I Need You to Love Me

"It’s pouring rain. It’s cold, it’s dark, I’m alone, and I’m scared. Honestly all I have is this notebook. I moved here to Japan, Shinjuku to be exact, because of a stupid dream I had. The dream showed me Shinjuku, and said “answers”. It’s not like I had anything left in the States, so why not move here? I’m aged out for the home, and once you’re aged out you’re thrown out. At 18 you’re thrown into the big bad world, alone, with no help to find your way.

So here I sit in this park, hiding under a bridge so my book doesn’t get wet. I’ll be sleeping here tonight. I slept in an alley last night, and parking garage before that. I have no money, and no clothes. I had those things, but the day I got here I was mugged and all that was lost. My one bag of belongings ran off with a stranger and left me here alone with my thoughts. At least I had my notebook out, so the thoughts aren’t forced to stay held up in my mind.

Oh god help me though, I’m going to die soon. I haven’t eaten since I got here. I couldn’t eat; if you have no money you can’t buy food. I’m starving, and weak. I can’t even write anymore my pen’s running out of ink. Great. Well if you find this with a dead body, my name is Rachael Stone, and I died looking for answers."

The eighteen-year-old girl growled in frustration and threw her pen with everything she had, watching it fly into the darkness. Her stomach was aching with hunger, and she was at the end of her sanity. She pulled her knees up and hugged them to herself, trying to find some comfort and warmth but failing. No position was comfortable when you were starving to death, and freezing as well. She took a deep, ragged breath in an attempt to keep herself calm, but instead she burst into tears. Using her knees to muffle her sobbing she let it all out finally, after struggling for so long to keep it held back. She cried the entire night, expending what was left of her energy before finally falling asleep.

She woke the next day with the sun, as always and quickly picked up her notebook and left last night’s hiding place. She received sneers, rude comments, scowls, and insults as she stumbled through the city streets of Shinjuku. She knew she looked terrible, but if they only knew. If they only could take themselves out of their own little worlds for a few moments, or even seconds, and realize what she was going through. Realize why she looked so terribly, if they would only realize why her clothes were so filthy and torn, why her hair was a mess. If they knew why she was bruised and weak, and why nothing they could say could possibly make her feel worse about herself… but that’s the truth about the harsh world we live in, they can’t.

After a day of begging, which made her no money and only managed to hurt her pride more, a man in an overly expensive suit, with a smile that made her skin crawl approached her after getting out of the black limo, with blacked out windows that had pulled into the alley she was standing in. “I hate seeing such a pretty young lady homeless and broke on the streets.” He sighed, reaching out and brushing her face with the backs of his fingers. “Don’t touch me!” she warned, slapping his hand away and glaring daggers at him. “You’ll have to get over that if you want me to help you. You could be living in a nice penthouse, making thousands of yen a night you know. A bath, some nice clothes, a little makeup, haircut… you’d probably bring top demand.” He mused, once again trying to touch her, but she backed away from him. “I’m not interested in some pimp’s offer to become his whore!” she spat backing up further as he followed her until she had her back pressed against the wall.

“Listen to me, sweetheart, I don’t take no for an answer. I work for the highest paying customers in Shinjuku and possibly all of Japan do you understand me? They need a new girl, and you fit what they’re looking for, so be a good little girl and get in the car, so I don’t have to hurt you.”

“One thing I have never been very good at, is being a ‘good little girl’. Back, the hell, away from me.”

He smirked obviously enjoying the fight she was putting up, and pinned her to the wall by her throat. “That attitude of yours could go two ways. They’ll love it, and pay more for the fight, or we’ll have to work it out of you.” He muttered, brushing his lips against her ear as he spoke. “Fuck, you, you fucking creep!” she yelled, bringing her knee up and hitting him in the crotch as hard as she could.

He let go and buckled, but didn’t go down. Instead he slapped her hard enough to leave a perfect handprint on the side of her face. “Don’t do that again, I don’t want to have to ruin that pretty face.” He warned, grabbing her by the hair and dragging her kicking and screaming to the car.

As soon as she was in, she was thrown across the laps of two other men who were grinning wildly at her. She growled and rolled off of them and into the floor. “This one’ll be fun.” One of them smirked, running his hand across the back of her neck as she sat in front of him. “HANDS OFF!” she screamed, trying to open the door but it wouldn’t budge. “I set the child security lock, so the door only opens from outside; do you really think I didn’t expect you to try and run?” her abductor smirked. She screamed an inaudible line of insults and kicked him with all her strength, but was quickly slammed against the wall of the car by the captor who had been rubbing her neck. “It’ll hurt if you fight too much.” He warned, pulling her into his lap. She still fought against him, but eventually all she could do was sit in his lap and cry as his hands explored her body over her worn jeans and torn T-shirt while the other two laughed. “We’ll take her.” The second one chuckled, handing the man who just forced her into the car a stack of money and turning back to her with a lustful grin as he watched his friend fondle her. She cried more, realizing that with her freedom, he had probably just purchased her virginity as well.

“Hey Ban, buddy, you sure the Yakuza have the gem we’re looking for?” Ginji asked as he and his friend waited crouched in the bushes for a chance to get through the Yakuza mansion’s gate and finish their recovery job. “Positive, now shut up, there’s a car coming!” Ban hissed, crouching lower and waiting for the right moment to move.

Without saying a word both guys watched the limousine, and moved in unison, darting through the closing gates at the last second. “Ginji, take the cameras.” Ban ordered with a quick gasp. Ginji nodded and used his electrical abilities to short out their motors before they could pan around and catch the intruders.

The two split up and went with their plan to find the gem. Ginji went to the electrical systems to shut them down, while Ban snuck in through the garage. An hour later, they were reunited and trying to sneak their way out of the building with the gem in hand. Getting out was proving to be more of a challenge than getting in.

They were just passing a bedroom that for some reason locked from the outside, when they heard what sounded like a girl’s desperate sobbing. They both stopped and pressed their ears against the door and cringed at the unmistakable sound of a human body being thrown to the floor. “They’re in a bad enough mood as it is, you wanna piss ‘em off more by fighting like this?” a man growled over her cries of fear, and now pain. “Please, p-please don’t do this!” she begged but was hit again. “Change into the red, this one’s not right.” He ordered. Ban and Ginji couldn’t tell what was going on inside the room, or hear what she was saying through her tears before being hit again, but they knew it could be nothing good. “Don’t worry about coverage, you won’t be wearing it for long. Just for the pictures.” He smirked. Suddenly her cries became muffled, and it sounded like they were struggling before she screamed out again and something, probably her, was thrown against the wall beside the door hard enough to knock a picture off of the wall on the other side, and onto the floor beside the two recoverers.

Before either of them could react to the abuse behind the door, a group of mobsters ran around the corner and drew their guns at them. “Drop the gem, punks!” one of them ordered. “Right, we’re just gonna drop it after all this work to get it back, because you asked us to.” Ban scoffed as he lit a cigarette. Instantly they opened fire, but none of the bullets hit their target. “Wow, you guys sure are lousy shots.” Ginji commented, blasting a bolt of electricity down the center of the hallway and burning most of them to the point they couldn’t fight anymore. Out of the ones who remained unscathed, all but three retreated, and in no time at all Ban and Ginji had them incapacitated.

“You think that girl’s okay?” Ginji asked worriedly. Before his friend could answer, several more mobsters were heard running for their location. “You distract them, and we’ll meet where we hid Miss Ladybug, okay?” he ordered quickly, knowing that if whoever was crying on the other side of that door was in as bad of condition as he suspected, she wouldn’t be able to fight her way out with them. Ginji nodded and ran for the guards, leaving Ban to break the door down and stop whatever it was that had her screaming at the moment.

As soon as the door was down he saw her in a corner, fighting with everything she had against the man who was straddled across her hips as her bare legs kicked wildly trying to get him off of her. He was holding her hands back so she couldn’t hit him anymore, while trying to get them cuffed to the table beside them. “Hey!” Ban yelled, making his presence known. The girl was still crying very hard, and was clearly terrified of Ban as much as she was the man who was on top of her. Her attacker noticed that she had stopped struggling suddenly, being distracted by the other person in the room, and quickly took advantage of the opportunity by cuffing her hands above her head to the bottom of the table beside her. She screamed again, and started pulling desperately at the cuffs, but all she managed to do was bruise and cut her wrists.

She didn’t hear their argument, or see their fight as she struggled against her restraints, crying now from pain, fear, starvation, frustration, anger, embarrassment, and desperation. The only thing that brought her out of her frantic struggle, was the man who broke into the room yelling, “Snake bite”, before her almost-rapist fell beside her. She screamed yet again and pressed herself against the wall to get away from him, not realizing that he was actually dead.

“Calm down, it’s okay, calm down.” Ban sighed calmly, kneeling down beside her, and trying to check over her without actually touching her. “Don’t! Please… p-please don’t, d-don’t.” she begged now gagging with her sobs. She knew she couldn’t vomit though, since there was nothing in her stomach to throw up.

“I won’t, I promise. I’m not one of them, my name is Ban Midou, I run a recovery service with my friend Ginji; we’re called the Get Backers. I’m not going to hurt you, but you have to trust me all right? You’ll be okay. I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Please,” she whispered, trembling weakly as he leaned over her, gently touching her wrists and inspecting the cuffs.

“Don’t worry, I won’t. Just hold still okay? I’m gonna break the cuffs and then we’ll get you out of here. What’s your name?”

“R-Rachael.”

“What instrument do you play, Rachael?”

“How d-did you know I play?”

“You have calluses on your finger tips, but only on one hand, which suggests you play a stringed instrument.”

“I used to play cello, and violin.”

“Used to?”

“I sold my violin for plane tickets, to come here to Shinjuku. I never owned a cello, I just played the one they had at the home.”

Ban nodded and gently lifted her into his arms, making her flinch and tension up; his conversation had done exactly what he wanted it to, and she had been too distracted by it to move around while he broke the cuffs. “What did I promise you?” he asked calmly as he grabbed the sheet from the bed and put it around her to cover her up. “That you wouldn’t hurt me.” She muttered. “Right, and that you’ll be okay. Now let’s go before those guys come back. Ginji’s waiting by the car already.” He nodded. At first they were running together through the halls, but it wasn’t long before the starvation and stress caught up to Rachael, and she collapsed. Ban quickly picked her up and ran out of the mansion and to the car, ordering that Ginji ride in the back and let Rachael have the front seat incase she woke up. He wanted her beside him if that happened, so he could calm her down if she freaked out. Their meeting wasn’t much less than traumatizing for her, and she didn’t know Ginji at all.