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      “Mr Lucas.”

      “What else do you want from me? I told you to go away!” the boy suddenly burst our furiously.

      “I've done a lot of mistakes with you, when I used to support your father... I was scared, but... No, I don't have any excuse, but I'm going to tell you something I always kept secret.”

      “I don't care,” Lucas stopped her, getting more and more furious.

      “It's about Kira, the girl who went back to Japan last year,” Rosalinda hinted, knowing that it was a delicate subject.

      Kira. Once more.

      A new spasm stroke his stomach violently.

      “I don't care,” Lucas told her again, twisting his hands to stop shaking with anger and despair as he had done all that year long. The worst year in his life.

      “I know you're lying. That girl was everything to you, Mr Lucas. I saw how much you suffered in the last months. You have to understand me: I wish I could have told you before, that Kira didn't forget you, as Mr Scott made you believe. I regret what I did, but I don't want to go away without telling you the truth. Kira wrote several letters to you in the past months. Eighty-six, exactly.”

      She had finally succeeded in being the centre of Lucas's attention: he was staring at her bewildered, with open-wide eyes.

      “Eighty-six letters? So, where are they?” he was able to ask her, while his brain was trying to focus on her words.

      “Your father took them and burned them. All of them,” she revealed, while she avoided telling him that she had always read them. “I'm very sorry.”

      Lucas kept staring into space with his hazy mind for a long while, before he could move a single muscle.

      He didn't even react when Rosalinda went on saying she was sorry, before going out of that house, never to come back.

      When Lucas came back into the real world, he could just feel a blind anger against the man who had brought him into the world and had then taken away from him even the poor comfort he could get in reading his best friend's letters.

      He had been suffering for a long time and he hated Kira for having left him, after she had sworn again and again that she would never do it.

      She had told him that she was ready to give anything up for him and she would never leave him, but instead...

      Not even the t-shirt she had given him that cursed summer was left to him, as he had torn it to pieces in a fit of folly, after he had been discharged from hospital because of a dislocated shoulder.

      He had fallen from the stairs by accident, he had told them after his father had threatened him.

      He walked to the living room in a state of trance, since he knew he would find his father there, as drunk as a lord.

      Their house was small, unlike the villa where they used to live in the past and which that vicious monster had foolishly lost in a game of poker a month before.

      He quickly got to the piano-bar, where he found an empty bottle of bourbon lying on the counter.

      His father was leaning down and looking for something else to drink, but he caught a glimpse of his son's arrival and he got up.

      “Where's Rosalinda? I want her to go and buy some more bourbon,” the man muttered while he tottered to his armchair, but his son blocked his way.

      “You fired her, don't you remember? She went away a few moments ago and she told me about Kira's letters,” Lucas told him, trying to hold back the anger which was starting to prostrate him.

      “Silly bitch! Why should she tell you?! I wish I had fired her before.”

      “How could you dare burn Kira's letters,” Lucas burst out, unable to hold back any more.

      His father looked at him for a moment, puzzled by his son's sudden verbal attack, then he recovered his temper.

      “I'm your father and I can do what I want! You belong to me.”

      “I don't belong to you!” Lucas shouted as an answer.

      “How can you dare talk that way to your father?” the man got angry, addressing his fist to the boys' chest, but Lucas was able to avoid it by a feline leap. However, he was too angry to be satisfied with protecting himself. He needed to let off steam.

      He felt the urge to give vent to his anger by beating someone for the first time in his life so, before he could even realize that new desire, he could feel his whole body stretching towards the man who had turned his childhood into hell, and striking his jaw violently, taking advantage of the drunkard's unsteadiness.

      He was taken back into reality by a sharp pain in his hand.

      Darren Scott was surprised and shocked by that attack, which had been more violent than he wanted to admit: he fell to his knees and felt a pain in his face.

      He was trying to stand up, when he was stricken again, by a powerful kick which left him breathless.

      “Silly bastard!” the man shouted at Lucas, panting and trying to protect himself.

      “You are a bastard!” the boy replied, then assaulted him once more.

      “I'll go and fetch my belt, then we'll see if you dare talk to me like that again,” he threatened him in a voice shaking with anger.

      “Just beat me! Beat me as long as you wish, dad! These are the only things you can do: get drunk and beat me. Well, you can do it, but I'm not going to keep still and wait for your blow with the belt any more!” his son shouted at him exasperated, while he went on punching him.

      “You...rotten merchandise...” the man muttered, shaken by his son's assault.

      “You're rotten merchandise!” his son suddenly replied. He felt tired of that assault which he couldn't stop any more and which seemed to get stronger and stronger after each new blow.

      His father burst out laughing scornfully.

      “Lucas, just remember this: a fruit never falls far from his tree.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I mean that you are as corrupted and rotten as me. You're my son and I'm your father! My same blood runs in your veins!”

      “I'm not going to be like you!”

      “You already are. That's why everybody keeps leaving you, just like your mother did to you and me. Nobody wants to stay with such a failure as you. Even your young friend ran away, as soon as she could.”

      “That's not true! Kira loves me. They forced her to leave.”

      “You're a poor fool! That girl never really loved you, or she would have stayed here! You know, Lucas, I read the letters she kept writing to you. What a mawkish girl! But I can tell you this: Kira isn't coming back to you any more! And she isn't writing to you again, because she has decided to give up running after such a poor fool like you,” his father told him scornfully.

      Lucas would rather be slashed by his father's belt at that moment, than listening to his terrible words, which were rotting him from inside.

      He was feeling dirty and ready for self-destruction.

      He called Kira's name one last time, but he already knew that his dear friend wouldn't run to help him and heal him from the pain which was tormenting him. She would never come back.

      He rushed out of the room, feeling shattered and disgusted for what he was and what he might become, and left his father there, coughing and recovering his breathe with the help of a bottle of whisky.

      RELATIONSHIPS

       Tokyo, Japan, January 9th 2017

      “You're so beautiful,” her mother whispered to her, while she finished combing her hair.

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