Tachibana Ichika

I had my legs crossed as I sat on top of my bed. The dark room, lighted with the lantern hung at the center of the wooden ceiling, was filled with the faint patter of raindrops. I turned my head to the right, looking at the window, looking at the dark sky filled with droplets of water vigorously running down and hitting the window and the wood. “What are those two doing in the middle of such heavy rain?” I thought as I looked at the rain. I opened my legs, kept the left foot on the ground, then the right one, stood up on the wooden ground, and tapped my feet, walking towards the window. PAT. PAT. PAT. PAT. I stood in front of the window, looking at the buildings on the other side of the street. The one at the center was painted white and faint green, made of thick bricks. The ones beside it were made of wood painted white and red. I held the blue short curtain on the right. I clenched my fingers around the curtain. “Itsuki…” I turned my head downward, looking at the empty road, which turned completely black and wet.

CREAK. The door behind me opened. I turned my head backward, looking at the in a black frock and a white apron standing at the doorframe. It was Yumiko, who was looking at me with her serious gaze. “Itsuki said he’s tired, so he might meet you tomorrow morning.”

“Y-Yeah, okay,” I nodded.

She then stepped back—her eyes fixed at me—and closed the door. CREAK. BAMP.

I turned my head to the front again, looking at the road beneath. “We live in the same building, but still, we rarely ever get a chance to meet.”

I remembered the time when Airi, Itsuki, Haruto, and I were walking down the dark and empty street, with Itsuki on the front, Airi on my left, and Haruto on my right. Itsuki had his eyes fixed on the moon in the front of us. The wide street was not cemented or bricked, just the soil. The houses on both the sides were throwing their orange flames out on the unpaved uneven road full of little stones on both the sides.

My lips opened, “Why did I fail as a leader?”

***

Suzuki Tadashi

“Y-Yamazaki…” My lips were filled with saliva as I murmured, my forehead and my left cheek covered in blood. I had my head tilted up as I looked at the figure in black pants and a thick black overcoat with my horrified eyes.

The figure stood with the open door of the barn on his left, his face completely black with shadows. The open door slipped in some light, with the little streaks of light falling upon Matsuda, with his butts on the ground, and his back bent backward as he pushed the ground to get up. His dark green t-shirt was filled with streaks of red blood spilled on it. With his back a little straight up, he turned his head to the front. He looked at me angrily as he frowned and showed his uneven dented teeth. “You motherfucker!” He waved his right hand on his messy hair, dragged his right boot towards his butts, raising his knee up, and struggling, stood up. His back was bent a little frontward, his right hand on the center of his left rib, where he was hit. His bent knees were trembling a little as he stood up. “Whaddya think yer are, eh?!”

“Ma-Matsuda-senpai…” I looked backward at him, shocked and weeping. My eyes were wet with my tears. “I-I-I’m so-sor-sorry…”

“Enough with it, motherfucker!”

Kurayami stood silently in front of me. I clenched my hands on his pants. My hands were trembling a lot.

“D’ya thin—”

“Stop it, sir!” Kurayami raised his voice.

The barn was completely silent as Kurayami’s streamlined dominating eyes were fixed on Matsuda, and Matsuda’s furious eyes were fixed at Kurayami. Matsuda then suddenly shouted at Kurayami, “Whaddya think y’are, asshole?! A hero?!”

“Gotcha!” Kurayami whispered in his mind.

I remembered the blue and white logo with the letter ‘I’ at the center of the circle rotating as it said, “We need you to help out the hero of the prophecy, or be the hero yourself and take the kingdom of Dansamia to salvation. Come on. Jump in. We need your power. We need to rise up against the unjust. A world… full of adventure… awaits your arrival.”

With my eyes wide open in illusion, I remembered my words back then and repeated as I heard them in my head, “It’s… my time… to be the hero… of my own story.”

“I’m not here to be the hero… I’m here to take the hero tonight,” Kurayami said in his heavy voice.

“Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero.”

“Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero.” My head was constantly chanting the same word over and over again at the back of my mind.

Kurayami moved his right hand at the back of his left side of the waist, and pulled out a medium-width sword. As he stood with it in the front of his chest, he said, “So, hero, are ya gonna finish it or I do?”

My mind had stopped working. My eyes were fixed at the front, completely dead. I was in an illusion as my mind continued to chant the same word behind my head, “Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero. Hero.”

I envisioned the face of Sasaki-senpai as he said while applying medicine on my bare chest, “You remind me of a wounded lion, kid. Silent, wounded, covered with blood after a brave fight, but still standing alive with pride to live another day.”

“It’s said that a hero from another world will come here, kill the notorious king, and bring back peace and freedom to the kingdom.”

“That’s where Imma send you now. New Dansamia City.”

“Because you’re the hero of the prophecy.”

“The hero… of the prophecy… The one who’d save the empire… and bring peace…” I murmured as I looked at Matsuda, looking at me with his furious eyes.

“And this is your first step to becoming a hero, Suzuki-kun,” Kurayami murmured as he moved the sword in the front of me by my right. “Here, take the first step.”

I held the handle of the sword with my right hand, and he let go of the sword. I gulped in, looking innocently and shyly at Matsuda. “I-I-I’m sorry…”

BANP. BANP. BANP. BANP. BANP. BANP.

SLASH!