Holyland - Vol. 18 Ch. 177 - Letter
- Thread starter MangaDex
- Start date
That's the point. The "streets" aren't some soft sunshine-and-rainbows type place. They're a place people escape to when they "fail in the real world", just like Masaki told Tetsu. You lose your job, you drop out of school/college/uni, you become estranged from your family/friends, you grieve a lost loved one, you lose yourself, you're lonely, you have no purpose — when people go through things like that, many people find themselves going out into the streets at night. A world filled with violence, drugs, alcohol, sex, music, and barbarism — but also a world of "failures" hanging out together. "Normal" people that don't escape from the real world will continue waking up early, going about their days — eating, talking to friends and family, going to work, going to school, shopping, occupying themselves with their hobbies, taking vacation, going to bed early because they have responsibilities they have to take care of early in the next day — so you won't see well-adjusted members of society hanging out around the streets as much as "delinquents", "thugs", or "good-for-nothings" do. The night streets specifically are a place for the failures of society to "lick each other's wounds" (as King put it) and get their adrenaline pumping from that world of violence. Their failures bring them together, where they find companionship, camaraderie, love, and hope for themselves and each other — they connect to one another through each other's griefs and pains. Yuu's like them too — he felt nothing from his regular life, no joy or pain. Eventually he grew tired of shutting himself in, and started seeking those exhilarating life-and-death experiences on the streets — where he could get jumped, robbed, stabbed, or worse. Part of Yuu's journey was accepting the fact that he liked that violence — he might've told himself that he hated it at first, but he liked the feeling of beating somebody else up. And it's not for the sake of dominance or to bully others — it was because that's the only way he knew he could make the "real him" seen to the world. In his room, he was an empty, anonymous shut-in that nobody knew of or cared about — but on the streets, even if it was dangerous, people knew him through his deeds. "Thug Hunter", his moniker, gave him an identity and a sense of belonging to those streets.
Getting back to the topic of the streets — they're not just some romanticized, easy place you can just hang around at and have fun like a goof. They're a place for the rejects of the world to come to, take time to find themselves, and get back up on their feet before "graduating" (the dilemma Yoshito and Izawa were dealing with).
