Are you staying for me?

Yohei knew from experience that physical blows constituted damage that usually disappeared over time. Humiliations, on the other hand, were much more difficult to forget, like the pain, the betrayals and the abandonments. They clung to the mind like poison ivy and popped up when you least expected it, souring the moment.

His parents had divorced when he was little. He had an older sister who saw rarely, if ever, because she had gone to live with mom in the separation. He stayed with dad, who was always working and only worried that he would keep acceptable grades. At some point in his life, he stopped trying to gain his attention, resigning himself to the fact that his progenitor had more important things on his mind than his own son.

However, he never really felt alone, or seriously resented the division in his family, since he had Hanamichi. They had met in kindergarten and transformed into siblings, with a level of bonding that they both considered unbreakable. Hanamichi was an only child so, in a way, he and Yohei had adopted each other. They were together during the divorce of the Mito family, endured all kinds of hardships as they grew up, transformed into troubled teenagers who didn't hesitate to clutch at anyone who provoked them, and comforted each other when Hanamichi's father died of a heart attack. That fact set the poor boy's soul on fire, who continued to dye his hair red no longer as a way to annoy his old man, but to remember that he should never feel helpless again and also a kind of posthumous tribute. Sometimes Hanamichi believed that his father could see him wherever he was. He liked to think that he made him feel proud, at least as a fighter, and then as a basketball player.

Yohei had no doubt that the few wounds his friend kept were of an intangible nature. He knew Hanamichi very well and knew that in a few days the fight with Mitsui would have been forgotten, unlike the death of his father, who would always be there. For him it was the same. Yohei received the occasional beating from his father for being a rude gang member, something that almost made him laugh to remember; however, the day her mother told him she was disappointed... that did hurt. And he never forgot it.

All that sea of reflections had a single catalyst: Fujii's silent cry, which brought him back to the present in one blow. He didn't know why, but he preferred that Norio Hotta and his henchmen kick him to the point of wearing out his shoes than to continue witnessing those endless tears. He felt helpless, unable to stop them. Why had he made her cry? Was she still scared by what happened at the gym, or some other particular reason?

Yohei watched her silently. The way her hands were sweating indicated that she had been very scared. He tried to sense some response in her body language, but got nothing.

And he wanted to know, in that instant he knew how much. Maybe he could figure out the real reason why she seemed to fear him that much sometimes.

.

.

Love and happiness for everyone.

Stacy Adler.