Genzo opened his eyes.
The ceiling. The same crack. A little longer than yesterday, or maybe the light was just different.
He lay there for another three minutes without moving. His body remembered yesterday: the smell of coffee in that small café, Aya's laughter, how Renji looked out the window at the rain and said nothing, Raiden spinning an empty glass across the tabletop round and round. Yesterday there was something like calm. Almost.
He got up slowly. His feet were cold, the floor even colder.
He drank water straight from the tap. Washed his face. In the mirror, the usual face. Dark circles that had already become part of his face. He had long stopped noticing them as something separate.
He got dressed. Jeans, black T-shirt, jacket on top. He took his phone, shoved it into his pocket without looking.
Outside, the air was that special kind. September, but still with a summer aftertaste. As if summer didn't want to leave, but already knew it had to.
Genzo reached the bus stop. There weren't many cars. He stuck out his hand.
Almost immediately, a black Nissan Cedric pulled up, old, well-maintained, with a quiet engine. The window lowered.
"Where to?" a low, even voice asked.
Genzo leaned down, looked at the driver. A man about fifty. Gray shirt. Calm, almost indifferent face.
"I'll show you," Genzo said and got in the back.
The door closed. The car moved off.
Silence settled immediately, thick like cotton wool. Genzo looked out the window. Streets floated past. Somewhere inside, something wrong caught on. Something small. Nameless.
Something's not right here.
He glanced at the rearview mirror. The driver was looking at the road.
"I've seen you somewhere, man," Genzo said. Not a question. Just out loud.
The man didn't answer. The car turned. The engine, quiet, steady.
The silence stretched for one block. Then another.
"You say you've seen me somewhere?" the driver finally spoke. His voice didn't change. No intonation, no pause.
"Possibly," Genzo said.
Another block.
"At the station?"
Genzo blinked.
The station. Fukuoka. Platform. Rain on the roof. A man in a dark coat who walked too close and dissolved into the crowd, leaving behind the smell of expensive cologne and something else.
Exactly. There.
"Probably," Genzo said evenly.
The driver fell silent. For a long time. The streetlights outside became more frequent; they were approaching the center.
"So where are you going?" the man said at last. Not a clarification. Almost rhetorical. As if he already knew the answer and was simply giving time.
"I'm a middleman, after all," Genzo said. "I could have gone home."
"You could have," the driver agreed.
And again silence. Soft, like old fabric.
"Did you tell your mom?" the man asked. Without accent. Without pressure.
Genzo wasn't surprised. It was also strange that he wasn't surprised.
"Of course not," he answered with apathy, looking out the window.
They stopped by the café. Genzo saw them before he got out of the car, the three of them by the entrance. Aya was holding her hair back with her hand; the wind wouldn't leave it alone. Renji stood a little to the side, hands in his pockets, looking at his feet. And next to him, Raiden, as impassive as always, back against the wall.
Genzo got out of the car. The strange feeling remained inside, like a coin in an empty pocket.
"How much?" Genzo asked the driver.
"A few," the driver said. "We're acquaintances, that's the main thing."
"Well, if so, then okay."
He didn't look back. The Cedric had already driven away.
Renji noticed him first. He raised his head and nodded. They shook hands, briefly, in their own way.
"Been driving long?" Renji asked.
"Caught a taxi." Genzo shrugged. "Weird guy."
"There are plenty of weird ones," Renji said without expression.
Genzo looked at the two unfamiliar people nearby. Aya noticed his gaze and slightly tilted her head.
"Aya," she said simply. Her voice was quiet, almost cautious, like a person who was used to weighing words before speaking them.
"Genzo." He nodded. Paused for a second. "Renji told me about you."
"Good things?"
"He said you don't leave when you probably should. Pause. That's a compliment, by the way."
Aya looked at Renji. Renji was looking to the side, but the corner of his mouth twitched, barely noticeably.
"He's good at that," she said softly. "Saying important things as if in passing."
Genzo turned to Raiden. He was looking at him calmly, studying him, without haste. His long dark-purple hair was slightly tousled by the wind.
"Raiden," he said. He didn't extend his hand. Just stated the name, like a fact.
"Genzo." Pause. "I've heard about you."
"From whom?"
"From people in the underground fights," Raiden said evenly. "They say you're unrelenting even when you've already been put down."
Genzo snorted.
"It's not stubbornness. It's just easier to get up than to explain why you're lying there."
Raiden narrowed his eyes slightly. He didn't smile, but something in his face changed. Almost approval.
"Solid logic," he said.
The wind passed by, ruffling Aya's hair again. She tucked it behind her ear with a habitual, tired gesture.
"So you heard?" Renji began, leaning against the wall.
"About the school?"
"About it."
Aya shivered slightly, although it wasn't cold.
"The rating dropped to 1.1. It's all over the internet already, reviews, complaints, someone posted a video from the hallway. The administration is silent, but silence won't save them anymore. Parents are writing to the prefectural committee. They say there'll be an inspection next week."
"1.1, that's almost the bottom," Genzo said.
"That is the bottom," Renji replied. "I'm transferring. Already decided. With Aya. Another district, another school. Far away from all this."
Aya nodded. Quietly but firmly, like a person who had made the decision long ago and was just waiting for the moment to say it out loud.
"At least it doesn't smell of bleach and other people's fear there," she added softly.
No one laughed. But no one objected either, because everyone understood what she was talking about.
Genzo looked at Raiden.
"You?"
"I'm moving," Raiden said shortly. "Another district. There's somewhere to go and something to go for there." Pause. "There's been nothing to hold on to here for a long time."
Genzo took a mint from his pocket, tossed it into his mouth. Chewed.
"I'm going to the competitions. This summer. Underground fights," he said it evenly, without boasting and without shame. "And I'm leaving ninth grade. No point in sitting it out."
Pause.
Renji looked at him for a long time. Not judgmentally. Just looked, the way you look at a person you understand but don't know what to say to.
"You've really decided?"
"Really."
Aya exhaled softly.
"It's scary," she said. Not as a reproach. As a fact, spoken aloud because staying silent about it would be dishonest.
"Scarier to stay where nothing works anymore," Genzo replied.
Aya looked at him. Something in her gaze changed, not pity, not sympathy. Something closer to recognition. As if she was seeing for the first time a person who thought the same way but said out loud what she kept inside.
Raiden put his hands in his pockets.
"And then what?" he asked.
"Summer first," Genzo said. "We'll see after that."
The wind passed down the street again. Somewhere at the end of the block, a shop door slammed. A sparrow landed on a wire and immediately flew away, as if it had changed its mind.
They stood in silence for a few seconds. Four people by the café entrance, each already knowing that their paths would soon diverge. But right now they were still here.
"Shall we go in?" Raiden said finally. "It's cold standing here."
Renji pushed off the wall. Aya pulled the door first.
Inside the café it smelled of cinnamon and old wood. A small hall, tables by the window, quiet music, something without words, just guitar and the sound of rain outside, which had started unnoticed while they were standing there.
They sat down as a group of four. They ordered coffee, except for Aya — she took tea with lemon and held the glass with both hands for a long time, warming herself.
They talked about different things. About what the other school Renji was transferring to looked like Aya had seen photos, said there was a normal gym and a literature teacher who didn't yell. About the district where Raiden would live quiet, he said, lots of trees, you can barely hear cars at night. About what it's like to go to competitions in another city and not know a single person there.
"It's normal," Genzo said, looking out the window at the wet asphalt. "I'm used to starting from zero. In Osaka there was one circle of people. Moved, another. Now this one." He paused. "Every time you think it can't get worse. Every time it does. But somehow you cope."
"Or you don't," Renji said softly, to no one in particular.
"Or you don't," Genzo agreed. "But you keep going anyway."
Aya looked at him over her glass. Then she said:
"You're strange."
"Everyone says that."
"No, I mean strange in a good way. Like a person who grew up too early and now doesn't know what to do with it."
Genzo gave a slight smirk. Not cheerful. But honest.
"Pretty much."
Raiden hardly spoke at all. He drank his coffee slowly, looking either at the street or at the others. But when Aya said something funny about the PE teacher who was afraid of his own students, Raiden smiled. Briefly, barely noticeably. But he smiled.
Genzo noticed it.
Normal people, he thought. Strange that they're normal.
The coffee ran out sooner than they wanted. The rain outside the window didn't stop. No one was in a hurry.
But time passed anyway.
When they went outside, it had gotten dark unnoticed, as always happens when you sit in a warm place talking. The wet asphalt reflected the streetlights in orange blurred spots. The smell of rain and, somewhere far away, fried food from a street stall around the corner.
Aya buttoned her jacket up to her throat.
Raiden silently nodded to everyone and headed toward the metro. His long hair got a little wet; he didn't turn around.
Aya lingered for a second.
"Good luck to you," she said to Genzo. "At the competitions. And in general."
"Thank you," he said.
She looked at Renji with a long, quiet gaze. She conveyed something without words. He nodded slightly in response. She left.
They were left alone.
Renji looked in the direction Aya had gone for a few more seconds. Then he shifted his gaze forward, to the empty wet street. It seemed that the incident when Ken had sex with her no longer mattered, after all, he had forced her. Somehow from that moment they had reconciled, even though she had cheated with another guy.
Genzo put his hands in his pockets.
"Well," he said. "I should go too."
Renji nodded.
Pause.
"Look," Genzo began. Stopped. Started again. "I'll write. And call. Not often, maybe. But I will."
Renji looked at him.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously," Genzo said. Without pathos. Just as a fact that had already been decided. "You're the first normal person I've met in this city. You don't just throw something like that away."
Renji was silent for a moment. Then he said quietly, almost to himself:
"You're the first one who smashed my phone and didn't run away."
Genzo snorted.
"The screen still worked."
"It did," Renji agreed.
Another pause. The rain drummed evenly, unhurriedly, on the awning over the café entrance.
"I'll miss you," Genzo said. Simply. Without embellishment. "Sounds weird, right? We've only known each other a short time."
"Sounds normal," Renji replied.
They shook hands. Firmly, briefly.
Genzo turned and walked along the wet sidewalk without looking back. His boots slapped through puddles. Streetlights floated overhead.
Renji remained standing by the café for a little longer. He watched Genzo disappear around the corner. Then he lowered his gaze to the asphalt.
Spring wasn't over yet. But something already was.