❝𝗳𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹, 𝗺𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗲❞ 𝗎𝗌𝗁𝗂𝗍𝖾𝗇

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 9

A few more weeks passed.
Light rays of sunlight came in from Ushijima's window, who after a long time had spent that night at his house, since he had been late for training.
The brown-haired boy had just woken up.

Unfortunately it hadn't been a good awakening: the boy held a hand in front of his mouth and he was shaking.
After staring at his blankets for a few seconds, Ushijima looked up and began to search desperately for his phone.
As soon as he found it, he turned it on and sighed with relief as he noticed the same message that Satori sent him every morning, when he wasn't with him.

"Good morning Wakatoshi-kun!"
Ushijima kept staring at the message.

His hands were still shaking, so he decided to call his friend.
The ringing of the phone seemed interminable, his heart kept beating faster and faster.

"Good morning Wakatoshi!" said Satori's faint voice from the phone.

"Are you okay?"

"Mh? As always, right?" Tendou answered, giggling.

Tendou's condition was getting worse, despite the fact that he took many antibiotics.
The boy often was struggling to breath, and most of the time his breathing was labored.
He spent whole days taking antibiotics, and when he didn't take them, coughing.

Tendou, however, still seemed determined in Ushijima's eyes, and despite his health conditions, he still did almost everything he could do before him.
So, except for a few critical moments many times he seemed the same person as always.

"Wakatoshi, are you there?" Tendou said, considering that the brown-haired boy remained silent.

"Yes, yes I'm still here."

Tendou snorted.
"I was saying, are you coming here today?"

"Yes, I'm leaving home now." Ushijima said as he was about to hang up.
But he heard Tendou's voice on the phone, asking him not to end the call, so he put the phone back to his ear.

"Mh? What's up?" Wakatoshi stammered.

The red-haired boy was looking out the window of his bedroom, always looking at the same place with lost eyes.

"I was wondering, since it will my birthday soon..."

"Tendou..." the boy interrupted him.

"Let me finish. I was wondering, why don't we go back there? Even an hour is enough for me, Wakatoshi." Satori said smiling.

"You seem determined, did you enjoy going there so much?" laughed the brown-haired boy.

"I thought you understood that!" he gave a weak laugh too.

"Come on, now I come and we talk about it, okay?"

Tendou was amazed: in the last three months Wakatoshi had done nothing but answer to his request with a "no".

"Y-yes! Hurry up!" the boy stammered, from his voice Ushijima could feel Satori's happiness in hearing him say those words.

Ushijima was starting to realize that probably, if Tendou wanted so badly to go back there, they had to hurry up before he got worse.
Satori's birthday would be in a week, and if he hadn't been too cold (very unlikely since it was already May) that afternoon Ushijima told Satori that if there were no changes he would have taken him back there.

"Thank you, thank you very much Wakatoshi-kun!" Tendou said, giving Ushijima a hug.

"I promised you, right?" the other boy said, forcing a smile.

Tendou nodded, the pale features of his face showing only the most sincere happiness in that moment.

The two boys were looking at each other.
Ushijima could feel a lump in his throat seeing the red-haired boy so faint, but at the same time happy for something Wakatoshi took so for granted, even though it really wasn't.
Tendou was a person you could make happy with little.
He didn't deserve all this pain, Ushijima thought.

Thanks to his pale skin, the brown-haired boy could see Tendou's cheeks blushed.
His gaze instead, a little covered by his red hair in that moment, this time was more brighter.

"Come on, come here, tell me about yesterday's training." Tendou then said, breaking the silence that had been created between the two boy and tapping with his hand on the bed, making Ushijima sit up.

They spent that day like all the other ones, including TV series, manga and antibiotics.
That same evening, however, this time it was Ushijima who fell asleep on Satori's chest, who was stroking his hair.

Tendou, who was still awake, saw a small tear near Ushijima's eye, which he understood to be the cause.
He brought his hand, that was shaking a little, close to the brown-haired boy's face, trying to dry the tear.

"Don't worry, I'm fine with that as long as you are with me."

Ushijima, who was already sleeping, didn't hear those words.
After a few minutes the red-haired boy, tired too, fell asleep too.

Since they were little, Tendou thought he was the one who needed Ushijima.
In the last months, however, both Satori and Wakatoshi had understood that they actually supported and needed each other.