The payphone at the southern end of Kabuki Street was a welcome relief from the scorching heat of the summer day. This was the kind of day Akarui was thankful the motor pool had several large fans that circulated air and at least gave some relief from the heat and that someone had given him a hand-me-down AC unit for his still mostly barren dorm room.
Ducking under the covered overhang of the phone, he would close his eyes for a moment and compose himself, his fingers gliding over the numbers that he knew all so well. The dial tone followed by the robotic ringing that echoed within his head and mind as he leaned heavily onto the left side of the booth.
“Hey… Mom… yeah I wanted to check in one the court…. They moved up the date… yesterday… yesterday!? And no one… you… you didn’t ca… I am not raising my voice Mom I am just frustrated that no one told me it moved up a whole week… So… so they dropped most of the charges… ho.... Because I was a juvenile.”
Akarui leaned hard into the metal casing as relief struck him, though that relief soon was pulled away from his mind as his mother kept speaking to him.
“How…. how much…?” The way his heart hit the back of his throat was already having him lean forward, barely holding onto the phone. “One….One Million… Seventy Thousand...Yen…” His knees buckled as the heat of the day became oppressive. “Please tell…. It's not a joke… it's… …” A pause as he would catch his breath. “How long…”
Planting a fist into the side of the heated metal, feeling his skin heating up until it began to almost sizzle painfully, yet he did not move from the spot or pull his hand away from the burning steel. Instead he would close his eyes. “A few weeks… I will get it done… can you put Sis on the line…?”
A few weeks… A few weeks or else the money is taken from his family…
“Hey… Heard you were doing good in school… you really are loving that new Prep School huh… Music and Space clubs? A new… song huh? You … you want to sing to me… I would love that.”
As Akarui settled in to listen, watching as the time began to tick down on the time of the call as he could just hear the melody starting from his younger sister… right up until the line went dead and the humming tone entered.
Very few times had Akarui ever been genuinely angry… even fewer times that he lashed out at something or someone. With several different groups all mingling about, Akarui let the hand holding the phone place slam the device back together, before pulling it off and slamming it back again… and again. Repeatedly until the plastic casing gave way and blood trickled off of his knuckles from the loss of his own emotional control. Still, he lashed out, punching wildly into the machine until he finally gave way and pulled free a wrench from his pocket and bashing the phonebooth until there was nothing left to break.
With people gawking and Akarui bloodied, he would turn back to make his way towards his dorm.
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After an hour inside of his dorm room, without even spending time to clean up: knowing he would get a chance at the showers considering the movements of shrimps in and out of the showers. Making his way to the entrance, he would pin up a handwritten note, one of several going up around Kabuki:
Looking for work to be done? Willing to do all forms of work, for any pay. Contact Akarui Sora if interested.