KOF School

Yashira's Viewpoint

The door closed with a slam as Yashiro shut himself up in his room after fighting with his mother. Yashira stared after him angrily before turning to the broken trophy beside the wall, the once dainty bronzed plastic still shone but laid in pieces. She got out a broom and swept up the debris before shoving the dustpan aside, meaning to throw the pieces out after preparing dinner.
Maybe she did go too hard on Yashiro, maybe just a little tonight. How else would she feel after finding out that Yashiro, her only son, had seized to be the first two times in one day? Surely, he needed a lesson to teach him that he should always be nothing but the first, right?
At first, Yashira considered to just reheat the leftover meat stew from the day before. But she stopped short while pulling the dishes out of the fridge.
Suddenly, she felt the need to apologise to him in some way. Breaking the trophy right after he won it seemed a tad bit too rash, maybe she had taken it too far.
But she was his mother! A mother should never apologise to her children in any way!
Her only option seemed to be food. So she decided to whip up Yashiro's favourite ramen noodle soup topped with homemade hosaki menma. That seems like a good way to show him that she cared.
So Yashira carefully cooked everything and was about to go call Yashiro down to dinner when the doorbell suddenly rang. She rolled her eyes and made her way to the front door to see her son's two friends standing in front of her. Chris and Shermie immediately bowed in greeting.
"Oh, it's you," Yashira frowned as she gazed at them. "What do you want?"
"Is Yashiro home?" Shermie asked. "He didn't reply to any of our texts."
Yashira scoffed. "Well, yeah. Who'd wanna speak to stupid worms like you?"
"But—"
"He's asleep," Yashira concluded. "So leave, will you?"
With that, she slammed the door on them, dusting her fingers as she made her way upstairs to Yashiro's room.
"Yashiro, come on!" Yashira called as she knocked on the door. "Dinner's ready."
But no Yashiro came. She didn't receive an answer so she decided to just barge herself in to pull him out. Yashira went in and was surprised to find the room empty. He wasn't in the bathroom, he wasn't in bed, he wasn't under the bed as well.
She even checked his cupboards. She had expected both of the wardrobe cabinets to be filled with clothes, but was surprised when the second one contained nothing but neatly arranged gold trophies and medals.
Yashira couldn't help but silently stare at the gleaming gold awards, taunting her for breaking that one bronze trophy that Yashiro received. It was as if all of those awards had suddenly ganged up on her to defend Yashiro for what she had done to him, demanding an explanation for treating him with such unfairness. She quickly closed the doors and continued looking around for any sign of where Yashiro might be.
And that's when she saw it. The window was left ajar, letting the icy draft blow into the room, leaving a small pile of snow on the red carpeted floor. Yashira went over and took a look outside to see a crater made on the snow directly below the window, like someone had jumped out and landed on the snow below.
Yashira was dumbfounded. Did... did Yashiro sneak out? But why?
She closed the window and decided to look around the house to find Yashiro. Surely, he didn't run away? Maybe he was just in another room.
But no matter where Yashira searched, she could not find even a trace of Yashiro besides the snow crater made under his window. What could've been the reason for him leaving like this?
Yashira waited in the living room. Surely, he'd return some time in the night. She wasn't going to sleep tonight if that was the case. She was going to wait for him all night so that she can demand an explanation for him leaving so suddenly without her knowledge.
So she put the food away after having some for herself and sat in the living room. An hour passed, then two. Yashiro still hadn't returned.
Midnight came, then another three more hours passed without Yashiro coming home. Yashira started growing more worried. What if something bad had happened to him? What if he was hurt?
She still had hopes that he would return. So she decided to wait until morning, ending up falling asleep on the couch.
But even when she woke up the next morning, Yashiro still hadn't returned home. Everything was just as she had left.
Yashira decided to go to the kitchen to see if he had come through the back door and realised that there was no sign of entry. Yashiro was rough when it came to entering the house through the back door, the welcome mat would always be in a disarray if he would ever use the door.
But everything was still neat and unchanged.
Yashira's gaze suddenly fell on the leftover dustpan by the back door, the broken trophy now laying as trash and not the treasure it had once been.

***

The pieces of the trophy were carefully superglued back together so that it would restore its original form. But no matter how hard Yashira tried, the cracks still showed clearly and a few tiny fragments still remained missing, leaving the trophy forever incomplete.
It was hopeless trying to fix the trophy, the damage was already done. It was as if she had broken Yashiro's heart the same time the trophy hit the wall. Maybe that's why he ran away, because no matter how much he had tried to fix it, the cracks still showed with a few missing fragments, leaving it incomplete. The damage was already done, there was no way to fully restore it.
She put up posters of Yashiro all around town and even pestered the police to look for her son, going to see them every single day. But it was as if Yashiro had wanted to remain missing, as if he had vanished into thin air without a trace,
No traces had been found of him loitering around train stations, not even bus stops or other public places like malls and shops. The airport security didn't report seeing him either. Where could he have gone? A teenage boy wandering around all alone in the world out there. Where was he?
Yashira suddenly felt herself being watched. She quickly turned around to look at the window behind her but saw nothing. She got up from her chair and went to take a closer look. She found scrambled footprints in the snow and went out to take a closer look. But whoever it was that had been spying on her had already left.