(Hello fans of Tekken. It's been a while since I've posted anything and for that I offer my honest apology. I haven't posted on my main story The Return in months and I know some of you might be worried about that/me, but I assure you both of those things are doing fine and will keep on existing. This that you're about to read, or not read, is a completely different story however. I've decided to sit down tonight and start a new story because I have a tremendous amount of things on my mind that I want to get out in one of the only ways that I know will work for me. I've chosen to write the story from a perspective I don't think many people have ever looked at really, and that would be a young Heihachi. He is a teenager in this story, roughly 18 or 19 years old. It's not going to be canon so it's pointless to try and figure out where the story fits on a Tekken timeline because it simply doesn't. I wanted to write a very unorthodox story about some teenagers and Heihachi just felt like the right choice. I saw his emotional response in the trailer for Tekken 7 and for some reason it really stuck with me. Finally, I don't have any grand scheme for this story, but I do have three strong predictions; It might be short. It could be very sad. It will be told in reverse. If you don't want to read it then you don't have to, that's all.)

Move On

Hopeless

It was February, in the Two Thousand and Fifteenth year of Anno Domini.

The air outside was frigid, practically below freezing.

Pulling his dull green car into an empty spot, the boy scanned his surroundings and let the vehicle fall into park. There, only three spots to his left, a mid-sized silver Lexus purred loudly with its lights on. He recognized it immediately.

Staring quietly at the car for a moment, he let out a sigh to no one in particular. Then he turned the key and removed it from his car, letting the sounds fall into silence. Sliding the keys into his pocket along with a worn black wallet and a cell phone, he opened the door and ventured slowly outside. Stuffing his hands into his pockets in search of warmth, the boy walked carefully across three empty spots and approached the purring silver Lexus.

She was inside. She looked down at her phone.

Lightly he tapped the glass with one knuckle and drew her attention. She looked at him and stared. He opened the door and climbed inside. The door shut behind him and warmth enveloped him.

They said nothing.

She put her phone down and turned all the way to the right. Crossing one leg over the other, she held her lip and intensified her stare.

He exhaled and turned only his head. He gave her something with the length of a stare yet the power of a glance. Their eyes met once more.

Orange. For god's sake, she had orange eyes.

"Can we talk now?" She asked finally.

"Yeah." He answered.

"So talk."

"About what."

"Why you're doing this."

"I'm doing it because I have to."

"You can't just stop talking to me. We see each other every day. We talk all the time."

"That's exactly what needs to stop."

"Why!" She exclaimed, already expressing her shock at the idiotic decision he was trying to make.

He resented the question. It had been asked a hundred times already, each time more similar to the last. "Because we can't talk to each other anymore. The more I talk to you the worse I get." He answered.

"No you don't. Just because you talk to someone doesn't mean you feel for them."

"It does when the 'you' is me and the 'someone' is you."

She rolled her eyes in frustration. She hated it.

He looked at her and blinked. He didn't mind that she hated it; he only minded that she had made up her mind so quickly. She didn't even take a second to acknowledge it, consider the words as anything more than inaudible and annoying. That was what bothered him; that she never gave any of it a thought.

"Feelings like this go away. They always do." She assured him slowly.

"These feelings are different." He countered.

"They aren't."

"They are."

"They're not! People get feelings like this all the time, and they always go away!"

"Then why haven't they gone away yet?" He asked angrily. He realized only after he asked it that the question wasn't simply rhetorical. He wanted more than anything to understand why.

Now it was the girl's turn to sigh. "Look, I don't know, okay? You have no reason to feel that way about me at all. I'm really not that great of a person. I'm not even that pretty. I'm shallow and I make stupid jokes. I'm terrible at being romantic. Like seriously, you've seen me at my absolute worst. How could you still like me after all of that?"

He felt a wave of sadness come over him. Endless words floated through his head. Every point that she made needed to be countered. Every flaw she found needed to be refuted. Every suggestion that she wasn't the most beautiful fucking girl on the planet needed to be revoked.

But he couldn't let those words out. He knew how she would react. He knew how she would feel. He simply wasn't allowed.

"Well?" She asked, feigning impatience. "How could you possibly have feelings for me?"

"How could I not." He answered quietly.

She opened her mouth to respond, then shut it in frustration. "You're ridiculous."

"I know I am."

"Like seriously, you think that you have feelings for me but you don't. I swear, guys do this all the time. I'm just nice to them and they take it the wrong way. I seem like a nice girl on the outside but as soon as you get to know me it's obvious I'm not worth the time."

"You really think I don't know the real you?" He asked, feeling nearly insulted, like years were being disregarded by a single statement.

"I'm trying to tell you, this is nothing. Its superficial and it will be over soon."

"I've known you for six years."

"But…"

"Since grade school. I've known you since we were both thirteen years old. Remember the palm parry? I still do. I've come to know every side of your personality that's ever been. I've seen you at your worst, I've seen you at your best. I remember you doing things that you've long since forgotten. I've been your best friend. I've hated you. I've wanted you. And in all that time, I've never felt anything close to the way that I feel now."

"Stop!" She pleaded. "You're not serious about this! It's nothing!"

Rubbing his eyes with one hand, he lowered his head and let sadness fall upon him again. "You just don't understand…"

"Understand what? I understand exactly what's going on, and it's nothing. You don't have feelings for me. You'll get over it!"

"You really just don't understand…"

"Understand what?"

"Kazumi. You don't understand how much I love you."

Her body recoiled.

"Heihachi stop!" She yelled as her eyes opened wide and she stared down the car's ceiling. "Don't say that! It's not true!"

"How can you tell me what I feel?" He shot back, just as loud.

"B-b-b- Because you can't love me! I have a partner!"

"I know you do! That doesn't affect how I feel! If anything, knowing you're with him makes it worse! He's horrible!"

"Heihachi just stop! We're not talking about him."

"Then what the Hell are we talking about?!" He yelled.

Kazumi took a breath, then spoke calmly. "Stop yelling at me."

Heihachi turned and looked out the window. Shaking his head in frustration, he tried desperately to stop loving the girl who sat in that Lexus.

But he couldn't.

"You don't love me." She said out loud. It didn't sound like she was speaking to him. The words were weak, almost pleading.

"I do." He countered tepidly.

She didn't argue back.

Time passed in silence. Both stared out of their respective windows. He was watching fierce wind blow dots of snow back and forth in front of a nearby street lamp. She was watching people as they entered a coffee shop.

More silence passed. He realized that nothing had changed. His resolve from the moment he entered the car had still failed to alter, even though he desperately wanted it to.

"I'm done." He told her.

"Heihachi. You can't." She pleaded as she turned to face him, suddenly full of fear.

"I need to. I should have been done months ago when it all started. I should have been done weeks ago, when you found out. I should have been done three days ago, before I ruined what I had."

To that, she said nothing.

For a brief moment he almost felt like laughing. "It was never going to happen at all." He admitted to the light post outside. "There was no chance of it happening from day one and you knew it. I was the idiot because I told myself it wasn't true. I was the idiot because I refused to believe."

Still she said nothing.

"It's not your fault. The only thing I could possibly blame you for is leading me on, but even then, you never did it on purpose. And often I was simply misinterpreting neutral signals from you. You see, it was my stupidity and reluctance that has caused me to keep this façade up for as long as I did. It was me all along."

Nothing.

"You were never going to want me at all, and it was foolish for me to try so hard and for so long. But I don't regret trying. I don't regret letting you know how I feel. That part needed to happen. Telling you how I felt and how I would love you was what I needed. If I never said anything at all, then I would have been even more miserable than I am now. And Kazumi, please try to understand me when I say that yes, I am miserable right now."

Nothing.

He looked away from the snow outside and gazed straight into her eyes.

"I'm a mess when I think about you. It's laughable. I feel like an idiot because of how illogical you make me, how easily you're able to take my cold, calculating mind and turn it to slush. All my life I've been raised to be the strongest and most reasonable man I can be. I've been taught to think, to analyze, and to plan. I've been taught that everything happens for a reason, and that the key to succeeding in life is to simply understand what those reasons are. But with you there is no reason. With you I can think of every aspect of your being for hours on end, which I've done so many times, and come out of the experience more confused than I was when I began. Everything I've ever seen has behaved in a way that makes at least a shred of logical sense, but not you. Not the things you do to me. When I think about you I become so stupidly in love that I'll do anything just to be around you, I'll do anything to have you tell me about your day, I'll do anything to sit next to you, I'll do anything just to see you smile again. Every time you're sad and every time you feel insecure I want to drop whatever I'm doing to be with you. I need to drop everything I'm doing because your sadness is enough to convince me that there's an irrefutable imbalance in the world. And until that balance is restored, until I see with my own two eyes that you're capable of smiling again, there's not a single thing on my mind that even comes close to distracting me. It's not reasonable to feel this way about someone. It's not logical. It's not something that can be explained away through science and study. This unconditional, relentless adoration I feel towards you is so strong that it has single handedly proved to me that the phantom love exists. That's how much words will allow me. I love you so much that I could write ten volumes worth of words on the subject and I still wouldn't be able to convey how I feel. Now I understand that that's what people mean when they say hopeless love. When love reaches a point where it's so strong that words and actions fail to describe it, you lose all hope that the other person will understand you. That's what they mean by hopeless. That's what I mean when I say that I'm hopeless for you, Kazumi. You make me hopeless every time that I talk to you. You make me hopeless every time that I see your face. You take this cold, logical person, and melt me into a hopeless, human mess every time you go so far as to remind me that you exist."

He finished the words and felt as though a river had just run through him. He had been staring into her eyes for the entire duration, but now that the river had stopped, he suddenly became aware of how red her eyes had become.

Then he heard her moan.

She was crying. Kazumi was bawling.

His blood went cold. He didn't understand why she was crying. Only a moment ago, before he had begun to speak, she was fine. He felt paralyzed.

She covered her face with both hands and let out another light moan, beautiful… tragic.

"Kazumi…" he ventured, still cold with fear at what he had done.

"Get out…" She finally managed to say between sobs. "Get out of my car…"

He didn't move. He couldn't.

She removed her hands and faced him directly. Bloodshot eyes. Her face running with tears. She could hardly breathe. "Get out…"

"I…"

"Heihachi, just get out…!"

The image burned into his mind. Only a moment had passed since he had seen it, but already he knew that the image of her face, with tears streaming down it, would never leave him.

Then he pulled on the handle and opened the door. Freezing air rushed in to greet them.

Neither one could tell the difference.

She covered her face again. The sobbing refused to stop.

He stepped out of her car and slowly shut the door. At once the sound of her crying seemed to vanish. He would not forget that either.

Through the window, he saw her shift the car into drive. It's sudden motion startled him. It only took a few seconds, and she was gone.

He stood alone in the parking lot. Hard asphalt beneath his feet and cold air upon his cheek. Numbness began to set in.

Slowly he did the only thing he could; turn around.

The dull green car greeted him from three spots down. He walked to it. As he walked, the same ultimatum played over and over again throughout his mind.

Move on. Move on. Move on. Move on. Move on.

Move on…

End

(It was probably very confusing. I think it's supposed to be that way. But if you haven't guessed already, this story is loosely based on some of the events that are taking place in my life right now. Honestly, when I first found out about this site and I started seeing how some writers used it as a platform for themselves to vent and better understand their problems, I found the entire notion to be pointless. It wasn't until certain things started happening in my life that I suddenly developed this urge to write about them and out them up, which brings us to the present. I don't know how many more of these I'm going to do. I see myself doing several more, although with a mind as indecisive as mine, that could mean just about anything. If I do write more, they'll probably be in the same somber tone that this one was in. If this depresses you, I'm honestly sorry for doing that. I thought I left a decent enough disclaimer at the beginning. I've seen through the comments and messages that many of you readers leave, that you really care about me and treat me as though I were your friend, despite the fact that you've never met me. That notion is really quite mind-bending to me, and I'm truly blown away by it, and the general concern this community shows not only to me but to all the other writers is absolutely beautiful. Thank you all for that. I've had a multi-month absence from this site, and I want to assure you all that I am in good health and I am not overtly depressed or anything like that. I've just got a lot on my mind. For those of you who only read this story because they wanted news on The Return, don't worry. It's still coming. I've hit a major bout of writers block because well… there's a lot on my mind. Chapter 18 is almost finished, and I just need to wrap up some parts then revise before I upload it, so you might see that by the end of the month. I'm really sorry for taking so long on everything nowadays. Thank you all very much for reading, and if you would like to leave a review or anything, feel free to do so. Just please don't leave a review full of life advice or therapy tips or any of that anti-depression jazz. I appreciate it, I really do, but I don't need it. I'm doing fine. I just have a lot on my mind.)