chapter one

hide everything sharp

The air was cold outside the Hope Hills apartment complex, the wind carrying the chilly breeze out past the Hanging District where Takahide Sena's corner apartment on the ground floor thrummed with all the activity of a Katsunari burnout party that I would never be on the guest list for.

If Oya was S.W.O.R.D's biggest shithole, Hope Hills was the biggest shithole's biggest fucking shithole. At one point in time, the apartment complex had actually been a pretty decent place. Some of the current residents have been here since the beginning, and they love to tell stories about what Hope Hills once was. Nobody is quite sure when it started to fall apart, but I think I was seven years old when I noticed that things had taken a turn for the worst, especially in my building, the Murder Block.

"Jesus Christ, Yasushi!" I complained from where I had tumbled to the gravel. "I give up!"

The cheap plastic penny board lay a few feet away from where I had fallen, stopped by the shell of a burnt out car behind the Hanging District. Yasushi Nishikawa had been my best friend since I started seeing his mother as a psychotherapist when I was seven. Against my better judgement, sometimes he can trick me into doing really stupid things.

Like standing out in the cold at one in the morning, Hope Hills time- it's when all the fucking crazies are out- to try and learn how to skateboard.

"Come on, Sakura!" The boy whined "You almost had it that time!" Yasushi's sweater seemed to swallow the tiny boy whole, his mop of bleached hair hanging over his face. When he'd first experimented with the hairstyle, his mom told him he looked stupid, and I was inclined to agree.

I got to my feet, grabbing the penny board with a grimace. My hands were torn up form falling on the gravel, and I had better things to do.

Like get enough sleep so that I didn't fall asleep during my international law class.
"I'm done for the night." I insisted, shaking my head. "I don't want to be out here when Takahide's party gets out." Takahide Sena was the second in command at Katsunari Industrial High School. He was the Hanging District's resident bad boy, seeing as how Nao, the real leader of Katsunari, was never around anymore. There were rumors that his estranged father was associated with Daruma Ikka, one of the most aggressive S.W.O.R.D powers. Some of the rumors even went as far as to insinuate that Takahide's father was one of Norihisa Hyuga's right hand men.

Yasushi looked at me softly, the moonlight bathing his face in a sickly, yet somehow still pretty blue shade. "You and I both know that's not the reason. You're still scared of Kidra, aren't you?"

It had been almost a year since the teenagers of Oya High went up against the stain on the Murder Blocks name: Kidra, a renegade faction of drug dealers. I was almost too scared to leave the apartment that summer, or even be left there alone. Of course, most of that was pre-existing anxiety about the area of Oya that I lived in, but it just got worse after what happened to Yasushi.

"They could have killed you, 'Sushi."I protested, brushing my hair out of my face. "I was so scared that I was going to lose you. I can't even walk through that part of town anymore without shaking."

Last summer, Yasushi was on his way home from Freshman Fight Night at Oyakou when he was jumped by four Kidra enforcers pretending to be students at the Housen Academy with the intention of inciting a gang war between the two schools. They caved his head in with a crowbar, and he needed eight staples in his scalp in order to patch it back together. My mom was the attending surgeon, and even she said that 'Sushi was lucky there was no real damage.

He reached for my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. "I know, Sakura. And I'm so sorry that I put you through that."

"I know. Why is it that you seem to be over it, and I'm not, even though I'm not the one whose head got bashed in?"

"Because you think differently than everybody else." The boy answered honsetly. "And that's a good thing, Kiri. It makes you special. I'd be worried if you suddenly became one of those fucking Sato girls that live in our building. They scare me."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you mean like Bianca Tsumeragi?"

Bianca Tsumeragi was the leader of the current Sato Seven, and all-girl group of the scariest fighters at Sato High School. They all lived in my building except for one, who lived closer to the Sannoh border. I tended to stay out of their way, especially after watching Bianca hold Toya Shiratori upside down over a balcony for telling her she had 'nice tits'. Yasushi had been crushing hard on Bianca for three years.

"Shut the fuck up. You're the one who had a crush on Takahide Sena."

Not this shit again. Madoka Ishii, one my closest friends at the Hope Hills Girl's School and resident of the Ghost Block was convinced that I only liked Takahide because of the striking resemblance he bore to Korean actor Lee Dong-wook. There was a little more to it than that, but obviously his face helped.

"Well, the fact that he wouldn't go to lunch with me because he's dating a literal fifteen year old is a little bit of a red flag." I hummed. "Madoka heard from one of the other Katsunari girls that this girl Takahide is dating has a yakuza fetish and she's only with him because of his tattoos." I also thought his tiger tattoo was kind of quirky and attractive, but I wasn't about to voice that.

"What a fucking tool."

"Agreed." I said, looking out at the gravel road, and then back to the board in my hand. "I suppose I could give it one more shot."

Yasushi grinned. "That's my girl."

"Shut up." I rolled my eyes, placing the board back on the ground and placing my foot just below the first set of wheels. Taking a deep breath, I pushed off against the ground with my other foot. At first the penny board moved slowly, speeding up as I built up more momentum from kicking off. After four kicks, I brought my second foot up onto the board, placing it and even distance behind the first one, and slightly turning my body.

I was doing it.

"I've got it!" I screamed, my voice echoing across the apartment complex.

"You did it, Sakura!" Yasushi screamed back

My moment of successes was short lived. From the very end of the road, just over the horizon, the blinding blue-ish hue of headlights blinded my vision. I was about to get hit by a car.

Yasushi hadn't taught me how to stop a skateboard, or how to make turns.

"What do I do?" I screeched, looking back in Yasushi's direction as he panicked

His eyes were wide as he scrambled for a solution. "You're gonna have to jump!"

"What!?"

I didn't have time to think it through: the pickup truck was getting closer. Covering my face with my arms, I leaped off the plastic penny board, crashing into the underbrush at the curb, gravel slicing through my knees from the artful tears in my jeans.

"Jesus fuck!" I shouted. I could hear the truck come to a stop, the heavy metal door opening and closing.

"Sakura!" Yasushi shouted, running over to where I'm lying on the ground, reaching for my hands to help me to my feet.

I slapped his hands away, getting to my feet on my own.

"Sakura Kobayashi, what the hell are you doing out here!?" It turns out that the driver of the truck was the one person that I wanted to see less than Takahide Sena: my mother's new boyfriend, Seki Kotaro.

I rolled my eyes, dusting the grass and gravel dust off my sweater. "None of your business." I answered shortly.

I was ten years old when my parents split up. My mom's hospital schedule changed and she started working later hours, and dad was always busy, commuting out of the S.W.O.R.D area for work. I couldn't see it then, how far they were drifting apart. Neither of them knew how to deal with a seven year old child who over-thought everything and had frequent, unexplainable panic attacks, even though they tried their hardest. Eventually, they decided to call it quits. Seven years later, enter Seki Kotaro, the man my mother has been with the longest since her split with Kenjiro Kobayashi.

"What would your mother say, Sakura?" Seki insisted. "Just because she's not home doesn't mean you can get yourself killed. Hope Hills is a dangerous place."

No shit.

Seki sighed "Get in the truck, Sakura. I'm not messing around."

I tried to walk, pain rippling across my skinned knee as blood began to rise to the top of the wound. "I'm staying with 'Sushi tonight."

I didn't wait for Seki to respond, leaning on Yasushi as we walked back in the direction of the Murder Tower. I'm sure Seki was shouting behind us, but I wasn't listening. When I had the chance to go to Tokyo with my father, I should have taken it. That way I wouldn't have seen what Hope Hills became.

All I had wanted for the past five years was to leave Hope Hills. To get away from the messy chaos that the apartment complex provided. My anxious mind couldn't handle it. Takahide's arty was starting to let out, the first stragglers exiting the apartment block. A Katsunari girl in a tight black dress was holding hands with an Oya boy who I was pretty sure was at least a co-leader of one of the four factions at Oya Kokoh. Their drunken giggles carried over the wind as he swept her off her feet, carrying her up one of the building's outdoor staircases.

"Why am I like this, 'Sushi?" I asked quietly as we started to ascend the stairs to the upper floors of the Murder Block, the newest yet most derelict of the four towers. "Why do I think the way I do, panic the way I do? Why do I have this constant need for approval?"

The questions swirled around my head in this mess of other thoughts that would never be quiet. My mind was like a war-zone. Nothing worried me more than my own internal thoughts. I couldn't just let things go like other people could.

"I don't know, Sakura. I wish I could tell you." Yasushi answered honestly as we headed down the fifth floor walkway. "But I know that it doesn't make you weak. It makes you stronger than you'll ever know."

I followed Yasushi inside the dark apartment, my stomach sinking when I took in the familiar sight of his mother, sprawled out on the living room couch, a bottle of Russian vodka in her hand. She was sound asleep,  something that became commonplace for Hinako Nishikawa after her husband went to prison for armed robbery. All he was trying to do was get his family out of Murder Tower, and look where it got him. Yasushi never forgave his father for what he did.

Sighing, Yasushi unfolded the plush blanket folded over the back of the couch, laying it over his mother's sleeping form before moving to a room with a faint pink light emanating from under the doorway. 

His seven year old sister was sound asleep, probably unaware that her mother had even come home. Or that Yasushi had left two hours ago when he came to find me.

Lately, I spent more time at the Nishikawas' apartment than I did my own. I didn't want to hang around the place on my own, so I tried not to. Of course, with all the chaos of Oya High's faction wars, Yasushi wasn't always around, and I had to figure shit out for myself. Fr years I had been trying to be less dependant on other people, but so far it hadn't worked.

Yasushi's room was a maze. Every available surface was covered with manga books, and the floor was scattered with clothes he never bothered to put away. It was the kind of messy, disordered chaos that I could never live in, but it suited him just fine.

"I don't know if I'm ready to live on my own." The comment was still a part of my earlier questions, my lugs still felt compressed as I took off my sweater, collapsing on the bed.

"Where is this coming from?"

"Yui, Madoka and I sent our college applications in today, and it just hit me.  In less than eight months, I'm going to have to leave Hope Hills, leave Oya. Everything I ever knew. I'm not sure if I can do it."

Yasushi frowned. "Kiri, you've wanted to leave Hope Hills since you were nine years old. You have a brighter future than most of the people in this building. This entire apartment complex, even." Bold words for someone who was failing his senior year because he'd rather kick somebody off a roof than do his math homework. "I'm not going to sit here and watch you let your anxiety take that away from you."

I nodded halfheartedly, slipping underneath the white duvet cover. "You're a good friend, 'Sushi. See you in the morning."

NOTES!

THIS IS THE LONGEST DAMN CHAPTER I'VE EVER WRITTEN. There was so much about Sakura and her friendship with yasushi that I wanted to cover and I don't even think I've skimmed the iceberg on her anxiety-

People who've read teenage dirtbag, let's see your guesses on who the couple leaving the party was *wink wink*