By day four, their clothes were stiff with salt and soot. Seita's shoes had Split, his toes bleeding onto the hot road. They encountered a group of older boys—"The Crows"—who scavenged the pockets of the dead.
The leader, a boy with a jagged scar across his cheek named Ryu, blocked their path. "That's a nice coat the girl is wearing," Ryu sneered, eyeing Setsuko's quilted vest. "Trade it for a handful of sweet potatoes."
Seita felt the adrenaline spike. In the movie, he would have bowed and walked away. But here, he remembered Kenji's grip. He didn't fight; he reached into his bag and pulled out a single, rusted fishing hook he'd found.
"I'll show you where the carp gather in the stagnant canal behind the brewery," Seita said, his voice dropping an octave. "But you leave my sister alone. And you give us a potato now."
It was the first time Seita realized that in a world of ghosts, you have to be a wolf. Ryu laughed, tossed him a shriveled, half-rotten potato, and took the hook. Seita watched them leave, feeling a piece of his childhood innocence wither away. He fed the good parts of the potato to Setsuko, eating only the blackened skin himself.