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Tyson FoxFlame
Author of 38 Stories |
Wow, I seriously haven’t written in the Kingdom Hearts section forever. I’m even surprising myself that I came back. But of course, there’re a few reasons why…
First of all, I started browsing through random things and reading different Sora/Riku fics including One for the Band by Falaphesian and two of Slashapalooza’s fics. Go check them out.
Secondly, I have a pretty strong feeling that this is a solid idea that hasn’t been done before. If it has, somebody please let me know.
Third, who cares, this will just be fun for me.
AU, Soriku pairing, maybe a little bit of other couplings if I see they fit.
Summary: The family was broken, made up of alcoholics, convicts, asylum patients, and the youngest a prostitute. After immense rehab and isolation, Sora Tanaka was released into the real world once more as an ex-whore and a renewed teen. He thought he had finally let go of his old ways, that is, until he met Riku. Guess old habits die hard.
Mmkay, well, let’s get this show on the road!
Disclaimer: don’t own everything outside of the actual games (KH and KH: CoM) so you can’t blame me.
Warning: Shounen-ai, might turn into full-blown Yaoi. Can’t stomach the thought, then I suggest you turn back now…it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Yes, indeed the boy was what one would describe as normal. That is, if you didn’t count the fact that he was handcuffed to the railing in front of him.
Why he was handcuffed, he had no clue really. It wasn’t as though he was going to suddenly jump off of the boat into the water below, hoping to get chopped up by the propellers. He wasn’t insane; that was his cousin Lulu. She’s the one who got shipped off to the mental hospital because she wanted to buy a bomb from one of her friends to blow up her geometry class. She really did have issues she needed to work out and Sora really didn’t care either way because truthfully, Lulu scared him. A lot.
Then again, at least she wasn’t a drug dealer like his Uncle Irvine. Who would have ever guessed that the goofy cowboy sold 50 CCs of cocaine to under-aged children behind the video arcade every day at 4pm? Then again, it wasn’t all that out of place in the Tanaka family. The boy himself was nowhere close to being a drug dealer either but he also didn’t get himself landed in a mental hospital, or juvenile hall for that matter.
Not for very long anyway.
Not as long as his brother, Laguna, had been sentenced there for the murder of the little girl down the street from their house. Laguna had claimed that she wouldn’t stop singing loudly in her yard and that he had gotten annoyed. So to solve the problem, he shot her, right in broad daylight. He had spent three years in juvenile hall and was recently moved to the normal jail due to his 18th birthday coming and going. He would remain there for another eight years or so.
His mother, Quistis, wasn’t around any longer due to the fact that she had committed suicide not too long after he was born. She couldn’t stand the family any longer and the thought of raising another child to become something else looked down upon in society was too much for her to handle. Apparently, she had her own metal issues to deal with.
He was born without a father, so that left him being raised in the hands of Laguna, who was only two years older, and his oldest brother, Vincent. Vincent and he were about 8 years apart and despite how much he adored his older brother and relied on him, he was still afraid that one day Vincent was going to suffocate him in his sleep.
Sometime between their mother’s death and Laguna being thrown in jail, Vincent developed a condition known as bipolar. It was very possible that he had always been that way and nobody ever noticed, but the fact of the matter was, it was very clear by this point. Vincent would have his good days where nothing could damper his mood. Those were the days that made his younger brothers happy. Then of course, he would have his bad days and be in a very foul mood. When Vincent was in a foul mood, he drank. When Vincent drank, he drank heavily. And when he drank heavily, he got drunk and lost control of what he was actually saying and doing. There had been many nights in the Tanaka household that the youngest had spent hiding in the broom closet under the stairs while Vincent threw everything breakable against the walls, yelling in rage at absolutely nothing and mutilating himself on the dining room table.
It didn’t help any that he had learned fighting techniques from their cousin waspart of a gang that ran around the town creating havoc everywhere they went. Thanks to those techniques, Vincent destroyed many a wall in his drunken state.
That still didn’t explain why the brunet boy was handcuffed to the railing of a ferry. He wasn’t a mental patient, a drug dealer, a murderer, an alcoholic, a gang member, and he wasn’t going to commit suicide (although he had thought about it once or twice). Instead, he was something that was only dangerous to him and could only cause damage to his own body.
Sora Tanaka, the youngest member of the Tanaka family, was an underage prostitute.
At the age of 14, Sora set out every Friday and Saturday night, heading to the Third District of Traverse Town, where all of the night life was. Decked out in skimpy, tight, and often black outfits accompanied with bondage accessories and thick make-up, he wouldn’t be wandering the streets for more then ten minutes at a time before he found a customer willing to pay him highly, if he performed right. Most of his customers were women much older then himself, plastered out of their minds and just looking for a good time. Sora never felt guilty about taking their money from them, not when he fully deserved it. Besides, it wasn’t as if the money was going towards a selfish purpose.
All right, so it mostly went to food and clothing for himself, but that was only because Vincent didn’t like to venture out of the house to buy things for him. He didn’t blame his brother for it though. It wasn’t a very good feeling to know that every time you step out of your home, someone was going to criticize you just because of your last name. Sora knew the feeling all too well.
However, no one knew he was an illegal whore. The kids his own age never ventured into that part of town so late at night, mainly because it was against their parents’ wishes. Sora was thankful for that at least; that way, no one could see what he was doing with his life. It was his business; he didn’t need to get everybody else involved like they had when Lulu went crazy and Laguna killed the little girl down the street. He was perfectly content with having mindless sex for a decent amount of money.
Maybe content wasn’t the right word…sure, he enjoyed being paid and all, but was it really worth it? Then again, was he really in a position that he could be questioning it? He always told himself no, so he continued. The make-up, bad lighting, and blurred vision made the young teen look to be at least 23 instead of his own 14 years. Naturally, the blue-eyed male took advantage of this and gathered more customers weekly. They all thought he was in his 20’s and he let them believe it. No one was the wiser.
That’s what he thought at least.
At the age of 15 on October 31st, he was caught and arrested by a woman police officer posing as a customer. Despite his protests, the police department contacted Vincent at home. It wasn’t exactly the best night for him to be wasted beyond belief and it didn’t quite click in his head that his little brother was being held in custody for under-aged prostitution. So Sora was a slut, big deal. That was the last thought that Vincent voiced before hanging up the phone and confirming the belief that the entire department had come up with.
The boy was messed up from being a part of the Tanaka family and it was in no stable shape for him to continue living there.
After several hours of trying to get bits and pieces about his family out of Sora and attempting to make new arrangements for the boy, he ended up falling asleep in the chair in the office, still wearing his heavy make-up, black bondage pants decorated with zippers, chains, and handcuffs, skin-tight crimson tank top and fishnet long-sleeved top over it.
By the time he had woken up the next morning, he discovered that he was to be sent to a rehabilitation center for troubled youth for the next several months. They didn’t want to send him to a mental hospital in fear that he would meet up with someone in his family, which was quite understandable in Sora’s mind. Afterwards, they would find some new foster family for him to live with.
This was why Sora currently found himself on the ferry traveling to some place called Destiny Islands. He turned his head again, spotting his companion, and temporary father still standing behind him.
“Baralai, can’t we please get rid of the handcuffs? I don’t plan on doing anything,” Sora pleaded the man quietly. The white-haired man smiled sadly and shook his head.
“Sorry kid, can’t do that. Gippal’s orders say that you have to be chained up and that I have to watch you at all times,” he explained to the 16-year-old.
“Yeah, but you know that I won’t do anything!” Sora pouted in protest, turning his body around as best as he could with his arm attached to a metal bar.
“You’re right, I know you won’t. Gippal doesn’t. I think he’s afraid that you’ll run off and rape somebody,” Baralai chuckled, earning another small glare from the brunet.
“That’s not funny, Baralai…” Baralai smirked and ruffled Sora’s hair affectionately.
“Ah, I know. I’m just kidding around. You should know that by now,” he pointed out. Sora nodded in return. He did know that. In fact, he knew a lot of things about Baralai. After he was released from rehab six months after his arrest, the hunt to find Sora a new family began. While this was taking place, the teen needed a place to stay. Baralai, the assistant chief of the police station volunteered to take him into his home until they could find a stable and safe environment. Gippal, the head chief, didn’t think it was such a good idea at first, but Baralai managed to convince him otherwise, which is how Sora ended up spending the next five months sharing an apartment with the older man. Over those five months, Baralai did some rehab of his own on Sora, helping the boy back on his feet.
It was a shame that they finally found a family for him. But both men knew that Baralai couldn’t afford keeping Sora around. After all, Baralai was barely home due to work anyway. Gnawing on his lower lip, Sora raised his eyes back onto Baralai’s face.
“So who am I moving in with exactly?” he asked, tugging at a strand of blonde hair that remained from the time he streaked it last year.
“Well,” Baralai started off and searched through his pockets. He soon came up with a piece of paper with some information scrawled on it. “Their name is Harada…”
Stuck inside cleaning out the guest room.
The girl sighed loudly, blowing her bangs upward in frustration. She had been working on the room for the past two hours and it didn’t even look like she had made a dent. There was so much junk piled up in every corner of the room that it was overwhelming. And the worse part was that the damn phone kept ringing. Being the only one home, she had no other choice but to answer the accursed thing. Hopping over a pile of old newspapers, she jogged down the hall and retrieved the cordless phone from her room.
“Kairi here,” she answered, leaning against the wall of the hallway.
“Hey Kai, what’s up?” a male voice came through smoothly from the other end of the line, belonging to one of her best friends, Riku.
“Oh my gosh!” Kairi all but screamed in Riku’s ear. She could visually imagine the silver-haired boy blinking in confusion and rubbing his ear.
“Dare I even ask what’s going on in the Harada house?” he asked her warily. Kairi groaned and slid to the floor.
“Ri-iku,” she drawled out his voice in a whiny tone. “It’s terrible!”
“What’s terrible?”
“I have to finish clearing out the guest room in an hour and I’ve already been working on it for two and it doesn’t even look like I did anything!”
“Well, have you?” Kairi paused and got up from her seat on the ground, slowly walking towards the other room. Peeking inside, she took note of the open magazine she had been reading still sitting on the bed and everything else that had remained untouched.
“Okay, so not really. But point is, it has to be done and I can’t do it by myself!” she whined again. Riku sighed and hummed.
“Why does it have to be done in an hour? Family coming?”
“Not exactly,” Kairi replied, opening up a garbage bag and throwing out old newspapers and random scraps.
“Oh?” Riku said in a questioning tone, now fully interested in what his red-haired friend had to say.
“Yeah. Well, you remember how my mom’s a social services worker?”
“Uh-huh…”
“Well, she got a call a few days ago from the social services program in Traverse Town.”
“Isn’t that like, a really long way from here?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the point. Anyway, they said that they were trying to find a home for this boy because his family life isn’t exactly stable and they couldn’t just stick him with any family ‘cause he’s kind of got his own issues too.”
“Like what?” Kairi snorted at her friend’s lack of memory.
“You know I can’t tell you stuff like that. My mom wasn’t even supposed to tell me. Anyway, after hearing the entire story, my mom felt sorry for him and told them that she didn’t have to find him a family because he could come live with us. So basically, in now less then one hour, I’m going to have some complete rapist stranger in my house and nobody cares about my consent on this whole thing!”
“…rapist?” Kairi froze. Had she said that aloud?
“Kairi? What rapist?” Riku repeated himself. That answered her question quickly.
“Never mind, Riku. He’s not a rapist.”
“Are you sure?”
“If he was a rapist, do you really think my parents would let him move in?” Kairi said plainly. Riku was silent for a few moments, obviously thinking it over.
“…yes, because they don’t love you.”
“Shut up!” Kairi gasped while Riku laughed at her.
“Kidding. Anyway, so what’s wrong with this kid’s family?”
“I don’t really know. My mom didn’t tell me that part. She just told me about why he’s moving in and that’s that. They’re out now picking up some things for dinner and then they’re going to collect him from the ferry dock.”
“How old is he?”
“16 like me.”
“So he’ll be going to our school then.”
“Yep, seems that way.”
“Are you excited?”
“About what?”
“Having a guy in your house, duh.” Riku snickered. Kairi rolled her eyes at her friend’s logic and moved onto the dusting.
“I don’t know. I’m kind of indifferent because I haven’t met him, but yeah, I’m excited about having somebody around.”
“Well, if worse comes to worse, you could always move in with me,” Riku offered. Kairi laughed and shook her head.
“Thanks, but I don’t think that will be necessary. Besides, you snore.”
“Do not!”
“Do so. But I don’t have time for this argument, I have to finish cleaning. I’ll talk to you tomorrow at school.”
“All right, take care, Kai.”
“Same to you, Riku.”
“Weird, that rhymed.”
“You’re weird.”
“I know. See ya.”
“Bye.” Kairi got in the last word and hung up the phone, setting it down on the now clean night stand. Already the room was starting to look better. Darting back to her room, she popped a CD into her stereo and cranked up the volume so she could hear it from across the hall. She turned it up even louder as she plugged in the vacuum, singing along at the top of her lungs while she vacuumed every inch of the room.
“I almost got drunk at school at 14, where I almost made out with the homecoming queen, who almost went on to be Ms. Texas, but lost to a slut with much bigger breastes. I almost dropped out to move to L.A. where I was almost famous for almost a day, and I almost had you, but I guess that doesn’t cut it, almost loved you, I almost wished you woulda loved me too!” She began dancing around tidying up the room, rearranging pillows on the window seat and replacing the musky yellow sheets with crisp white ones she had washed that morning. Tossing the old sheets out into the hall, she began singing with the words once again.
“I almost held up, a grocery store, where I almost did five years and then seven more, ‘cause I almost got popped for a fight with a thug, ‘cause he almost made off with a bunch of the drugs, that I almost got hooked on cause you ran away, and I wish woulda had the nerve to ask you to stay, and I almost had you, but I guess that doesn’t cut it, almost had you, and I didn’t even know it. You kept me guessin’ and now I’m destined, to spend my time missin’ you, I almost wished you woulda loved me too!” Kairi flung open the curtains to let sunshine into the room and continued singing and dancing to the song that was currently playing. She opened the closets to make sure there was nothing inside and was rather thrilled to find them empty. It saved her a lot of time and trouble. Due to her loud singing and music, she failed to notice that the front door had slammed closed. She also failed to notice that footsteps were walking up the stairs as she plugged in all of the wires to the TV and threw the bedspread back over the sheets
“Here I go thinkin’ about all the things I could of done, I’m gonna need a forklift ‘cause all the baggage weighs a ton. I know we had our problems, I can’t remember one. I almost forgot to say something else, and if I can’t fit it in I’ll keep it all to myself. I almost wrote a song, about you today, but I tore it all up and then I threw it away!” Suddenly, she became aware of the fact that the music had stopped playing and that there was applause behind her. Whirling around quickly without falling over, Kairi spotted her father standing in the doorway of the room, clapping his hands with an amused grin on his face.
“Thank you for the lovely show, Kai, but you’re supposed to be cleaning the room,” Kenta Harada smiled at his daughter who was slowly creeping back into a corner of the room.
“Well, I am cleaning, Daddy. Just look at the room, perfectly spotless.” And indeed it was. If you didn’t count the fact that the vacuum was knocked onto its side in the middle of the floor. Hastily standing it upright, she looked back at the doorway and saw her mother had come to join them.
“Looks good, sweetie,” Hitari Harada said in approval, allowing her blue eyes to scan the area.
“Thanks, Mom. Did you go pick him up?” Kairi asked, wheeling the vacuum out of the guest room and into the broom closet.
“We did, he’s downstairs right now in the living room,” Kenta replied and led his wife and daughter back down the stairs, turning to the right into the family living room. Standing in front of the fireplace looking at the pictures on the mantle, Kairi saw a boy with spiky brown locks, dressed plainly in a white t-shirt and blue jean shorts. The odd thing was, he wasn’t wearing shoes. Hitari smiled and walked over to him, lightly touching his shoulder. Jumping in surprise, the boy allowed his eyes to flicker away from the pictures to the kind face of his new foster mom.
“You’ve already met my husband and me, so now I’d like you to meet our daughter,” Hitari explained to the brunet who merely nodded. Taking him by the shoulders, Hitari turned him around to face Kairi and Kenta.
“This is our daughter, Kairi. Kai, this is Sora Tanaka. He’ll be staying with us for however long he pleases,” Hitari said, taking care of the introductions that may have surely been awkward otherwise. Kairi smiled softly and studied the boy’s features. Large ocean-colored eyes watched her dully, lacking in the sparkle of a happy teen.
‘Then again, his lifestyle wasn’t exactly something he could be happy with.’ Kairi reminded herself. The front of his hair had been streaked with a blonde color at one time, but now the color was beginning to fade away. His face was graced with a polite and somewhat timid smile of his own, letting on the fact that he was more nervous then she was about the entire situation. Coming out of her trance, Kairi grinned wider and began to talk.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Sora. Hopefully, you won’t get too fed up with me any time soon!” she said enthusiastically, causing the other teen to laugh lightly.
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” he replied softly, looking up at Kairi through thick lashes covered in…blue mascara? Kairi blinked a few times, making sure she wasn’t just seeing things, but indeed, Sora was wearing mascara, along with black eyeliner and a hint of silver eye shadow. Knowing that she was staring, she quickly averted her gaze and glanced at her mother.
“So, what’s for dinner?”
“Your father kept begging me to order a pizza,” Hitari sighed in exasperation. Kenta shrugged and grinned again.
“What? Can you blame me? Besides, I was just thinking of what the kids would want for food,” he defended himself, winking jokingly at his wife. Kairi giggled behind her hand and Sora gave off another half-hearted grin, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“I like that idea, Dad. What do you think, Sora?” The red-head turned back to the new boy, only to find him gone.
“Where’d he go?” Hitari questioned, looking around the living room for any sign of the brunet. A few moments later, Sora returned with the other cordless phone in his hand.
“What kind of pizza does everyone want? I’m buying,” he stated afterwards, raising protests from both Kairi and Hitari.
“Sora you don’t have to do that, you just moved in!” Kairi exclaimed and attempted to grab the phone away from him.
“Honey you should save your money for other stuff,” Hitari added, trying to corner Sora on the other side. However, after spending his entire life as a Tanaka, Sora knew every trick in the book and managed to wiggle his way out of the female Haradas’ grasp, with Kenta standing there shouting ‘pepperoni!’ all the while.
“Hi, I’ll take two large pepperoni pizzas and a two-liter bottle of Coke delivered to…um…” Placing his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, Sora looked around to all three of the Haradas. “What’s the address of this house?” he asked them.
“24 Crestwater,” Kairi answered without thinking. It wasn’t until Sora relayed the addressed and hung up the phone that she realized what she had done.
“Sora, seriously, you don’t have to pay.” The boy shrugged and sat at the counter in the kitchen.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s the least I can do when you guys are letting me stay here.”
“Yeah but aren’t you going to want that money for something else?” Kenta countered back as he sat at the table. Sora turned around in his bar stool and faced Kenta.
“Well maybe, but spending $15.67 isn’t going to hurt me any,” the brunet rationalized. Kenta nodded in agreement.
“All right, if you’re absolutely sure. Why don’t you go upstairs and unpack while we wait then? Kairi will help you, won’t you, Kai?” Kenta addressed his daughter in a tone that said ‘Do-this-whether-you-like-it-or-not.’ Kairi nodded and began to walk through the kitchen back through the living room and up the stairs.
“C’mon, Sora. You’re staying up here,” she called over her shoulder. The boy jumped off of the stool and barreled after the blue-eyed girl. Taking the steps two at a time in his haste to catch up, he was surprised to find Kairi waiting on the landing for him. With another graceful smile, she took Sora by the wrist and led him to the end of the hall to the last room on the left.
“Okay see, that’s my room,” she pointed at the door across the hall room the door they were standing in front of. “And this is my parents’ room.” she also pointed at the door on their left that was at the very end of the hall.
“That’s a closet,” she indicated the door next to Sora’s new room. “And that’s the bathroom. You might get those two confused for a bit but you’ll remember soon enough,” she pointed at the door on the other side of her bedroom. “The room at the end of the hall on the left is my dad’s office. You can go in there whenever you like to use one of the computers. We have two, one for regular use and one for my dad’s business. Just remember that the black one is business, gray is normal. Still with me so far?” she asked the boy who was staring at her with a slightly dazed expression.
“Uh, I think so. Use gray, bathroom on the right,” he repeated what Kairi had told him. Kairi giggled again and nodded.
“Right. Then the room at the end of the hall on the right is just a room my parents use to entertain guests, so you don’t have to worry about it that much. Downstairs is the laundry room. You walk through the kitchen and there’s another door in there that leads to it. The den is also downstairs. If you want to go watch TV or something, instead of taking the stairs upstairs, go to the right a bit and go down the smaller flight of stairs. There’s a couch and a few recliners in there, along with a standard-sized TV. And that’s about it. Wanna see your room and have me shut up?”
“Well, you don’t really have to shut up, but sure,” Sora replied, testing out a casual grin cautiously. It became apparent to him that Kairi loved to talk, a lot. She was almost as talkative as he used to be, which didn’t really bother Sora in any way. Although, he couldn’t help but wonder…
“And here we are!” Kairi interrupted his musings by pushing open the door behind him and leading him into his bedroom. Blinking at the cleanliness of the room, Sora stepped in and sighed in relief as his bare, sore feet hit the fluffy cream-colored carpet. From his position in the doorway, he saw a window with a bench under it straight across from him, adorned with dark red pillows. On the left side of the window was a dresser and to the right of the window was a TV stand, complete with TV and VCR. On the wall to the right of the window wall was the bed, facing so that the foot of it was in the middle of the room. He guessed that it was about a Queen-sized bed, decorated with royal blue covers and more red pillows. The wall opposite of the bed was occupied by a closet and on the left of the door was a writing desk with a large lamp on top of it.
“Wow,” he chuckled and stepped further in the room, spinning around in a full circle and landing on his bed.
“You like it? Mom and I didn’t really know how else we could make it look nicer, so we just decided you could decorate it yourself,” Kairi trailed off, sitting in the computer chair that was in front of the desk.
“No, it’s perfect! It’s actually a lot nicer then my room at my own house,” Sora laughed again, spreading himself all over his bed as far as he could stretch.
“Glad to hear it,” Kairi said with a smile and watched the boy in front of her, rolling around on the bed like a puppy.
“Dude, is this a water bed?” Sora asked suddenly, sitting upright and promptly falling over due to the motion of the bed.
“Uh-huh. We like having out guests be comfortable.”
“You people absolutely are incredible!” Sora beamed and bounced on his bed once more.
“Yeah, we know,” Kairi retorted with a smirk, causing Sora to stick his tongue out at the girl. Smiling to himself, he cuddled up further into his pillows and sighed.
“Something wrong?” Kairi asked the brunet, watching his happy expression slowly fade into something that could be described as pensive.
“Well, no not exactly…”
“Then what?” Kairi scooted the chair closer to the bed, sitting directly in front of Sora.
“Kairi, did your mom tell you…about me?” he left the question open-ended for Kairi to figure out on her own.
“What do you mean?” All right, so maybe she wouldn’t get his hint.
“I mean about my past…my family…everything…” Sora looked away from her eyes, finding his hands to be more fascinating at the moment.
“She told me about you…how you were a…yeah,” Kairi finished lamely, not wanting to actually call him a prostitute in fear that he would be offended.
“Just say it. I was an under-age illegal prostitute. I have accepted the fact a long time ago,” Sora assured her, even though he still refused to look at her.
“Still, I didn’t know how you would react…”
“I don’t care anymore,” Sora mumbled, letting on that he indeed still did care. Kairi decided that that was the correct moment to change the subject.
“That’s all she told me. What else should I know?” she asked, leaning her elbows on her knees.
“Well, let’s see. My mother killed herself three months after I was born, my oldest brother is a bipolar alcoholic who probably doesn’t notice I’m gone, my other older brother murdered one of our neighbors and is residing in jail in Traverse Town, my uncle’s a drug dealer, my cousins are gangsters and insane, and, um…I just turned 16 at the end of August, my favorite color is blue, I dropped out of school for a year because I couldn’t stand it and home-schooled myself, I became a prostitute when I was 14, got caught when I was 15, spent six months in rehab, lived with the assistant police chief in Traverse Town for five months, moved here, and I love chocolate. That’s Sora Tanaka in a nutshell I guess,” Sora finished in a slightly bitter tone, gnawing on his lower lip.
“Wow…I’m sorry I asked…that’s…” Kairi found herself struggling for words while watching Sora slowly lose his composure.
“I know, terrible, you’re sorry, blah, blah, blah. Don’t sweat it, I’ve heard it all before,” Sora mumbled before he rolled over, crawled under his covers, and closed his eyes. Biting his lip to keep it from quivering, he took a deep, silent breath and snuggled into one of the pillows. “Hate to be rude, but do you mind leaving for a while? I’m kind of tired…” Kairi glanced over to the clock that was on the bedside table. It only read 6:30 in the evening, but she pushed the chair back into its original spot and stood up.
“No problem, I’ll let you catch up on your rest…I’ll wake you up tomorrow morning. Mom and Dad already enrolled you into my high school,” Kairi said to the boy who already appeared to be asleep. Stepping across the room, she drew the curtains to block the sun and headed out of Sora’s bedroom, closing the door gently behind her.
“Who ever would have thought someone so innocent-looking was so messed up?” she murmured to herself and walked down the hall into the office. Sitting herself in front of the gray computer, she logged onto her internet and signed into her instant messenger. Under the name LightPrincess (she knew it wasn’t original, but she really didn’t care), she scanned her list to see if anybody important was on. She heard a high-pitched bing! and looked at the window that had appeared.
SarcasticShadow has just signed in.
Grinning gratefully, Kairi clicked on the name and started typing.
Hey Riku, what’s up? A few moments later, Riku chose to reply.
Not a lot, Kai. Just checkin’ mail and such. How’re things at the Harada house? Kairi frowned at the screen and began typing her reply.
Not as great as I thought they’d be but not terrible either.
Oh. How’re things with the guy?
That’s the thing, not as great but not terrible. Found out about his family!-sarcasm-
Hey, sarcasm’s my thing remember? And what’s wrong with his family?
It’s so…messed up! Seriously, he explained everything to me and it’s nuts!
…are you going to tell me?
I don’t know if I can. You’d have to ask Sora yourself.
Is that his name?
Sora?
Yeah.
Yeah, Sora Tanaka. He’s coming to school tomorrow so he’ll meet the whole gang, I guess. He’s really nice actually for somebody who’s an ex-prostitute.
…a WHAT? Kairi froze and groaned, knowing she shouldn’t have said that to Riku. Now he’d be pestering her all night.
Never mind, Riku. I gotta go though, so I’ll see ya tomorrow! Quickly, Kairi signed off before Riku could send any more questions her way.
“That was rather strange…okay yeah, she can be spacey sometimes, but that was weird even for her,” Riku confirmed and re-read the conversation. The only thing that bothered him about the whole thing was the second to last statement she had said.
‘He’s really nice actually for somebody who’s an ex-prostitute.’ Those words ran through his head over and over again, never stopping long enough for him to think about them.
“What if he tries to sleep with Kairi?” Riku asked himself, this being his main worry. He thought over that idea and shrugged it off.
“Nah, Kairi would never let something like that happen,” he continued talking to himself as he stared at the screen. “Well then, I wonder what that makes him,” he voiced his second thought. “And I wonder what’s wrong with his family,” he added in the third thought. Riku shook his head furiously. He hadn’t even met the boy yet and already he was concerning himself with his issues. That was Kairi’s job. After all, he was staying at Kairi’s house. Riku sighed to himself and finally closed the message window, staring out the real window of his room. The sky was beginning to grow darker as the sun set, giving the sky the illusion that it was bleeding.
Giving up on trying to answer questions he knew nothing about, Riku shut down his computer and pushed himself away from his desk. Wandering out of his bedroom, he headed for the living room and flopped down on his couch, turning on the TV for lack of anything better to do. He tried to block out everything Kairi had said to him by watching some mind-numbing cartoons but it didn’t work. There was only one thing that ran through Riku’s mind, over and over again, much like a CD on repeat.
‘Tomorrow I’m meeting an ex-prostitute. His name is Sora Tanaka. I wonder if he’s sane.’
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