False Start (Boyxboy)

21: AMBIVALENCE AWAKENS

One of life's greatest pleasures is feeling like you've earned your rest.  Feeling like you've earned putting it all on hold.  I spent most of my Sunday in a sleep too deep for even dreams to reach me, and it was bliss.

The sun was still illuminating the white window curtains when two raps on the door pulled me back to reality.  Instead of the stethoscope-wearing strangers that I'd seen too much of, a familiar face ducked in, pleasantly surprising me.

"Yo."

Mori's austere features were softened by tired eyes, sagging posture, and casual clothing.  When he smoothed some loose wisps of hair back into his bun, a bandage around the crook of his arm caught my attention.

Slipping the mask off my face, I rasped out, "Hey, Mori."

He smiled from the end of the bed, but it faded when he took a look around the room.  Setting his arms on top of his head, he paced toward the window and puffed up his cheeks as though steadying his nerves.  A rock rolled around in my stomach.

"I'm so sorry," I finally said once the silence had become stagnant and tough to breathe in.  "I worried and hurt everyone.  I feel like an idiot."

"You are an idiot," he retorted, but it was said with compassion.  Giving me a sidelong glance, he teased, "Do I need to give you a lecture or did you learn your lesson?"

We laughed a little, and I sheepishly said, "I feel like I deserve a lot worse than a lecture."

"Yeah, well, words can do some damage."

Both of us braved looks in Keiji's direction then.

"The doctors said you'll both be out of the race for a while."

"Yeah."

As he stooped onto the stool by my bed, I felt this urge to dump all of my darkest inner thoughts onto him.  But I didn't know where to start, and the moment passed me by.

Shun entered twice as loudly as Mori had, lifting the mood like he always did, with Niou at his back.  He sauntered toward me with raised eyebrows, shaking his head.

"I'll be damned," he said.  "I missed out not going to camp, huh?  You feeling okay, bud?"

I sat up a little further in bed.  "I feel all right.  Just kind of more guilty and stupid than anything."

"Don't let that morphine make you too sentimental," he joked, adding a wink.

Stepping to his friend's side, Niou mumbled, "I'm glad you're okay.  We'll miss you at practice."

Him saying that shocked me in a happy way.  I guess it's inevitable that when something bad happens, it brings you closer to everyone affected.   I felt less invisible to my teammates.

"I'll miss you guys too.  I can't wait to get back to running."

Shun shot an ugly look toward Mori and then me, resting an elbow on Niou's shoulder.  "I heard that Fukui's been nasty.  I'm so pissed that I wasn't there to put him in check.  He's probably happy that all of this happened so that he can have his spot back for a while."

Niou averted our eyes at the mention of the red-head.

"Once you're better, Kazuhiko, and Keiji, too, I'm going to call a team meeting about all of that," Mori said, wearing a stern expression.  "Unhealthy competition within the team will bring us down."

I nodded a stiff nod, wishing I had the guts or clarity of mind to speak up for Hiro.   Where was he, anyway?

"But, back it up for a second," Shun chimed in, and his smile returned.  "How did you ruffians even manage to get out of the cabin unnoticed?  And what the hell were you planning to do in the woods anyway?"

The other two chuckled, and I kind of did too, but the implications in his joke embarrassed me.  I wondered what would have happened in the woods had things gone differently.

"Falling off a cliff, too? And stabbing your leg?!" he continued.  "All of it.  I'm so curious to hear how it all happened."

In the midst of me trying to figure out how to tell the story without including the fight, the door to our room opened again.  This time it was Yo.  In his fist were some little flowers that looked like they'd been picked from weeds, probably the last we'd see before the brunt of winter.  He quietly shut the door, looking less relieved than the others.

"Dude," he grumbled toward me and the guys congregated around my bed, but the sentence trailed off with a bow of his head. 

He pulled off the beanie he'd been wearing, causing his hair to stick up in different directions, accentuating his distress.  Arms hanging heavily at his sides, he stared somewhat longingly at the unconscious Keiji.

"Dude," he started again, prying his eyes away to look into mine, and headed over to stand by Shun and Niou.  His voice was unsteady. "You have no idea what it was like on our end."

A shudder shivered down the length of his body and he rolled his shoulders as if trying to shake off an unnerved feeling.

"We woke up in the morning and you guys were just gone.  We didn't know if you got up for a jog or what. Coach was kinda more mad than worried, so we went for a morning run without you guys.  We never thought you'd both be dying out there.  If only we knew..."  He looked toward his dirty shoes and squeezed the beanie and flowers in his hands, muttering, "Bakas," under his breath, before trying to smile at me.  "They called Coach on a radio, so we rushed out of camp.  Then we got here and they wouldn't tell us much at all.  I'm just so glad you guys are okay... I mean, are you okay?"

Through his somewhat condescending tone, it seemed like he was a little mad at me, maybe laying on some blame, and like he felt defensive over Keiji.  Jealousy, the life-long friend I'd been drifting apart from, reappeared at my side. But this was a new breed of jealousy.

Swallowing, I said, "No, yeah, I can't even imagine," knitting up my brows and unable to look straight into anyone's eyes.  "Keiji and I will be okay, though."

My friend was the white elephant in the room, up until that point. At the mention of his name, Yo set his things by the sink and went to perch at the end of Keiji's bed. The way he looked at him sickened me. No one but me was allowed to harbor such solicitude in their eyes and lather it all over him like that.

There were a plethora of glass jars on the counter filled with cotton balls, band-aids, and Q-tips. I tried to turn all of my attention in that direction as Niou combined some of the contents and filled the freed containers with water. But as he arranged the flowers inside them on the window sill, Yo's voice alerted me.

Under his breath, he said something that sounded like, "Get better before we run out of time," squeezing Keiji's knee through the sheets as he did.

Before we run out of time?

I wondered if I'd heard him wrong. I wondered what that could mean, or if I was reading too much into it. I wondered if I should ask, but a miraculous thing stole my attention.

Keiji awoke.

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(I'm sorry for taking so long to update, guys. I went on a snowboarding trip and then had family in town for two weeks, so I didn't get much "me" time. I'll try to pay you back for your patience with frequent postings for a while. <3)