Note: italic - said in English or in head. Noraml - Japanes.

After losing the girl and with the sun setting, the three Yankees decide to hang around their usual  spot, smoking a few cigarettes and watching the people, who just got out of work, walk by. “I can’t believe she got away…” Reita said first breaking the silence, “I mean who knew she could run so damn fast.”

“Yeah I know. How did she know that we were going to do something to her afterschool?” Uruha takes a long drag from his cigarette. “Do you think she understood us, back in class?”

Reita snorts, “Man that’s not possible. She’s a foreigner who doesn’t know a of Japanese, how could she understand us?”

“Then how do you think she knew?” Uruha asks, blowing out smoke.

“… I don’t even know.” Reita says scratching his head in frustration, “Oh! What if it’s one of those animal instincts kind of things?” Uruha gives him a confused look, sighing he says, while pointing one finger in the air like he was proving a point, “Well it’s like when you know when you’re in danger, your body just takes over without your brain’s consent.” Then he taps his finger on his chin, as if he was thinking, “… or was that called an adrenaline rush? Or was it premonition?” he takes a quick inhale from his cigarette. Blowing it out, he begins again, but only faster, “Well the point is that she must have felt that something bad was going to happen, which means she didn’t really know about we said in class.”

Uruha nods, “okay that makes since” then he turns to the short one, “What do you think Ruki?”

Ruki stares straight ahead and shrugs. Taking one last long inhale and letting the smoke settle in his lunges. Then flicking the bud to the ground and pushes himself off the wall he was leaning on. “I’m going home” he says, rubbing his eyes.

He starts to head to the direction of his house, “wait!” Reita yells. Ruki stops, turning around to see that Reita is digging in his bag. Then he pulls out a box of smokes and tosses it to the short one.

He catches it with one hand and stares at it for a few seconds, finally smiling he says, “Thanks.” At last he starts to walk home, making sure to step on his discarded cigarette as he walked past his friends. Strolling slowly, dragging his feet even, so he wouldn’t have to arrive too fast. His eyes begin to glaze over so that the cars passing by him, looking like shooting starts whooshing past him.

He walks through the familiar twist and turns that he doesn’t even need to think about because he’s been taking this route since he was small, until he reaches the house with the dirty forest green door and old, beat up, white fence.

Pausing before the house, he stands in the middle of the street, wondering what he is going to have to go through today. Pushing that thought at the deepest darkest place at the back of his brain. Gathering courage, he begins to walk towards the fence. He pulls the gate, causing it to screech in protest. Ignoring the spine tingling noise, he quickly closes it behind him and walks on the gravel walkway to the door, kicking a few rocks on the way.

Taking a deep breath he swings the heavy door open and takes in the sight of the house. Its dark and the sun has long gone past set. Ruki flicks the hallway light switch on, kicking off his shoes and slipping into his old, but still comfortable, house slippers.

Dragging his feet to the small living room, he stops and sniffs the air. He grunts in disgust, covering his nose with his shirt. Turing on the lights to see what was causing the horrible smell of alcohol, even though in the back of his head he knew what it was.

When the light stops flickering his eyes settle on a scene of a passed out woman on the couch, surrounded by empty bottles. Sighing, Ruki walks further into the room. He bends down next to her, pulling a bottle from her hand. He gently lifts one of her legs that has fallen off and places it back on the sofa. Then getting back up he goes toward a small door in the hall. Opening the small closet, he pulls out a pastel yellow blanket. He lays it on top of her, making sure that no more of her body parts were hanging off the couch.

Once he has checked that she is comfortable and grabbed as many bottles as his little arms could carry, he leaves and goes into the kitchen. He had to admit that even his poor school had a better looking kitchen than his. The countertops were a grungy sea-foam green, Ruki knew that they were probably from the 70’s. He didn’t even want to begin with the refrigerator that was another appliance from the 70’s. It was an ugly yellowish green with two doors one on top of each other, with rusty handles. The mortar also makes a loud clucking noise every time it would start up and the doors would squeak that would always send unpleasant shivers down his back.

Going to the trash first he dumps the bottles in, then he goes to the refrigerator and opens it fast. His body slumps down a bit seeing that the refrigerator, as per usual, was practically empty.

His mother got hurt at her work a long time ago and wasn’t able to walk right after that. Her being the only parent in the house meant that they would get monthly checks from the government. They get plenty of money and all, but the true problem is his mom.

Since Ruki is always at school or out when the check comes she gets to it first. Instead of spending it on things they need like food and paying for the overdue bills, she spends it on her booze and if there is any leftover she always hides it from Ruki saying that he would spend it on useless things. So he always has to turn the house upside down to find it. But when he does find it, he uses it to pay for the bills that are the most important like water and light. With the rest of the money he spends it on food and paying for his disposable phone, also buying a pack or two of cheap cigarettes.

So with the very few food choices that were in the fridge, he pulls out old rice and some eggs. Then placing an old pan on the burner he waits a few seconds for it to heat up, and he starts to make omu-rice.

When it’s ready he plops it on a plate and goes back to the fridge to get a bottle of ketchup, making a quick and messy zigzag line on the omu-rice. Then he steps back, with the ketchup still in his hands, to observe his creation. Obviously happy with it, which this one came out way better than the last ones. ‘It actually pays off to watch Kai in cooking class … sometimes’ he thought, now glaring at the food he thinks back to today, how easily Kai had started talking to the new girl and how she didn’t ignore him like she did to Ruki.

Mentally shaking himself off to forget about that, thinking that he had better stuff to worry about right now, he grabs the plate of food and goes back into the living room. He gently places the plate on the coffee table, which was in front of the couch. Then he crouches down next to his mom and starts to prop her up so she could eat. Having trouble with her because of her weight, he jerks her around to roughly. The movements of her body must have woken her up because at that moment her stone cold blue eyes snaps open.

He could see that her eyes were still bloodshot, but she still seemed in control because she looks at him in disgust and pushes him off her causing his back to hit one of the edges of the coffee table.

He grunts of the pain but then quickly it up knowing that showing weakness in front of her would not be of the best thing to do. He chooses his words carefully before he lets them escape from his lips, saying with a low shaky voice, “I made you something to eat.”

She looks at it with a sickened face and wipes her hand across the table, hitting the plate causing it to go flying to the other side of the room. Ruki watches his masterpiece slid slowly down the wall, with his spirits slowly going down with every inch the omu-rice got closer to the floor. Turning to him, his mother spits the words, “Where the hell is my whiskey?!”

He sighs and gets back up, using his hands to push himself off the floor. He walks over to the ruined food, thinking what a waste it was, while his poor stomach was rumbling from the lack of food.

When he has picked up everything he goes back into the kitchen, dumping the food and broken plate into the trash bin. Then walking up to one of the rickety old cabinets, he pulls out a new bottle of alcohol, thinking as he goes back to his mom, ‘I know I shouldn’t be giving her more of this poison, but she’s not going to listen to me and if I hid it or throw it away, she’ll either buy more or beat me black and blue for throwing away what’s hers.’

When he enters the room he sees her sitting up staring blankly at nothing, gritting his teeth he hands her the poisonous bottle. She snatches it away without looking at him and tells him, “go the away!” while she waves her hand as if she is dismissing an unwanted worker. He takes the invite and heads to the stairs to go to his room.

He closes the door to his sanctuary. This room consisted of walls that were white at one point but now have writing all over and now is a yellowish white, an old twin size bed that he has had since he was small, and an old black, bulky, TV that has a VHS player.

Throwing his schoolbag next to the door, he lays on his bed, which cracks from under his weight. Uncapping a marker that was already on his bed, still laying down he faces the wall and starts to doodle random things.

He continued to do that for a few more minutes till he felt a vibration in his pants. Closing the marker, he reaches into his front pocket and pulls out an outdated, beat up gray cell phone. He flips it open to see that he has a new text massage from Reita. It reads *Hey wanna hang out? Uruha and I are thinking of checking this new club out ♪ (┌・。・)┌.*

Ruki smiles at the screen thinking, ‘We just saw each other idiot!’ rolling over to face the ceiling, he texts back *Nah, I’m tired* then he closes the phone and places it on top of his belly.

Placing his head between his arms and looking up at the white ceiling, with glow-in-the dark stars that he put up as a kid, he finally notices that his stomach was growling. his teeth, he grabs his schoolbag and starts to dig for the pack of cigarettes he had gotten from Reita.

Kissing the box and thanking god for it, he pulls one out and runs it under his nose, inhaling the nicotine. Then he places it between his lips and lights it, thinking out loud, “Ah, nothing better than a cig for dinner.” He stays smoking it like that for a bit, moving every once in awhile to drop the ashes in an old blow that he officially made his ashtray.

Finishing the rest, he puts the filter in the ‘ashtray’ and slowly gets out of bed to go to the bathroom. Pulling his shirt over his head, casing his necklaces to jingle and plop back down onto his warm, smooth, skin. Throwing the shirt on the floor he turns so that his back is facing the mirror. He sees a round purple bruise forming where he bumped into the table.

Letting out a breath, he continues to get ready for bed, taking off all his eyeliner and accessories. Then he stripes down to just his boxers. Once done he turns off all the lights and opens up the window to let some of the smoke out and also to cool off the room. Finally he crawls into bed. He didn’t know how tired he was till his head hit the pillow. Slowly his eyelids became heavier with every passing moment and he was having a hard time keeping them open. Then lastly letting the darkness take him, he welcomed another dreamless night.

E/N: Horrible mother isn't she? Well next update will be in a week :)