Falling

Chapter 4

It's been a week since Kuroo's surprise visit to Sendai. All of Kuroo's visits so far were surprises and both was because he was worried about Kei. 

Kei never thought he would see a day where someone was worried about him again. He was sure Akiteru had forgotten about him, then he comes back and tries to be all friendly with him again. 

What if he left again? What would Kei do? What if Kuroo left him too? It should be second nature by now, people leaving him, hurting him. He was used to it. It doesn't matter. However short the time that Kuroo has been talking to him, Kei felt that he was important. Once, in a long while, he felt like he could amount to something. 

Sure Kei still had thoughts about how incapable he was, how ugly he was, how scarred he was, but Kuroo could reverse that thought with just a sentence. Kuroo was an important existence to him now. If Kuroo left, Kei didn't know if he could ever pick himself up again. 

"Kei! Let's go. The train is in an hour!" Akiteru called out from the front door. 

Kei took his bag and followed Akiteru out the door, into a taxi they had called. 

"Tokyo is a great place! I'm sure you will like it." 

Their trip was awkward, so to say. Kei did not know if Akiteru felt the tension in the air or not, but Akiteru kept talking, filling in the silence with his voice. If Kei was a little younger, he would feel comforted by his brother's voice, but now, Kei just felt cold. It was empty. The voice of the person who abandoned him. 

No. Kei couldn't think like that. Akiteru did not have a choice. He would have brought Kei along if he could've. Kei was young then, didn't understand the world and it's laws. He was older now, he knew the reasons why he was left alone. But that didn't stop the thoughts from coming to him. 

Akiteru never wanted him. He was a burden. There was nothing he could do. He was weak. Unlike Akiteru who was the perfect son, the smart one, the sporty one, the one with aspirations, the one with the means of achieving his dreams, Kei was just the mistake. Kei wasn't good looking, he wasn't good in sports, he wasn't smart, he wasn't motivated enough to try anything. Why would he try when he knew he was bound to fail? Doesn't that make his defeat even more crushing if he had tried his best? 

He has no dreams, no goals for the future. He was just going with the flow, waiting for his time to rot, the time when he finally descends to hell. 

"Kei, have you thought about what you wanted to do after high school?" Akiteru asked, "If you want to go to university, I'll be more than happy to sponsor you." 

"No... it's fine. I don't even know what I want to do yet." 

"Well if you think of something you want to do, just tell me okay?" 

"hn." 

Akiteru was just being nice. Why is Kei acting like this? He's so rude. He doesn't appreciate the things his brother does for him. It's not like college is cheap, but his brother is offering to pay. Kei doesn't want to burden his brother with a nobody like him. It's all just a waste of money. 

His hospital fees were expensive enough. Kei knew that Akiteru had actually paid at least half of the bills. His mother's boyfriend paid the rest. The medicine that were prescribed to him weren't cheap either and he would need an indefinite amount of it. 

Kei should go to work too. He was sixteen. He could legally work now. Technically he could have started working when he was fifteen but his grades had slipped when he started working for a manual labour company. He was forced to quit by his mother and his class adviser.