The swings thrust forward and back as the sun began to set that evening. The children were playing at the playground, but only one was at the swings. The boy, about the age of a child in elementary school, sniffled as he swung, his tears falling onto the ground. As he looked shamefully on the ground, a shadow cast over his tears.
"What is wrong?" asked the man leaning beside the swing poles.
"I.." sniffled the boy, "I wasn't allowed to play with the others."
"I'll need a little more detail than that, please."
—
"Hey!" yelled Tanaka, "Stop it! You're being too rough on me!"
"But I didn't even touch you!" yelled Sato.
"Hey, hey!" glared Ikeda, coming around to the other side of the playground, a bunch of other children following him, "What's going on here?"
"Ikeda!" thought Sato, "He'll side with me! He's a fair person!"
Just before Sato was about to explain, Tanaka cried out, "Ikedaaaa! Sato hurt me with a stick! We were just playing tag and he hurt me with a stick!"
"I did not!" yelled Sato in his defense, "He's ly—"
Ikeda put his hand up, signaling both of them to stop talking. Ikeda was Sato's friend, but Ikeda had other uses for Tanaka. In this case, he wanted Tanaka to use for some future plans, and wanted to get on his good side because of his rich parents.
"Lying won't get you anywhere in life, Sato," warned Ikeda.
"But I really didn't!" replied Sato, "All I did was touch him so that he would be It, but he started wailing! I didn't even hit him with a stick!"
There was truth that there was no stick to be found, but Ikeda had the final decision on the matter, regardless of the lack of evidence.
"Sato, quit and lying and go away," glared Ikeda, "We'll call you back if you're actually useful."
With those words from Ikeda, coupled with the laughs from the other kids like Yoshida and Fujita, caused Sato to puff up his cheeks, tears streaming from his eyes. As he wiped them off and tried his best to hide them, they began to yell.
"Is Sato crying again?" laughed Fujita, "Man up!"
Sato ran away to the other side of the playground, kicking a pole and hurting is foot in the process. That's when he went and sat on the swings, relieving his foot and trying to take his mind away from the situation.
—
"Life is unfair, isn't it?" asked the man.
"They all laughed at me, even though I wasn't in the wrong!" cried Sato.
"I understand how you feel," said the man, looking up into the sky and the dawning sun, "There came a time when I too, was wrongly accused. Wrongly accused for things I've apparently committed. My loved ones, gone, left me. I tried my best to prove I was truly a man they could love, a man that could change.. However, my timing was just a bit off.
It was tragic. Something that whenever I'd think back to it, I'd still get chills of the mistakes that I've made that day."
Sato didn't understand much of what the man was saying, however he nodded in agreement. His tears began to dry up as the man told his story, leaning on the swing set, and not paying attention to his audience's reactions, caught up in his own monologue.
"Be grateful that the situations you're in right now aren't as life changing as you may think," advised the man, "You're still young, and life doesn't have much of an impact towards you. So be grateful, that at least you get to play a while. That you get to have fun. That you enjoy life a little."
Sato nodded his head once again in agreement, not really listening to the man's speech. Soon, Sato noticed that the sun was barely visible in the horizon. That's when the man looked at his wristwatch.
"Say," said the man, "Since you've been abandoned by your comrades for a while, why don't we play a game? Something that's fun?"
Sato looked at the man, who had a calm expression on his face. He hesitantly agreed.
"But only for a little while," mumbled Sato, "I've got to go home soon."
"It won't take much time," smiled the man as he extended out his hand to the boy.
—
"It's getting late!" gasped Tanaka for air, collapsing to the ground, "I won without having to be tagged yet again!"
"Yeah, yeah, you won," mumbled Yoshida, "We'll try to get you again next time."
"Where's Sato?" asked Fujita, looking around, "It's time to go."
Ikeda looked around for Sato, being the leader of the group. He then noticed the swings, which were empty but still swinging. As the swings thrusted forward and back, Ikeda saw them as if the swings were struggling to move, trying to escape.
However soon, the swings came to a complete stop.
"He must've left home early," mumbled Ikeda to the others, "We'll find him tomorrow. He always comes back."
The swings never moved from their position for the rest of that day.