After the day of the "Examination," not everything changed at once. The change was insidious and slow, like poison seeping into water. I remained in my private room, and my food was still slightly better than the others' watery soup. But Ikumi's gaze had changed. It was no longer the gaze of a blacksmith who had found a rare metal, but that of one looking at a stubborn piece of metal that refused to be shaped under the hammer.

  During that period, the nightly rituals began.

  Every night, before I went to sleep, she would summon me to her office. The first time, I went with a heart pounding with hope, thinking she might test me again, and maybe this time it would work.

  But she was holding a thin leather whip.

  "The stone failed to awaken you," she said with a frightening calm. "Let's try something more direct. Pain is the key that opens locked doors in the soul."

  I didn't understand her words, but I understood the whip as it fell.

  I would say "I'm sorry" with every strike, and she would whisper words about "the fire that forges steel" and "the weakness that must be burned away."

  This became our daily session. And every week, the "tool" would change. A bamboo stick, a sharp-edged metal ruler... each tool left a different kind of pain, and I was learning the alphabet of agony.

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  Then, after months of failed "forging," her patience ran out.

  One day, I returned to find my few belongings thrown outside my room. I was moved to the common hall, the noisy hall that reeked of sweat, despair, and dozens of other bodies. I had lost my last private space in the world. That evening, my bowl contained the same thin soup that everyone else ate.

  The era of the "golden child" was over. I had officially become just another disappointment.

  At first, the other children ignored me. I was the failure; I was no longer even worthy of their jealousy. This new loneliness was harsh in its own way.

  But the ignoring didn't last long.

  One day, one of the older children, the leader of their group, gathered the rest of the boys. He looked at me with a malicious grin.

  "I'm tired of training," he said. "We're going to play a new game. The 'Catch the Devil' game."

  Everyone immediately understood who the devil was.

  "Soldiers of the Gu Clan!" he shouted. "Our mission today is to cleanse this place!"

  The hunt began.

  I ran. I ran in terror through the filthy alleys that had become my playground and my prison. I could hear their voices chasing me, their shouts, their cruel laughter. At first, I could escape for a while, using my knowledge of every corner to hide. But they were getting stronger and faster every day.

  They always caught me in the end.

  The group beatings were different from Ikumi's. They weren't organized or cold. They were chaotic, alive, and filled with the gleeful hatred of children who had finally found someone weaker than themselves.

  This became my life.

  Every sunrise brought with it the beginning of the "Catch the Devil game." And every sunset brought with it my summons to Ikumi's office for my session of "forging."

  I was trapped between two kinds of hell. A chaotic hell by day, and an organized hell by night.

  I was just an animal locked in a cage, with no escape, only waiting for the next round of pain.