Someplace Like Home |n.j

25.

"Happy Birthday!" Kenji spotted the girl sitting at the edge of the curb. She takes a drag of the cigarette before acknowledging the boy with a cake in hand.

"What are you doing?" She eyed the cake in distaste and dropped her cigarette, crushing it under her foot.

"You're seventeen now Nami, what do you think?" He settles the cake between them after taking a seat on the concrete.

"What is there to celebrate?" The young teenager questioned bitterly, picking the icing with her index finger.

"You have me, and Harumi." Kenji suggested with a shrug. Nami picks her phone from her pocket and turns on the cracked screen. Her eyes squint to make out the text from her mother. She quickly stuffs the device back inside her pocket.

Kenji rose his brows in curiosity, "Your mom?"

Nami waves him off and licks the icing off of her finger.

"Anyway," Her optimistic friend smiled, "I don't think you should feel so bad about your life. I know birthdays are stupid, but stupid things are nice sometimes."

"I don't know if I should feel happy about having a gambler and a domestic abuser as a father, Kenji. But you're right," Nami falls back with a heavy exhale and her back meets the pedestrian sidewalk. It was two in the morning, she wouldn't be blocking anybody's path anyway.

"I guess I should be happy that he's such a scum, or else I wouldn't meet you or Harumi."

Kenji picks the candle from the cake and holds it right next to her head. She turns her neck and blows it out. Nami couldn't bother making any wishes. If she wanted change, she'd make it. If she wanted anything, she'd get it. A birthday wish wasn't going to make anything come easier to her. He throws the candle out to the road right after and lays down next to her.

"Sometimes I wonder why our parents are like that. We hate it, but look at us," Kenji paused and chuckled, turning to look at Nami. She was so beautiful as they laid on the concrete, as if they were the only ones on earth, Kenji wanted to stay like this a little longer, "Aren't we the same as them? Is it wrong that we take advantage of their ways?"

"What do you mean?" Nami mumbled. She knew, and she's had the same exact thoughts before, almost all the time. But Kenji always knew what to say. Maybe things would make more sense coming out of his mouth.

"I don't know. Us smoking, drinking...laying on the road at two in the morning? Skipping school all the time? Being friends even. My mom and your dad probably grew up like this too. What if we grow up to be like them?"

"I'm not going to abuse my husband," Nami retorted. "Half of it wasn't even our fault. We were pressured by them to smoke and drink. Stuff like that isn't easy to walk out of. My mother is always working, my father's way of raising me has always been to just bring me wherever he went. I didn't ask to be part of anything I've seen growing up. So I didn't take advantage of any of this, right?"

Right?

Maybe she just wanted him to say it so she could have a chance to defend herself. So that someone could hear these thoughts for once, so that someone could understand.

"You know," She swallowed, staring at a single star in the sky, "When I grow up, I'm leaving this place. I'm leaving my parents. I'm going to be someone else, I'm going to have a completely different identity, so different that even if you saw my face, you'd never know it was me."

"Yeah?" Kenji answered absentmindedly as he digested her words. She was going to leave this town, she was going to leave him and Harumi. Kenji knew Nami the best. She'll do anything she puts her mind into, and saying them out loud meant that there was no backing out. The universe has already heard it, and that's what it'll expect.

He didn't want her to leave, but he knew there was nothing here that was good enough to make her stay. Not the teachers and counsellors at school, not the social workers, not even Kenji and Harumi.

"I'm so sick of everything. Sick of going home, sick of going to school and seeing everybody's faces. They mock me behind my back about my father, they always think I never hear it, but I do. And you know what I hate most about this, and everything else?"

Kenji shakes his head, even if Nami couldn't see it anyway.

"That I felt bad for my father. I hate that even after everything, I still care about my parents. If I didn't care, I wouldn't get hurt. I wouldn't feel bad about my life if I didn't care about them. It's the fucking feelings. All the extra shit getting in the way of me being who I need to be, doing what I need to do."

"Do you regret caring about me and Harumi?"

Nami turns her head to meet his eyes and immediately looks away at the sight of his expression.

"I don't know." She swallowed harshly. "But I know it doesn't hurt me. I know you and Harumi wouldn't hurt me."

That was more than anybody could ask from Nami. Kenji was hesitant as he lifted a hand and reached for her cheek. She saw it coming, her racing mind did, and so did her thumping heart. Nami stayed still and let him. He leans over and envelops her waist with his arm. He was new at this, he'd never done it with anybody, but the countless times he'd imagined it with her in his head made him felt like he'd done it a thousand times before. Her breath tickles below his nose before he finally closed the distance and latched onto her lips with his.

It was soft and sweet like honey, better than what he'd imagined.

They twist and turn, and before Kenji could land on his back, Nami jumps up with a yell of profanities. They sit to see the cake mushed into a mess with their shoes covered in its remains.

"Shit," Nami wiped her lips with the back of her hand and kicked her shoes against the curb to get the icing off.

"Yeah, shit," Kenji was burning, scratching the back of his head while he looked away nervously, refusing to meet the eyes of the girl next to him.

"Oh now this is real shit," The phone in her pocket buzzes and the birthday girl didn't need to check to know that it was her mother.

"Just don't pick up," Kenji suggested with a cough.

"No, I have to. Or else she'll get pissed off her tits when I get home. That'll be soon, my father will come pick us up in a while I bet." But she took her time. Nami pulls out another cigarette and lights it up, prepping herself for the conversation awaiting for her.

She offers the first drag to Kenji, and he smiles, taking one and handing it back to her. Nami stuffs it between her lips and accepts the call, then rests the phone next her ear.

"What's up,"

She was so sick of her mother's voice. Nothing ever meant good when she heard it.

"Your father, he's dead. Your goddamn father is dead, Nami,"