tomodachi - V. Beginning a New End
~友達~
~tomodachi~
V. Beginning a New End
“I’m sorry, I-I shouldn’t have; I don’t know what came over me, I’m really sorry,” Ohkura begged. He was on the verge of tears, seeing Ryo curl up against the wall, his body shivering in what he imagined was sickening fear.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized profusely. “I won’t do it again, I promise. I-I shouldn’t have done it so fast, especially what had happened to you just this afternoon… I’m so stupid! I didn’t stop to think that the terror must still be fresh in your memory. I shouldn’t have taken the chance… I’m so sorry,” Ohkura buried his cries into Ryo’s bedcover, the older boy having abandoned them in his panic to shirk away. Ohkura’s desperate apologies were met by no answer; only the weak echoes of ragged breathing could be heard from the pitiful, huddled mass that was now Ryo Nishikido.
“O-Ohkura,” he finally breathed, his throat dry and his voice feeble. The younger one lifted his reddened eyes from the dampened blankets at the faint call of his name.
“Ohkura,” he mumbled again, as if testing the shape of his name with his lips.
“R-Ryo?” Ohkura sniffled hopefully, the tears blurred his vision, but through the distortion, he watched as Ryo turned slowly to look up at him. The older boy’s face had turned expressionless. His lips neither frowned nor smiled, but his eyes were overflowing with glimmers of pain.
“Ryo, I’m so sorry… please, believe me, I never wanted to hurt you, I just… I just thought you meant for us to, t-to k-kiss…” Ohkura stammered, the words escaping before he could stop himself. He hadn’t meant to sound so… so direct. But he meant what he said when he said it. There was no turning back now.
“O-Ohkura?” Ryo tried again, his name now softening to a question. The older one’s voice was strained by his sudden fatigue.
“Y-Yes?” Ohkura replied anxiously, scared of how Ryo would react.
“I… I wanted you to.”
Ryo’s eyes gazed upward to meet Ohkura’s, and for a second, Ohkura struggled to process what those four words could mean.
“I-I shouldn’t have yelled at you… I’m sorry… I-It must’ve scared the hell out of you, to have been shouted at so suddenly…” Ryo murmured, his eyes drifting to the ground as he spoke.
“What h-happened?” Ohkura asked, too frightened to bother avoiding the clichéd question.
“I… I saw him…” Ryo shuddered as the image returned to his eyes once more. “In my mind… he became y-you, and I was m-me, and it was all happening all over again, a-and the v-voices, his voice, my screams, they all came back to me, a-and I couldn’t stop them… it was like I was p-possessed by my own hallucinations…” Ryo fists clenched as he clutched them to his head, and his eyes squeezed agonizingly shut, as if the memories were still haunting him now.
“Ryo…” Ohkura’s heart ached at Ryo’s tortured confession. “I’m so sorry…” He felt the tears flooding to his eyes again.
Ohkura hesitated. But before long, he gave in to instinct and wrapped his arms around Ryo to comfort the older one for the second time that night.
“Ohkura…” the faintest smile graced Ryo’s lips. “I told you, you did nothing wrong… You don’t have to feel sorry,” he insisted, his voice heavy with veiled grief.
“I’m sorry,” Ohkura whispered, ignoring his words. “I’m sorry, I can’t do anything more than this.”
~~
“Everything’s going to change now,” Ohkura nodded encouragingly. “We’re going in, and we’re going to tell them what happened. You and me together. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid,” Ryo scowled, trying his best to hide his inner insecurities as he led the way in, opening the door of the front office.
~~
“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s truly what happened. I was there to witness it myself,” Ohkura persisted.
“You boys need some sort of proof before you go around accusing one of my staff of attempted rape,” the principal sighed. “I can’t go around believing every single appeal you kids make to me; otherwise, I’d be forced to investigate practically a teacher every week! What kind of crazed school system would allow that?” He rolled his eyes, signaling the discussion had ended, no protest.
~~
“What are we going to do?” Ryo groaned. “I have no proof; we just witnessed it with our own eyes!”
“We’re going to need some evidence to support our allegation,” Ohkura frowned. “I wish we could’ve filmed it or something when it happened…”
“But there are only cameras in the hallways at our school, none in the classrooms,” Ryo replied skeptically.
“What if we place a camera in the room?” Ohkura wondered slowly.
“But it’s too late now…” Ryo raised an eyebrow, unsure why Ohkura had suggested such a strange idea.
“Yeah, I guess so…”
Ryo froze. “You don’t think he’s going to come after me again, do you?”
“What?! No. If he did, he’d be dead,” Ohkura stated resolutely.
“But if he did… we could catch him in the act, and if we can catch him on tape, the principal can’t do anything but believe us. I think it could work…” Ryo reasoned cautiously, his tone wavering with the chilling breeze that had just swept by as he voiced his suggestion.
“You can’t be serious. You can’t let him do this to you again! I’m not going to let you endanger yourself like that!” Ohkura’s insistence only strengthened as Ryo’s waned.
“Please, don’t be mad,” Ryo murmured softly, his gaze retreated behind the shadow of his bangs, falling before his dark eyes. “It’s the only way we can get him, framing him in the act. After that… he’ll be gone for good.”
Ohkura nodded wordlessly, he was too caught up in worry. “But it’s still too dangerous…” he whispered under his breath.
“Tacchon?” a cheerful voice smiled from behind them, breaking the grim mood.
Ohkura turned abruptly, surprised to have been addressed in the middle of walking back to the dorm so early in the morning.
“Yasu?” He grinned back.
Ryo raised an eyebrow. It was a kid. At least, he sure looked like a kid in comparison to Ohkura. Sure, Ryo was also shorter than Ohkura (Ohkura seemed to tower over most all the students), but Ryo grudgingly pushed the thought away. The unfamiliar boy, on the other hand, not only was tiny in his eyes, but also had a strangely happy smile. Happy, as in, wildly childish. And what he was wearing… Ryo wanted to straight out ask him, what was he wearing? Patterns exploded chaotically all over this boy’s outfit, and the additional blasts of colors were only an added bonus. A vibrant checkered shirt, matched with a similarly multicolored checkered tie, was worn under a loud orange hoody, and Ryo marveled at how this boy could possibly think this bizarre upper attire would ever match his equally flashy yellow sneakers and pink striped socks that reached up into the pant legs of a pair of bright blue pants that were folded up to right above his ankles. A speckled knit hat weaved with layer upon layer of varied colored stitching was fixed loosely over a shock of bleached blonde hair, and a puff ball tied to the top of the hat bounced up and down as the boy skipped over to meet them.
Ryo painfully resisted the strong urge to avert his eyes. This one was strange; there was no doubt about it.
“Tacchon, I can’t believe it! You’re attending school here?!” the flamboyant boy exclaimed excitedly. Ryo decided that this would be a good name for him. Flamboyant boy.
But apparently this, as in the flamboyant boy’s colors and the hyper energy, was all normal to Ohkura, as he answered back, apparently even trying (but failing) to match flamboyant boy’s enthusiasm as he replied, “Yeah! And you are too?”
Flamboyant boy nodded earnestly. The puff at the top of his head began bobbling crazily at the jerking movement. “Oh my, how many years has it been? The last time I saw you, we must’ve still been in middle school!”
Ohkura smiled. “Ah, yes, I remember, I was in seventh grade when I moved away, so you must’ve been in eighth. I can’t believe we’re both attending the same college; it’s been so long since I’ve last seen you!”
“Around six, seven years now…” Flamboyant boy kept nodding. That bobble was really getting on Ryo’s nerves, watching it dip up and down over and over and over again in the breezy wind.
“Umm… Ohkura?” Ryo finally interrupted, tired of having his presence remain unacknowledged.
“Oh! Ryo!” Ohkura immediately turned to face Ryo once more, gesturing at flamboyant boy as he introduced, “This is my friend, Shota Yasuda. We were childhood neighbors back in the day, before my father switched careers and our family was forced to move out of town.”
“Hi!” flamboyant boy waved flamboyantly at Ryo.
“Hey, I’m Ryo,” he answered calmly.
“Nice to meet you! I’m Yasu,” he greeted energetically.
“You too.”
“So you go to school here, too?” Yasu inquired.
“Yup, that would explain why I’m here,” Ryo shrugged.
Ohkura cut into the awkward silence that followed, explaining casually, “I met Ryo in my Calculus class.”
“Ah, is that so? I remember taking Calculus last year… wait, were you in my class? You look really familiar, Ryo.”
Ryo nodded uncomfortably. “Yeah… but I flunked out, so I had to take it again this year.”
“That’s too bad, it must be even more torturous the second time around!” Yasu laughed. He was obviously joking, but Ryo couldn’t help but look self-consciously down at the ground, trying to pretend to have taken a sudden interest in the bleak, muddy earth. It was, in fact, quite uninteresting.
Ohkura sensed the soreness of the subject was still a little too much for Ryo to handle, and attempted to change the topic. “So, Yasu, why are you out and about so early anyway? Classes don’t usually start this early, I don’t think,” he wondered nonchalantly.
“Oh, I was just taking a little walk. Remember how I used to tell you that I liked to take strolls in the morning, breathing in the fresh air and stretching out my legs before settling down to eat my breakfast?” Yasu giggled as he pointed at Ohkura and questioned, “Why are you out so early, Tacchon? You were never willing to wake up early to go on my morning walks with me, yet here you are now… Is there something going on here that I should know about?” Yasu playfully raised an eyebrow at his “Tacchon”, and Ohkura in return simply laughed out loud. Quite loud, and quite uneasily, at that.
“Oh, we were just… uh, you know, we were just-”
“We were just out to see the sun rise,” Ryo hastily added in, forgetting that the sun had already risen a few hours ago.
“But that’s no fair; Tacchon would never have come out with me to see the sunrise,” Yasu pouted. “I could barely even drag you out of bed to get to school on time!” he broke out into laughter at his own remark.
Ohkura suggested sheepishly, “I guess… people change?”
~~
A/N: yushh! I finally introduced another character, and after much long, thought out debate, indeed, I settled on YASU!! ^^ hahahaa he was just too adorable to ignore... xD I also enjoyed making Ryo freak out at him and his flamboyancy, hopefully you realized I was just joking about it, though. lol! You gotta love Yasu, just look at his adorableness~ ^^
*EDIT* OMG I JUST GOT 365 NICHI KAZOKU AND EIGHTOPOP!!!!!!! SERIOUSLY JUST MADE ME SMILE SO HARD!!! X3 awwww its so cute!!! *fangirl flail* they totally recognized how yasu's solo totally rocked over all the others on the 8UPPERS album, so they all wanted to take part in it! ;) hahaa i miss hearing yasu's super cute voice singing the ENTIRE song, but this is just too adorable! I love how they changed the lyrics around too! lol xD and to think TOPOP had been stuck in my head ALL DAY today.... i think it was a premonition. LOL <3