Though Hideki didn't go to bed until 12:35am, his cellphone spontaneously decided to cooperate, and his 5am alarm rang perfectly on cue.  Hideki groaned and tapped the 'snooze’ icon before rolling over and pulling his pillow over his head.  However, he only laid there for a matter of moments before he realized he was chasing a lost cause, and he rolled out of bed.

His nearly four-hours of sleep were restless ones.  The sight of the girl holding the bloodied boy, kept flashing in his mind.  When he closed his eyes, he saw the red-eyed woman with her infuriatingly calm smile.  The ringing of an old-fashioned telephone, the clicks, the dial tones, the cry of cicadas, they all nearly deafened him in the quiet of the house.  Hideki sat up on the edge of the bed, rested his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands, taking a moment to try to collect himself before going downstairs.

When Shion came downstairs and stepped into the kitchen at 7am, she was surprised to see Hideki there, standing at the stove, dressed in his school uniform.

“Good morning,” Shion said awkwardly, glancing around the kitchen, “You’re wide awake.”

“My alarm goes off at 5am,” said Hideki, as he turned the stirred the pot, “I get up and go for a jog, pick up a few groceries from the corner store, come back, shower, and start cooking breakfast.”

“Industrious,” Shion said with a small smirk, before going to open the rice cooker.  She was shocked to see it nearly five times more full than she ever prepared for herself, and the rice was tinged a faint brown, with the occasional fleck of green.

“It’s germinated brown rice, it’s a lot healthier,” Hideki said, “I bought this pre-made from the store but I’ll start germinating my own from now on, since it’s so expensive.”

“Who actually needs this much food?” asked Shion, as she took up a bowl and rice paddle to dish up a serving for herself.

“I’m 5’7” and 180 pounds,” Hideki explained, as he took Shion’s rice bowl.  He dipped a ladle into the pot on the stove, and then poured the mixture on top of her rice; chicken, egg, scallions, soy sauce, and chicken stock made for a ‘mother and child’ rice bowl.  He looked at her as he offered the bowl back, and said, “I have to take in a lot just to maintain weight, and when I find a local gym, that’s going to start going up again.”

“So you’re a bodybuilder?” Shion asked, taking the bowl and looking Hideki up and down.

“Muscle doesn’t happen by accident,” he said with a smirk, “I moved a lot and changed schools a lot when I was a kid, but I could always find a place to run or lift something.  Plus, new kids don’t get bullied as much if they look like they could knock someone’s head off.”

Hideki prepared himself a much larger bowl, and moved to sit down at the kitchen table across from Shion.  He bowed his head, a brief and silent prayer before he began to dig into his rice bowl with a pair of green chopsticks.

“I’m starting to get why your dad sent so much money,” Shion said with a smirk, “He wasn’t paying for any inconvenience, he was paying for your grocery bills.”

Hideki paused between shoveling bites into his mouth, and said, “I’m sorry for the burden.”

Shion sighed and said, “I’m not going to say ‘you’re no burden’, because honestly, I never expected to have a house guest.   My husband is as straight-laced as his half-sister is careless, and we’re pretty used to her whirling in and out of our lives on a whim.  It was fully our responsibility to care for his parents, our responsibility to take her cat when she was between jobs for six months, and so on.  I don’t think my husband was even shocked when she said ‘I need you to take care of my new husband’s boy’.”

“I’m used to reckless people too,” Hideki said quietly, “My parents divorced when I was five and my mom has never made any attempt to contact me.  My dad worked or went on dates all the time.  He remarried when I was eight and sent me to live with my grandparents in Hokkaido most of the time, but they bounced me back to him pretty often.  He got divorced again when I was ten, and they sent me back to live with him for good.  I got shuffled around from school to school every time he traveled for work.  I’m used to the gig at this point… Dad has a new wife or live-in-girlfriend and they don’t like having me around, so off I go.”

Shion paused between bites, looking at Hideki quietly. She let out a soft sigh and said, “I think that has to be just about the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.

Hideki looked at her awkwardly a moment, before muttering, “Sorry.”

“No, no,” said Shion as she shook her head, “It’s nothing you should apologize for.  I never expected that you’d been put through so much garbage already at your age.   I mean, it still doesn’t excuse you being out at an ungodly hour, but…”

Hideki fell silent, looking down at his rice bowl.  The thought crossed his mind again, of the girl and the boy bleeding in the middle of the street.  He could only assume someone else called for help, by the fact the police had arrived, but he couldn’t accept how much time had passed, or where he was during all of it.

“I still want you to come straight home after school,” Shion said, snapping him out of his daze, “But I’ll help you unpack, and… I’ll order us Pizza Hut tonight, okay?”

Hideki was surprised by the hesitant smile that Shion offered, but he answered it with an excited grin, and asked, “Super Korean Purukogi pizza?”

Shion laughed, and said, “Sure. As long as it’s got sausage and cheese in the crust.”

Hideki left for school in higher spirits than the day before.  It wasn’t the promise of splurging on a spicy Korean beef pizza that lifted him up, but the fact that his new ‘aunt’ seemed a much nicer person than he’d initially assumed.  Even Hideki’s grandparents sometimes acted like he was a burden, all the while smiling and saying ‘we’re so happy to have you here’, so it was strangely refreshing to have someone plainly tell him that he was a burden, but she didn’t mind trying to include him in their home.

His spirits fell, however, when he arrived at school.  As usual there were teachers at the front gate, overseeing students arriving at school, but there were black bands pinned around their upper arms.

When he came up the stairs to his floor, Hideki saw that class 1-A, the classroom next to his own, had both their front and back doors open to the hallway.  Students lined up to enter through one door, and were emerging from the other side, sobbing.  As Hideki passed by an open doorway, moving down the hall, he could see that two desks were piled with fresh flowers, around two framed pictures.

‘Two?’ Hideki thought, staring at the sight before it vanished past the door frame.

“You’ve arrived at a difficult time,” Fumi said.

Hideki’s sneakers skidded on the floor as he stopped, just in time to not run into the class representative standing right in front of him.  He looked down at her, quiet for a moment, before asking, “What happened?”

“No one is entirely sure,” said Fumi, “but that doesn’t stop rumors from flying everywhere.   Sanada Ryuma and his girlfriend, Mitsuyama Eri, were both found dead last night just a couple of blocks from her home.”

Again, the image of the girl, holding her bloodied boyfriend, permeated his mind.   He could remember her crying out for help, screaming, and sobbing.   He remembered her eyes clearly locked on his as she shouted.

“Both?” Hideki whispered, his brow furrowing.

Fumi nodded, and said, “Some are calling it a lovers’ suicide, but the middle of a neighborhood street seems like an unromantic place for that sort of thing.”

Hideki held his hand over his mouth, unable to drive the images from his mind.

‘She was alive,’ he thought, ‘I saw her alive.’