I want to go home

Twenty years ago ...

Yota pulled himself free from his dad's hands and ran towards the front door. His mum continued to wail even as he dragged the door aside and he didn't look back to see how badly she was being beaten in his stead. The hard ground hurt his rough feet and the late afternoon blurred around him as he hurried down the street.

The Yamamoto family had gone on holiday a week ago and he was sure they weren't due back for another week. The Ishikawa couple next door usually called the police for him but their car wasn't in the driveway. The last time he had asked the man at the convenience store for help, he had been treated like a nuisance and forcefully hauled back home. His dad had beaten him twice as hard that night and the memory alone was enough to weaken his knees.

During their previous visit to the park, his mum had stared at the police station while he played with the grass by her feet, ripping it out of the ground until she told him to stop. But he couldn't remember which direction the park had been, nor how far they had travelled to get there. He wiped his eyes as he ran and his heart swelled until it seemed to press uncomfortably against his lungs.

Someone grabbed his elbow without warning. He yelped as their thumb dug into a large purple bruise on his upper arm and his free hand flailed until it hit the face of the person holding onto him.

“Wait!” yelled the girl. She maintained her grip on him even as his right leg buckled. “You're gonna get hit.”

The pavement scraped skin from his knee and he tried to protect as much of his head as he could with one hand but she didn't do anything else. He blinked and the descending sun turned her brown eyes almost golden against the darkening sky. She pointed at something to his right and several cars rumbled disturbingly close to his face before she helped him scramble away from them.

“What're you doing?” she asked once they were at a safe distance from the road. “Are you okay?”

Her attention scorched his discoloured arms, lower legs, and feet. He hugged himself as soon as she let him go and a quick glance over his shoulder revealed that neither of his parents had followed him out of the house.

“Do you want me to get my mum?” She knelt down beside him, placing something long and wrapped in fabric on the ground.

Pushing his messy hair back from his eyes, she frowned in response to his temperature. He did feel feverish but that was nothing new after the usual encounters he had with his dad. Especially following one as bad as today's had been. There was no way of knowing whether this girl or her mum could help but he couldn't bring himself to speak anyway. He rocked back and forth on the pavement as if it would straighten out the mess that his thoughts always became whenever he had to deal with anyone else.

All kinds of people moved around the little space they had taken up in the middle of the pathway. Most were silent, some of them spoke quietly to their companions and looked back, whilst others made made irritated sounds or brushed past them impatiently. Judgement pressed down on him from all sides like the spiked walls he had seen before in a movie he barely remembered, but no one stopped or tried to find out why two children were on the ground outside a large restaurant that smelt strongly of cooked fish, miso soup, and steamed rice.

The girl pulled off a stone-grey zip-up sweatshirt that had been tied around her waist and wrapped it around his bare shoulders. She then slipped her black cap carefully onto his head before pulling him further down the road, though not before she picked up the long object she had been carrying a few minutes ago.

“Mum!” she called as they hurried into the closest convenience store, scanning the brightly lit aisles methodically and moving as fast as his sore feet would let her. “Muuuum!”

She had no reason to help him. He hadn't told her what was wrong nor explained what he needed but that didn't stop her from trying to do something.

“Big sister?” murmured a boy, who seemed to be around the same age as Yota, as he turned away from a shelf rife with carefully arranged stationary. He had the same wavy dark hair as the girl and his previously focused brown eyes widened. “Why is your nose bleeding?”

Yota's hand spasmed in her grasp. A thin trail of blood rolled down from her left nostril to her upper lip. She rubbed it away with the back of her hand.

“Don't worry about it,” she said. “Where's mum?”

The other seven year old glanced suspiciously at him, then pointed at the aisle they had been about to check next. His sister pulled Yota around the corner and nearly straight into the bulging stomach of a tall woman wearing a white dress decorated with red and blue flowers. He cowered in anticipation but she stopped before they could collide as if she had seen him from the corner of her eye. Her soft hand was large on his blotchy shoulder and smelt like freshly used soap.

“Hello,” she said gently, bending down but remaining mindful of her stomach. “Are you okay?”

“I don't think he is,” said his slightly older saviour. “I think he needs help.”

Yota cringed as her mother noticed the smeared bloodstain on her face, then scanned him from head to toe. He tried to curl them inwards but was sure she had already spotted his long grubby nails

“Do you think you could tell me what's wrong?” she asked, her tone still mild, and the girl at his side didn't release his hand, even after he started to sweat more.

“My mama,” he said shakily, gaze lowered. “I don't want – my mama – to die.”

~

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Her dad drove them all to the police station, then all the way to Yota's house behind an accompanying police vehicle. The only part he remembered with relative clarity was when he had been instructed to stay in the car along with the girl, her mother, and her little brother as the two officers and her dad went to investigate the situation at home.

“You can put it on properly,” said the girl, patting the hanging sleeve of her sweatshirt. She stopped instantly when he winced. “Sorry, I wasn't trying to hurt you.”

He tried to conceal his bruised upper arms with both hands and held himself together as he sat in between her and her brother, who wouldn't stop staring at him.

“Are you cold, Yota?” asked her mum, her dark eyes framed by the rear view mirror. “We can turn the heater on, if you like?”

He shook his head slowly and kept his attention on the pathway leading to his house. He had been forced to reveal his name, address, and every other personal detail they needed to identify him at the station, and he had a feeling he would pay for it somehow.

His mum always warned him not to tell anyone about whatever went on at home because it would make his dad even more angry. He couldn't forget the cold sheen of tears in her eyes that day as she smiled and hugged him tight. Nor the way her ribs had pressed painfully against his, her cage-shaped pendant leaving an brief imprint over his breastbone.

“Are you hungry?” asked the girl. He shook his head again. “Do you want to sleep?”

His eyelids always seemed perpetually filled with liquid, his bones ready to shatter at the slightest touch, yet both always managed to stay intact no matter how harsh his dad's fists were. His stomach growled, quietly, as if it knew better than to draw more attention to him.

“Here, Hikari,” said the girl's mum, passing her a bunch of bananas from the passenger side seat. “We might have to wait for a while so eat these in the meantime. You must be hungry after practice.”

“Thanks, mum,” she replied. “Do you want one?”

“I've got one already.” Her mum held up the aforementioned fruit.

Hikari nodded and broke off another one from the bunch, tapping it cautiously against the tip of Yota's nose. Startled, he turned to her but her expression was malice-free as she offered it to him.

“Here you are,” she said. “We might not be able to have dinner for a long time so you might as well eat, right?”

His stomach had gradually coalesced into a single knot but he took the banana from her anyway. She smiled and leaned over him to give one to her little brother, who peeled it at once and started eating it as if he hadn't been fed in days. The long object that had hung from Hikari's shoulder when they first met was currently cradled by her feet and knees, its tip level with her upper body.

“This is my gun,” she told him, unzipping its case to show him half of its black and vivid blue length. “It's a Double Eagle M83A1.”

He couldn't understand why any parents would buy their child a gun, nor how she was allowed to walk around with one when she couldn't have been older than ten. Particularly when even other adults in their home country weren't allowed to do so. He jerked back as she tilted it towards him.

“It's not a real one,” she said hastily. “Dad got it for my birthday so I could keep playing airsoft. Do you want to hold it?”

“Maybe we should let Yota eat first,” said Hikari's mum with an indulgent smile. “Then maybe he'll be ready to hear all about your training.”

He dug his thumbnails into the peel of the fruit but made no move to detach it. It split easily under the slight pressure, pushed to the limit by the expansion of its contents. The old wounds on his body burned but raised voices snatched his attention away from them. The police were walking his handcuffed dad over to their car, holding one arm each.

In the semi-darkness, his enraged expression was barely visible but his desperate movements as he tried to escape radiated an all too familiar violence. He still wore the same cropped beige trousers and sleeveless vest that was grey instead of white. He tried to kick one of the officers, clearly screaming various profanities at them, and the other policeman spoke rapidly into his radio, his face taut.

Hikari's mum started to get out of the car seconds before the smile fell off her face completely and she closed the door behind her. The word 'back up' slipped into the vehicle and Yota's stomach rocked alarmingly as Hikari's dad entered his field of vision. The headlights highlighted his ashen features and he took off his glasses, rubbing an arm across his eyes. He caught his wife's gaze and shook his head, then looked directly at Yota through the wind-shield.

Hikari's mum covered her mouth with a hand and the girl herself tried to place a reassuring hand over his. The corners of her smile flicked downwards and he clamped his hands over his ears as the police officers forced his dad into their car. Hikari's dad spoke to her mum and helped her back into their car before he approached the door on her brother's side.

Yota pulled his knees up to his chest and blocked the world out, yet he heard the door open and her dad speak to him.

“Yota, do you want to come back to our house tonight?”

“No,” he said, the word enormous in his mouth.

“Your dad has to go with the police but you don't have to,” continued Hikari's dad. “Actually it's better if you don't, at the moment.”

“I want to go home.” His breath left moist marks on his half bare thighs, his brow crushed against the top of his knees.

“You can't go there just yet,” explained the older man. “I can tell you why once –”

“No!” Yota curled himself up into a tighter ball as his throat ached and the shell of his ears stung within his grip on either side. “I want my mama.”

“Yota, your mum is –”

“No,” he whimpered. Tears raced down his cheeks but it didn't matter which one was the winner. “I want to go to mama.”

Hikari's brother started to cry and was instantly comforted by her dad. He knew they were all looking at each other over the top of his head and that he was making things difficult for them by not doing what they asked of him. He didn't know how long it would take for their kindness to transform into cruelty and he winced as fingers brushed the back of his own.

Hikari uncurled his hands and placed them on his opposite shoulders, then arranged her sweatshirt until it covered him better before she shielded his ears with her own hands. Her right arm lay protectively across his upper back, her left hand settled upon his upper arm, and her ribs rose and fell steadily against his.

It was the only thing that stopped him from breaking completely that night in the back of her stable family's car, even as his own fragmented outside of it.