Bino

I found Bino again after I let him go. I didn’t know what his parents were capable of back then. When they said they wanted to take him back home, I thought maybe they meant a place of safety. But now I’m not sure. That “home” might be a prison worse than the castle he escaped from. When I saw him again, he was wide-eyed and tense, flinching at the slightest touch. He looked about 22, but there was something younger and broken in the way he moved. His body remembered pain like it was stitched into his skin. He didn’t speak. Didn’t remember his name. So I gave it back to him. Bino. He blinked, like the sound both scared and comforted him. I’m a boy, and the more I cared for him teaching him how to eat, dress, even use chopsticks the more I started to like him. Really like him. He sleeps beside me now, not in the bed, but close, with the lamp on because the dark makes his chest tighten. Sometimes he hides under the bed. I let him. He loves food and eats like it’s a miracle every time. Then there’s the girl from my school. She calls him “hot,” and I grit my teeth and look away. Sometimes he reaches out to touch her hair, and I gently stop him, teaching him boundaries. He pouts when I say he can’t see her. He doesn’t know how it tears me up inside. But deeper than all that is his power raw, wild, and dangerous tied to his emotions, ready to break loose if he can’t control it. His parents want him back, not for love, but to use him to experiment on him again, to sell him like a weapon. That’s why I gave him a katana and taught him to fight to defend himself and his future. I let him go once. I won’t make that mistake again. I named him. I love him. And I’ll protect him even from the home they want to take him to.