Chapter Text
Haruka gripped the already shaky window ledge tighter, mentally pleading with it to stay in place. If it collapsed now, Haruka would be flattened like a pancake. The problem wasn't just the rusty, barely-hanging-on ledge, but also Haruka's own slippery fabric gloves. He knew he couldn't leave any evidence, but he simply couldn't afford better quality gloves! Had they seen how much good leather gloves cost? No? Well, he had, and honestly, the prices almost made his eyes pop out!
With swift movements, he swung from one ledge to another, trying to hook his feet onto the brick protrusions. The building he lived in looked like it was about to fall apart, judging by its condition.
Finally – the last ledge before his own window. It was slightly further from the other windows due to the apartment's corner location. Haruka jumped. For a second, his heart stopped, but almost immediately it started beating again as he grabbed onto the ledge, which was sturdier than the others. Pulling himself up, he maneuvered his feet onto the ledge, settling precariously and letting one leg dangle slightly. Haruka pulled his only lock pick from his boot, the one he used to open every lock he encountered. He successfully opened the window, just as he had thousands of times before, and climbed into his apartment.
Darkness greeted him. There was no electricity in this apartment; at least, Haruka couldn't afford to pay for it. It got cold in winter, but it was still better than the orphanage or his aunt and uncle's house. His boots creaked across the floor, leaving dirty tracks behind, but Haruka wasn't particularly bothered. He walked over to the countertop – the place where Sakura did homework, ate, and cooked. Right now, he wouldn't mind something hot. The only option was ramen, and Sakura began to prepare it without complaint. It was 4:12 AM; he wouldn't have time to eat before school lunch, so now was the perfect time for a snack.
Placing a pot of water from a five-liter bottle – of which he had a supply, as Haruka paid for water selectively – on the gas stove, he sat down on his bare mattress. The sheet, used as a blanket, was crumpled into a ball. A black tail was visible from within, and Sakura had no intention of disturbing it yet.
He took off his mask, tossing it into the far corner of the room. He unzipped his black hoodie, which flew into the same corner as the mask. There was a clang of metal.
He was left with only a white T-shirt, on which a pink stain was clearly visible. Sakura wasn't used to being an optimist – blood on his T-shirt wasn't a good sign. He'd have to figure out how to wash it out, as it was the only T-shirt in his closet! Though he didn't even have a closet.
The damn fabric gloves, because of which he almost fell from a height of six floors nearly every time, flew into a pile with particular fury.
Haruka decided not to empty his pockets, full of weapons in both his pants and his hoodie. Maybe he'd do it tomorrow. He needed to eat and go to sleep! Tomorrow was his first day at a new school, which he'd barely managed to transfer to, and he shouldn't be late. At least to be in the teachers' good graces for a few minutes. The thought made him want to sigh heavily, but Sakura restrained himself.
He didn't care what these people thought of him.
He just needed to finish school.
While the water boiled, Sakura had nothing to do. Taking off his T-shirt and going to wash it wasn't an option. It was a noisy business, because if Haruka washed at home, he did it in an iron basin that roared no less than thunder. The neighbors would start banging on the door again, and he didn't need that. Tomorrow, if his boss gave in to persuasion and paid him last week's salary, he could go to the laundromat. But first, he'd buy food.
Sakura got up from the mattress just as he heard the water boiling on the stove and poured it over a package of ramen. He waited only a short while, about two minutes, and sat down to eat the undercooked noodles. Haruka drank all the broth, savoring the lingering taste on his tongue, stretching the pleasure of fullness for a few minutes. Without finishing the noodles, he closed the package – he'd take them for lunch tomorrow.
He lay down on the mattress to sleep in his T-shirt and pants, but he did take off his combat boots. His eyes were terribly heavy after the warm broth; Sakura would have gone to sleep even without a sheet, but he desperately needed to hold something in his hands while he slept.
"Come on," he said. "Get out, you fluffy bastard."
From the crumpled sheet, a black cat with a white spot right on the fur near its nose lazily emerged.
"You damn freeloader," Sakura grumbled, more for show than out of displeasure. The cat, yes, it had no name, Haruka just called it "cat," loved to hit him in the face when the sun rose, so he had every right to interrupt the cat's sleep at night.
Sakura wrapped himself in the sheet and fell asleep almost immediately. Thoughts of school faded into the background. The scratch on his side throbbed.
He woke up to a palpable poke on his face from a clawed paw. The cat stood nearby, diligently batting at his face with its paw, its expression the most sadistic imaginable. Haruka, peeling his stuck-together eyelashes apart, looked at the cat with a hazy gaze. He didn't want to go anywhere. His eyes closed, but Sakura was almost immediately hit in the face again. This time with claws.
"Ow!" He hissed softly, quickly grabbing his nose with his hand. There was a small scratch there, similar to the one he had on his side. Speaking of which, how was that?
Fortunately or unfortunately, he didn't know, Sakura didn't have time to examine various scratches from rebar. Under the cat's supervision, Haruka dressed in his school uniform, which he had been saving up for since last month, put a few notebooks in his backpack along with the leftover ramen, and left through the door. It was dangerous to enter the house through the main door at night, as there was a curfew in this musty dormitory. The door was locked and monitored by watchmen who simply slept at their posts and woke up to any excessive noise.
The door was flimsy; there was no point in locking it. It could be opened with a simple kick.
He hid all his important belongings under a broken floorboard right under the countertop, while what he didn't care about (a bedsheet and the cat's litter box) remained in plain sight. Stepping out into the corridor, which, as usual, reeked of everything imaginable, Haruka practically ran down the stairs. If he hadn't been practicing vigilantism at night, he probably wouldn't have been able to run so quietly. There was no need to be shy; Sakura was proud of his ability to approach someone completely silently. Even though he initially developed this skill to avoid his relatives' attention, it had proven very useful.
Sakura had been a vigilante for about a year and had plenty of experience.
Fights hadn't been unusual for him since he was eight. He clearly remembered the first time he fought, won, and got punished for it. That day, his classmates had attacked him again. They pulled his hair, tearing off pieces of skin along with it. Haruka was ready to beg for mercy then, but something clicked in his head. Another pain in his head, a pain in his stomach from a kick, his pants wet from juice poured on him from a carton. Haruka stood up, clenched his fists, and hit. He hit, hit, hit, until his tormentors lay on the ground with broken noses and jaws.
He was seven. By then, he had already been branded a bully, and after that, he was suspended from school for two weeks. A nightmare awaited him at home. His uncle was angry, his aunt was angry, his cousins had hidden in their rooms on the second floor. Haruka was left alone with the angry adults. He doesn't want to remember what happened before he fell asleep in his shed. He remembers spending his two-week suspension there, receiving only crumbs for lunch, once every two days.
If he were to meet them now, Haruka wouldn't vouch for himself. He wasn't sure if his uncle would keep a whole jaw and nose, or his aunt her hair.
Without waking the guard, who was snoring in the lodge, Sakura left the house.
The neighborhood he lived in wasn't entirely safe. Frequent robberies, drunken antics, occasionally – murders. Garbage, syringes, broken bushes, and half-rotten trees lay everywhere. It was nothing, Haruka had lived in worse places. He stepped over a leg sticking out from under a bench, muttering under his breath about annoying drug addicts. He knew this man by sight: he was the one who rented him the apartment. No questions, no documents. He only occasionally visited his apartment to check if Sakura had destroyed it and asked for small loans. For the first couple of weeks, he gave him money, but then stopped when he realized Haruka was giving him money for his next doses.
The only school that accepted him was an hour's walk from his home. It was far, it would have been faster to take the bus, but... Haruka didn't have any fucking money. So he would walk until he turned blue.
Buildings changed, and it gradually became brighter. Sakura had a headache. It felt like a cotton ball with needles inside. It annoyed him, but he couldn't do anything about it. The pain pulled, throbbed, and Sakura just kept breathing and breathing, just to quiet the pain a little.
It didn't help. Repeating the same action, hoping for a different result – that's madness. Perhaps Haruka was mad.
Well, fuck it.
Who cared about that? The school gates appeared before his eyes – iron, but without a speck of rust. They must have been painted very recently. He sniffed and caught the disgusting smell of fresh paint. As Sakura got closer, he didn't need to sniff anymore; the smell was palpable anyway, growing stronger and stronger.
"Ugh, the downside of a cat mutation is obvious. His head throbs from the smell, but Haruka forces himself not to wince and opens the iron gate door. The courtyard is full of noisy kids. How lucky he is to have learned to dull his own hearing. The same can't be said for his sense of smell. Sakura sets a goal: to safely reach the entrance and find out which class he's been assigned to. His plan for a good impression with the teachers will fall apart the moment some jerk latches onto his hair.
So, he needs to act carefully.
Sakura quickly glanced around, realized no one was looking at him, and moved forward with a calm stride. He squeezed between groups of teenagers without touching a single shoulder or arm, bending his body as much as he could. At one point, his knee cracked from an awkward position, and it seemed a nerve was pinched for a few seconds. He wanted to cry out but bit his tongue. Good thing it wasn't hard enough to draw blood; that's a very unpleasant feeling. He never liked the taste of blood in his mouth.
Reaching the coveted glass door, Sakura was about to grab the handle when he heard:
"What did you say there?" The voice seemed rough to him. "Repeat that!"
It didn't just seem rough. It definitely was rough. Even rude. Haruka counted to five, thought for a moment, then reached for the door again. There wasn't as much time left until the bell as he would have liked.
"I-I..." A trembling voice answered him. A picture of tears immediately came to mind.
"What are you?!" At that moment, intentionally or not, he didn't know, his hearing improved, and he heard better. A thud and a yelp. The guy was pushed against the wall. "Are you just going to keep stuttering, snot-nose?!"
Something flared up inside Haruka at the aggression. Even if something serious had happened, this kid had no right to push or attack.
"Listen," a second voice intervened. "We can smooth this over pretty easily, want to?"
"Yes!" the stutterer rejoiced. Haruka knew it wasn't worth rejoicing.
Inside, he kept repeating one phrase – "Not your business, don't interfere. Not your business, don't interfere."
"Give us your money and he'll back off." Silence hung in the conversation after those words. Expected.
"B-but, I don't have any money..."
"Oh, come on!" The jerk burst in again. "No money?! What do you eat for lunch?! Air?!"
"I have food with me..."
"Don't lie to us," the calm jerk said. "You have money, don't you?"
"Th-that's...!"
"Oh, for God's sake!" A fist hit a fist. "Stop mumbling! Hand over the money, now! Otherwise...!"
Sakura didn't get to hear what would happen next. He sprang from his spot and grabbed the freak by the collar of his uniform. Without a strong tug, Haruka knocked the idiot to the ground. His friend immediately stepped back but decided to speak up:
"Hey, what are you doing?!"
"Get up," Sakura said to the stuttering guy. The guy turned out to be a blonde, slightly taller than Haruka, but several times weaker.
The guy stood up, instantly hiding behind Sakura's back. Sakura didn't particularly appreciate this, as the stranger behind him didn't inspire confidence.
"Get lost, you freaks." Sakura grabbed the blonde by the sleeve and dragged him along towards the door.
They went in, and Sakura almost immediately turned right, pretending to know where he was going. Honestly, he didn't. He'd find the teachers' lounge somehow.
He paid no attention to the blonde's shouts, which were no longer tearful but more confident, and quickly disappeared around the corner.
***
After wandering around the school, exploring every corner and peeking into every unlabeled classroom, Sakura finally found the teachers' lounge.
He found it just before the bell. The teacher he was supposed to see wasn't there, and he had to talk to other people in the room. Ogawa-sensei, as he introduced himself, clearly looked at his hair and eyes with more disgust than ordinary people.
"What did you say your name was?" he asked.
"Sakura Haruka," Sakura clenched his fists. He could have lunged at those freaks at the door, but if he lunged at a teacher, he'd definitely be in trouble.
"I'll see now, Sakura-kun," his eyes still fixed on his hair. "It's on Nakagawa-sensei's desk."
They walked to the correct desk. Ogawa-sensei rummaged through the papers and found what Sakura needed. He was enrolled in class 1-1. At that very moment, as he learned, the bell rang throughout the school. Damn it. He'd missed a class.
"I..." Ogawa hesitated. He looked at the papers on Nakagawa's desk, at his own papers, at the other teachers, and finally settled on Sakura's hair. He'd already seen that glint in his eyes. Ogawa definitely didn't like his hair. "I'll write you a note so Nakagawa-sensei doesn't scold you."
Sakura nodded politely. Well, he couldn't count on such leniency next time.
The second lesson was English, and in this, Sakura was extremely lucky. As a child, when he still lived with his mother, he was given a phone so he wouldn't distract her from her tasks. Sakura was an obedient son. He didn't interfere when told to stay put, didn't speak when ordered to be silent. And if the video he was watching switched to another one, not in Japanese, Haruka couldn't do anything about it. He had to keep watching further and further until his mother finished. Thus, imperceptibly, his understanding of English as a language solidified in his mind.
The only free desk was in the darkest corner, near the cabinets, from where the board was almost invisible. Sakura took out his notebooks but didn't write anything down the entire lesson. He remained unnoticed by the teacher. In the dark, in the corner. No one noticed him.
It couldn't be said that he was against it. Silence, calm, no one bothering him with questions. The day flew by unnoticed. Sakura left school, walked quickly to his job, and hid his backpack in the nearest bushes.
Time to start his shift.