Back when I was in ninth grade, I lived with my parents and my younger brother. On New Year's Eve, after watching the Kohaku Uta Gassen music show, I went to bed hoping for a nice first dream of the year... but in the middle of the night, a nightmare jolted me awake.

My heart was pounding loudly enough for me to hear, oily sweat oozed over my entire body, and I felt a chill run down my spine as if ice-cold water had been poured on me. But I couldn't remember what the dream was about; I just sat frozen in the exact position I'd popped up in from my futon.

"A nightmare right at the start of the new year? Talk about terrible..."

Thinking that, there was no way I was getting back to sleep, so I headed to the living room where the fridge was to quench my parched throat. But even though it was past two in the morning, my entire family was sitting in front of the TV, huddled together in an embrace.

[Original Story] My Family's Bizarre Behavior [Audio Version] *Published with formal permission from the original author.

The TV was left running, showing a news program on the screen. And it was completely silent. On top of that, every single window was wide open, making it just as cold inside as it was outdoors. It was so clearly abnormal that a chilling shiver ran through me.

"What are you guys doing?! Have you lost your minds?!"

When I yelled out, half-snapping in a voice so shaky even I could tell, my younger brother mouthed something repeatedly. "Because..." he stammered, and then suddenly burst into tears. Watching him, my parents remained silent and expressionless the entire time, closing all the windows, turning off the TV, and telling my brother, who was curled up and crying, "Go back to sleep," as they led him to the bedroom. Having encountered such an eerie event at the start of the new year, I couldn't sleep and stayed up until morning reading manga in my room.

When morning came, I asked my parents, "What were you doing in the middle of the night yesterday?" But they just gave me puzzled looks as if to say, "Huh?", leaving me completely at a loss. What was all that about yesterday? Talking to my friends about it would only make them doubt me, and since my girlfriend had dumped me back in December, I decided it must have been a hallucination caused by mental exhaustion and chose to forget about it.

A while later, I woke up in the middle of the night from another nightmare. This time I vaguely remembered the content: a dream about getting struck on the back of the head by a stranger. Strangely, even after waking up, a dull throbbing pain remained near the crown of my head. Furthermore, bizarre thoughts like "I'll be okay at the convenience store" crossed my mind for no reason. Frightened and bordering on panic, I went to the living room, but nobody was there. For some reason, a burnt smell filled the air, perhaps from the grilled meat we had for dinner. Suddenly remembering the weird incident in the living room from New Year's Eve, I spent another sleepless night.

Around the beginning of February, my body started itching abnormally. At first, I thought it was just dry skin, but my back and head felt especially severe, like they were burning, and I kept scratching fiercely. The itching showed no sign of getting better, so I visited a dermatologist and got a topical ointment. When I tried to apply the medicine after taking a bath, my brother pleaded, "Let me put it on!" I turned my back to him, and for some inexplicable reason, he delivered a hard slap right onto my back. "What the hell is wrong with you?!" I yelled. My yelling always made my brother cry, so tears quickly welled up in his eyes, and just as I thought he was about to wail, tears began streaming down his face without a sound. Then his face seemed to lose all color, until he was crying with a completely expressionless face. Stunned by that creepy expression, I suddenly realized my parents were standing nearby, shedding tears with the same blank expressions. Looking closely, I could see their lips moving slightly, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. I was completely stunned, but in the next instant, the scenery around me turned blood-red, gradually shifting to sepia as my consciousness drifted away.

Thinking the scenery looked somewhat familiar, I looked closer and realized I was at my cousin's house. Beside me, my uncle was staring at my face with a solemn expression. "Huh?! Why am I here?" I couldn't grasp the situation at all. Before long, relatives began gathering around me in groups.

Was everything up until now just a dream...?

While making various guesses in my head, I panicked again when I noticed my body was covered in bandages everywhere for some reason.

"If he doesn't have his memories, maybe it's better he doesn't remember," my grandfather said, to which my uncle replied, "We have to tell him what happened. The culprit hasn't been caught yet, and the police will be coming back in a week." Then, my uncle explained everything that had happened.

My house had been set on fire by someone on January 1st and burned down completely. I had apparently survived because I happened to be at a convenience store, but I seemed to have witnessed the suspect, who struck me on the back of the head and beat me savagely all over, causing me to lose my memory. After hovering between life and death at the hospital, I managed to survive and was taken in by my grandfather. It was already March. Having undergone rehabilitation for two months while lacking my memory, just as I regained consciousness, I had to accept a cruel reality.

I broke down in tears. My grandparents cried along with me. The pain of losing everything precious all at once was beyond words. Bruises still remained all over my body, and a sharp pain shot through my joints whenever I bent them.

Why all the windows had been open in the dead of winter in the middle of the night. My family huddling together with blank faces. The nightmare of being struck by a stranger. The scenery suddenly turning blood-red. Everything fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

In the end, the culprit still hasn't been caught. The blue bruise on my back had a patch shaped like my younger brother's palm where that specific area remained completely unharmed, but about five years later, around the time the other scars cleanly disappeared, that palm shape vanished along with them.