"Let's hope he's sleeping..."
The scared boy thought.
He had just come home from the park after playing with Taru. They had found a ball that was left there, and Taru decided to leave it to him. That made him very happy.
But, as he got closer and closer to what was supposed to be his house or at least the house he lived in, he started getting more and more worried.
"Let's hope he's sleeping..."
The boy repeated one more time before opening the door as slowly as he could.
"THERE YOU ARE, YOU LITTLE SHIT!"
He was not sleeping.
*****
"There you are, you shit! What the hell took you so long?"
"I was just talking a bit with Taru an-"
"SHUT UP! Always chatting up to that uppity son of a bitch... what the hell did he even say to you? 'Hey, moron, if you can bench this huge weight I'll pay you a round with that slut from the other class...'. There's no other reason for that rich daddy's boy to take interest in someone like you, now is it?"
The man taunted him, still sitting on the couch with his clothes from two days ago and a little skyline of beer bottles all around it. He took a long sip from the current survivor.
"Yes, yes, good, now calm down, you drunk bastard. Drink your beer, stay there on the couch, you don't need to do anything else... just lay down, lay down..."
"SHIT!" The man shouted as he threw the bottle against the wall.
Although the glass object crashed into the wall opposite from him, Raiden couldn't help but flinch and shake a little.
"No, no! Calm down, calm down! Stay there, you piece of shit! Stay there. No, no, don't get up, don't get up, don't get up!"
His internal panic increased more and more as the figure with disheveled hair rose up and, with a movement that one might see performed by a clown at a circus, turned around and looked at him.
Raiden looked down, not wanting to cross those eyes, those black, wrathful, evil eyes.
"HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO FUCK UP EVERY TIME, IN EVERY SINGLE WAY POSSIBLE! DO YOU NOT SEE HOW USELESS YOU ARE?!" The man screamed at the top of his lungs.
Raiden's muscles tensed up all together and his hairs all leaped up, signaling to him an impending danger.
His room was right over there, just across the living room, right there, he could go through that door and be in his room downstairs, with his weights, his bed, his freedom.
But was it really freedom, or just the impression of it? A little break from the constant reality of having to live with that monster?
"He's already pissed, it's useless to wait. Maybe if I hurry up he won't even hit me..."
He moved as fast as he could whilst not trying to make it seem too much like he was trying to run away.
He reached the side of that man, barely surpassed him, and... BAM!
Right in the back of the head. Very little muscle there. Very difficult to reinforce it. A very sharp pain. But one he was, at the very least, slightly used to.
He never hit him back. One time he called him out and insulted him when he was 10. He beat him up even more. He never did anything like that ever again.
YOU ARE READING
Burn [English Version]
Fantasy[English translation and continuation of the Italian version of "Burn". I would like to think of this as the better version.] In an alternative world where magic is part of everyday life, a young student named Haruki Shika desperately tries to find...