Love Between Old Friends

Chapter 5

xXOC's POVXx
I left the dinning hall, rushing through catwalk to get to Kazuma's room. I dragged the rice paper door open and stumbled to the floor crawling the rest of the way to my backpack. My whole body was trembling; arms shaking beyond control, tears drowning my eyes, heart racing and even I was hyperventilating. I reached to the side of my backpack and pulled my puffy bag towards me, I struggled to unzip the bag, fumbling over and over again with the zipper, my eyes were so filled with tears each time i wiped them away more appeared, after a few attempts I unzipped it revealing its contents to me, medication.

I started to pull out bottles and bottles of pills each one saying different things; Tricyclic antidepressants, heparin and Prazosin. I glanced at each label on the pill bottle, tossing them aside as they were not the ones I needed, I kept tossing more and more containers of pills to one side as I was finding a specific one, and finally I did, benzodiazepine. I unscrewed the top with brisk fashion and dispensed out two to three blue and white striped pills, without thinking I ingested all of them at once and fell back on to the futon that was already made.

I rested my arms on my forehead and began to whimper, the pain and duress was gone but...my chest was on fire...the tears didnt stop flowing, instead it just kept on going. I lightly bit on my jacket to stop me from crying out loud, I let out the odd sniffs and whimpers, but only that, I let my other jacket sleeve cover my eyes to soak up the tears.

"Why...why must this happen to me..." I lightly cried out.

After a few minutes of silent whimpering the drugs finally kicked in... I returned back to my normal state and took a deep breath, wiping away the remaining tears on to my sleeve...

"MESSAGE FROM OZ HAS ARRIVED!" The alert roared out from my phone.

Fishing out from my pocket I flipped my phone open at read the message, I skimmed through the message and proceed to flip my phone close and let out a heavy sigh.

xXKazuma POVXx
"Riku..." I was down right worried about Riku, I've never seen him like this... what else happened to him for the past decade.

"Riku has changed a lot, hasn't he?" Mansaku said, breaking the ice of silence in the air. "I mean sure its been ten years but, he is utterly different from last time."

"I agree!" Yumi Jinnouchi roared out. "He used to talk a lot to everyone, but now he's become more shyer than before."

The lively chatter filled the room again, but mostly talking about Riku and how he changed... No one knew about the fight we had, only Kenji knows, but that's it...However they're not wrong, Riku has changed a lot! when we were young he was very playful and quiet energetic, shy at times but opens up once he knows them, he had short black hair an opposite to mine, soft brown chocolate eyes and this big Cheshire grin on his face. But now... it was different; his hair was significantly longer, covering one of his eyes, his attitude and emotion was even more quiet and cold, hell even what he was wearing was completely different than before, he used to wear colourful clothes and down its either black or red...

Did I do this, Did i hurt him that badly that he became this lifeless shell...I dont know...

I glared at my laptop for a while letting my mind be consumed by the 1's and 0's of the internet, the chatter around me seemed to slowly disappear as I was entraced...Another window popped up from my screen, it was a e-mail...with the title 'Open me!' The rest of the family heard the sound of the alert and surrounded me and glared at my screen as well.

"Who do you think its from Kazuma, I mean no one really as your personal e-mail do they?" Kenji questioned... He was right I dont let anyone apart from family and friends to have this e-mail, but this user was no one on my friends list. I moved my mouse cursor on to the e-mail and clicked on it, another window popped up, it was a video from the battle arena in OZ.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO THE BATTLE ARENA, TONIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT IS A NINE THOUSAND MAN BATTLE, SPECIFICALLY CHOSEN BY OUR TONIGHT'S CONTESTANT.

The hell, a nine thousand man battle? I didnt even know they existed.

AND HERE'S OUR CONTESTANT, HE LIVES FOR THE FIGHT, HE DRIVES THE LADIES WILD, HE'S ELEGANT LIKE A LEAF IN THE WIND, HE'S MORE VICIOUS THAN JACK THE RIPPER HIMSELF, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I GIVE YOU, SOUL...RIPPER...JACK~

Flood lights shined down on Jack, crowds cheers out his name while others booed and hissed at him, I guess they weren't happy of him forfeiting the match between him and I. The bell rang signifying that the match has started and out of the shadows hordes of faceless mobs spawned from the darkness, Jack was unphased all he did was draw out his scythe and began twirling it like a baton.

We saw him fight against the hordes, it was like our battle, no one could touch him or graze him, he did pirouettes, twirls and jumps to dodge his opponents while at the same time he slashed up groups of the horde causing them to disappear out of existence. As time went on people cheered out his name more and more, my family where so shocked, how was he doing this, was it a bug in OZ or some sort of hack? But if so the code monkeys in OZ should know in an instant, Its just like what the announcer said hes a leaf in the wind.

Ten minutes passed since the fight began and he already brought down 95% of the mobs and was close to his objective; destroy all enemies and press the big red button in the center of the arena. The last few mobs were tired out and were put down with a few slices of the scythe, the final mob was cut in have as Jack did a twirl on the spot and press the red button to end the game.

THAT WAS AMAZING LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, SOUL RIPPER JACK HAS BROUGHT DOWN NINE THOUSAND MEN WITHOUT A SCRATCH! LETS SEE IF HE HAS ANYTHING TO SAY.

There was silence in the air, Jack had his back to the camera, while a small speech bubble popped up from the side of Jack. "A week from now I request a fight with King Kazma!" Before I could react the window closed by itself, the match was over...