Learning To Fly: A Saki Enomoto Pseudo-Route

Countdown :: Damn The Torpedoes

The water seems a bit colder than usual this morning.

My breath hitches in my throat as I step off the stairs and plunge myself in up to my neck, but I shake it off and use the shock to kickstart my routine. I start to make long, powerful strokes towards the opposite side of the pool.

Through this whole week, the schedule has been the same. I wake up, I change, I come down to the pool. I swim for half an hour or so, shower, and then I go to class. I have to admit that Nurse was right. Having a routine has helped me tremendously over the last week, and my body is finally adjusting to some sense of normalcy. Knowing what time I'm going to wake up and what I'm going to be doing has done wonders for my insomnia; I haven't had to take another dose of sleeping medication since the initial one Nurse gave me.

What hasn't been great for my sleeplessness are the thoughts constantly running through my head about this last week, or more specifically, the day that started it.

I reach the edge, slap the concrete, and turn around, pushing off back towards the way I came.

That whole day in itself was a blur, looking back on it. And not just because of what happened with Saki, but later that night when I was thinking about it.

In the shower that night, my mind was wandering all over the place, branching out from our earlier conversation into a countless number of meanings and possibilities. No matter where my thoughts strayed off to, they all kept coming back to the same two things.

It was obviously a very emotionally charged moment, for the both of us, but...why did it feel like there was more to it than that?

And more importantly, why was it that the further I was removed from that moment, did it feel like I had missed something incredibly vital?

All the pieces were bouncing in my head, desperately trying to fit themselves together into a coherent answer. I just knew I had all the information I needed; I was frustrated that it wasn't coming together into a language I could understand. I've always been able to brute-force mental solutions, but try as I might, I couldn't quite grasp it, my mind elusively circling it like the water going down the drain.

One lap down. Going for two.

Nurse, Mutou, Saki, Emi...everyone I've met since I got here to Yamaku has been trying in their own way to tell me something that was pounding against me as relentlessly as the water beating down on my skin. Everyone has been trying to tell me not to treat the disabilities of others around me as an issue, or that it's only an issue if I choose to let it be one. But I had no idea what that meant, much less how to act on it.

When my thoughts replayed back to that first week, something popped into my head and it made it all click.

It was the first time I met Rin.

Rin never shied away from my condition; in fact, she asked me about it outright. At the time, I was so shocked that someone who barely knew me would ask me about that, or that she saw no problem with doing so. I figured out pretty quickly that "conventional" isn't a word that really applies to Rin, and that may be why it took so long for that part to fall into place.

I was told that I shouldn't make a big deal about my disability, or the conditions of others. But I obviously can't go up to someone like Hanako and ask her why she's scarred, or someone like Emi and ask her why she has artificial legs.

But then again there are plenty of other things I wouldn't bring up with people I just met, so why should things like that be any different?

Like anything else, it's just one more thing that fits onto the ladders of friendship that all of us are climbing.

Everyone starts out with everybody else the same way. It begins with something simple, like a name. You place your foot on the bottom rung. A birthday, a phone number, the title of a favorite book or song; all helping you climb a little bit higher.

The further you climb, the more you learn about someone. Their hopes and their dreams. Their fears and their weaknesses. They also open up to you in ways that they never would if you were still at the bottom. If you ask a friend you just met why he's tired, he may tell you he has a lot of stuff going on at home, and leave it at that. Someone you've known longer may tell you that their parents are fighting, or ask you for your opinion on it.

And before you know it, it's going both ways.

I complete a second lap, and push off from the wall, letting the momentum carry my body out into the pool, realizing that I'm too preoccupied to keep this up at the moment.

At a certain point, someone's condition becomes just like anything else in their life when it comes to other people – you choose to share it or not, or respond to questions about it or not, no different from anything else. Saki never asked me about my heart, saying she figured I would tell her on my own when I was ready.

No, not so much when I was ready, but when our friendship progressed to the point where I could tell her.

I think she knew that, even if I didn't.

Earlier that day, I opened up to her in a way I hadn't opened up to anyone, just from the simple act of discussing my condition and its ramifications openly. Specialists and nurses and doctors don't count; I'm merely numbers on a chart to most of them, and all they are to me are white coats with the colors of their scrubs underneath the only thing distinguishing themselves from each other.

And yet...we still weren't on equal footing. When she said that she was too scared to come out and tell me about her ataxia, or the results of it...

I duck my head under the water, letting the coolness leech the heat from my face. I float there for a few seconds with my eyes closed, the feeling of weightlessness permeating through me.

Something changed that day between us...which is why it's so confusing that the mood between us is like it didn't happen at all.

After a few minutes on the floor, we stood up. I helped Saki into her chair, and after a few more, we left as simply as we came in. It was like after that huge emotional outpouring that left both of us exhausted, there was a tension in the air neither one of us felt entirely comfortable with and that I couldn't seem to let go of, even after both of us left the room.

Hence my mindset and subsequent epiphany in the shower.

I haven't seen Saki much this last week. Most of the times we've gotten together the last few weeks have been a result of plans made at the pool or just randomly bumping into each other. With Saki's leg out of commission the former hasn't happened, and chance hasn't been on my side with the latter. I haven't seen her at lunch, and the three times I ran into her in the hallways, her body language showed that something serious was on her mind, prohibiting anything more but some small talk. I've only seen Chisato once, and I haven't seen Noriko at all.

My body reminds me with a sudden urgency that it needs air. My feet find the bottom of the pool and I stand, breaking the surface and taking in a lungful. Shaking the water from my hair and ears, I hear a sound coming from the end of the room.

Cli-chack. Cli-chack. Cli-chack.

I turn, and I can tell the sound is coming from the locker room and getting closer, but nothing looks different at the entrance.

Cli-chack. Cli-chack. Cli-chack.

I know I've heard that sound before. Are those...crutches?

Three seconds later, my eyes go wide as Saki emerges from the small hallway clad in her black swimsuit. True to my guess, she's making her way with the help of a pair of crutches under each arm. Her towel is wrapped around her neck, hair pulled back into the tight ponytail I'm used to seeing on her in the mornings. A glance down her body shows that her knee is no longer wrapped in the elastic bandage she's been sporting the last week, and her ankle is bare as well...even if she's holding it behind herself off the ground.

"Saki!" I say, greeting her with the relief I'm feeling at seeing her at the pool for the first time in a week. I'm rewarded with a smile that seems to be mirroring that same emotion.

"Hey, Hisao. Glad to see you here."

"Of course," I respond, trying without success to not let my enthusiasm show. "Been here every day this week. Doctor's orders."

"That's good," Saki says, her features softening a bit. "I'm glad you kept up with it. I was worried you might have dropped it."

"Nah," I say, laying on my back to float. "I'm actually really enjoying this part of the morning, you know?"

Saki starts to make her way towards the pool, her movements much more slow and mechanical than they were with the cane. With difficulty, she ever-so-slowly lowers herself to a seated position at the edge, placing her crutches to the side. I can see the effort took more out her than she's willing to let on, so I swim over towards her.

"No swim cap today?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "I'm not going to be doing any laps for a while," she says, looking down at her leg. My eyes follow hers down to her right ankle, and I'm shocked at what I see. Even though it's been a week, her ankle and the outside of her foot is covered by an ugly bruise, the pale skin stained with angry mottled reds and purples. Saki must see the look of concern on my face.

"Don't worry," she says reassuringly. "It looks worse than it is. It's going to look like that for a few weeks, but at least it's healing. I guess I just won't be able to wear sandals for a while."

"Are you able to get around on it now?"