The rain stopped at the break of dawn and when the residents of Everyone's House got up, they didn't even know there was a storm the night before.
They all got up at around the same time and Luna smiled at the other girls as they got out of bed. "Me and Kauru are heading out to catch breakfast," Bell called into the ladies' room.
The tan-skinned boy looked back at Kaoru and they nodded. Shingo yawned and sat down at the table where he was going to get to work on the communications device, when he saw Howard coming out of the woods outside their fence. "Howard's back," he called out and the girls got changed faster and ran out to the living room.
Kaoru grinned as he was climbing down the tree and made sure no one saw him. Bell turned with a wide smile and waved in his direction. All of them were at least a little worried that Howard never came back during the night.
The two boys climbing down the tree found that the others were all now piling down behind them. They walked out the front door and everyone stood in a group as Howard reached the fence.
Luna was the first to realize something was wrong. It wasn't his dirty and soaked clothes; everyone noticed that a few seconds later. She didn't see the ripped off sleeve or the cuts on his arm and face, though a few seconds later she noticed that too. Her eyes focused on the frown on Howard's face. It wasn't his usual arrogant frown showing he was annoyed at something, it was much deeper than that.
The others all noticed everything else about Howard at the same time and decided not to let him come to them. They all started running forward and shouting.
"What happened to your shirt?" Menori shouted since she got stuck with the laundry all the time.
"Why are you all wet?" Chako asked in a loud voice. She realized the ground was soaked a second later and realized it rained the night before.
"What happened to your face?" Bell saw the scrape on his cheek and dirt covering his face. It didn't look good.
"Where were you all night?" Sharla asked. Even though he was the one being mean to her, she felt bad that he spent the whole night out there because of her.
"Did you put out the fire?" Kaoru asked and Howard tensed up.
The blonde boy turned his head and stared right into Kaoru's eyes. The other child was not expecting the look he received from Howard, or the tone of his raspy voice when he asked, "How'd you know about the fire?"
Howard didn't know if they saw the ship or not, but he thought if they did they would have shown up after a while.
Luna answered for the stunned Kaoru and stepped closer to Howard than anyone else. "We saw it last night," she responded and the boy in front of her nodded. "Howard," she said in a quiet voice, "are you okay?"
To the others, his scrapes weren't that bad and his clothes could be fixed and cleaned. To Luna though, there was something else wrong. She could see the traces of blood in his hair.
"I'm fine," Howard's arrogant tone started and he waved her off with a flick of his hand. His voice was hoarse and it sounded like he lost it overnight, "I just need a good shower," he laughed and the pushed Bell and Kaoru out of the way so he could walk between them to the shower.
His push was surprisingly forceful and both other boys stared after him as he walked away.
"Howard," Luna whispered. She stared after him until the kid was near the shower area. Finally she turned around and started giving out directions to the rest of them who nodded and moved out.
She was working on the garden with Sharla while the others were all away from camp. It wasn't the design she'd set up the day before, but she wanted to be around their home when Howard was ready to talk. She kept Sharla there too in case Howard felt like apologizing which seemed unlikely. He acted like nothing was wrong when he came back and they all accepted it again.
Sharla saw her friend sigh and knew what she was thinking about. "It's okay Luna," she assured and the orange haired girl turned to her in surprise that she knew what was on her mind. "I know he probably feels bad about what he said. Let's just work together for now on okay?"
"Right!" Luna said and was about to get to work when she saw Howard step out of Everyone's House. He was staring straight ahead at the woods he came out of that morning, and then his head snapped over to the garden where the two girls watching him flinched.
He thought they didn't see it, but right as he turned, both girls saw the deep grimace turn into a toothy smile. "Yo!" He called over and started walking towards them with his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a different shirt than yesterday and the two girls smiled and waved back as he walked over. "I'm gonna take the day off, is that okay Luna?" He asked and both girls lowered their bottom lips a little.
When Howard wanted to take a day off, he took a day off. He'd never asked before, and the way he was standing there awaiting an answer from their 'leader' was too weird. "Uhh s-sure," Luna accepted, glancing from him to Sharla to him again. "You had a long night so I guess I can acce..." Luna faded off.
The second she said 'long night,' their friend stopped smiling and his eyes weren't focused on her anymore.
'Papa, why did you leave me? Why?'
"Howard!"
The boy shot his head to the left a little and saw Luna a foot away. "Uh, sorry," he said. She was yelling at him from a foot away and he was completely ignoring her for a few seconds. "Thanks," he remembered her saying 'sure' and he turned back for Everyone's House. As he was a few feet away, he said in a loud enough voice for the girls to hear him, "Sorry Sharla."
Howard walked slowly and his hands drifted out of his pockets as he climbed up the inside of the tree. He got upstairs and looked around. Fatigue was catching up with him, and he knew he had to go to sleep soon.
His eyes drifted over Shingo and Chako who were staring at him and he barely even noticed them. He focused on the blue chair in the living room and he thought back to how it got up there.
'"Move it Bell! I need this to look out over the lake!"'
'"Can't work today! My seat is too comfy!"'
'"Don't touch my seat! No Shingo, only I can sit on it because it's mine!"'
He walked towards the seat and stared at the back of it for a few seconds.
"Uhh Howard," both the robot cat and two year younger boy were feeling a little unnerved by this situation. Howard walked right past them with the most intense hatred they've ever seen in his eyes. Shingo was staring at him through his glasses and he asked, "Wh-What are you-"
The blonde boy lifted a leg and kicked the back of his seat. The movement was so sudden that the other two dropped their jaws and then dropped them further as the seat broke through the wooden planks and arced over the shower.
Luna and Sharla looked back over at the house. The two of them were talking about what could be wrong with Howard since he apologized to Sharla, and then his chair went flying through the air, landing in the water with a huge splash. They looked closer and Howard was panting hard at the hole in the wall as he stared down at the ripples going across the water.
"Howard! What was that for?!" Chako yelled. The pink creature stood up on the log it was using as a chair and pointed at the hole Howard was now walking away from. "That was 'your' chair! You loved that chair! Besides that, who's going to fix the wall?!"
"I'll do it when I wake up," the boy sounded so tired that neither of the other two said another word to him as he turned the corner. Less than ten seconds later they could hear the heavy breathing in the room next to them of a sleeping person.
Sc
"Hey Kaoru," Bell started after fishing with the other boy in silence for so long.
One of the main reasons Kaoru liked working with the larger boy most out of the others was that Bell stayed quiet most of the time. It allowed them to get their work done faster so the tan boy talking meant it was something really on his mind. "What is it?" The boy in all black asked as he stabbed a fish through the gut with his spear.
Bell felt a little uncomfortable, but he continued, "Did Howard seem a little," he stopped and frowned. He'd been thinking about it all morning, but the shove Howard pushed him with, it wasn't a 'move so I can get past shove' it was a 'get out of my way or someone's going to get hurt' kind of shove. "Different?"
Kaoru tried to keep his mind away from the problems of others, especially Howard. Mainly because he cared least about the stuck up asshole than any of his other fellow students, but also because he didn't want to get too attached. At any time they could get eaten and he didn't want to make too good of friends with any of them.
Somehow after such a short time, he'd found himself attracted to them anyway. He cursed himself that he'd risk his neck for the sake of others, but they were a group and he was part of it. Howard was part of that group too. "Hmm," the boy muttered, "he was a little, less jerky than usual." He thought that Bell would crack a smile off of that, but the tan-skinned boy was actually concerned.
"Ask him when we get back later," Kaoru stated and the conversation was over.
Sc
"Everyone! Mina!" Menori shouted as she ran out of the woods. The girls who were farming were preparing lunch with the fish the boys brought back. Shingo was setting the table and Howard was still asleep.
"Menori welcome back!" Sharla called out to their friend who was out of breath. The usually composed violinist had her hands on her knees and was panting hard.
The others were all jogging towards her since it seemed like she had something important to say. She lifted one of her hands off of her knees and pointed back in the woods. "A ship, crashed," she took a deep breath and then started explaining how she came across some broken trees that made a path to a recently destroyed ship in the woods.
"Was it functional?" Shingo asked and the girl shrugged her shoulders.
"I never went in," Menori admitted. When she saw it she dropped her fruit and went running back. "But it must have crashed last night since a fruit tree I picked from yesterday was one of the ones knocked over."
"What's going on?" The group turned around and saw Howard walking towards them from the tree. He had a straight face and it only shifted slightly when Shingo exclaimed that Menori found a ship in the woods.
"Was it working?" Howard asked. He'd already seen the state of the ship, he knew there was no way it could fly. He'd be stunned if any of the equipment was still working.
"Let's go check," Luna suggested and everyone agreed. As a big group they traveled through the woods with Menori in the lead and Howard taking up the rear.
Bell looked back a few times and Luna followed where he was looking. 'Looks like I'm not the only one who's noticed something weird about Howard.' She didn't want to look back to make it too noticeable, but she did anyway and saw the blonde boy staring off through the trees, not paying attention to where they were walking at all. 'The Howard I know would be shouting right now.' Luna didn't like this new solemn expression the boy had on his face but she heard Menori shout from up front and had new things on her mind.
The ground ran up the trail of broken trees to the top of the hill and looked down at the broken ship below. Menori only got a glance of it last time, but now that they were looking around, she wished she had better prepared them.
There was a man bent over a tree branch and he was missing a leg but either he didn't mind, or he was dead and couldn't scream. They all tried to assume the former. There was another person covered in blood bent out of the broken cockpit of the ship.
It was an impressive vehicle even in pieces. It had white smooth wings where they weren't dented, and looked like it was made by a big company. "Look!" Sharla pointed and they stared at the words near the back of the ship'a center.
"Howard Corporation," a few of them read out together and then turned to Howard to see how he would react.
His jaw was lowered and he looked shocked. When the others all started moving down towards the ship though, his face went back to normal and he looked a little to the left of the side of the ship. There was a pit in the ground and he was the only one who noticed the black leg sticking out of the hole.
"I want to get in the cockpit and see if their communications device is still working," Shingo started in a hesitant tone, "but..." They all looked up at the cockpit and knew he didn't want to go in through the broken glass with the dead body.
"We'll have to go in through the ship," Menori offered. They all started looking for entrances and finally Kaoru shouted out.
They ran over to where his voice was and Howard's blonde hair cast a shadow over his eyes. It was the same hole in the hull he pulled his father from.
There was a trail of blood leading from the inside of the ship to right outside the hole where there was a puddle on the floor. "Wait," Luna started putting two and two together, "someone made it out of the ship."
They all looked excited at the aspect of an adult being there. All of them except for Howard who followed the blood trail with his eyes. The others noticed it too, and after the large puddle, the trail continued thicker than before and they walked with it up to a hole in the ground.
There was a large chunk of metal at the bottom of the pit, but what made most of them look away and Sharla lose her breakfast, was the burnt corpse in the hole. It was unrecognizable, but it wasn't down to the bone. Everything was black around the man and the others all looked away fast while Howard stared down in shock at the body.
He wanted his papa to burn to dust and float with the wind, scatter across the island. Something better than a burned up body in a hole.
"Here," Luna got back to the task at hand, "I'll go in first. I don't really know what I'm looking for so Shingo you want to come in with me?"
The younger boy seemed hesitant but he nodded and walked around the puddle to the hole with their leader. Luna was going to tell the others to look around some more when she froze and they followed her gaze back to the pit from before.
Howard had the corpse by the armpits and was dragging him out of the hole. He got the body ten feet away before it chipped and the bottom half broke off as he was dragging it. 'I'll bury you. It'll be a nice grave, a good grave,' Howard was trying to keep himself calm until the second the body broke.
The blonde boy stopped moving and everyone looked over at him. They were all taking it pretty hard, but this was one of his father's workers. He had to feel partially responsible for what happened.
Then he screamed.
It was horrible. The others clenched their ears as Howard dropped the top half of the body he was dragging and fell to his knees. He put his hands in his hair and screamed at the top of his lungs again.
The others weren't covering their ears because it was so loud, because it wasn't. Howard had lost most of his voice the night before. They closed their ears because his cries sounded so painful that they didn't want to hear it.
"SORRYYYyy!" He screamed at his maximum volume. His voice was trying to heal, but it cracked again and came out raspy for his next scream until he bowed his head accepting defeat.
Luna ran up to Howard and the others were behind her. "You have nothing to be sorry for," the girl told him but he was shaking his head that he held in his hands. His hands covered his eyes but tears were seeping in between his fingers and dripping on the floor. "It wasn't your fault they..."
"It was me," Howard whispered and the others all stared at him as his tears stopped. He lifted his head and stared at them all with bloodshot eyes that had tears coming down on either side of them. "I was too scared to tell you before, but it was me."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Luna whispered back to him.
"The escape pod launch, it was me." Everyone stared at him with wide-eyes. "It was an accident, in all the confusion it just happened." Some of them wanted to be mad at him, but it was hard when he was sobbing in front of them. "And now he's dead," he said in a higher pitched voice. "They're all dead, because I played around with the buttons."
"Howard you didn't..." Shingo started but the older boy stopped crying instantly. His tears stopped flowing and he wiped his face once.
"I killed them," he said and Kaoru winced. He felt the same way when he thought about Louis. Howard grabbed the top half of the body and started walking away, "The least I can do is bury them."