The word hung in the air like a challenge thrown down between enemies. Ryu stood in the center of Room 7, surrounded by curious faces of other children who'd been awakened by the confrontation, his fists clenched at his sides as he faced down his tormentors one final time.
"No," he repeated, his voice stronger now. "I won't say that about my father. I won't say that about myself. And I won't let you win."
Takeshi's face went through several emotions - surprise, anger, and finally something cold and calculated that made Ryu's stomach clench with dread.
"Wrong answer," Takeshi said quietly.
Hiroto disappeared from the doorway, returning moments later with something that made Ryu's heart stop. His father's volleyball, the leather worn smooth from years of handling, the surface marked with scuffs that told the story of a professional player's career.
"Last chance," Takeshi said, holding the ball casually in one hand. "Say what we want to hear, or your precious daddy's memory gets what it deserves."
"Don't." Ryu's voice cracked with desperation. "Please. It's all I have left of him."
"Should have thought of that before you decided to be stubborn."
Hiroto pulled a pocket knife from his jacket - a small thing, probably meant for opening packages, but sharp enough for destruction. The blade glinted in the dim morning light as he held it up for everyone to see.
"You wouldn't," one of the younger children whispered from across the room.
"Watch us," Takeshi said.
He tossed the volleyball to Hiroto, who caught it with deliberate ceremony. The knife moved toward the leather surface, and Ryu felt something snap inside his chest.
"Stop!" he lunged forward, but Takeshi was ready for him, blocking his path with arms that had grown strong over five years of institutional life.
The knife bit into the volleyball's surface with a sound like a whisper. Air hissed out through the puncture, and Ryu watched in horror as his father's ball began to deflate in Hiroto's hands.
"Still feeling proud of daddy?" Hiroto asked with false sympathy, making another cut. More air escaped, and the ball collapsed further.
"You're monsters," Ryu gasped, struggling against Takeshi's hold.
"We're realists," Takeshi corrected. "We're teaching you what the world is really like."
Hiroto wasn't finished. He grabbed the deflated volleyball with both hands and began tearing at the weakened leather, pulling pieces away with deliberate cruelty. The sound of fabric ripping was obscenely loud in the small room.
"Stop it!" several children called out, but none of them moved to intervene. Five years of seeing what happened to people who crossed Takeshi and Hiroto had taught them to stay out of the way.
"This is what happens to precious things in places like this," Hiroto panted as he continued his destruction. "They get broken. They get destroyed. They get thrown away like garbage."
He held up the mangled remains of the volleyball - leather torn in strips, inner bladder hanging out like exposed organs, the proud surface that had once held a professional player's dreams reduced to worthless scraps.
"Just like your daddy," he added with vicious satisfaction, and hurled the destroyed ball directly at Ryu's face.
The impact wasn't painful - the deflated ball had no weight behind it - but the emotional blow was devastating. Pieces of torn leather stuck to his cheek, and when he pulled them away, he could see his father's name faintly printed on one fragment, the ink smeared but still visible.
Something fundamental broke inside Ryu's chest. Not just heartbreak - that was too small a word for what happened. It was the destruction of hope itself, the final severing of his connection to everything good in his past.
"You," Ryu whispered, his voice barely audible.
"What?" Takeshi leaned closer with mock concern. "Sorry, didn't catch that."
"YOU DESTROYED IT!" The words erupted from Ryu's throat like a primal scream, carrying five years of suppressed rage and grief. "YOU DESTROYED THE ONLY THING I HAD LEFT!"
He launched himself at Hiroto with the fury of someone who had absolutely nothing left to lose. His small fist connected with the older boy's nose, producing a satisfying crunch and a spray of blood that sent Hiroto staggering backward.
"You little - " Takeshi grabbed for him, but Ryu was beyond caring about size differences or strategic thinking. He fought like a wild animal, kicking and clawing and biting, targeting anything he could reach.
"GET OFF ME!" Hiroto roared, trying to shake Ryu loose as the smaller boy wrapped around his waist like a furious koala.
Blood was streaming from Hiroto's nose, and Ryu could taste it on his knuckles as he continued swinging wildly. One of his kicks caught Takeshi in the shin, sending the taller boy hopping backward with a string of curses that would have made Mrs. Hayashi faint.
"HELP!" someone was screaming. "SOMEONE HELP! THEY'RE KILLING EACH OTHER!"
The fight devolved into a writhing mass of limbs and violence on the floor of Room 7, with Ryu at the center like a hurricane of grief-fueled rage. He managed to land several more solid hits before Takeshi got a grip on his arms, but even restrained, he continued thrashing with desperate fury.
"Hold him still!" Hiroto gasped, one hand pressed to his bleeding nose.
"He's like a rabid animal!" Takeshi grunted, struggling to maintain his grip as Ryu twisted and fought.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?"
Mrs. Hayashi's voice cut through the chaos like a blade. She stood in the doorway in her bathrobe and slippers, her usually perfect hair wild with sleep, her face a mask of horrified authority.
"Mrs. Hayashi!" Takeshi immediately shifted into victim mode, his voice taking on a tone of injured innocence. "Thank goodness you're here! Ryu went crazy! He just attacked us for no reason!"
"No reason?" Ryu struggled against Takeshi's grip, his voice hoarse from screaming. "They destroyed my father's volleyball! They tore it apart!"
"What volleyball?" Mrs. Hayashi's eyes swept the room, taking in the scene of destruction. "I don't see any volleyball."
Hiroto had already kicked the torn remains under his bed while Mrs. Hayashi's attention was on the fighters. "I don't know what he's talking about," he said, his voice muffled by the hand covering his bloody nose. "He just went berserk and started hitting people."
"LIAR!" Ryu screamed, redoubling his struggles. "YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID! YOU TORE IT UP WITH A KNIFE!"
"Ryu, calm down this instant!" Mrs. Hayashi stepped into the room, her authority filling the space. "Let go of him, boys. I'll handle this."
Takeshi and Hiroto released him, immediately stepping back and arranging themselves into poses of wounded innocence. Ryu stood in the center of the room, chest heaving, hair wild, small fists still clenched for battle.
"Now," Mrs. Hayashi said with the voice she used for serious disciplinary matters, "someone explain to me what happened here."
"We were just trying to talk to him about sharing room responsibilities," Takeshi said with perfect sincerity. "But he started yelling about some imaginary volleyball and attacked Hiroto without warning."
"Look at my nose!" Hiroto added for effect, lowering his hand to show the damage. "I think he broke it!"
"IT'S NOT IMAGINARY!" Ryu shouted, his voice cracking with desperate fury. "THEY STOLE MY FATHER'S VOLLEYBALL AND DESTROYED IT! LOOK UNDER THE BED! THE PIECES ARE RIGHT THERE!"
Mrs. Hayashi walked to Hiroto's bed and peered underneath. In the dim morning light, it was hard to make out details, and Hiroto had kicked the remains far enough back that they weren't immediately visible.
"I don't see anything," she said, straightening up with a frown.
"Because they hid them!" Ryu was practically vibrating with frustrated rage. "They planned this! They stole it during the night and destroyed it to hurt me!"
"Ryu," Mrs. Hayashi's voice took on the particular tone adults used when they thought a child was having an emotional breakdown, "I understand you're upset, but making accusations without evidence - "
"I'M NOT MAKING IT UP!" The words came out as a broken scream that made several children flinch. "WHY WON'T ANYONE BELIEVE ME?"
"Because you're acting like a lunatic," Takeshi said quietly, just loud enough for Mrs. Hayashi to hear. "This isn't the first time he's had one of these episodes."
"Episodes?" Mrs. Hayashi looked concerned. "What episodes?"
"He gets really paranoid sometimes," Hiroto explained, dabbing at his nose with a tissue someone had handed him. "Thinks people are stealing his things, plotting against him. We've been trying to help him, but..."
"But he's been getting worse," Takeshi finished sadly. "More violent. More unstable."
The casual way they painted him as mentally unstable, the practiced performance of concerned sympathy, the complete reversal of victim and aggressor - it was masterful in its cruelty. Five years of careful planning had led to this moment, where they could destroy his most precious possession and make him look like the problem.
"That's enough," Mrs. Hayashi said firmly, taking Ryu by the shoulder. "You're coming with me, young man. We need to have a serious discussion about appropriate behavior and getting you some help."
"I don't need help!" Ryu jerked away from her grip, but he was too exhausted from the fight to resist effectively. "I need people to believe me! I need someone to care that they destroyed the only thing I had left of my father!"
"Your father's been gone for five years, Ryu," Mrs. Hayashi said with what she probably thought was gentle understanding. "Perhaps it's time to let go of - "
"NO!" The word exploded from him with such force that Mrs. Hayashi took a step backward. "I won't let go! I won't forget! And I won't stay here with people who think destroying someone's memories is acceptable!"
He pushed past her toward the door, his vision blurred with tears of rage and heartbreak. Behind him, he could hear Takeshi and Hiroto already spinning their story further, painting themselves as victims of an unstable child's violent outburst.
"Ryu, come back here!" Mrs. Hayashi called after him. "We're not finished talking!"
But Ryu was already running down the hallway, his bare feet slapping against the cold linoleum. He didn't have a plan, didn't have anywhere to go, didn't have anything left to lose. All he knew was that he couldn't stay in a place where cruelty was rewarded and victims were blamed for their own suffering.
The front door of Sunflower Children's Home was locked, but Ryu knew about the window in the laundry room that didn't latch properly. He'd discovered it during one of his many attempts to find hiding places over the years, though he'd never had reason to use it before.
He squeezed through the opening just as he heard footsteps in the hallway behind him, Mrs. Hayashi's voice calling his name with increasing urgency. The morning air was cold against his skin - he was still wearing only his pajamas - but the chill felt cleansing after the suffocating atmosphere of the orphanage.
By the time Mrs. Hayashi realized where he'd gone and checked the laundry room window, Ryu was already several blocks away, running through the empty pre-dawn streets with nowhere to go and nothing left to protect.
The small park near the elementary school became his refuge by default. He'd played here sometimes during the few periods when Kenichi had been allowed to take him on supervised outings, and the familiar playground equipment felt less hostile than the unknown streets beyond.
He collapsed onto a swing, his chest heaving from the run and the emotional exhaustion of everything that had happened. Only then did he realize he was still clutching something in his right hand - a fragment of torn leather from his father's volleyball, the piece with his father's name partially visible in faded ink.
It wasn't much. A scrap of damaged material that probably meant nothing to anyone else. But it was proof that the volleyball had existed, that his memories weren't delusions, that his father had been real and had loved him enough to leave behind something precious.
Ryu pressed the leather fragment against his chest and finally allowed himself to cry - not the angry tears of battle, but the deep, wrenching sobs of genuine grief. For his parents, for his stolen childhood, for the destroyed volleyball, for five years of surviving in a place that had tried to break his spirit.
The sun was rising over the empty playground, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that reminded him of the morning practices he'd shared with Kenichi. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear sirens - probably Mrs. Hayashi calling the police to report a runaway child.
But for now, he was alone with his grief and a scrap of leather that held the last tangible connection to everything he'd lost.
The swing creaked gently in the morning breeze as Ryu sat there, homeless and heartbroken, clutching the remains of his father's memory.
____________________________________________________________________________
[Current Status:]
[Host: Yukitaka Izumi (Soul: Ryu Miyamoto)]
[Level: 1 (29/100 XP)]
[Skill Points Available: 1]
—
[Stats:]
- Serving: 2/100
- Receiving: 1/100
- Setting: 3/100
- Spiking: 0/100
- Blocking: 0/100
- Stamina: 15/100
- Jump Height: 28/100
- Game Sense: 15/100
—
[Abilities:]
- Empathic Connection (Level 1) - Active
- Critical Strike (Level 1) - Temporarily Unlocked (Remaining Uses: x2)
—
[Active Quests:]
- Daily: Complete 1 hour of focused volleyball practice (COMPLETE - Reward pending)
- Tutorial: Successfully receive 10 serves in a row (Progress: 0/10 | No deadline)
- Main: Find Your Team (Deadline: 29 days)
—
[Status Effects:]
- Soul Integration (80% Completed) - (Processing transmigration events)
- Family Bonding - Enhanced emotional connection, +10% XP gain from family activities (44 hours remaining)