When he saw what was happening to the world around him, he knew it was all over. He couldn't do anything now.
But what killed Jin the most was that he knew who had started the chaos in the first place. He'd rip that sadistic person into a thousand shreds if he could. Although, you can't exactly do that to yourself, can you?
Jin wished that he could go back to earlier days, when things were simple and when the world was at peace; when his grandfather was nothing more than a mere tiny orb of transparent existence. Staring down at the mass of people beyond the front gates of the Zaibatsu, peaceful loving youths against the brutality. His mind ran over his thoughts like clockwork. He missed the people he loved, the happiness he once shared with his mother when they live a solitary life alone in the forest of Yakushima.
But the person he missed the most...was Ling Xiaoyu.
Jin couldn't believe that he was so stupid that he missed the signs. He told himself that it was his hormones, but then again, hormones don't go on continuously for years. He told himself the craziest things, but it always came to the same conclusion. He was in love.
Being in love felt foreign to Jin. He'd always kept himself hidden, closing up his heart to anyone who so much as touched him; an example was Xiao. It pained him to do this to people. To her. But he knew that it was for the best. Why? Well, that answer was buried deep within his chi resonating core.
/You've lost, mortal. I have won. You are forever held in the arms of beautiful defeat./
Kazama tipped his head forward, his nose braced against the glass pane shielding him from the certain death that awaited him. There was so little clarity in his life these days and the heat of every moment he thought about Xiao only complicated matters. He knew that she was in danger whenever she was near him - yet she still persisted in trying to help him. He smiled at that. They had been so close in High School before he dropped out...even that seemed ages ago when he thought about it.
He went over her appearance in his head. Her hair, her eyes, her face...all of which were perfect in his eyes. Her voice, no matter how grating it was on the ears, was still as soft like a wind chime in the summer breeze. How he missed it...her; he meant.
But his viewpoint was changing. He was going on twenty-two, he had lost his mother, he had heard of Heihachi announcing the third tournament the day he had planned it, and he had fallen in love with Xiaoyu, at first from a distance and then up close, and now he was losing his mind and his heart to the Chinese youth.
And soon...soon enough, someone would write to him that another of their family had perished at the hands of his ruthless soldiers under his command.
It came then - that thought, the name, the place, the things Jin imagined would happen there. A shadow passed across him, and within its passing he felt himself shudder. The war was out there, it was calling his name, and though he pressed his hands against his ears and hummed a tune to himself, he could hear it echoing through everything.
/Forever in my grip./
He closed his eyes.
Was this not a life?
Surely, yes.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and whirled around to see the last person he would ever expect to see there, standing before him...was Ling Xiaoyu. She smiled.
"Hey, Jin."
He felt a weight lift off of his shoulders that day, could almost smell the relief washing over him, and as that day closed Jin lay in his bed with a girl he could so easily have loved for the rest of his life, and she whispered secrets that meant everything; and yet nothing at all.
He felt things had somehow impossibly simplified.
That was the only way he could describe it.
As if things now had some meaning, and thus everything else could be aligned and given its rightful importance.
For now, Ling Xiaoyu was the most important thing in his life.