Chapter Twenty One

Sachie

"Help!" I tried to yell, but it came out as a muffled grunt, mainly due to the fact that someone had covered my mouth with some rough, heavy cloth. Not just my mouth, it felt as though my whole head was being tightly wrapped in the fabric.

What's going on?

I heard Fuji and Ishizaki struggling alongside me. Had to free myself—had to help—a pair of thick arms pinned my own to my sides. I kicked my leg back in the general direction of my captor. Judging from the scream that erupted into my ear when my heel made contact, it was a man. He dropped me in his pain. Fumbling with the cloth shrouding my vision, I had almost gotten it off when something hard hit the side of my head.

Very dizzy, my head throbbing, I could do nothing more than fight to remain conscious. It was quiet. The others had been subdued. It seemed a lost battle.

"Which one is it?" someone hissed in a rough voice.

"How can I tell in this dim light?" another person snapped back.

"Just take them all before the police come," commanded a third.

The kidnappers threw me bodily onto a cushioned seat. Grunts told me Fuji and Ishizaki had been treated in a similar fashion too. Someone nudged me with his elbow.

Elbow? Their hands must be tied.

The nudging didn't stop until I forced a moan out of myself. Not at all a difficult thing to do, given all the pain I was in. I felt that person lean against me for a second, as if reassuring me that everything would be fine.

An engine started. We were in a car.

How can everything be fine? How can anything be fine again, Fuji? My courage had long since left me and as brave as he was, my friend had little to spare.

The car trundled on, first on smooth road, then along what felt like a bumpy dirt path. The continuous jolting made my head pulse with agony, blurring my mind.

Need to...go...get out...escape...where? Home...no...not home...police...police station...got to...head hurts...Fuji...Ishizaki...Fuji Fuji Fuji...
I was dimly aware of being lifted out of the car and dumped painfully onto a hard floor. There was a clanging of metal against metal, the slam of a door, then silence.

"Tezumi!"

Ouch. Someone was kicking me. Not very heavily, but every movement sent twinges of pain shooting around the region of my brain.

"Tezumi! Please wake up!" Fuji's voice... Fuji? Yes, Fuji. My groggy mind registered that much.

I thought I'd gone blind when I first pried my eyes open, and saw only darkness. Then I noticed the moonlight shining through the bars.

The bars?

I willed my shaking arms to half lift myself off the floor. There was cold stone under my fingers. I was in a dark room, with cement walls and an iron door. A little window fitted with metal bars allowed some light to creep in. It was a literal prison cell.

"Tezumi!" Fuji poked me again with his toe.

"What?" I groaned, propping myself up into a sitting position. Both boys had been tied up, their hands behind their backs and backs to the wall in a similar sitting position as the one I was in.

"Oh good, you're awake. It sounds stupid to ask, but are you ok?"

"As ok as a person can be after being hit on the head with a sledgehammer." I crawled a few feet forward and collapsed in the space between the two. The advantage of being injured was that no one bothered to chain you up. You couldn't move around a lot anyway.

"What just happened?" Ishizaki asked in a small voice, still in a state of shock.

"Facts show that we've been kidnapped," I snapped as best as I could.

"Why?" he wondered in a dazed voice. "Your family isn't rich and tennis tensais don't sell for much on the black market, I expect."

"Ishizaki!"

"Don't, Tezumi," Fuji said soothingly. "He isn't in his normal state of mind."

"Fuji." I rolled my eyes. "This guy doesn't have a normal state of mind. But that's beside the point. One of us must be their target, and Ishizaki is right—

for once. Neither of us is worth that much, so that must mean—"

There was a jangling of keys and the metal door was flung open. In came three men. They looked normal enough in polo shirts and baggy pants, not so different from my own father. The only difference was that these guys had snatched us off the streets.

"How could you not even know who we were supposed to take?" the tallest of them growled at the other two.

"We got him anyway." A messily shaved fellow said. He turned to us. "Which of you is the Ishizaki kid?"

Seeing as 'the Ishizaki kid' was still chattering at the teeth, I and Fuji had to point him out.

"So this is the little prince." The man leered evilly and motioned for his companions to take Ishizaki away. The boy followed limply.

"Well, well, well...and what shall I do with the two of you?"

Fighting to keep up a stony glare, I fearfully waited for him to speak, as a convict in court awaits his sentence.

"Killing us won't do you any good," Fuji spoke up in a quiet, unnaturally calm voice.

"Oh, don't worry. I've heard so much about you, Fuji Syusuke. Hyuuga's daughter adores you. It would be unkind to kill her idol."

I breathed an inward sigh of relief.

"As for you..." the man turned to me with a perverted grin. "You're too pretty to kill just yet."

For a split second, I could swear I saw his eyes flash red.