Chapter 10 – Letting Go

Later that day, Rhyth and Yoyo were hanging out together in Rokkaku-dai Heights. The sunbeams in the sky were beginning to disappear as sunset approached. After what the two of them went through earlier, this was a much-needed change of pace.

Garam's near-death back at the skyscraper district was still on Rhyth's mind. She chose to honour Garam's wishes by not telling Corn about it back at the Garage, but now she was wondering if that was the right choice to make. She felt that the other GGs deserved to know about what happened. Maybe if Corn knew about it, she thought, he'd be more careful about what he sends them off to do. That could prevent them from getting into more danger in the future. She decided to ask Yoyo for his thoughts.

"Hey Yoyo, do you think we should have told Corn about what happened back in the skyscraper district?" she asked him.

Yoyo was caught off guard by the question. He wasn't expecting her to bring the matter up again, at least not so suddenly. "Uhh, I dunno. Garam wants us to keep quiet about it."

"I know, but what happened back there was serious," Rhyth replied. "Weren't you shaken up over it too?"

Yoyo looked down at the ground. "Yeah, I was."

"Well you sure didn't look that way."

Yoyo looked back up at Rhyth. "I was just trying to keep my cool, yo," Yoyo responded. "I didn't wanna look like a wuss in front of Garam. He never loses his cool, you know?"

"There's nothing wrong with expressing your true feelings, Yoyo," Rhyth told him.

"It's nothing like that," Yoyo insisted, still trying to keep his cool. "Honestly, the whole thing's not that big of a deal, anyway." He began to skate away.

Rhyth grabbed Yoyo's arm, keeping him in place while giving him a stern look. "Garam almost died! How can you say that it wasn't a big deal?"

"Well… I mean, doing crazy shit is what being a Rudie is all about, yo!" Yoyo replied with a sheepish grin. "Messing with cops, messing with gangs, those are all dangerous!" He sounded unsure of his own words, as if he was desperately making up reasons to justify acting indifferent toward the incident.

"That stuff's not what I signed up for when I joined the GGs," Rhyth said, letting go of Yoyo's arm. "You said that joining would be fun, but you didn't mention that we're expected to risk our lives."

"It is fun!" Yoyo responded. "And what we're doing isn't that dangerous. It's not like we're putting ourselves into any more danger than we'd usually be in. Hell, you could lose your life just by crossing the street if a car hits ya."

"Don't even try to compare jumping across skyscraper rooftops to crossing the street," Rhyth retorted.

Yoyo was fed up with the conversation. "Hey, it was your idea to relax by coming here, but there's nothing relaxing about this discussion. Can we just drop it?"

Rhyth sighed deeply but agreed to drop the conversation. It was true that she wanted to relax, but she was still frustrated with Yoyo for understating the severity of the earlier incident. Did nobody feel the same way as she did?

Despite being friends with the other GGs, she felt like the odd one out of the group. She didn't enjoy messing with the other gangs or getting into trouble with the police, but she tolerated it because she enjoyed the company of the GGs. Her new friendships weren't worth putting her life at risk though, and with increasing tensions between them and the police it seemed like her life was in greater danger than ever before. How long could she tolerate it?

The two of them continued skating along the dirt path in silence, letting the atmosphere calm their nerves. Yoyo eventually broke the silence and asked Rhyth, "So why do you like skating around here so much?"

Rhyth was glad that Yoyo changed the subject to something she was happy to talk about. "Well, I grew up here," she replied. "Coming here reminds me of my youth. I can't help but be nostalgic for it."

"This place ain't that old," Yoyo remarked. "Wasn't it built, like, only a decade ago?"

"Okay, I spent most of my childhood here," Rhyth specified. "I think my family were one of the first to move in. I can't even remember anything from before we moved here, so all of my childhood memories still belong to this place."

"Didn't your childhood suck though? Why would you want to be reminded of it?"

"It didn't suck; it was just…" She struggled to find the right words. "It was a bit… rough at times, but I still have very fond memories of it."

"I guess, but you gotta let go of your past eventually," Yoyo said. "You keep asking to come here so it seems like you're still super-attached to this place."

"What's wrong with that? I just feel more comfortable here."

"Even with Poison Jam hanging around?"

"They've never bothered me before."

"Lucky you."

Yoyo still didn't quite understand Rhyth's love for the area, but Rhyth felt that she had explained it as best as she could. To her, it was simply a matter of sentimentalism. Her past may have been hard, but it was still a part of her life that she cherished. Unlike the other GGs who wanted to forget and move on from their pasts, she wanted to cling to hers as much as she could which is why she frequently came to Rokkaku-dai, her childhood neighbourhood. This was something that Yoyo — who hated his childhood — couldn't relate to.

While in the middle of their conversation, the two of them were quietly approached by a small dog. Rhyth was the first to notice and kneeled down to pet it. "Oh, Potts, where'd you come from?"

"You know that dog?" Yoyo asked her.

"Yeah, I used to see him all the time back when I was homeless. He's always wandering around the area."

Yoyo kneeled down as well to get a closer look at the dog. The boxer dog didn't have a collar on, so Yoyo figured that it must be a stray. He knew that Tokyo had recently been having a problem with stray animals, but he'd rarely spotted any himself. He figured that it must only be a problem in Kogane, a district that he rarely frequented until he joined the GGs.

"Where'd you get the name Potts from?" he asked Rhyth.

"I came up with it myself. Isn't it a cute name?"

"I guess. Kinda weird that you named some random dog though."

Potts began licking Yoyo. He had always wanted a pet dog but his parents would never let him have one. This gave him an idea.

"Hey, we should bring him back to the Garage and keep him as a pet!" he suggested.

"Do you think the others will mind having a dog around?" Rhyth wondered.

"Who wouldn't want a dog around?" Yoyo quipped.

Rhyth smiled. "Good point. Let's bring him back with us."

It didn't take much effort to convince Potts to follow them all the way back to the Garage. He seemed to already have some affection for Rhyth — presumably due to their previous encounters — and was following closely behind her. Occasionally he would walk up to Yoyo and sniff him for a bit.

The group arrived back at the Garage. Beat and Gum were away, so the only people who were there to greet them were Corn and Garam Corn watched from atop the raised platform as Potts quickly left Rhyth's side to run around the Garage.

"Hey, what are you guys doing bringing a dog back with you?" Corn shouted at them.

"Yo, can we keep it? Pleeeeeaase?" Yoyo begged.

"His name is Potts," Rhyth mentioned. "Can we please keep him?"

Corn groaned. "I don't usually refuse new recruits, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting a dog to join us."

"Is that a yes?" Yoyo asked.

Corn sighed. "Fine, we can keep it."

"Yes!" Yoyo shouted ecstatically as he fist-pumped the air.

Potts approached Garam who was sitting in the shade beneath the raised platform. "Cool, I've always wanted a pet dog." Garam remarked. Despite the fact that he lived in Kogane before joining the GGs, he never crossed paths with the dog before. Potts began licking his face which grossed him out a bit. "You should maybe give this little guy a bath. He was probably rolling around in garbage all day. He sure smells like it."

"Wait, that reminds me…" Corn hopped off of the platform and skated up to the pile of garbage laying around the Garage. He searched through the pile and pulled out a plastic dog kennel. "I knew some of this stuff would come in handy."

Rhyth skated up to Corn with a disapproving look on her face. "Don't keep Potts in a crate! He's used to being in the wild; he needs lots of space to be comfortable."

"I'm not gonna force him into it, but it'll be here if he ever wants to sleep in it or something," Corn responded. He pointed two of his fingers at both Rhyth and Yoyo. "And since you two brought him here, you two are gonna be primarily responsible for taking care of him."

"No problem!" Yoyo replied confidently.

Corn continued. "That includes scooping up his shit and giving him baths, which you should probably do right now."

Yoyo's facial expression suddenly changed from one of pure joy to one of slight discontent. He was clearly not keen on taking on those responsibilities. Rhyth didn't seem to mind however, as she carried Potts into a discarded tub that was lying around outside near the other garbage. As long as someone was taking on those duties, Corn was happy.

"Um… is there a hose around here?" Rhyth asked Corn.

The sun had already set as Beat and Gum were skating through the Shibuya bus terminal. The nightlife was as busy as ever around the terminal, with busses frequently coming and going to drop people off. The two of them had just gone out to grab a bite together — something which was beginning to become a frequent routine — and were making their way back to the Garage.

The two of them stopped at the side of a scramble intersection, waiting to cross the street. Once the traffic lights signaled the cars to stop, pedestrians flooded the entire intersection and began walking every which way. Beat and Gum waded through the crowd and continued on their way.

Gum pulled out a pack of bubble gum and popped one into her mouth. She began to chew on it, occasionally blowing large bubbles before popping them with her lips.

"Things seem to have died down around the bus terminal," Beat mentioned. "No more gangs messing around and causing trouble for us."

"Yeah, it looks like the Love Shockers stopped spraying their tags all over the place," Gum replied, still chewing her bubble gum.

"I guess this turf is as good as ours then, eh?"

"Yeah…" Gum blew one last bubble before spitting her gum into a nearby trashcan. "I didn't expect them to back down so easily."

"I guess your little meeting with them helped out after all," Beat remarked. "It may not have brought us closer to retrieving the Goddess, but at least it got those girls to leave us alone."

Gum recalled her confrontation with the Love Shockers from a few days ago. I guess they weren't lying when they said they'd leave us alone, Gum thought to herself. What's going on with them? It's not like them to give in so easily.

"Hey, didn't one of the Love Shockers say that you two have a history?" Beat called back to mind. "What was she talking about?"

Gum rolled her eyes. "She was overstating the relationship that we had. We were merely… acquaintances."

"How'd you guys meet?"

Gum sighed. Beat's questions were becoming increasingly uncomfortable for her to answer. "I used to go to the same all-girls academy as them. We'd chat occasionally, but we weren't close friends or anything."

"So you knew them before you knew Corn?" Beat recalled that Gum stated she'd met Corn last summer during the school break.

"Yeah."

"Weird," Beat replied. "So what made you want to start a gang with him instead of with the Love Shockers?"

"I already told you, I don't want to talk about that stuff," Gum grumbled. "I'd rather leave the past in the past."

Beat was tired of people being so secretive about their pasts. Was it an unwritten rule that Rudies weren't supposed to talk about that stuff? He skated in front of her and stopped, cutting her off. "Why are you so hesitant to talk about your past? I'm not scared to talk about my past. Here, I'll tell you about it right now: I was a deadbeat loser who never accomplished anything in his life and whose parents hated him! See, it ain't so hard!"

Gum pushed him out of her way. "Not everyone's like you, Beat. I'm not as open about my past as you are, and if that's bothering you so much then… well, tough shit." She skated past him.

Beat sighed. Whatever it was that Gum was hiding, she wasn't going to divulge it so easily. But her constant rejections were only making him more curious. Was her past really that bad, or was she just being difficult? Regardless, there was no way he was going to convince her to spill the beans. He'd just have to leave it alone.

They both continued making their way back to the Garage, Beat following just a step behind Gum.