Vale

| 1 |

Shiro tapped his foot, sat in a navy blue chair in a row of chairs attached to the sickly white walls of a hospital. Head upon the knuckles of his clasped hands, he feared the worst, and with each thought that zoomed through his mind in a relay race, his gritted teeth sunk deeper into each other. His heart was an irregular beating mess inside his hoarse throat that worsened over time. Four hours of waiting yet it felt like an eternity.

The door besides him creaked open and Shiro looked up at the nurse that stepped out with his deep brown eyes. "Is she okay?" His voice was dry, unlike how it usually was; cheerful and sunny.

"Yes, she's okay." The nurse nodded, his fingers clasped a wooden clipboard. "She just underwent surgery, and she's holding up okay. She'll have to stay here at the hospital for a while, and then once she's fit to go, she can come home. But..." He licked his finger, then flipped one of the thin pages on the clipboard. "She's going to need medication. It'll be the only thing that'll keep her with us."

Shiro let out a relieved sigh and leant back on the seat. His slender fingers ran through his soft, mocha coloured hair. "Thank God..." He muttered to himself. What happened to his mother happened all so quick, and he didn't want to lose her. He worried that he may've taken too long panicking instead of calling the hospital. "Okay, okay-"

"We can't distribute the medication to you without... without payment, though." The nurse mumbled the last words. Rubbed the side of his face with his hand.

"Payment?" Shiro spat. "Look- I can't pay, not right now- is there any way- any way possible for her to get free medication?"

The nurse stood silently for a few seconds as his finger tapped against the coarse clipboard. Once he mustered up the words, he looked down at his clipboard. "I'm sorry, sir. There's nothing I can do about it."

"Fuck..." Shiro whispered under his breath. He leant forwards and his foot began to tap again. One of his legs swerved from side to side. His forearm that rested upon his moving thigh moved with it. Those words echoed in his ears. If there was nothing the nurse could do about it, then he had to do something about it. "...Okay, okay. I'll- I'll find a way- to pay you guys."

It took a good few tears for the nurse to rip the bill away from the clipboard. It folded once it touched Shiro's hands. "Thanks..." Shiro mumbled. He tugged his backpack up from the ground and zipped it open, and carefully placed the bill inside.

Home. A cramped apartment in a desolate tenement. Rotting concrete walls that surrounded him and his mother. In the bathroom, white tiles turned a mangy yellow clung onto the exposed plaster for dear life. The rotting bathroom ceiling was half black from the mold that formed upon it from condensation. Shiro leant against the rusty fence on his small balcony, and stared at the small skyline in the distance.

One hundred and twenty five thousand dollars just for the surgery alone. Ten thousand a month just for the medication. No matter how many jobs Shiro worked, he couldn't make that much money in a life-time. There was only one path Shiro could walk that could potentially bring him enough money. And that was the life of crime.

But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't even kill a fly, let alone another person. He knew he couldn't take on that life-style. The guilt. The loss. The trauma. But if he didn't, his mother would perish. And it'd all be his fault if he let her die.

He pulled his phone out from his pocket and stared at it for a minute. He forced his fingers to move to the cracked screen, then one finger struck the screen upwards. His fingers jabbed at each number that appeared, and once his phone unlocked, he called someone he knew.

"Hello? Yeah- it's me. Shiro. Heh- long time no see. Yeah, yeah... I just need some help. It's to do with my mother. She's ill, and- yeah. You get it. I wanna... I wanna join your gang."