I learned young that there are two types of people in this world: the ones who take, and the ones who get taken from.
Hiroshi Matsuda was definitely the second type.
He knelt on the rooftop gravel, Takeshi's hand gripping the back of his neck, pushing his face toward the ground. His glasses had fallen somewhere during the drag up the stairs. Without them, he looked even more pathetic, squinting up at me, confused, scared.
Exactly how he should look.
"Please," he said, voice already shaking. "I didn't mean..."
I cut him off with a kick to his ribs. Not hard enough to break anything. Just enough to shut him up and establish the ground rules for this conversation.
Ryo shifted uncomfortably by the door, making sure no teacher wandered up here. He'd been with me since middle school, loyal enough, but lately he'd gotten soft. Started asking questions like "Is this really necessary?" and "Maybe we should just let it go."
Like weakness was ever an option.
"You know what your problem is, Matsuda?" I circled him slowly, hands in my pockets. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the rooftop. Most students had already left for the day. Smart. They knew when to make themselves scarce. "You don't understand how things work around here."
He tried to push himself up. Takeshi kicked him back down, grinning. At least Takeshi still got it. Some people existed to be stepped on. That's just nature.
"I-I didn't do anything," Hiroshi stammered. Blood trickled from where Takeshi's ring had split his lip during the initial "invitation" to come upstairs.
"Didn't do anything?" I crouched down to his level, close enough to see the fear swimming in his unfocused eyes. "My girlfriend says you asked her out. You calling Yuki a liar?"
Understanding and panic flashed across his face simultaneously. "No! I just, she helped me with homework once, and I was thanking her. I said...I said she was nice, and maybe we could study together again, but I didn't know."
"You didn't know she was my girlfriend." I grabbed his collar, pulling him close. "You didn't notice the guy who runs this school has a hot girlfriend? You didn't think maybe you should check before shooting your shot?"
The thing about my mom's clients, the ones who came to our shitty apartment when I was younger, is that they taught me something valuable. Power isn't about being the strongest or the smartest. It's about making someone believe you'll actually follow through.
And I always followed through.
"I'm sorry," Hiroshi whispered. Tears were starting now. Good. "I'm really sorry. I'll never talk to her again. I'll transfer schools if you want. Please, just..."
"Just what?" I shoved him back toward the concrete. "Just let you go? So you can tell everyone that I'm soft? That you can disrespect me and walk away?"
Takeshi laughed from behind me. "He's actually gonna cry. Man, Kenji, how do you find the biggest losers in school?"
I didn't answer. Something about Hiroshi's expression had caught my attention. For just a second, underneath the fear and the tears, there was something else.
Anger.
It disappeared as quickly as it came, but I'd seen it. And it pissed me off.
Because anger meant he thought he had a right to it. Like he was the victim here. Like I was doing something wrong instead of just maintaining order.
That's when I noticed his bag, half-open against the rooftop railing. Something black and rectangular poked out, covered in anime stickers.
I walked over and pulled it out. A handheld gaming console. Not a real Nintendo Switch—one of those knockoff GameTech Portables you could get at discount electronics stores. But it was the newer model, and from the wear on it, well-loved.
"Oh shit," Takeshi said, leaning in. "That's gotta be, what, 20,000 yen?"
More like 15,000 for a knockoff, but close enough. For someone like Hiroshi, probably a fortune.
Perfect.
"Don't..." Hiroshi's voice cracked completely. He struggled to his feet, swaying. "Please, that's... my dad worked overtime for months to get me that. Please."
The desperation in his voice made something warm bloom in my chest. This was the moment I'd been looking for. When they realized they had no power at all. When they understood their place in the world.
My world.
"You should've thought about that before you went after my girlfriend."
"I didn't! I swear, I was just..."
I walked to the edge of the rooftop. The railing came up to my waist, old metal painted institutional green. Four stories down, I could see students walking to the train station, tiny figures living their irrelevant little lives.
I held the GameTech out over the edge.
"No!" Hiroshi lurched forward, nearly falling. Takeshi caught him easily, wrapping an arm around his chest.
"Tell me you're sorry," I said, not looking back at him. Watching the console dangle over empty air instead. "Tell me you'll never even look at Yuki again."
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I won't, I promise! Please, my dad—he saved for six months. He felt bad because we can't afford the real ones, but he wanted..." His voice dissolved into sobs.
I pulled the console back.
For a second, hope flickered across Hiroshi's face.
Then I slammed the GameTech against the concrete rooftop floor.
The screen spiderwebbed with a satisfying crack.
"STOP!" Hiroshi thrashed against Takeshi's grip like a caught fish. "PLEASE!"
I raised it and brought it down again. Harder. The plastic shell split. A button popped off and skittered across the gravel.
Again.
The screen shattered completely, LCD crystals catching the late sunlight like broken glass.
"Dude," Ryo said quietly from the door. There was something in his voice I didn't like. Something that sounded like judgment. "Maybe that's enough..."
I ignored him. Raised the GameTech one more time and brought it down with everything I had.
It exploded into pieces. Screen fragments, circuit boards, the rubber grips...just wreckage scattered across the rooftop like the world's saddest puzzle.
"There," I said, dropping the largest remaining chunk at Hiroshi's feet. The power button, still attached to a strip of broken plastic, rolled to a stop near his shoe. "Now you've learned something about respecting other people's property. My girlfriend isn't yours to talk to. Got it?"
The irony of that statement, lecturing him about property while destroying his, didn't even register. In my head, it made perfect sense. He'd crossed a line. Consequences were consequences.
For a moment, nobody moved. The only sound was Hiroshi's ragged breathing and the distant noise of traffic below.
Then he stopped struggling. Just stared at the pieces of his console scattered across the concrete. His face had gone completely blank.
Empty.
I'd seen that look before. On my mom's face sometimes, after a particularly bad client left. The look of something inside breaking that couldn't be fixed with bandages or apologies.
But I pushed that thought away. This was different. This was necessary.
"Clean this shit up before you leave," I told him. "Don't want to leave a mess."
I turned toward the door, toward Takeshi and Ryo. Ready to head down, maybe grab food, text Yuki about what a good boyfriend I was for defending her honor.
Behind me, I heard Hiroshi stand up.
"You piece of shit."
His voice wasn't scared anymore. Wasn't pleading. It was something else entirely.
I turned back, more amused than concerned. "What did you..."
He charged.
Not a practiced rush. Not a fighter's technique. Just desperate, furious momentum from someone who had nothing left to lose.
His hands hit my chest.
I staggered backward, more from surprise than force. My heel caught the railing.
"Oh shit—" Takeshi's voice, suddenly sharp with alarm.
And then there was nothing behind me but air.
For a split second, I hung there, balanced on the edge. I could see Hiroshi's face, shocked at what he'd done. His hands still extended, as if he could pull me back.
Then gravity made its choice.
I fell.
Everything slowed down. They say that happens, and they're right. Time stretched like taffy, gave me an eternity to think in the space between the rooftop and the ground.
I saw Ryo rush forward, hand outstretched, too late.
I saw the sky tilt, become the ground, become the sky again.
I saw the school building rotating past me, windows and bricks, and the face of some freshman staring out in horror.
The wind screamed past my ears, or maybe that was me screaming. I couldn't tell anymore.
I thought about my mom. How she worked herself to exhaustion to keep our shitty apartment. How she'd cry when she found out her son died falling off a roof. How this would probably kill her too, in a slower, quieter way.
I thought about Yuki. Would she even care? Or would she just move on, find another guy who could buy her things and make her feel important?
I thought about my grandmother, who let us live in her house even though she hated what my mother did for money. How disappointed she'd always been in me.
I thought about all the people I'd hurt over the years. Kids I'd beaten up. Students I'd extorted for money. That freshman whose phone I'd broken just because I was in a bad mood. Faces blurred together, a carousel of fear and pain that I'd caused.
And underneath it all, a thought that surprised me with its clarity:
I deserved this.
Not for hitting on someone's girlfriend or whatever bullshit reason I'd told myself I was punishing Hiroshi for.
For everything else. For being the kind of person who broke someone's most precious possession just to feel powerful. For building a kingdom on fear and calling it respect.
The ground rushed up, concrete and grass, and the corner of the school building.
I had time for one more thought before impact.
I don't want to die.
Everything went white, then black, then nothing at all.
I woke up to white ceiling tiles and the steady beep of a heart monitor.
Everything hurt. My head pounded like someone had split it open and filled it with broken glass. My back screamed with every breath. My arms ached.
But below my waist...
Nothing.
Not pain. Not numbness. Just... absence. Like that part of my body had been deleted from reality.
I tried to sit up. Lightning shot through my spine, and suddenly a nurse was there, pressing me gently back down with practiced hands.
"Easy," she said, her voice professionally calm. "You've been unconscious for two days. Don't try to move yet."
Two days. I'd been out for two days.
The rooftop. Hiroshi. The fall. The ground.
"My legs," I said. My voice came out hoarse, unfamiliar. "I can't feel my legs."
Her expression shifted. Became carefully, meticulously neutral in a way that made my stomach drop.
"The doctor will be in shortly to discuss your condition."
"What condition? What's wrong with my legs?"
She didn't answer, just adjusted my IV and left, her shoes squeaking softly against the linoleum.
The doctor who came in twenty minutes later was a thin man with grey hair and the kind of tired eyes that said he'd delivered bad news too many times to bother with bedside manner anymore.
"Mr. Yamamoto," he said, pulling up X-rays on a light board mounted to the wall. "You fell approximately four stories. You're very lucky to be alive."
"My legs..."
"I'm getting to that." He pointed to a spot on the X-ray, a place where my spine looked... wrong. Compressed. Damaged. "You sustained severe trauma to your lower thoracic vertebrae. We performed surgery to stabilize the spine and reduce swelling, but the damage to the spinal cord was extensive."
The words washed over me, clinical and meaningless. Thoracic vertebrae. Spinal cord. Medical terminology that didn't connect to anything real.
"What does that mean?"
He turned to look at me directly. "It means you won't walk again. The paralysis is permanent."
Permanent.
The word sat in my chest like a stone. Heavy. Cold. Impossible.
"No." I shook my head, which made the pounding worse. "No, that's... that's temporary, right? Physical therapy, or another surgery, or..."
"I'm afraid not. The damage is too severe. The nerve pathways are..."
"Check again. Do another surgery. I'll pay whatever..."
"Mr. Yamamoto." His voice remained level, but there was something like pity in his eyes now, which made it worse. "I understand this is difficult to accept. But the injury is permanent. We have counselors available to help you process this, and we'll set you up with physical therapy to maintain your upper body strength. The wheelchair..."
"Get out."
"Mr. Yamamoto, I know this is overwhelming, but...."
"GET OUT!"
The words ripped out of me, raw and desperate. The doctor's expression didn't change. He'd probably been yelled at by newly paralyzed patients before.
"I'll give you some time," he said quietly, and left.
The nurse followed. The door clicked shut.
And I was alone.
I tried to move my legs. Concentrated every bit of willpower I had on just wiggling my toes. Commanded them. Begged them. Screamed at them in my mind.
Nothing.
It was like they didn't exist anymore. Like someone had drawn a line across my body and erased everything below it.
I turned my head, carefully, because even that hurt to look out the window. Four floors down, I could see the hospital courtyard. People walking from the parking lot to the entrance. A businessman jogging to catch a bus. A kid kicking a soccer ball while his mother watched.
So easy. So natural. Movements I'd made a million times without thinking.
Never again.
The weight of those two words crushed down on me. Never walk. Never run. Never stand up without help. Never chase someone down when they disrespected me. Never...
My phone buzzed on the bedside table, somehow having survived the fall in my pocket. The screen was cracked but functional.
A text from Yuki: "OMG babe heard what happened!! r u ok??? visiting hours tomorrow, can't wait to see u "
I stared at the message. At the heart emoji. At the casual certainty that everything would be fine.
She had no idea. None of them did.
In my world—the world I'd built, the hierarchy I'd maintained through fear and violence—weakness was death.
And I'd just become the weakest person I knew.
I closed my eyes, but I could still see it. The wheelchair was folded in the corner, waiting. The pitying looks from the nurses. The long hospital hallways I'd need help navigating.
The school I'd ruled, where I'd been someone who mattered.
Where I'd now be nothing.
If I'd known what was coming, the betrayal, the humiliation, the complete destruction of everything I thought I was. I might have wished I'd died on that pavement.
But I didn't die.
Not yet.
That came later, in a different way, in a quiet room where nobody cared enough to check on me anymore.
But first, I had to learn exactly what I'd put others through.
Karma, I'd learned on the streets, always collects its debts.
Mine was just getting started.