Kapitel 10: Back Home

"Azami, I'm back from the farms!" Her father walked into the small kitchen holding a basket and their rations for the night. He stops midway to see a man sitting at the table.

He stands up and turns around to be Haru, "what the hell is this...?" He lifts a piece of paper up from the table that had alien markings on it that her father had only seen once before in a book. He took the paper from his hand and looked at each drawing closely. Covering his mouth he started to shake his shoulders slowly then fell to the ground.

"She left. I thought she'd stay, but I guess something or..." He looked to Haru's direction and continued, "or someone changed her mind." Getting up he lunged at Haru and held his shoulders, "what happened boy!?"

Pinned to the thin wooden wall of the dank kitchen he tripped in his words, "I uhm...She-" Haru averted his gaze, unable to face the father of the girl whose heart he shattered because of his own fears.

"Tell me she at least left for the right reasons." Looking back, Haru straightened himself under the man's gaze and told him the truth.

"I told her I couldn't take her as my partner." Letting go of Haru, Azami's father took a step back and began to pace the room. "You told me that no matter how much I loved her I couldn't! I broke her heart Jameson! I know who she is and I damn well know who you are, but please...does she even want that part of her life right now?"

Jameson, Azami's father, looked back at the eighteen year old boy that had just confessed his love for his daughter and began to laugh. "She's too far away for you to do anything about it now. By the time you reach her she'll already know everything she needs to about this damned country and what it's done." He walked down the hall into the broadcasting room and lit a fire.

Haru rushed in behind him, "are you telling me to just give up on her? To give up on what we both wanted."

Still turned away, Jameson lifted his daughter's last goodbyes to him to look closer at the letter. "No," he threw the paper into the fire, ashes rising through the chimney into the afternoon sky. "I'm telling you to let her take back back what's rightfully hers...Her place as Tomo's rightfullly born queen." He turned around and stared at the boy then began to snicker. "Did you really think I'd let another generation go by like this?"

Haru backed away from the man who he'd known since birth, "this isn't right! She doesn't even know what she's going to fight for!" Haru stepped forward to defend his love's honor.

But was once again shrunk by defeat at her father's words, "she knows. I've told her mostly everything. Her mother just needs to fill her in on the rest." He strode over to Haru with power booming in his voice, "did you really think I'd send my little girl up there with her knowing who we really are?" They both stared at each other.

"No..." Haru shrank back into the kitchen and sat at the table.

Jameson came in but paused before sitting down, "listen...I know that you have both been together for so long, but this isn't your fight and you know it." He sat down and patted the young second stager's back. "She needs to know about the massacres on our country that they've banned people from learning about. Please..." he pulled out a map from his pocket and placed it on the table. He walked to the doorway from the kitchen and spoke, "just don't try and stop her anymore."

Haru looked at the paper and rose up to his feet. "Thank—" He turned around to see Jameson no where in sight,.

Running out of the old but humble home, he sprinted down the street to end up in another house around the corner. "Mum! I know you're home!" He sprinted through the empty halls looking for his mother. "Please! This is important!" Stopping himself across from his mother's door he crept forward. He opened it just a crack to see a guard standing at the foot of his mother's bed holding an electric bat.

He put a knee on the bed while unzipping his pants, "now y'all be good so we don't have to draft yer' kid got it?" Closing the door softly, Haru lightly crept to his room and began to pack a duffle bag. His face straight as a board, he wiped the one tear from falling down his face.

Walking out of the house listening to the echoing cries of his mother and the pounding of wood against wood he turned towards the edge of town and kept on going.

"Don't worry mum, after Azami makes it to the capital..." Haru looked back at the town he used to run through everyday from first stage to now and spoke softly but confidently, "he'll be the one begging for mercy." He turned to face the road ahead once more and marched triumphantly into the next town, the road changing from dirt to tiny pieces of gravel.

Looking forward towards the horizon, he thinks of Azami and the emotions he's seen of her's over the years, happiness when she was at my second stage ceremony and sadness when her father would yell at her for talking about how her mother 'passed.' Holding her in my arms for all of those moments, a tear, a smile at times.

I need her. She needs me.

He thought to himself as he walked from town to town seeing the different vendors, but was stopped when he saw guardians marching one of them out of the town towards his own. "You've been banished from this town until further notice. We will be back for you after nightfall." The guardian pricked the slimy vendor's fingers with a metal syringe.

The pig of a man was sweating through his shirt as the me through him to the floor, "b-but--!"

The towering man cut him off, "and don't even think about running, or we'll just send the gators after you by order of our leader." The vendor quivered under the guardian's gaze and began to squirm away to a nearby town.

Looking back at the guardians, Haru saw them take the man's blood and suck it into a small and strange device. The metal hand-held 'thing' began to light up and sound in a monotone electric voice, "Charles Ming, sixty three years of age. His father was drafted while he was in his first year, while his mother was taken by our leader to become a slave. Wanted by the capital guardians for falsifying information to broadcasting station."

Haru backed away from the scene and began to run away i to the next town. As he came to the center he saw no one in the streets.

Seeing that it was past sunset, Haru set off to find the nearest rebel base. Opening the door to the humble aboad, he walked in and called out the code Jameson had given to him to signal that he needed help to any rebels around. "tomodachi o tasukete." He waited a few moments before he heard a door creak from the back of the small building.

"Come in friend...I have one room left." The old women led Haru into a back room and continued to speak, "I have a feeling you're going to the capital. I would've sent you with my son but his father has given him mixed emotions about the war." The women looked sad as she looked up down the hall where there was a light on and two people softly talking. "You can sleep in the room next to my son's. Just don't tell him who you are." Haru nodded his head and thanked the woman for helping him.

Walking down the hall he ignored the muffled voices and walked into the small room he'd be sleeping in.

He thought to himself about what Azami would be doing right now or where she even was. "I'll find you...and I'll tell you how much I really love you." He laid on the mat and closed his eyes. "I swear on Hama's grave."