Afterwards: The Fourth Tekken Novel

Mixed Feelings

Kazuya, Jin, and Amber sat on the couches, with only Jin seeming nonchalant as he scrolled through his phone. The other two wore grumpy looks on their faces as Jun and Lars gathered not far off, seated on the floor as they excitedly rummaged through the large tote bag that Heihachi had brought.
"He brought so much?" Lee asked, surprised as he walked past them to sit with Kazuya. He stopped midway and changed his mind and joined Jun and Lars instead. "Darn..." he picked up a packet of sour candy before turning to Kazuya. "Spiky, wasn't this our favourite when we were kids?"
Kazuya didn't want to look. "Who cares?"
Lee sighed. "Well, I guess I'm taking both packets with me, then. More for me."
"Lee..." Anna sighed.
"What? I love these!" Lee argued, grinning as he looked at the packet. "Gosh, been so long since I had these." He smirked as he tore the packet open. "You want some, Kazuya?"
Kazuya frowned and turned to look at Lee, who was now sucking on a sour candy. Eventually he sighed and gave in, reaching for the sweet. Lee sighed and handed the sweet to Jin so that he can pass it to Kazuya, but the younger man was more interested in laughing at something on his phone.
"Oi, Fringey!" Lee called. "Give this to your father."
Jin sighed and took the sweet and handed it to Kazuya without a word before going right back to his phone. Kazuya scowled at the sweet, but popped it in his mouth.
Jun shook her head, amused as she continued to rummage in the bag. She felt something and pulled it out, then gasped as she realised what it was.
"Dango!" Jun exclaimed. "And he got us such a big packet too."
"And lots of... canned coffee?" Lars said in surprise as he peeked into the bag to see what's making the clinking noise.
"And soft drinks," Lee added. "Darn, this guy is so random..."
"But didn't try to attack us once?" Anna piped up. "If I know Heihachi, which I do, he would be bombing us by now. But he's sending us canned drinks instead of grenades? Something's off."
"Either that, or his clone has more humanity," Jun added, placing everything back into the bag. "You want some of the things, Lee?"
Lee sucked at the sweet in his mouth and pulled the bag towards him to see what he can steal, pulling out a few cans of coffee a second later. "I'm also taking a bag of sweets. You guys can have the other." He burst into laughter. "Guys, there's a comb of bananas in here."
"He also brought Koshu grapes," Jun added. "And Miyazaki mangoes."
Jin snorted as he finally lowered his phone. "What, he went grocery shopping for us or something?"
"In that case, he forgot to get meat," Lars smirked.
"Does this fish katsu count?" Lee asked, holding up a packet of a very large fish cutlet.
"It's been quite some time since we made any tonkatsu," Jun chuckled, bagging everything. "Right, Kazuya? You want some tomorrow?"
"Do as you wish," Kazuya grumpily said.
Jin sighed. "Dad..."
"It doesn't sit right that all of this came from Heihachi, and you guys are actually excited," Kazuya retorted. "Why?"
"Because..." Lars grinned as he pointed his hands at the bag. "Free stuff!"
Kazuya rolled his eyes and got out, grumbling under his breath as he walked away. Amber made herself as small as possible as she sulkily shrunk into a corner of the sofa.
Jin sighed when Jun suggestively turned to look at him. "Fine, I'll speak to him." He got up and went after his father.
"Amber?" Jun called.
Amber shook her head. "Just leave me alone..."
"Aww," Anna went towards her. "You need to talk, Amber?" She said as she seated herself beside Amber.
"I don't want to," Amber sighed. "Today was such a wild day, and it doesn't help that Heihachi showed up here. It just shows that he sees me as a pathetic piece of trash."
"No, it just shows that the Old Fart actually has a heart buried somewhere in there," Lee said, getting up. "I appreciate that he's at least trying to compensate, but yeah. Nothing will make up for whatever he did."
Amber nodded. "Yeah. I... I remember when I first came to, it can be said the day I was born. I didn't remember anything besides leaving Jin at Shin's place before shopping for groceries. And then I was suddenly in a lab... I couldn't remember anything else, and then I found Jin. He was all grown up, he was just five in my memory, but he was standing taller than me then."
"Do you remember this?" Lee asked Jun.
Jun nodded. "I do. They just left me in the forest, my car wasn't far off, so I just rushed home as quickly as I can. I didn't know what they were up to, but I know Heihachi was behind it."
Amber sighed. "I tried to speak to Jin, he was asking me what happened and all. But then this... this power. It overcame me, Jin realised that... that I wasn't his real mother." Anna put an arm around her as she continued. "He fought me, told me that I wasn't his mother but asked me to just live my life somewhere else." A tear escaped her eye. "I took cover in a forest, foraged to fend for myself, when the wolf spirit possessed me."
Lars groaned. "This Jin..."
Amber shook his head. "No. No, it wasn't his fault. He didn't know what was up. He didn't know if I was just an illusion. It was right for him to feel that way, who knew what else the Devil Gene would do to try and consume him. It can mess with the mind, you see."
Lee nodded. "Yeah, I've seen it. Kazuya battling it during childhood. He'd sometimes talk to himself, I used to think he was going crazy at some point."
"Yeah," Amber nodded. "And he had already been through so much, poor boy..."
Jun sighed and got up. "Why didn't Heihachi even try to be a good father? He could've stopped so much chaos."
"Yeah, but he is the chaos," Lee added. "Jun, I had nothing to do with him, I was just a street rat making a living by fighting and stuff, but he took me in. For what? For fun, literally for fun." But he shrugged, a smirk on his face. "Eh, but I ain't complaining. At least I had everything growing up."
Lars snorted and nudged him. "Oi."
"What, it's true," Lee chuckled. "I had a lavish life growing up."
"This guy just made full use of it," Lars shook his head, amused.
"Why not? He didn't give us love, but had lots of money, so I just compensated with that," Lee shrugged. "Not sure about Kazuya, though. He never really cared much.
Jun got up. "Speaking of which, we gotta do some damage control."
"I'm coming too," Lee said, following her.
"Me three," Lars sighed, getting up too.
Anna nodded and turned to Amber, an arm around her to pull her close. "Don't think too much about it, Amber. We're all together now, we're all here for you."
The doorbell rang and Anna sighed as she got up to answer it. It was her sister and her family.
"You guys, Hei brought lotsa stuff!" Anna exclaimed, immediately going into gossip mode. "And it was such a huge bag, there were sweets, expensive fruits, snacks, and a lot of canned drinks for some reason."
"Now that's just odd," Adam said as the three of them stepped in. "And to think we saw him at breakfast."
"You guys saw him at breakfast?!" Anna gasped. "Oh, tell me more!"
Nina smirked as she waited for Anna to close the door before beginning. "He was having his breakfast at La Poisson when we showed up. Adam's parents were with us and they saw him and was like 'they also serve riffraffs?!' and that's when we realised that he was there."
"They were super aggressive too, so ready to fight them," Steve added. "Grandpa nearly ran over to hit him."
Anna chuckled. "Wow."
"And then Nina said that he was a walking bomb, but Steve was like 'no, he's a sitting bomb'," Adam burst into laughter. "It still cracks me up, so funny."
Nina noticed how Amber was still seated alone and stopped the three of them and pointed to her. "How is she doing?"
Anna sighed, remembering how she was still down in the dumps. "Not great. She hasn't recovered from today's happenings, especially not the... Heihachi ones... but yeah, we're trying to comfort her."
"Maybe we should all just go for a nice long holiday," Steve suggested. "That helped us relax before, remember? Spend some time away from home, just unwind and not think of anything other than enjoying."
Adam smiled at that idea, already imagining himself relaxing on a lounging chair by the beach with a coconut shake in his hand and a sunglasses resting on the bridge of his nose. "Mmm..."
Nina chuckled as she shook her head before turning to Anna with a smile. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. But I feel like we should do it incognito. Especially since stuff happens whenever we travel."
Steve grinned. "Yeah, like there was the Yakushima incident, the Hokkaido and Bahamas incident, the Rikubetsu incident, the Maine incident, the Dublin incident, the Kyoto incident, then... what else incident?"
"I don't think anything actually happened in Maine and Dublin, we just enjoyed ourselves," Nina said. "What even happened in Kyoto?"
Anna smirked. "These guys blindfolded Kazuya and snuck him into a jet and flew him to Kyoto. And then Lee and I showed up at the Ryokan when they were checking in."
"Oh..." Nina nodded. She went over to Amber and the trout of them tried as much as they can to cheer her up.