CONNECTIONS, H. Kazutora

025

It's been 7 months since Toman has been disbanded. Me and my friends would hang out regularly, except a specific person. That person is Mikey. We're not sure why he just randomly disappeared but we just thought it's because he's busy. We didn't think much of it until one day, he called each one of us to meet him at Musashi shrine. It was kind of weird though since he planned to meet up at 1:20 AM in the morning but since we haven't seen Mikey for a while, we just agreed to go there. Which was a huge mistake. I arrived at the shrine and saw Mitsuya, Chifuyu, Draken and Peh-yan standing in a circle.

"Yo where's Mikey?" Draken asked as he looked around over and over.

"I don't know, he said he wants to meet up here but it's already been 20 minutes" I turned on my phone to check the time as the others kept on searching for Mikey.

...

"Hey guys I see something over there! Maybe that's—" Peh-yan was gonna continue his sentence when suddenly he got cut off and a loud thud echoed in the sky. We all turned around and saw Mikey standing above Peh-yan who was passed on the ground with white eyes as blood streamed down his nose.

"MIKEY WHAT THE FU—" A hard punch landed on Draken's nose causing it to burst out bleeding making him fall to the ground.

"MIKEY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! STOP IT" I yelled out as I started running towards Mikey but stopped in my tracks when a cold glare was sent to me, sending shivers down my spine as I took a few steps backwards. He averted his gaze away from me and slowly walked towards Draken. Lifting Draken up by the collar, Mikey punched him repeatedly with a mischievous grin. Mitsuya and Chifuyu stepped in, grabbing Mikey's arms stopping him from hurting Draken any further. At the end, they both got punched in the face by Mikey. He gave us one last grin before leaving the place. We don't know what has gotten into him. He just disappeared for a while and came back.. Like this. Watching Mikey slowly disappearing into the shadows, I turned back to look at the others that were injured.

"One of you carry Peh-yan, he's still unconscious. Let's go to my apartment, i'll help you guys clean up your wounds" I quickly ran towards them helping them get up on their feet. I took a quick glance at their faces expecting a confused expression but all I could see were anger written all over their faces.

We're in my living room just sitting on the floor. None of us said a word to one another. I helped them clean their wounds and bandage them up. They still seem to be mad about what happened but I didn't want to make them more mad than they already are by opening my mouth.

"It's getting late. I'm gonna leave now, bye." Draken stood up, walking out of the front door. The others started doing the same, saying their goodbyes to me.

I'm not sure what Mikey was thinking when he beat up his friends but whatever the reason is, i'll figure it out.

The next morning, I called Takemichi and explained everything that happened the night before. We planned to meet up at Mikey's place. Takemichi suggested that we bring the others to meet Mikey but after all of the things that happened between them, I'd rather not get the others involved in this. The both of us got to Mikey's place and knocked on the door, the door slid open but it wasn't Mikey, it was his grandpa. I asked grandpa Sano if Mikey's home but only received a head shake from him before the door closed. Weeks after weeks, I would go there everyday and knock on the door hoping to see Mikey but he never came home. His things were still in his room left untouched which was odd. I slowly lost hope and just accepted the fact that Mikey probably never wants to see us again.

Years went by and we all forgot about Mikey, not his existence though. Hina and Takemichi were still couples from high school till now, Pah got released from juvie and is running a real estate company with Peh-yan, me and Chifuyu applied a job at a pet shop called 'PALME' and now that we're running our own pet shop, Draken became good friends with Inui and introduced me to him and now they own their own motorcycle shop called 'D & D motorcycle shop', Mitsuya is a fashion designer, Hakkai and Yuzuha are successful models working actively overseas, and as for the Kawata twins they own their own ramen shop. I remember during high school I would always beg Chifuyu to give me ride to the juvenile detention center to visit Kazu, I introduced Chifuyu to Kazu and they became pretty good friends.

One day, I was sitting on a chair playing with a cat at the front desk when suddenly I received a call.

"Kazutora Hanemiya, will be released today"

I jolted up from my seat and ran to Chifuyu's office to inform him that Kazu will be released today and that we'll go pick him up. Chifuyu nodded his head agreeing to go with me. "We'll just close up the shop early today" He said with a gentle smile. I went back to the front desk and packed up my bags before putting the cat that I was playing with a few minutes ago back into its cage. Taking off my apron and putting it on the racks, I dashed out the door running towards Chifuyu's car. I happily jumped up and down as I watched Chifuyu close up the shop, waiting for him to start the car so that we can leave.