Heroes Without Capes

Hanae

Nobody had told him this city would be so big.

Ooshiba sat down on the curb, resting his head on his knees. He had been walking the streets for what felt like hours. Where was he? Was he anywhere near his destination? He couldn't tell. Maybe he was getting closer, maybe he was walking away from it. Maybe he had spent the past two hours going around in circles. He didn't know.

He was tired, more tired than he had ever been in his life. He was starving. And he was cold. It had been warm at home, but here it was freezing at night, a cold seaside wind pulling at his hair and clothes and creeping under his jacket that was way too thin for this place. He hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday, and he couldn't eat until he got home, his empty wallet laughing at him in his pocket. And he wanted to sleep. His legs felt heavy. His eyelids were falling down as he walked, growing harder and harder to push back open, as if someone had attached invisible weights to them that were growing heavier by the second. He had barely slept on the train, he was tired from the match, and he was exhausted from walking. And yet he couldn't sleep. Not yet.

Where was he? Was he going the right way? Damn it, his stupid phone. If it hadn't died on him he could have looked up the address, looked up how to get there and found the place in no time. Now he was stuck with no directions and nobody to ask, wandering an unfamiliar neighborhood in an unfamiliar city in the wee hours of the morning. The streets were deserted. The only noise was a car driving by in the distance and the neverending howling of the wind.

He shouldn't rest now. He should keep walking, or he would never find that hotel in time, and then his entire trip here would have been in vain. Get up, even though he was starving and tired, even though he could barely keep his eyes open, even though every bone in his body was screaming for him to rest. It was for the greater good, he reminded himself as he heaved himself back up, trudging on in a random direction, dragging his feet forward, little by little, step by step. His eyes were closing as he went, and his legs were threatening to gave way, but he stumbled on, step by step.

For Kimishita.

He thought of his captain, his friend. The boy he loved. He thought of the look on his face when his father had called him, his retreating back as he was escorted off the pitch after twenty minutes, the tears in his eyes when he had melted into Ooshiba's arms. He thought of Kimishita's smile, his laugh, the intense look in his green eyes when they played soccer together, the time he had fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder. He thought of all the times Kimishita had helped him, comforted him or cheered him up in that awkward cranky way of his, all the times he had pulled him out of a slump, all the times he had supported him, again and again, over the course of five long years. He thought of the crack in his voice when he had told him not to speak about leaving with him, the look of pain in his eyes.

And he kept going.

Ooshiba walked on, despite his exhaustion, driven by nothing but stubborn determination. He was't doing this for himself. He was doing this for someone who needed him. If he couldn't go past his limits this once, what kind of hero would he be?

So he kept going. Following street signs and his intuition, he kept going. Seaside Hotel... that meant it had to be near the ocean. He had to find the ocean. Was it that way? This tourist sign... what did it read? He couldn't read anymore. His eyes were too tired.

At long last the rushing of distant waves mixed into the wind's incessant howl, and a moment later Ooshiba found himself at the shore of the ocean, gazing over a dark expanse of water stretching out before him, splashing against the concrete below his feet. In the distance a breath of silver lined the sky, the first greeting of the new morning. Almost there. Just a little more walking, a little more searching, and then he'd be there.