Kuwabara lay on his bed staring blankly up at the ceiling. He hadn't cried when Shizuru informed him that Ryuko had been hit by a car that morning after he'd gone to school. He didn't really feel sad even. Just sort of…empty.
There was a knock on his bedroom door and Mr. Kuwabara stuck his head in. "Kazuma? You okay?"
"I guess," Kuwabara said.
Mr. Kuwabara came in and sat down on the edge of his bed. "Want to talk about it?"
Kuwabara didn't say anything, but his dad just sat there and waited in silence. Finally, Kuwabara voiced the question that had been burning in him since he'd heard about Ryuko. "What's the point? In caring I mean. We lose everything eventually, so why bother caring? Wouldn't it be easier if we didn't?"
"You always have to ask the hard questions, don't you?" Mr. Kuwabara asked dryly. "Tell me, Kazuma, can you really imagine going through life not caring about me and Shizuru? Or your friends? Or your mother? Can you imagine a life where we didn't care about you?"
"No," Kuwabara admitted quietly.
"Caring hurts," Mr. Kuwabara told him. "When people you care about hurt, you hurt. When they leave or are taken from you, you hurt. When they do or say something mean, you hurt. That's a part of life. But all that hurt is worth it for the time you have with the ones you care for. If you could go back to the day you found Ryuko, knowing that you wouldn't have him long, would you do anything different than you did before? Would you leave him outside our fence to fend for himself?"
Tears stung Kuwabara's eyes for the first time. "No," he whispered.
Mr. Kuwabara hugged him. "I didn't think so."
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