Renegades: Battlegrounds.-Chapter 55: All Eyes on Us

Old Hanasakura Shopping Arcade

6:17 PM

April 12, 2005

Ren doubled over, hands on his knles, lungs burning like someone had lit a fire inside his chest. The sprint from school had taken everything out of him, every last reserve of energy he had been hoarding through detention.

Beside him, Shiinchiro somehow looked worse. His face was tomato-red, wheezing like he had just run a marathon in the summer heat. Sweat dripped down his temples.

"Never... doing that... again..." Shiin gasped between ragged breaths.

"You... said that... already..." Ren managed, his own voice barely more than a wheeze.

They had arrived at their destination. The Old Arcade.

It was derelict—a relic from another era. 1980s architecture crumbling into itself like a dying giant.

Faded signs in Japanese hung at odd angles, some barely clinging to their moorings. Broken windows gaped like missing teeth.

Graffiti covered every surface, tags, symbols, drawings, layers upon layers of paint telling stories of whoever passed through.

But in the center stood a three-story building, an old department store with lights glowing from inside. Still alive. Still breathing.

"This is it." Shiin wheezed, finally managing to catch his breath. He gestured toward the building with one shaky hand.

"Sakuratei HQ. Locals call it The Garden."

Ren straightened slowly, his ribs protesting with sharp jabs of pain. His whole body ached from detention, from sitting rigid and tense for two and a half hours, from the desperate sprint across half the district. Every muscle screamed for rest.

"Doesn’t look like much," Ren muttered, eyeing the decrepit exterior.

"That’s the point." Shiin pulled out a water bottle from his bag, took a long, grateful drink before offering it to Ren.

"Cops drive past every day. Never look twice. Just another abandoned building in a forgotten part of town."

Ren took it gratefully, the cool liquid soothing his raw throat. He drank deeply, letting the water settle the fire in his chest.

They stood there for a long moment, neither moving. Just breathing. Letting their heart rates settle back to something resembling normal.

The evening air was cool against their overheated skin. Cherry blossoms drifted past on the breeze, even here in this forgotten corner of Hanasakura.

"Before we go in..." Shiin reached out, pulling Ren back just as he was about to start walking toward the building.

Ren turned, one eyebrow raised.

"There are a few people you should look out for..." Shiin’s voice had gone serious—more serious than Ren had ever heard it.

He pulled out his notebook, the same one from the cafeteria the other day. Pages bent and worn, notes scribbled frantically in every margin.

He flipped through quickly, stopping at a particular page covered in crude drawings and underlined names.

"Here! Look at these guys." Shiin’s finger jabbed at the page. "There are three people you absolutely cannot... you must not cross. If you do, it’s going to be really, really bad."

His expression was deadly earnest now, all traces of his usual goofiness gone.

"Well..." Shiin let out a long sigh, shoulders sagging. "You already clashed with one of them, so who am I kidding? You’re probably gonna find a way to piss off all three eventually."

Ren glanced down at the pages, trying to focus but his exhaustion made everything blur at the edges. His vision swam slightly. The words and drawings seemed to shift and merge together.

"Later." he said quietly, handing the notebook back. "I can barely think right now, Shiin. My brain feels like mush."

"But Ren... this is important."

"Shiin." Ren’s voice came out flat, heavy with fatigue.

"If they’re as important as you say, I’ll meet them soon enough. Probably tonight. Right now I just need to get through this without collapsing face-first on the floor."

Shiinchiro’s concern was written all over his face. His mouth opened, then closed. He looked like he wanted to argue, to make Ren understand the danger.

But he must have seen something in Ren’s eyes.

He closed the book slowly, tucking it back into his bag.

"...Okay." His voice was small. "But seriously, you need to careful in there. I mean it."

"I know." Ren handed back the water bottle, his fingers brushing the white armband hidden under his sleeve.

The fabric felt heavier than it should. "Trust me. I know."

The weight of what he was walking into pressed down on his shoulders.

"So where’s the entrance exactly?" Ren asked, starting to walk toward the central building. His legs felt like lead.

"Let’s split up and look for it," Shiin suggested, already moving to the right. "You go that way, I’ll check over here. Shout if you find anything."

Ren nodded and went left, following the perimeter of the building.

He didn’t find a door.

What he found instead was graffiti.

An old graffiti, layered and faded in places, but still visible in the dying light.

It told a story.

It started with a small red flower—simple, almost childish in its execution.

Then a pink cherry blossom, more detailed, petals delicately rendered.

And at the end loomed a huge black dragon, scales intricately drawn, eyes that seemed to follow you. Small writing ran along its serpentine body.

Ren stepped closer, squinting at the faded text. "Born from the depths of despair, they rise, their fury unleashed upon the world. The Black—"

The rest was scratched out. Deliberately. Violently. Deep gouges in the concrete had destroyed whatever came after. Only the word "Black" remained visible, isolated and ominous.

Ren stared at it, something cold settling in his gut.

Those words felt... familiar somehow. Wrong. Like a memory he couldn’t quite grasp, hovering just out of reach.

"Hey Ren!" Shiin’s voice cut through his thoughts. "I found a door over here! I think it’s the way in, but it’s jammed or something. I can see light bleeding through the edges."

"Coming," Ren called back, tearing his eyes away from the mural.

He found Shiin struggling with a stuck door, pulling on the handle with both hands, feet braced against the wall for leverage.

"The damn thing won’t budge..." Shiin muttered through gritted teeth, face reddening with effort.

"Move." Ren’s voice was flat.

His exhaustion had burned through what little patience he had left. Two and a half hours sitting rigid in detention. A fifteen-minute desperate sprint across the district.

He was done with obstacles. Done with delays.

He stepped forward, measured the door with tired eyes, and kicked.

Hard.

The door exploded inward with a deafening BANG, wood splintering around the lock.

Shiin’s jaw dropped. "You... you just broke it!"

"It was stuck." Ren said flatly, as if that explained everything. As if kicking down doors was a perfectly reasonable solution.

"You can’t just go around breaking..." Shiin started to protest, hands waving in exasperation.

"Can we just get inside already?" Ren cut him off, voice heavy with exhaustion that made his words come out sharper than intended.

He stepped through the broken doorway without waiting for an answer.

Shiin followed, still muttering under his breath about property damage and first impressions.

Then they both stopped dead.

Wrong room.

Very, very wrong room.

This wasn’t an entrance hall or a reception area.

This was a training space or had been, once. Now it served multiple purposes, all of them screaming gang headquarters.

Weights lined one wall in organized chaos: barbells, dumbbells, a bench press setup that looked like it had seen serious use.

Punching bags hung from reinforced ceiling beams, some swaying slightly as if recently used.

A pool table dominated one corner, cues racked on the wall.

Worn couches were pushed against walls covered in elaborate cherry blossom graffiti, some pieces looked almost professional.

And everywhere were Sakuratei members.

At least twenty of them, maybe more. Second-years, third-years.

Some wore the full white jacket, cherry blossoms embroidered across the back. Others had them draped over furniture or tied around their waists.

Some were lifting weights, muscles straining.

Others played cards at a makeshift table, cigarettes dangling from mouths.

A few clustered around someone’s phone, watching something that made them laugh.

Every single head turned toward the broken door.

Toward Ren standing in the doorway, fist still clenched.

Toward Shiinchiro, who looked like he desperately wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole.

Complete silence fell like a guillotine blade.

Even the music someone had been playing cut off mid-beat.

One guy by the weights, massive, definitely a third-year, shoulders like a linebacker set down his barbell with exaggerated slowness. The weights hit the rubber mat with a dull thud that echoed in the sudden quiet.

His voice came out flat and dangerous. "...Who the hell are you?"

Another voice cut through the tension, lazy and amused, drifting from somewhere near the couches: "Oh, I know exactly who he is."

A figure stood up from one of the battered couches, stretching with casual confidence.

He looked maybe eighteen or nineteen. Tall and lean, wearing a white tank top that displayed lean, ropy muscle. A jagged scar ran from his left shoulder down across his collarbone—old, healed, but prominent. The kind of scar that told stories.

His Sakuratei jacket hung carelessly over the back of the couch behind him. Dark hair fell across sharp, assessing eyes that locked onto Ren with unsettling focus.

He was grinning.

Too wide. Too friendly for someone who looked like he’d been through a war.

The kind of grin that made Ren’s instincts scream danger.