Love Hurricane

“Wow! I hadn't realized I was so famous!” Adam stopped her, feeling uneasy.

“You can't avoid it, if you appear on the cover of the most famous magazine for girls. You have a future as an idol” Kira replied. She had always read Lovely, since her classmate M isaki had lent it to her.

“That was three months ago.”

“Do you mean that you aren't going to become an idol?”

“Exactly! Neither now nor ever,” Adam stated with a very broad smile which was trying to hide his pain and sorrow for having been forced to give up his dream. He had always been charmed by the fashion world and the idea of becoming a model had prodded him from the start.

His interview for Lovely should have been the best launching pad...at least till his father had accused the magazine of “having tricked his son with gay-like nonsense and trifles.” He had shouted to him that he'd rather die than see his own son walking like a “freak” dressed in “freak” clothes in the middle of “freak” fashion designers.

“There's a place at the Military Academy waiting for you, my son,” his father had told him proudly, since he loathed the possibility that Adam could do something else with his life, maybe something not very “heterosexual.”

He never knew whether it was those words' fault or his terror of being marked as homosexual by his father, but he had started going out with Youra the day after and they had paired off three days later.

He didn't feel happy though, but he was too scared to look for a different solution.

“It's a pity. I don't know why, but I've always thought you would become a model when you grew up...That's probably because I always see you modelling along the school corridors,” Kira said, bringing him back into the real world.

“Thank you for your kind words, but I've already decided to follow in my father's steps and become a soldier like him.”

Suddenly the girl burst out crying again and fell at his feet.

“Hey, are you okay? Have I said anything wrong?” Adam got immediately scared and leant down in front of her.

“I hate soldiers,” Kira could hardly sob.

“I thought you father was a soldier like mine.”

“He is actually... and I hate him too. I had to leave Princeton for his fault.”

Adam tried to speak again, but he was frozen by the girl's gloomy despair.

He could understand her so well: she was confined in a world she didn't want.

“So, is that the reason why you often come here and cry?” Adam whispered softly, trying to hold back the emotion that scene was stirring inside himself.

Unlike all the other girls in their school, Kira wasn't crying for a bad mark, for a love disappointment or for any other girlish foolishness. He was very struck by her.

“Would you like to go back to Princeton? To your friends?” he guessed again.

“To Lucas,” Kira moaned and sniffed her nose.

“Lucas? Is he your boyfriend?”

“No, he is my best friend. He is in danger and I'm not there with him any more, to protect him... I don't even know where he is at the moment and what's happening to him” the girl sobbed, showing Adam the sealed envelop she was holding in her hand.

Adam turned it upside down in his hands. The letter was addressed to a Lucas Scott from Kira Yoshida, but it had been sent back to her with the words “unknown addressee,” written by the post office with a big red stamp.

“Your friend might have moved home. Did your Lucas ever tell you anything?”

Kira stopped crying with a superhuman effort and she tried to focus on the explanation she should give him. She had never been in confidence with anyone in the last year, not even with her school mate Misaki, but at the moment she was feeling like offloading the burden she was carrying inside onto someone else.

She had never spoken to Adam before actually, but his eyes made her understand she could trust him.

“My father was moved to the USA five years ago, so we went to live in Princeton, next to Davenport...I met Lucas there. He is as old as me and went to my same school. I'm very fond of him and I've always tried to protect him from that alcohol addicted butcher, but...”

“Alcohol addicted butcher?”

“His father,” Kira explained and started crying again. “He beat him... Lots of times and I couldn't stop him. My mother tried too, but with no effect... however, we helped Lucas a lot by our presence and the violent scenes became less frequent, but I'm not with him any more now, I...I...”

A new burst of weeping.

“He is alone at the moment and there is nobody ready to protect him,” Adam guessed, feeling sorry for him. “What about his mother?”

“She died some years ago and left Lucas alone with his father” Kira answered in a very scornful and resentful voice towards that woman who should have looked after her own son instead of running away to the after-world, in her opinion. “I'm the only one who cares about Lucas in this world and I left him.”

That guilty feeling and her pain for that state of things struck Adam like a punch in his stomach, leaving him absolutely breathless.

“What will he do without me? I'm sure is father will beat him again and I won't be there. I'm not there with him any more, can you understand me?” Kira went on giving vent to her deep frustration. “My mother keeps saying that Lucas never answered my letters for his father's fault and that he probably never gives them to him... but after this last one, I don't know what I should think. Could anything serious have happened to him?”

“Can't you hear from him anyway?”

“Thanks to her previous job, my mum was able to learn that Lucas is well, even if his father has a lot of money in the last year because of some wrong investment. But that's not enough for me! I want to go back to Princeton! I should never have gone away! It's all my father's fault.”

“Your father was moved back to the USA embassy in Tokyo a year ago, wasn't he?”

“Yes, I prayed and begged him to leave me in Princeton. I was ready to go to college, but he didn't let me do it. The worst thing is that I was really sure I would stay there with Lucas. I had sworn to him that I would never leave him, instead...I don't know if he will be able to forgive me. He'll think I'm treacherous like his mother.”

“That's not your fault.”

“It's all my fault: each time Lucas feels pain, it's my fault, my parents are always quarrelling for my fault...” Kira burst out because she had noticed her parents' never ending night quarrels, when they believed she was sleeping in her bedroom. Leaving Princeton had been difficult for her mother too, because she had had to leave her job and her daughter was dejected and unrecognisable, so that had been a very bad blow for Elizabeth too.

“I've never seen our daughter crying so much, not even when she was a baby! Kenzo, I've been trying to make her stop for months! I was wrong to agree with you and leave Princeton. And what for? To turn into your mother's carer? Oh, Kenzo, this isn't the kind of life I wished for,” Elizabeth often complained.

“Tokyo is my home town and my wife should look after my mother which is a widower now and is alone. Besides, I've already told you to look for a part-time job, but only if you are able to look after our daughter. Being so often far away from you was a mistake. Kira clearly needs some discipline and moral rules” her husband kept telling her.

“What are you hinting at? Do you think I didn't match up my responsibilities towards her?”

“Should I remind you that our daughter hasn't spoken to me for months and is behaving very badly with everybody? Not to mention her bad marks at school! She didn't even pass her entrance examination at the International School and she is attending a very common Japanese school at the moment.”

“Kira has always been the best in her class! What did you expect from her? You suddenly dragged her away from her school, her friends and above all from Lucas! You know how much she cares about him!”

“You should call him a scapegrace!”

“It's not his fault if he has a father like that.”

“I don't care! Kira's life is here now and she must accept it!” her husband ended every time before leaving the house and slamming the door.

At the memory of those quarrels, Kira was carried away by a new torrent of tears.

Without uttering any other word, Adam made her sit down on a dusty chair and let her give vent to her feelings, till she stopped crying.

“I'm so sorry for what you are going through,” Adam burst into her thoughts. “I don't know what's happening to your friend, but I can tell you that you should put more trust in him, in my opinion.”

“I trust him!”

“So, stop considering him like the victim he used to be when you were children. He is growing up like you, so he will soon be able to protect himself from his father, you'll see.”

“But Lucas is so small and thin if compared to his father.”

“He probably used to be like that, but I'm sure he'll turn into a strong boy soon, capable of looking after himself.”

Kira looked at him with wide- open eyes. She had never thought that Lucas could be able to protect himself from that monster. In her mind, Lucas was still a small and slim nine-year-old child, covered in bruises and scratches. However, Adam was right: Lucas had grown up and had become stronger, even if that wasn't enough. At the moment.

“Thanks,” the girl mumbled softly, turning in her hands the handkerchief which was soaked with tears and mucus.

“No problem. I didn't feel like being lumbered with maths today,” Adam laughed, trying to play it down.

“Oh my God, school! I had science today,” Kira suddenly remembered when she looked at her watch. Almost an hour had gone by since she had run away to her secret shelter.

“I think you'd better wipe your face before going back to school, or your teacher will get worried.”

Kira smiled at him gratefully.

They walked to the door together.

“You aren't telling anyone what I said, are you?”

“Of course not!” Adam comforted her. Seeing her crying had been a sort of catharsis for him too, as well as something relieving, even if he hadn't shed any tear...almost.

He liked that girl. He had been able to feel her sensitivity and her sweetness during that short time.

He hadn't seen anybody crying for a friend till then.

She wanted to protect Lucas and defend him from life's injustice.

He wished he could have someone like her standing on his side as well!

“Can I ask you a question?” Kira asked him after a short while.

“Of course.”

“Why do you usually hide in the library too and sometimes cry?” she asked him with caution.

“What? I...?” Adam stammered uneasy.

“Yes, I saw you. But if you don't want to tell me, I'll understand.”

Adam sighed dejected and all the thoughts which had been haunting him since he had run away cropped up again violently in his mind.

How should he answer her?

“I think there is something different inside myself,” he said in a whisper, realizing the meaning of his own words for the first time.

***

Princeton, Kentucky, November 11th 2015

“I'm sorry, Mr Lucas,” Rosalinda, who had become the Scott family's ex- housekeeper, sighed sorrowfully.

“I'm sorry too,” Lucas mumbled gloomily, without raising his eyes from his homework. He couldn't stand that woman's tears. False tears. Crocodile ones. Female ones.

“You cry at first, then you betray and leave,” the boy wished he could shout at her, but he held back and grasped the pen violently, till he almost broke it.

“You don't need me any more here. Your house is small and your father doesn't want me” Rosalinda tried to justify herself.

“It's all right.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“What for? For seizing the opportunity and running away from a violent and drunkard master who often beats you too?” he wished he could answer.

“Enjoy my father's severance pay.”

“Mr Lucas, I didn't want to leave. I've stayed here all these years just for you...Things got worse after your mum's death, but I stayed here in spite of it all, even if I was never brave enough to revolt against Mr Scott.”

“Goodbye, Rosy,” Lucas stopped her as he couldn't stand that woman's words any more. She should go and relieve her conscience with someone else! He had to study, as he was sick of being teased for the way he read in front of other people, or for his poor marks, even if he tried hard to do better.

Since Kira had left, “his clever and sagacious mind” as she used to call it, seemed to have retired!

Kira...

If he just thought about her, he could feel his stomach churning till he had to bend down with spasms.

He didn't even notice the housekeeper who was still standing by his bedroom's door.

“Mr Lucas.”

“What else do you want from me? I told you to go away!” the boy suddenly burst our furiously.

“I've done a lot of mistakes with you, when I used to support your father... I was scared, but... No, I don't have any excuse, but I'm going to tell you something I always kept secret.”

“I don't care,” Lucas stopped her, getting more and more furious.

“It's about Kira, the girl who went back to Japan last year,” Rosalinda hinted, knowing that it was a delicate subject.

Kira. Once more.

A new spasm stroke his stomach violently.

“I don't care,” Lucas told her again, twisting his hands to stop shaking with anger and despair as he had done all that year long. The worst year in his life.

“I know you're lying. That girl was everything to you, Mr Lucas. I saw how much you suffered in the last months. You have to understand me: I wish I could have told you before, that Kira didn't forget you, as Mr Scott made you believe. I regret what I did, but I don't want to go away without telling you the truth. Kira wrote several letters to you in the past months. Eighty-six, exactly.”

She had finally succeeded in being the centre of Lucas's attention: he was staring at her bewildered, with open-wide eyes.

“Eighty-six letters? So, where are they?” he was able to ask her, while his brain was trying to focus on her words.

“Your father took them and burned them. All of them,” she revealed, while she avoided telling him that she had always read them. “I'm very sorry.”

Lucas kept staring into space with his hazy mind for a long while, before he could move a single muscle.

He didn't even react when Rosalinda went on saying she was sorry, before going out of that house, never to come back.

When Lucas came back into the real world, he could just feel a blind anger against the man who had brought him into the world and had then taken away from him even the poor comfort he could get in reading his best friend's letters.

He had been suffering for a long time and he hated Kira for having left him, after she had sworn again and again that she would never do it.

She had told him that she was ready to give anything up for him and she would never leave him, but instead...

Not even the t-shirt she had given him that cursed summer was left to him, as he had torn it to pieces in a fit of folly, after he had been discharged from hospital because of a dislocated shoulder.

He had fallen from the stairs by accident, he had told them after his father had threatened him.

He walked to the living room in a state of trance, since he knew he would find his father there, as drunk as a lord.

Their house was small, unlike the villa where they used to live in the past and which that vicious monster had foolishly lost in a game of poker a month before.

He quickly got to the piano-bar, where he found an empty bottle of bourbon lying on the counter.

His father was leaning down and looking for something else to drink, but he caught a glimpse of his son's arrival and he got up.

“Where's Rosalinda? I want her to go and buy some more bourbon,” the man muttered while he tottered to his armchair, but his son blocked his way.

“You fired her, don't you remember? She went away a few moments ago and she told me about Kira's letters,” Lucas told him, trying to hold back the anger which was starting to prostrate him.

“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.

RELATIONSHIPS

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.

“I'm going back to him, mum. I promised.”

Elizabeth started shaking because of her daughter's words and she understood she was wrong: nothing had changed.

***

Princeton, Kentucky, January 15 th 2017

As soon as the girl's mouth brushed his lower lip, he couldn't avoid moaning with pain.

“Couldn't you wait one more day, before letting Kurt split your lip?” the blonde girl said in a flute-like voice, making her tongue slip down his neck till his naked chest.