Shinonome Ward
Raiden no Me, Kaminari no Kuni
…0300 hours
“Our deepest thanks, Garu-Taichou. Our relationship brings profits to all parties,” said the bald-headed, squat man dressed in expensive furs and silks. The wavy-patterned golden chain he wore around his neck was not only a sign of wealth, but also a piece of identification that marked him as a high-ranking member of the Oil Merchants’ Guild. The man the oil merchant addressed, however, was not another merchant, but rather a High Captain of the City Guard, with the dark blue uniform with badge and chain-link epaulets to signify such.
“And those profits are what are important. As long as you supply the payments, I will eliminate your competitors,” said the Captain in a gravely voice that dripped with avarice. “And now I must head back to my home, for it is late and I am looking forward to giving some floggings tomorrow,” he said, turning away. The fat Oil Merchant bowed again, a simpering expression on his face, but no less avaricious in tone. He did not lift his head until the Captain had left the lush, terraced veranda that the two had met within in secret.
A few minutes later, the Captain rounded a corner into an alley, stopping briefly to light a cigarillo with a match. The glow of the burning tobacco cast a soft orange light on the surroundings, including a hooded figure who now entered the alley behind the man. The Captain was a man of experience, and his sword was out of its sheath and he was in a battle stance before the hooded figure had even stepped forward.
“And what do you want?” snorted the Captain, confidence and malice admixed in equal measures as he pointed the tip of the blade at the hooded figure, who now slowly lowered the hood from his face.
“High Captain Garu? My name is Haikuno. I’m here…” said the figure, now revealed to be a rather young-looking teenager with innocent eyes. “…to beg you to let me into the Guard!” he said, suddenly kowtowing! “I swear you won’t regret it! I’m really good at lifting things and will follow any orders you give me!” he said, raising and lowering his head in an exaggerated show of supplication. The Captain, Garu, burst into laughter.
“My sides! Ha!” he chortled, holding himself as if in pain. “You’re funny, boy! For that I won’t execute you for sneaking up on me like that,” he said, chuckling involuntarily. “You’ll just have to apply like everyone else. Now get out of here before I change my mind about sparing you. Ha!” he said, now sheathing the blade and turning to walk out of the other end of the alley. Haikuno lifted his head, facing Garu’s back. His expression, which was initially a portrait of disappointment, quickly shifted into a smile as he rose from his hands and knees, and as his hand went to the hidden weapon at his side.
“But I haven’t changed my mind about killing you,” whispered Haikuno, suddenly dashing forward with speed only matched by shinobi... Garu, suddenly tipped off by the changing of the wind, whirled around with his sword already halfway out of his sheath.
With a disgusting squishing sound, Haikuno’s short, double-edged blade punched through the metal plating of Garu’s cuirass and plunged deeply into his midsection, bisecting the man’s liver and filleting open the major vein returning blood to his heart. With a quick twist to the side, the blade now shifted and slashed across the abdominal aorta, instantly filling his peritoneum with blood. Garu, a born fighter, nearly had his own weapon out of its sheath when suddenly, another blade, a smaller Santaru-Taji fighting dirk, punched through his wrist, severing tendons of the fingers and causing his hand to spasm open.
“You little shit…” gurgled Garu as his free hand found its grip around Haikuno’s throat and started to squeeze. Undeterred the boy kept his blades buried in their respective targets, knowing that if he let Garu get to his blade, the odds might be turned around for a precious few seconds, leading to his death. For a man who had nearly lost his entire blood supply, the Captain was surprisingly strong, and the grip would not let up. Darkness started to form around the edge of Haikuno’s vision, and the sounds of their struggle grew slightly more muffled with every heartbeat and every second without breath entering his lungs. He felt his strength begin to slip. His fingers felt clumsy around the hilts of his daggers…
Garu let out a rattling sound as his pale eyes suddenly rolled into the back of his head, and his grip suddenly lessened with the oxygen death of his brain. The Captain’s corpse clattered to the ground, skin turned pure white. Haikuno also fell backward, landing on his behind as he gulped in precious air like a fish tossed back into water after being caught. After a minute, the boy slowly got up, shook the blood off of his blades, and sheathed them again with a look of satisfaction.
</B>
With some effort, the boy pushed open the door to the safehouse on the opposite side of town and dragged himself in.
“Haikuno-kun! How’d it go? You look like you could use…a breather!” chuckled Risei as she leapt down from the rafter she perched upon and bounded up to Haikuno with feline grace.
“It was nothing, heh,” said Haikuno cheerfully, his voice a bit hoarse in spite of his efforts to look unruffled. Suddenly his eyes bulged and his face turned pink as he felt Risei’s tongue lap against his bruises. “..whoa!”
“Aw, your poor neck!” cooed Risei with a smile. “Don’t worry, your onee-chan will make it better!” she said, giggling. Haikuno’s face turned a shade redder as he slunk away from her embrace.
“Er, more importantly, how did you guys do? You look fine,” said the boy, scratching his head as he looked at Risei and the two other women with her.
“Well, since you insisted you go alone and nearly got choked out in the process, that left three of us to deal with a single fatass oil merchant, so of course it was easy, anta-baka!” retorted Marie as she rammed a jag-tipped cleaning rod down the barrel of her sniper bolter. “But i-it’s not l-like I’m concerned about you or something! I j-just didn't want to have to go after your target as well!” she added, as if to cover her bases.
“Yeah, the fattie was lucky. Imagine getting killed by three beautiful women. Can’t do better than that!” chuckled Risei, grinning. The third woman in the room now rose from her seat.
“You. Strip. Now,” said Mitsuru softly as she strode up to Haikuno, whose facial expression changed to a quizzical expression of total “derp.”
“Wait…wha!?” said Haikuno, half-chuckling, half disbelieving. Before he could react, Mitsuru’s hand were upon his sweater and slacks, and with unexpected strength, she tugged the garments off, leaving him solely in his boxers. His hands shot down to cover his crotch as his entire body now turned red. “Hey! What the hell?!” he whined piteously as Risei and Marie started to laugh.
“Thank goodness,” said Mitsuru softly as she handed him back his clothes.
“She’s doing that because she’s concerned about you, Haikuno-kun,” said a man’s voice from the shadows. Immediately, all eyes on the room were suddenly on Enishi, whose presence had either entirely gone unnoticed all of this time or who had suddenly infiltrated a well-lit room with four people.
“Enishi-samaaa!” squealed Risei, trying to glomp the ex-ANBU Captain, who easily avoided her rather statuesque figure yet again.
“Mitsuru-chan worked for the PRMC’s elite assassination squad for many years. She lost many comrades to slow-acting poisons that could have been detected and treated earlier if their victims had not been trying to act tough and conceal the presence of small, but inevitably lethal wounds that they had sustained during missions,” said Enishi, pouring himself a cup of tea from a nearby pot.
“Oh, I see now…” said Haikuno, realizing now why Mitsuru had acted so peculiarly. “Don’t worry, Mitsuru-chan. I’m not going to die on you. I plan to live and bring about a change!”
“Although I fear that you may need to eat your words unless you get some more training, Haikuno-kun,” said Enishi, sipping at his tea. “Had High Captain Garu possessed just a bit more blood in his body, you might have joined him in death very easily.”
“Ahahahahaha!!! You have to go to cram school now!” cackled Marie.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I want you to train a bit with Yukiko-chan. She’s a master of close combat and I think you’d learn some important survival tips from her,” said Enishi, rising from his seat and heading for the door. “See you all at the base,” he said, vanishing.
“Aww, he didn’t even feel me up a little,” pouted Risei as she looked toward the door and then toward Haikuno. “Oh well, you heard the man, otouto. Yukiko-chan will be waiting for you!”
With the crashing of steel against steel, Haikuno’s body was thrown back on the dusty floor of the sparring hall. The boy let out a grunt of pain and frustration as he hit the ground, before starting to cough from the upturned dust mixed with sweat vapor.
“Why don’t we take a break?” asked Haikuno’s blonde-haired sparring partner, Yukiko. “After all, I can’t beat you up too much or Enishi will be annoyed,” she said, bending down and extending a hand to him.
“Okay, you’re right, I’m beat,” sighed Haikuno as he took her hand and stood up. Every muscle ached and burned with lactic acid from the trials and tests that Yukiko had put him through since the early morning, starting from a jog around the forest while wearing leaden weights, to several hours of fording the obstacle course with even more weight, to treading water for a hour while wearing nearly his entire body’s worth of weight, to the sparring session just now. To her credit, Yukiko had accompanied him every step of the way, wearing even more weight than he had. Plus, she had sparred against him with her weapons of choice, a pair of twin samehada, each of which stood as tall as she did, and whose blades were the thickness of his hand. Fortunately for him, she had taken pains to wrap the serrated blades with many layers of leather, for otherwise each hit would have been akin to sticking one’s body in a sawmill. However, unlike Haikuno who was a sweaty, painful mess, Yukiko seemed to have avoided even breaking a sweat. She stood in front of him, completely unruffled save for the subtle off-kilterness that she always possessed.
“I brought sandwiches from the kitchen. Do you like mayonnaise? I’ve read that boys like mayonnaise,” she said, offering a box of sandwiches that looked positively appetizing. Haikuno grinned and dove in, devouring two of the sandwiches in a matter of seconds.
“Thanks, Nakamura-san!” he said between mouthfuls.
“You can call me Yukiko, if you wish,” said the blonde, smiling softly.
“Thanks then, Yukiko-san! Hey, did you make these?” asked Haikuno, sipping out of a thermos of tea.
“Actually, Mitsuru did. I’m not allowed to cook anymore after the curry I made caused everyone to vomit. I’d never seen Enishi turn green before,” she said, wistfully.
“Ah, can’t be good at everything. I’m horrible at sorting laundry, so that’s why Mitsuru and I work in the kitchen,” said Haikuno, smiling.
“Yes, I did laundry once. I ended up washing Marie, clothes and all,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “I’ve also been forbidden from maintenance work. That was because I caused the toilets to explode while attempting to fix a leaking faucet. Sadly, I suppose combat is the one thing I am good at, in truth.”
“But isn’t that why we’re all here? To kick the evil bastards’ asses in the Capital and bring a change to the land? You should be proud of your talent!” said Haikuno.
“I suppose I am, actually. But it wasn’t always that way,” said Yukiko, sipping out of her own thermos.
“Hey, you know I’ve been curious – how did you end up with the Kingslayers, anyway? I heard you’re a missing nin from Kirigakure…”
“Yes, although I wasn’t born there. I was born on one of the surrounding islands, and attended their shinobi academy when I was thirteen. I had a childhood best friend named Mashiro, and she did not have any chakra potential, so she stayed behind. Every day at the academy I wished to come back and visit her, and when I finally graduated after three years, I rushed back to see her at the first chance I had. During our time apart, she had gotten into a relationship with a rough man named Kanda. I did not like him from the start, and I had my suspicions that he was actually part of a local gang. It did not take long into my stay until I discovered him choking her after a petty argument over money.
“He was no match for me, who had been trained at the Mist Academy. I incapacitated him and told him to never approach Mashiro again. I expected Mashiro to thank me, but instead she slapped me, screaming, and told me that our friendship was over. I…I did not know what to do. I left my hometown immediately and went back to Kirigakure. I did not get a chance to see her for another two years, during which time I sent her many letters begging for her forgiveness. I did not receive a response to a single one.
“When I was promoted to the intermediate rank of shinobi, what they call a chuunin, I took an opportunity to go back to my hometown again, seeking to try to mend things with Mashiro in person. When I arrived, I found out that shortly after I had left the first time, Kanda had taken her into the swamp, where he and his subordinates gang-raped her and then killed her. I then proceeded to hunt each of the men down and executed them. When I at last cornered Kanda, I used a hacksaw to slowly cut him in half from between his legs to the top of his head. I hung him upside down in order to maximize blood flow to his brain and thus maximize his suffering and time alive. He did not lose consciousness until I cut through his brainstem.”
“Ehhh, chotto-mate…” said Haikuno, turning a pale shade of green himself.
“Oh, sorry... I forget that those descriptions can make others nauseated. In any case, after I had killed them all, I knew that I could not go back to my family, nor back to Kirigakure. So from there, I left to Lightning Country, which was the farthest place I could think of from where I had lost my friend. At first, I only traveled to find a peaceful place where I could simply…expire, in a way. Enishi found me randomly on the streets of Kelmura. I had ceased to eat or drink several days prior to that, and was close to death. In my delirium, I thought he was a Mist ANBU come to execute me. But instead, he ordered me to live.”
“Enishi-sama’s a pretty compelling guy, I have to admit,” said Haikuno, eye glimmering.
“He and I have much in common. We are both shinobi forced from our villages by factors beyond our control. We both bear a great burden of guilt,” said Yukiko, letting out a subtle sigh.
“I heard that he killed the actual Raikage herself. Kagetsu Kiyo the Immortal. Is that true?”
“It is. Although I do not believe that he wanted to.”
“I’m jealous of him. He’s so damned powerful and skillful. And here I am, not able to do a damned thing without getting nearly killed myself. I mean, how the hell am I going to free Maru Maru from the grip of that bastard Karachi?” grumbled Haikuno, looking at the floor with a downcast gaze.
“We all start from nothing, Haikuno. But it’s how we respond to our setbacks that allows us to grow,” said Yukiko, gently petting him like a mother might do to her son.
“Your hands are really soft…” he whispered, missing home.
Raiden no Me, Kaminari no Kuni
…0300 hours
“Our deepest thanks, Garu-Taichou. Our relationship brings profits to all parties,” said the bald-headed, squat man dressed in expensive furs and silks. The wavy-patterned golden chain he wore around his neck was not only a sign of wealth, but also a piece of identification that marked him as a high-ranking member of the Oil Merchants’ Guild. The man the oil merchant addressed, however, was not another merchant, but rather a High Captain of the City Guard, with the dark blue uniform with badge and chain-link epaulets to signify such.
“And those profits are what are important. As long as you supply the payments, I will eliminate your competitors,” said the Captain in a gravely voice that dripped with avarice. “And now I must head back to my home, for it is late and I am looking forward to giving some floggings tomorrow,” he said, turning away. The fat Oil Merchant bowed again, a simpering expression on his face, but no less avaricious in tone. He did not lift his head until the Captain had left the lush, terraced veranda that the two had met within in secret.
A few minutes later, the Captain rounded a corner into an alley, stopping briefly to light a cigarillo with a match. The glow of the burning tobacco cast a soft orange light on the surroundings, including a hooded figure who now entered the alley behind the man. The Captain was a man of experience, and his sword was out of its sheath and he was in a battle stance before the hooded figure had even stepped forward.
“And what do you want?” snorted the Captain, confidence and malice admixed in equal measures as he pointed the tip of the blade at the hooded figure, who now slowly lowered the hood from his face.
“My sides! Ha!” he chortled, holding himself as if in pain. “You’re funny, boy! For that I won’t execute you for sneaking up on me like that,” he said, chuckling involuntarily. “You’ll just have to apply like everyone else. Now get out of here before I change my mind about sparing you. Ha!” he said, now sheathing the blade and turning to walk out of the other end of the alley. Haikuno lifted his head, facing Garu’s back. His expression, which was initially a portrait of disappointment, quickly shifted into a smile as he rose from his hands and knees, and as his hand went to the hidden weapon at his side.
“But I haven’t changed my mind about killing you,” whispered Haikuno, suddenly dashing forward with speed only matched by shinobi... Garu, suddenly tipped off by the changing of the wind, whirled around with his sword already halfway out of his sheath.
With a disgusting squishing sound, Haikuno’s short, double-edged blade punched through the metal plating of Garu’s cuirass and plunged deeply into his midsection, bisecting the man’s liver and filleting open the major vein returning blood to his heart. With a quick twist to the side, the blade now shifted and slashed across the abdominal aorta, instantly filling his peritoneum with blood. Garu, a born fighter, nearly had his own weapon out of its sheath when suddenly, another blade, a smaller Santaru-Taji fighting dirk, punched through his wrist, severing tendons of the fingers and causing his hand to spasm open.
“You little shit…” gurgled Garu as his free hand found its grip around Haikuno’s throat and started to squeeze. Undeterred the boy kept his blades buried in their respective targets, knowing that if he let Garu get to his blade, the odds might be turned around for a precious few seconds, leading to his death. For a man who had nearly lost his entire blood supply, the Captain was surprisingly strong, and the grip would not let up. Darkness started to form around the edge of Haikuno’s vision, and the sounds of their struggle grew slightly more muffled with every heartbeat and every second without breath entering his lungs. He felt his strength begin to slip. His fingers felt clumsy around the hilts of his daggers…
Garu let out a rattling sound as his pale eyes suddenly rolled into the back of his head, and his grip suddenly lessened with the oxygen death of his brain. The Captain’s corpse clattered to the ground, skin turned pure white. Haikuno also fell backward, landing on his behind as he gulped in precious air like a fish tossed back into water after being caught. After a minute, the boy slowly got up, shook the blood off of his blades, and sheathed them again with a look of satisfaction.
</B>
Later…
<i></i>With some effort, the boy pushed open the door to the safehouse on the opposite side of town and dragged himself in.
“It was nothing, heh,” said Haikuno cheerfully, his voice a bit hoarse in spite of his efforts to look unruffled. Suddenly his eyes bulged and his face turned pink as he felt Risei’s tongue lap against his bruises. “..whoa!”
“Aw, your poor neck!” cooed Risei with a smile. “Don’t worry, your onee-chan will make it better!” she said, giggling. Haikuno’s face turned a shade redder as he slunk away from her embrace.
“Er, more importantly, how did you guys do? You look fine,” said the boy, scratching his head as he looked at Risei and the two other women with her.
“Yeah, the fattie was lucky. Imagine getting killed by three beautiful women. Can’t do better than that!” chuckled Risei, grinning. The third woman in the room now rose from her seat.
“Wait…wha!?” said Haikuno, half-chuckling, half disbelieving. Before he could react, Mitsuru’s hand were upon his sweater and slacks, and with unexpected strength, she tugged the garments off, leaving him solely in his boxers. His hands shot down to cover his crotch as his entire body now turned red. “Hey! What the hell?!” he whined piteously as Risei and Marie started to laugh.
“Thank goodness,” said Mitsuru softly as she handed him back his clothes.
“Enishi-samaaa!” squealed Risei, trying to glomp the ex-ANBU Captain, who easily avoided her rather statuesque figure yet again.
“Mitsuru-chan worked for the PRMC’s elite assassination squad for many years. She lost many comrades to slow-acting poisons that could have been detected and treated earlier if their victims had not been trying to act tough and conceal the presence of small, but inevitably lethal wounds that they had sustained during missions,” said Enishi, pouring himself a cup of tea from a nearby pot.
“Oh, I see now…” said Haikuno, realizing now why Mitsuru had acted so peculiarly. “Don’t worry, Mitsuru-chan. I’m not going to die on you. I plan to live and bring about a change!”
“Although I fear that you may need to eat your words unless you get some more training, Haikuno-kun,” said Enishi, sipping at his tea. “Had High Captain Garu possessed just a bit more blood in his body, you might have joined him in death very easily.”
“Ahahahahaha!!! You have to go to cram school now!” cackled Marie.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I want you to train a bit with Yukiko-chan. She’s a master of close combat and I think you’d learn some important survival tips from her,” said Enishi, rising from his seat and heading for the door. “See you all at the base,” he said, vanishing.
“Aww, he didn’t even feel me up a little,” pouted Risei as she looked toward the door and then toward Haikuno. “Oh well, you heard the man, otouto. Yukiko-chan will be waiting for you!”
<B>A few days later…
With the crashing of steel against steel, Haikuno’s body was thrown back on the dusty floor of the sparring hall. The boy let out a grunt of pain and frustration as he hit the ground, before starting to cough from the upturned dust mixed with sweat vapor.
“Okay, you’re right, I’m beat,” sighed Haikuno as he took her hand and stood up. Every muscle ached and burned with lactic acid from the trials and tests that Yukiko had put him through since the early morning, starting from a jog around the forest while wearing leaden weights, to several hours of fording the obstacle course with even more weight, to treading water for a hour while wearing nearly his entire body’s worth of weight, to the sparring session just now. To her credit, Yukiko had accompanied him every step of the way, wearing even more weight than he had. Plus, she had sparred against him with her weapons of choice, a pair of twin samehada, each of which stood as tall as she did, and whose blades were the thickness of his hand. Fortunately for him, she had taken pains to wrap the serrated blades with many layers of leather, for otherwise each hit would have been akin to sticking one’s body in a sawmill. However, unlike Haikuno who was a sweaty, painful mess, Yukiko seemed to have avoided even breaking a sweat. She stood in front of him, completely unruffled save for the subtle off-kilterness that she always possessed.
“I brought sandwiches from the kitchen. Do you like mayonnaise? I’ve read that boys like mayonnaise,” she said, offering a box of sandwiches that looked positively appetizing. Haikuno grinned and dove in, devouring two of the sandwiches in a matter of seconds.
“Thanks, Nakamura-san!” he said between mouthfuls.
“You can call me Yukiko, if you wish,” said the blonde, smiling softly.
“Thanks then, Yukiko-san! Hey, did you make these?” asked Haikuno, sipping out of a thermos of tea.
“Actually, Mitsuru did. I’m not allowed to cook anymore after the curry I made caused everyone to vomit. I’d never seen Enishi turn green before,” she said, wistfully.
“Ah, can’t be good at everything. I’m horrible at sorting laundry, so that’s why Mitsuru and I work in the kitchen,” said Haikuno, smiling.
“Yes, I did laundry once. I ended up washing Marie, clothes and all,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “I’ve also been forbidden from maintenance work. That was because I caused the toilets to explode while attempting to fix a leaking faucet. Sadly, I suppose combat is the one thing I am good at, in truth.”
“But isn’t that why we’re all here? To kick the evil bastards’ asses in the Capital and bring a change to the land? You should be proud of your talent!” said Haikuno.
“I suppose I am, actually. But it wasn’t always that way,” said Yukiko, sipping out of her own thermos.
“Hey, you know I’ve been curious – how did you end up with the Kingslayers, anyway? I heard you’re a missing nin from Kirigakure…”
“Yes, although I wasn’t born there. I was born on one of the surrounding islands, and attended their shinobi academy when I was thirteen. I had a childhood best friend named Mashiro, and she did not have any chakra potential, so she stayed behind. Every day at the academy I wished to come back and visit her, and when I finally graduated after three years, I rushed back to see her at the first chance I had. During our time apart, she had gotten into a relationship with a rough man named Kanda. I did not like him from the start, and I had my suspicions that he was actually part of a local gang. It did not take long into my stay until I discovered him choking her after a petty argument over money.
“He was no match for me, who had been trained at the Mist Academy. I incapacitated him and told him to never approach Mashiro again. I expected Mashiro to thank me, but instead she slapped me, screaming, and told me that our friendship was over. I…I did not know what to do. I left my hometown immediately and went back to Kirigakure. I did not get a chance to see her for another two years, during which time I sent her many letters begging for her forgiveness. I did not receive a response to a single one.
“When I was promoted to the intermediate rank of shinobi, what they call a chuunin, I took an opportunity to go back to my hometown again, seeking to try to mend things with Mashiro in person. When I arrived, I found out that shortly after I had left the first time, Kanda had taken her into the swamp, where he and his subordinates gang-raped her and then killed her. I then proceeded to hunt each of the men down and executed them. When I at last cornered Kanda, I used a hacksaw to slowly cut him in half from between his legs to the top of his head. I hung him upside down in order to maximize blood flow to his brain and thus maximize his suffering and time alive. He did not lose consciousness until I cut through his brainstem.”
“Ehhh, chotto-mate…” said Haikuno, turning a pale shade of green himself.
“Oh, sorry... I forget that those descriptions can make others nauseated. In any case, after I had killed them all, I knew that I could not go back to my family, nor back to Kirigakure. So from there, I left to Lightning Country, which was the farthest place I could think of from where I had lost my friend. At first, I only traveled to find a peaceful place where I could simply…expire, in a way. Enishi found me randomly on the streets of Kelmura. I had ceased to eat or drink several days prior to that, and was close to death. In my delirium, I thought he was a Mist ANBU come to execute me. But instead, he ordered me to live.”
“Enishi-sama’s a pretty compelling guy, I have to admit,” said Haikuno, eye glimmering.
“He and I have much in common. We are both shinobi forced from our villages by factors beyond our control. We both bear a great burden of guilt,” said Yukiko, letting out a subtle sigh.
“I heard that he killed the actual Raikage herself. Kagetsu Kiyo the Immortal. Is that true?”
“It is. Although I do not believe that he wanted to.”
“I’m jealous of him. He’s so damned powerful and skillful. And here I am, not able to do a damned thing without getting nearly killed myself. I mean, how the hell am I going to free Maru Maru from the grip of that bastard Karachi?” grumbled Haikuno, looking at the floor with a downcast gaze.
“We all start from nothing, Haikuno. But it’s how we respond to our setbacks that allows us to grow,” said Yukiko, gently petting him like a mother might do to her son.
“Your hands are really soft…” he whispered, missing home.