one

give yourself a try

If there was one thing I hadn't missed while I was in Okinawa, it was the S.W.O.R.D district.

I spent my life avoiding S.W.O.R.D at all costs.

Even if our house was a few blocks away from the infamous Oya High. My parents always told me to stay clear, and I was glad to do just that.

See, my family are islanders. My parents are originally from Okinawa, and I was born there. Until kindergarten rolled around and we moved back to mainland Japan. We'd go back every summer, and I told myself that I was going to stay there permanently one day.

As soon as I graduated from a certain hell, I moved back to Okinawa and took on odd jobs while I tired to figure out what I want to do. I got a degree on the island, then I enrolled in a constructional engineering program that brought me right back to S.W.O.R.D.

And that is where all of my problems started.

I inhaled the smell of the breakfast stir-fry as I cracked an egg open over top of it.

"Noboru!" I shouted "Breakfast!"

I tossed around the stir fry a few times before pouring it onto a plate and leaving it on a kitchen island.

Culinary school had always been my end goal, even my parents agreed it was worth it, but we never had the money.

"You look a little too dressed up to be going to Oya High." Noboru mused, hobbling into the kitchen. Last summer, before he rented the basement form my parents he had been hit by a car after leaving the Iemura Group. He was in a coma for weeks and still hadn't fully regained the ability to walk.

This was the world S.W.O.R.D was in, and we just had to adapt and deal with it.

"Are you sure you don't want to switch floors? I don't mind taking the basement if it's easier on your leg."

"Midori, it's fine. You already do laundry and make food, you don't have to give up your part of the house."

I shook my head, hastily shoving some stir fry in my mouth as I dug around in a drawer for my day planner "Do you need me to take you to physio? I can call the teacher at Oya and tell him I'll be late-"

Noboru laughed "Midori, stop. Yamato is going to drive me."

"Okay." I exhaled, smoothing out the cable knit long sleeve I was wearing. "I'm sorry, I'm so new to this whole landlord thing."

After everything bad that could have possibly happened with the S.W.O.R.D District happened, my parents took off for Europe, which meant that paying bills, taking care of the house and anything else that they would have done for Noboru was now my job.

And I was pretty bad at it.

"It's fine. Just focus on getting to Oya in time. God, be careful there. They're a bunch of fucking wack jobs."

Oya High was once a training ground for delinquent kids so they could be recruited into the yakuza. I wasn't sure what exactly had happened along the way, but now it was filled with middle aged men who smoked pot and fist-fought each other all day. Next to Daruma Ikka, they were one of S.W.O.R.D's strongest forces. Hell, to become leader you have to get punched a hundred times and not die. Surprisingly, the only person to ever to that was only a year older than I was.

Murayama Yoshiki. 24 and he still didn't have a high school diploma.

But he could fight like hell.

I pulled my day planner out of the drawer, quickly shoving it into a bag before Noboru spoke again.

"You know, after everything that happened to you lat summer, nobody would blame you if you went back to Okinawa."

I stopped in my tracks, feeling the bile rise in my throat. "I can't go back right now. That would mean that Doubt, and that the Mighty Warriors win. I'm this close to getting my degree, I can't go back to the island now."

"Don't you already have like four degrees?"

I chuckled. "Two, plus CPR certification and I trained drug dogs in Osaka. But that's not the point. I've never been good at being on my own, but if I went back I would be totally isolated."

Noboru nodded "I get it. You know you can talk to any of us if you need to, right?"

I nodded "Yeah, I know."

By 'any of us', Noboru meant the Sannoh Hoodlum Squad. I'd gone to school with two of them- Tetsu and Dan -but didn't really know any of them too well, except for Naomi Tatsuya. She's been my best friend since the second grade.

"Hey, I have to go. I want to try and get there early to make a good impression. Are you sure you don't need anything?" I said quietly, throwing one arm of my backpack over my shoulder.

Noboru nodded. "I'll be fine. It's you I'm worried about."

"Thank you. For caring."

I stood on my doorstep, taking a deep breath as I walked to my car. The last few months had not been kind to me, but I had to keep fighting.

Doubt weren't going to win.

And I made a promise to Masaki that I wasn't about to break.

"Thank you so much, both of you. But I really can't stay. I've been gone for three days now, and people are going to start asking questions, especially around the college."

Hiroto looked like he wanted to say something, but Masaki cut him off.

"Midori, I'm not going to make you stay. But I need you to promise me that you're not going to shut people out, you're not going to fall apart. Because if you do that, then it doesn't matter that we got you out of there when we did. It will mean Doubt has won."

I exhaled, quickly unlocking my car door.

There was no way I could be alone after everything that happened.

I turned on the radio, closing my eyes and inhaling a few times before pulling out of the driveway. I saw a motorcycle coming to a stop at the end of the road and figured it was Yamato coming to pick up Noboru for his physical therapy.

What I would have done for friends like Cobra and Yamato. People like Sannoh Rengokai.

Oya High was an imposing stone building. Between it's terrifying presence, and the fact that it looked like it was about to fall apart, my day was not off the the best start. I actually didn't even like the idea of leaving my car there.

It was eerily quiet outside the school, practically the opposite of what I had anticipated. Taking a sharp breath, I stepped out of the car and headed towards the front doors.

There, sitting on a folding chair with his feet propped up on a brick and a book in his hands was a nerdy looking guy in the ugliest glasses I think I have ever seen. When I reached for the door, he looked up at me.

"You are dressed way too nicely to be going here." He remarked, stepping out of the chair "You must be the Literature tutor."

I chuckled nervously. "Is it that obvious? I'm Midori."

"Todoroki. Let me go with you. The teachers don't really care about us so you're liable to die if you go in there alone."

"Good to know." I said before following Todoroki inside

If possible, the inside of Oya Kokoh looked worse than the outside did.

Any part of wall that wasn't spray painted or punched through has somebody leaning against it, and old chairs and desks were piled so high I thought they'd topple over at any given second. I tucked my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, trying to shrink and make myself as small as I possibly could.

Todoroki chuckled. A grim chuckle that made me slightly uncomfortable. "They're harmless. At least, on this floor they are. Floors are sorted by rank. Anybody down here can't win a fight yet."

"I'm familiar with how this works. I went to a school very similar to this only the yakuza weren't here every week trying to recruit hapless teenagers." I remarked, following the guy into an empty stairwell. "I wouldn't say we were an organized fight club, but I used to get into a lot of fights. I had issues back then."

"Well, the yakuza forgot about this place and nobody left so now there are more people in the thirty plus category."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty -six."

I hummed in acknowledgement as we finally finished climbing flights of stairs. From the outside, Oya doesn't look as big as it actually is.

Todoroki stopped in front of a door.

"Murayama's in here. He's really dense though, so this is probably going to suck. Don't worry, he has the cash, you're still getting paid."

"Thanks." I said quickly, ducking inside before muttering under my breath "Pretentious asshole."

"Yeah, Todoroki is kind of pretentious, isn't he." A voice from behind spoke up, causing me to jump.

"Jesus Christ, have some tact you asshole."

"Sorry." The guy laughed, propping his feet up on a table. He was shorter than I expected, hair falling down over his eyes. He was wearing a bandanna on his forehead but it didn't lok like it was doing it's job right.

Murayama Yoshiki.

This was going to be interesting.

NOTES!

HERE'S CHAPTER ONE!! it's so freaking long omg-