Chapter Text
Looking at the gang of bat-wielding thugs standing before him, Sakura gripped the package hidden inside his jacket even tighter against his chest with his left hand.
He was so exhausted drained by the sharp, gnawing pangs of hunger in his stomach and his soul battered by the alienated, disgusted glares of strangers that he simply couldn't find the strength within himself to endure a fight right now.
Moreover, he refused to waste the strength of Furin on a selfish, meaningless street brawl.
"Please... just back off,"
Sakura said, keeping his voice as low and restrained as possible. His lips were trembling slightly from the biting cold. He bowed his head.
"I don't want... to fight you..."
Those words had forced their way out of Sakura's mouth with such agonizing difficulty that his pride was bleeding internally.
For the first time in his entire life, he was officially backing down, practically begging someone to just leave him alone.
"Hah? You actually know how to fight?"
The boy leading the gang mistook Sakura's submissive demeanor for a sign of pure terror and burst into a fit of raucous laughter.
Turning back to the bat-wielding upperclassmen behind him, he mocked him at the top of his lungs:
"Did you hear that? The clown is actually trying to threaten us! Look at this absolute loser not only is he a freak, but he's a coward who just learned how to speak!"
"Just look at his hair, man. He's nothing more than a literal monster. Aren't you ashamed to walk down the street looking like that, you creep?"
"When your parents first laid eyes on you, they probably thought they were cursed or something. Who knows which dumpster they tossed you into because of it!"
"Exactly! You're an eyesore to normal people. I wish you never even existed; there's no place in
this world for things like you!"
*Fracture.*
The heavy, venomous insults continued to spew from the thugs' mouths like a foul, endless stream of sewage.
Sakura’s eyes widened in the dark alleyway.
That suffocating sense of abandonment the greatest trauma of his childhood along with the dark, festering memories of everyone around him treating him like a "monster" and casting him out, cracked open in his mind like the vicious lash of a whip.
It hurt so much.
His chest was heaving up and down like a bellows, but still, Sakura offered no reaction.
He clenched his jaw so tightly that his teeth threatened to shatter. He didn't fight back; he didn't even spit a single bitter word in return.
He simply clenched his fists and buried the cruel insults deep inside. Because he knew that if he threw a punch, he would tarnish the proud name of Furin.
"We're talking to you, are you deaf!?"
The boy in the front grew emboldened by Sakura's dead silence and lack of response. Lunging forward with a rapid step, he pulled his right fist back and drove a brutal punch straight into the center of Sakura's face, smashing into his cheek.
*Thwack!*
Sakura’s head snapped violently to the side from the sheer force of the blow.
As his split black-and-white hair fell over his face, he staggered backward a step or two, crashing heavily into the narrow
alleyway's rusty wall.
He felt the warm trickle of blood sliding down his cheek. Yet, despite the dizzying impact, his left hand was still fiercely guarding the blue-wrapped package beneath his jacket. The notebook hadn't sustained a single scratch.
"Hah! Look at this, the loser crumbled after a single punch!" the boy yelled, shaking out his hand. "Bofurin or whatever the hell that headache is—your uniform is nothing but a worthless piece of trash, just like you!"
Sakura slowly raised his head. Peering through the chaotic strands of his hair, his mismatched eyes one brilliant gold, the other pitch black were no longer gleaming with just pain. Now, fueled by the desecration of Furin's name, they burned with a terrifying, entirely different kind of hatred.
.
*Fracture.*
Before Sakura could even shake off the shock of the first strike, the gang leader delivered another devastating blow, this time a vicious left hook.
*Thwack!*
Sakura’s head was thrown wildly to the opposite side. The corner of his lip split open instantly, warm blood oozing down toward his chin. His body, already numb from severe hunger, collided heavily with the unforgiving concrete wall and slumped down to the cold ground.
"What happened, huh? You've completely lost your voice!"
the boy roared, driving a brutal kick straight into the chest of the fallen Sakura.
Sakura doubled over in agonizing pain from the kick, yet he never once pulled his left hand away from beneath his jacket.
He was protecting it...
He was hiding Nirei's future, shielding the Notebook against his own chest.
"Just look at the state of him, a total clown,"
said one of the bat-wielding thugs in the back, stepping forward.
He swung the wooden bat, striking Sakura ruthlessly across the back.
*Thud!*
Sakura ground his teeth in pure agony, a muffled, guttural groan escaping his throat.
"You are the most useless creature in the world, boy. Nobody loves you, nobody wants you. With that disgusting hair and those freakish eyes, you’ll only ever inspire absolute disgust wherever you go. The day you were born, you became the ultimate punishment to your family!"
"Thank god I wasn't born like him, or I'd genuinely want to die. I mean, who wouldn't?"
Punishment.
Freak
Unwanted filth.
Murderer.
The insults rained down in an endless, merciless torrent, accompanied by a relentless barrage of bats and kicks slamming into Sakura’s bruised body.
Sakura did absolutely nothing. He didn't resist; if they wanted to strike him, he simply let them strike.
His heart was burning, fiercely consumed by invisible flames.
That inferno blazing in his chest was a thousand times greater than his physical
pain.
Those dark, isolated days from his childhood, where he would cry alone in his room, pleading to the void,
"What did I even do to make them look at me like that?"
had morphed into a colossal, raging wildfire within his mind.
The sheer cruelty of people, this distillation of pure hatred, was reducing his soul to ashes.
He had grown too exhausted to even defend himself; it wasn't just his body he had surrendered, but his very soul, leaving it bare as an open target.
Let them strike him. It wasn't as if they were doing any real evil, they were merely hitting him...
For the sake of Furin, for the sake of Makochi, he could bury this agony deep within himself.
But right at that moment, the gang leader violently grabbed and shook the front of Sakura’s jacket as he lay on the ground.
Sakura’s left arm, which he had been guarding at the cost of his life for the past several minutes, was suddenly forced open to the side by a jarring kick.
The boy caught sight of the blue wrapping paper hidden beneath Sakura's jacket.
"Aha! What’s our little mutant hiding in here?"
he sneered, reaching out. His filthy fingers grazed the bag touching Nirei’s handmade leather notebook.
*CRUMPLE.*
The pristine wrapping paper was violently crushed between the boy's grimy fingers.
In that fractional split second, all the echoing sounds of weeping in Sakura’s mind, his childhood traumas, and his burning heart suddenly turned to absolute ice.
Time stopped entirely. Every single noise in the world was muted. The only thing left in existence was the agonizing sound of that bag crumpling.
That package... It wasn't just a notebook.
It was the very first token of true friendship Sakura had ever bought purchased because, for the first time in his life, he cherished someone else enough to spend every last cent he had, risking starvation and homelessness just to get it.
It was Nirei's dream. It was the spirit of Makochi, of Bofurin. And this absolute scum had dared to lay his hands upon that sacred relic.
Sakura’s head tilted upward with chilling slowness.
Piercing through the veil of his black and white hair, his golden eye had been entirely purged of the shattered, defeated expression it held only moments ago.
Within that eye, there was now a feral, unstoppable, and deeply murderous glint.
.
.
.
.
No, it cannot be. You are an angel of kindness...