Ritsu and the Tanuki

It was late in the evening at Tenshou Park. Most of the parents that were usually there had already left, dragging behind them their screaming children who had wanted to stay and play longer. The park was nearly deserted except for one lone figure sitting on a park bench. The person's gaze was stuck on the glistening lake. As we zoom in on the brunette's face we now see tear tracks staining his face and even more tears rolling down from his forest green eyes. Ritsu Onodera was trapped in a sea of pain and grief.

The youth had been crying for hours. From another person's view of the boy's life it would be assumed that he was a fairly good little rich kid with nice, loving parents who owned their own publishing company, Onodera Publishing. He seemed to look like he probably had a girlfriend. However, those outsiders will never know of the underlying problems surrounding the young male.

At Ritsu's expence, his parents constantly fought with one another and his mom would always come home drunk very late at night. If he was lucky enough, his mom would pass out at the entryway. Unfortunately, when she did not, he was victim to her beating him up. His father would shout at his wife as she beat her son, but never intervened to stop it... it was child abuse at it's finest.

At school he did have a girlfriend, or at least he used to have a girlfriend. Ritsu meet Ann in middle school and they had started to date up until quite recently. In fact, they had broken up only today. He had caught her cheating on him with one of the school's jocks. He then found out that the only reason why she even dated him in the first place was for his money.

He was already upset about his girlfriend problem but to makes mater worst, when he came home his dad was the drunk one instead. His dad was not one to drink either. However he was as drunk as drunk could be and unlike his mother when Ritsu's dad got drunk, he would verbally abuse his son, but not beat on him.

After a tormenting shouting match with his father, Ritsu left the house and came to the park to calm down. Like he always did when his thoughts started to grow dark about ending his life.

As he contemplated on these thoughts, a sudden screech brought the broken boy out of his conflicted head and back into reality. Turning his head, he watched as a strange animal limped away as fast as it could, blood trailing behind it, away from what appeared to be a large orange tabby cat. The cat slunk towards the strange wounded animal, preparing for the kill.

Ritsu couldn't bear to see more pain and suffering so, without thinking, he leapt up from his bench and bolted toward the animals, picking up a stone as he did.

"OI! LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Ritsu shouted as he threw his stone at the cat, careful not to hit it, but close enough to scare it away. After making sure the cat was completely gone, Ritsu turned toward the injured animal, cautiously, so as to not scare it anymore.

However, the strange animal was too injured to care anymore. It layed it's head down and closed its eyes, waiting for the it's end, to be delivered by this new creature approaching it.

The animal suddenly felt something gently stroking its fur. It opened its eyes wearily, yet curiously, and saw that the human male was stroking him while speaking in a quiet murmur.

"There there, it's alright, I won't hurt you. You're going to be fine. I'm Ritsu. It's okay, I will take care of you little one," He told it.

The animal didn't understand the words being said, but felt like he knew what the human meant. He relaxed, trusting that he was now in safe hands. Ritsu, sensing that he had gained the strange animal's trust, scooped him up into his arms.

"What kind of animal are you anyway? You look like a raccoon, but you also look like a dog, so what are you?" Ritsu pondered on this for the barest of seconds before realizing that the animal still needed to be bandaged up.