Another One Bites The Dust | KyouHaba

Lost Boy

Under the skin were muscle, blood, bone and flesh. It was a simple fact you could learn from even the most basic of biology books. It doesn't matter what part of your body you were looking at: blood, flesh and bone would always be there. The muscle moves when you want it to and the blood flows when you need it to. The bones keep you upright and postured, but the flesh is just the cushioning. A filling near useless. Yahaba Shigeru didn't believe that anything was useless, and he was going to prove it.

It started with him sitting alone at lunch, fiddling with a rose thorn he had intentionally stuck into his thumb. There was a small trickle of blood running from the broken skin, but the boy didn't cry. He was experimenting and he wouldn't cry.

He put his other hand over his thumb and concentrated. The last time was an accident. This time was going to be deliberate. He focused hard and thought about it as much as his eight-year-old mind could. There was flesh under his skin, where the splinter was. He could push it out if he went about it the right way.

His spare hand squeezed his thumb tightly, closing around it. Small bubbles of blood burst around the thorn and Shigeru's eyes widened when he watched it move. It had moved, ever so slightly. It had moved upwards and he could feel a twitch in his thumb. When he concentrated again, the thorn fell to the side, tumbling past his nail and landing on his plate, sitting amongst droplets of red blood.

The boy beamed excitedly, and Tamura sat opposite him only a second afterwards.

"Hey, Shigeru," She smiled. "What are you grinning about?"

"I got a thorn out!" He replied promptly, showing her his thumb. There was no puncture wound, despite the size of the thorn and the thin trickle of blood that had run down his thumb.

She blinked at him, smile never wavering but her eyes uncertain. "I'm so proud of you! Did you use tweezers?"

"No!" He beamed wider. "It's my secret!"

Tamura sighed fondly. "You and all your secrets... You love having them, don't you?"

He nodded. "The more secrets I have, the more powerful I am."

"Oh-ho, where did you learn that?"

"My book," The boy looked down at the novel on his lap. "Well, it's Kenji's book. I took it from Kenji because he said it was boring. I don't think he was smart enough to read it. Or even read. Can Kenji read?"

Tamura frowned very slightly, obviously unsure how to respond to his directness. "Shigeru, that's not very nice."

"Oh. But it's true."

"Kenji can read perfectly well, okay? But not everyone likes sticking their nose in a book all day, eh?"

Shigeru shrugged. "Well, that's dumb. They're... they're fuckfaces!"

Tamura reeled back in shock. "Where did you learn that?!"

The boy laughed, a rare sound. "I knew you'd be surprised! I knew it! Your heart was too calm and now it's going pitter-patter, pitter-patter!"

The woman laughed with him, but it was a nervous chuckle. Shigeru was a creepy kid, for lack of a better word. He knew too much. Some of the supervisors who hadn't spent too much time with him assumed his 'knowledge' was from his books or his way to get attention. Tamura knew better. What Shigeru said was always too close to be a coincidence because the boy was too smart. There were many, many times when Tamura was convinced Shigeru knew more than her about everything.

A particular incident which had scared her was when Yuki – often quite calm and collected – had been lashing out at anyone who pushed her buttons. Tamura had moved to take Shigeru out of the room, for if he did anything it was pushing peoples' buttons, but then the boy walked up to Yuki and asked her why she was bleeding from 'down below'. The children were confused but Yuki's face had paled like he had just figured out a deathly secret that held her honour at stake. Tamura had realised that Shigeru was far more than just an odd kid that day... He was never going to be normal.