Disclaimer: If I would be trying to make money with this, I'd most likely be dead by now. All the characters –save random people- belong to Hidekaz Himaruya. Story belongs to me. All incidents are pure fiction and are not based on real events.

Hurt

Bang!

Glas splinters.

Red.

Screaming.

Tears.

Bang.

Air.

Night.

The door closes.

I look outside the window. There, there is the television tower, there the Tokyo Dome and lights are flying through the streets. Above the lights millions of silvery stars are floating in the night sky gleaming promisingly.

I blink a tear, that is about to roll down and touch his skin, out of my eyes. He would wake up. His arm is lying directly over my chest where my heart is, if feels suffocating. He will be angry, if I cry, especially if I wake him by doing so. He's already calling me a "damn crybaby", he will shout at me again.

Or maybe he'll throw a fit, if I try to calm him down. Yesterday he threw a vase at me, when I asked why we came to Tokyo during this time of the year.

Above my left eye a violet blossoms, it bleeds when I touch it too much. I still don't know the answer.

He moves. I wince and curl into the bed sheets he pulled of me while sleeping. It's cold.

"Yaoyao?" I turn my head to the side and look into his dark orbs. They glisten like the stars. I often wonder, what they say.

I smile even though he's looking at me with this strange expression again.

"Why are you still awake?" he asks and combs a hand through my hair. I give a muffled cry as he touches the wound and he's sitting upright in bed. I bend to the side awaiting the blow.

It's not coming.

"Does it still hurt?" he cups my face with his large hands. I would breath again but I'm scared so I just nod.

Suddenly there are tears in his eyes.

He pulls me close and wraps his arms around me. "Oh, Yaoyao, I'm sorry! Please, I'm sorry!" he breaths against my neck and strokes my skin, so that a tingling runs down my back. " I really am so, so sorry! You know that, right? I love you, Yao, I love you. Can't you forgive me this time?"

Slowly his hand wanders up my leg and I nod. "yes" I'm nodding again, I'm forgiving him again.

He pulls my hair back and presses tiny little kisses down my throat. I close my eyes.

"I love you"

"I know"

In these moments I would forgive him anything.

…

I wake up late in the afternoon, because he's gone. The sun is high in the sky already. For a while I'm just lying there daydreaming, then however I heave myself out of bed and stiffly shuffle into the bathroom dragging my feet over the ground.

As I'm looking into the medicine cupboard I notice the gaping void inside. Soon all the painkillers will be gone…

I brush my teeth, comb some strands of hair over the bump on my forehead and shuffle back into the bedroom. My clothes are scattered wildly over the floor together with some empty bottles and crumpled packet of cigarettes. Again, there is no trace of him. He must've already gone when I was still sleeping. It smells like smoke.

I look at the bottles, the ashtray on the bedside table, then at my clothes. Then the bloody stains on the bed.

I sob shakes my body, I sink onto my knees on the dirty carpet beneath me burying my face in the palms of my hands. I don't want to see anymore, don't want to hear.

But the tears refuse to come.

…

I'm sitting in the single armchair in the living room and stare into nothingness, when the door opens. I do not say anything. What am I doing here anyway?

Somebody tosses something into a corner and then comes into the living room. The stench of alcohol fills the air. He's drunk again.

"Go shut the door" he slurres and gestures towards the door of the flat in a shooing motion. He doesn't even look at me "will you go already, there's a draught in here"

I stay silent and look outside. Covering the trees down the street deep under the window is the snow. Will I again spent this Christmas here? Where will I be when winter is over? Will I still be here?

His cold voice rips me from my thoughts. "Will you get going now, bitch? Do you have trouble hearing or what?" he stops advancing in the middle of the room and glares at me.

"I'm leaving, Ivan" I say, without turning away from the window.

"What?" now he's sounding angry.

"I'm leaving" I repeat, stand up and walk towards the hall where my jacket is hanging. Out of the corner of my eyes I see something being hurled towards me and I manage to duck just in time before the ashtray flashes millimeters past my head breaking into pieces on the wall as it hits the doorframe.

"You're going nowhere!" he shouts trudging towards me "you're staying right here!"

I take another step back. "No"

"Like hell you will!"

"I don't see a reason to stay"

"I'm not ALLOWING this!"

I turn around. Anger is burning in the pit of my stomach, a sensation so intense I have never had before, that I have always kept down, always tried to forget. " Don't tell me what I am allowed to do or not" I say and he stops for a moment.

Then he takes a deep breath, probably to shout at me again, but I cut him off.

"Tell me one good reason why I shouldn't leave right now. I moved here because I thought we could be happy together. And what's waiting for me here? You're yelling at me, you're permanently coming home drunk and you throw things at me, you hurt me and forbid me to say a thing…"

His eyes flash and the next moment something is flying through the air too fast to dodge. The pain explodes in my side.

"Oh…"

I gasp and stagger against the wall, hands reaching down. Broken glass is lying on the ground. I grimace and pull a glass shard out of my stomach, the blood flowing from the wound over my hands and onto the ground. Thank god it didn't pierce any vital points. I press a hand onto it, with the other one I reach for my jacket which is hanging on a hook next to me.

"See?" I pant, every word is hurting "you did it again. You're always hurting me, even though I try to do it right! Every time I don't follow your orders you become violent! I've had enough of this, Ivan, I'm not going to be pushed around by you like that anymore!" Now I'm almost yelling, the blood is flowing warmly over my hand.

He stumbles towards me, his eyes are wide. He kneels down before me and wants to take my hand from the wound but I don't let him.

"No" he whispers "no, Yao, I didn't want that! Please, believe me, I didn't want that! Let me have a look at this, I'll drive you to hospital and everything's going to be okay!"

I close my eyes. He's doing it again.

I shake my head. "I've been swallowing your lies for way too long" I say. My voice is calm even though there is a storm raging inside my head.

I turn around and quickly slip on my jacket.

He's following me. Funny, how pathetic he's suddenly looking…

"But I love you!" he says and he cries. For the first time the tears leave his face and drip to the ground "I don't want to lose you, Yao! You're the only thing I have, please don't go! I love you!"

I don't know if he is saying the truth. I would have wished he were. But he's hurt me one time too much to be deserving that. "I can't" I say and I am crying too. But I wipe the tears from my face. "I'm going, Ivan"

Behind me he slumps to the floor I hear the dull thud. "I LOVE YOU!" he screams and he's sounding so desperate, so real, that I almost stay.

You're too soft, he once has told me when I was sharing my breakfast with a little girl who was looking for her parents, you're way too soft.

Maybe he's right.

I am too soft to seek my revenge on him for everything he has done to me.

BAM!

The door to his apartment closes and I stagger along the hallway, into the elevator. As if in trance I stare into nothingness, exit at the bottom floor, push the entrance door open and stop at the street. The cool night air caresses my skin and I take a deep breath.

The door closes behind me.

Now I am free. Finally I am free.

Before me the lights of Tokyo are sparkling, there are people everywhere, and there's the Christmas market. I should visit that one soon.

I raise a hand, a taxi comes to a stop and I get on.

I posses no luggage, no clothes, no food, no mobile phone, in the pocket of my jacket there are only a few Yen. I don't have a home anymore.

But I don't care. Soon there will be Christmas and then New Years Eve.

Time to start anew…

The taxi driver looks at me. "Where're you heading?"he asks and I look outside the window. It has started to snow. It really is a beautiful view. " Doesn't matter where…" I say.

At that moment he spots my hand that I still hide under my jacket holding the wound. There will most likely be a scar but that will also be the last memory of him that I will be keeping.

"You're hurt" the taxi driver states and attempts to lift the jacket but I jerk back. He retracts his hand. "I'll drive you to the hospital"

I shake my head. "No, I've got no money left for that, just set me down somewhere, I'll be okay"

He smiles. "That's no problem, I can pay!"

The car starts.

"How did it happen?" he asks as we reach a traffic light.

"My…" for a moment a struggle for words "… ex-boyfriend threw a glass carafe at me…"

"Oh… is that why you're here?"

"I guess so, yes"

For a while depressing silence reignes.

"Thank you" I say "for helping me. Thank you."

The corners of his mouth move upwards, his smile is warm. "My name's Kiku" he says and holds out a hand "nice to meet you!"

I also smile.

Then I take his hand into mine.

"I'm Yao"