|Weak Hero| Alones

Chapter 1

Gray staggered in the alley, exhausted. No, he felt even worse than exhausted. If he closed his eyes now, he felt as if he wouldn't wake up for a while. He was in immense pain and each breath hurt, but he couldn't afford to stop for too long. 

He had barely managed to escape his kidnappers after months of being held captive and tortured. Who knew how far he had gotten from their hideout, especially since his current condition was incredibly weak. Even when he was healthy prior to his kidnapping, he was still physically weaker than the average high schooler.

His mind was still very fuzzy due to the drugs they had injected him with and forced him to consume. Whenever they weren't stabbing him with needles, they drugged his food. If he refused to eat, they held him down and shoved it down his throat. While many of their customers preferred more petite people, they wouldn't want them to be thin enough that their bones showed.

Gray forced himself to throw up, hoping that it would help get the drugs out of his system faster. Bile burned his throat and he wiped the corner of his mouth with the sleeve of his dirty shirt.

'Fuck...' He didn't know where he was, but he just knew that he had to keep running. But his broken and abused body refused to listen, becoming heavier each passing second. He leaned against the cool brick wall and stared up at the night sky.

How long had it been since he had last seen the sky? After he had been kidnapped, he had been kept in a room—no, could it even be called a room? It may have had a bed and was connected to a small bathroom, but it was more a cell to him. There were no windows so he couldn't even tell what time of day it was or how many days had passed.

'I don't want to go back...' Gray thought as he slumped down to the ground, no longer having the strength to get up. 'I'd rather die than go back!'

Footsteps caught his attention and terror filled him. 'Did they already find me!?' He clenched his eyes shut, wishing to be invisible.

"Aren't you the White Mamba?"

White Mamba. That was his epithet given to him after rising through the ranks of the Shuttle Patch. Only other high schoolers called him that, not those monsters. His kidnappers called him those revolting nicknames that made him want to tear his own ears out whenever he heard them.

At least he now knew that the person who had found him wasn't one of those monsters. However, he wasn't completely at ease. His friends never called him by his epithet and instead used his real name. Many of his enemies wouldn't skip a chance to beat him while he's down. A lot of people wouldn't care about his injured state and would just want revenge.

The footsteps neared but no attack ever came. A pair of white, expensive shoes entered his peripheral vision and he somehow mustered the strength to look up at the person standing in front of him.

'Who are you?' Gray wanted to ask that question out loud but he didn't even have the strength to speak. He tried to stay awake but his vision was quickly fading to black.

XXX

"Donald," Kingsley addressed his friend after helping him. "Mind telling me why I helped you with tend to the injuries of the White Mamba, who might I remind you has been missing for months?"

"I found him in an alley," Donald answered. "I couldn't just leave him there,"

"Actually, yes, you could've," Kingsley corrected. "Just like how we ignore the Union members bullying other students,"

"He looked so pitiful," Donald told him. "He looked like a child, alone, lost, and scared. He..." He let out a soft sigh. "He reminded me of myself when I was younger...before I met you and back when I lived in that hellhole,"

"Still," Kingsley said. "You should've taken him to the hospital instead,"

"You saw how many injection marks he had," Donald's voice became a bit softer. "If he woke up in a hospital, he'd probably panic,"

"He'd still panic if he woke up in a stranger's house," Kingsley pointed out. "At least in a hospital, he'd get proper medical attention. There's only so much we can do with first aid kits,"

"If his condition gets worse, I'll bring him to the hospital. But for now, I'll let him stay here,"