Gyutaro and Ume were born at Rashomon Riverside, the most impoverished part of the Entertainment District.
The children living at Rashomon Riverside were seen as nothing but a waste of food money, a troublesome burden. Gyutaro had faced several brushes with death just being born, and even after surviving his birth, he was often beaten and cursed by his mother.
Scrawny and ugly-those were his defining traits.
Idiot, coward, worthless trash-those were his nicknames.
People hurling insults and pebbles at him was an everyday occurrence. Yet even this inhuman existence failed to break Gyutaro, because when he had no idea what meaning his life held, he saw his "sun."
Ume, his little sister.
Unlike Gyutaro, Ume had displayed extraordinary beauty from childhood, putting even many adults to shame.
Seeing how everyone envied Ume swept away Gyutaro's feelings of inferiority. To give his sister a better life, he put his accidentally discovered talent for fighting to work as a debt collector. For the first time, he felt proud of his frighteningly ugly appearance.
Just when Gyutaro thought everything would change for the better, the "sun" in his heart went dark.
Ume, who worked at the Brothel, had no aversion to the various things she did with men. But everyone had a line that could not be crossed, and for Ume, that line was her brother.
One day, a samurai insulted Gyutaro with vile words. Unable to tolerate it, Ume gritted her teeth, grabbed her hairpin, and stabbed out the samurai's left eye. For that, he took his revenge on her.
He bound Ume and burned her alive. When Gyutaro arrived, she lay on the ground, burned beyond recognition and barely breathing.
Gyutaro trembled all over as he looked at his dying sister on the ground. Ume's body quivered faintly as she