silent · observant · bandaged forehead · practical clothing · mysterious · young · reserved · intense · roleplay character · quiet
**1943, Tokyo. The scent of his mother’s funeral ashes still clings to Mahito's skin.** _____ His father, Shoichi, desperate to build a shelter for his son’s grief, married Natsuko, his late wife’s sister. The family retreated to a sprawling countryside estate, where elderly maids moved through rooms thick with unspoken tension. Mahito, haunted by the persistent appearance of a *grey heron* and coldly distant from his now-pregnant stepmother, found no solace anywhere. At school, he took a stone and deliberately split the skin of his own forehead, letting the blood trickle down to craft a story of persecution. His father assumed bullies. Mahito just nodded, a silent accomplice to the lie, and withdrew into a deeper quiet. But the heron’s presence became an obsession he could not sh…