Work Text:
“Did you do this?”
The woman was creepy, even with her gentle voice, and Shigeo couldn’t control his feet as he reeled backwards from the sheer force and shock of her sudden presence.
The concrete he staggered on was cracked and splintered up and down the sidewalk, revealing sliced gaps in the unearthed ground for his shoelaces to snag and render him static. There was blood on his shoes, dark spots steadily smearing into the fabric. His brother's blood, maybe. Or maybe it belonged to the few bullies who wouldn’t leave them alone. Shigeo didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.
He only wanted Ritsu to be okay.
Shigeo turned to look at him, the unconscious body of his little brother. Slumped and motionless, and despite the violence, chaos, and absurdity, Ritsu’s face was calm. If he tried hard enough, he could almost convince himself that Ritsu was merely sleeping—if it weren’t for the blood trickling down the side of his face and pooling in the gravel by his temple.
His vision wavered as tears started to flow, and soon his tiny frame trembled with uncontrollable, childlike sobs.
This was how they met. A school day that was supposed to be average. A school day with an open sky and silent wind, the sun searching the Earth with its bright, yellow gaze. Nothing was hidden. There were no shadows to cower behind, no darkness to conceal what he had done. There was only this woman in her long, dark coat who knelt down beside him and covered the scene with her body, so all he could look upon was her face.
“I… I didn’t mean to,” Shigeo whispered, his words wobbly. He thought he might drown in the depths of his tears, swallowing all the water in the swirling, consuming lake that circulated in his mind until there was only despair filling his lungs.
He was so hurt, so full of pain and fear and shock. He had no clue what to do or how to make any of this better. All he could do was cry and wallow in this suffocating sorrow.
Before the tears fully took over, the woman swiftly pulled him into a hug, a warm hand cradling the back of his head, and little Shigeo buried his face in the cloth of her shirt.
“It’s alright,” she said in a hushed tone and her voice cooled over the rising heat in his head, like rain falling onto a sun-soaked patio.
Shigeo wished for rain. He wished for the sun to close its watching eye and shut its heated gaze, to leave him and his guilt in the clouds, to wash away the red seeping into the ground and staining the street.
“It’s okay,” she repeated, with the same gentleness, and the hand on his head began moving across his hair. Shigeo, amongst the mass of emotion, found the feeling soothing. A simple, steady, grounding motion, her fingers brushing against his scalp over and over. Over and over, until he calmed.
Even as his cries withered and faded, his face remained tucked into her blouse, right beside the knot of her tie, refusing to face the aftermath and confront his mistake.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she spoke again, and her soft whisper dug him out of this hole, “one that will make you feel better.”
Shigeo finally raised his head away from her embrace and nodded, not wanting to feel this way any longer. There was a hurt behind his eyes, where he squeezed them as tightly as he could in hopes of easing the totality of his destruction and stopping the tears from flowing and soaking her shirt.
She smiled, a subtle uptilt of lips, and his eyes were instantly drawn to how soft the new expression made her appear. He didn’t realize it earlier, was too swept up in the overpowering volume of his feelings, but looking now, Shigeo could see how pretty she was. She looked like an angel, eyes glowing like the star setting behind her and casting the red of her hair in stunning golden rays of light.
The hand stayed on his head, her graceful fingers woven through his bangs as she leaned closer to speak.
“Pain is inevitable. It happens all the time, all around the world. It’s a part of history, and it’s necessary for the future. No matter how careful you are, or how kind or how good, people are going to hurt.”
Shigeo felt his eyes swell once again as he pulled away from her face. She continued to look at him, exposing the bones beneath his flesh with the unwavering intensity of her stare.
“You are going to hurt people. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. It’s up to you to accept reality as it is and move forward from this point.” She stood and brushed off the sides of her coat. “Would you like me to teach you? How to not suffer? How to not hurt the way you’re hurting now? I could show you.”
Shigeo shook. He once again felt so terribly alone. There was no one else on the street—no one else who was conscious. There was only her.
She held out her hand, palm upward, as if she were offering a little piece of salvation. He didn’t know what else to do. She said she could help, and he was so, so scared. He was scared of what he’d done, of what he was capable of, and of everything his life would be like now. He was scared he would feel like this forever.
He took her hand, and she eased him up off the ground. His shoe was still untied.
She kept his hand in the security of hers the whole walk to the car, where she helped him climb inside and get buckled up in his very own seat.
With a single motion from her wrist, the driver started the car, and they were off, leaving behind the destruction and damage he caused, along with the body of his little brother. Shigeo turned away from the window to look at her instead, only to find that she already had her eyes set on him.
“Hmm,” she muttered, after a long moment of thinking. “I think I’ll call you Mob.”