POISON TREE, Tokyo Revengers

zero

CHAPTER ZERO, 零

2017

MEMORIES OF THE long summer days lingered fresh in their young minds. It was the hottest summer in a decade and the torrential rain showed no mercy to the region.

Keung Daiyu remembers it all.

The hum of the air conditioner, the stench of stinky tofu, the housewives from the markets trying to make a move on her fiance.

She felt strangely daring that afternoon and so she indulged herself more in her memories. A dangerous thing to do. Beady black eyes staring right at her. Fist pounding against the window.

A cold chill ran down her spine. It was the most memorable summer. Because it was the worst summer of Daiyu's life.

How did they end up like this?

How did he end up like this?

She saw it. Death wrapping itself around his now feeble and immobile body. She had already become familiar with death then, too familiar perhaps.

The body stirred, a noise escaping from its lips.

Daiyu turned away from the window and immediately shot up from her seat. She picked up the box of egg tarts in her hands. "Look what I got you," she said, opening the cardboard box. "Do you know how lucky I was? I was just about to leave but they brought out the fresh ones from the kitchen." She laughed quietly at herself.

The young woman picked one up carefully from the box. It was still warm. She brought it up to his mouth, but he turned away so quickly, that his chin almost knocked the egg tart out of her hands.

"I don't want it."

"I said they're fresh." Her voice was no longer vivacious and soft like before. Instead, it was stern, monotonous. The absence of the gentle tone from before was echoing. 

The crumbs from the egg tarts started to crumble off, falling to the ground – helpless.

"I said I don't want it!"

Then it was everywhere on the floor. Crumbled to pieces.

"Just fucking leave me alone. That's what I want. Not your stupid egg tarts."

Daiyu was frozen, her eyes glued onto the mess scattered. She turned her face away, not wanting him to see her glassy eyes and her chin trembling like a young child. "I'm sorry."

He lurched forward and smashed his fist against the table where the cardboard box had been. "I said leave me alone! Leave! I don't want you here! What don't you understand?"

Daiyu didn't say anything, she couldn't. She simply respected his request and headed to the door but stopped at the doorway. She turned back, her eyes staring at the floor as she muttered, "I'm sorry." She hid her eyes behind the dark curtains of her hair as a stray tear slipped down her cheek.

The rejection of her own blood had stung much harder than any heartbreak Daiyu has experienced in her twenty-six years of life. There was a physical pain that it generously brought along with it and the pain lingered in the absence of the lash of rejection itself. And yet every day for the rest of the winter, she would visit him. The violent and angry outburst only came around on the colder days. But nothing was as worse than the deafening silence he gave her on most of those days.

And no matter how much she was hurting, Daiyu still came back every day, every morning, and every night for the rest of the winter which led to another year. And every time she leaves with her throat filled with stones, a heart so horribly scarred and unsolicited tears that stained her face.