Dark Places | S. Tendou

EVERYTHING'S FINE, I AM FINE*

TW: Some mentions of physical abuse.

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Maeko couldn't tell how long she sat there, with Tendou lying in her lap, and her fingers gently pulling through the knots in his messy red hair. She finally stopped crying or, at least, letting the tears stream freely down her cheeks. Her eyes were still wet and red-rimmed. She couldn't think about any of it, him, the way he looked so utterly defeated, quiet and gloomy, without bursting into tears all over again, but it wasn't like she could help looking.

Tendou suddenly squirmed, rolling onto his back so he was now looking up at her from where he laid in her lap. It looked like he had been crying, too, but too softly for Maeko to hear it. He was biting on his lower lip while he got comfortable as if trying to hold back a wince. His long lashes left small, wet imprints on the tops of his cheekbones every time he blinked.

He released a long, shuddering breath. Maeko almost didn't recognize his voice when he spoke. It was deep and raspy like the croak of a toad, but it was still him, unmistakably. Nobody else looked at her like that, so endearingly. "Do you ever feel unhappy?"

Maeko was hit with déjà vu. It reminded her of the night they spent together in the arcade when he asked a question similar to this one, but unhappy felt like an intense drop from tired.

She was slow to answer, but mostly because she was unsure how to answer, just like she had been on the aforementioned night, too. It felt like there was a wrong thing to say. "I used to be unhappy when I was younger. I didn't have friends and my classmates picked on me a lot, but then I met Ayume and things started to get better."

Maeko firmly believed that Ayume was the answer or, at least, her answer. It was silly to think that one person could be responsible for providing happiness like that, but feeling safe at school was a gigantic step in that direction for Maeko. She didn't know what she'd do, or where she'd be, if she hadn't met Ayume.

Tendou didn't look displeased with that answer, per say, as much as he looked unconvinced or, perhaps, doubtful.

"Even then?" Tendou pressed. "Even when you have someone that you really care about or think that you could love—" his dark eyes fixated on hers, "—is there not sometimes still this feeling in the back of your head that you can't shake, no matter how much you try, or want to, that you're unhappy?"

Tendou broke into a coughing fit and, immediately, his hands tightened around his stomach.

Seeing him like that, obviously in pain, distracted Maeko from their conversation. Her hand hovered over top of his, where it clutched his stomach, but she didn't dare touch him there. Instead, she simply looked at him, pleading. "What happened to you?" It was the third time she asked him that. She hoped it wouldn't be the third time he shut her out.

He looked reluctant to answer but, eventually, with a sigh that appeared to take some effort, he relented. He already reached out to Maeko and asked her to meet him here. It was clear that she wasn't going to leave him alone without understanding what was going on.

Rather than explain it in words, Tendou's fingers curled around the bottommost fabric of his shirt, pulling it up to expose the skin underneath.

Maeko couldn't help but gasp. It was either that or cry again which she really didn't think he needed right now.

Bruises, a menacing shade of bluish-black, across and up his stomach, and he was only exposing a very small fraction of his skin. Maeko thought he might've been trying to make it seem less bad than it was by doing that. It was no wonder that he had been awkwardly squirming so much, or biting on his lip to keep from making sounds, whenever he moved. He was in pain. She wished there was something she could do to take it away; but even if she couldn't change the past, there had to be something, at least, that she could do for him now, moving forward.