Chapter One

Raiko fell down on all fours with a clack, his nose inches from the floor. The papers Sensei had pushed on him to carry lay scattered around him. After a second of shock, his mind racing from throbbing knees to scratched palms, he hurried to collect the papers closest to him in a crumbled pile.

The murmur of the class died down and the silence weighed in on Raiko’s back, pulling him further down. He didn’t need to guess what was happening. He was already surrounded by them.

“You’re such a klutz, aren’t you, Fuyuki?” A pair of shimmering school slippers and the whitest knee-length socks he had ever seen were standing on top of the math assignment for next class. Those belonged to Jun Morimoto, the class’s princess. Raiko’s hand froze as he was just about to make contact with the paper. If he tried to pull on it from underneath her, it might rip; and then Sensei was going to be mad at him.

“Respond when you’re talked to, pig!” Raiko got kicked hard from behind, his chin scraping across the floor. A wave of anxious giggles rippled through the classroom. That would be Daichi Sato, also known as Jun Morimoto’s guard dog.

“I’m sorry,” Raiko uttered. He did not dare to look them in the eyes, much less look up. It would make it worse. He just had to endure, like always. They would get bored with him, eventually.

“You’re sorry?” Morimoto replied with an overly courteous voice, “How about you apologize for spraying your foul smell all over the classroom? Like, don’t you feel bad for the rest of us?”

Raiko felt the blood surge to his cheeks. How he wished he could just sink into the floor at that moment. He pushed himself off from the ground onto his knees again, his gaze fixed on his sleeves still stained with yesterday’s blood. A thin layer of sweat started gathering on his forehead.

“Ugh, you’re disgusting,” Sato said, “Just move out of the way already!”

Raiko was kicked aside against the classroom lockers and left there contorting in pain. As he gasped, his hands on his side, his aggressors strutted their way to their seats, not a thought given to the papers beneath their feet.

The classroom slowly returned to normal. Between waves of pain, Raiko could hear his classmates talk about sports clubs, what had been on television last night, and how someone forgot their homework and was buttering up their friends for help. As he opened his blurry eyes, he found no pair of eyes looking back. That was to be expected. His classmates all knew what would happen if someone said anything or tried to help him. So, as far as everyone was concerned, Raiko didn’t exist.

With a groan, Raiko pushed himself and began gathering the papers, trying his best to avoid his tears from staining them. He needed to hurry. The bell would ring any minute now and Sensei wouldn’t be too far away when it did.

His sweaty hands trembled. He felt dizzy, even nauseous, but not just from the adrenaline of the moment. He wondered what was wrong, whether he had been smacked too hard this time. However, it then dawned on him: he hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday. Mom had yet again been too busy to fix dinner. But not to worry. Raiko had managed to scrape enough coins lying around the house that he had bought a tuna-mayo rice ball on the way to school this morning. And it was neatly stored away in his bag. So, perhaps, if Raiko gathered the papers quickly enough, maybe he could get a bite or two in before the bell.

Sensei, however, was early.

“Fuyuki, what are you doing on the floor?” He looked down at Raiko, his wrinkly face contorting. “Are those the class assignments I gave you? I can’t believe it!”

With a hurried pace, Sensei moved through the columns of standing students and crouched down in front of him. He grabbed a couple of them, “There’s footprints all over these!”

Before Raiko could say anything, Sensei threw the papers at his feet, “Just how useless can you be? You can’t do anything right!”

“I’m sorry, Sensei, I-”

“What, Fuyuki?” Sensei said, “Do you think there’s any excuse for this? I’ve had enough of you. Pick those papers up and go back to your seat at once.”

“Yes, Sensei,” Raiko responded.

Before getting up, Sensei leaned forward and said, not so quietly, “Also, and it pains me to say this, but make sure you bathe tomorrow. Someone complained about it.”

The school bell rang. Sensei got up and addressed the class as he walked towards the teacher’s podium. As his classmates turned their heads forward and Raiko focused on picking up the papers, his breathing eased, even only a little. His side still ached, and he was sure he had bruised his knee when he tripped, but other than that, it was over. For now.

Raiko stood up and moved weakly through the desks to give Sensei the stash of papers. He couldn’t help but to notice glances, smirks, and whispers from Sato and his pals; followed by snuffed out laughter as he went past them. Jun Morimoto, however, was pinching her nose, which somehow felt worse than being kicked.

It wouldn’t do much to tell them Raiko had bathed the night before. It was just that he didn’t have spare clean shirts to use as his mother had forgotten to do the washing. In fact, he was aware of the yellow stains underneath his armpits, the mud-shaped shoe marks on the back of his uniform, and the droplets of dried blood spattered on his shirt’s front and sleeves. He was aware of how bad he looked, and, if fate would allow it, he wouldn’t be at school at all. But that was the one thing he couldn’t do. It would cause trouble for his family.

Defeated, Raiko reached into his tattered schoolbag and fumbled for the rice ball. His stomach growled and he hoped no one had heard it. But eating it would have to wait until the end of the afternoon classes. And he needed to save some too. There was someone waiting for him on the way home with a belly just as empty as Raiko’s was.

By the time school ended for the day, Raiko’s legs felt like soggy noodles. He tried his best to stay focused, but some days were just difficult to get into algebra. Raiko let out a small sigh, his shoulders dropping. He would have to go over the exercises again tonight.

Raiko put away his torn and worn notebooks, then used his jacket sleeve to clean up his scribbled-out desk. Words like ‘die’ and ‘pig’ and ‘loser’ didn’t bother him anymore. Luckily, it wasn’t his turn to be on cleaning duty so he could just scuttle quietly.

The halls became crowded, but Raiko navigated the sea of students with precision. If he stayed curled up, minded his own business, and looked forward, he could blend into the wave of dark-blue uniforms making for the exit.

If Raiko forgot about his life for a second, he felt like he belonged in the same reality as any other students. He wore the same uniform, with the same golden emblem patched on his breast pocket. He attended the same classes, instructed by the same professors, and walked the same halls. But it was all a farce. The truth was that he wasn’t supposed to be there.

He’d gotten in through a scholarship, which was a fancy way of saying someone wanted to feel good about themselves by giving poor Raiko a chance at a better education to go along with his high grades. So he could become someone in life, instead of being shackled by his family’s lack of means.

Therefore, Raiko was supposed to be grateful for this bountiful opportunity at a prestigious school, full of the country’s brightest - a golden generation that would ensure the future. These people would go on to become business leaders, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and politicians. They would influence the trajectory of progress so that ordinary people would live a better life; and Raiko just happened to be the first one to benefit from it.

Raiko paused as he reached the end of the shoe lockers. He produced his outdoor shoes, made sure to look inside for some pins or rocks, and then placed them gently on the floor. His shoe locker was caved in and it hasn't been fixed yet. He would have put his indoor shoes inside, but the school staff gave him permission to take them home with him. Apparently, they had had enough of him losing them.

Once Raiko was through the school’s gate, that’s when he needed to pay attention to his surroundings. Any student running at him, any blatant laughter, any high-pitched shriek was enough to send his nervous system into overdrive. More than once he had been jumped at outside the school, but there were shortcuts and blind spots along the way. Dark alleyways, narrow side streets, and overhead passages that he could use to take detours and avoid being seen. Raiko never took the same path, even if it meant getting home later.

And it was on one of his detours, by the edge of the river, that Raiko had found it. A stray cat. Its black fur was lackluster and failed to conceal its ribcage from sticking out. It had stood still, its gaze fixed on Raiko, ready to pounce away at any time.

Raiko had frozen for a moment, mesmerized, but the running footsteps of Sato and his friends echoing behind him were more important. He had to hide, but where? They were so close. There had only been one option: the river. He could still remember his mother’s face when he arrived home, dripping on the old carpet.

But there had been something about that cat. Raiko wasn’t sure why, but he had come back the next day, albeit by another path. And he sat down by the riverbank, feet dangling over the surface. The black cat, its ears pricked and tuned into Raiko, came to a stop a few meters away from him.

Raiko then threw some chunks of dried chicken in its direction. Leftovers he had saved from dinner the day before. He had wished he had something better to give to it, but sharing what little he had with another destitute creature made him happy. The cat, startled at first, slowly brought its muzzle to the pieces of chicken scattered about. Nibbling and finding them to its taste, it quickly bit into them and wolfed them down on the spot. With the last piece of meat locked in its jaws, the cat looked once at him and then jumped to a ledge and vanished inside an open pipe.

It was then that Raiko understood why the cat had caught his attention. It was its eyes. They were in shades of purple, as though the color exploded from the slit pupils out in a radiant halo. And so, Raiko had named the cat ‘Mu’, as in the first sound of ‘purple’.

Ever since that day, Raiko had always saved some of his lunch to share with Mu. As their orange-tinted afternoons together grew in number, the cat had come closer to Raiko, step by step, and now the cat sunbathed idly a few centimeters from him, his head resting between his paws, though its ears occasionally twitched and scanned around them for danger. If Raiko tried to approach it, Mu would jump back, but when Raiko yawned and lay back on the grass, listening to the water running its course, he would find, were he to open his eyes covertly, that Mu would be sniffing his leg or arm.

And that warmed his heart with joy. Raiko had started imagining how Mu’s fur would feel to the touch and how awesome it would be when Mu finally accepted him.

“And then the teacher said I should bathe more often. Can you believe it, Mu?”

The cat said nothing, of course. But sometimes Raiko could swear he heard a purr or a low meow that he interpreted as Mu expressing its anger at the bullying he was subjected to.

And, just as the shadows grew longer, and Raiko knew he had to say goodbye for the day, the sadness overtook him. Truth is, Raiko wanted to take Mu home with him. His family didn’t have much. They probably couldn’t even afford cat food, but Mu would at least have a roof over its head. But Raiko also knew better. A roof didn’t make a home. If home was supposed to be where he felt safe the most, then Raiko wondered where his home truly was.

With a heavy sigh, Raiko got up and smacked the back of his trousers to remove the dirt a few times. Then, he threw his bag over his shoulders and crouched in front of the cat.

“Save some for tomorrow morning, okay? Don’t eat everything all at once.”

The cat yawned and stretched, baring its fangs and producing its claws. Mu sensed it was time to part ways and it glided through the tall grass, a piece of tuna locked in its jaws. But then, it stopped, its ears pointed.

“What’s wrong, Mu?” Raiko looked around, a spike of anxiety rushing through his body. He expected to see someone over the hill, walking by the sidewalk. A bicycle, perhaps. But there was no one.

And yet, Mu kept alert, its food dropped in front of its front paws. Its ears kept rotating, trying to pinpoint whatever it was that was putting it on edge.

“Mu?” Raiko stepped forward. “Everything’s okay. Just go on. It’s getting dark. It’s not safe-“

But, before Raiko could react, Mu dashed over to him, nudged its head against his leg, and zoomed off, disappearing into the pipe. Not without first picking up the tuna.

After a moment of stillness, Raiko brought his blood-spattered sleeve to his face. He tried not to wail as the waves of sadness overwhelmed him. How empty his life had been. How desperate he was for a small act of kindness. On that riverbank, hidden away from the world, to find solace in Mu had meant everything to Raiko.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mu.”