Victory Storm - Love Hurricane

“Silly bitch! Why should she tell you?! I wish I had fired her before.”

“How could you dare burn Kira's letters,” Lucas burst out, unable to hold back any more.

His father looked at him for a moment, puzzled by his son's sudden verbal attack, then he recovered his temper.

“I'm your father and I can do what I want! You belong to me.”

“I don't belong to you!” Lucas shouted as an answer.

“How can you dare talk that way to your father?” the man got angry, addressing his fist to the boys' chest, but Lucas was able to avoid it by a feline leap. However, he was too angry to be satisfied with protecting himself. He needed to let off steam.

He felt the urge to give vent to his anger by beating someone for the first time in his life so, before he could even realize that new desire, he could feel his whole body stretching towards the man who had turned his childhood into hell, and striking his jaw violently, taking advantage of the drunkard's unsteadiness.

He was taken back into reality by a sharp pain in his hand.

Darren Scott was surprised and shocked by that attack, which had been more violent than he wanted to admit: he fell to his knees and felt a pain in his face.

He was trying to stand up, when he was stricken again, by a powerful kick which left him breathless.

“Silly bastard!” the man shouted at Lucas, panting and trying to protect himself.

“You are a bastard!” the boy replied, then assaulted him once more.

“I'll go and fetch my belt, then we'll see if you dare talk to me like that again,” he threatened him in a voice shaking with anger.

“Just beat me! Beat me as long as you wish, dad! These are the only things you can do: get drunk and beat me. Well, you can do it, but I'm not going to keep still and wait for your blow with the belt any more!” his son shouted at him exasperated, while he went on punching him.

“You...rotten merchandise...” the man muttered, shaken by his son's assault.

“You're rotten merchandise!” his son suddenly replied. He felt tired of that assault which he couldn't stop any more and which seemed to get stronger and stronger after each new blow.

His father burst out laughing scornfully.

“Lucas, just remember this: a fruit never falls far from his tree.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are as corrupted and rotten as me. You're my son and I'm your father! My same blood runs in your veins!”

“I'm not going to be like you!”

“You already are. That's why everybody keeps leaving you, just like your mother did to you and me. Nobody wants to stay with such a failure as you. Even your young friend ran away, as soon as she could.”

“That's not true! Kira loves me. They forced her to leave.”

“You're a poor fool! That girl never really loved you, or she would have stayed here! You know, Lucas, I read the letters she kept writing to you. What a mawkish girl! But I can tell you this: Kira isn't coming back to you any more! And she isn't writing to you again, because she has decided to give up running after such a poor fool like you,” his father told him scornfully.

Lucas would rather be slashed by his father's belt at that moment, than listening to his terrible words, which were rotting him from inside.

He was feeling dirty and ready for self-destruction.

He called Kira's name one last time, but he already knew that his dear friend wouldn't run to help him and heal him from the pain which was tormenting him. She would never come back.

He rushed out of the room, feeling shattered and disgusted for what he was and what he might become, and left his father there, coughing and recovering his breathe with the help of a bottle of whisky.

Tokyo, Japan, January 9th 2017

“You're so beautiful,” her mother whispered to her, while she finished combing her hair.

“Thanks,” Kira exclaimed with a broad smile on her lips, which made Elizabeth's heart leap with joy. Seeing that happy look on her daughter's face was the best lenitive she had, to wipe away the anxiety and anguish she had been feeling in the last two years.

And it was all happening thanks to Adam Gramell. By his sweetness and sensitivity, that boy had been able to find his way into Kira's heart, helping her to forget Lucas Scott, that boy in Princeton.

Elizabeth hadn't certainly appreciated very much the fact that he was two years older than Kira, but her daughter's smile had been enough to dispel her fears.

Besides, Adam was the kindest and most harmless boy in the world and Kira didn't seem to worry about all the love letters he got from his classmates.

“I trust him, mum! I know Adam very well, and I'm sure he would never deceive me!” Kira had told her two weeks before.

“Deceive you? Oh, Kira, have you already gone so far? You told me you were just friends! You're still so young and...” her mother had got scared.

“Keep calm, mum! And then, I'm fifteen years old, nearly sixteen! I'm not a child any more and we haven't gone so far yet, even if Adam is seventeen!”

“Really? Haven't you? Would you tell me, if it was...”

“Mum, just trust me. Adam and I are just friends, even if I can't deny that we have been thinking about pairing off lately.”

“Please, Kira...”

“I know: I must take it easy. I mustn't hurry up. As you always say, make love and not sex with a stranger. Blah, blah, blah,” Kira kept saying like a robot, as she had memorized her mother's advice. Elizabeth had panicked five months before, when Kira had told her that her classmate Misaki wasn't a virgin any more.

“That's perfect.”

“However, Adam knows I'm not ready yet and that's okay for him. He told me that our friendship is the most important thing.”

“I hope so,” her mother sighed, surrendering.

Luckily the door bell rang at that moment, putting an end to a conversation which always made Kira uneasy, also because of her sense of guilt for all the lies she kept telling about Adam and herself.

“It must be Adam! Can you go and open the door? I'm still choosing the shoes I'm going to wear,” Kira asked her, trying to tidy up the clothes she had thrown on her bed.

She saw her mother hesitating for a moment, before she walked away.

“I'm really happy, do you know it?” she told Kira, then she went out of the room.

“So am I, mum. But please, hurry up now, or Adam will believe that I'm going to keep him outside in the cold. You know he feels it so much!”

“I didn't believe you could start smiling again, after we left Princeton and... Lucas,” Elizabeth mumbled cautiously. She hadn't spoken about that for some months, because she didn't want to make her daughter cry, but she felt that something was changing at that moment.

Kira suddenly stopped when she heard her friend's name, then, without raising her eyes from her clothes, she succeeded in answering after a long while, without surrendering to sadness.