Toma Tanaka - April 14th, Late EveningToma sat in his room, at his desk, papers and pencil shavings scattered in front of him messily. He leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of his soda as he looked out his window. He paused for a moment, staring at his reflection. The bruise on his upper-cheek was still there, of course. The boy briefly wondered how long it would take for it to disappear.
Hunching back over the desk, he decided that it didn't really matter. At least not as much as his right wrist, which was now wrapped up in compression-bandages.
With a stubborn frown, he picked up his pencil again with his left hand. Putting the tip to paper, he fought to answer the next math question, his hand refusing to cooperate with him. It was a simple question, but it took him a full minute to get his answer down.
Sitting back, he stared at his writing. It looked like it belonged to a three-year-old who was missing its thumbs. With an exasperated sigh, he tossed the pencil across the room and sunk into his chair, hand running through his hair.
As Toma eyed the paper, his door was knocked on. He looked over, to see his father standing at the doorway. Toma, tired from Track club, immediately felt himself waken, and he sat up, an uncertain look on his face. It wasn't often that his father left his workroom, and it was even more uncommon for him to come up to Toma's room -- when he had something to say, he always said it during supper.
"Hey, Toma. Do you have a minute?" the man said with something of a sheepish smile, though it wasn't very noticeable.
"Um, sure," Toma said, turning around in his seat to face his father better.
"What's wrong?" He stared at his father's face, and was surprised with what he saw. The usually stone-faced man looked as his son often did -- disheveled and tired.
"Good," he said with a small smile. "I promise I won't take too much of your time." He stepped further into the room, scratching the back of his neck. "I, uh... are you okay? Your cheek, I mean."
Toma was somewhat in shock, seeing his normally unwavering father acting like this. The question snapped him out of his stupor. "Oh, yeah, no, it's fine. It only hurts a bit when I touch it. And smile, I guess."
His father gave a small, forced laugh. "That's good." He paused again, looking like he had a weight on his shoulders. "I... I wanted to say sorry. For hitting you."
The boy's eyes widened as he realized that his father felt guilty; even enough to cause him to lose sleep, by the looks of it. Toma had put both of his parents through hell because of his own idiocy. He quickly pushed himself off of his chair and hugged his father tightly.
"Don't worry about it," he said with a laugh.
"You shouldn't be sorry about disciplining your kid when he acts like an ass. It's fine." He let go and stepped back, a reassuring smile on his face.
His father gave a frown. "It's not fine. I shouldn't have hit you. I--"
Toma cut him off. "You live and you learn then, I guess. No use in spending all your time thinking about the past, right?" He gave his father a bright smile.
The man opened his mouth to respond, but thought twice and returned a small, relieved smile. "Okay, I'll let you get back to work then." He paused. "I love you, Toma."
"Love you too," Toma answered. As his father walked out of the room, he didn't look as tired.
What the hell? Why had his father done the apologizing and he the forgiving? Senseless.
As Toma closed the door, he felt anger well up inside him. He wanted to break something, preferably himself. He had to be
better.Throwing a tantrum wouldn't do anything, so he picked up his thrown pencil and sat back down, ready to continue struggling with his left hand.
April 20th, After SchoolHarvester had turned up after being missing for a few days. While Toma hadn't felt as desperate to find the boy whom he had never met nor seen as he had with Noboru, he still did a bit of searching. It was nice to know the guy was okay.
More worrisome was the fact that two similar apparent kidnappings had happened in a short span of time. The circumstances surrounding both the disappearances and reappearances were equally mysterious. The whole thing had Toma's attention.
But for now, there was one other, slightly more pressing issue: Golden Week. A
full week of no school. Toma was already having trouble keeping busy. If he didn't figure things out quickly, this next week would be downright awful. It's not like he had a ton of friends here that he could make plans with -- beyond Aiko, it was hard to call anyone else anything more than acquaintances. It wasn't exactly how he had hoped the new school year to begin. Had he not been friendly and open enough? Maybe. He had been sort of quiet and broody the past several days.
Something to work on and fix, then.
Another thing to work on: finding a job. That was getting desperate. Toma was running stupidly low on money, lower than he had ever been since his first paycheck several years ago. And of course, working would be a good way to spend Golden Week.
So Toma found himself wandering around Warakuma again, walking into stores and politely asking if there were any job openings.
A dozen 'no''s later, the boy found himself standing outside of a small convenience store, a cold soft drink in his left hand. He held the can up and pressed it against the bruise on his cheek, giving a little sigh from both the cold and exasperation. The bruise had begun yellowing out, and would be gone completely soon enough. His wrist, however, was a little worse off than that. He still couldn't move it. Clearly he had done worse than simply sprain it, as he had originally thought.
With only his left hand, Toma nimbly cracked the drink open, and took a sip. That was the one advantage of not being able to use his good hand: he was getting fairly adept at using his left. He certainly wasn't ambidextrous, but being forced to use his weak hand for almost a full weak now, he found it cool that he could see an improvement.
The boy's phone vibrated in his pocket, causing him to put his drink down and fish it out. A text from another male in his class, with pictures attached. He opened them.
What.An...
interesting scene. Toma's first thought was that this probably wasn't something that he would want to show to others, had he been one of the four people depicted, but... it looked like the shirtless Noboru and the other boy were... striking poses? Which implied they weren't too embarrassed by the mob surrounding them. So maybe they were okay with the pictures being sent around?
Toma sent the compromising photos to Aiko.
"is this something he usually does" was the message.
