A full month passed; Shinku finally got more accustomed to his robotic eye, and he began his physical rehabilitation for another two-week period. While in rehabilitation, Ryota came to visit. "Hey kid, nice to see you walking around now."

"Yeah, thanks. I'm getting used to the eye as well, but sometimes I still couldn't tell how far away things were."

Ryota hung around for a while until he had to leave for the day. During this time, Shinku planned every step of his escape. "Now that I can finally walk a bit, I need to get out of this place. I can't trust these people."

Still cautious after only a week of his rehabilitation, Shinku took his chance and ran away. "Now's my chance to leave, but I need something to help move around with." Shinku used a crutch left in his room to aid in his mobility.

Soon the nurses come along to check up on him, noticing he was missing from the building; a high alert was set in place. Shinku heard the sirens go off and turned around in shock.

"No, they found me out already. I need to get away from here quick. I can't let them catch me."

Shinku slowly lost strength in his body and fell to the ground. "Damn it, I need to move. Wait, maybe I can try using my magic. I need to try anything."

Shinku focused on the ground beneath him and managed to move his body.

"Wow, no way I'm actually doing it." Shinku then got away until he exhausted his magic, and he went off by foot once again.

The police force soon came to help find him by request of Ryota, believing that he could also be an asset to them later on.

"We need to find this kid; with proper training in a few years, he'll be indispensable with his innate magical ability."

Shinku finally found somewhere to hide out; the only thoughts in his mind,

"I can't trust them; they might betray me later. No one can be trusted for anything." He got a flash of Ryota's face and began to backtrack, "Maybe not all of them are as bad as I think, but I still couldn't take a risk like last time."

He soon dozed off and woke up early in the morning, going into hiding again, continuing with his vigilante actions, taking down thugs and searching for information.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"If you don't want me to take off your right arm, you better tell me who your boss is."

The thug laughed at Shinku for believing he could get info on his higher-ups. Angering Shinku, causing him to knocked him out and continued his rampage; he grew weaker by the day, pushing his body past its limits, ignoring his body's exhaustion.

"(Heavy breathing) I need to keep moving; I can't stop now when I'm getting so close to getting answers." He fought through the stress and his need for rest.

Over time, Shinku got more competent with using his magic on a basic level. At the same time, the police force investigated every lead on him as Ryota found a very big clue and found out how to track Shinku.

"Every time there's a thug takedown, we always see signs of melted rocks. What's happening in those places to cause that?" Ryota looked back on some recovered security footage where he saw the stone turn to lava and was used to attack the thugs.

"I couldn't see the attacker in this video; let me speed it up a bit. Wait, there's no way it was him."

As Ryota looked through the video, he saw a young boy leaving the scene, and he instantly put the pieces together. Using the very noticeable sign of the warped look of the molten then solidified stone, Ryota went to track him down himself. In the middle of one of his battles, Ryota finally found him.

"Shinku! What are you doing? Why'd you run away like that? You haven't even finished your rehabilitation yet."

Shinku looked over to Ryota, his eyes looking soulless. "I didn't need to explain to you, and I didn't need your help. I've been taking care of myself just fine for a long time."

Ryota clenched his fist and shouted at him, "Wake up and look at yourself; you're a kid. You have no experience fighting street thugs who don't even have magic. What's your plan when you actually come across a master? You'll die a pointless death, just an insignificant person killed by criminals. That's what you're choosing instead of accepting help."

Shinku slumped his head down, and the building began to shake; his anger grew stronger until he just exploded, asking,

"Have you ever had to take care of your family on your own, have you ever had to spend three years living as a homeless person to provide for your family alone, watch your father die and raise your own sister by yourself, take care of your own sickly mother, work hard to give half of everything you make to street thugs with nothing to do with their life, or maybe this have you ever had the experience of losing your eye while you looked at the only people you had in the world perish and felt their bodies grow cold in your arms, have you ever worked so hard you nearly killed yourself only to have everything you worked for be ripped away from you in minutes, if not how could you possibly relate to my pain."

Shinku's body, void of any more strength, fell to the ground, tears in his eyes. Ryota ran and caught him before he hit the ground and answered him,

"I may not know what you've been through, but I would never let you go through that torture again; you can finally be vulnerable, so go ahead and let it all out.

" Shinku bawled out in pain; his wails shook the ground around them as he held onto Ryota tightly and passed out in his arms, falling into a deep sleep—the first time in a while that he had felt such a warm touch and slept so soundly.

image [https://i.imgur.com/cOVLyNs.jpeg]