Chapter 3: Grudge Match.
I couldn't open my eyes. I was awake, but I physically couldn't open my eyes to see. That was the first thing I remember. Naturally I started to panic. My body jolted in fear, and to my surprise, as my other senses started to kick in, I realized that I was still in that alleyway. The ground I was laying on was hard and cold, and beneath my shaking and sweating fingertips I could feel the gritty particles of dirt and dust within the crevices of the cobblestones. I breathed heavily through my mouth, since my nose was filled with my own blood. I must have realized all this within the space of a second, since it didn't take long for my observer to respond.
"He's waking up!" a man to said to someone unknown. I flinched slightly when I felt his hands enclose around my head. My throbbing skull was gently lifted off the ground and what I presumed was a jacket was placed under me, so I didn't have to rest my head on the hard floor.
"I can't see!" I panicked.
"Your eyes are swollen shut," he calmly informed me. Frightened, I lifted my hands to my face and hissed as I touched the tender area. The man carefully pulled my hands away, fearing that I may unintentionally hurt myself. "Stay still," he instructed. I gasped as I felt something sharp enter the skin above my eye. The feeling was then repeated on the other side. I shivered as some warm liquid dribbled down the sides of my face. Later I learned that he had made an incision to reduce the swelling and that the liquid was my own blood and pus. "Can you see?" the man wondered.
Slowly my eyelids began to rise. My vision was blurry, so I blinked a few times, but eventually I could keep them open long enough to absorb my surroundings. I observed a man, no older than my own brother, crouched down by my side. A few feet away was a slender and petite woman, and even though I was way too young at that age to be thinking of girls, I thought that she was quite pretty. "My name is Hamato Yoshi," the rather well-built man introduced himself with a calming smile. "And this is my girlfriend Tang Shen." The name rang a bell, but at that moment my head was too convoluted to try and remember where I had heard about her before. My focus was immediately shifted back onto Yoshi when he asked me a question. "What is your name?" the man repeated, as I didn't properly comprehend his words the first time he pronounced them.
"Oroku Saki," I said. As I spoke, a few drops of blood flowed down the back of my nasal passage and trickled around the back of my throat, causing me to enter a couching fit. Yoshi wrapped his arms around me and lifted me up into sitting position to see if that would help. It did.
"Oroku-san?" Yoshi murmured to himself. "Are you related to Oroku Nagi?" he questioned. With my throat still sore and irritated, all I dared to do was nod in response. "Hurry! He still might be at the dojo!" Yoshi urgently instructed the woman. Not needing to hear anything more, the woman named Tang Shen started to run in the direction of the Foot training quarters.
I tilted my head back, suddenly feeling rather woozy. "I know your brother," Yoshi started to say, making mindless small talk. "He's a good fighter. We're both ninjitsu instructors, so I see him quite often when we have meetings," he told me, but I didn't care. I was too focused on breathing deeply in the hopes that I would stop feeling nauseated. The last thing I wanted to was to vomit all over myself. "Hey, stay in there, okay?" Yoshi rubbed my upper arms a little, hoping that would keep me awake. "Tell me a little about yourself," he ordered. The calmness in his voice had been replaced by worry. Groggily I sighed while I tried to think of what to say. I closed my eyes out of tiredness, and when I opened them again, he was gone.
Shocked, I blinked once and then twice. The alleyway had faded and now I was lying on a soft bed in a sterile hospital room. My mind whirled in confusion, as I honestly believed that only a second or two had passed, but obviously my conception of time was horribly wrong. My mother was the first to discover that I had woken up. I had never seen her so excited in my life, at least not within my presence. With her eyes brimming with tears of joy, she corralled my father and brother into the room as soon as they were available. Once all of the heightened emotions had died down, my parents informed me of what the doctor had told them. Apparently I had had a concussion. Sections of my hair had been shaved and my head had been bandaged, as I had a few open wounds over my scalp – all of which needed stitches. Along with sustaining head injuries, my nose had been broken. Thankfully the swelling around my eyes had greatly been reduced due to the incisions Hamato Yoshi had made, even though I needed two stitches over those cuts as well.
Time in the hospital, I must admit, was incredibly mind numbing and forgettable. It was my brother who would visit me the most, taking the time to either advise me on life or to tell me about what had been happening within the confines of the Foot. I appreciated him spending the time with me, as without him, I would be left all alone with my only company being my own bitterness about what I had done the day I was injured.
After a week in hospital, I learnt the torturous truth that I must face another week due to some complications in the healing process. Missing so much of school, some of my friends made a point of visiting me at least once. The one who visited me the most often was my friend Nobu. He was a quiet boy who spent most of his time both inside and outside of class reading manga. Because of his silent and detached disposition, at first I was taken aback by the fact that he was visiting me, but I quickly realized that he had the perfect solution as to how I spend my time. Nobu's father was a wealthy businessman, who had made the smart decision to invest and work alongside American companies. Being close friends with the Americans and conversing with them on a regular basis, one such business partner gave Nobu's father a stack of Superman comics. "A present for your son," as they had described it. Obviously Nobu's father had jokingly described what an obsessed nut his son was with manga during a casual lunch meeting. The comics were in English, but that didn't matter to my friend. Unlike my father, Nobu's father encouraged his son to learn English, since to him it was obvious that the future of business lay with the United States of America.
So Nobu, like an excited little child, showed his proud and growing comic book collection to me. I could only ever stare at the illustrations, but Nobu was more than glad to try and tell me what was happening within the dialogue. Personally I believe that Nobu was just thankful that he had a captive audience to discuss his most beloved topic. At first I used to groan at his excitable babbling, but soon I grew attached to the story. I remember discussing many trivial things such as the limits to Superman's powers and how he could have time to both save the world from its problems and date the rather demanding Lois Lane. However as time went on, the more issues I flicked through with Nobu, the more I grew tired of the classic super hero. He was just too perfect. Too powerful. Instead I became fascinated by the villain, Lex Luthor. What I liked about him was that despite the fact that Superman was the most powerful being on the planet, Lex Luthor would stand up to him, never fearful and never backing down. He was just a man, completely opposite to the protagonist. To think that he would come so far with such defiance inspired me. Nobu thought it was odd that I would like the villain better than the hero, but to me my friend never seemed to appreciate what Lex represented. But I did.
Despite the odds stacked against me, I left hospital two days earlier than expected. I remember being asked the same question over and over again at school as to what happened to me, as though I had suddenly become public property. My newfound 'fame' irritated me at first, but soon I began to appreciate the idea that I was the topic of conversation. Yet the greatest change wasn't found with my classmates, but instead with my father.
Since the attack, it seemed that my father took the time to cherish me as his son – to be so grateful for what he had, since through experiencing some parental paranoia, he realized that I could easily become lost one day, never to return. To be honest, I wasn't used to his kindness. Some days I believed he was simply mistaking me for Nagi. But he was only trying to be more of a prominent father figure in my life. He wanted his presence to be felt and remembered throughout my aging years. I guess he just wanted what everyone wanted out of life – to impact on another, as without being remembered for something, anything, we eventually leave this world without making our little mark… or dent. And to what would be the purpose of life without our little dents in time?
Unfortunately my father was never used to change. The perfect example of his perpetual, underlying human nature occurred a fortnight after being released from the hospital. For the first time in a long while, my father trusted me with a pile of yen. Because of the attack and with my brother being so concerned about my health, Nagi had decided to postpone inviting Tang Shen to a family dinner. Once again that woman's name felt familiar to me, but I could never make the connection as to who she was, even though it felt like it was at the tip of my tongue. To this day, I still feel so foolish for not foreseeing the future.
But after pushing the date of the evening dinner back further and further on the calendar, the night had finally been set for tonight. The yen my father had given me was part of an errand, where it would be my important mission to go down to the corner store and buy the groceries that would be needed to make the feast. He also told me that I could keep the change. I did what I was told and bought the best quality fish on the market, however on the way home I had to pass the store where my favorite arcade game, Space Invaders, was housed. I shouldn't have stopped. My mission was so simple - just buy the food then get home so that my mother could start cooking dinner. Yet I couldn't help myself. Being in that gaming zone made me feel alive. It was the activity that I was good at, my purpose, and I couldn't simply walk away from it. I needed to pay my electronic friend a little visit.
I knew I had made a mistake as soon as I had stepped through the door of that building. The gang of bullies from school were there, surrounding and congratulating their friend Takeshi as he played Space Invaders. I wanted to slink back outside, but I faltered, as I wanted to know what they were doing with the game I had dominated. It didn't take long for one of the boys to spot me observing them. After tapping his friends on the shoulder, soon everyone was staring back at me.
"Well look who's here," the leader of the gang chimed. "Are you planning on playing Space Invaders?" He crossed his arms in an attempt to intimidate me through his overconfidence. It almost worked, except that I remembered what my brother had told me. I shouldn't have to give up the things I love. I needed to defend and protect my reputation. So I suppressed my desire to simply mumble a few words and wander off, by instead puffing in a deep breath and deciding to talk back.
"Of course I'm here to play," I boldly answered. With a smirk on his face, the leader glanced at his friends, as though he needed their consensus on how this conversation would end.
"Go home," he sneered. "There's no point playing this game now. Takeshi-san has the top score. There's no way you're going to beat him," the boy boasted. I felt a defiant spark light up deep within my body. It was the drive to prove them wrong. It couldn't end like this. I wanted to see their scowls of disappointment when I obliterated their pathetic high score – to see them give me the respect that I deserved; that in the gaming arena, I wasn't one who could be pushed around. My reputation was on the line.
"Wanna bet?" I slyly answered. The leader gave me an indignant look, as obviously he preferred me to just give up and disappear. Personally I was afraid that they were all going to pin me down and steal the rest of my yen, but in the other boys I could observe a glimmer of curiosity in seeing me take the challenge. Once again the leader looked at his comrades as though he needed their approval.
"Step aside. Let him play," he announced. As the group of older boys moved to the right of the beloved machine, I nervously stepped forward, gently placed the plastic-bagged groceries down to the left, and took a hold of the joystick with my sweaty palm. I was so nervous that my other hand was shaking so violently that it could barely slip into my tight pocket in order to pull out the correct coins to play. But once I plopped that yen into the arcade game, I started to relax. I knew this. I knew what I was doing. My main motivation was to prove them wrong – to show that I, Oroku Saki, was no push over.
I must have played for over an hour, but I can't really be certain. Time loses itself when in an intense battle. At first the boys watching over my shoulder would blurt out words in the hopes of startling me into making a mistake, but that was a pitiful tactic, one that I could easily ignore. After ten minutes, it was Takeshi who stopped his friends from being so annoying, as he wanted this to be a fair battle for the high score listings – a way to test his own greatness and answer once and for all who was better at Space Invaders.
It wasn't long till my wrist became sore from constantly flicking it back and forth. My mind kept wandering off, thinking about the most mundane things. But I managed to stay focused and kept shooting. I think my intense concentration rubbed off onto the other boys, as soon they were also glued to that black-background screen, flinching as a secondary reaction to its crude, pixelated graphics. My entire body was shivering with excitement. I almost couldn't contain my enjoyment and transfer it to the game in front of me. Then the tiredness started to settle into my joints and eyelids. I knew I needed to get home. A part of me wanted me to hurry up and make an irreversible mistake, and yet the stronger part of me wasn't willing to sacrifice this opportunity.
Eventually the inevitable happened. My spaceship flashed in despair when it was hit one too many times. Finally it was game over. But all the physical pain and mental torment paid off when the high score screen popped up with a blank space in the first place position. I couldn't stop grinning. I did it! After frantically tapping in my name, I quickly turned around so I could see the crushed faces of my enemies, but instead I came face to face with my angry father. It seemed that out of worry for my long absence, my father had spent the last ten minutes searching the neighborhood for me. The gang of boys were still there, only now they were off to one side, fearfully looking at the enraged adult that stood in front of me.
Without thinking my father slapped me across the head. I instantly hissed and cowered in pain as I could feel my old wounds sting. My father quickly realized his impulsive mistake and for a second there was a hint of fear in his eyes. But that look quickly dissipated, as though he promised himself that he would simply refrain to verbal assault instead. "You stupid boy!" he violently declared. "Stupid, stupid boy!" he spat. "Why are you wasting your time playing this game!?" He pointed towards Space Invaders as though it was an evil fiend that needed to be destroyed.
"I, I thought you said that I could spend the rest of the yen on whatever I wanted?" I protested. I should have interpreted his last sentence as a rhetorical question, but my head was stinging too much for me to be wise enough to simply close my mouth.
"But not on this!" he bellowed. I lowered my head in shame, knowing I had gone against his harsh will. I could tell that he wanted to say more about the subject, but he refrained from doing so. Other customers in the store had stopped to eavesdrop and quietly observe our altercation. My father didn't want to make a spectacle of ourselves and to be the talk of the town. "Pick up the food," he commanded. Obediently I bent down and gathered up the weighty plastic bags, feeling completely ashamed of myself. "Let's go home," my father quietly ordered. In his eyes, I could almost see his anger simmering inside. Not trusting me to follow, he grabbed my upper arm and yanked me into step behind him. As I was pulled through the doors of the shop, I took one long last glance at the arcade game that I had grown to love, just knowing that this time I would never play it again.