Nine years ago…
Soft morning sunlight streamed through the old wooden window of a small house nestled in a valley in Chiang Mai province. The rays caressed the face of a young boy still curled up happily on his mattress. The cheerful chirping of birds blended softly with the fragrant aroma of cooked rice wafting from the kitchen, painting the morning atmosphere with warmth and a sense of security.
"Wake up now, dear. You'll be late for school," his mother's gentle voice called, accompanied by her incredibly warm smile—a smile that remained an unforgettable image in his mind, no matter how much time passed.
The boy's name was "Kay." His life at that time was simple and overflowing with happiness. His father was a skilled mechanic teacher at a vocational college. His mother was a kind nurse at the local health center. And he had a little seven-year-old sister named "May" who always tagged along behind him like a shadow.
In the eyes of a young boy, everything around him seemed stable and everlasting—until the night of death and loss crept in, unannounced.
In the dead of night, amidst the profound silence, gunshots erupted continuously, jolting everyone in the house awake in utter terror. The sound of shattering windowpanes filled the air. Black smoke began to billow and spread throughout the house. His father quickly grabbed Kay and May, pushing their mother towards the back door.
"I'll try to hold them off! Take Kay and May and run with your mother, quickly!" his father shouted, his voice desperate and urgent.
But before they could escape, several high-powered flashlights blazed, accompanied by shouted commands in an unintelligible language. Several menacing men dressed in black swarmed into the house. One of them violently yanked him from his mother's grasp, sending him sprawling. May screamed at the top of her lungs in terror—and then everything around Kay plunged into darkness.
He regained consciousness on the cold, hard floor of a sealed steel truck. The interior was dim and damp. He was among a dozen or so other strange children. Everyone looked terrified. Some were sobbing uncontrollably, some sat silently like statues, and some… lay perfectly still, no longer breathing.
"If you don't want to be thrown out by the roadside like dogs, shut your mouths and don't look at me!" one of the large, burly guards snarled at them, his voice furious, his eyes hard and merciless.
Over the following days, the children were moved from place to place, with no clear destination, until they reached a large, abandoned warehouse deep in a remote forest. He had no idea where May, his sister, was. He didn't even know if his parents were still alive. Despair began to gnaw at his young heart.
On the third night of their confinement in the abandoned warehouse, a deafening explosion ripped through the night's silence, followed by the sound of a helicopter swooping low over the warehouse roof. Soldiers in black, heavily armed, stormed the warehouse from all directions. Gunfire erupted fiercely.
Amidst the chaos and the deafening roar of gunfire, he heard an incredibly familiar voice calling out.
"Kay! Grandson! Where are you!"
A tall, elderly man with salt-and-pepper hair, his face lined with wrinkles and battle scars. It was his grandfather—a man he had only seen once a year during holidays. But now, his grandfather was braving a hail of bullets to find him.
After the terrifying events of that night, he was not sent back home to Chiang Mai as he had hoped. Instead, he was taken to a secret military training camp located deep in the northern jungles. This place held no smiles, no fun and games, no mother's embrace, no little sister like May, and no more of his mother's warm, fragrant jasmine rice. There were only the periodic sounds of gunfire, sweat drenching his body, and bloodstains.
"You are too weak. If you want to survive in this cruel world, you must learn to kill." Those were the first words he heard from his grandfather, in his new role as his instructor.
The training began, intense and brutal, far beyond what a child could endure. From unarmed combat and the use of all kinds of weapons—knives, guns, and explosives—to survival training in the harshest conditions. He had to learn to kill animals for food with his own hands, until one day... he was ordered to kill a human target for the first time.
"He's no good. He's one of those who kidnaps children to sell them," his grandfather said, his voice flat but laced with a chilling coldness.
His hands trembled, cold sweat seeping from his palms. The first bullet was fired erratically, without aim. And that was the day "Kay," the boy who once had a simple and happy life, died. And with his death, came the birth of "Death," the cold-blooded assassin.
Years passed. Death became a shadow, a traceless killer. He had no name on any official registry, no real identity in the outside world. He traveled secretly to every corner of the globe, quietly taking on dangerous and dirty missions, eliminating targets as ordered, and then disappearing like a nightmare that had never happened.
But after every mission, he would often sit alone in a dark corner, gazing at an old family photograph, faded with time—a picture of a family of four, parents and children, smiling happily in front of their old teakwood house in Chiang Mai.
"May... where are you now..." he would murmur to himself, guilt and longing evident in his eyes, even in the shadows.
And that was the beginning of the young man called "Death," the man who had walked through death countless times, before fate led him back to confront his past and the family he had left behind. His journey had just begun anew, on a different path… a path to discovering the true meaning of "home" and "family."