The Monsters Inside Us

Five

Every time Bachira woke up and found a pillow under his head where Isagi's leg had once been, he frowned to himself and cursed Kunigami. He believed, although both unconfirmed and entirely correctly, that Isagi wouldn't have moved him without someone else's suggesting it.

Ah, well.

He blinked the last of sleep from his eyes and noticed that the rest of his fellow teammates had come in and gone to sleep. The lights had been turned off, and the room was obnoxiously loud.

It wasn't, really. There was the odd shifting and the sounds of restful breathing. No one snored painfully loud. Every so often, someone would kind of whine, or babble to themselves. Bachira didn't really mind the sounds when he was asleep, but when he was awake, they grated at him. Worse, he knew he had at least an hour until he got tired enough to fall asleep again.

So, for the time being, it was just him and his thoughts.

He's not here, he then heard inside his head.

Right, and the monster was here too.

He did lift off the mat enough to take a look around the room. Isagi was, indeed, not among them. His futon was empty. Lazily made up, but empty. So that explained it. No wonder the rest of the sounds were bothering him so much more than usual.

Someone else was missing too, though Bachira couldn't figure out who it might be. He had not paid as much attention to the other team members. But regardless of who it might be, he didn't like it either way.

"Hmm," Bachira hummed to himself, pondering that as he looked up at the ceiling.

Worry not, the monster told him. He's yours.

Bachira decided to use the time he had to spend awake to convince himself of that fact. He flipped over and pulled his pillow over his head, trying to drown the room out.

He started thinking back to the first game the team had played. He'd seen how frustrated and lost Isagi had been getting. He remembered that well. When he was still getting to know the monster. When he thought he was the only one. It was worse when you tasted loss, which was bitter, Bachira remembered. He'd always been good at soccer, but he was no stranger to loss.

But it had not been a full loss. It had been fun. The part that had been the most fun was when he'd reached out to Isagi, I think me and you could work together to score a goal, and found that he'd reached back with no hesitation.

Yeah. Let's do it.

Bachira smiled at the thought. It had been so much fun playing together.

The monsters inside of them were soccer monsters, after all. It only made sense that that would be when they most wanted to be close to each other.

Bachira the person, however, wanted to be close to Isagi the person more often than just the time they spent on the field. It bothered him that he wasn't in the room, even if the two usually slept nowhere near each other. He just liked knowing he was nearby, for whatever reason. He could pick Isagi's breath out in the dark like a musician could recognize their own instrument in an orchestra.

The absence of it gnawed at him.

"Hmmpt," Bachira said in quiet dissatisfaction.

Here he comes, the monster said next. Bachira lifted his pillow and listened carefully.

And sure enough, less than a minute later, Bachira started to hear footsteps from down the hall, and they ended with Isagi dipping back into the room, slow and on tip toe, ever mindful and respectful.

So odd, Bachira thought to himself. How someone could be so kind and monstrous at the same time.

But he didn't ponder it long. He stayed statue still as he listened to Isagi slide back into his own futon four or five people down, stifling his own breath so he could hear Isagi's morph from the mindful, relaxed pattern to the mindless and slightly louder breath of sleep. It calmed him, just knowing he was there, in the same room.

Bachira was able to fall asleep right away after that.

And he was better for it, because after a fairly consistent and restful sleep, he was ready for the next game against Team Y.

He'd get to play with Isagi again. That thought excited him very much.

He'd seen Isagi change in the last match, and he'd continued to change even off the field. In his conversations with the others, the way he thought to himself, even the way he existed was different. His monster was inside his head, knocking on his skull, looking for a soft spot through which he could slither in. It was just a matter of time. It crept closer during every game.

Soon, he'd have no choice but to let it in and accept it, and his monster would tell him all the same things that Bachira's told him.

He's the special person you've been waiting for, Isagi would hear as well.

The thought made Bachira giddy.

At his own monsters request, he was going to make sure to help Isagi's awakening along in any way that he could. Wherever he was looking, he would be there. The opponents he needed out of the way, he'd take care of them. When he was open, he'd send the ball to him. Every. Single. Time. As far as Bachira was concerned, they were the only two important players on any field they'd ever step onto. Everything else was just background noise.