Stay || Manjiro Sano

Chapter 16 || Mike's Hopes

"Hey, Baji."

"Huh? What do you want, Mikey?"

"Why did you bring this crying girl here?" The blonde pointed to the girl who was pulling her knees to her chest, she was sitting from afar, alone, wiping her tears as she did so.

Mikey thought the original plan was to train together with Baji at his Grandfather's dojo but he suddenly came with a girl with him.

"She's my cousin, she'll be staying with us from now on." Keisuke explained shortly, his hand stuffed on his pockets.

"Ha?! What the heck does that mean?!" Mikey was still confused, so what if she's his cousin? Does that mean she'll be joining them right away? And also why did she come here just now? Keisuke and him had been friends for awhile now so he should've known about her from the start.

So why now?

"Look, Mikey." Keisuke motioned Mikey to come closer to him, his voice suddenly decreasing its volume. Mikey leaned closer to the black haired boy, ready to hear what he has to say. "You really wanna hear what happened? Fine, I'll tell you."

But Mikey surely wasn't ready to 'that' kind of topic, especially coming from Baji who seemed like he was free from worries and stuff related to that.

Apparently, Y/n was a girl raised by a single Father who didn't act like a Father at all. He was an alcoholic drug addict, it started when his wife had died. Over the years, Y/n had grew up abused and afraid, she would've been in a much worse situation if Keisuke's Mother didn't visit from time to time to let her stay at her place, that's where she started spending time with Keisuke.

It was no surprise that the two got along quite quickly, Keisuke understood the situation Y/n was in six months after they started hanging out. By that, Keisuke knew he had to put an end to her Father's doings. He couldn't let Y/n live a life like that anymore, she wasn't someone who deserved something like that.

Six weeks after that, Keisuke's Mother got busy with her work and Keisuke was worried because he still couldn't see Y/n and how she was, and so, he asked his Mother for her address, saying Y/n left some things at home and wanted to return it.

He didn't know if his Mother knew about Y/n's Father or not, since Y/n hardly ever opens up to anyone and her body showed no signs of abuse, that was because her bruises were hidden, under her clothes.

By that day, Keisuke went to his cousin's apartment.

That day was traumatic for the both of them, Y/n almost got raped by her own Father and Keisuke saw it with his own two eyes, he something terrifying, something his cousin was about to experience.

Keisuke didn't hesitate attacking her Father and drag Y/n out then immediately called the police.

By then, her Father got arrested.

Mikey was quite shocked. He didn't knew a girl around his age had to go something terrible. He knew it was no doubt that it was traumatizing, heck she might even be already traumatized.

"Baji, why didn't you told me sooner?" Mikey asked, a bit downed after he heard the information from Baji. A visible frown painted his face.

"She's having a hard time with new people, but today I forced her to come since Mom wasn't at home today." Baji explained. "Mikey, what happened to her scarred her, I need something that can maybe help her."

Mikey couldn't believe that Baji was actually very worried, she must be someone really important to him. It made him smile.

"Don't worry, we'll help her, together." He grinned.