This evening, they sat on the bench of the playground, where Tomoyuki managed to pull up for the first time. The open, irreplaceable picture from the steep hill, which mesmerized the teenagers, gave them a full view of the starry sky that reigned over them. A view from the top.
Two young children and their parents were also playing in the playground, and Tomoyuki felt a certain sense of calm and pleasure as he looked at them. He was pleased that these children were going through a happy infancy, and he hoped that the joy in their family would not be ruined by human stupidity or accident.
"I have never been a good person," Takashi revealed, lifting his chin toward the evening starry sky, "nor have I even tried to classify myself as one. Sometimes, after committing so many sins and disparaging the virtues of so many people, one begins to forget whether they are human at all."
Silence.
Sighing at the bitter recollections of the past, Takashi closed his eyes.
"I'll tell you about my past, just listen carefully."
"If about the past… you mean the distant one?"
Nodding, the brown-eyed man continued: "Since I was an infant, I've had the ability to swear at other kids. The irony is that since that time, selfishness has been born in me, which I'm sorry to say. But, what could I do about it? Selfishness has become an integral part of my life."
"Go on," Tomoyuki insisted, seeing Takashi's shoulders shake.
"Oh, I used to live on the edge of town. In search of my missing dog, I wandered into the dense forest that surrounded the southern part of the small settlement. I got lost. It was daytime, and I began to build a path for myself so I wouldn't forget where I'd come from and where I might have wandered."
"That's… surprisingly correct train of thought for a boy."
"At some point, memorizing every pebble and tree… I saw a home in this forest."
The forest was notorious for its popularity with the homeless and the number of attempted homicides — illegal fights to the death and similar things were frequent here, making it hard to get news on television every year about another fatality that occurred in this forest.
"You should have seen my face, for I was told earlier that there were no people living in this forest."
The wooden house was not old, much less abandoned. The boy ventured to follow the grounds of the house in interest, and soon realized that from the iron front door a certain person had stepped out.
"The next moments I remembered for my life and it led me to violate all human principles — I saw three children my age following an ugly man. His chubby belly was just as memorable to me."
The children's bodies were bruised, and they were walking around with dirty T-shirts and ragged shorts. The man was using them as his dogs and objects of illicit pleasure. How could Takashi have known about this? It's simple — the hopeless faces of the three children, the scars on their arms, and the ungroomed lengths of their hair could make it clear that something was wrong in this house.
Hiding in the bushes, the boy covered his mouth in shock.
"My assumptions were confirmed when a few days later these children saw me watching the bushes. We were soon able to find common ground, but I found it difficult to communicate with them because of their lack of grammar and vocabulary skills."
Takashi remembered the way to his house and back to the forest. Perhaps the three children had been in the man's care since childhood. Takashi knew one thing for sure: the children had previously been stolen from an orphanage, which soon closed due to scandal.
"They assured me that they weren't going to run away from home, but I didn't believe them. I wanted to help them sincerely, because they were the only ones with whom I was not disgusted.
The children revealed that someone like Takashi, hiding behind the bushes, also came to them from time to time. This person also treated the children indulgently, hiding his face from the children and his presence from the maniac.
Takashi was seized with hatred for this man, who shamelessly hid the disappeared children in his house. He was doing the hell with them, so Takashi convinced the three to escape. He created a rescue plan, but when he first told them, the boy could not believe his eyes — the apathetic faces of the three children disposed to indifference; they were unwilling to do anything.
But Takashi was able to give them hope by explaining the plan in great detail. The plan was to stun the man when he lost his grip and set fire to the house so that no trace would be left behind. The front door was locked with several locks. The man was often at home, which made it difficult, and the children were not physically strong.
Covering up the tracks was just an excuse in setting the house on fire — Takashi had a plan to get revenge on the bastard for his shamelessness. The only problem was that the children couldn't find a steady abundance of fire for nothing, and Takashi asked them to search the house to resolve the situation.
Takashi asked the child to have one go inside the house, and he decided to leave the other two outside to be told about the situation through the window. They succeeded, but they failed terribly — the child, using special gestures Takashi had taught him, declared that there were no gas appliances in the house that could cause a fire.
Not to disappoint them, Takashi dared not dash their hopes: he had to come up with another plan, to find some thing that was capable of setting the house on fire in a circle.
And then, on his way home, he discovered two full cans of gasoline.
"It shocked me, because I had always walked only one way and had never seen any canisters before. It hit me and I came up with another way to set the house on fire. The plan wasn't foolproof, and there were chances it wouldn't work, but I rashly decided to act on that particular day."
Where in the middle of the road the two canisters came from, the child didn't care: he had his own rescue plan to carry out.
"In the sweat of my face, I brought both canisters and saw a child sitting at the entrance. Asking him, I learned that two other children were in the house and one of them was being bullied. As I got closer to the crotch of the front door, I put my ear to it and heard everything that was going on in the house — the children's screams."
For the three children, these everyday activities were commonplace. A child standing outside told him that there was a second child sitting in front of the door in the house. Takashi, calling him over, persuaded him to continue the rescue plan, after which the children agreed. The third child, on the other hand, was screaming in the other room, wanting time to pass faster. He was in pain.
They were clinging to a chance, Takashi gifted.
"What other plan are you talking about?" the restless child expressed his disbelief, whereupon Takashi retrieved two canisters of gasoline from the bushes.
Takashi instilled hope in both of them, and they decided to wait until the violence was over and came through the next one. According to the plan, when the third child comes up, the plan should be explained to him and what he should do. While the second child, who had previously been sitting in front of the door when it was his turn, tried to stun the man with some object, the third child was to open the front door in any way, and Takashi and the boy outside were to pour gasoline on both the house and the hallway. The plan was completely hopeless and depended on luck, but everyone knew what they were doing.
Eventually the little boy, trying to find a way to desperately stun the man, decided to poke his eye out with scissors, since they were the only nearby object on the table. He broke free from the man's grip and ran to stop him, closing the door and leaning his chair against the doorknob in desperation. Finding a lighter, they tried to open the front door with various objects, but only one of the three locks came up to break it. To reassure themselves, they locked the hallway door with a closet, which gave them some time to think.
The man broke through the door in anger and tried to create a hole for himself with hard kicks. Being terrified and heated, they found some huge pliers, managed to open the door, and helped Takashi spill gasoline in the front room without spilling it on his own body or clothes. Meanwhile, the third boy finished pouring the gasoline outside.
"The bastard managed to get out through the hallway, and I threw the fire on the floor in time to lock the door behind me. The fire ignited instantly. We all ran outside the property and managed to set the house on fire. As I watched the house burn inside and out, I began to wonder about the consequences. Of course, the timing wasn't right, but…"
Hearing the noise of children running away and one child whose shirt and half face were on fire, Takashi couldn't move from his seat in shock. The door swung open abruptly, and a man bursting into flames ran out of it, shouting inappropriate words that were impossible to hear. He ran straight at the children, and through his flaming face, Takashi could see the unconcealed anger. It was a sincere hatred that drove the flaming man, who was close to death, to chase.
Stopping the fire on his comrade's face, the children ran recklessly to the other side, which was not their intention.
"He ran past me, which seemed as if his hatred had not caught up with me. I still couldn't move with fear, and as I saw him desperately chasing after the children, I turned my head straight toward the burning house and realized that I had committed a real crime and that one person was about to die because of me."
Mindlessly watching the blazing house, which was about to collapse, Takashi did not notice the grown man with the skinny body standing next to him. He, too, was watching the flaming spectacle, dressed in a black hooded jacket and jeans. His relaxed shoulders told Takashi one thing: the stranger was pleased with the beautiful sight.
He held a silver revolver in his hands.
"What a beautiful sight," his calm, grown-up voice came out.
He turned to face Takashi.
"In that moment… I saw his thin face. His strange pupils glowed ruby-colored, like clear crystals."
Then a man with a smile on his face under his hood said: "This is your mutual sin. Are you ready to take responsibility?"
He put a revolver in his hands. In the small, thin hands of an eight-year-old Takashi.
"You've helped people find new life and pulled them out of the abyss of despair," the strange stranger added. "Appreciate yours, too, for only you have the power to affect it."
There were many more news stories about this incident, but the case was quietly closed. No trace remained, and the man's burned-to-the-ground body offered no evidence other than a wound in his right eye. No one recognized the pests, and little was known about the body that burned in the woods. According to unofficial accounts, he had been missing for more than three years.
"So," Tomoyuki summed up after hearing, "the gasoline canisters were planted by a stranger?"
"I don't know for sure, and that pisses me off. According to those kids, that's the man they noticed shortly before I showed up."
"And what was the subsequent situation?"
"We met him more than once and talked a lot, but after a while he disappeared. Disappeared."
"What do you mean by 'we'? Did you really manage to find three children?"
"Yes, the plan was for us to meet the next morning. They went to the police after the incident, and what a surprise it was to people that the missing children showed up years later."
"And these missing children…"
"Ah, yes. Those kids are Makoto, Jiahao, and Araki."
The answer knocked Tomoyuki out of his mind; he understood why there was a burn scar on Jiahao's left cheek. Araki's presence in this story did not embarrass the blue-eyed guy, for he had already heard of their closeness and how Araki used to hierarchically lead their society. Back in the hooligan days, they had their own youth group, but it disbanded after Araki left the business.
"But why didn't you just call the police?" Tomoyuki asked incomprehensibly. "The result might not have been as famous as the news of the forest burning to the ground."
"I had no father or mother, and I lived on the edge of town with my old grandmother. When she died of old age a few years later, I was adopted by another family. With Jiahao, Makoto, and Araki it was the same story — we all grew up without a family, so we didn't have a sensible upbringing. We thought we could do whatever we wanted."
"So…" Tomoyuki's eyes opened wide. He surmised to himself that perhaps the bully trio had befriended him because of their similar family history.
"I told you the secret, not by chance," Takashi added, smiling, "but because it was about time. That stranger had a strong influence on us. He tried to help them find hope and bestow upon them the understanding that the horror that had enveloped them for a long time was over."
"Why didn't he then decide to help them much earlier, if he knew about the situation long before you did?"
"That I do not know, for I did not ask. It probably had something to do with his personal affairs? He first became acquainted with the children a few weeks before I came along. I think he wanted to see what I would do that way… or he deliberately didn't take the time to save them, being on the lookout for the right moment."
Tomoyuki thought to himself, "I see… Ruby-colored eyes that sparkled like crystals… I had never heard of such an eye color. Maybe he wore lenses?"
"Not as important as the event itself, Tomoyuki-kun. The point is that I still have many questions for him, a thirst to know the answers to which I have not been able to quench for years… The picture doesn't quite add up, and I know exactly what I'm going to ask him. To find out the unsolved mystery from the man who gave me a new life. But he disappeared that day… why?"
Tomoyuki wondered if this man had been the most important person in Takashi's life, for his unusual predisposition toward that man had become a beacon lighting his way into the future.
"Tomoyuki-kun, this is my last dream… The three of us have been digging deeper and deeper for years, finding clues. It's only a matter of time… one more step, and Jiahao-kun, Makoto-kun and I will get to the truth. Araki stopped doing this, which made him run away, severing all ties. It seemed like something pointless to him, but he simply didn't want to admit that he was scared. Fear of remembering his past."
Takashi looked up dejectedly and stared at the evening sky, glittering with a myriad of stars scattered across the galaxy.
"You should find yourself," he finally added, "for you cannot walk with us forever. I don't advise you to cloud your mind with bastards like us, because we're not the same species," a smile was visible on his face.
"Takashi-kun, what are you…?"
"You're not guilty of anything, and the responsibility for our sins lies with us bastards. It's up to us alone to judge when to atone for them. However… I would like to atone for them after Makoto and Jiahao and I fulfill our cherished dream. We don't need anything else in life. So, Tomoyuki-kun, choose your own path. Start a new life in which you will no longer be subordinate to anyone but yourself."
'You have everything,' Takashi thought to himself, 'to change your life, and I have no right to hold you any longer. A man needs freedom. Free yourself, Tomoyuki-kun, and run away. Run away wherever you can, because that's the only way you can atone for your sins. Free yourself.'
To Takashi, the blue-eyed teenager seemed like a white tiger cub trapped in a cage. His possibilities were unrevealed and his future was clouded — which is why Takashi came to his senses. He longed for the tiger cub to live his life in the wild, where he belonged.
Tomoyuki's blue eyes, like those of a white tiger, had seemed to the high school student from the first days they had met as a refuge for all gloomy thoughts — Takashi then could easily see the hatred hidden in Tomoyuki.
Through his pupils, Takashi saw hell.
***
March time began. Takashi summoned Tomoyuki to the unfinished building, on the top floor. As they met, the blue-eyed man noticed a package lying on the floor, with some items inside. He approached the joyful trio and asked what they were so happy about.
"We are free," came the reply from Takashi, appeased.
Tomoyuki looked at the package and saw there a portrait of the four boys, and in the center on a chair sat the silhouette of a thin man with dark brown hair and a youthful appearance. He was wearing dark sunglasses.
This package served as a sign to Tomoyuki that he needed to act.
One of the next days, Tomoyuki met Tamaki in his front yard.
"Hello, hello, Tomoyuki-kun!"
"Don't call me that," Tomoyuki replied dismissively.
It was clear from their conversation and greeting that this was not the first time they had met.
Tamaki, who noticed the teenager's grim face, asked him what was wrong. The smile never left his face; and after a few seconds of silence, Tomoyuki's lips moved.
"The sun will rise soon."
Upon hearing him, Tamaki no longer seemed happy.