I quite honestly don't know what I was thinking when I wrote this. But I like it.
I.
Jump, Kimihiro! your father tells you, smiling and laughing. You, full of joy and exuberance, comply. For a few moments you hang suspended in midair and think you could stay there forever, or at least until bedtime. It's a thrill, and it might be scary if not for your father standing beneath you like a whole world of your own with outstretched arms and a smile to tell you that it's all right. You land in his arms and he spins, night and day, until you're surprised to see the afternoon sun in the same place it was before you jumped.
That's dangerous, your mother scolds, but she is also smiling. You do not understand. What do you know of danger, after all? If danger is a moment of flight to the safety of your father's embrace, then you want your life to be as dangerous as it can be. You like danger.
II.
You can't see your father, but that can't be right. Maybe he's hiding. And the sun is starting to go down. He's probably late, but he's sure to show up soon, so you climb to the top of the hill and stand there where the slope is steep, waiting for him to arrive as the sun touches the roof of your house. When it disappears altogether and you can't see properly from staring at it for too long, you jump, expecting your father to catch you, to feel his arms enclose you and spin you in circles until your mother cannot scold for laughing.
You hang in the air longer than usual. Has the hill grown? Maybe it's just that you're waiting for your father to run out and catch you. But suddenly you hit something cold and unforgiving and lifeless and you are immobilised by a hurting you've never guessed could exist until feeling it for yourself. You cry out for your father, your mother, anyone, but only echoes ring out in the growing gloom. You can't sit up for the sharp angry pain in your chest, and somehow you know that neither your father nor your mother will come back for you.
III.
Another thing is following you close behind, and you're running as you've never run before, barely aware of the turf beneath your feet or the branches whipping at your face and arms. You will not die so cheaply as a meal to something that to most people does not even exist. So you run, and run, and run until suddenly your feet leave the ground and you fly forwards.
You remember the descent from a second-story window in the not-too-distant past and brace yourself, hoping it's not too high a fall. It's too dark to see the ground, but you can feel it rushing toward you, feel the air rushing past you like a million arrows failing to do anything but pass you by. Or perhaps it's just one arrow, a shot in the dark that is just as likely to be accurate because the shot is always as blind. It probably doesn't matter, as you anticipate your impact with every fibre of your being.
But you don't hit the ground; you're caught instead, knocking the one who caught you backwards and into a circle that he somehow manages to come out of without falling down. Don't do that again, Doumeki tells you with an edge of fear in his voice. You want to say that you've fallen from heights far too much and that you don't try to do it at all, but you remember a time in the far past in which you did jump willingly. You haven't had anyone to catch you for a long time.
You tell him, I won't, but you don't demand to be put down.