If I were to choose one word to describe today, it would be "eventful".
I could also include "painful" seeing as I have the wind knocked out of me by a fist connecting with my gut. It doesn't take me too long to reel back in and pull in another punch, but timing is everything.
My fist connects with his face, making him stumble back into his comrade's clutches.
And by the look of things, he didn't seem too happy about it, what with him elbowing the guy behind him to his right and yelling obscenities to the other one on his left, prompting them to let go.
"Just what is it with you guys and me going out for a walk?" I ask them in a mock-polite voice. The gorilla in the middle - whose face I had the pleasure of painting blue - answers back viciously,
"You ain't just going out for a walk, Sakamoto. I can smell all that fresh green dough right outta your pockets, just waiting to get plucked from right under your nose... or should we make that your cold dead body?" he threatens in that old, recycled tough-guy crap from some bad American movies from the 50's.
As if saving the meager amount of money wasn't enough trouble, these chimpanzees had to start jumping at me from out of corners, clawing at me with their hairy hands for bananas... which I don't have, obviously. And if I did, they wouldn't be getting any.
Today was special for me to save this much money, but I'd have to leave that out for later, considering the predicament I'm in right now.
"Yeah, sure, keep it up with the old death threats, Junji. Like that's going to get me to hand out money. Why not all of you come over here and show what candy asses like you scrap like... hm?"
I don't kid when they all jump at me, screaming like a bunch of crazy kamikaze fighters.
I take a stance, and let them come at me.
But fortunately, I'm not stupid.
I side-step to the left, avoiding the brunt of the attack.
They take a moment to recuperate as they fly at me with punches by pairs. The first two, I off - not kill, mind you - easily with a couple of take-downs.
The second two are a bit trickier, one whirling a chain at my head and the other swinging a rusty old pipe at my guts.
A split second is all it takes for me to skip back and catch the heavy chain in mid-air with my right hand, and escape the metal pipe that was aimed at my gut; poised to rearrange my guts completely, after that assault on my stomach courtesy of Junji Sanada failed to deliver.
My hand feels pretty sore after catching a 7-pound chain like that, but it doesn't stop me from winding it up and pulling it in to take a launch an uppercut at the guy's jaw, who falls flatly to the ground with a satisfying thud.
The second delinquent with the pipe brings his weapon back in, and over his head, attempting to bring it down over my skull full-force.
The rusty old thing barely misses my cranium, but I feel it cutting into my left cheek down to my lower jaw.
Apparently the tip has been wrenched off of its base, leaving it pretty mangled and viciously sharp.
Fortunately for me, it seems bodily hormones and intense anger problems are on my side - the latter featuring more prominently as part of my personality.
The thought of the nasty scar this will leave only fills me with more rage as I slap away the dirty, brittle stick of a weapon as if it were nothing but bread and grab the guy by the collar, bringing him up to my level to meet my fist and four of its knuckles.
The initial acquaintance is followed by an immediate reunion.
Again.
And Again.
And over and over - with a little help from my knee to his abdomen - until I feel I've done enough that even his own dog wouldn't recognize him.
I drop his limp body at my feet, kicking him away in disgust. Now my attention is turned towards the last two goons of this candy squad of a gang.
I breathe in deep, heavy breaths as I try to channel rage - no, not rage... utter annoyance, at these two.
Especially Junji, whom I've grown fond of exchanging punches with since I got into this high school. Not that we're buddies, it's just that for both of us, there just isn't a suitable punching bag in the school than each other.
But let's get the niceties out of the way, this guy really, really pisses me off. He's the stereotypical bully-slash-delinquent of the school, with a bad 50's haircut and a matching 6-man gang to boost his hilariously inflated ego.
"Hey, I'm thinking you and your little lapdog behind you want a crack at me." I say, "But if so, why don't I see any charging... ?"
"I'm in no hurry. But the fact that you came over to this side'a town on this particularly fine day got me thinkin'... you're here to buy flowers for that Kurosawa girl, aren'tcha?" he says, "Well isn't that sweet, two o' the most hated people on campus comin' back home after a year away, lookin' to meet and make out again..." and he drones on and on with the sounds only a child makes when he's making fun of someone.
What's worse, he's directed it right where I'd least expect his stupidity to reach:
Her.
As his noisy teasing continues on through the silence of the concrete bridge we're on, and the streets on either side, I swallow hard, pulling myself back in before someone really gets hurt... and that does not include the little rat behind him, who starts to back off slowly without him noticing.
"You did not just go there, Junji..." I glare at him, snarling those words beneath my breath.
He just aggravates the situation even more by pointing and laughing at me.
Laughing.
His insults were enough, but now he dropped a bomb on himself when he started that irritating, donkey-neigh of a laugh at me.
"Oh, I just did," he concludes. Just as his belly-aching got to cloud nine, I found I had already lost it.
Just seconds after he says those last words, I got in closer as my fists found a new friend in his face, crashing into it one after the other, never relenting even as he stumbled back a generous number of steps.
I keep him standing by throwing uppercuts after hooks followed by straights to the face.
After that merciless torrent of punches, I grab onto the lapels of his school jacket and hold him up to my face, which would be burning up with anger right about now.
By the number of hits he received - 15 by my count, maybe more - he could barely be recognized now.
The swelling on his face looked more like they were made by stingers from a whole swarm of yellow-jackets than human fists.
Which could be one of the reasons why they gave me that nickname at school — Yellow-Jacket Sakamoto.
I hated that nickname just as much as I found Sanada's gang to be irritating. But the odds were against me, as the whole school found it to be very fitting.
Whether it had something to do with my hair - which was not yellow, but a sandy kind of brown — or my penchant for the color Fulvous, which was somewhere between yellow and orange — was left ambiguous.
As I was about to finish him off with one last smack to the temple, I caught his eyes taking unnerving glances behind me, punctuated by him pointing a finger to something or someone behind me.
I held back for now, as I wanted to know what it was that caught his attention even after I beat the liver out of him, but never lowering my guard in case it was a trick.
I turned around and saw Junji's beaten gang staggering back up from the ground, their heads fixated on a black vehicle that parked up just behind us.
It didn't take long for them to take off when the driver stepped out.
A tall, rough looking man with sunglasses and white, cropped up hair.
I loosened my grip around the pig's lapels, and he wasted no time in following his gang's lead.
I, on the other hand, stayed and threw the man a familiar smirk of acknowledgment. He returns the favor with a full-on grin.
"It's been quite some time, Master Kureno," he says in an equally rough old voice, as if ignoring the beauty marks on my face from the scuffle just now. "I take it those were some friends of yours... ?" he asks, only acknowledging the idiots that fled the scene.
"You could say that. Although, I'd rather you refrain from using the term friends, Ryo." I reply a little sharply, however adapting to a more restrained form of speech.
More formal, although I don't usually use such polite talk with anyone else - anyone I don't know, anyway.
He takes notice of my apparently bitter state, and says no more to help fuel the fire.
"Your uncle wants to speak with you."
He cuts right to the chase. I raise my brow curiously. What could I have possibly done to make my Uncle reprimand me now?
"What is it he wants me-" I stop before deciding to go on ahead and not make him wait any longer.
Ryo gives me nod, and opens the back door of the car for me. Inside, I find him waiting, seated in his usual position with his legs crossed and his arms tightly closed at his chest.
His face is obscured by shadow, although I can see his long face and square jaw as a silhouette against the light from the opposite window behind him.
"Get in," he says flatly.
I do as he says and climb in, with Ryo closing the door and getting back to the driver's seat.
My uncle tells him to drive. Just drive, he says, but he doesn't say where in particular. We must be going for a cruise now since he didn't tell Ryo where to go, all he said was "Drive".
I'm feeling anxious at what he wanted to talk to me about. Instigating more fights in and out of school, most likely.
But no, there's no hint of disappointment in the dark confines of the limousine. No air of ominous disciplinary action here.
Not even a shake of the head to signify I had done something wrong.
All I see is him looking right at me, across from where he sits right now, his face still a mysterious silhouette in the dark.
I can see his glass-framed Amber eyes staring at the light-blue box with red ribbons wrapped around it poking out of my jacket's inner pocket.
I don't take mind of this at first, but I know that this means something to him, and if that's true, then it's this... this gift that's the reason for his calling me to talk with him.
But that's highly unlikely, because I only bought this a few minutes ago-
Suddenly – and this takes me back a whole deal – I catch a glint of his smile.
I can already tell, by the mere glimpse of that Cheshire Grin of his, that I'm in a whole lot of trouble.
And believe me when I say this... I almost wished I still had the company of Junji and his gang.
†††End of Chapter 1†††
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