Rating: K+ (for mild language)

#4 Our distance and that person

Jounouchi stopped off at the mailbox on the way home from school. As usual, his father didn't pick up the mail, a fact for which Jounouchi was grateful. With the number of notes coming home from school about his fighting, especially since he'd starting hanging out with Hirutani, it was just as well that he got to the mail first. Not that his old man would care or bother going to see the principal. Unless the principal had some scotch or at least beer behind his desk that he was willing to share, what was the point?

The mailbox was full and Jounouchi shoved everything into his backpack then headed up to his apartment. Holding his breath, he unlocked the door and poked his head in.

The place was a mess, but then the place was always a mess. Empty beer bottles and pizza boxes and ramen packages littered the floor and there was that stale day- or even week-old beer smell that he always associated with his father. The mess didn't bother him, though. Hirutani had told him about his older brother's college fraternity parties and how things looked the morning after and it sounded a lot like this, so Jounouchi just pretended he was in college (not that he'd ever get to go to college with his grades and no money) instead of sixth grade and it was all good. No, the mess was fine so long as the person who made the mess wasn't around. And so far, it looked like the coast was clear.

Cautiously, Jounouchi stepped through the door and quietly closed it behind him. He put his backpack with the mail down on the floor and crept as quietly as he could toward the bedrooms; it was possible his dad was asleep. But when he got there, he found the bedroom empty, although similarly littered with the debris from several days of binge drinking. But no Dad.

With a heavy sigh of relief, Jounouchi returned to the living room. With a sweeping motion, he shoved the boxes and bottles and trash off the couch to make a place for himself, then grabbed his backpack and settled in to start going through the mail.

A lot of it was bills. He put those aside in a stack for his dad to look at. Not that Dad would do anything about them. The power had been cut off twice in the past six months because he hadn't paid the electric bill, and the gas had been shut off once. When Jounouchi was old enough, he would apply for an exception for students who need money to work even though they're still students. He could get a newspaper route and help out with the bills. Of course, Hirutani had told him there were other, easier, faster ways to get money, but Jounouchi wasn't ready for that. Not yet, anyway.

Among the bills there was the letter he was expecting from the school. He pulled that one out and opened the envelope, reading it quickly.

This is to inform you that your son, Jounouchi Katsuya, has been suspended for three days. He was caught fighting with another student… blah blah blah. Jounouchi found the space at the bottom that was looking for his father's signature and hastily scrawled Jounouchi Raidon in a very close approximation of his father's handwriting. He folded up the note and stuck it back in his backpack.

There was more mail, most of it more bills, and a package of some sort. He shoved aside the bills and looked at the package, surprised to see it was addressed to him. No return address, although it was postmarked Tokyo. It was wrapped in plain brown paper, giving no indication what its contents might be. Jounouchi frowned. Why would someone from Tokyo send him a package? Curious, he tore open the box and found a videocassette. He turned it over in his hands, but it had no labels.

A thought occurred to him then. Hirutani was always telling him about those videos he'd swiped from his brother. It would be just like him to order one through the mail and have it sent to Jounouchi as a joke. It certainly would explain the plain wrapping and the lack of return address. Grinning from ear to ear, he eagerly got up and went over to the TV and jammed the cassette into the VCR. He was dying to see what the fuss was about.

When he hit play, a short burst of static gave way to a shot of a bedroom. It looked like a young girl's bedroom, decorated in pink and frills, with stuffed animals on the bed. Jounouchi frowned. He was interested in seeing some of those videos, yeah, but with grown-up women with chests the size of cantaloupes, not with little girls! That was kinda sick… and then someone moved in front of the camera and his mouth dropped open.

It was Shizuka!

Shizuka, his kid sister, whom he hadn't seen or even heard from in the two years since his mother took her away to live with their grandmother in Tokyo. He was shocked at how grown-up she looked. She'd been seven when he'd last seen her, her face pressed against the window of the car as their mother drove away. Now she was nine. Her hair was longer and pulled back into a ponytail and she was chewing gum. She sat down in front of the camera and smiled shyly and waved.

"Hello, Katsuya Big Brother. I… I know you haven't heard from me in a long time. Mom won't let me call or write or anything, and writing is kinda hard to make the characters nice when they look all blurry anyway, so…" She took a great big sigh. She was nervous, he could tell. "I thought it might be cool to make a video of myself and send it to you instead. You know, just to say hi. Mom's not home and I think I can get it into the mail without her knowing, and I'm betting you're the one who always gets the mail so you don't have to tell Dad. 'Cause, you know…."

She paused, taking another breath. "Anyway, Mom has been taking me to some new doctors here in Tokyo, and there's a school here for kids with vision problems. They're helping me learn Braille and how to walk with a cane. You know, just in case. Mom thinks the doctors will be able to help, though. There's a new operation, and if we can save up enough money in the next five years or so, they think it'll work. It's really expensive, though, so I don't know. Mom works hard, but she doesn't have much money and neither does Grandma and no one thinks… well, you guys don't have any money either, anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. But I think it's gonna be okay, because I've met a lot of kids at school who can't see at all and they do just fine. Maybe I can get one of those Guide dogs. That would be totally cool, huh? Then I could take him everywhere and no one could tell me I couldn't."

She paused again, and her eyes filled with tears. "I miss you, Big Brother. I hate that you're so far away and that you can't come live with us, too, because of… well, you know."

Jounouchi chewed on his lip in frustration, willing his eyes not to water. He was a boy, dammit, and boys didn't cry.

"If you can send me a videotape back, that would be cool. Oh, but address it to 'Kawai Shizuka.'" She rattled off an address in Tokyo before explaining, "Mom sorta changed our names to her maiden name when we moved here and she'll freak if she intercepts it and it says 'Jounouchi' on it. But anyway, I'll try and always check the mail first so she doesn't see and you always check your mail, too, 'cause I'll try and send more tapes every now and then. Okay? I miss you, Big Brother. I—"

There was a sound from somewhere off screen and she tensed, looking over her shoulder. Turning back to the screen, she said quickly, "Mom's home, gotta go. 'Bye!'" She then blew a kiss at the camera and disappeared out of the frame. The scene jiggled a bit and then went to static.

For a long time Jounouchi sat and watched the static, his own brown eyes reflecting back at him in the screen in the place where Shizuka's hazel ones had just been. Those big, beautiful hazel eyes that were growing dimmer and dimmer each year. Then he rewound the tape and watched it over and over again until he memorized every word, every smile, every tear on her cheek, even the way her gum cracked as she talked. Finally, he took the tape out and brought it into his bedroom, hiding it in the bottom of his underwear drawer along with his stash of magazines he'd swiped from his father and a few Hirutani had given him as well.

Guide dogs, he thought in frustration. She thinks it would be cool to have a Guide dog. He ground his teeth together, his fists clenched in rage. He kicked over the wastebasket in the corner by his desk, scattering papers and candy wrappers around the floor. When that wasn't enough to dispel his rage, he picked it up and hurled it against the wall, satisfied to see it dent on the side. Guide dogs. GUIDE DOGS. Well, not if I can help it, dammit.

He sat down heavily on his bed, his breath coming fast. When he'd finally calmed down, he reached over to the telephone that was buried under a pile of dirty shirts and socks. He dialed Hirutani's number.

"Hey, it's Jounouchi," he said quickly when his friend answered the phone. "Uh… you said you knew of some ways to make a few quick yens?"

"Yeah…" Hirutani answered slowly.

Jounouchi chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Count me in."