Oh - I just wanted to say thank you. [ ichiro grins and points at wherever the nearest anime night poster is!! ] Beau told me a little bit - she said you guys set this thing up. It's, uh, it's really cool of you.
[ he looks so ridiculously happy about this? just exuding puppy vibes. if he had a tail, it would be wagging. ]
Yeah. Luke and I talked about it a little bit when we first got here, but, we didn't get to plan anything, cause of... [ he trails off there, because he probably doesn't have to say "cause of all the gruesome murder"? ] I hope you guys get to have some fun out of it, too.
[ anime night really made his whole week actually. sometimes you are a giant nerd.
too bad it's memshare week so we don't get to have nice weeks! ]
at fourteen years old, you live in an orphanage. you've lived in one since the war, since your mother died, and your dad -- well. you're the only person who knows what happened with that, and it eats at you, makes you angry. you've never been any good at holding onto your temper, and it threads into your interactions with everyone. good, bad, positive, negative; even with your two little brothers. you do your best never to snap at them, and they look up to you, and they rely on you, and it is the best job in the world. you will do anything and everything for them.
this orphanage is temporary. you've thought it since you came here, stubbornly tried to argue that you should be allowed to just care for jiro and saburo, but you're only fourteen years old, but director tamotsu, the head caretaker of the orphanage, is the one to remind you that laws exist for a reason, and you're brought into the care of the orphanage like a child, too. you really like him. he's wise and kind and gentle, in the ways you know your father wasn't. life in the orphanage isn't perfect, but you slowly settle in.
one day, you catch the bill collectors outside of the orphanage on your way home from school, and it eats at you in ways that nothing else has. your brothers like the orphanage. they like the director - he's an old, tottering kind of guy, but he's kind to them, and he's kind to you, and you feel your blood boil when they threaten director tamotsu, try to hassle him into paying his interest faster or else, they're gonna make him pay for it - and when you bring it up to him, he apologizes to you.
...and ultimately, you make your decision. you have your strength, like you've always said. if you have nothing else, you have that. so you lie about your age, you fake a document to say that you're sixteen - because you're tall for your age, tall and strong, always looking older than you were - and you start working at a construction site. it's hard work, but being busy makes you happy. it keeps you energetic, and your manager praises you for it, promising a raise, so you work your hardest and try to come up with ways to sneak the money to director tamotsu. you've got your strength.
so you have to save your money. you have to pull together the pennies and find ways to make cash, and one day, a man in a limosuine sees you and stops you after you get into a fight. he says the way you responded to two jerks trying to pick on someone caught his eye. that you chose violence (and it hurts, a little, somewhere in your core; when did you become this person?) instead of trying to talk things out pleased him, and he offers you a job. the wage is higher than anything you could dream of making at fourteen years old. he hands you a 500,000 yen down payment on the spot, an investment in your future - he's a money lender, and wants you to work for him.
a "money lender" makes him a loan shark. it's a cruel business, a violent one. but you think about tamotsu's desperation, and you think about how much you want your brothers to be happy, and you give mozuku a call.
and what do you do? you go with your partner, some guy named samejima, to the house of a kid who borrowed money from mozuku. he's maybe eighteen. you and samejima threaten him, and you beat the shit out of him, until he sobs on the floor and hands you everything he has. you think you broke his ribs with your foot. you're not sure. mozuku praises you. it's for them.
barely a month of this passes, and the money seems to disappear. you go and you threaten and terrify men, women, children, you beat the shit out of people who beg for your mercy and your life, you collect your money, and you get your salary. the days blur together because they have to, the jobs blur together because they have to, but the cash comes steady, and you hand it to director tamotsu - but as soon as it comes, it's gone. day by day, week by week, your brothers get unhappier and unhappier, and no matter what you do, it seems like the orphanage's debt is too great. you beat the shit out of men for mozuku for hundreds of thousands of yen, and one day, he takes pity on you, and tells you, "That director of that orphanage has been borrowing money from me. Here's the address of where he spends it."
this time, you're the loan collector, and this time, you're going to make him pay. you and another guy from the organization make it back to the orphanage, and you're already trying not to seethe when you arrive. when you accuse tamotsu of stealing the money you gave to your little brothers to make sure they got to eat, he smiles and says he can just make you disappear, and he'll keep your brothers around, and he can find a different orphan to run a scam for him. maybe your brothers and i will be like family when you leave, he says, won't that be perfect?
they are all you have. and you - your temper has never been good enough not to rise to bait. (you immediately resorted to violence, mozuku said to him, you've captured my interest.) you fucking lose it any rational thought goes out of your head at the idea of this scumbag taking your family from you, taking the only thing you have left, treating them like piggy banks, you just --
you fucking lose it.
you hit him, and you hit him, and you hit him, and you scream in his face about giving the money back, but it's not about the money. it's about jiro and saburo, and you just keep hitting until you feel his nose give way under your knuckles, and you don't care, and you're rearing back to hit him again when you look up
and right now, they hate you, because you can't bear to tell them the truth, that someone they considered a father figure was so cruel. you can't tell them that you've been doing dirty jobs to bring them money. you don't want them to be like you. you don't want them to be angry. to be violent. to be bitter.
you leave the orphanage and you run, and you run until you feel like your feet can't carry you anymore, then you sit on the steps in west gate park, and for the first time in a long time, you cry.
they'll never know what you go through. they'll never know the truth of what actually happened.
because you want them to be loved, to be happy, to be safe, to live a life where they're never afraid of anything, or anyone, where they always know where their next meal will come from. you don't want them to have to live the life that you've lived. you want better for jiro and saburo.
(right now, they're just afraid of you.)
tamotsu will probably quit, at least, and maybe then things will get better, but you have to keep earning the money, because what if he's replaced with another scumbag bastard? what if the next guy who runs the place is worse? the longer they have to stay in this hellhole, the more trouble jiro and saburo will be in, and you can't let that keep happening.
and so you get your shit together, and you stuff the money you were able to beat out of tamotsu under your bed, and you swear that you'll do every dirty job in the city so they can get out of here.
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no subject
Oh - I just wanted to say thank you. [ ichiro grins and points at wherever the nearest anime night poster is!! ] Beau told me a little bit - she said you guys set this thing up. It's, uh, it's really cool of you.
[ he looks so ridiculously happy about this? just exuding puppy vibes. if he had a tail, it would be wagging. ]
no subject
Well I'm very glad to see someone so pleased by it?
no subject
[ anime night really made his whole week actually. sometimes you are a giant nerd.
too bad it's memshare week so we don't get to have nice weeks! ]