Heavy Blood

23. Izuna

Actually, it wasn't one month.

Lisa had been in very much despair when I told the class the summer holiday ceremony this year was the thirteenth of June.

"But that makes our monthly countdown futile!" she wailed.

"But Lisa!" Angelica said. "This means we will have to wait one day less! It's a good thing!"

"Oh..." Lisa said as it went up to her.

For me, though, the date was agony. It was exactly one year since me and Tobirama had broken up. I still missed him terribly, everything we'd been through still forming a string from my heart that went straight to his, wherever he might be. Sebastian Goldstein, the physics teacher, phoned me in the morning.

"How you feeling?" he asked.

I smiled. I was so happy and lucky to have him. We'd slept together once after an afterwork with the teachers of our school, and I'd fallen madly in love with him. I'd confessed, and he'd had to shamefacedly tell me that he was actually straight. I had been furious with him. For weeks. But he sincerely apologised, and a deep friendship had started to form between us from then. I think it truly started from the moment he saw the scars on my back, and I had to explain them to him. He was reddish blonde, with a tall and slender body and a strong nose. He was two years older than Tobirama and looked more like an arts teacher than a physics one. He was the smartest person I have ever met, and that went on to his emotional intellect as well; he was someone I could rely on in every situation.

"Terrible", I said, drying my tears.

"You know I think you should contact him."

"I would have if it had been my decision to break up! But it wasn't. He chose God."

"I'm sorry", he said. "You've already told me."

"Sorry. You have nothing to apologise for. Do we meet at the coffee table in the staff room before the ceremony?"

"You apologise too much", he said warmly and it was such a Tobirama thing to say, my heart clenched. "See you there, Izuna."

I walked through the school corridor to the staff room. I was clad in black suit pants and a long, light blue shirt with a black T-shirt underneath so I could keep the shirt open. Around my neck was a necklace on a black cord with three thick silver pearls that Karen, Madara's nurse, had gifted me after my brother's death. I entered the staff room.

"Izuna!"

"Sebastian."

He immediately stood up to embrace me, and the other teachers, a good mixture of elderly gentlemen and young girls and everything in between, greeted me warmly.

"Please, have coffee!" a middle-aged woman who taught maths to the older children said. "Or tea!"

"Thank you", I said, taking a cup and a cookie.

"Izuna!" It was Mr Smith, the school counsellor that would retire. I was very upset about that, since I really liked him.

"Mr Smith! Haven't changed your mind yet? Just one more year, pleaaaaase?" I mock-pleaded him. He laughed and put an arm around me.

"You can always phone me. We can take walks and have ice cream in the park. Real father-son things. If..." He looked away, suddenly insecure. "If you'd like?

He caught me completely off guard. Tears filled my eyes before my brain even registered what he'd said. I knew he had no children of his own, and his wife had died in breast cancer last year. We'd bonded over both having lost a beloved to cancer. "I'd love that", I whispered.