Island

Sora

My brain went blank from the news Mari had just told me. I couldn’t believe it, but there she was right in my face, telling me that she heard them talk about him coming back.

“Are you sure it’s him?” I asked for the third time.

“Pretty sure. I heard them whispering about it in the Lab before they went out of range,” she said smugly. She could hear better than a dog, and if she really put her mind to it, she could listen to everything that was going on all the way in the Prison, which was farther away than the Lab.

I hugged her with a squeal, unable to control my happiness after hearing that Hazuki was coming back after all these years.

In a split second, it all came back to me, all the memories, the good and the bad, and with it, my excitement vanished as if it had never greeted me in the first place.

He would have never come here of his own free will.

Mari noticed the change in my mood but didn’t need to ask what was wrong. She arrived here after Hazuki and I had run away, and even though she never met him, I talked about him a lot, so she knew what was going through my mind.

The next period was going to be Magical Training, which mostly meant free time for us both, since we just had to look out for any accidents. The classes we taught were small, and together we had a little over a dozen students with wide age gaps and proficiency in magical abilities.

The oldest was a man twice my age, going on fifty-one in a few months, who could manipulate the air any way he wanted. I had seen him use it to dry his clothes or pick up fruits from tall trees, and lately, he was trying to use it to fly, saying a bald man with a big beard hovering above the ground looked pretty cool. The idea looked cool, but the control he had on his magic probably wouldn’t allow him to do it. 

The youngest was a little girl who was just beginning to learn how to write, who could jump between shadows. We hadn’t figured out her reach, but with the ease she jumped around, I was pretty sure it would be pretty wide. There were also other magical types, such as a girl who could control plant life and a teen who could create fire. Elemental magic was very common, but the way each of us used it varied greatly.

Mari didn’t hear anything else about Hazuki for the rest of the day, not even when we walked on the outskirts of the village closer to the Lab. Everyone loved to gossip in this place, and news and rumours travelled fast, and without more information, I kept thinking that maybe she had misheard them as days turned into a week with no more information to go on.

“Don’t forget about our plan,” Mari said. Her eyes bore into me as if she could tell what I was about to do.

“Never. The plan remains the same.”

She nodded, and part of me wondered if she had heard about him and simply decided to keep quiet about it because she was afraid of what I would do if he was indeed back here. If she did, she might be right, but either way, I would probably have done the same thing. I wanted to see him. I have been wanting to see him for the past eight years.

That evening, I walked down the village market, bustling with all types of magic, shows and trinkets, anything to make our lives a little less boring. What an odd thing to say, magical people having boring lives. But in this secluded place, where the only thing different was more people coming in, everything became old quickly. So we did anything that brought some of that excitement of living back to us.

I went to the busiest part of the market, found my target, and picked a fight straight away, glaring at the man. He had a very short fuse and quickly stood up, matching my glare. I looked down on him and kicked a stone towards him.

It was that easy to make him attack me, and when he did, I attacked him back. He could create anything out of metal, which included the sword that appeared in his hand, but I was stronger, and my light beam easily broke his sword.

A new one appeared right away, looking more sturdy than the previous one and making the man breathe harder due to the effort. I saw guards approaching when people noticed what was going on, and infused my fist with light, shooting him with it. He was thrown back from the blast, his shirt burnt from the impact, and before he got up to his feet, I punched his face just as hard. For good measure, I fought against the guards as they tried to put handcuffs on me, using fingertip-sized light beams to hurt them. It would hurt like a slingshot, and besides a bruise, they would be fine. When they threatened me with a tranquiliser, I wielded. I didn’t want to be sent to the Lab, and this would be enough to send me to Prison for a few days.

It had been quite a long time since I had been back here, and the sole reason I was happy to be back was due to the possibility of seeing Hazuki again. I recognised most of the guards and some of the inmates when I arrived. Not all of the inmates came here from the village, a few came from the outside.

I spent the first day locked up in my cell. It was a standard punishment, and since I had been a role model for years and had a few friends around, it would probably be the last.

“What brings you here?” said Cooper, on my third day as I kept watch in the cafeteria. He used to work in the Village, but after some trouble, he was pushed to work here instead.

“Rumours.” He waited for me to explain further as he took a drag of his cigarette. “I heard there is a new prisoner, his name is Hazuki.”

“Ah,” he said with a chuckle. My eyes bulged at his reaction, and hope clogged my throat. “Fourth floor. End of the shift only.”

I bit my lip from smiling too much and nodded. I wanted to give him a big hug for confirming what I came to check, but it would look bad for both of us with all the cameras around.

Before the cells locked for the night, I climbed up the stairs to the fourth floor, my heart drumming in my ears. He sat on his bed as if he knew I was coming to see him, but his eyes opened wide when he recognised me.

We stared at each other for a moment, and then he laughed, not from happiness. It was a mocking laugh, and I couldn’t tell who he was mocking, if me, him or both of us.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“Neither should you.” I held onto the bars for strength. “I hoped to never see you again in here.”

He stared at the dark sky, but I couldn’t take my eyes from him. He looked older, more mature, and all the anger he harboured before was nowhere to be seen.

“Where are we?” He asked, his eyes back on me, devoid of any expression.

“An island to the south of Tokyo,” I blurted. He wasn’t supposed to know that. Even amongst the staff, only a handful knew where this island was situated. “Forget what I said,” I said, flustered with everything. “It’s confidential, no one knows where we are. This island doesn’t even show on maps.”

He murmured the word island as if savouring it with distaste. “How do you know it then?”

“I heard them talk.”

He seemed satisfied with the answer, as the silence remained for a long minute.

“A year after we escaped, they brought us to this place.” He hummed uninterested, as if he had learned everything he wanted.

After that night, I visited him almost every day. He never asked why I was back here, and I didn’t ask him why he was brought here either. Eight years was a long time to act like we were still the same teens planning to run away. Now I was an adult, with a plan to escape and leave everything on this island behind me, I just needed to make sure he was coming with us. I wouldn’t leave him out of my sight a second time.