Disclaimer: YuYu Hakusho belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi.
Technically, this should be considered pre-series… but it's not too much.
Little Prayer
The incense in the temple reminds me of the scent of cigarette smoke and old alcohol. It transports me to a small old world from the days I recall when people stood taller and ceilings rose higher. More often than not, old filth crowded it. I don't think my parents wanted me to play there, but it seemed to me that it held a mysterious secret that my parents did not approve of—yet understood.
The only room she remembered to clean on a regular basis was the one the little boy slept in.
She was really young, a lot younger than my mother. And except for the boy, she was all alone. She tried her best, but some days she forgot, or she got sad, and some days he would come and eat dinner at my house because he didn't have a daddy to cook for him.
A little voice inside of me never wants to forget that child, the one I remember from days when I did not know what teenage pregnancy meant, or how it felt not to have enough money, or what it took to acquire money illegally, or how scary it was to be a parent when you were not ready to give up being a child.
But I did not know then how Atsuko must have felt.
Outside, the bells chime in the wind. Most of the temple visitors find it peaceful. But the turbulent, noisy clanging reminds me of the storm I saw in a boy's eyes. When did that fierce, spirited determination become frustrated anger, even hatred?
A little voice in my heart always loved him. So I worried violently.
A small prayer rests in my heart, a prayer I said daily without realizing I knew the words.
Be careful, Yuusuke.
I worry.
A little boy threw his life away, fighting gangs in the streets because there was no one to blame for his unhappiness. He neglected his future because he could not see anything better for himself than the situation in which he grew up.
You carelessly skip school and pick fights and push me away. You act like a tough punk instead of a little boy.
So I pray.
Please be careful, Yuusuke. Because if you die today, in some forgotten corner of some forgotten street, all anyone will know about you will be what they find in your pockets. All these strangers will find are meaningless bits of junk. No one will see that those pieces of junk are pieces of the soul of a boy, hungry and searching for meaning to fill his life.
Please don't die, because then to everyone your life will have been meaningless.
I treasure the memory of a small, warm hand engulfing my own; and a larger hand, rough, forming calluses. I long to hold the hand of a man, a man happy and content, with warm eyes and a smile I remember from a long-ago time when it was missing teeth.
So I hope.
And I cling to the little prayer in my heart that has watched over you since we were small, Yuusuke…
…
Owari
…
-Windswift