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Men are irresponsible.
Teenagers are stupid.
And Nirei's parents were gone for the weekend.
That's it. That's the whole disaster.
Nirei knew they shouldn't.
He knew it from the moment Suo kicked the door shut and pushed him against the hallway wall, still with sweat clinging to his clothes.
He knew it, and he didn't care. They were teenagers, they felt invincible, and they'd spent months circling around something neither of them dared to name out loud.
There isn't much to tell about that night. Clumsy. Rushed. The kind of mistake teenagers make because consequences always feel far away until they're not.
It was good. More than good.
They'd been like that for months. No one in the group had said it out loud, but everyone knew, ever since Sakura's love-sensor had gone off, and conveniently, Nirei and Suo seemed to have their own little world apart from everyone else.
Weeks later, Suo disappeared. Nirei, who spent half his life worrying about people who never asked him to worry, ended up dialing his number for the hundredth time that week.
He hadn't expected to find him right there, and even less expected the beating that came after.
He'd expected those words even less.
Every word hit Nirei like a stone.
One hurt more than the others.
We aren't anything.
He thought, unable to help it, about the empty house, about that afternoon, about everything that had happened between the two of them before Suo disappeared without explanation.
If Bofurin meant nothing to Suo...
Then what had that afternoon been? Nothing too? Just one more thing you could leave behind without ever looking back?
—And us?— Nirei asked, his voice smaller than he would have liked — Was that nothing too?
Suo didn't answer right away. For a second, just a second.Something cracked in his expression, something that looked like regret. But he crushed it almost as fast as it had appeared.
—Don't make this more complicated than it already is.
They were lies.
Nirei could tell by the way Suo fought.
His punches were powerful, but they lacked the force he used against real opponents. They still hurt, because it's hard to hit someone with love in the way, but what hurt more was the look on his face. Suo had always been good at hiding his feelings, this time, though, the sadness in his eyes was impossible to miss.
The fight felt much longer than it really was. Even after landing one good hit, Nirei was still far below Suo's level, he was weak, he was pathetic, and there was nothing he could do to stop him from leaving. He wanted Suo to explain what had happened, whether something had happened to him, whether it was his own fault that Suo had decided to go. But by then, he was on the edge of unconsciousness, he couldn't even cry anymore. His whole body ached, and he knew that once the adrenaline wore off, it would only get worse.
When Sakura and the others came running after getting the call, they found Nirei collapsed, his lip split, and one eye starting to swell. He still tried to explain what had happened, even struggled to his feet to point in the direction Suo had gone, only to collapse again a moment later.
Saying it out loud made everything feel real. Watching his friends' faces only confirmed what Nirei still refused to accept. But none of that compared to Sakura's reaction.
In the end, Nirei let himself be carried without protest. His whole body ached, but that wasn't what hurt the most. Whatever had broken inside him didn't have a name yet, and it wasn't something a bag of ice could fix.
His mom didn't scold him when he got home that night with a black eye and a swollen lip. She just looked at him, sighed like someone who'd already resigned herself to the fact that her son was the type to get into trouble, and put a bag of ice on his face without another word.
—Sleep — she told him —We'll talk tomorrow.
Nirei slept.
Or tried to.
The next morning, he woke up with a dull ache in his stomach. At first, he mistook it for another bruise from the fight. He pushed himself halfway upright, still groggy, and it was the damp cold beneath him that finally snapped him awake.
The bed was soaked in blood.
He screamed.
He didn't remember ever screaming like that before. The sound tore out of him before he even realized it was his own, and his mom ran in wearing her pajamas, her hair still tousled, and froze in the doorway for one full second before reacting.
—Get dressed. We're going to the hospital. NOW.
The ride blurred together. He remembered the leather against his skin, his mom's hands trembling on the steering wheel, the traffic lights passing one after another while he stared without really seeing them. He remembered her talking to herself under her breath, words that never quite formed complete sentences. He had never seen her that scared.
At the hospital, there were questions Nirei didn't know how to answer because he didn't understand what was happening to him either. There was a nurse who took his blood pressure with cold hands. Then a doctor walked in wearing the carefully neutral expression of someone used to delivering bad news.
—I'm sorry to say this so directly — the doctor said, glancing between Nirei and his mother — but you were roughly five weeks pregnant. What you're experiencing is a spontaneous miscarriage. Physically, you'll be fine.
The silence that followed felt endless.
He didn't want it.
That was the first thing he thought, with a brutal honesty he'd later be ashamed to admit out loud.
He didn't want a child, not now, maybe never, not with Suo, not with anyone. And if things had been different, if his country weren't one of the most conservative on the continent, if the word abortion didn't come wrapped in legal statutes and threats of prison, if he'd been given the chance to choose, he would've made that decision himself, it would've hurt, but it would've been his decision.
He never got that chance. His body and the beating from the day before decided for him before he'd even had time to process that there was anything to decide.
When the doctor left the room, his mom sat on the edge of the bed and stared at a fixed point on the wall, her hands clenched in her lap.
—Thank God — she finally said, very quietly, as if the words cost her something to get out — Thank God that…
She didn't have to finish.
Nirei knew exactly what she meant. Deep down, she was relieved she wouldn't have to face her son's teenage pregnancy.
But the relief didn't stop her from breaking a second later.
—What were you thinking? — Her voice cracked somewhere between a whisper and a shout —YOU'RE A CHILD, AKIHIKO NIREI!! HOW COULD YOU BE SOO--
She stopped herself. She looked at her son, pale, hooked up to an IV, with the black eye still blooming across his face from yesterday's fight and the anger dissolved into something else.
—I'm sorry — she whispered as tears spilled down her face— I-I'm so-sorry, I s-shouldn't yell at you, not here, not now...
If they hadn't been in a hospital, if a nurse hadn't been coming by every ten minutes to check the IV, Nirei was sure she would've slapped him. Instead, she sank down onto the floor of the room, sitting with her back against the wall, and Nirei, with what little strength he had left standing, slid down to sit beside her. They held each other there, on the cold hospital floor, without saying anything else, because there was nothing left to say that wouldn't hurt.
He definitely hadn't wanted it.
But that night, staring at the hospital ceiling, he couldn't stop thinking about how strange it was to lose something before he'd even known it was there. He'd never had the chance to decide because fate had already decided for him.
The days passed quickly. Nirei fully recovered, physically at least, the other part, the part that didn't show up in a blood test or a medical checku, took longer, it was the kind of wound a person simply learned to carry without letting it show.
So he decided to focus on something else.
On Sakura, for instance, whom Suo's betrayal was eating alive. After a lifetime of having no one, losing one of the people who'd supported him most had left a crack that wouldn't disappear overnight. They didn't know exactly what Sakura's life before Bofurin, but they knew enough to understand this wouldn't be easy for him to get over.
So Nirei decided to forget about that useless idiot Suo, he wasn't around anymore, anyway, and get back what he did have: being useful.
Being there for the others, and proving to Suo that if he'd decided they were nothing, that they weren't friends anymore, fine. Let him believe that; they knew it wasn't true.
He told Sakura as much while hugging him, finally finding a moment alone together.
There was an honest "talk" with Red Chanpuru, and in the end, everything turned out fine.
The fight itself wasn't the hard part. What came after was.
Since the hospital, his mom had become unbearably protective. Nirei understood why. Deep down, he was even grateful for it, but there were days when it felt like she was watching his every move.
So he told her he was going to a sleepover with some friends, promised everything would be fine, that he'd be responsible. He just hoped that the bruises on his face would have faded by then, if not, he'd tell her he'd fallen.
The next day, Nirei went out on patrol with Sakura and the others. They couldn't just drop their responsibilities over a few bruises, and besides, things hadn't gone too badly for Bofurin, the other side had definitely come out worse (ignoring the fact that Nirei had taken the worst of it).
That's when he saw her.
His mom was walking fast, almost running, with that expression Nirei knew all too well, the perfect mix of relief and fury only a mother could wear at the same time. She stopped in front of him, grabbed him by the arms, turned his face from side to side, checking for new injuries, confirmed he was in one piece, and only then, only after making sure he was in one piece, did she finally lose her patience.
—Come here
She dragged him by the arm into a nearby alley, far, she thought, from curious eyes. Not far enough, a second later, Sugishita, Sakura, and the others heard the sharp crack of a slap followed by a scream that ran cold.
Sakura was the first to react. He ran toward the alley with the others right behind him, but they didn't make it in time to stop whatever was happening. They only caught sight of Nirei's mom with her hand still raised, tears in her eyes, and Nirei with his cheek red and his gaze lowered.
—Since you're so rebellious now!— she shouted, her voice breaking between sobs and anger — Since you think you're so grown up! Then go live like a real adult, let's see how well you do without me!
The words came out through tears, then she turned and walked away, leaving Nirei standing in the middle of the alley while his friends looked at one another, unsure what to do.
—Are you okay? — Sakura asked carefully.
— I'm fine — Nirei replied, and this time the smile that followed didn't convince anyone — Don't worry about it. It's been a rough few months, and my mom's really stressed, that's all.
He only half believed what he was saying.
What Nirei didn't tell them that day, what he didn't tell anyone, not even Su-Sun Fei until much later, was that his mom had spent weeks looking into transferring him to another school. Away from Bofurin, away from the fights, away from everything.
It wouldn't be easy. They were already well into the school year, and very few schools accepted transfers that late. But his mom was the type who, once she got something in her head, didn't stop until she got it, and Nirei lived with his stomach in knots waiting for the news that she'd pulled it off.
Deep down, he hoped she wouldn't. That no school would have room, that the paperwork would get tangled up in some bureaucratic mess, that fate, for once, would work in his favor. That way he could stay with his friends, with Suo, at least until the school year ended.
He hated making his mom worry. He understood her, even when the way she showed it hurt. But wasn't ready to leave the people he care about, not yet.
That night, when he finally got home, because no matter what happened, he always ended up coming back, the house was quiet.
One light on in the kitchen, no voices. He stood in the doorway for a moment, waiting. For something to happen, for someone to call his name, to yell at him, anything. No one came. He climbed the stairs slowly, his body heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the bruises or the exhaustion from training.
He closed his bedroom door and stood there for a moment, not quite sure what to do next. His homework was still on the desk, his phone was full of unread messages from the group chat, his uniform was tossed over a chair, but none of it registered. Everything was exactly where he'd left it, none of it felt real.
He sat on the edge of the bed without taking off his shoes. He thought he should be feeling something simpler: anger over the slap, sadness over the shouting, maybe even relief that it was finally over. Instead, all he felt was tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep could fix, but the kind that settled somewhere deep inside you and refused to leave. Only then did he realize how long he'd been carrying it, maybe since Suo left or even before that.
He'd spent weeks pretending he was fine, often enough that he'd almost started believing it himself. But now, alone, in his room, with no one watching, he didn't have the energy left even for that. He caught himself thinking that even getting out of bed had become harder, food didn't taste like much. Even training , something he used to enjoy, felt strangely empty (maybe because he started to train alone).
He wondered if this was what happened to people who weren't okay.
He'd never really stopped to think about it before there had always been something more urgent, someone else who needed help. But now there was nothing left to distract him.
He thought about his mom downstairs, probably still awake, probably still angry, or hurt, or both. He thought about going down to apologize, about letting her say whatever she needed to say.
He stayed where he was, not because he was angry, he was just too tired to explain himself, to keep pretending he was okay, to look for words he wasn't even sure he had anymore.
That was when he stopped holding back.
The tears started falling before he even managed to sit down on the bed. He cried out of fear of losing his friends without having lost them yet.
He cried for Suo, now called Sun Fei.
For the uncertainty of not knowing whether, one morning, his mother would walk into his room to tell him everything had been decided, that he was leaving. He cried for her too. Because he understood her fear, and precisely because he understood it, he was incapable of hating her. He cried for all the words he'd swallowed over the past few weeks. For every smile he'd forced just to convince everyone he was fine. For the exhaustion of holding himself together when, in truth, he'd been falling apart for a long time.
And he cried for that small life that never got to exist. Not because he'd wanted to become a father. Not because he'd even imagined what that future would have looked like. Simply because, for a little while, it had been there. There had been a possibility, however small, however brief. Then it was gone.
He didn't know if he had the right to feel that pain. Sometimes he was even ashamed of how much it hurt. How could he miss something he'd never wanted? How could he grieve for someone he'd never even known? Yet the pain was real, it wasn't the loss of a child he'd dreamed about, it was the loss of a future that had existed just long enough to disappear.
He cried for everything he no longer understood.
For the person he'd been before the hospital.
For the boy who still believed the world made sense.
For all the decisions other people had made for him.
For the future that seemed to be slipping through his fingers before he'd even had the chance to hold on to it.
When the crying finally quieted, the room settled into a heavy silence. Nirei wiped his face with the sleeve of his uniform and let himself fall back onto the bed, exhausted. That night, he realized there were kinds of grief that had nothing to do with wanting something; sometimes they came from realizing too late that, without meaning to, you'd already made room for it. That was the part that frightened him most, not that he'd lost a possibility that he'd cared about it without ever noticing.
He never told anyone. Not that night, not the ones that followed. Not Sakura, not Kaji, not even when he and Sun Fei finally spoke again days later.
Maybe he never would.
At some point, though he couldn't say exactly when, he'd decided it was his burden to carry, the beginning of it, the end of it, all of it. It had happened because of him, because he hadn't known how to take care of himself, because of his own weakness, and carrying it in silence was, in some twisted way, the only thing he still felt he could control.
Weeks passed. Then months.
The three of them slowly started spending time together again, though it was never quite the same. There was something different in the way they sat together now, in the silences that no longer filled so easily with jokes. But Sakura started laughing again, and Sun Fei no longer carried that shadow on his face he'd had those first few weeks.
Sometimes Nirei watched them and thought that at least he'd managed that much, their smiles no longer looked forced.
That was enough.
He hadn't told them anything, and he probably never would. It was easier that way, he told himself.
It had been his mistake, his responsibility, and there was no reason to ask anyone else to carry it with him.