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[h2][u][color=steelblue]K E N I C H I[/color][/u][/h2]
[h3][b][i]Hospital[/i][/b][/h3]
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"You didn't, Motome-chan. It's cool." The words were out of his mouth as soon as she apologized, and he meant them...but she was still looking at Yashiro. Kenichi gulped as he turned away, rubbing his side.

But now, as he entered the room proper, he saw for himself just what his classmate had really gone through. And, as uncomfortable as he was right now, he still felt a cold pang through his chest. Fast as the crack of a whip, Kenichi's breath caught in his chest for a moment.

[i]A camera lay on its side, still recording despite the chunk of black in the corner of its lens. The aftermath of the bomb left little to see--scattered parts from the jeep, dust clouds swirling in the wind. Blood in the sand. A man's arm barely in frame, not moving. Those who watched the recording later would not be able to see what was going on, only hear the shouting of the soldiers as they shouted and scurried about. At some point, the gunfire began. A hand covered the camera, and everything went dark for several seconds.

Then Kenichi's father appeared, one side of his face caked in blood and dirt. It was so gore crusted that you couldn't even tell that his eye had been blown from the socket.

"Ken-chan...Hotaru...I love you both. But I'm...not done yet." Somehow Yoshida Nobuyuki managed to smile. A big, shit-eating grin. "I'll see you both...soon..."

Another explosion, or something much like it, went off, and the camera went black.[/i]

Kenichi hadn't actually seen that recording until after his father had made it back home. Before that, he and his mother had simply suffered through all of their worries, crying and feeling absolutely distraught and helpless, while knowing nothing more than what they could see in the news. He hadn't seen his father until weeks later, after he had finally returned to Japan, and finally been given more than just "keep him stable" surgeries, and finally been moved out of intensive care and to a local hospital. And by that time the leg, the eye, one of the kidneys, two fingers on the left hand, and several pounds of flesh and blood were gone. Some of them would later be replaced, along with a plate in the skull and several screws in the bones of the right arm.

But nothing had ever healed the crack in Kenichi's own heart. Rage and hate had just filled it up instead.

"...Yo. Yashiro-kun." He managed after a long moment of silence. The bones in one of his hands popped as he shoved his fists into his pockets. His tone of voice was hard and flinty, and his grin had twisted into a sour frown. His eyes, however, were much like Fumika's own when he looked at Takeshi. That look of wanting to help, and not knowing how.

"...Looks like somebody really fucked you up, huh?" he said point blank. That...that wasn't how he wanted it to sound. "...Any idea who did it?"