The Undesired Second Chance

Chapter 2: Live and Let Learn

After nearly a week cooped up in the small hospital, Axel was going a bit stir crazy. Sure, Kichirou's visits helped alleviate the boredom—forcing him to shift gears from zero to goddamn-it-takes-so-much-effort-just-to-understand-you without much warning—but practicing an unfamiliar language is not... He couldn't say it was very fun at this point. It is interesting. It is a good challenge. The actual conversations were always entertaining, like talking with long-time friends.

But it is exhausting.

At least both of his regular visitors were finally pronouncing his name correctly (enough).

His own pronunciation of their names, however... it left quite a bit to be desired: it was as correct as his accent allowed. He was still practicing, though, since if they were going to put in the effort to learn his name he sure as hell was going to return the favor. Especially since they were also patient with his still-developing skill in Japanese. Neither doctor nor teenager knew any German or, more surprisingly, any English—which admittedly struck him as a bit odd, but whatever—so instead they had taken it upon themselves to teach him more of their language. Axel didn't have much hope that his understanding was improving, but it was the thought that counts.

Just yesterday Kichirou had come in ranting about 'sneaking rocks and leafs' or something, so he clearly must not be making much progress on that front. Unless that was one of those unhelpfully cryptic oriental sayings, in which case... yeah, unhelpful.

So, yes. He was still bored, confused, and lost with little more than the clothes in his backpack.

Not the clothes on his back, since those had been pretty much ruined by whatever had beat him up so badly. His cellphone was another casualty of the mysterious apparently-not-with-a-truck accident, having been stuffed in his pocket. The screen was cracked and falling out of its bent casing, completely unusable, but he thought he might be able to salvage the memory card. It was a pleasant surprise, if somewhat unexplainable, to find that his backpack had survived largely unscathed.

Which meant that at least he had something he could do other than practice Japanese: take inventory of what he had. The backpack had a change of clothes, his favorite gray puffy jacket, his laptop and its solar charger, headphones, the rubik's cube he had never bothered to take out, his wallet, e-reader, and a slew of charging cords: basically what he always packed in a carry-on, just in case the airline lost his luggage. (In this case, however, it looked more like he had lost the airline.) He was decently sure that there were a few pens in there somewhere as well. All of the devices were dead at the moment, solar charger included, so he couldn't actually do much with them at the moment, but it was nice knowing they weren't in pieces.

He fiddled with the rubik's cube absentmindedly. Adri had given it to him nearly two years ago as a graduation present, demanding that he should solve it because he was a nerdy-type and she could never figure the 'cruddy color cube' out. That was honestly what she had called it. Ever since it had basically lived in his backpack. With a sigh he flicked a few sides, lining everything up, then noisily reshuffled it. Axel really hoped his sister wasn't freaking out that he wasn't back in München yet.

Or rather, that she wasn't too freaked out. The freaking out part was probably non-negotiable.

It just didn't make any sense. He should be back in München. He had been. And yet, obviously, he was not. Last he checked people in Germany spoke German... or English, at least. Frequently both.

Not neither.

With a quiet grumble that sounded suspiciously like curses (from three languages, no less), Axel took his time sliding the segments of the rubik's cube back into order. Honesty the language barrier was the most frustrating part of this whole confusing fiasco. He could never be sure if he was understanding or being understood, and actually that fact seemed to be the only thing he was sure of lately.