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I don't speak. Never have. Not because I can't, but because I don’t want to. It’s something I’ve never quite understood—this sense of quiet that clings to me like a second skin. Growing up in the sprawling, suffocating city, my silence wasn’t something I thought to question. In fact, it felt natural, like breathing or blinking—something that simply was. My brother, Ryūnosuke, was the one who spoke for us when words were necessary. He had no problem being heard. And I—well, I didn’t mind.
But then, when I turned twelve, everything changed. Ryūnosuke joined the Port Mafia. I watched him slip into its shadow like a man donning an entirely different skin. And, by some twisted turn of fate, I found myself alongside him, thrown into that same darkness with no understanding of why.
In the beginning, I didn’t question my place among them. After all, it was Ryūnosuke—the sharp, cruel boy who had always seemed older than his years—who guided me into this world. His silence, too, seemed deliberate. Yet, unlike me, he was no stranger to violence, to the dark weight of words meant to wound. To him, silence was a weapon, a tool in his endless arsenal of control. But me? I had nothing to offer but my own quiet presence. A ghost.
In the Mafia, everything was about presence—about being noticed or, sometimes, not being noticed. Ryūnosuke moved with the grace of someone who had always belonged. His every step was calculated, every word used with purpose. People were drawn to him, and I, as I always had been, was left in the periphery, an observer, a mere shadow to his sharp, ever-present light.
But then I began to notice something. People started to whisper about me—not in the ways they did about Ryūnosuke, who commanded attention, but in ways that made me uncomfortable. My silence, once just a passive trait, was becoming a mark of something else. An abnormality.
“You’re weird, you know that?” It was the first time one of the older Mafia members had addressed me directly in such a way. My mouth stayed shut, the words they spoke echoing in the empty chambers of my mind, unanswered. My hands fidgeted nervously, but I didn’t speak. I never did.
“You think you’re better than us, huh?” The man’s voice was low, like a growl, and his eyes narrowed as though daring me to speak. Ryūnosuke had walked off to handle something, leaving me alone for what felt like the first time in weeks. The quiet that followed was almost deafening, even to me. I felt the weight of their gaze. Felt the pressure, the expectation.
I wasn’t better. I wasn’t anything, really. But I had never been asked for words, never been expected to offer them. In our house, words were always something Ryūnosuke controlled. I wasn’t like him, and that had always been fine. But now? Now it felt like a weakness, like an open wound. My silence was no longer just mine —it was noticed .
And that made it dangerous.
It wasn’t long before I started to hear the mutterings, the whispers just out of earshot. “That girl doesn’t talk. What’s wrong with her?” “She’s got something off about her. Don’t trust the silent ones.” My chest tightened at every word, my body growing tense, trying to block them out, but there was no escape. In the Port Mafia, weakness—any kind of difference—was a liability. And silence? Silence was a fucking liability.
I noticed how they looked at me differently. Some didn’t trust me, their eyes wary, as though I were hiding something behind the mask of silence. And perhaps, in a way, I was. But it wasn’t a secret. It wasn’t something I was keeping to myself—just me .
But I was becoming a target. Not physically—not yet. But mentally, emotionally. I started seeing how my silence caused unease, how it made others uncomfortable. No one could tell what I was thinking, what I was feeling. I didn’t answer to them. I didn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing whether I cared or not. And that was the problem.
They began to see me as an anomaly, a creature that didn’t quite belong. And anomalies were often hunted. They wanted me to speak, to explain myself, to justify my existence in a place that demanded conformity. But I didn’t have the words for that. I didn’t know how to tell them I wasn’t trying to be different. I wasn’t trying to set myself apart. I just was. But in a world that fed on power, on control, being wasn’t enough.
So, my brother’s entrance into the Mafia had made me seen —but not in the way I ever expected. I was seen as an oddity, an enigma they couldn’t crack. And the truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be cracked. I had lived in the shadows for so long that stepping into the light, letting them see me, even just a little, made my chest tighten, my breath shallow. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—give them that power. Not over me.
But silence? Silence had never felt like a gift, only a heavy burden. The more they questioned me, the more the weight grew. I started to hate the silence, not because it was a part of me, but because it was something that set me apart. Something that made me a target in a world where being ordinary was the only protection.
And then one day, Ryūnosuke came to me. He was the only one who understood me, who didn’t demand anything more than I could give. His sharp eyes watched me closely, his face unreadable.
“They’re going to make you speak sooner or later,” he said. His voice was steady, like he already knew the truth, like he had already seen what I couldn’t bear to admit. His eyes were cold, calculating, like the way he assessed his enemies. But there was something else there, something softer that only I could see.
“I don’t need to speak,” I replied. The words felt foreign coming from my lips, but they were true. I didn’t need to speak. I never had.
“You don’t, not yet,” he muttered, “but it will get harder. People—” He paused, glancing over his shoulder as if expecting someone to overhear. “People will force you to. They won’t let it slide forever.”
I swallowed hard, my throat tight. I didn’t want to hear that. I didn’t want to acknowledge that the one thing that had kept me in the shadows was now the very thing threatening to expose me, to break me.
But as always, Ryūnosuke was right. My silence was becoming a weapon against me, and the very thing that had once been my shield was now becoming my weakness. And I didn’t know how to fix it .
I never realised how much silence could isolate you until it became the very thing that others feared.