Reo Tanaka was gone.
His apartment, where the eighteen-year old boy would eat in, sleep in, live in, had no one inside it.
No one came to his apartment to visit him.
It was as if no one would care if Reo died.
The day was Friday.
On a different Friday, in the past, ten Chinese gangsters had participated in kidnapping two teenagers.
One of those teenagers had been murdered.
As Reo was gone, there was another Japanese boy gone, whose favorite person in the universe was a girl Reo was aware existed.
Outside Japan, in a wide, three-story home in a country where most people spoke English, a Chinese man with a red skull tattoo on his right bicep kept his focus on the American eighteen-year old girl seated at a desk in the room.
When the girl had lived in Minnesota, she would cut her current, long strawberry blond hair, make it chin-length.
Living with the Chinese gangsters, the girl stopped cutting her hair.
She flipped a page in the one-hundred page long journal, which had English text, the journal written by a Chinese gang leader in Beijing.
Beside the journal, sat a paper sheet stack with Chinese text written on most of the papers. A pencil sat on the stack.
The girl was the kidnapped translator and interpreter for the Chinese gang occupying the mansion.
The Chinese gangster with the red skull tattoo was the one who took her from the home she shared with her white-haired grandmother in Minnesota.
"Keep up the good work, Lucy," the Chinese gangster with the red tattoo said, speaking English.
He patted her head before removing lint from her red, short-sleeved shirt.
"Thanks, To." Lucy said while the Chinese gangster moved to the bookcase in the room.
To pulled a thick book from it, which detailed America's history.
Using the light emitting from the sole lamp in the room, To read a random page in the book.
To was not born in America.
Twenty-nine years ago, To's mom gave birth to him in Sichuan, China.
As a young kid, To would catch mosquitos with Yong, sell them to a six and a half feet tall man with a strange obsession with mosquitos.
Many times, the money To had earned from catching mosquitos prevented him from starving to death.
When he was a teenager, he had left Sichuan with Yong, settled in Beijing where the Chines gang leader Ding hired both boys to help him make money from buying and selling people within China and outside China.
The people To had kidnapped and sold were not mosquitos, but To was intent on sacrificing' others normal lives to banish the suffering in his life.
Next week, he would visit his ex wife and daughter in Beijing.
After reading five pages in the book in his hands, To returned the book to the bookshelf, stepped to the spot near the window, moved the bright red curtains to the right.
A person shot a guard outside.
Moonlight glowing against the yard, the Chinese gangster outside dropped, while a person holding an pistol ran past, the person wearing a ski mask, black hoodie, black jeans, black shoes, their back against a sling-attached sniper rifle.
"What the hell was that? A gunshot?!" Lucy said as To pulled a bright red pistol from his pocket.
The pistol in To's hand was a weapon he hoped he would never lose.
He trained his eyes on the collapsed gang member outside, who pressed a hand to the gaping hole in his forehead before going still.
To would bring vengeance.
He turned to Lucy.
Lucy stood, grabbed the pistol she kept on the desk.
"We need to kill whoever's trying to kill us." To said before leaving the room with Lucy.
For To, killing a person to keep the other gang members safe was a duty he never regretted.
In the hall, Yong held a submachine gun as he stood next to Ding, who carried a pistol.
Ding ran a hand through his short white hair, coughed. He said, in Mandarin, "If we don't kill them, we'll torture them for a whole year straight."
To nodded, turned to the stairs.
"To, let's go downstairs and meet whoever it is." Yong said.
Yong moved to the spot next to To.
They had stood beside each other many times in the past.
In 2017, last year, they stood beside each other as their boss-Ding-slit a rival gang member's throat.
The rival gang member was a nineteen-year old boy.
"One of us is already dead. Let's try not to die in California, too." To said before descending the steps.
On the first floor, a Chinese man kept two pistols aimed at the mansion's front door.
His shoe bottoms against the bright red rug, he said, in Mandarin, "Come on. Come on, fucking idiot."
Bullets came.
They had emerged from the door, sped into the gangster's body.
He fired the pistols in his hands.
"Shit!" Yong said in Mandarin, but he didn't try moving the fallen gang member to safety. "You fucker! I'll shoot you in the eyes! Understand?!"
No bullets fired.
To didn't stop pointing his red pistol at the door.
Shouts emerged from the hall containing the water-filled tanks holding Ding's pet piranhas.
Five gang members emerged from the hall, each armed with weapons.
A gang member held an automatic black rifle.
Two bullets entered his head.
"Hey, what the f-?!" a gang member started saying before more bullets penetrated the wall.
The bullets entered clothes, bodies.
They killed.
To and Yong became the sole living gang members in the vast room.
To's hands trembled with warm rage.
He viewed the bleeding dead men on the floor, shifted his focus to the door.
A bullet collided with his leg.
"Fuck!" To said, falling onto his ass.
He opened fire.
Yong opened fire, letting bullets rocket out his submachine gun.
They stopped shooting when their guns lost all their ammo.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" To said while the bullet inside his leg continued burning his flesh. He placed his pistol in his pocket, clenched his fists. "We... can still kill this fucker."
Yong reloaded his submachine gun. As the scent from the gangsters' dead friends assaulted the living gangsters' noses, Yong said, "You're going to be fine, To. Right after I take this motherfucker out."
The attacker entered the room.
Three seconds passed.
Yong, a bullet having passed through each eyeball, dropped onto a corpse.
Warm tears blurred To's vision as he yelled.
He dragged himself to Yong's breathing body, reached for the submachine gun.
The attacker opened fire.
