A Wakiya short story
Warnings: Cursing, themes of anxiety, themes of fear of stairs.
Those stairs.
Those Godforsaken stairs.
I can't remember ever liking these stairs. They just felt wrong. I don't know whether it was how old they were, or how they would creak whenever you put any weight on them, but whenever I would walk up them, I would feel awful. My heart would race. My palms would sweat. It would get harder to breathe. I hated it. I hated every second of it.
But of course, my dad didn't care. He would always talk about how much he loved the aesthetic. How little the creaking actually mattered. How I was strong enough to tough it out. That if I really was the man "I thought I was " that I would. Basically, he made it clear he wasn't going to do anything. And because of some bullshit contract, he was the only one who could do anything. So I just had to suck it up.
And suck it up I would, with Rantaro already on the top, egging me on. I took a deep breath, and climbed the first step. Then the next. Then the next. I tried to ignore how the stairs creaked and how my legs shook. It was going well. Until the third to last step.
Creak
Oh fuck.
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.
I was going to die. The stairs were going to cave in, and I was going to die. Why else would that step creak as loudly as it did. I had to get off. I couldn't be on the stairs when they caved. I jumped over the last two stairs, somehow sticking the landing, but now my leg hurt.
"Shit." I mumbled. Though I would take this pain over being dead.
"Wakiya!" Rantaro yelled, rushing to my side. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, of course I am. Now get off me!" I know he means well, but I still want to punch him.
"You sure, you look pretty shaken up. Was it the stairs?"
"What?! Of course not! I'm not a baby!" Now I really wanted him to go away.
"Alright, if you say so." With that, he finally left.
I took a sigh of relief and looked back at the stairs. They were just as sturdy as before.
Maybe I was a baby after all.
