The night air cut sharply through the tall, angular young man's hoodie as he stood on a hill overlooking the city. He drew his hood more tightly around his face and turned his back to the gusts that blew over the sprawling stretch of Tokyo. The park was full of silvery moonlight despite the cool autumn wind that swirled around his lean, lithe frame. The white beaches and turquoise ocean of Okinawa were replaced by the desolate alleys and cool rain of Tokyo. The city's sense of loneliness and separation was only deepened by the washed out colours around him. He sighed and turned on his heel, striding silently through a clearing before leaving the park and walking briskly down the sidewalk of the neighbourhood that bordered the park.

The sound of his boot heels clicking on the sidewalk seemed unbearably loud in the oddly quiet air. This street seemed to be empty despite the bustling city around it. Everywhere he went in Tokyo was devoid of any meaning, but the strange movements on the edge of his consciousness continued to plague him with fear and doubt. He saw other people his age enjoying their lives full of happiness and seemingly carefree. All that Zakki could see was a vision of himself wandering the streets as an old man, babbling and rambling crazily, but he shook his head and tried to dispel that paranoid fear.

The slim youth's musing was broken by the sound of someone yelling. It was indistinct and difficult to pick out the words, so he lifted his head and looked around. The sound came from an alleyway and he moved towards it. It was a young teen's voice and he was terrified. The quiet young man began to run faster toward the sound. He dashed into the alley and saw a boy on the ground, trying to cover his body from the kicks that rained down on him, as he whimpered piteously.

"Leave him alone!" The slim young man's voice was surprisingly strong and authoritative as he stood in front of the two older men who were kicking the boy.

"Heh. Who's this? Go away, kid. Its none of your business." They turned back to the sobbing boy and continued to rain kicks on him as he cried out in pain.

"Stop!." Zakki took a step forward with considerably more bravery than he actually felt.

"Okay, you little shit, we will." The two men sneered and turned to face this irritating distraction from their satisfying beating.

One took a step forward, his heavy bulk dwarfing the young man's slim frame. Zakki didn't back down in spite of the size differential. The man grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up and tossed him easily into the concrete wall of a building. Zakki grunted but managed to struggle to his feet, so the other man hit him across the face and he fell again. As the two men beat him, Zakki noticed that the young boy had managed to get up and was slowly limping away.

Zakki staggered to his feet, trying to keep the men busy while the younger boy continued to escape. The larger of the two men hefted a rock and tossed it at him. He tried to dodge it but the sharp rock gashed his shoulder and he shouted in pain. The young man stood again with blood soaking his black clothing as the men circled him. Both men ran at him now and Zakki used his lithe frame to his advantage by diving out of the way. The momentum of both larger men carried them into each other. Both collapsed into a dazed pile and lay there groaning.

The slim lad shot a nervous glance over his shoulder as he limped towards his new acquaintance, but the two thugs seemed to be incapacitated. The small, bloodied figure slumped on the sidewalk in front of him and the young man, who was not much more filled out than the boy, managed to get him to his feet and help him. They limped and staggered as quickly as they could. Zakki managed to find a niche in between a wall and a tree and they both collapsed there, bruised, battered but alive.

"Are you alright? What did those assholes want?" Zakki asked in a weak voice.

"They wanted to rob me. I told them I didn't have any money, but they didn't care!" The boy whispered.

"They usually just want someone to hurt. You fit the bill at the moment. There's lots of people like that in this world. You need to be careful!"

The boy sobbed now, shaking.

The skinny young man reached out and patted him on the back briefly.

"What's your name? Mine's Zakki."

The boy glanced up, his dirty face looking tired in the moonlight, and said, "I'm Yusuke."

"Pleased to meet you, Yusuke. How'd you end up out here on the street? If I can ask that is." The solemn faced youth asked gently.

"I got kicked out of the house. I was doing badly in school and my father just lost his job. He started drinking a lot and he threw me out when I got my last report card. " The tired boy began to cry again.

Zakki patted him on the back quickly and spoke reflectively.

"I know how it feels. My parents rejected me as well. It still hurts like hell, but you figure out how to go on."

The tall, slim young man got up and helped the boy up next to him. They turned and began to walk slowly down the street. Now that Zakki had Yusuke safe with him it only made sense to keep protecting him as long as he was able to do so.

The next morning dawned cool and soggy. Yusuke had slept in Zakki's spare sleeping bag in one corner of his tent. On the other side of the tent, Zakki slowly stretched and cracked his back as he looked around the tent. It was cold and he hated the sensation of being dirty, but at least he had some shelter.

He heard the sounds of Yusuke stirring, so he stood, half stooped as he made some attempt at stretching a bit more in the confined space. Every one of his bruises hurt like hell and the wound on his shoulder blade throbbed. He reached back and felt the crust of dried blood on his shirt.

The angular youth stepped out of the tent. As the cool, damp morning air wrapped around him, he shivered. Zakki glanced around and wondered how long it would be before the cops showed up and evicted him.

"Hey….Zakki?" Yusuke's voice came softly from inside the tent.

The razor-thin youth elegantly moved back into the tent.

"Yeah? Whats up, Yusuke?" He asked in his soft tones.

"I had this terrifying dream last night. I kept thinking there was something in the tent that wanted to hurt me." The boy's voice was sleepy but his recollection of the dream was clearly troubling.

Zakki sat down and rested his back up against the wall on which the tent rested with his long legs stretched out in front of him.

"I've had those dreams too. I think that it's a pretty natural result of being stuck in a tent on the street."

In spite of himself, Zakki thought about the strange feelings he'd had of strange flickering that occurred on the edges of his consciousness. He worried about them and hoped he wasn't suffer the early symptoms of schizophrenia, but his reverie was interrupted by a sharp comment from his younger companion.

"Hey Zakki! There's someone coming!"

He focused on the door of the tent and saw an outline moving outside. The lanky twenty-something grimaced, as he realized that it was probably the owner of the building where they were camping coming to kick them out.

"Fuck! You'd start wrapping the sleeping bag up. We're probably going to have to move quickly. I'm sure we're about to be evicted!" The long, lean youth leaped across the tent, opening the tent flap and coming face to face with a large, livid man in an undershirt and ill-fitting jeans.

Zakki eyed him coolly. Unlike the men who'd been beating up Yusuke,this overheated idiot didn't intimidate him at all. The androgynous youth's green eyes met those of the middle-aged man and the man looked away first.

"What the hell are you doing on my property, you goddamn squatters!" The man's face was bright red as he shouted.

"We appear to be camping here. We'll be moving on soon so just calm down. " Zakki's naturally stubborn nature came to the fore as he squared his skinny shoulders and replied to the challenge.

"You filthy kids get the hell off of my property. I'll give you ten minutes to get out!" The landlord shoved Zakki and he stumbled back a few paces before catching his balance. The slim man, just barely out of his teens dusted himself off and walked slowly back to the tent and poked his head in.

"We're definitely moving on. Take that big duffel bag of mine and stuff whatever you can into it. I'll take the tent down." The boy nodded and started to stuff unruly piles of clothing, a few books that Zakki kept and anything else that he could find into the huge duffel bag.

The tent was a simple tarp affair and Zakki took it down with ease. The two of them finished clearing up camp and the skinny youth lifted the heavy duffel with a grunt. It felt as if it weighed more than he did. His shoulder throbbed but he gritted his teeth and the pair set off down the street through the waking city.

There didn't seem to be much to say for a few minutes as they trudged along but eventually Yusuke piped up.

"Why are you out on the street, Zakki?"

The almost painfully thin young man furrowed his brow as he struggled slowly down the road.

"Nothing was ever right at home. My parents started to argue when I was a little kid and it only got worse. Eventually I couldn't take it any more. I just had to get out."

Yusuke glanced up at him.

"That's pretty awful. Was it just the arguing? Like wasn't there more than that?"

"My father couldn't understand what was going on with me. He and my mother differed about what they should do about the stuff I was experiencing."

Zakki stopped and put the duffel down with a thud, leaning his lanky frame up against a low concrete wall.

"Um so, like, what were you experiencing?" Yusuke asked as he looked curiously at Zakki.

"You'll probably think I'm nuts if I tell you."

The young, moon-faced teen shook his head.

"Nah. I bet I won't!"

The lanky man next to him screwed up his face and said, "Sometimes I think I see things. I don't mean like full-blown hallucinations but like there's something just out of sight that's trying to chase me."

"Oh that's weird. Sometimes I get stuff like that too!"

Zakki stared at him and replied, "Really? Seriously?

"Oh yeah. I just kinda ignore it. I bet it's just a bunch of ghosts or something." The boy's tone was nonchalant. The slim twenty-year old wished he could be that cavalier about his odd sensations and he said, "There's no such thing as ghosts, Yusuke."

His companion only laughed.

"There are so. You just have to believe in them."

Zakki just let the matter slide at that point and they began dragging their heavy bags down the road again looking for another place to camp. Eventually they found an isolated corner of one of Tokyo's bigger parks and settled down into it as unobtrusively as possible. They ate a meagre meal of chocolate bars that Zakki had stashed away and washed it down with a flat can of cola before getting ready to sleep. As was often the case, sleep came quickly to the exhausted youths once they'd climbed into their sleeping bags.

There was a tug on the leg of the slim youth's pants and he came more fully awake. Looking down, he saw the slight figure of Yusuke sitting at his feet, staring intensely at him. Zakki sat up and gave the boy a quizzical look.

"What is it, Yusuke? It's the middle of the night." The young man tried to keep annoyance from creeping into his voice as he spoke. The last thing he wanted to do was snap at his younger friend.

"You looked like you had mist all around you, Zakki. I thought I was dreaming but I think I was actually awake. I told you there are ghosts!" The boy was looking off, past Zakki, into some place that was much more remote.

The brooding youth nodded slowly as he took in Yusuke's words. He responded, "Are you sure you really saw that?"

"Yes! I'm not lying to you! I told you I see stuff like that!"

The skinny older boy sat up more and yawned before he spoke again.

"Okay, okay I believe you! So how often does it happen to you? "

"Um every couple months. Sometimes more. Sometimes I feel like something really,really bad is out there waiting to get me. "

The small teen shivered and it wasn't just the temperature inside the tent that made him shake

Zakki said, "Yeah I get that too but I think we're safe for now. Try to go back to bed and get some sleep, kid.

The younger teen scampered across the tent and climbed into his sleeping bag. Zakki zipped his own sleeping bag tighter around himself and tried to sleep, but he tossed and turned on the cold, hard ground under him and a streetlight sent a beam of light into his eyes. Before he managed to drift off, he wondered if by some strange quirk of fate, he'd found a friend who understood what he felt and the terrors that plagued his nights.