"The cold wind slices through the cold streets of Shinjuku's night like a forgotten blade, hungry for a victim. A teenager lumbers, staggering raw flesh, clothes shredded, blood crusting him like a second, bruised skin. Each step leaves a footprint in frozen mud.
Clapps…clapps…clapps.
Footsteps echo, mocking. They're the heartbeat of a city that doesn't care. Sadori freezes, his gaze yanked upward. The moon hangs like a surgeon's scalpel, and millions of indifferent stars gloat in the black, spectators to his unraveling.
'Strange,'
he whispers, his voice a splinter. His fist clenched so tight the nails bite crescents into his palms. He tastes iron his own, the night's, the rejection's and buries the ache so it won't consume him. He limps home, a ghost in his own darkness.
Morning bleeds in, a reluctant light. Sadori and his little sister, in crisp school uniforms a mockery of hope walk to the bus. Timi is hummingbird, oblivious.
'Oni-san, there's a guy who smiled at me yesterday at school and his name is bobb! Isn't that cute?' timi said getting into her older brother nerves. Sadori's jaw clenched like a vise. 'timi, shut up. I'm trying to think.' He scrambles for a better excuse anything to dam the flood inside, and she falls silent, confused.
Her grin digs like a tiny, inadvertent shovel into his exposed nerves 'Uh, someone sounds jealous. Is it because you got rejected… like, oh! yes if remember correctly forty times?'
Sadori halts. The asphalt spins. The night's cuts gopen, rivers of salt in every wound. Flashbacks pounce, teeth bared.
A girl turns, uniform neat, voice in a polite knife slicing precision 'Sadori-san, I love him. The guy on the basketball team.'
A red thread in his chest snaps, and the fends fracture. He feels the pieces scatter.
sasai next. Both stood in an open place, the air was so soft and warm. so he ask his heart out, only to get it's pieces with the edge of the sword. Sasai bluches her face turned reds.
All my life there's this guy, who always hold a special place in my heart-- she didn't finished when she's noticed she was standing alone all by herself.
Sadori-san...!"
Ukiya next. They step into a cold shadows where hope goes to die. He asks, his voice a threadbare prayer.
"Do you… maybe…"
She blushes into a name, her face alight with someone else's glory 'Yutsuki Kazama. He saved us all. My heart beats for him.'
Sadori vanishes. He isn't there. Only a hollow echoes. The laughing pack corners him in circles, their joy a gasoline-soaked torch,
'World record, forty rejections! Wow, Hajime. You're a legend in humiliation.' one of the the gang member said laughing hard.
Sadori begins walking his way home , Rain falls like shards, but he's numb. Icicles form in his veins. He turns, looking at the packs, eyes brimming, the weight of unshed tears calcifying his throat. The mockers' laughter sours, but it's too late he's already ash. One of them cracks, tone awkward.
' how sad..!" We're sorry, Sadori-san… we didn't mean…'
timi breaks the heavy trune 'So, were you saying, oni-san?'
Sadori forces a smile, a papier-mâché mask, 'Forget it. I have a girlfriend now.'
The lie trembles. The bus screeches, a mechanical monster indifferent to his insides. They climb in. The silence inside swallows them whole, and Sadori folds into a seat, a crusted thing pretending to breathe.