Naoya Teshigawara was ultimately an unserious kid. You could ask anyone, he was the class clown. He made jokes and everyone laughed. Naoya would do anything for a laugh, even going as far as pulling his pants down in class. It earned him a first class trip to the principal's office, but everyone laughed. Well everyone but one. In the back of the class was the same serious unfazed face, always just staring at him with almost a look of pity in his eyes as he looked of the rim of his glasses as his blonde classmate. Every time as the class clown was dragged out of giggling elementary class, that face would always be the one that stuck him the most as, a skinny kid with stringy blue hair, just looking over his glasses holding a book.
Naoya was in the principal's office much too often, his older sister insisted he must have has at least a thousand frequent flier miles totaled up, what ever that meant. He didn't see his sister all that often. Mio, who was fifteen and rarely home, wasn't close to her brother but stuck up for him like a decent sister when she was home which again wasn't often. Secretly Naoya looked up to his sister who was eight years his senior. Every so often he would be stopped by his mother, a shaky blond woman with smile lines and dark bags under her eyes who was dreadfully skinny but was thought beautiful by her son none the less. She would tell him not to grow up and be like his sister, not to stay out every night and be a delinquent. At the tender age of seven, he didn't know the meaning of that word "delinquent". But at that moment, seeing his mother shaking more than usual with her face beet red and her eyes moist like she had been crying, he agreed nonetheless scared of disappointing his mother.
Sitting on the firm and immensely uncomfortable wooden bench, Naoya Teshigawara age seven squirmed in his seat as the woman working the school's office glared back at him if he moved too much. With every glare the rambunctious second grader froze and watched intensely as the receptionist went back to typing. He was anxious, for once in his short elementary career he was down to see the principal for a reason that wasn't completely clear. He hadn't pulled down his pants in class, nor had he flipped any girls' skirts during recess, he hadn't even written funny messages on the blackboard or made funny faces during tests. He had just been sitting at his desk working on the most difficult subtraction he had faced in his short life when his teacher calmly walked over to his desk, placed a hand on his shoulder and kindly said they would be making a trip to see Hazama-sensei, the principal. He had never seen Tsubaki-sensei, his 28-year-old teacher with normally kind brown eyes that reminded him of his mother. She was kind and pretty, but was terrifying if angered which was a side that Naoya brought out fairly often.
Naoya just sat there as still as he could, his legs swinging off the edge of the bench. He thought of how Tsubaki-Sensei had excused herself to go back and teacher his class and instructed him to be good while Hazama-Sensei finished up a phone call. From the silence and the clicking of letters being typed, there was a click and the principal's door opened to reveal a seemingly friendly Hazama-Sensei. Normally when Naoya met with the Hazama-sensei, he was stern and serious. Now, the middle-aged man was smiling and inviting in the second grader. What was happening? It was all so surreal.
Naoya took a seat in a seat that was oversized compared to his small frame opposite to Hazama-sensei who sat behind his desk and attempted to make small talk with the boy. He asked about his friends, and his studies, and his family. "Teshigawara-san, How is your sister Mio? It's been a long time since she walked these halls, but I remember her. You remind me a lot of her, she was a good student." The second grader stiffened up a bit. He wasn't supposed to be like her, but at the same time he didn't understand. He was a horrible student who just barely got by. How could he be compared to a good student? Still He found the idea that his sister was a good student odd. He could remember just a few days before a screaming match between their father and his sister about skipping class before she grabbed her back pack and ran from the house onto the back of a man's motorcycle. The young boy answered that his sister was going ok.
Then the principal got much more serious, he was no longer smiling like before but rather looking at him much more seriously. "Teshigawara-san, Naoya, Do you know why you're down here, son?" In a moment of meekness the boy shook his head and offered a timid "no", he was about to be scolded for something he just knew it. But no scolding came, only a concerned voice from the normally stern principal. "Teshigawara-san, Some members of our staff here and Yomiyama Elementary, Tsubaki-sensei included, are worried about you. Son, May I ask how you got that bruise on your arm?"
Naoya looked down at his right forearm, a large fading but still relatively new handprint shaped bruise wrapped it's self around his arm close to his wrist. Quickly the young boy looked at the bruise, covered it with his other hand, and smiled back at the principal. "That? I got into a fight with some older kids at the park over a swing. It was my own fault. " The child laughed it off, acting as macho as he possibly could, in a vague and clear attempt to hide the origin of his many bruises. The middle-aged principle was unconvinced but said nothing, "Son, have your parents ever hit you? It's all right you can tell me. I just want to help you."
Naoya froze, his false macho smile still plastered on his childlike face as a single word flashed in his head. The word continued to flash but it couldn't make its way to his mouth. Instead young Naoya continued to smile and say "Nope. Everything is fine Hazama-sensei." He simply shook his head and looked down at the bruised child before him before saying, "Alright, but please remember. If you're ever in trouble you can always tell a teacher promise me you will then go back to class.
"I promise Sensei." With that the child jumped from the chair onto the floor and bowed respectfully to the principal before head out the door to go back to his class on the second floor. On the way up the stairs, Naoya stopped in front of a window looking out into the court yard, it was just reflective enough her him to see his reflection. He looked about and noted the bruises on his arm that were from the night before, Looking into the window he pulled down the neck of the t-shirt and inspected his neck. He glanced at the fading handprints, and shook his head before heading back up the stairs again but not before catching another glimpse of his arm. From then on Naoya would wear a jacket everyday, no matter the weather.
The sun was shining on that bright May day as Naoya walked slowly toward his home. Most kids were picked up, or at least walked home by their parents. Naoya walked home alone with his eyes down staring at the cracked sidewalk as she make his way up his street and up to his front door. His small hand hovered over the doorknob. He could hear yelling on the inside, his shaky mother's cried and his father's slurred threats. No matter how much he didn't want to open the door, he had no choice, things would only be worse if he was late. At that moment, he considered running and calling the police from a pay phone, but what good would that do? Things would just end up even worse for him in the end. He just stood there in an almost trance like state before a loud "SMASH" and his mother's screams brought him back to attention and he rushed in the living room. There was a smashed lamp on the floor beside his sobbing mother who was curled up in a ball on the floor. Over her stood his father, a tall man with five o'clock shadow and scraggly hair who reeked of whiskey.
"Mom!" The frantic boy called running toward his mother only to be stopped by his father roughly holding back by his arm. The Teshigawara patriarch glared down at his young son spotting that he was still wearing his shoes. "You disrespectful little shit!" one hand met Naoya's face and made its way across as the young boy tried to cry. His mother looked up from her spot on the stained rug and yelled out to her husband, "Soiichi! Stop it! Soiichi he did nothing wrong! He's only a child!" her protests were met by her husband's boot that returned her to her whimpering stupor on the rug "You whore! You stay out of this!" the drunken man yelled as he dragged his son to the front door which he had forgotten to close, Naoya was met by yet another hard slap before being dropped on the floor. "Are you so ungrateful for this house that you wont even take off your shoes? You're lucky you even have a house, or even shoes for that matter. Take them off!" the frantic child on the floor pulled the shoes from his feet only to have them nabbed by his raging father who then in turn swung open the front door and tossed them into the road. Naoya said nothing and stared at his father who slammed the door shut then turned back to the young boy and held him slightly off the floor by his vice like grip
Naoya screamed out in pain before his father punched him in the gut, "You little bastard! What did you tell them? The police were here today!" Hot tears streamed down the seven year Old's cheeks, as he yelled out in protest "Nothing I didn't say anything!"
"Bullshit!" Naoya was dropped hard onto the floor and his abusive father grabbed his arm and started to drag the boy up the hard stairs. At the top of the stairs, there was a window that gave a clear view of the businesses across the street. Making it to his feet for only a moment, and in that split moment he saw something he wouldn't soon forget. There was a phone booth right across the street, and in that phone booth stood a second grade boy. He was skinny with stringy blue hair and glasses that were constantly on the tips of his nose so he was always looking over them. But this boy he was no longer calm. He was staring like a deer in headlights at the house across the street, and he seemed to be yelling into the phone. That was the last glimpse of the outside the young say before being dragged down the hall and again brutally beaten by his father then shoved into the darkness of an old closet with more than four locks on the outside. One his son had been shoved into the closet much like a hidden corpse the foot was locked by chains and deadbolts and the angry drunken man walked away. Not too long after, the seven-year-old Naoya had faded into black. The next thing he knew he was being rolled out of his house on a stretcher bloodied and beaten. Before blacking out again in the ambulance, he remembered seeing two things for certain. A familiar serious boy with glasses standing behind caution tape, and his own drunken father being forced into the back of a police car.
It was a week and a half before the young student returned to school with a cast on his arm, stitches, broken ribs and bruises. It almost didn't seem real considering the injured student acted exactly as he had before. He told jokes and refused to see the seriousness in the world. No one saw the child's pain, except for one. The boy who never laughed that sat at the back of the room.
Before the school bell rang one morning, a still recovering Naoya ventured into the courtyard to find that same stringy haired boy sitting below a tree, reading a book. "Is that all you do?" the silly blonde asked and received a rather serious answer as expected. "No, but it's better than other things I could be doing." Teshigawara shook his head and cut right to the chance. "What's your name? You were on the phone in the phone booth. You broke up my family." Standing before the blonde, the serious boy adjusted his glasses, pushing them up on the bridge of his nose. "Kazami. Tomohiko Kazaki, and I saved your life."
Naoya just smiled a weak smile and looked back at Kazami. "Yeah Kazami, You saved me. How did you know? Was it the bruises?"
Kazami shook his head, "Partially. I live down the street from you sometimes I heard yells. But there was also something else."
Naoya looked puzzled "What was that?"
"I once heard that the funniest people in the world were the ones in the most pain, I don't laugh at pain."
Naoya grinned, laughed, and wrapped his unbroken arm around Kazami's shoulders, "You know Kazami? You're weird! For now on you're going to me my friend."
Kazami looked unfazed by the kid who had already deemed an idiot "Hey, I never said you could call me Kazami."
Naoya continued to beam, "I don't care! You'll always be Kazami to me," he confirmed pulling Kazami as to say they were going to walk into the school.
Shaking his head, Kazami finally smile and let out a small laugh at the class clown. "Fine Teshie, lets go."