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When Sho was still very young, he dreamed of a family; a mother, a father, a big house by the river. He dreamed of new sneakers and toy cars, warm beds and home cooked meals. He made up names for his mother and father, picked the colors for the room he and his brother would share. He designed the playground down the street, where they would meet Toshi for baseball games. He'd heard enough stories to know what childhood was like; and in the slim twilight hours between the real world and dreams, he made one for himself from the scraps of what he knew. They would have a dog, he decided, and three bikes between them - one for Toshi, of course, when he came to play. Mom and Dad would always let Toshi come to play, and even stay the night.
"Why don't you have your friend come and stay for the weekend?" Mom would say as she packed his school lunch. "It's so nice when he's around, and he's always liked our big house by the river."
By the time Sho met Kei, those dreams were nearly dead and gone. He was almost ten, and far too old for fantasies of parents and families. Shinji and Toshi were his family - they were all that he needed, and if his parents didn't want him, well, then, fine. He could do better without them, anyway. He'd get rich, someday, and buy that house by the river all by himself. He'd have fast cars, not bikes, and nothing but candy in the kitchen. So what if it got cold at night in the derelict and decaying warehouse that they called a home? So what if he was hungry all the time? So what if he'd never had a toy to play with in his whole entire life? He didn't need any Mom or Dad. He didn't want any Mom or Dad. Of course not. Why would he? And if he happened to cry at night, when no one was listening - well, that didn't mean a thing. He didn't think about those things anymore. Not really.
Kei had changed all that. Barely larger than a child, himself, his sure and quiet manner had provided Sho with his very first taste of stability. Kei always looked the same. Kei always came back. Kei could be counted on to keep both promises and secrets. He was kind to Shinji and Toshi. He brought food for them, never stole from them, stayed with them at night and kept an eye out for the roaming droves of older kids who had been known, in the past, to ambush them as they slept. He would lie beside Sho when the nights got cold, wrap him up in his coat and stroke his hair until he fell asleep.
He grew with Kei, laughed with Kei, lived with Kei in a tired one-room flat in South Quadrant far away from the river and loved every second of it. He loved the little apartment with it's thin, high-set windows and peeling plaster. He and Shinji shared a bed, Toshi slept on the couch, and Kei never seemed to sleep anywhere. It wasn't Kei's house, or so he said, yet he remained to be a constant presence for the years to come. They had to boil the water before they drank it, and the electricity only worked half the time; but it was a place to sleep, a place to be warm, a place to keep their cumulative possessions safe from the elements. Toshi swept the floors clean twice a day. Kei brought home lamps and worn-out end tables, and an old TV with poor reception. He never seemed to mind the constant presence of three young and overeager minds. Like a patient older brother, he laughed when they drew on the walls with charcoal, and never argued with them when they ate their stolen sweets before their stole rice. He played with them, ate with them, stalked the streets with them in the evenings - but it was with Sho alone that his true allegiance lay. It was Sho to whom he taught his secrets, Sho with whom he talked the most. The others were welcome, but Sho was beloved.
The years wore on. The old flat became to small for them. Toshi got a job as a pizza boy, with Kei for a cheerleader and Sho for a scout. Shinji fell in love with a fishmonger's daughter, and together they opened a small yet quasi-lucrative koi farm. Their money barely fit in cookie tins any longer, and when wads of bills ran over, they spent the surplus on stylish clothes and frivolous decorations and - in Toshi's case - a snazzy little vespa. They painted the flat three times over before they moved out. Shinji moved into the flat above the koi farm; Toshi found a warehouse apartment only two blocks from work. Sho and Kei rented a clean and modern little studio closer to the river. Sho found very quickly that he loved it, there, but that didn't stop him from looking back on their old, cramped flat in the South Quadrant and missing it just a little. Somehow, without ever drawing attention to itself, a family had formed and grown in those shabby rooms with their thin, high-set windows and peeling plaster. In a strange way, it had made the place almost beautiful. There was something in life to look back on and smile about. Sho found that he quite liked the feeling of it.
From that day on, he looked forward to finding new things that he could leave behind and smile back on. Change was no longer frightening and filled with loss, but a challenging and bittersweet adventure. Nothing was too big to tackle, too difficult to figure, too high to set eyes on. The day that Sho became a man was the day he decided to learn everything.
Kei became an inexhaustible font of information, a virtual oracle of street-sense and clever ideas. Kei taught him to read and write, and how to do math. He taught him how to hear a bullet coming. He taught him how to move without a sound. While Toshi hawked pizza and Shinji tended fish, Sho learned how to make a living from the greed and carelessness of others. He could shoot his way through a warehouse by fifteen. By seventeen, he had Toshi drugging pizzas and splitting profits. There was never a sliver of doubt in his mind that Kei was proud of his innovation, his determination, his aggressive brand of contagious enthusiasm. He made an art out of combat, a business out of stealing, and a life out of the cracked Mallepa streets. Sometime between very late and very early, when the money was counted and the celebrations slowly fading, Sho and Kei would sit on the roof and watch the city pass beneath them, and it was in those quiet moments between midnight and dawn when Sho was sure that he loved him. He'd never been sure what love was in the first place, but it had to be something like this, he decided. If it wasn't, then Sho wasn't sure that he was interested.
Everything safe and constant lived in Kei.
When they shot him in the chest, Sho's entire world shuddered.
His entire arm was burning, throbbing; he could not will his fingers to move. With a strangled gasp, Sho hit the wall - and then it happened; the bullets tearing into Kei, one-two-three, cracking in the stale air like fireworks and reverberating in Sho's ears. The first shot stunned him, the second shot jarred him, and the third sent him reeling over backwards. No scream. No struggle. Just a bright flash of shocked eyes, and a shudder so deep that Sho felt in his own bones, felt it roll through the air around him like an invisible shock wave and rock the very foundations of what he considered to be reality. He reeled. Kei gasped. Sho screamed. Kei choked. Sho drew his second gun with his good arm, shot six times at the dark forms in the doorway. They shot back. Kei's lips pooled with blood. It would take more than three simple bullets to kill his preternatural friend - the rational half of Sho's mind knew this, of course - but when Kei's head had cracked against the wall, when that slender body had crumpled to the floor, something deep inside of him had gone cold.
In the next split second, three distinctly different things happened. Sho could never sort out, afterward, which of them had been the catalyst. There was no way to say for sure what happened first - and in the end, it didn't matter a good goddamn.
Part of the rotting stairway splintered and gave way, and took two of the impending attack force down with it in a hailstorm of nails and wood and broken bones.
A bullet tore through Sho's right shoulder so clean and quick that, for a moment, his arm was simply numb. It was the scent of the wound that brought his senses back, when he again remembered to breathe - hot metal, burned flesh, and the sharp iron tang of blood, tinged with singed leather and smoldering silk - and then the pain exploded through him like a thousand white-hot knives. And inside Sho's head, Kei screamed long and loud - a single, anguished syllable echoing through his mind.
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When Sho was still very young, he dreamed of a family; a mother, a father, a big house by the river. He dreamed of new sneakers and toy cars, warm beds and home cooked meals. He made up names for his mother and father, picked the colors for the room he and his brother would share. He designed the playground down the street, where they would meet Toshi for baseball games. He'd heard enough stories to know what childhood was like; and in the slim twilight hours between the real world and dreams, he made one for himself from the scraps of what he knew. They would have a dog, he decided, and three bikes between them - one for Toshi, of course, when he came to play. Mom and Dad would always let Toshi come to play, and even stay the night.
"Why don't you have your friend come and stay for the weekend?" Mom would say as she packed his school lunch. "It's so nice when he's around, and he's always liked our big house by the river."
By the time Sho met Kei, those dreams were nearly dead and gone. He was almost ten, and far too old for fantasies of parents and families. Shinji and Toshi were his family - they were all that he needed, and if his parents didn't want him, well, then, fine. He could do better without them, anyway. He'd get rich, someday, and buy that house by the river all by himself. He'd have fast cars, not bikes, and nothing but candy in the kitchen. So what if it got cold at night in the derelict and decaying warehouse that they called a home? So what if he was hungry all the time? So what if he'd never had a toy to play with in his whole entire life? He didn't need any Mom or Dad. He didn't want any Mom or Dad. Of course not. Why would he? And if he happened to cry at night, when no one was listening - well, that didn't mean a thing. He didn't think about those things anymore. Not really.
Kei had changed all that. Barely larger than a child, himself, his sure and quiet manner had provided Sho with his very first taste of stability. Kei always looked the same. Kei always came back. Kei could be counted on to keep both promises and secrets. He was kind to Shinji and Toshi. He brought food for them, never stole from them, stayed with them at night and kept an eye out for the roaming droves of older kids who had been known, in the past, to ambush them as they slept. He would lie beside Sho when the nights got cold, wrap him up in his coat and stroke his hair until he fell asleep.
He grew with Kei, laughed with Kei, lived with Kei in a tired one-room flat in South Quadrant far away from the river and loved every second of it. He loved the little apartment with it's thin, high-set windows and peeling plaster. He and Shinji shared a bed, Toshi slept on the couch, and Kei never seemed to sleep anywhere. It wasn't Kei's house, or so he said, yet he remained to be a constant presence for the years to come. They had to boil the water before they drank it, and the electricity only worked half the time; but it was a place to sleep, a place to be warm, a place to keep their cumulative possessions safe from the elements. Toshi swept the floors clean twice a day. Kei brought home lamps and worn-out end tables, and an old TV with poor reception. He never seemed to mind the constant presence of three young and overeager minds. Like a patient older brother, he laughed when they drew on the walls with charcoal, and never argued with them when they ate their stolen sweets before their stole rice. He played with them, ate with them, stalked the streets with them in the evenings - but it was with Sho alone that his true allegiance lay. It was Sho to whom he taught his secrets, Sho with whom he talked the most. The others were welcome, but Sho was beloved.
The years wore on. The old flat became to small for them. Toshi got a job as a pizza boy, with Kei for a cheerleader and Sho for a scout. Shinji fell in love with a fishmonger's daughter, and together they opened a small yet quasi-lucrative koi farm. Their money barely fit in cookie tins any longer, and when wads of bills ran over, they spent the surplus on stylish clothes and frivolous decorations and - in Toshi's case - a snazzy little vespa. They painted the flat three times over before they moved out. Shinji moved into the flat above the koi farm; Toshi found a warehouse apartment only two blocks from work. Sho and Kei rented a clean and modern little studio closer to the river. Sho found very quickly that he loved it, there, but that didn't stop him from looking back on their old, cramped flat in the South Quadrant and missing it just a little. Somehow, without ever drawing attention to itself, a family had formed and grown in those shabby rooms with their thin, high-set windows and peeling plaster. In a strange way, it had made the place almost beautiful. There was something in life to look back on and smile about. Sho found that he quite liked the feeling of it.
From that day on, he looked forward to finding new things that he could leave behind and smile back on. Change was no longer frightening and filled with loss, but a challenging and bittersweet adventure. Nothing was too big to tackle, too difficult to figure, too high to set eyes on. The day that Sho became a man was the day he decided to learn everything.
Kei became an inexhaustible font of information, a virtual oracle of street-sense and clever ideas. Kei taught him to read and write, and how to do math. He taught him how to hear a bullet coming. He taught him how to move without a sound. While Toshi hawked pizza and Shinji tended fish, Sho learned how to make a living from the greed and carelessness of others. He could shoot his way through a warehouse by fifteen. By seventeen, he had Toshi drugging pizzas and splitting profits. There was never a sliver of doubt in his mind that Kei was proud of his innovation, his determination, his aggressive brand of contagious enthusiasm. He made an art out of combat, a business out of stealing, and a life out of the cracked Mallepa streets. Sometime between very late and very early, when the money was counted and the celebrations slowly fading, Sho and Kei would sit on the roof and watch the city pass beneath them, and it was in those quiet moments between midnight and dawn when Sho was sure that he loved him. He'd never been sure what love was in the first place, but it had to be something like this, he decided. If it wasn't, then Sho wasn't sure that he was interested.
Everything safe and constant lived in Kei.
When they shot him in the chest, Sho's entire world shuddered.
His entire arm was burning, throbbing; he could not will his fingers to move. With a strangled gasp, Sho hit the wall - and then it happened; the bullets tearing into Kei, one-two-three, cracking in the stale air like fireworks and reverberating in Sho's ears. The first shot stunned him, the second shot jarred him, and the third sent him reeling over backwards. No scream. No struggle. Just a bright flash of shocked eyes, and a shudder so deep that Sho felt in his own bones, felt it roll through the air around him like an invisible shock wave and rock the very foundations of what he considered to be reality. He reeled. Kei gasped. Sho screamed. Kei choked. Sho drew his second gun with his good arm, shot six times at the dark forms in the doorway. They shot back. Kei's lips pooled with blood. It would take more than three simple bullets to kill his preternatural friend - the rational half of Sho's mind knew this, of course - but when Kei's head had cracked against the wall, when that slender body had crumpled to the floor, something deep inside of him had gone cold.
In the next split second, three distinctly different things happened. Sho could never sort out, afterward, which of them had been the catalyst. There was no way to say for sure what happened first - and in the end, it didn't matter a good goddamn.
Part of the rotting stairway splintered and gave way, and took two of the impending attack force down with it in a hailstorm of nails and wood and broken bones.
A bullet tore through Sho's right shoulder so clean and quick that, for a moment, his arm was simply numb. It was the scent of the wound that brought his senses back, when he again remembered to breathe - hot metal, burned flesh, and the sharp iron tang of blood, tinged with singed leather and smoldering silk - and then the pain exploded through him like a thousand white-hot knives. And inside Sho's head, Kei screamed long and loud - a single, anguished syllable echoing through his mind.
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