Chapter 0:
A Family's Pillar
I had lived all my life believing I’d have no regrets when it came to the end. Maybe it was confidence, or maybe it was just my youthful ignorance. Nevertheless, it never changed until it was too late.
Before Mother passed, all she left me was an apology. I was fifteen years old and I had no one but her. Apart from those words, she also left me with a good sense of my education. I wanted to make her proud, and while I was never the best in our class, I was never the worst.
No family was willing to take me in, and the comfort I was raised with up until that point in my life was forgotten. My relatives who offered no support to my single mother didn’t even shed a tear when she died.
They didn’t turn their backs on me. I wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. I ran away and completely disappeared. Though I cut familial ties with a bunch of hypocrites to escape the status of being a pariah in the family, fate signed me up straight to a course for the underworld.
Initially, I tried to get an honest job. Though not fruitless, my search was a challenge. I was able to get hired at small convenience stores or some laborious gigs. They paid well, though it was hard to get rehired after. A capable adult was better suited for this type of job than some scrawny, starving kid. The convenience stores cheated me out of a full pay. I was a runaway kid who only finished his final year of middle school, and figured I was an easy target for an unfair wage.
Not long after, I was doing petty crimes to survive: Shoplifting and pickpocketing. When I discovered the existence of a fence, I began dipping my toes into burglary and vandalizing cars for parts. A path that would lead to my faithful encounter with the yakuza.
I got caught doing these activities, and I had done it to a yakuza. Receiving a knuckle to the cheek first, I thought this was the end of the line for me. I knew that a lot of rumours went around that even kids weren’t safe from them, so I prepared myself for the worst, though I guess I can consider myself lucky that I met Shuji, my official gateway to the underworld.
Shuji was also a runaway, though one thing led to another, and he became a yakuza. He decided to take a gamble on me, taking me under his wing. The man was superstitious, sometimes talking about his low karma and how it didn’t hurt to do some good once in a while to tip the scales even a little bit.
Through him, I still got to attend high school. Some delinquents tried to stick out, though I was there more for learning despite being sponsored. After high school, I realized that I was already firmly tied to the syndicate. Shuji’s gang had given me their support, and now I needed to give something back.
Slowly over the years, my petty offences paled in comparison to my misconducts in later years. The job had corrupted me and developed me into a callous man. The underworld became my home, and the family I was in really became a family. Shuji was more like a brother to me than a father, yet I wouldn’t know what it felt like in the first place.
But just like actual callouses, which one can shed, my hardened heart could become soft once more. It happened after Shuji died. Struck by grief, my thoughts were a mess. In that cesspool of darkness, memories resurfaced. I need not reminisce about most details, for most of their relevance is lost in my new life. However, I faintly remembered the comfort I lost — the love given by my mother. Something I will hold on to no matter what life I lived.
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