Victory Storm "Love Hurricane"

ADAM

Tokyo, Japan, November 11th 2015

When he reached the old wing of the building, his heart was beating fast.

He looked around with caution, making sure that he had left behind all the horny girls who were always following him, craving to become his girlfriend.

Being the most handsome boy in the school had turned into a curse for him, especially after what had happened with Arashi.

If he only thought about what had just happened to him, he could feel some more fuel in his legs.

“Is there a place far enough to run away from what I'm feeling?” Adam's mind was shouting, when he got to the broken door leading into a room which was once the school library, before the last earthquake had made that side of the building unfit for use two years before.

The headmaster had finally found cheaper building a new library in the east wing, than reinforcing the north wing and making it safe, so that place was always deserted now.

Still shaken for Youra's kiss and Arashi's hug, Adam started pushing open the door of his secret shelter...almost secret, since he had had to share it with a fresher in the last year.

Only when he got inside, he flopped down on the floor, holding his head between his legs and hoping he could forget what had been whirling in his mind for a long time.

He recollected Youra's image. Gorgeous Youra. Every single boy in his school would go to any lengths in order to go out with her, but every single girl in his school would sell her soul to the devil in order to go out with him.

Youra hadn't taken a long time before looking for him and asking him to be her boyfriend, and he had agreed just because that was what all his friends expected from him.

Even his father had shaken hands with him at that moment, happy and proud of him.

But when she had tried to kiss him, he had felt nervous and had got in a cold sweat, while his head and his heart kept reminding him Arashi's smile.

“Why Arashi? Youra is the right one for me! I love Youra!” he had been telling himself for more than two months, but Arashi's smile, his hugs or his slap on the back were enough to turn Youra into impalpable air if compared to Arashi's sunny brightness.

He had been wondering till he got exhausted about the reasons of his behaviour but with no results, till that day at least.

It was just something silly: someone had tripped Arashi up and he had fallen into Adam's arms, even if just for a few moments.

Just a few moments...but they were enough to make him rush into the toilette to hide the evident erection which was pushing against his school uniform trousers.

“What a shame!”

He had run like a crazy to wipe that blameworthy and out of place instinct away from his mind. Even the memory of Youra's naked body hadn't been able to turn his attention from that.

“Why is all this happening to me? What's wrong with me?” Adam was dejected and tried to hold back those feelings which seemed to choke him.

He was going to break down once more and give vent to frustrated and shameful tears, when he heard someone else moaning painfully in the room.

He had already heard it several times in the last days, but it sounded much more desperate this time.

Feeling curious and worried at the same time, he got up and moved slowly to the bookshelf where fantasy novels used to lie.

Without making any sound, he cast a glance between the aisles, till he could see the whining girl. She was sitting on the floor as usual, her arms around her knees curled up on her breast and her legs left completely naked by her crumpled skirt. She was crying her heart out.

He wiped away from his mind his classmates' motto, saying that nobody could give up a chance of seeing a girl's panties, and he moved closer to her.

As soon as the girl realized he was there, she stopped crying and suddenly jumped up, wiping her face with her school uniform sleeve.

“Use this one,” Adam told her, handing her his handkerchief.

The girl grasped the white tissue with shaking and fearful hands and wiped her face carefully.

“Thanks...You're Adam Gramell, aren't you?”

“Yes, and you're Kira Yoshida, aren't you?” he guessed, pretending being uncertain of her answer, when he perfectly knew who that girl was. Even if she was two years younger than him and she always looked so miserable, that girl hadn't actually been able to escape any male radars since she had stepped into their school one year before. Her only slightly prominent eastern features had immediately attracted everybody's attention. Her parents came from two different ethnic groups like his, but Adam's father was American and he had taken his blue eyes, which made him so terribly charming, after him, besides his stately and muscular body. Kira instead had her mother's unusual dark green eyes, while her long and straight hair was like Japanese ones. However, there was something awfully charming in her and her mysterious, discreet and sad look had always made her the object of some boy's attention, even if she surely got rid of them all very quickly.

“Do you know me?”

“Half-blood people like us never go unnoticed.”

That statement seemed to strike her, since he could see her smile for the first time.

“But I'm not the nicest boy in the school like you: the famous Youra Lee-Kuro's boyfriend, a basketball champion, school idol and Lovely's cover boy.”

“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.