OUTCAST ── .✦ satosugu

06 KATERINA POLINA, PURE AND HUMBLE

ONE YEAR LATER, 2008

Gojo lay on his back, deep into the soft mattress of the bed at Geto's new place - he'd rented an apartment near the center of the city not too long ago, sick of lodging at the motel.

His white hair lingered leisurely at his head, tangling under the back of his neck at the mattress and becoming one snowy mess like a puddle's curly fur. Hotel California sang from under the tone-arm of a thrifted record player in the back of the room, filling the occasional silence.

Gojo was stuck in a funny pose, his arm aimlessly hanging in the air holding a red marker and circling little streets, trembling while trying to follow the course of routes of the city map held by the other hand. He was trying to concentrate, but the dry marker barely working was not giving him peace.

"You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." Geto sighed. A dreamy cigarette smoke oozed around the room.

"How do you analyze a six year old kid?" Gojo raised an eyebrow.

"Don't say it like he's an experiment to you." Geto flicked the cigarette but starting to pile up at his fingers.

"I'm just sayin' I don't even know what he looks like! How'm I suppose' to find him on the streets if I don't even know the color of his hair?"

"I think that one's pretty obvious, isn't it?

"Msure, but how can I find him in a sea of black haired boys?

"Tall and grumpy, that's what you're looking for."

"And house?"

"Ugly, probably."

"Clothes?"

"Cheap. Are you making excuses to not pick him up?

"I just can't see myself tatkinn' this kid anymore..." He tried to abandon the conversation by skimming deeper into the map, but a voice in his head spoke mindlessly: "Am I like a dad now?

Geto squeaked in his armchair, clocked at the window melancholically and puffed at his cigarette. "All parents damage their children. It can't be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair."

"I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me."

"Apparently there's a black sheep in the Zen'in clan. Even though he's a man, he doesn't have an ounce of cursed energy. How awful must that feel."

"Can you stop talking in riddles?" He placed the map on his chest and rolled around in the bed to find the cap of the marker

"I'm talking about Toji. Anything you do as a dad, I'm sure it's gonna' be better than anything those kids had been through."

***

A few days after that conversation, the two found themselves lolling their heads around every corner of the streets searching for the kids with no idea of what they looked like, how their house looked, or where it was located in the city.

When they reached the lousier side of Tokyo in the suburbs, they decided to split and search alone to save time. Gojo's eyes reeled around the households getting more and more grey. On his way, he noticed:

A boy gingerly strumming the strings of an old guitar, perched in the corner of a street and a young girl running her slender fingers through her hair whilst watching him. Bruised knees and bones peeking under skin at the elbows like the top of a pyramid.