Saviour: Syo

Part 6

Syo, Katashi and Haruna had known each other since they were born. Their families were very close. Katashi used to live opposite Syo's family bakery, before moving to a larger house when his sisters were born. Haruna's mother often helped out in the bakery during its early days, and she would bring Haruna around to play.

Haruna's parents had died in a plane crash when she was 4-years-old, leaving her in the hands of her 15-year-old brother. At the time her parents were returning from a trip to visit their sick grandmother in Hokkaido for a week, and Haruna and Rui were under the watch of Katashi's family.

That time was a hard struggle. Haruna could hardly comprehend the situation at the time, but somehow Syo and Katashi had managed to understand and stuck by her until it sunk in. Once Rui had turned 16 and started going to high school, he started single-handedly raising Haruna. Currently, at 26-years-old, Rui was busy repaying debts to Syo's and Katashi's families through his job and Haruna's part-time job.

They met Mirai and Riku in 5th grade. Riku was stoic, rather blunt child who said whatever came to her mind, raised in a household were expressing your thoughts was encouraged to no bounds. This caused people to dislike her. Mirai was tall for a 5th grader, but he was teased because of his girlish name.

Eventually they all managed to become friends, because all of them were often misunderstood. Haruna had made all of them join hands, and declared a promise to be friends forever.

This was a moment I remember being happy.

Shoya has severe dyscalculia. It means he has difficulty in any and every form of math. He can't tell addition apart from multiplication, doesn't know how to solve 3 + 24 - 24 without thinking hard on it, etc.

Things were really difficult for him. But when he was diagnosed, they said he didn't have a spot of dyslexia. Rather, his language skills were stronger than average.

Now, he can speak 18 languages fluently and knows basic Ukrainian, Irish, Polish and Spanish. Sora wants him to learn Bulgarian and Welsh too. However, learning languages made no impact on his personality. Because he also has dysthymia, a disorder where the person thinks it's normal to be depressed all the time.

So when someone displeased him, he'd start cursing in Cantonese or Hindi or some other language under his breath. However, when he first spoke fluently in English, Mandarin and Hebrew, everyone was overjoyed.

This was a moment I remember being happy.

Last year was difficult for Souta. His girlfriend was going through extreme conditions, being shoved around her family following her parent's divorce. Neither parent wanted to keep her, but hardly anyone managed to keep her themselves. In short, nobody wanted her.

Souta was out of his mind with worry over her. The desperate look on his face and how deranged he was was something nobody could erase from their mind. He completely flipped out when she was going to be sent off to Jamaica by her uncle. Instead, he brought her home.

He found her an studio apartment close by their home. He visited her daily. He himself enrolled in a part-time job to support her. They studied their butts off and got her a scholarship in a university.

Even though getting by is difficult, the look of relief and the return of his smiles was more than enough.

This was a moment I remember being happy.

Sora was so happy when she started going out with her boyfriend. She gained motivation to be going by every day. The day she declared it. The day she taught him.