Original Love

Episode Twenty-Four

-----------FLASHBACK-----------

TEN YEARS AGO

She grew up on a small island in the Kagawa Prefecture. It is not a very populated place. In fact, she knew everyone and everybody could easily recognize who is who and where is where. Brought up by her very old grandparents and her single father, Aoi Chiba lived her whole childhood and teenage years without much care for unnecessary material things. As long as they could eat enough for a day and sleep under a roof and stay healthy...

She was contented.

Until that day when the big storm came and the flood ruined all of their crops. Her family had only one small farm where her father and her grandfather spent days taking care of to earn some money for their living expenses. But because of that one tragic day in their lives, all of the sources for their income and even their house has been destroyed by the fatal blow of that huge storm.

Aoi Chiba was eighteen then. She was about to graduate from high school. It would not be long before she could finally land her own job and help out with her family. At the time, Aoi already knew the hardships her family had been facing and she could see the struggling her father is keeping up to make sure their family could at least survive the famine. So despite the strong objections pressed on by her own father and her grandmother, she still pursued leaving and immediately traveled out of her hometown to finally try her own luck in the city. And that was how she had made it to live independently in one of the famous districts in Tokyo.

At eighteen, nearing her nineteen, Aoi Chiba began her job as a waitress first.

It was not really easy. Not everything had been really easy, but she still tried to work out her way to make a living and sent some money back to her family in Kagawa. So in the next few years, she tried to be practical and save as much as she can to give it all back to her father. Eventually, she heard better news from them, but when it was finally about time that she could already come back to her hometown...

Aoi Chiba had declined and decided that she was going to stay in the city... for good.

Her father had not taken it lightly and strongly tried to convince her to go home but because she had grown to love her independence and the freedom she got by living in Tokyo... Aoi Chiba had become quite selfish at the time and had reasoned her way out of her father's objections.

And without much care for the consequences, she went on and tried to ignore her past.

She continued her new life because she felt happier than ever. Until another news came in.

But this time, it was the kind of news that she would never ever had expected to come.

Another tragedy had happened.

Her grandparents... Her father...

All of them.

Had died because of the big wave that year. It was not only televised nationwide. The phenomenon had garnered international media and at the time it happened, Aoi Chiba had been too busy to earn herself some more savings. She only expected such warnings from the news to be just the same as the previous ones but when it finally happened... It was as if the whole world had finally shattered and the regrets poured down.

She did not even know what to do next. The phone call came that early morning after the night the tragedy happened. The officials were trying to trace the relatives of those that had been affected by the floods and the tsunami. Aoi Chiba had just woken up when the ringing sounded and as soon as she had answered it and received the news...

She found herself slumping down on the floor, heaving without any noise. She could not even get out a single tear, her eyes were too dried with shock as she tried to get the words out of her mouth. None came out. She could still hear the worried voice of the caller repeating his question from the other end of the line. It felt like a long minute before she finally let out an answer and when she did and finally dropped the call...

The tears eventually showered.

It was not just a continuous pour of unrelenting sadness, it was an ugly guttural whining noise, almost as if it was a baby who had been crying. She could not accept the fact. And when she finally had no tears left to cry, that was when she came to her senses and saw the world in a different way.

It was not just herself anymore. She was now more than on her own. She was completely alone. All the moments from when her father had repeatedly tried to ask her to come back home came haunting her back. And it was even more painful after the way it had ended that time.

She can never come back to the past anymore.

Years went on, Aoi Chiba, all alone and lonely, had taken permanent residence in Tokyo after the tragedy. She had forced herself to forget everything else. She assumed her renewed life, knowing fully well that she can never be as happy as she could ever be. She must accept that atonement of choosing to leave her past behind. And from there, she went on as if the days never really mattered. She kept herself busy with her own work, avoided social contacts, and she even distanced herself away from anybody else.

Until...

She eventually met Kenichi. The man who had changed her whole life for the better. The one who turned her world a hundred eighty and showed her a new way of living her life out of the darkness. She did not want to let him in the first time. She was too determined not to let anyone in.

But Kenichi, out of all the other men who had tried and failed at wooing her, never gave her up.

He saw something no one had ever seen and appreciated before in her.

And when she felt that she could finally be happy...

That night happened again.

The phone call that had brought all of her trauma back in an instant.

Only then, Aoi Chiba finally accepted that it will never really get any better.

Her life had been fatefully doomed from the start. And no matter how much she suffered and risked everything she could have just to be happy again, it will never really last that long.

She just had to accept it. Until she dies...

And maybe by then...

Those people... That she loved so dearly will come to meet her again. And maybe, she could finally tell them all how sorry she is... And she can finally move on.

Move on from that dark, cruel world that had continuously shattered her apart.

Over and over again.

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-----------TWO DAYS LATER-----------

Her head feels like it weighs a ton as she slowly lifts it up to look around her surroundings. She can only recognize the whiteness of her hospital room with not much of a thing to distinguish yet. The sliding windows are shut closed and the airconditioner buzzes in the background as Aoi Chiba takes her time to familiarize everything else. She is still all alone.

There are no signs of anyone else. The room is much bigger than the previous one she got back when she had stabbed herself and got admitted in a hospital before. She tries to test out her voice but all that just came out of her mouth is a hoarse sound that does not even form any coherent word. She coughs badly and eventually turns her head to her sides and finds a glass of water resting over the bedside drawer.

She sips on the straw put inside and sighs as the cold liquid smoothly glides down her throat and down her chest. She finally feels much more replenished as she sips for more. She almost empties the glass before she chokes and puts the drink away upon the sound of the door opening. Her eyes immediately flits towards the front doorway right when a shadow comes in and is soon followed by the figure of Jin Sasai walking into the room.

They instantly meet each other's eyes and for a full second, no one speaks up.

Jin Sasai looks too startled as he gives Aoi from the distance a quick double-take and pauses in the middle of his step from the door. His hand still clutching the doorframe beside him before he finally gets back to his senses and remembers to give the woman a respectful bow of his head.

Aoi Chiba tilts her head with a frown, slightly puzzled with the sudden greeting as she watches the big burly guy closes the door behind him and picks out his phone from his pocket. It takes not much of a hard guess to know that he is already calling Kenji Yanagi for the news. Aoi Chiba has still no idea how long she has been down and sleeping inside the room as she still is slightly unaware about anything else aside from remembering what had happened that day with the shootout.

She can only replay the last moments she had been clinging on Jin's arms and desperately trying to keep herself awake but as she had been slowly pulled down to the darkness, she has no recollection or whatsoever now of what happened afterward.

But as she tries to refresh her memory, a sudden recall of her last conversation with Sakamoto pops into her mind. And the memory leaves her gasping. She suddenly starts hyperventilating over the bed that immediately steals Jin's attention from the phone as he quickly hangs up in the middle of his conversation and hastily runs to her side to check what is wrong.

Aoi could only make out three words out of her lips as she grabs on Jin and breathes heavily.

"Ito..." she exhales in a soughing voice while continuously heaving, "Yama... zaki... Ito..."

Jin Sasai has already gotten the whole gist of it as soon as he heard the first word coming out of her lips. Ito Yamazaki. The enemy. He had been already informed about the possible betrayal of that Yakuza boss when Sakamoto had shared this one with him right before they arrived at the hospital on that day. Sakamoto had revealed that he had told Aoi Chiba of that possible old case that she might have been trying to solver herself that she thought had been Kenji's fault all this time. But in fact, it was actually all Yamazaki's doings.

Now, if Sakamoto had been really right about it, there might be a greater chance that this woman will be switching sides. Jin Sasai had formerly discovered her direct affiliation with that Yamazaki long before the Oyabun's birthday and he almost had tried to eliminate her. But when the shootout happened, everything just gone haywire. He no longer seeks for her extermination.

He just wants her to be an ally instead. She might not do any much for the family, but Jin had seen Kenji while she had been in the critical phase and it had been too much to endure.

He was also in that same erratic state... When she had started to lose her consciousness within his arms. It really scared him. And since then, Jin has started to feel that strong sense of responsibility to make sure she will be safe.

It just kicked in.

And he does not really understand how it all happened like that, he just suddenly felt the need to do it.

He has to protect her.

Even if Kenji does not ask him to, Jin has already made up his mind.

This woman, who had gone through so much that it feels almost too impossible to believe, she needs to be saved.

"I want to kill him, Jin."

Jin almost does not hear her saying it but when she suddenly gives him a direct stare, he quickly feels the urgency of her words. It takes him a moment to release the air he has been holding in his throat and finally speaks back.

"Him?" he reaffirms back, "You mean, Ito Yamazaki?"

There is a slight pause. And for a whole few seconds, Aoi only gazes into his eyes with that determined look on her face. She never blinks, she just keeps her silence. And after finally giving it her final thought, she just nods.

Without saying anything else, it already answers everything else.

She wants that bastard dead. And it does not matter how and when she can do it, she no longer cares if she has to use Kenji to fulfill it... She just wants Ito Yamazaki to pay for what he had done to Kenichi. With blood.

She wants him dead. HE HAS TO BE DEAD. And that will be her final retribution. Her one final attempt to free her will.

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