章節 23: Outreach
At last, at long last, it was the second of May.
The alarm went off at 8:00 AM that morning.
Unlike his usual routine, Shugo got up on that first alarm without so much as a word of complaint.
After taking a short shower, going about his morning rituals, and getting dressed, Shugo checked his appearance in the bathroom mirror. For today, his top was a black bomber jacket – a favourite of his, with white accents and the words 'BULLET CLUB' in all caps on the back over a skull and crossed AK-47s that could only be the club's logo – which he wore over the RCPD shirt Chief Ryoma had given him. For his pants, he picked out one of two urban camo cargo pants he kept in his closet. Finally, his footwear consisted of a matching pair of socks and rubber shoes, both of which featured a black-and-gold color scheme.
'I just hope I don't get any literal bullet holes in these clothes.'
Shugo then left the house not long after, with his subsequent commute to the Rakuen Community Center taking little more than half an hour. Once there, he showed his school ID to the two ushers manning the registration booth that had been set up at the entrance, where the way he was wordlessly waved by one of them after a glance at his laptop screen in strongly indicated that Rena had indeed told them to expect him.
"Just a little bit early," said one of them, a slim redhead, with a smile. "Go straight on ahead to the auditorium – the event begins in 15 minutes."
Just before he was about to enter the auditorium, however, he heard someone call his name.
"Shugo!"
In what was fast becoming a running gag, his stomach performed a somersault off the closest high perch it could find when he saw just who it was-
"Big brother!"
-Right before it promptly botched the move when he saw that she wasn't alone.
'Rena…'
'And Yuria, too?'
Shugo blinked, not that he needed to; his eyes weren't lying to him. Of the two girls who'd called to him, the first was a petite girl slightly younger than him, with waist-length brown hair and a cute, heart-shaped face that didn't so much get the butterflies going in his stomach as it did get his stomach itself going crazy stunts. The other was a much younger girl who he'd just met earlier this week, but whose blond hair and blue eyes made her just as attractive in her own right.
'They're related, alright.'
"If Yuria's calling you 'big brother', I guess that means you've already met," commented Rena with a smile and a laugh, just before surprising Shugo with a hug out of nowhere that he was sure would've given him a heart attack had she waited even a second longer before letting go. "Saves me the trouble of having to introduce you, I suppose."
"We meet again, big brother," Yuria chimed in a second later with a bright smile of her own.
'Yeah, I knew it,' thought Shugo, suppressing a grin as his guess was confirmed.
"My big sister's told me so much about you! For starters, did you know-?"
For better or worse, Shugo never found out exactly what he was supposed to know.
Rena chose that moment to place her hand over her little sister's mouth, prompting the younger girl to start squirming in protest.
"As you may have noticed, my adorable baby sister's quite the chatterbox," said Rena, giggling nervously. "C'mon, Yuria, we'd better go. Mom's expecting us to help with the preparations, remember?"
With that, the two girls left.
And as Shugo watched Yuria continue to squirm as Rena half-carried, half-dragged her away, he couldn't help but wonder just what Yuria had been about to tell him that her older sister was so embarrassed about.
'Whatever,' he thought with a shrug as he finally entered the auditorium.
'Must be a girl thing, I guess.'
------
Minutes later, once the Amaki sisters had retreated to the nearby function room that had been designated for their use…
"What was that back there, Yuria!?" Rena demanded, her flustered tone complementing the furious flush that now lit up her cheeks. "Just what were you about to tell him, anyway!?"
"Oh, nothing, really," Yuria replied in a tone of mock innocence. "Just that the brownies you made last week were based on my recipe."
The younger girl's face then cracked into a cheeky, mischievous grin. "Don't worry, sis. I totally wasn't gonna tell him about those times you told me about how you first met as kids at Mom's amusement park as a bedtime story-"
Yuria's words were cut off when her big sister flicked her on the forehead.
"Ow! What'd you do that for?"
Rena glared reproachfully at her for a moment, before her expression turned into mingled sadness and concern.
"For some reason, Shugo doesn't remember how we met," she admitted. "It's partly my own fault I never got to tell him my name back then, so it's all I can do right now to try and get him to remember using the ribbon he gave me."
"…Oh," Yuria managed, her playful, mischievous demeanour immediately giving way to sisterly concern as she gave her big sister a comforting hug. "I'm sorry, Rena."
Rena smiled down at her little sister as she returned the embrace and patted her on the top of the head.
"You didn't know, Yuria."
"What are you gonna do, then?" Yuria asked moments later, when her older sister finally let go and she did likewise. "Are you gonna tell him?"
Rena's smile widened just a little bit as she shook her head.
"Not just yet," she replied. "We've both seen how he is around me, after all. I'd like to think there's a part of him that does remember, at least subconsciously if nothing else."
Yuria nodded in understanding as she smiled back. "Well, at least there's that, right?"
"I'll tell him myself if it comes to that," Rena explained further. "But if possible, I'd rather give him room to remember on his own first."
"Alright, sis. Good luck!"
The two sisters hugged one more time.
------
"Follow me, please."
As soon as Shugo entered the auditorium, the usher at the door offered to lead him to the back where the other participants of the outreach were waiting for the event to start. There were youths his own age, give or take a year, presumably having been invited by Rena just as he was. Likewise, the presence of younger children accompanied by their parents strongly implied that Yuria followed her older sister's lead by inviting whoever she could. Still others were adult men and women, and from the few that he managed to recognize, Shugo surmised that the outreach spearheaded by Rena's mother had managed to draw participants from all over the city.
"Oh, hi, Shugo! It's nice seeing you here!"
Even then, the teen still found himself taken by surprise by just who he ran into in the auditorium's backstage area: Chief Hikawa Ryoma, clad in an olive-green RCPD shirt similar to the one he gave Shugo, and his son Taro. Surprisingly, Riku wasn't with them.
Instead, their third companion was an attractive young woman whose name Shugo didn't know. The new girl appeared to be in her early- to mid-twenties, with blue eyes and chest-length black hair. Between her round, red-framed glasses, her high socks that stopped just short of meeting her knee-length black skirt, and her ample chest that was still clearly visible underneath her dark red, long-sleeved sweatshirt, Shugo couldn't help but find her quite attractive.
"Oh, wow," Shugo managed, willing himself to focus on the older man. "Hi, Chief!"
"It's great to see you too, Taro!" he added a second later, laughing as the boy hugged him around the midriff and he reciprocated. "Riku wasn't free?"
"Sadly not," said the woman with them. "I had to fill in for him."
"Come to think of it, I'm not sure the two of you have met yet," Ryoma commented, his eyes darting from Shugo to the woman who had accompanied him and his son.
Both the teen and the woman shook their heads.
"Shugo, this is Kadena Saaya."
As Shugo's eyes went to the woman in question, he took extra effort to keep his eyes from going downward. Even then, he had to admit that he found Saaya attractive. As a matter of fact, Shugo was convinced she would've easily made it as an actress or gravure idol if she hadn't become a cop.
"Oh, so you're Shugo?" Saaya's eyes widened as she acknowledged him, beaming. "It's nice to finally meet you. They've all told me good things about you."
"She's one of my personal staff, just like Riku, Ayato, and Ayaka are," explained the chief.
"Oh," the young man nodded as he understood. "Are they joining in, too?"
"They're here," Ryoma confirmed. "You just missed Ayaka, though. She ran off looking for that friend of hers a little while ago."
Shugo assumed that the friend in question was Rena.
"And Ayato went to get that girlfriend of his, but they should be back any minute now."
And sure enough, at that moment…
------
"Well, we're here."
Akizuki Ayato and Matsugane Erina arrived just a block from the venue around the same time Shugo ran into the others inside.
"It's nice of you to join the outreach," Ayato said to his girlfriend as he held her hand. "You could've just used the day off to catch up on lost sleep, you know."
"Ayaka invited me," Erina replied with a light shrug. "How could I let her down?"
Ayato didn't bother to answer. The main reason he was there was because Ayaka, Taro, and the chief all decided to go. While Chief Ryoma did assure Ayato that he could stay behind if he didn't feel like going, there wasn't much for him to do by himself back at the chief's place even if he had.
'And seeing as Riku's not here today, someone needs to look after these guys.'
"Besides, I could say the same thing about you," she added as she gave him a wry grin and a sideways glance. "We both know you're a lot nicer and a lot more caring than you like to let on, but you've never been the type to get involved in this sort of thing, either."
Ayato couldn't argue the point. Whenever Erina's day off came around, the two of them generally went out on dates to one of the malls that catered to the lower-middle class. He'd buy something for her from one of the stores at least once a month, usually twice. They'd catch a movie or have fun at the arcade, before having either a late lunch or an early dinner at one of the many restaurants operating in that mall. Finally, he'd bring her home to the apartment she rented to cap the day off.
Every once in a while the two would go to one of the other places to visit in town. They went to the aquarium once, just as they visited the planetarium and the zoo on two separate occasions. But compared to their usual dates, participating in an outreach for the underprivileged was one thing Ayato and Erina definitely hadn't done before.
"I'm not complaining, of course," Erina added as her wry grin became a small but sincere smile. "As far as dates go, this one's a first for us!"
Ayato laughed as the two began to walk. "It is, isn't it?"
For her part, Erina wasn't bothering to hide how happy she was today. It was one thing for Ayaka to get involved in outreach programs and community service; between her frail health and the series of unfortunate events that had befallen her and Ayato from a young age, Ayaka had always felt a kinship with those whose life circumstances were similar to hers. While she did have her limits, especially where Haru and the rest of her brother's old friends and associates were concerned – and Erina fully supported agreed with her there, seeing as they were the ones who pulled Ayato into a life of crime and very nearly got him killed – they were the exception and not the rule.
On the other hand, Ayato had been decidedly less inclined toward the idea of community service. The last time a mutual friend of theirs brought it up, Ayato bitterly ranted that he and Ayaka had been left to fend for themselves after their parents and grandparents died, and that the community was in no position to expect any service from him after they'd all but abandoned him and his sister.
"'Giving back to the community'?" Ayato scoffed incredulously. "Seeing as they gave me and Ayaka all of jack squat to begin with, I'm not sure how, why, or even what I'm expected to 'give back' to the community."
While Erina didn't completely agree with her boyfriend's reasoning, she couldn't entirely blame him either. After all, he was the one who shouldered the burden of ensuring his and his sister's survival, even if it sometimes meant resorting to less than lawful means – and, as was the case on his very last job, risking life, limb, and jail time in the process – in order to do so. Even if he were inclined to do so, all the legit and not-so-legit jobs he constantly took on with the goal of making just a little more money left Ayato barely any time to see Erina on her days off, much less get involved in community service.
Whether or not she agreed, Erina's firsthand knowledge of everything he and his sister had been through made it difficult for her to begrudge his antipathy towards the concept of community service. Even if he was only here because of Ayaka and their newfound benefactor, the idea of Ayato joining in on an outreach program seemed about as likely as a pig taking flight little more than a month ago. Knowing what she knew, Erina found it impossible to glance at the man to her left without her heart welling with emotion at the turnaround he had made.
First and foremost, Erina felt gratitude – towards the police chief and his aide, both of whom had taken a troubled young man under their wing and steered him away from an early grave mere hours after he'd just had a dangerously close shave. This was especially true in the case of the chief, since it also doubled as an extraordinary act of magnanimity and mercy towards someone who had been involved, albeit unknowingly, in the attempted kidnapping of his son.
But even that was eclipsed by the sheer surge of affection Erina felt for her boyfriend in that moment-
'I love you, Akizuki Ayato.'
-And by her pride that Ayato had finally begun to live up to the man she always believed he could be.
'And I'm proud of you.'
Finally, they'd arrived at the venue itself.
After the two had taken a moment to register their names at the registration booth, one of the staff on hand ushered them in and led them straight ahead to the auditorium.
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