Author's Note - There is talk of abuse of children in the worst kind of way in this chapter. Don't read if you're sensitive to it. It's not detailed or anything.
If he had to say who his best friend was, he wouldn't know who to pick.
Don was his best friend for talking to. They spent a lot of time together, since Don's foster parents worked a lot and would let him stay at his lessons late. But Mike was his most fun friend. Mike laughed and made jokes and always thought things were awesome, except when he got mad. But he didn't get mad a lot.
He wasn't sure which he'd pick, but it was okay. His father told him he wouldn't have to pick. He said boys were allowed to have as many friends as they wanted.
Leonardo had never had friends before. Not really. Nothing like Mike and Don.
He didn't like Rafael a lot. Rafael was always mad.
But for some reason his father liked for all four of them to spend time together.
Rafael was teaching Don some Spanish, and he and Mike would talk sometimes about things. But Leo never found anything to talk to him about. His father said everyone had common ground, and it was just a matter of finding it.
They were both the same age. They were both orphans - Leo knew Yoshi wasn't his real father. But that wasn't enough.
He didn't complain to his father, though. He knew Yoshi wanted them to get along, and he was always disappointed when Leo said he didn't like someone. He always said it meant that Leo wasn't trying hard enough to understand them.
Leo worried about Mikey a lot. Rafael was just angry and that was how he was, but Mike? Mike got angry and didn't want to.
He hated being mad. He got so angry he couldn't control himself, and he hated it. He told Leo that he didn't know where it came from, and he wanted to be happy.
Leo wanted him to be happy, too. There weren't a lot of happy kids except in Yoshi's daytime classes. The ones that Miss Prentiss brought in were never happy.
Even Yoshi didn't know why Mike got mad. He told Leo he could tell that Mike had an optimistic personality, but something must have happened to him that he hadn't really dealt with.
"I know what it is," Rafael said one day, when Mike didn't show up because he was under punishment for tearing his sheets back at the state home.
Leo just rolled his eyes. Raf always said he knew everything about everything. "You do not."
"Sure I do. I've been around."
"Fine, what is it?"
Raf leaned in. "Promise not to tell your dad?"
Leo glared at him. "No."
Raf's eyes rolled. "Fine, baby. Never mind."
"Okay, what?"
"Forget it."
Leo warred with himself for a minute. Helping Mikey was more important than telling his dad one of Raf's stupid ideas, though. "Okay, I won't tell."
Raf looked back, eyebrows raised. He came in close, leaning in to look up at Leo. "Better not. He wouldn't care anyway."
"Why not?"
"Because adults never do."
"So what is it?"
Raf lowered his voice, conspiratorial. "Mikey's getting fucked."
Leo glared at him and told him to forget it and stormed off.
Yoshi taught him all about words like 'fuck'. They were rude words that rude people said when they didn't know better words.
Raf used them a lot.
Leo forgot about Raf and his words. At least, he tried to.
But he was curious. Yoshi told him that often - he was a curious boy, who had to know things even if he didn't understand them.
Anyway, Mike was his friend and he didn't get any better in his lessons with Yoshi. When he was in his bad moods now and then he didn't seem to remember anything about lessons. He didn't say much of anything at all.
So one day he went to Yoshi.
"You know how you said I could ask you anything, even questions that might make you mad?"
His father seemed amused by the question. He sat down on Leo's bed beside him. "Of course. Have I ever gotten angry at you for wanting to learn?"
"No." Leo fidgeted all the same.
"Then ask. Waiting gives the seeds of doubt time-"
"-to become a garden. I know." Leo sighed. "Okay. What does…what does 'fuck' mean?"
Yoshi's eyebrows flew up and he turned a little pink. "It has a few meanings, I believe. But there are always better words to express any of those meanings."
"I know."
"Where did you hear this word?"
Leo shot him a look.
Yoshi smiled. "Rafael, then."
"You can't teach him not to talk like that?"
"It's hard to undo certain habits." Yoshi sounded unconcerned. Then again, Yoshi let Raf get away with a lot of things. "Why does the word concern you now? I've sheltered you, perhaps, but you must have heard it before."
"He said it about Mikey. And he said it like it was a bad thing, but when I heard it used before…" Leo shrugged. "Raf said the reason why Mike got so mad was that he was getting…you know…that word?"
Yoshi pondered that for a moment.
Then his back straightened and his face went pale and serious. "He said Mike was getting fucked."
The word sounded so weird coming from his father's mouth, but Leo nodded.
Yoshi stood and left the room.
Leo went to sleep that night still confused.
"Last year," she said in his ear, her voice a thin sigh through the phone.
Yoshi sank into a chair, dismayed. "Why didn't you tell me? I always ask for the histories of the boys you send me."
"It was never proven, Yoshi. I can't tell you unsubstantiated rumors. Besides, you know by now how often that kind of thing shows up in these boys' pasts."
Not one of my boys, Yoshi wanted to answer. Instead he simply tightened his hand around the cord of the phone. "What happened to him?"
"It's the same as a thousand kids. He was being fostered by a couple. One of his teachers at school was worried about his behavior and asked him a few questions that led her to go to the police about the husband, and he was returned to us. We couldn't prove abuse. We hardly ever can, you know, but even Mike wasn't helping."
"What do you mean, wasn't helping?"
"He never admitted the abuse. To be honest, I think he doesn't remember it. I think somehow he's blocked it from his mind."
"Of course he has!" Yoshi stood up in frustration, pacing his small kitchen. "That's exactly where this anger comes from! A mind can never erase trauma such as that, it simply buries it. But bubbles always surface."
"What do you want me to do, Yoshi? Mike doesn't remember it and I for one am glad he doesn't. I've seen a lot of boys turn into the worst kinds of abusers themselves, falling back on a history with a bad family as an excuse. He has the right to get angry."
"It's not…" Not healthy. Not at all.
But he didn't go on. He let her go back to work, and he sat for a while in his kitchen, lost in thought.
Of course he knew these kids were hurt too often. He never understood it. There was work required to foster children. Why go through the effort just to injure and molest and traumatize?
Why one of his boys? Why?
It was the most horrible cycle, and Yoshi himself had set it into motion.
It hurt him, so badly he canceled an evening class and lost himself to quiet meditation to calm his spirit.
That bright-eyed, golden, smiling boy. What might he have become if Yoshi had kept him? The same gentle spirit without the anger. Pure. Rare.
Damn him and his choices in the first year he was a human.
He could never regret keeping Leonardo, of course. His boy's devotion and curiosity and openness to every new thing he saw was a constant refresher for Yoshi's spirit. He learned from the boy as much as he taught him.
But he could have raised Mike as well.
Mike. It might have been short for Michelangelo if Yoshi had held on. A fitting match for his Leonardo.
He knew, of course, that such speculations were useless. Regrets were pointless. He had made a mistake, perhaps, but he had made the mistake from a place of sincerity. He hadn't doubted that his choice was what was best for the children.
He had been wrong.
But that mistake was forgivable. He had been out of his depth those years ago, struggling to make a place for himself. It would have been entirely irresponsible to hold on to four children.
All four. God, what might they have been? Don's unquenchable need to understand the world…Yoshi would have gladly embraced the challenge of teaching him, and could have learned with him. How brilliant might he be by nine if he had had support?
Rafael…what in his life made him so angry? What might he be if raised by Yoshi? Would he be bigger if he had a body that had never known starvation and neglect? Would he still be so angry?
Having the boys so close was salt on the wounds of his past. Yoshi felt it as a constant weight.
Did they have a right to know their history? Would they despise him if they came to find he was the one who surrendered them into the system they were trapped into?
It was the worst kind of torture. Worst because he knew he would never be rid of it. He would never lose track of the children again, even if keeping them near hurt him.
He shut the door on Mike's next lesson, which Leo would know meant Yoshi expected full privacy.
He spoke to the boy, soft and earnest, about abuse. Statistics and facts, and how the victim was never to blame for his own abuse. How adults could confuse and hurt and lead children to believe they were somehow at fault.
Mike just listened, appearing thoughtful but with the glow in his dancing eyes that meant he was only listening to another lesson.
He didn't connect the words to himself. His cheer held, and when Yoshi ran out of words he jumped to his feet lightly and asked if he could use the bokuto Yoshi was training him with.
Yoshi knew it would take time, but all the same his heart was disappointed.
His guilt held, so much that he took the bokuto from Mike's hands. "Perhaps you're ready to begin training on a new weapon."
Mike's already bright smile split his face bigger. "You mean the sticks, don't you?"
Since the day he began practice the nunchaku on the wall had fascinated him. He begged to learn to use them, but Yoshi refused. He hadn't realized that Mike would be one of his own boys, and no temporary student.
He went to the wall and took down the nunchaku. "You are energetic and your reflexes are quick. I think these might be a proper fit for you after all."
Mike crowed, bouncing on his toes. But when he took the single pair from Yoshi's hand he forced himself to still and hold the weapon respectfully. "Thank you, Master," he said with a bow, and a smile he still couldn't hide.
Michael was an easy child to place, Prentiss told him, but a hard one to keep settled. The flares of temper he had were more than parents knew how to handle, and even his smiling blond-haired and round-cheeked beauty couldn't keep him appealing after a few of those tantrums.
Yoshi asked Leonardo, of course, before he did anything. He spoke sincerely to his son and was answered sincerely, because that was how father and son had always been.
Leonardo expressed a single worry about becoming less important in his father's eyes, and seemed to believe Yoshi's reassurance that such a thing was impossible.
After that was settled, Leonardo's pleasure at the idea was plain.
Yoshi called Prentiss the next day and asked to begin the adoption process.
Leo couldn't help a smug grin when he saw Raf. "You were wrong, you know."
"About what, cabron?" Raf had come out of his lesson smirking as always, like he didn't listen to a word Yoshi ever said about humility and kindness.
Leo didn't get mad that time, though. He was kind of smug himself. "You said my father wouldn't care what you said about Mike."
Raf's smirk vanished. "You told him?"
"Of course. I tell my father everything." Leo spoke proudly.
"Of course you do, you lying pendejo." Anger was already making Raf tense. "You fucking kiss-up."
"Stop talking like that." Leo's voice was sharp. "And you were wrong. You said dad wouldn't care, and he does. He says he's bringing Mike here to live with us so he'll never be in that state home or with people who will hurt him ever again."
Raf snorted, his cheeks red. "Oh, of course. Of course Mikey the golden boy gets everything. How stupid of me."
"Stop it. You're just mad you were wrong."
"I wasn't wrong."
"You said adults never care. But they do."
"Fine. I guess adults just never care when it happens to me."
Leo rolled his eyes, exasperated. "Not everything is about you, Raf! You should be happy for Mikey."
But Raf wasn't happy for Mike. Even though Mike was the one he was least angry at, he wasn't anything like happy.
In fact, he was more furious than ever for weeks after Leo told him the news.