Chapter 3 - A Broken Family

You can’t say that I was a normal child, because I was far, far from being one. My parents were killed when I was four, so I wouldn’t remember their faces if I tried.
I was born broken. They couldn’t get to me though, because the demon king kept them from harming me. He brought me to a home that smelled of cherry blossoms. This is where I would grow up.
This is where I met my foster father.
This is where I met Kastyr.
Kastyr looks the same as he did then, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but to me at that age, it was astonishing. Seeing everyone else’s parents grow old and weathered, and Kastyr never changed one bit, neither did the other boy who lived with us.
Benny was a nice kid, but he never changed either, and I didn’t know why.
Kastyr taught me the secrets of his family’s martial arts, which I would never be able to get down, I was always daydreaming.
Benny hit me several times, and we fought as if we were natural-born brothers. We were a broken family, even though I was the only broken who lived there.
“So Zenel, why don’t we go to the park today?” Kastyr asked kindly.
“C’mon Zenel, let’s go, let’s go!” Benny was always eager to venture outside of the house, but I, however, was afraid of thee people who killed my parents.
I didn’t want to die.
I was a dreamer, not made to fight, or to study. I was meant to become someone special, this I knew, because one day when I turned nine, Galen brought me over to his house, where I met his daughters.
That’s when I first met Rena.
That’s when I learned about my gift.
I could see her dreams, even though she was awake, I could see them.
We played for a little while, but I had to leave, I didn’t want to of course, but this was different than just friendship. This was when I first felt the string of fate pull at my heart.
Kastyr had prepared a nice meal consisting of mostly his favorites, but that couldn’t be helped, because that’s really all he knew how to make.
We weren’t family by blood, but we were a family nonetheless.
I had to leave when that man came. Andy wasn’t exactly fond of the broken, so I couldn’t stay there. Kastyr had me hide with a friend of his.
Her name was Nanashi. She was a nice lady, but she wasn’t family. I felt awkward around her until a year or so after I started living with her.
I didn’t really like the food she cooked, because it just wasn’t the same. It tasted weird.
Nanashi, as it turned out, is also a broken. She was also hiding from them.
Nanashi told me about the cultural reformation that wiped out the traditions that Kastyr still held close to him.
“There are some people who secretly hold festivals, the traditional festivals of their cultural history. Master Kastyr happens to be Japanese, so he has a tendency to do some weird things now and then.”
I just looked at her. “Japanese?” I was twelve years old and I didn’t know what Japan even was, that this place I lived in, used to be Kyoto.
She laughed. “I see that Kastyr has neglected telling you about this.” She smiled. “Japan was a beautiful country, a very, very technologically advanced lifestyle, where some lived to be very old, and still very healthy. Japan was the technological capital of the world one hundred years ago. They were a great impact on the world. They helped prevent global warming, they made the best movies, and you couldn’t make fun of them, no one could. They could only make fun of themselves. People there were happy, unlike the people who live here today, no one seems to care who made the Eiffel Tower, who built the Leaning Tower of Pisa, who constructed the great pyramids of Gaza. That’s a past everyone has been forced to give up. There can not be any more ‘holy wars’, because they took it all away.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“Who knows? Probably some idiots who thought that they could make this Earth a better place.”
I learned so much from her that no one else was brave enough to teach, for they feared execution, they feared everything.
Things would change soon enough, because I knew that I would meet Rena again, and then I’d know even more.
Several years had passed since I started living with Lady Nanashi, but I knew that I still didn’t belong there.
One day, after I had turned nineteen, she handed be a pair of keys and a nameplate.
“What are these for?”
“You get to run a hideout for other broken shinigami.”
“Why me?”
“’cuz you know you have to. It’s payment for living with me for the past several years.” She smiled innocently.
“Say what!?” I looked at her as if she were crazy. “I thought you liked my company!”
“Yeah, but you ate quite a bit, and you used all of the hot water, which wasn’t nice at all…”
So, I ended up running an apartment complex. Which earned me quite a bit of money, but I had to give half of my earnings to Nanashi for the first two years, but I liked the job.
I met all sorts of people, and I was able to walk freely outside, sometimes. I really don’t like it outside you see, for I am a dreamer, and I will always be a dreamer, even when I am by her side.
My dreams will never die.

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