Twisted Joy
Title: Twisted Joy (follow up to Twisted Passions)
Rating: PG
Feature/Pairing: Aiba/OC, Jun/Nino, Ohno/OC, Ohno/Sho, Nino/Ohno
Summary: Highschool AU. A glimpse into the lives of friends and strangers entangled in a web of secrets and emotions.
Both of them were waiting for Matsumoto Jun to return from his after school extracurricular activities. One of them was Matsumoto's older sister, Matsumoto Kaori, and the other was his friend, Aiba Masaki, who had retired from the basketball club a year earlier. They loitered outside on the roof of the apartment complex five floors above the ground as they waited, the host and the guest.
Aiba Masaki left his junior's older sister by a corner where someone had hung up their laundry to dry on a clothesline. At the end of the rooftop where the rain gutter ran around the building, he balanced on the very edge of the duct. His arms spread wide. His white school uniform shirt flapped in the wind and whipped around him as wildly as his cropped, light brown hair. Despite the imminent danger of his position, a soft smile adorned his face. Because of it Matsumoto Kaori did not fear for him. Aiba looked like an angel; he was too majestic to fall.
"Matsumoto-senpai," Aiba began and turned to address her watching him. The colorful sheets on the clothesline swayed behind her, contrasting against her dark hair and clothing.
Matsumoto Kaori was a university student, having graduated the prior spring. Aiba and she were only a year apart, but it seemed as if much more separated them beyond their age or current distance. Aiba had watched her long before, but he never understood her. Similarly, she knew nothing about him except for what he gave her and everyone else. And yet, even then, his feelings exceeded him.
Aiba raised his right arm high above his head towards the sky and spread his fingers out, palm face up. He blocked out the sun in his eyes. Matsumoto Kaori was stunned at the beauty of the live portrait in front of her. It appeared as if he was holding a shining star in his hand.
With that same mysterious smile on his lips, Aiba asked her, "Senpai, I only have one wish left. What should I do with it?"
On the perfect spring morning, she had separated herself from the other graduating seniors. Aiba found her standing all alone with her back to him by a row of green trees. He realized as he neared her that perhaps she had slipped away to be alone and that promises made to her brother to watch over her or not, he had no right to share this private moment of hers.
Matsumoto Kaori turned and saw him. He could have run away. Instead, he chose to stay and embrace her melancholy.
"Senpai," Aiba started with a bright smile, "Congratulations on your graduation. You're getting farther away from me."
She shook her head at his teasing, although Aiba was sure he was not joking and only spoke the truth; if he didn't try to hold on to the image of her, she would have disappeared from his sights completely.
"The team will miss you coming to watch their games," he told her. "Will you still come to support them when you have time?"
She didn't miss the subtle way he left himself out of the loop. "Jun said you left the team," she murmured.
Aiba smiled all the brighter because that was how he coped with their differences. "It's true that I don't play anymore, but I will continue to watch and support them." Just as he had watched her all along.
In every facet of his life, he was a shadow without a life of its own, his meaningless stride more prominent than ever since he had lost his purpose.
Matsumoto averted her gaze and stared solemnly at the row of trees that were so clear in her memories. Once, two boys and one girl laughed in this place. "This will be the last time I come here. I don't like this place," she said. "I am only reminded of the reasons why he's not here. I have too many regrets."
Matsumoto Kaori knew no one in this world had the power to grant her deepest desires. Her ex-boyfriend, her first love, was out of her grasp all through her own unforgivable mistakes. She tried to entertain Aiba and retorted as respectfully as she could to his wistful scenario, "If you don't know what to do with it, may I have your wish?"
Aiba bestowed on her the most dazzling smile.
She wondered why, as she did every time she saw it, he could be so beautiful.
"Why do you want this wish, senpai?" he asked her. "I have given everything of myself to the people around me. At first I wanted to give this wish to you, but perhaps I want this wish for myself."
He teased her and yet for the first time, Matsumoto Kaori saw that what underlined his cheerfulness were eyes that sparkled from dark, fathomless depths. She had spent the last few months before her graduation sitting in on the basketball club team's practices and games, not because she was actually watching, but to find a reason to be somewhere. She had seen the star that was Aiba in all his glory, surrounded by friends and fans. But this person before her was not everything that was the other one.
Why are you here? Matsumoto Kaori wondered. She did not voice the question she wanted to ask him. "What will you wish for?" she inquired.
Aiba tilted his head back and exhaled. The sky blue above belied the burden in his body. Again he spread out his arms. Then he whispered, "My wish is to give you wings."
He promised his mother, Just one more game. He promised his doctor, Just one more run. He promised his body, Just one more year. He woke to darkness and his own tears into a nightmare come to life. His coach embraced him and murmured into his ear, "Thank you. For everything."
Aiba hated words of gratitude with a ring of parting because it meant Never Again.
"Won't you play anymore? The team misses you," Matsumoto Jun told him. "You were our Ace."
The past tense terrified him, but Aiba smiled anyway. "I don't play anymore."
On the day of their first agonizing defeat of the new school year that spring afternoon, in the audience Aiba cried for the team, but perhaps he cried for himself.
Matsumoto Kaori who had come to watch her brother play, who had seated herself beside Aiba and stayed silent throughout the entire game, failed to notice his tears. She caught sight of her younger brother's expression of regret as he walked off the court and finally broke her silence to whisper, "It's okay. Next time."
Aiba willingly fooled himself into believing that her support were meant for him as much as everyone else. He told himself, It's okay. Maybe one day.
He preferred words of comfort; of a hope that might come.
Aiba realized that he couldn't stop smiling. It was a part of himself that he'd given away too often. It had become a reflex he expected of himself. He guessed from Matsumoto Kaori's frown that she was wary of his easy deception. Try as he might he couldn't show her what he never showed anyone else, not even to his reflection in the mirror.
"Why give wings to me?" she asked.
Aiba looked at the ground far below him and moved his body to the flow of the wind, tipping dangerously on the side of the abyss. "Because I am weak, senpai," he answered. "I will give you wings and then I will beg you to save me when I fall."
There had been a boy who lived in Aiba's neighborhood called Ninomiya Kazunari. They also attended the same school. Matsumoto Jun had a crush on him and Aiba had stood by to watch his friend's feelings grow without a word of warning.
Aiba knew things about Ninomiya that he could never tell Matsumoto; things he saw outside from the safety of his own bedroom window, himself very much the shadow. How could he tell someone about the wandering man who was a father, about the frequently distressed mother, about a boy who Aiba would see sneak out in the middle of the night and who dived into the darkness without hesitation?
Aiba never told Matsumoto Jun that he witnessed the moment Ninomiya held his mother's arm and led her silently down the street swathed under the cover of night. They left with nothing more than mere backpacks on their backs.
Aiba couldn't tell his friend that he envied Ninomiya. Somewhere else in this world, Ninomiya and his mother belonged. They questioned fate and fought against it. They were seeking their lives elsewhere, together.
Aiba had no place to go.
Matsumoto Jun was supposed to be home at least half an hour ago, but he had taken a different route with a detour after school. He stopped outside a different house and stood on the pavement staring at the lonely building he often visited once a week. The Ninomiya residence had been empty ever since they abandoned it. One day they were suddenly gone and Matsumoto Jun had neither heard nor seen anything of his classmate.
Ninomiya had relegated Matsumoto to a stalker anyway and Matsumoto's current actions didn't disprove it. Perhaps it was for the best that Ninomiya was gone. Matsumoto hoped the other boy was happy wherever he was. In the months following the day Matsumoto had first noticed his classmate in the bathroom stall, he regretted that he had never seen Ninomiya smile. That memory remained, etched in his mind to this day, never discounted. So he prayed that Ninomiya had found his happiness elsewhere.
"I won't come here anymore," Matsumoto said to himself and to the lonely house. That singular memory and his subsequent unrequited love would probably haunt him for the rest of his life, but he had to make an effort to walk away from the unwavering demon.
Matsumoto turned towards home as the sun set at his back.
"It's not needed right away. I want to finish high school first," Aiba told his father. "I want to graduate."
At his response to his father's careful warning, his mother dropped into his room. She stormed to position herself right in front of him and rapped her knuckles against the side of his head. "Why don't you care more about yourself, you ungrateful kid?" she demanded, struggling to hold back her anguish tinged with anger at him and her own uselessness.
Aiba took her wrinkled hands gently into his own and kissed the knuckles that she had pressed against his skull. He understood his mother, but he wished she would understand him, too. "I wish I had all the time that was promised me, mama. Why can't I have all that time?"
No one had answers for him.
It was that day that Aiba met with Matsumoto's older sister at their home and requested to speak to her privately. For once, he selfishly wanted her to think about him.
"I didn't realize it at first, but I know myself better now," he told her. "Senpai, I really like you."
"You don't mean to jump, do you?" Matsumoto Kaori asked as she watched him teeter and tip towards the other side. For the first time she was spooked and took one tentative step nearer to him. "I don't have wings. I won't be able to save you."
Aiba smiled brilliantly at her, but only he knew what his smile truly meant. "I wish you did. I wish you could save me, senpai."
He thought back to his light confession a few weeks ago. She could not accept him. Neither could he, knowing the truth about the empty shadow that he truly was. He could not allow her to sacrifice herself for someone like him.
She couldn't find the right words to reject him and her answer remained caught in her throat.
Expertly, Aiba shrugged it off with a smile. He understood that neither of them were strong enough to hold on to the other. There was a gap that he could only wish he had the strength to fill.
Perhaps one day they could be friends.
More than anything else, Aiba loathed words of gratitude followed by farewells.
To Matsumoto Kaori's relief, Aiba moved away from the edge and returned to the sturdier rooftop. He took a step towards her and then he stumbled. His eyelids fluttered and closed. He crashed to the ground.
Matsumoto Kaori lunged forward, but not quick enough. She was on her knees about to reach for him, but he gained consciousness and clutched at the bleeding cut on his head where he had hit the cement. Struggling to right himself, he laughed spectacularly and waved away her hands that were hesitant to hold him, hovering strangely in midair.
They stood together and he stumbled once more, but did not fall again.
Matsumoto Kaori was appalled and horrified at the blood that dripped down the side of his face. Yet he chuckled at himself as if this was nothing, despite herself knowing this wasn't right.
Why do you smile? she thought and wished she had the courage to ask him.
"I'm so clumsy. I'm sorry," Aiba said with much lightheartedness, hoping to wipe the concern off her face. "Matsujun's not back yet. I'll go home. Thank you for everything." He moved away from her so that distance separated them again. "Good bye, senpai."
"It's okay, senpai," Aiba followed her silence at his confession. "I just wanted to tell you. I didn't want to have this regret."
Rating: PG
Feature/Pairing: Aiba/OC, Jun/Nino, Ohno/OC, Ohno/Sho, Nino/Ohno
Summary: Highschool AU. A glimpse into the lives of friends and strangers entangled in a web of secrets and emotions.
Both of them were waiting for Matsumoto Jun to return from his after school extracurricular activities. One of them was Matsumoto's older sister, Matsumoto Kaori, and the other was his friend, Aiba Masaki, who had retired from the basketball club a year earlier. They loitered outside on the roof of the apartment complex five floors above the ground as they waited, the host and the guest.
Aiba Masaki left his junior's older sister by a corner where someone had hung up their laundry to dry on a clothesline. At the end of the rooftop where the rain gutter ran around the building, he balanced on the very edge of the duct. His arms spread wide. His white school uniform shirt flapped in the wind and whipped around him as wildly as his cropped, light brown hair. Despite the imminent danger of his position, a soft smile adorned his face. Because of it Matsumoto Kaori did not fear for him. Aiba looked like an angel; he was too majestic to fall.
"Matsumoto-senpai," Aiba began and turned to address her watching him. The colorful sheets on the clothesline swayed behind her, contrasting against her dark hair and clothing.
Matsumoto Kaori was a university student, having graduated the prior spring. Aiba and she were only a year apart, but it seemed as if much more separated them beyond their age or current distance. Aiba had watched her long before, but he never understood her. Similarly, she knew nothing about him except for what he gave her and everyone else. And yet, even then, his feelings exceeded him.
Aiba raised his right arm high above his head towards the sky and spread his fingers out, palm face up. He blocked out the sun in his eyes. Matsumoto Kaori was stunned at the beauty of the live portrait in front of her. It appeared as if he was holding a shining star in his hand.
With that same mysterious smile on his lips, Aiba asked her, "Senpai, I only have one wish left. What should I do with it?"
On the perfect spring morning, she had separated herself from the other graduating seniors. Aiba found her standing all alone with her back to him by a row of green trees. He realized as he neared her that perhaps she had slipped away to be alone and that promises made to her brother to watch over her or not, he had no right to share this private moment of hers.
Matsumoto Kaori turned and saw him. He could have run away. Instead, he chose to stay and embrace her melancholy.
"Senpai," Aiba started with a bright smile, "Congratulations on your graduation. You're getting farther away from me."
She shook her head at his teasing, although Aiba was sure he was not joking and only spoke the truth; if he didn't try to hold on to the image of her, she would have disappeared from his sights completely.
"The team will miss you coming to watch their games," he told her. "Will you still come to support them when you have time?"
She didn't miss the subtle way he left himself out of the loop. "Jun said you left the team," she murmured.
Aiba smiled all the brighter because that was how he coped with their differences. "It's true that I don't play anymore, but I will continue to watch and support them." Just as he had watched her all along.
In every facet of his life, he was a shadow without a life of its own, his meaningless stride more prominent than ever since he had lost his purpose.
Matsumoto averted her gaze and stared solemnly at the row of trees that were so clear in her memories. Once, two boys and one girl laughed in this place. "This will be the last time I come here. I don't like this place," she said. "I am only reminded of the reasons why he's not here. I have too many regrets."
Matsumoto Kaori knew no one in this world had the power to grant her deepest desires. Her ex-boyfriend, her first love, was out of her grasp all through her own unforgivable mistakes. She tried to entertain Aiba and retorted as respectfully as she could to his wistful scenario, "If you don't know what to do with it, may I have your wish?"
Aiba bestowed on her the most dazzling smile.
She wondered why, as she did every time she saw it, he could be so beautiful.
"Why do you want this wish, senpai?" he asked her. "I have given everything of myself to the people around me. At first I wanted to give this wish to you, but perhaps I want this wish for myself."
He teased her and yet for the first time, Matsumoto Kaori saw that what underlined his cheerfulness were eyes that sparkled from dark, fathomless depths. She had spent the last few months before her graduation sitting in on the basketball club team's practices and games, not because she was actually watching, but to find a reason to be somewhere. She had seen the star that was Aiba in all his glory, surrounded by friends and fans. But this person before her was not everything that was the other one.
Why are you here? Matsumoto Kaori wondered. She did not voice the question she wanted to ask him. "What will you wish for?" she inquired.
Aiba tilted his head back and exhaled. The sky blue above belied the burden in his body. Again he spread out his arms. Then he whispered, "My wish is to give you wings."
He promised his mother, Just one more game. He promised his doctor, Just one more run. He promised his body, Just one more year. He woke to darkness and his own tears into a nightmare come to life. His coach embraced him and murmured into his ear, "Thank you. For everything."
Aiba hated words of gratitude with a ring of parting because it meant Never Again.
"Won't you play anymore? The team misses you," Matsumoto Jun told him. "You were our Ace."
The past tense terrified him, but Aiba smiled anyway. "I don't play anymore."
On the day of their first agonizing defeat of the new school year that spring afternoon, in the audience Aiba cried for the team, but perhaps he cried for himself.
Matsumoto Kaori who had come to watch her brother play, who had seated herself beside Aiba and stayed silent throughout the entire game, failed to notice his tears. She caught sight of her younger brother's expression of regret as he walked off the court and finally broke her silence to whisper, "It's okay. Next time."
Aiba willingly fooled himself into believing that her support were meant for him as much as everyone else. He told himself, It's okay. Maybe one day.
He preferred words of comfort; of a hope that might come.
Aiba realized that he couldn't stop smiling. It was a part of himself that he'd given away too often. It had become a reflex he expected of himself. He guessed from Matsumoto Kaori's frown that she was wary of his easy deception. Try as he might he couldn't show her what he never showed anyone else, not even to his reflection in the mirror.
"Why give wings to me?" she asked.
Aiba looked at the ground far below him and moved his body to the flow of the wind, tipping dangerously on the side of the abyss. "Because I am weak, senpai," he answered. "I will give you wings and then I will beg you to save me when I fall."
There had been a boy who lived in Aiba's neighborhood called Ninomiya Kazunari. They also attended the same school. Matsumoto Jun had a crush on him and Aiba had stood by to watch his friend's feelings grow without a word of warning.
Aiba knew things about Ninomiya that he could never tell Matsumoto; things he saw outside from the safety of his own bedroom window, himself very much the shadow. How could he tell someone about the wandering man who was a father, about the frequently distressed mother, about a boy who Aiba would see sneak out in the middle of the night and who dived into the darkness without hesitation?
Aiba never told Matsumoto Jun that he witnessed the moment Ninomiya held his mother's arm and led her silently down the street swathed under the cover of night. They left with nothing more than mere backpacks on their backs.
Aiba couldn't tell his friend that he envied Ninomiya. Somewhere else in this world, Ninomiya and his mother belonged. They questioned fate and fought against it. They were seeking their lives elsewhere, together.
Aiba had no place to go.
Matsumoto Jun was supposed to be home at least half an hour ago, but he had taken a different route with a detour after school. He stopped outside a different house and stood on the pavement staring at the lonely building he often visited once a week. The Ninomiya residence had been empty ever since they abandoned it. One day they were suddenly gone and Matsumoto Jun had neither heard nor seen anything of his classmate.
Ninomiya had relegated Matsumoto to a stalker anyway and Matsumoto's current actions didn't disprove it. Perhaps it was for the best that Ninomiya was gone. Matsumoto hoped the other boy was happy wherever he was. In the months following the day Matsumoto had first noticed his classmate in the bathroom stall, he regretted that he had never seen Ninomiya smile. That memory remained, etched in his mind to this day, never discounted. So he prayed that Ninomiya had found his happiness elsewhere.
"I won't come here anymore," Matsumoto said to himself and to the lonely house. That singular memory and his subsequent unrequited love would probably haunt him for the rest of his life, but he had to make an effort to walk away from the unwavering demon.
Matsumoto turned towards home as the sun set at his back.
"It's not needed right away. I want to finish high school first," Aiba told his father. "I want to graduate."
At his response to his father's careful warning, his mother dropped into his room. She stormed to position herself right in front of him and rapped her knuckles against the side of his head. "Why don't you care more about yourself, you ungrateful kid?" she demanded, struggling to hold back her anguish tinged with anger at him and her own uselessness.
Aiba took her wrinkled hands gently into his own and kissed the knuckles that she had pressed against his skull. He understood his mother, but he wished she would understand him, too. "I wish I had all the time that was promised me, mama. Why can't I have all that time?"
No one had answers for him.
It was that day that Aiba met with Matsumoto's older sister at their home and requested to speak to her privately. For once, he selfishly wanted her to think about him.
"I didn't realize it at first, but I know myself better now," he told her. "Senpai, I really like you."
"You don't mean to jump, do you?" Matsumoto Kaori asked as she watched him teeter and tip towards the other side. For the first time she was spooked and took one tentative step nearer to him. "I don't have wings. I won't be able to save you."
Aiba smiled brilliantly at her, but only he knew what his smile truly meant. "I wish you did. I wish you could save me, senpai."
He thought back to his light confession a few weeks ago. She could not accept him. Neither could he, knowing the truth about the empty shadow that he truly was. He could not allow her to sacrifice herself for someone like him.
She couldn't find the right words to reject him and her answer remained caught in her throat.
Expertly, Aiba shrugged it off with a smile. He understood that neither of them were strong enough to hold on to the other. There was a gap that he could only wish he had the strength to fill.
Perhaps one day they could be friends.
More than anything else, Aiba loathed words of gratitude followed by farewells.
To Matsumoto Kaori's relief, Aiba moved away from the edge and returned to the sturdier rooftop. He took a step towards her and then he stumbled. His eyelids fluttered and closed. He crashed to the ground.
Matsumoto Kaori lunged forward, but not quick enough. She was on her knees about to reach for him, but he gained consciousness and clutched at the bleeding cut on his head where he had hit the cement. Struggling to right himself, he laughed spectacularly and waved away her hands that were hesitant to hold him, hovering strangely in midair.
They stood together and he stumbled once more, but did not fall again.
Matsumoto Kaori was appalled and horrified at the blood that dripped down the side of his face. Yet he chuckled at himself as if this was nothing, despite herself knowing this wasn't right.
Why do you smile? she thought and wished she had the courage to ask him.
"I'm so clumsy. I'm sorry," Aiba said with much lightheartedness, hoping to wipe the concern off her face. "Matsujun's not back yet. I'll go home. Thank you for everything." He moved away from her so that distance separated them again. "Good bye, senpai."
"It's okay, senpai," Aiba followed her silence at his confession. "I just wanted to tell you. I didn't want to have this regret."