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It was a cold and windy evening, with clouds heralding an impending downpour. Everything took on a darker aspect than it really was and should. Jotaro walked briskly flanked by Joseph, who silently tried to keep up his pace. The boy would never have expected that moment, but as soon as he found out about Kakyoin's death he immediately understood that it was his personal duty to tell his parents. He himself asked the Speedwagon Foundation not to send any letters or useless formalities, because Kakyoin never had been a simple travel companion for him. He was not just a simple help for the trip to Egypt which was no longer useful, he was a friend who could no longer be hugged. That was what really mattered. And Jotaro had never felt like this with anyone.
It was the first time he felt his stomach tighten, his eyes burning, his jaw shaking. He clenched the cigarette between his teeth and inhaled shivering, feeling the pungent taste of smoke in his throat.
He was lost in his thoughts until he felt a hand on his shoulder; he turned abruptly, almost crossly, unable to formulate any words, but the old man immediately intervened: "According to the indications, this is the place."
And he pointed to the gate on their left. Jotaro relaxed his expression, took a few steps back and stopped to admire the alleged house where Kakyoin lives, or rather he lived.
A humble-looking but well-kept house; entirely in wood like his house, perhaps a little larger, and a garden full of exotic flowers and trees.
He wondered if Kakyoin had ever spent afternoons in that garden. Maybe he had planted those flowers himself. Or...
No, he had to stop to think of him. It was time to formulate the speech he had been preparing for the past few weeks.
He walked over to the brick wall with the intercom and ran his eyes over the three names written in ink that was slowly starting to pour, including N. Kakyoin.
He felt the cold press of the metal button on his fingertip as Joseph whispered: "You should throw your cigarette. You know how hard Kakyoin insisted on making you quit."
Without thinking, Jotaro agreed, making it fall to the ground and crushing it with his shoe.
Then, he pressed the button.
No reply. The only audible noise above the wind was Joseph's slow movements as he took off his hat and placed it against his chest.
"Maybe we should-"
Jotaro rang again.
After a few seconds they heard a creak in the distance, and noticed a petite woman with an unmistakable forelock that surrounded the profile of her face. When Jotaro felt her gaze on him and Joseph, the woman approached uncertainly, until she was a few paces from the gate.
She really looked a lot like Kakyoin, but she had a broken expression; pale skin, tousled red hair in a disheveled ponytail, dull eyes. She dressed very much like Holly, the boy thought.
"Who are you two?" Joseph was about to answer, thinking Jotaro still wouldn't speak, but the boy preceded him: "My name is Jotaro Kujo." he replied.
"And what do you want?" she retorted in annoyance, not even trying to understand why those two men were at her door.
"I am a friend of Noriaki."
Hearing that name, the lady almost fainted. Her eyes widened, her breathing became more labored, and the tears could be heard forming with sobs.
Without worrying about the desperation in her voice, she trembling approached the gate, leaning on the bars and looking Jotaro in the eyes with an indecipherable expression.
"Are you serious!?"
"Yes."
"I-... no, it can't be! Prove it!"
Jotaro sighed. "His favorite fruit are cherries. He likes playing video games and painting. He's a Leo, I think. His uniform is green and he always wears it."
His mother's eyes glittered with hope, while Jotaro tried to hide his by lowering his hat.
There was a faint click, and the woman opened the gate.
"You... you know where he is?"
"Yes. But I..." Jotaro didn't know how to talk to her without sounding too direct or without hiding his deep disappointment; he didn't want to alarm his mother right away, but he wasn't good at these things.
"It's better to talk inside." Joseph intervened, who until now had been only watching.
The woman glanced at him, then turned and, following the path she had taken earlier, ran for the door calling for a man, probably her husband. The other two men instead walked in long strides looking at the ground.
As soon as they arrived at the door, there was a man to welcome them, slightly less tall than Jotaro but with a very slim build. He wore a thick frame of glasses over his narrow nose that encircled his purple eyes.
His wife, holding a hand on his chest, whispered as if the other two could not hear her: "They know where our Noriaki is."
The man lost his serious and resolute expression and immediately took on a more human aspect. Peering at them, and never taking his eyes off them, he invited them to sit down.
The first time his voice was heard, it was a grim: "Would you like something to drink?"
But they both shook their heads.
Several seconds of silence followed, with Joseph glancing at Jotaro for any type of sign, and the sound of rain began to tap on the glass. He began to talk, taking off his hat.
"Where should I begin..." He thought aloud to himself looking at Joseph, who invited him to continue.
"I met Kakyoin at school for the first time three months ago." His gaze never remained still; he went from looking from Joseph to his parents, from the window to the furniture of the house. "You have probably noticed that after the trip to Egypt he was slightly different."
The two looked at each other as if to formulate an answer, and the mother, placing a hand on her husband's knee, replied weakly: "Yes, we noticed. Not even a week later and he disappeared without leaving a trace."
"Until today, at least." The father intervened in a worried but hopeful tone.
Jotaro was hating their positivity. How would they react when he told them the truth? He was seriously worried, even though he had never been empathetic.
"...He had been brainwashed by a bastard who put my mother in danger. And Noriaki tried to kill me."
Joseph was also surprised by how direct Jotaro had been, and the woman huddled closer to the man, who was visibly irritated and rose to his feet, moving away from his wife gently. "This is bullshit! I don't believe it."
Joseph intervened trying to calm him down: "Sir! My nephew is telling the truth-"
"Believe what you want. I know it sounds weird, and I've never been good with words, but if you let me tell you everything I have the evidence to prove it."
His wife also tried to calm him down: "Earlier the boy told me several things about Kakyoin. He certainly knew him."
And the man sat down, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes: "I'm sorry, I'm just nervous." and groaned luodly "Go ahead. "
Jotaro waited again for a few seconds and then resumed: "In recent months we have traveled to Egypt to defeat that man, his henchmen and save my mother."
Incredibly, the parents seemed to believe him, but they were still confused.
Jotaro put his hand in his pocket, taking out the photo they had taken together, and placed it on the coffee table in the middle of the room. The parents, leaning forward, smiled as soon as they saw Kakyoin and the mother, excited, grabbed the photo. Joseph and Jotaro approached her, and Joseph smilingly pointed to Kakyoin admitting, "His intelligence really helped us a lot. He solved puzzles that without him we would have died for."
Then he introduced them to all the others, including Iggy, telling their adventures.
"Mrs. Kakyoin," Jotaro interjected at one point, as she, talking to the old man, had almost forgotten her worries.
"Yes?"
"Do you remember... Hierophant Green?"
The two looked at each other in confusion at the mention of that name they had not heard for years.
"Jotaro, you want to tell them that-"
"Yes. Kakyoin wasn't crazy. Hierophant existed. And I could see him."
They didn't know how to react. For years they had kept it hidden, ashamed of their son and now a stranger came to tell them that he was not just an imaginary friend?
"Me and the old man have one too, they're called stands. Do you have a paper and a pen? I'll show you." The mother hurried to a chest of drawers where she took out what Jotaro had asked, and then approached him to hand everything to him.
"Knowing the existence of stands when you're not a stand user can be dangerous," and summoned Star Platinum behind him. "but you deserve to know everything, and that's the only way."
Unable to see his stand, they saw the pen rise and float in the air.
Her mother screamed in panic, but Joseph shrugged and reassured her.
"This is what Jotaro was talking about. Please, sit back and wait. It means no harm."
Star Platinum began drawing himself and Hierophant Green, and handed the paper to Jotaro making it float in the eyes of the couple.
Approaching, the father staggered back slightly, but tried to recover and understand everything little by little.
"The one on the right is Hierophant Green. The other is mine, Star Platinum."
"I-It's hard to believe, but" and the man bit his lip. "After what I've seen, who can says what is fiction or reality anymore?"
The mother gently took the paper.
"Can I keep it, with the photo?"
"Yes."
Joseph returned to Jotaro, placing a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.
"But still," and the father took on a darker tone. "Where is Kakyoin now?"
The blue of Jotaro's eyes shone, and his pupils became thinner. He clenched his fists, it was time.
As if he couldn't already remember clearly, he saw the whole vivid scene in front of him, feeling Noriaki's blood on his hands, and hot tears began to flow from under the visor of his cap, tickling his chin.
Joseph immediately noticed Jotaro's discouragement and offered him his shoulder as a support, noting his parents' realization out of the corner of his eye.
The father approached Jotaro slowly, grabbing him by the shoulders and lifting his face. "What are you trying to say!?"
Jotaro instinctively closed his eyes and swallowed a sob, turning.
The mother fell to the ground, probably having already understood but looking at Jotaro as if waiting for a definitive answer.
"It was January 16th of this year. I saw him with my own eyes."
The mother let out a chilling scream, repeatedly banging her fists hard on the floor. Her husband turned to her to hug her, and then threw himself on Jotaro and clutching his sleeves between his fists abruptly: "Who do you think you are, to take our son away from us like this!? After months that we were desperate for him you, selfish bastard, came to tell us about his death like this?"
Jotaro's tears streamed down his cheeks, unable to respond. He had never felt so vulnerable and weak; if he wanted to, he could have knocked the man out in a few seconds, only if he hadn't been in such a situation and that man wasn't Noriaki's dad.
"I..."
"Uh!? You have something else to say?"
Joseph tried to intervene, grabbing the man by the shoulder.
"He's probably as traumatized as you are. They two became... really close."
The father looked at Jotaro loosening his grip, and the boy raised his face slightly, showing himself to the man, and then lowered his gaze again.
"It was hard for everyone." Joseph continued.
"...Close?" the mother rose from the floor and approached Jotaro.
"We were his first friends... he told us." Joseph explained almost in a whisper.
"I loved him." Jotaro admitted soon after, then grabbing the man's wrists and pulling him away from his uniform.
"I'm... really sorry." sob "I've never been an expressive guy, and" sob "For once I could open up like this to someone" sob "to... to someone..." and he broke down in tears.
Joseph was about to hug him, but the woman preceded him, starting to sob too, with her face buried in his neck.
The father was more destabilized and skeptical, but he calmed down seeing his wife trusting that boy so much.
There was a loud thunder outside the window which attracted everyone's attention.
"You should go now." his father admitted, putting his hands in his jeans pocket and avoiding everyone's gaze.
The woman took a few steps back, noting that Jotaro was slowly recovering.
"You seem like a good guy. I bet you would have treated Noriaki very well." and smiled, tears still wet on her face.
Joseph put a hand on Jotaro's shoulder: "Let's go."
And Jotaro rummaged in his pocket again looking for the only Kakyoin's object that was left to him, one of his earrings. He found it on the helicopter, while the other was lost.
As soon as he took his hand out of his pocket, the mother instinctively grabbed the object with her fists closed, and then opened them and took the object between her fingers, holding it close to her chest.
Opening the door to them, she said, "Thank you really much. Please, come visit us again."
At the invitation, Jotaro lifted his face sharply looking at her, and then adjusted his hat with a nod of approval.
"Do you need an umbrella?" Said the father, looking at them from further away.
"No, we'll make it." Joseph smiled adjusting his hat over his head. And a few seconds later the door closed, making the warm light from the living room disappear and they were left in the complete darkness of the big garden.
Drops covered Jotaro's face and tears, and he heard above the loud sound of the rain: "You did well, Jotaro. You did well."