Chapter 2: The Friend
Zak managed to shove the journal back into its crevice before his parents came to tuck him into his bed. The first couple of pages had given him a raw sense of adventure, the dates clearly pointed out that this book had been written before the Great Happening. Pieces of things such as this were extremely rare here in Japan, a fierce sense of pride erupted throughout the frail boys body, anything he could do to keep together his mothers heritage was his goal. It was all his mother had left...besides himself and Dad.
He often wondered why they had left the southern beaches for this village near an old desolate city long abandoned by its teeming inhabitants. Story's were always told of the times before everything went to hell but nobody ever told him what had happened before the Great Happening. Every night Zak would lie in bed and think about these questions, mulling them over in his head, he had learned to stop asking long ago. He rolled over in his sheets...eyes closed in a blissful sleep.
Zak woke up to a freezing house the next morning. The air had a chill feel to it, as the fire had not been stoked all night. Zak stumbled into the main room with a glazed look in his eyes. Fall was definitely making its appearance within the small village. Zak's father was sitting at the table, munching on the remainder of his breakfast. Zak and his Dad never got along since before Zak could remember. Zak secretly felt it was because he didn't look anything like his father at all. Zak was small, almost completely blind without glasses, and could hardly go anywhere without tripping or otherwise blundering about causing his unruly mess of dark brown hair to flop about.
So his father largely ignored him. As soon as Zak realized his father stare, he booked it out of there, running as fast as he could to...nowhere in particular.
'I'm a failure, aren't I?' He mused this over as he came to a halt beneath a cherry blossom tree. 'Even my own Dad can't stand me' His back slid down the tree till he came to halt, leaning against the bark for support.
"Hi Zak!" Out beyond the their own yard was his neighbor, Rachel. "So are ya done bein' all weird today?" She put her hands on her hips "come on, lets go do something!"
Even though they were both fourteen and had known each other since they were 6 Zak still couldn't stand her sometimes. Especially now, She seemed to have something that bothered Zak...but not in a bad way, Zak let it go, he just thought it was another strange thing about girls he just couldn't figure out. Like how every once in a while she got extremely annoyed with him for nothing.
Zak lifted his head at his new idea "Hey, lets go back to that hotel!" At the mention of the hotel Rachel looked down and started shifting her feet.
"No, I really don't like it there Zak, can't we do something else, please?" Her pleading look oddly made him feel sympathy for what was obviously a ruse.
In the end he finally gave up "OK, OK we won't go, but I do want to go get something from my house first." Zak dashed back into his house, after making sure nobody was around he snatched the journal from its place and returned to the tree.
"Is that the nasty old book by that skeleton you picked up?" Rachel looked at the book with a certain distaste towards it. "whats in it anyways?"
Zak plopped down beside the tree and looked up at his friend, " I think it was the guys journal before he...you know...died."
Rachel's eyes widened with fright, "That's his personal property, what if he came back and decided to haunt you!"
Zak looked down at the small journal in his hands, "I'm pretty sure if he took all the time to write this stuff down he would want someone to read it, I mean what if there's some really important stuff in here...we could finally learn about the Great Happening!" The fright drained and gave way into excitement as Rachel listened to Zak, she immediately sat down next to him to read exactly what the young man had written all those years ago.
AN: I know I know, the chapters here are exceedingly short, but fear not devoted reader, this is only the beginning. Keitaro and Co. will make their appearance soon enough, trust me.