When Summer Ends (oneshot)
Title: When Summer Ends
Pairing/Focus: AibaxNino friendship
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: suicide, supernatural
Summary: Nino is an average high school student with an attitude and an inborn stubbornness, whose potential future is quickly spiraling into descent. Will witnessing a horrible accident force him to try to change his fate?
Notes: I actually don’t know much about Japanese schools or the system, so take everything with a grain of salt.
For: __sine written for the ninoexchange
Beta: Thanks, C!
* * *
Aiba and Nino met after the final bell in the hallway outside the cafeteria and joined the crowd vying to see the rankings board. They pushed and shoved their way into the mass of students until they settled somewhere near the front where they could clearly see their names at the bottom of the list.
Aiba’s sudden cackle drowned out the chatter and pound of feet of the students around them. “You’re no better than me,” he triumphantly declared to Nino.
Nino expressed his annoyance with a hiss and pushed his way out of the crowd. Aiba followed until they stopped at a section of the hallway clear of struggling students. “This sucks. I can’t believe I’ll be wasting my precious summer taking supplementary lessons with you.”
“Like you had plans to do anything,” Aiba scoffed and brushed his comment aside. Unaffected by Nino’s frustration, he moved the conversation along and asked, “Are you waiting for me today?”
Nino felt another sting of irritation at Aiba’s smug acceptance of their rankings, but he addressed his friend’s question anyway. “I’ll be in the library.”
“Again? You don’t even study,” Aiba said. “I don’t understand why you’re wasting so much time there.” Muttering to himself, he pulled his school bag around his shoulder and went on his way.
“It’s much better than your boring practice!” Nino shouted at his back. Down the hall, Aiba turned his upper body and waved at him as if he hadn’t heard the intended insult. Nino sneered at the departing gesture, but as soon as Aiba disappeared from his sight his expression fell into an imperceptible frown. Disappointment curdled inside of him, but he told himself that he shouldn’t have been so surprised; his grades had been steadily declining since he entered high school. In any case, his homeroom teacher had taken him aside just a few weeks ago for some counseling, all in vain. He lacked focus, a drive to succeed and concern for anything beyond the present; issues that could only be changed on a personal level, and truthfully he did not know how to go about fixing his problems when he could not muster the determination to change.
Releasing a deep breath, Nino threw a last glance at the already thinning crowd in front of the rankings board before heading to his destination.
*
In the school library on the third floor, Nino went to the back. He chose the last table near the windows and sat down to wait for Aiba. Aside from the one student assistant behind the front desk, the library was empty. Exams having ended and with summer break so near, most students consequently put aside their studies to enjoy the weather. Nino preferred the solitude that the situation presented. He eased into the most comfortable position possible in his hard wooden chair and stared outside the adjacent window. Down below in the school backyard, students from the gardening club tended to the roses they had planted in the spring. The deep red of the petals and vibrant green bushes against the backdrop of the dusty school grounds presented a jarring picture.
Nino’s interest, however, was not on the flowers, but the students doing the work. He singled out a person from the group below and gave her his sole attention. The girl, an upperclassman by the name of Takeuchi Yuko, captivated him ever since he first saw her during opening ceremony. He likened her to the roses she cultivated; among her peers, her beauty and air of maturity stood out. He enjoyed watching her garden; he’d had a rough two weeks not seeing her when extracurricular activities had been temporarily halted for exams. Aiba knew of his attraction to Takeuchi, but by coincidence Nino had found this view from the library and he treasured the secret all by himself.
As he watched, Takeuchi paused in the process of clipping the rose bushes and sat back on her heels. She wiped a hand across her sweaty brow and smiled sweetly. Nino’s own lips curved into a smile. For the brief moment while he watched her, he forgot his present troubles.
*
After practice, Aiba and he walked to an arcade to celebrate the conclusion of exams. They spent their allowance within an hour and trudged home penniless as the sun set at their backs. While they walked together part of the way, Aiba confided in him, revealing depressing news. “Coach said if I don’t bring my grades up by the next midsemester exam, I’ll have to sit out of practice until it gets better. I don’t think that’s even possible.” Sulking, he turned to ask Nino, “You think I need a tutor?”
“Stupid. You have to take the supplementary lessons first,” Nino retorted. “Worry about that later if you still haven’t learned anything.”
To his response Aiba glumly agreed.
Eventually they went their separate ways. Nino reached the building of his apartment after a five minute walk through his neighborhood. He entered their apartment into the kitchen. Shouts erupted from around the corner. It took him but a second to realize that his mother and father were screaming at each other.
“That’s just so like you!” his mother’s voice boomed. “You always have an excuse!”
His father replied in a volume just as loud. “How else am I supposed to get away from you?!”
Nino eased down the hall to his room. In their own room with their door partially closed, his parents did not hear or catch sight of him. He gratefully shut his bedroom door behind him. With the thin wooden barrier and white walls between them, his parents’ shouts were at least decently muffled. Accustomed to their arguments, he jumped onto his bed and looked at the time on his cell phone. Their argument could last hours this time.
*
Nino joined Aiba during the lunch hour break between classes and watched Aiba shoot baskets with peers from his basketball team. He sat on the sideline blessedly alone, his head bopping up and down as he fought off sleep. A cellphone carelessly thrown to the floor right beside him startled him into wakefulness. The offensive senior, whom the phone belonged to, went out to join the players unaware of having disturbed him. Nino yawned and had just decided to find a place to rest for the remainder of the hour when Aiba bounded over to him.
“Let’s go,” Aiba said and pointed his thumb over his shoulder.
Nino grumbled over lost sleeping time. “You’re done playing?”
Aiba shook his head. His voice lowered as he said, “The seniors get very competitive and they’re sore losers. I’d rather not get on their bad side. Besides, sensei told me to meet him in the faculty’s office. I think he’s going to talk about my grades.”
Or give you counseling, Nino thought as he remembered having gone through a similar meeting with his homeroom teacher. He forced his heavy body to move and stood from the hard, polished floor. “Then I’m going to the library,” he said.
“You’re going, Aiba?” another player shouted from the court.
Aiba turned to address his club mate’s question. “Gotta meet my teacher. It’s now or later.”
“But you really sure about that tutoring thing?”
Surprised by the question, Nino threw Aiba a look of incredulity.
His head turned, Aiba did not catch Nino’s expression. “Yes!” he returned.
“Alright,” the boy said. “I’ll tell you if I find somebody. See you later.” He waved to Aiba then Nino, both of whom returned his gesture.
Out in the hall minutes later, Nino asked, “You’re really getting a tutor?”
Aiba shrugged. “If you want, you can join me.”
“You’re crazy,” Nino replied with a shake of his head. “You’ll never get me to voluntary attend something like that.”
Aiba sighed and distractedly scratched his head. “I don’t get you, Nino. If you’ve got a problem, why don’t you try to fix it?”
Nino thought of his parents. Most of their arguments stemmed from their personal frustrations and usually escalated for no reason at all. Despite their constant screaming at each other, and sometimes an effort from both sides to compromise, nothing stayed resolved. To Aiba’s question, he blurted out more forcefully than intended, “Geez, you’re so naïve. Life’s not that easy, you know. Not everything can be fixed.”
*
After school, he went to the library again. To his disappointment, steady rain fell outside, forcing the gardening students inside. Just moments before when he had walked down the halls the weather outside the line of windows had been sunny and cheerful. This sudden downpour irritated him, especially since the sky outside had turned a gloomy, ugly gray that further negated his mood. He pulled out his phone to waste away the remaining waiting time with a game when a large streak of black whisked passed the window. The whistle of the wind as it went down drew his attention. The sound of a soft collision followed. Curious, Nino cautiously stood by the window and stared out. He saw a broken body sprawled out beside the very rose bushes that Takeuchi had tended lovingly. Blood seeped from the body, washed away by the rain. Horrified, he choked on his screams and moved back from the glass. His legs met his discarded chair and he clumsily fell over the wooden furniture.
At the front desk, the student assistant looked up from her book at the commotion and saw him awkwardly positioned on the floor over his fallen chair. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Muffled screams erupted from outside and Nino knew other students had discovered the body. “Someone jumped off the roof,” he whispered in answer.
The student assistant either couldn’t hear him or thought him a liar. “Someone did what?”
Nino shook his head because he couldn’t force himself to speak again. He pointed outside the window where he still heard panicked shouts and screams. As the student assistant approached to confirm his statement, Nino peered outside again. Through the rain that pelted the window, he saw the body still sprawled on the ground; unmoving, lifeless and the face turned on its side forever expressionless. Nino couldn’t help but look closely and see the deadened eyes of the fallen. He recognized the person. His knees buckled and he convulsed on all fours.
“What’s wrong with you?” the student assistant demanded, taking a step from him and giving him a hard look.
“The body,” Nino gasped.
“What body?” The assistant peered outside. “The gardening students are watering the roses. That’s all.”
Nino reigned in his nausea and forced himself back to his feet. He looked out. He saw the skies outside the window as clear as could be, streaked with wistful, white clouds. The gardening students, Takeuchi included, were carefully watering the roses. He gaped because he knew what he saw. He had seen himself on the ground, very much dead.
“You were hallucinating,” the assistant muttered and walked back to her desk.
*
“What’s wrong?” Aiba asked as they exited the school grounds.
Brooding over his nightmarish vision in the library just hours earlier, Nino shuddered. “I had a bad dream.”
“What’s it about?”
“I died.”
“Well, that sucks.”
Nino shuddered, again. He couldn’t dispel the image of his own lifeless expression from his memory. “It seemed so real, almost as if it had happened.”
“Then it’s a good thing it was only a dream,” Aiba consoled him.
Dream or not, the vision had shaken Nino’s nerves. He declined an evening out with Aiba and went straight to bed upon reaching his home. His mother knocked on his door and told him to come out for dinner, but he ignored her. Instead of cursing him as she would his father, who wasn’t home anyway, she accepted his refusal quietly unlike her usual self. When Nino closed his eyes in hopes of escaping his vision through sleep, the image of death visited him again. He knew this night would be as miserable as the last.
*
The closing ceremony of the semester took place early in the morning before classes. While dozing off on his feet in line, Nino received a message from Aiba asking if he had accidently taken someone’s phone from the gym the other day. No, he had not. Peeved by the accusation, he gave the reply.
At dismissal as students headed to their classes, Aiba met him in the hall and hastily pulled him aside. He whispered, his face full of concern, “Did you really not see it? Sempai is very angry because it was a new phone. He thinks you’re lying.”
“What the heck,” Nino grumbled, too tired from a sleepless night to care about someone else’s problem. “I didn’t take it.”
Aiba nodded, believing him completely. “No one came in after we left and none of the other guys took it either. I think you should try to avoid the seniors and go straight home after school.”
“Like hell I will.” Nino stepped out of Aiba’s shadow. “It’ll be even more suspicious if I avoid them. I didn’t steal anything and I’m not going to act like a frightened culprit.”
“That sempai’s ruthless, Nino,” Aiba tried to persuade him.
“Of course he is,” Nino retorted sarcastically and walked away from him. “I’m going to the library.”
*
Yellow security tape sectioned off the area around the space the body had been, enclosing most of the rose bushes also. From the third floor window of the library, Nino saw the etched white outline of the body where it had fallen. Shivers overtook him again. He told himself he was having another nightmare. Yet, he was very much awake. A handful of men in uniform loitered in the area. Two men in colored suits, much closer to the building than the rest, were in deep conversation with each other. Nino pressed his ear against the glass, hoping he’d catch a bit of their conversation.
“The victim was a freshman,” one of the detectives said. “I spoke to his homeroom teacher. Apparently, he had a few troubles at school.”
“Bullying?”
“Not necessarily. A few fights with the seniors. More importantly though, he’d been struggling with failing grades.”
“You can’t rule this case as suicide from just that.”
“Well, the homeroom teacher heard from the victim’s best friend that his parents were contemplating divorce. The father’s been living separately from the family for a few months.”
“Trouble at school and home.” The second detective sighed. “Got an address?”
“The mother’s, yes. Ninomiya Kazuko lives in an apartment near here.”
Nino jumped back from the glass. His heart thumped against his chest so loudly he could hear the beats in his head. This was crazy; he had gone crazy. None of this was real. His eyes shifted to the distance. In the scene that reeked of death, he noticed that the line of trees in the background was almost stripped of color; that on the ground were strewn multi-colored leaves. He realized that the autumn season of his freshman year had yet to come.
*
Nino sat in the very spot where the body, his body, had been. Cross-legged, he stared blankly at the beautiful rose bushes in bloom. In this garden, in some dream, he had jumped off the school roof. But presently everything was unchanged. He was afraid to tell Aiba, the one and only person he ever told anything, that he was seeing some sort of alternate reality. He couldn’t believe that he’d do something as ghastly as kill himself.
“Do you like the roses?”
Nino turned his head and saw Takeuchi beside him carrying her gardening toolkit. All thoughts and feelings of melancholy fled. He scrambled to his feet, suddenly nervous. Never had he dreamed of speaking to his ideal girl. Yet here she was right in front of him. Answering her truthfully, he gave a vigorous nod.
She graced him with one of her sweet smiles. “Would you like to take one?”
He did a double take and responded with an illiterate, “Huh?”
“The blooms will wither in a few weeks anyway. It makes no difference if we lose one or two roses early. Would you like one?” she asked again.
Nino froze with no answer on his tongue. He didn’t need a rose, but he couldn’t blatantly reject her offer.
“You could give it to your mother or your girlfriend,” Takeuchi suggested. She went to the nearest rose bush and clipped a rose for him. She handled the flower gently as she offered it for him to take.
Unable to speak but grateful for her gift, Nino took it.
“We’re glad students like you can admire our work after all the effort we put into growing these,” she said. “I hope you continue to support the gardening club.”
Charmed into silence, Nino nodded again and watched her leave the garden.
*
Pleased with Takeuchi’s gift, he enjoyed a silent dinner with just his mother and him. His attention elsewhere, he replayed his meeting with Takeuchi over in his head. His only regret was that he hadn’t denied having a girlfriend. The only girl he liked, after all, was her. Nothing around him registered until he went to bed and heard whispering in the hall. He sneaked a peek outside his door to observe the cause of the noise and saw his father make his way out with a suitcase. His mother watched his back silently, her arms crossed and her posture grave. The door snapped closed behind his father with a sense of finality. Nino fell from grace back to reality. He realized that his father would not return for the night, or anytime soon for that matter.
“Mom?” he called out into the silence.
She started at his voice and turned around. Her sunken eyes, filled with remorse and regret, looked him over and knew that he had figured the situation out.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Your dad and I need some time apart.”
What about him? Why didn’t they tell him earlier? Nino wanted to ask the questions but couldn’t. Instead, he slammed shut the door to his bedroom, effectively shutting his mother out.
*
He entered the library as soon as it opened an hour before the start of supplementary lessons. Even from afar, he saw outside the window that most of the trees were now completely bare, prepared for the cold season. He saw students, dressed in their winter uniform, circle around and depart for home or their after school activities. The yellow security tape and white outline of his shape was no longer there on the ground. If he was seeing the future and if he was dead and these people and the world was going on just fine without him, then he thought he didn’t care enough about the world in the first place. He pulled back a fist to smash the window in, but hesitated and finally lost the strength to act. He stormed out of the library and decided that he’d never return. Damned was his life for following the events in his vision, but as long as he knew about his fate, he could go against it.
*
Nino lost his opportunity to change his falling out with a group of seniors, as relayed by the detectives in his vision. He stood no chance against his upperclassmen. As soon as the bell for the end of lessons rang, the seniors had the doors to his classroom covered. He recognized the gang leader as a senior from the basketball team; the very one Aiba had warned him about. They singled him out among his peers and beckoned for him to follow. Supplementary lessons for students in the same grade were taken together in the same room under one instructor, thus Nino sought for help from Aiba who had been on his heels, but his friend was suddenly nowhere to be found.
In the school’s backyard, just a few paces from the rose bushes, Nino was accused of theft, thoroughly searched and beaten. They left his face and the visible parts of him untouched. His bruised body was discarded where it was. Aching all over, Nino couldn’t force himself to rise. He spent the rest of his afternoon outside until he summoned the energy to call Aiba for assistance. Aiba followed his instructions to the backyard and saw him from afar. He approached Nino at a run. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he murmured, appalled as he helped Nino upright. “I met with my tutor immediately afterwards and-”
“Shut up,” Nino hissed from behind clenched teeth. “Just get me home.”
Aiba skipped extracurricular activities and helped Nino back to his apartment. To their relief, his mother had left a note for him and gone out. They fixed him up as much as they could by cleaning his cuts and placing cold patches on his sores and bruises. As Aiba searched the kitchen for something to eat, Nino read his mother’s note. She had gone to meet a marriage counselor her sister had recommended and did not know when she would return; he was in charge of his own dinner.
Aiba came back up the stairs with a box of cereal and a container of milk. “What’ll your mother think when she comes back?”
“I’ll probably be asleep by then,” Nino muttered. In explanation, he handed Aiba the note. While his friend read it over, he said, “My dad left yesterday. They’ve decided to live apart for now.”
“Sucks,” was Aiba’s only reply, which did not effectively relay the sympathy he felt, but which Nino could clearly read in his expression.
*
All over again, Nino found himself back in that same garden with his back against the wall and anything worth a little filched from him. The seniors left him in the same spot, laughing and joking as if they were just innocently passing through. Nino spat at the ground when they were gone. He couldn’t believe that Aiba was still a part of the basketball team, playing a team sport with bastards like them.
To avoid the seniors and express his disappointment with his friend, he left the school grounds immediately after his next lesson and spent an hour roaming the streets outside places he and other students often frequented. He headed home only as the sun began to set. Again, he found himself home alone in charge of finding his own dinner.
Takeuchi’s gift to him, the rose of which he had treasured and kept in a cup full of water on his desk, had started to turn dirt brown and shrivel. In his eyes, the most beautiful thing around him was dying. Suddenly, life for him had become stale.
*
The week long supplementary lessons concluded that morning. Students who had to attend took written tests, received their test grades, and dispersed. The same bullies came searching for Nino again and he just barely managed to escape by finishing early. He ended up in the library knowing full well that the seniors would have thought he was on his way home. No other students occupied the space in the library, preferring to enjoy the perfect weather outside. Lulled by the peace and silence, he went to the last table at the back and stood by the window. Light snow fell outside. The skies were a dead, uninviting gray. He couldn’t tell what time of day it was in this vision.
A boy sat on the ground by the dead rose bushes, his back turned to the window. Nino thought he recognized the boy from his back, but he couldn’t be sure because the boy wore a knitted hat. As he watched safely tucked away in the present, wondering what his vision was showing him, a girl he did recognize ran over to the boy. She was none other than Takeuchi. Nino pressed closer to the window until his nose touched the glass. He saw Takeuchi crouch down to the boy’s level. She wrapped her arms around him and whispered words into his ear that Nino couldn’t hear. Their sweet embrace jarred Nino and his gut wrenched at the knowledge that this was the future without him.
By coincidence, the fortunate boy turned in Takeuchi’s arm. Shock replaced Nino’s jealousy as he confirmed his earlier guess; the boy was his best friend, Aiba. Aiba threw an indifferent glance up and froze at what he caught sight of. Swiftly, he disengaged himself from Takeuchi’s embrace and stood facing the building. His head tilted back and his gaze settled on the third floor window, on Nino. Nino and Aiba’s eyes met across the distance. A shiver passed through Nino. Could Aiba see him? It wasn’t possible.
“Nino?” Aiba asked.
Takeuchi looked in the direction of his gaze and stared passed Nino. “There’s no one at the window.”
Yet, Aiba continued to look straight at him. Nino’s pulse raced and he drew in heavy breaths. It couldn’t be true. The Aiba outside the window was not the real Aiba. He sucked in a deep breath and stepped back from the window until he was hidden from view. He could still see the flurry of gentle snowflakes fall against the gray sky, but both Aiba and Takeuchi were no longer in his line of sight. He heard Aiba scream. “Nino! Nino, where’d you go?!”
“Aiba, don’t do this!” Takeuchi pleaded over his screams. “He’s gone! Nino is gone!”
Nino crouched under the table and covered his ears just as the Aiba outside burst into blubbering tears.
*
Instead of heading home after his usual walk after lessons, he headed to Aiba’s family apartment. He knew his friend would have been home for some time and sent a text for his friend to meet him in the parking lot. Aiba met him five minutes later and joined him at a curve in the lot. They sat on the curb while their legs dangled over the edge and rested on the pavement. Aiba eased them into comfortable conversation and they passed meaningless minutes with talk while enjoying the cool, scented summer night after a sweltering hot day. Eventually, Nino steered the conversation in a different direction and addressed the main reason for his visit.
“Aiba,” he started gravely, “do you like Takeuchi?”
Aiba shut his mouth abruptly at the blunt question. Nino knew his friend could not lie and he saw a range of emotions cross Aiba’s face. He guessed his friend’s answer without the verbal confirmation and his expression hardened, his lips thinning in his anger. Aiba saw the hard look in Nino’s eyes and knew he had been figured out.
“I told you I like her,” Nino said, unable to keep a harsh edge from his tone. “Why didn’t you tell me you do, too?”
Aiba hunched his shoulders and removed his gaze to the cold ground in shame. “I’m sorry.”
Nino pursued his response aggressively. “Sorry? Sorry for what?”
“Sorry,” Aiba repeated.
“Dammit! What are you sorry for?” Nino gripped Aiba’s collar and turned him around so they faced each other. Aiba turned his gaze down.
Nino glowered at him, hating his innocent passivity. “You never intended to tell me.”
Aiba shook his head.
Nino shoved Aiba from him. All he needed, really wanted, was the truth; and yet his supposed-to-be one-and-only true friend refused to face him properly. Somehow, some way, Aiba and not Nino had won Takeuchi’s affection. He felt even angrier that someone as weak as his friend, someone who could not even state the truth, would live with everything he would lose. He stood and glared down at Aiba. “Why must it be you?” he asked the question that Aiba had no understanding of. Then he turned on his heels and stormed away.
*
He raged at home in his bedroom for a few days. He skipped meals and only made necessary trips to the bathroom. Every night, his mother checked in on him to make sure he was present and alive, but unaware of his neglect she left him alone and spent the majority of her time packing away his father’s belongings or going out to meetings. Curled up in his sheets, Nino wondered why he had to die. Even while he turned the question over in his mind, he felt fed up with his life.
Aiba neither stopped by nor called. Nino questioned the differences between himself and his friend; what made Aiba so special?
Eventually, his mother kicked up a fuss about his laziness and him not giving her a helping hand around the apartment. In the aftermath, she cried and cursed him for following in his father’s footsteps of burdening her. Made uncomfortable by her tears, Nino dragged himself out of bed the next morning, dressed in some crumpled clothing lying around his room, and took off. He thought about roaming the city, but realized he had no place in mind and glumly turned his steps towards school.
*
Despite his determination to avoid Aiba, he couldn’t stop himself from peeking into the gym where the basketball team held practices. He secretly hoped for one glimpse of Aiba in order to find a reason to ridicule his friend. He searched for Aiba among the players, going from face to face on the court than those on the bench and then the others roaming or training on the sideline. Unease gradually overtook him as he realized Aiba was not among the players. Only at that moment did he understand how important it was to him that Aiba was always around.
Although he went through the trouble of hiding himself, one of Aiba’s teammates sighted and recognized him and called out his name in greeting. Nino froze up in fear and his eyes quickly scanned the players again. He was relieved to find the bullying senior missing from practice; not surprisingly, since Aiba had previously painted a picture of his upperclassman as a rude and selfish player whose only merits were his skills. Nino was sure someone like that skipped practices on a whim. Releasing a breath, he stepped out from behind the door and returned the greeting. “Where’s Aiba?” he asked.
The player expressed surprise at his ignorantly asked question. “He’s suspended.”
In turn, Nino felt surprised. “Why?”
The boy scratched his neck, unhappy to recount the situation. “He got into a fight with an upperclassman. Arrogant asshole, that guy. I meant the sempai. He was bragging about his new phone and Aiba went off on him. Said something about lying. First time I saw Aiba like that. Coach suspended both of them for fighting.”
Understanding dawned on Nino. He knew why someone as sweet-natured as Aiba lost his temper. His friend’s defense of him opened a flood-gate full of guilt and shame. He confessed, “I haven’t spoken to Aiba for a few days.”
“He’s probably sulking,” the boy said. “But well, Aiba’s not the sort to feel down anyway. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. If he’s got a problem, he’ll figure out a way to fix it.”
Nino felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. He remembered Aiba making a similar statement just a few weeks ago. If Aiba was someone who tried his best to fix his problems, then what did that make him? He answered his own question immediately: he couldn’t remember ever putting in effort to do anything.
“The seniors are retiring from the club anyway,” the boy went on. “There won’t be a problem once Aiba returns.”
“I’m glad,” Nino said. Before he left, he asked Aiba’s teammate one last question. “Did you introduce Aiba to his tutor?”
Uncertain why he asked, the boy replied truthfully, “It’s not like I personally knew her. I connected them through a friend. I was told she was patient and kind. I just thought someone like Aiba could benefit from that sort of person.”
Nino nodded his agreement wholeheartedly. “Yeah. He needs someone like that.”
*
The world outside the library window was white. Snow covered a majority of the school yard and created a blanket over the dead rose bushes. Aiba and Takeuchi stood facing the window. Nino watched as Aiba took Takeuchi’s hand and blew warm breath over her cold skin. She graced him with a sweet smile. Nino’s gut wrenched again, but this time he couldn’t tell if it was because of Takeuchi or Aiba, or the heartwarming scene before him of two people who cared about one another. Aiba’s eyes moved to the window where Nino stood watching and again their eyes met. Nino realized with a start that they stood in the snow because they were waiting for him.
“Nino!” the Aiba outside screamed and took a step towards the building.
Nino saw Takeuchi look anxiously at where he stood at the window and yet she was unable to see him. At that moment, he knew with a certainty that only the Aiba in the future could see him in their past.
“Nino!” Aiba screamed again, with no clear reason why he was shouting Nino’s name. His shouts became desperate chants.
Nino bowed his head and stepped away from the window out of Aiba’s sight.
*
He purposely approached Takeuchi this time as she pruned the roses along with another member from the gardening club. She smiled at his sudden appearance and greeted him warmly, but did not stand from her crouch or pause in her task. Nino stood a foot from her and gestured to the rose bushes. He asked, “How long until the roses die?”
“Not long now,” she answered. “They only last a few weeks. Then we’ll have to cultivate them again. It’s a repetitive cycle.”
“When will they bloom again?”
“If we’re careful during summer break, they’ll come around the time the new semester starts,” she answered.
He watched as she carefully clipped the rose bushes. She kept her hands steady despite his stare and allowed silence to fall between them as she worked. Nino crouched down beside her and treasured the calm and sweet scented atmosphere around them as he watched her. Although it pained him to admit it, he thought her steadiness would do Aiba a lot of good. He broke the comfortable silence by asking the question that had brought him there. “Sempai, I have a friend named Aiba Masaki. Do you know him?”
For the first time, Takeuchi’s hands paused. She replied, “You are his friend?”
Her response confirmed Nino’s guess. “You know him,” he stated as a matter of fact.
“I tutor him twice a week,” Takeuchi confessed. Then she grinned at Nino. “He’s an eager learner. I can’t believe he’s been struggling.”
“He’s an idiot,” Nino said.
Takeuchi threw him a sharp glance and realized he’d declared the term affectionately with no intended insult. She settled back on her heels and gave him a thorough look-over, suddenly wary of him. “Why’d you ask if I knew him?” she asked. “If you’re his friend, wouldn’t he have told you he’s receiving help?”
“It’s his secret,” Nino explained simply. “Sempai, would it possible for you to get me another rose?”
His abrupt request startled her, but Takeuchi nodded. She reached to clip one for him, but he stopped her.
“I know it’s really too much to ask, but could you give it to Aiba?” he asked. “You see him twice a week.”
Takeuchi scoffed, Nino’s friendship with Aiba was becoming more suspicious to her the more he spoke. She said as if scolding a child, “Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you two with all this secrecy, and it’s none of my business, but I’m not obligated to do anything. Aiba pays me to tutor him and nothing more.” She huffed, then continued more gently than before, “But since I’m such a kind person, and it’s not like I’m going out of my way anyway, I’m willing to oblige your request as long as it won’t put me in some sort of pickle.”
“It won’t.” Nino shrugged as if the outcome did not matter to him. “I just thought it’d be a nice surprise for Aiba since he’d appreciate it, but how weird would it be if a guy gave roses to another guy?”
Takeuchi snorted at his pitiful excuse. “You still have a lot to learn about flowers. It’s probably not a red rose you’d want to give Aiba. Lucky you, I’m growing different colored roses at home. If you really want, I’ll deliver a yellow rose for you.”
“What’s the difference? Why does the color matter?” Again, Nino shrugged.
“It matters,” Takeuchi assured him. “Yellow roses are given between friends. It means friendship. If I give him that, you won’t have a need to feel awkward.”
Nino contemplated the offer. The rose had been his idea of forgiveness, and he had hoped Aiba would recognize the implication of him getting Takeuchi to deliver it. He didn’t really think the color of the rose mattered in this situation, but Takeuchi thought nothing of going through the extra trouble so he decided he’d graciously accept her kindness. To her, his head bopped up and down in a bow. “Thank you, sempai.”
*
He just might have come to terms with the fact that the world would go on as usual without him. As the sun set, he went to the library for one last look outside the window; firmly, he believed this would definitely be the last time he came here. After today, he had no need to see a future without himself. He expected Aiba to stand outside in the yard waiting for him, but as soon as he entered the library and looked to the window at the back what he saw instead shocked him. Outside, Aiba stood dangerously on the snow-covered ledge. His hands and most of his body were pressed against the glass of the window, but he teetered capriciously on the edge. Aiba sighted Nino and forgot for a moment that he was on verge of falling. “Nino!” he shouted desperately.
Nino ran to the window and pulled himself up until their faces were leveled. He spoke in a hiss to not draw the attention of the student assistant from the front desk. “Idiot! What the heck are you doing? Get down!”
“It’s really you,” Aiba said and sighed. “I knew it was you.”
“Get down!” Nino demanded again.
Aiba went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. His breath misted on the glass. “I ran to the library, but you were never there. I knew this was the only way to see and speak to you.”
The lengths he would go to astounded Nino and at the same time caused a deep wrenching agony in his gut. He feared for Aiba’s safety. He knew the snow-covered ledge was slippery. Aiba’s grasp on the window was so tight, his knuckles had turned white. Any moment now, his fingers would lose its strength or his feet would slip. The cold on the other side that numbed him to the bone did nothing to help.
Nino heaved a deep breath. There was nothing he could do but force the blasphemous words out of his mouth. “Aiba, I’m dead. You’re talking to a vision.” He saw mist form in Aiba’s eyes and denial on his face, but he forced himself to continue. “Don’t come here anymore. I’m not really here.”
Aiba shook his head and choked out, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, Nino, until I saw from inside. You used to watch Takeuchi from here, didn’t you? You liked her that much. Even though you said you’d move on, you still liked her. But you only thought about me.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Nino told him, and truthfully it didn’t because to him his best friend was worth much more. To his dismay, Aiba burst into tears.
“Then why’d you jump? Why’d you leave? What hurt you so badly, Nino? You should’ve told me.” Aiba’s expression contorted as he sobbed uncontrollably. He turned his head and pressed his tear-stained cheek against the glass. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop you.”
Aiba’s anguish and the wet patch he left on the glass gradually affected Nino’s nerves as well. He couldn’t just laugh it off. “I don’t know,” he answered, unwillingly feeling sobs rise in his throat also. Why did he jump?
Aiba continued to bawl while clinging on to the ledge. Crushed by his tears, Nino stood struck in place. Finally, he saw that Aiba’s grip was loosening. He swiped his arm across his eyes and resolved to get his friend to safety. “Aiba, I promise you I won’t do something like that. Ever.” Sniveling, Aiba shook his head in disbelief and Nino knew the Aiba outside would never believe him. In the future, it had already happened. To this Aiba, he hadn’t kept his promise. “I promise,” Nino repeated. “I’ll never jump. We’ll be best friends forever, okay? I’ll be with you until we die at a very old age.” To his relief, Aiba nodded. “So get down. It’s dangerous. Please.”
Aiba’s fingers slipped from its hold. For what seemed like seconds, he veered back from the window; then began his descent down. Nino shrieked. Instinctively, he swung his fist at the glass with all his might once and then again. The vision and glass shattered as one just before Aiba reached the ground. Nino fell to his knees on the floor in utter shock. Numbness from his left hand spread to his entire body.
The student assistant rushed over screamed when she saw the cuts on his bloodied hand.
*
His mother raged and cursed at him when he arrived home with his left hand wrapped in a bandage. He couldn’t even step pass the kitchen before her anger burst. “Your father and I do everything for you!” she bellowed. “All we ask is for you to get good grades and stay out of trouble. You know I’m going through a tough time right now. But you go and do something like this. Where will we find the money to fix that window? Do you even work? No! I pay for your tuition. I feed and clothe you. And yet this is how you act. Do you want to send me to my grave early?”
It was nothing Nino hadn’t heard before, and he would’ve kept his silence if this was just another one of his mother’s bad days, but her last remark along with what he had gone through ignited his fuse at last. It was unfair to him that his parents had decided on their own, without any concern for him, to live separately. It was unfair that his mother constantly unleashed her frustrations on him. He knew that she was going through a rough time. He never once complained about his frequent cold dinners or the emptiness of their apartment since his father’s departure. But just once, he wanted her to accept him and his problems unconditionally. Unhinging all of his pent up emotions, he threw back at his mother, “If I die, will you be happy then? You won’t have to worry about a burden like me.”
His mother scowled. “You keep your mouth shut, you brat.”
“I mean it,” Nino said, too furious to calm down. “I’m going to die, mom. I’m going to die before you and leave you all alone. That’s what you deserve.”
His mother slapped him. The sound of bone against skin resonated throughout their apartment. For a moment, both of them could not believe what had happened. Nino glared at his mother. He turned on his heels and stormed into his room. He snatched a bag, stuffed a few clothes and utensils into the bag then stormed down the hall passed his mother to the front door.
“Kazunari, where are you going?” his mother asked more than demanded, her trembling voice expressing her fear of being left alone.
Just as his father had left his family with just one suitcase, Nino uncaringly left his mother with just his one bag slung over his shoulder. He stepped into the cool night air and dived into the illuminated darkness.
*
His mother called him, but he ignored her calls. An hour after her calls stopped, Aiba called him. Nino knew she had enlisted the help of his friend. After days of avoiding him, it seemed Aiba had courageously decided to breach the divide that had developed between them. He ignored their calls for another half an hour and finally picked up on Aiba’s tenth call.
“Nino, is that you?” Aiba asked warily over the phone.
“What do you want?” Nino curtly replied.
“Your mother had a meltdown in our kitchen,” Aiba ventured to tell him. “She was a wreck. Your father came to get her.” His volume quieted as he murmured, “I heard you threatened to kill yourself.”
He hadn’t gone that far, but Nino thought that maybe hysterical parents were prone to exaggeration.
“Where are you?” Aiba asked.
“If I tell you, you’d just tell my parents.”
“I won’t,” Aiba promised.
“I’m on the school roof,” Nino said. “I’m thinking about jumping off.” He heard scrambling and knew his friend was rushing to his side. Even then, he said into the phone, “You’re coming, aren’t you?”
*
Nino stared over the edge. He was four floors above the ground. The rose bushes were somewhere below him, but he couldn’t see them in the darkness. The lone lamp in the school’s backyard did not lend enough light for him to make them out. He’d only ever seen the garden from the third floor window of the library. He wondered what the view would look like in the daylight. He wondered why the him in the future dared to jump.
“Nino!”
Nino turned and saw Aiba run to the center of the rooftop and pause. Aiba stiffened and his arms froze in midair. His voice quavered as he pleaded, “Nino, don’t jump!”
“Don’t speak so loud, Aiba,” Nino reprimanded him lightly. “There are still security guards around here.”
Aiba lowered the volume of his voice, but continued to beg, “Nino, come back here.”
Nino sighed and stepped back from the edge. “I was not going to jump. I’m not that stupid.” He moved to Aiba’s side. His friend checked him over for any signs of injury. When he found none aside from the swollen pink bulge of Nino’s cheek, he fell to the ground in unrestrained relief. Nino dropped to the ground beside him and lay on his back to appreciate the starry night sky. “I scared you, didn’t I?”
Aiba pounded his chest with a fist to calm his racing heart. “Don’t do something like that again. I almost had a meltdown, too.”
Nino remembered the as of yet nonexistent Aiba who had climbed to the third floor and cried outside a window. He knew his friend was capable of such a thing. “What would you have done if I really jumped?”
Aiba dropped on his back beside Nino and shared the same view of the star studded sky. “Don’t joke about something like that,” he said.
Nino was relentless in his pursuit of an answer. “But what if I told you that at the end of summer, I will die? It’s written in the stars.”
Aiba sighed. “I’m not going to answer you anymore if you continue. I don’t believe any of it. The stars don’t have the power to determine something like that.”
Nino uttered his own sigh at Aiba’s stubborn attitude, but he appreciated the strength of his friend’s positivity. “Don’t worry. I made a promise anyway. I’ll live until I’m old and wrinkled and all of my teeth have fallen out. I’m going to keep on living no matter what so that someone important to me doesn’t hurt himself, too.”
Aiba turned to his side and faced Nino’s profile. “Who?”
“That’s none of your business,” Nino retorted. He changed the dreary topic by asking, “Are you going to ask Takeuchi out?”
Aiba jolted into an upright sitting position and turned his face away. He fidgeted for a few seconds before murmuring, “I’m going to stop seeing her.”
Nino figured Takeuchi had yet to deliver his gift of forgiveness to Aiba. “Don’t be stupid,” he said and sat upright also. “I’m rooting for you. Of course I still like her, but one day I’ll forget these feelings. I’m not the one for her. You are.”
“You don’t know that,” Aiba murmured.
“I do,” Nino said with complete conviction. He shoved Aiba’s shoulder playfully with his fist. “No matter what you do, I’ll have to forgive you. You were right, you know. I have never put effort into fixing my own problems. From now on, I’ll just have to try my best.” He grinned. “Next semester, I’m going to be at the top of the student rankings.”
“You wish,” Aiba replied, somewhat relieved at the change in their conversation. He turned to face Nino again. “Are you going home?”
Nino stretched lazily. “I have to. I have to apologize to my mom.”
*
True to his expectations, his mother raged at him when he returned to their apartment a few hours later. His father was also present at her side, trying to calm her down but at the same time agreeing with her. Nino accepted their scolding humbly. He did not fail to take note of the swollenness of his mother and father’s eyes. His father had to return to his own abode and go off to work in a few hours, but he stayed with them until Nino disappeared into his bedroom.
Nino dived into bed, dead tired and content to drift off to sleep, leaving his troubles for the brighter day. Moments later, his mother barged into his room and inadvertently woke him up. She shuffled to his side, roughly applied an ointment to the swell in his cheek then stomped out again; done without a word. Alone again, he settled onto his back, closed his sleepy eyes and chuckled to himself.
*
The student assistant glowered at him, but Nino merely waved at her with his bandaged hand and approached the window he had broken at the back of the library. Temporarily, a plastic bag had been taped over the entire window to stop any drafts from getting in. He stepped closer and saw a blurry outline of the present outside world; everything was as it should be. His one and only source to see into the future had been destroyed by him. He was not naïve enough to believe that destroying the window had changed anything, but that was why he was going to make an effort now to do just that. He still had the rest of summer to make something happen.
While walking through the courtyard on his way out, he stopped in his tracks when someone from behind called his name. He turned and saw Takeuchi approach him with a bouquet of yellow roses. “You’re delivering them today?” he asked.
“I already did,” she said. “These are for you. From Aiba.” She offered the bouquet for him to take. Nino gaped at the roses, but instinctively stretched out his arm. Takeuchi dumped them in his arms. “You guys are strange,” she commented. To Nino’s surprise, she smiled. “Not that I find anything wrong with a type friendship like this. Aiba’s a sweet boy. He almost cried when I told him the meaning of the yellow rose. Of course, he paid for these since I wasn’t going to rip out my entire garden for you.”
Nino grinned down at her. He tucked the bouquet under one arm and offered her his uninjured hand for her to take. She eyed him curiously, but took his hand. He shook vigorously. “Take good care of my friend, sempai. If possible I’d like to see the day you get married.”
Takeuchi looked at him strangely, but Nino left without an explanation, still grinning with his roses unceremoniously tucked under his arm.
Pairing/Focus: AibaxNino friendship
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: suicide, supernatural
Summary: Nino is an average high school student with an attitude and an inborn stubbornness, whose potential future is quickly spiraling into descent. Will witnessing a horrible accident force him to try to change his fate?
Notes: I actually don’t know much about Japanese schools or the system, so take everything with a grain of salt.
For: __sine written for the ninoexchange
Beta: Thanks, C!
* * *
Aiba and Nino met after the final bell in the hallway outside the cafeteria and joined the crowd vying to see the rankings board. They pushed and shoved their way into the mass of students until they settled somewhere near the front where they could clearly see their names at the bottom of the list.
Aiba’s sudden cackle drowned out the chatter and pound of feet of the students around them. “You’re no better than me,” he triumphantly declared to Nino.
Nino expressed his annoyance with a hiss and pushed his way out of the crowd. Aiba followed until they stopped at a section of the hallway clear of struggling students. “This sucks. I can’t believe I’ll be wasting my precious summer taking supplementary lessons with you.”
“Like you had plans to do anything,” Aiba scoffed and brushed his comment aside. Unaffected by Nino’s frustration, he moved the conversation along and asked, “Are you waiting for me today?”
Nino felt another sting of irritation at Aiba’s smug acceptance of their rankings, but he addressed his friend’s question anyway. “I’ll be in the library.”
“Again? You don’t even study,” Aiba said. “I don’t understand why you’re wasting so much time there.” Muttering to himself, he pulled his school bag around his shoulder and went on his way.
“It’s much better than your boring practice!” Nino shouted at his back. Down the hall, Aiba turned his upper body and waved at him as if he hadn’t heard the intended insult. Nino sneered at the departing gesture, but as soon as Aiba disappeared from his sight his expression fell into an imperceptible frown. Disappointment curdled inside of him, but he told himself that he shouldn’t have been so surprised; his grades had been steadily declining since he entered high school. In any case, his homeroom teacher had taken him aside just a few weeks ago for some counseling, all in vain. He lacked focus, a drive to succeed and concern for anything beyond the present; issues that could only be changed on a personal level, and truthfully he did not know how to go about fixing his problems when he could not muster the determination to change.
Releasing a deep breath, Nino threw a last glance at the already thinning crowd in front of the rankings board before heading to his destination.
*
In the school library on the third floor, Nino went to the back. He chose the last table near the windows and sat down to wait for Aiba. Aside from the one student assistant behind the front desk, the library was empty. Exams having ended and with summer break so near, most students consequently put aside their studies to enjoy the weather. Nino preferred the solitude that the situation presented. He eased into the most comfortable position possible in his hard wooden chair and stared outside the adjacent window. Down below in the school backyard, students from the gardening club tended to the roses they had planted in the spring. The deep red of the petals and vibrant green bushes against the backdrop of the dusty school grounds presented a jarring picture.
Nino’s interest, however, was not on the flowers, but the students doing the work. He singled out a person from the group below and gave her his sole attention. The girl, an upperclassman by the name of Takeuchi Yuko, captivated him ever since he first saw her during opening ceremony. He likened her to the roses she cultivated; among her peers, her beauty and air of maturity stood out. He enjoyed watching her garden; he’d had a rough two weeks not seeing her when extracurricular activities had been temporarily halted for exams. Aiba knew of his attraction to Takeuchi, but by coincidence Nino had found this view from the library and he treasured the secret all by himself.
As he watched, Takeuchi paused in the process of clipping the rose bushes and sat back on her heels. She wiped a hand across her sweaty brow and smiled sweetly. Nino’s own lips curved into a smile. For the brief moment while he watched her, he forgot his present troubles.
*
After practice, Aiba and he walked to an arcade to celebrate the conclusion of exams. They spent their allowance within an hour and trudged home penniless as the sun set at their backs. While they walked together part of the way, Aiba confided in him, revealing depressing news. “Coach said if I don’t bring my grades up by the next midsemester exam, I’ll have to sit out of practice until it gets better. I don’t think that’s even possible.” Sulking, he turned to ask Nino, “You think I need a tutor?”
“Stupid. You have to take the supplementary lessons first,” Nino retorted. “Worry about that later if you still haven’t learned anything.”
To his response Aiba glumly agreed.
Eventually they went their separate ways. Nino reached the building of his apartment after a five minute walk through his neighborhood. He entered their apartment into the kitchen. Shouts erupted from around the corner. It took him but a second to realize that his mother and father were screaming at each other.
“That’s just so like you!” his mother’s voice boomed. “You always have an excuse!”
His father replied in a volume just as loud. “How else am I supposed to get away from you?!”
Nino eased down the hall to his room. In their own room with their door partially closed, his parents did not hear or catch sight of him. He gratefully shut his bedroom door behind him. With the thin wooden barrier and white walls between them, his parents’ shouts were at least decently muffled. Accustomed to their arguments, he jumped onto his bed and looked at the time on his cell phone. Their argument could last hours this time.
*
Nino joined Aiba during the lunch hour break between classes and watched Aiba shoot baskets with peers from his basketball team. He sat on the sideline blessedly alone, his head bopping up and down as he fought off sleep. A cellphone carelessly thrown to the floor right beside him startled him into wakefulness. The offensive senior, whom the phone belonged to, went out to join the players unaware of having disturbed him. Nino yawned and had just decided to find a place to rest for the remainder of the hour when Aiba bounded over to him.
“Let’s go,” Aiba said and pointed his thumb over his shoulder.
Nino grumbled over lost sleeping time. “You’re done playing?”
Aiba shook his head. His voice lowered as he said, “The seniors get very competitive and they’re sore losers. I’d rather not get on their bad side. Besides, sensei told me to meet him in the faculty’s office. I think he’s going to talk about my grades.”
Or give you counseling, Nino thought as he remembered having gone through a similar meeting with his homeroom teacher. He forced his heavy body to move and stood from the hard, polished floor. “Then I’m going to the library,” he said.
“You’re going, Aiba?” another player shouted from the court.
Aiba turned to address his club mate’s question. “Gotta meet my teacher. It’s now or later.”
“But you really sure about that tutoring thing?”
Surprised by the question, Nino threw Aiba a look of incredulity.
His head turned, Aiba did not catch Nino’s expression. “Yes!” he returned.
“Alright,” the boy said. “I’ll tell you if I find somebody. See you later.” He waved to Aiba then Nino, both of whom returned his gesture.
Out in the hall minutes later, Nino asked, “You’re really getting a tutor?”
Aiba shrugged. “If you want, you can join me.”
“You’re crazy,” Nino replied with a shake of his head. “You’ll never get me to voluntary attend something like that.”
Aiba sighed and distractedly scratched his head. “I don’t get you, Nino. If you’ve got a problem, why don’t you try to fix it?”
Nino thought of his parents. Most of their arguments stemmed from their personal frustrations and usually escalated for no reason at all. Despite their constant screaming at each other, and sometimes an effort from both sides to compromise, nothing stayed resolved. To Aiba’s question, he blurted out more forcefully than intended, “Geez, you’re so naïve. Life’s not that easy, you know. Not everything can be fixed.”
*
After school, he went to the library again. To his disappointment, steady rain fell outside, forcing the gardening students inside. Just moments before when he had walked down the halls the weather outside the line of windows had been sunny and cheerful. This sudden downpour irritated him, especially since the sky outside had turned a gloomy, ugly gray that further negated his mood. He pulled out his phone to waste away the remaining waiting time with a game when a large streak of black whisked passed the window. The whistle of the wind as it went down drew his attention. The sound of a soft collision followed. Curious, Nino cautiously stood by the window and stared out. He saw a broken body sprawled out beside the very rose bushes that Takeuchi had tended lovingly. Blood seeped from the body, washed away by the rain. Horrified, he choked on his screams and moved back from the glass. His legs met his discarded chair and he clumsily fell over the wooden furniture.
At the front desk, the student assistant looked up from her book at the commotion and saw him awkwardly positioned on the floor over his fallen chair. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Muffled screams erupted from outside and Nino knew other students had discovered the body. “Someone jumped off the roof,” he whispered in answer.
The student assistant either couldn’t hear him or thought him a liar. “Someone did what?”
Nino shook his head because he couldn’t force himself to speak again. He pointed outside the window where he still heard panicked shouts and screams. As the student assistant approached to confirm his statement, Nino peered outside again. Through the rain that pelted the window, he saw the body still sprawled on the ground; unmoving, lifeless and the face turned on its side forever expressionless. Nino couldn’t help but look closely and see the deadened eyes of the fallen. He recognized the person. His knees buckled and he convulsed on all fours.
“What’s wrong with you?” the student assistant demanded, taking a step from him and giving him a hard look.
“The body,” Nino gasped.
“What body?” The assistant peered outside. “The gardening students are watering the roses. That’s all.”
Nino reigned in his nausea and forced himself back to his feet. He looked out. He saw the skies outside the window as clear as could be, streaked with wistful, white clouds. The gardening students, Takeuchi included, were carefully watering the roses. He gaped because he knew what he saw. He had seen himself on the ground, very much dead.
“You were hallucinating,” the assistant muttered and walked back to her desk.
*
“What’s wrong?” Aiba asked as they exited the school grounds.
Brooding over his nightmarish vision in the library just hours earlier, Nino shuddered. “I had a bad dream.”
“What’s it about?”
“I died.”
“Well, that sucks.”
Nino shuddered, again. He couldn’t dispel the image of his own lifeless expression from his memory. “It seemed so real, almost as if it had happened.”
“Then it’s a good thing it was only a dream,” Aiba consoled him.
Dream or not, the vision had shaken Nino’s nerves. He declined an evening out with Aiba and went straight to bed upon reaching his home. His mother knocked on his door and told him to come out for dinner, but he ignored her. Instead of cursing him as she would his father, who wasn’t home anyway, she accepted his refusal quietly unlike her usual self. When Nino closed his eyes in hopes of escaping his vision through sleep, the image of death visited him again. He knew this night would be as miserable as the last.
*
The closing ceremony of the semester took place early in the morning before classes. While dozing off on his feet in line, Nino received a message from Aiba asking if he had accidently taken someone’s phone from the gym the other day. No, he had not. Peeved by the accusation, he gave the reply.
At dismissal as students headed to their classes, Aiba met him in the hall and hastily pulled him aside. He whispered, his face full of concern, “Did you really not see it? Sempai is very angry because it was a new phone. He thinks you’re lying.”
“What the heck,” Nino grumbled, too tired from a sleepless night to care about someone else’s problem. “I didn’t take it.”
Aiba nodded, believing him completely. “No one came in after we left and none of the other guys took it either. I think you should try to avoid the seniors and go straight home after school.”
“Like hell I will.” Nino stepped out of Aiba’s shadow. “It’ll be even more suspicious if I avoid them. I didn’t steal anything and I’m not going to act like a frightened culprit.”
“That sempai’s ruthless, Nino,” Aiba tried to persuade him.
“Of course he is,” Nino retorted sarcastically and walked away from him. “I’m going to the library.”
*
Yellow security tape sectioned off the area around the space the body had been, enclosing most of the rose bushes also. From the third floor window of the library, Nino saw the etched white outline of the body where it had fallen. Shivers overtook him again. He told himself he was having another nightmare. Yet, he was very much awake. A handful of men in uniform loitered in the area. Two men in colored suits, much closer to the building than the rest, were in deep conversation with each other. Nino pressed his ear against the glass, hoping he’d catch a bit of their conversation.
“The victim was a freshman,” one of the detectives said. “I spoke to his homeroom teacher. Apparently, he had a few troubles at school.”
“Bullying?”
“Not necessarily. A few fights with the seniors. More importantly though, he’d been struggling with failing grades.”
“You can’t rule this case as suicide from just that.”
“Well, the homeroom teacher heard from the victim’s best friend that his parents were contemplating divorce. The father’s been living separately from the family for a few months.”
“Trouble at school and home.” The second detective sighed. “Got an address?”
“The mother’s, yes. Ninomiya Kazuko lives in an apartment near here.”
Nino jumped back from the glass. His heart thumped against his chest so loudly he could hear the beats in his head. This was crazy; he had gone crazy. None of this was real. His eyes shifted to the distance. In the scene that reeked of death, he noticed that the line of trees in the background was almost stripped of color; that on the ground were strewn multi-colored leaves. He realized that the autumn season of his freshman year had yet to come.
*
Nino sat in the very spot where the body, his body, had been. Cross-legged, he stared blankly at the beautiful rose bushes in bloom. In this garden, in some dream, he had jumped off the school roof. But presently everything was unchanged. He was afraid to tell Aiba, the one and only person he ever told anything, that he was seeing some sort of alternate reality. He couldn’t believe that he’d do something as ghastly as kill himself.
“Do you like the roses?”
Nino turned his head and saw Takeuchi beside him carrying her gardening toolkit. All thoughts and feelings of melancholy fled. He scrambled to his feet, suddenly nervous. Never had he dreamed of speaking to his ideal girl. Yet here she was right in front of him. Answering her truthfully, he gave a vigorous nod.
She graced him with one of her sweet smiles. “Would you like to take one?”
He did a double take and responded with an illiterate, “Huh?”
“The blooms will wither in a few weeks anyway. It makes no difference if we lose one or two roses early. Would you like one?” she asked again.
Nino froze with no answer on his tongue. He didn’t need a rose, but he couldn’t blatantly reject her offer.
“You could give it to your mother or your girlfriend,” Takeuchi suggested. She went to the nearest rose bush and clipped a rose for him. She handled the flower gently as she offered it for him to take.
Unable to speak but grateful for her gift, Nino took it.
“We’re glad students like you can admire our work after all the effort we put into growing these,” she said. “I hope you continue to support the gardening club.”
Charmed into silence, Nino nodded again and watched her leave the garden.
*
Pleased with Takeuchi’s gift, he enjoyed a silent dinner with just his mother and him. His attention elsewhere, he replayed his meeting with Takeuchi over in his head. His only regret was that he hadn’t denied having a girlfriend. The only girl he liked, after all, was her. Nothing around him registered until he went to bed and heard whispering in the hall. He sneaked a peek outside his door to observe the cause of the noise and saw his father make his way out with a suitcase. His mother watched his back silently, her arms crossed and her posture grave. The door snapped closed behind his father with a sense of finality. Nino fell from grace back to reality. He realized that his father would not return for the night, or anytime soon for that matter.
“Mom?” he called out into the silence.
She started at his voice and turned around. Her sunken eyes, filled with remorse and regret, looked him over and knew that he had figured the situation out.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Your dad and I need some time apart.”
What about him? Why didn’t they tell him earlier? Nino wanted to ask the questions but couldn’t. Instead, he slammed shut the door to his bedroom, effectively shutting his mother out.
*
He entered the library as soon as it opened an hour before the start of supplementary lessons. Even from afar, he saw outside the window that most of the trees were now completely bare, prepared for the cold season. He saw students, dressed in their winter uniform, circle around and depart for home or their after school activities. The yellow security tape and white outline of his shape was no longer there on the ground. If he was seeing the future and if he was dead and these people and the world was going on just fine without him, then he thought he didn’t care enough about the world in the first place. He pulled back a fist to smash the window in, but hesitated and finally lost the strength to act. He stormed out of the library and decided that he’d never return. Damned was his life for following the events in his vision, but as long as he knew about his fate, he could go against it.
*
Nino lost his opportunity to change his falling out with a group of seniors, as relayed by the detectives in his vision. He stood no chance against his upperclassmen. As soon as the bell for the end of lessons rang, the seniors had the doors to his classroom covered. He recognized the gang leader as a senior from the basketball team; the very one Aiba had warned him about. They singled him out among his peers and beckoned for him to follow. Supplementary lessons for students in the same grade were taken together in the same room under one instructor, thus Nino sought for help from Aiba who had been on his heels, but his friend was suddenly nowhere to be found.
In the school’s backyard, just a few paces from the rose bushes, Nino was accused of theft, thoroughly searched and beaten. They left his face and the visible parts of him untouched. His bruised body was discarded where it was. Aching all over, Nino couldn’t force himself to rise. He spent the rest of his afternoon outside until he summoned the energy to call Aiba for assistance. Aiba followed his instructions to the backyard and saw him from afar. He approached Nino at a run. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he murmured, appalled as he helped Nino upright. “I met with my tutor immediately afterwards and-”
“Shut up,” Nino hissed from behind clenched teeth. “Just get me home.”
Aiba skipped extracurricular activities and helped Nino back to his apartment. To their relief, his mother had left a note for him and gone out. They fixed him up as much as they could by cleaning his cuts and placing cold patches on his sores and bruises. As Aiba searched the kitchen for something to eat, Nino read his mother’s note. She had gone to meet a marriage counselor her sister had recommended and did not know when she would return; he was in charge of his own dinner.
Aiba came back up the stairs with a box of cereal and a container of milk. “What’ll your mother think when she comes back?”
“I’ll probably be asleep by then,” Nino muttered. In explanation, he handed Aiba the note. While his friend read it over, he said, “My dad left yesterday. They’ve decided to live apart for now.”
“Sucks,” was Aiba’s only reply, which did not effectively relay the sympathy he felt, but which Nino could clearly read in his expression.
*
All over again, Nino found himself back in that same garden with his back against the wall and anything worth a little filched from him. The seniors left him in the same spot, laughing and joking as if they were just innocently passing through. Nino spat at the ground when they were gone. He couldn’t believe that Aiba was still a part of the basketball team, playing a team sport with bastards like them.
To avoid the seniors and express his disappointment with his friend, he left the school grounds immediately after his next lesson and spent an hour roaming the streets outside places he and other students often frequented. He headed home only as the sun began to set. Again, he found himself home alone in charge of finding his own dinner.
Takeuchi’s gift to him, the rose of which he had treasured and kept in a cup full of water on his desk, had started to turn dirt brown and shrivel. In his eyes, the most beautiful thing around him was dying. Suddenly, life for him had become stale.
*
The week long supplementary lessons concluded that morning. Students who had to attend took written tests, received their test grades, and dispersed. The same bullies came searching for Nino again and he just barely managed to escape by finishing early. He ended up in the library knowing full well that the seniors would have thought he was on his way home. No other students occupied the space in the library, preferring to enjoy the perfect weather outside. Lulled by the peace and silence, he went to the last table at the back and stood by the window. Light snow fell outside. The skies were a dead, uninviting gray. He couldn’t tell what time of day it was in this vision.
A boy sat on the ground by the dead rose bushes, his back turned to the window. Nino thought he recognized the boy from his back, but he couldn’t be sure because the boy wore a knitted hat. As he watched safely tucked away in the present, wondering what his vision was showing him, a girl he did recognize ran over to the boy. She was none other than Takeuchi. Nino pressed closer to the window until his nose touched the glass. He saw Takeuchi crouch down to the boy’s level. She wrapped her arms around him and whispered words into his ear that Nino couldn’t hear. Their sweet embrace jarred Nino and his gut wrenched at the knowledge that this was the future without him.
By coincidence, the fortunate boy turned in Takeuchi’s arm. Shock replaced Nino’s jealousy as he confirmed his earlier guess; the boy was his best friend, Aiba. Aiba threw an indifferent glance up and froze at what he caught sight of. Swiftly, he disengaged himself from Takeuchi’s embrace and stood facing the building. His head tilted back and his gaze settled on the third floor window, on Nino. Nino and Aiba’s eyes met across the distance. A shiver passed through Nino. Could Aiba see him? It wasn’t possible.
“Nino?” Aiba asked.
Takeuchi looked in the direction of his gaze and stared passed Nino. “There’s no one at the window.”
Yet, Aiba continued to look straight at him. Nino’s pulse raced and he drew in heavy breaths. It couldn’t be true. The Aiba outside the window was not the real Aiba. He sucked in a deep breath and stepped back from the window until he was hidden from view. He could still see the flurry of gentle snowflakes fall against the gray sky, but both Aiba and Takeuchi were no longer in his line of sight. He heard Aiba scream. “Nino! Nino, where’d you go?!”
“Aiba, don’t do this!” Takeuchi pleaded over his screams. “He’s gone! Nino is gone!”
Nino crouched under the table and covered his ears just as the Aiba outside burst into blubbering tears.
*
Instead of heading home after his usual walk after lessons, he headed to Aiba’s family apartment. He knew his friend would have been home for some time and sent a text for his friend to meet him in the parking lot. Aiba met him five minutes later and joined him at a curve in the lot. They sat on the curb while their legs dangled over the edge and rested on the pavement. Aiba eased them into comfortable conversation and they passed meaningless minutes with talk while enjoying the cool, scented summer night after a sweltering hot day. Eventually, Nino steered the conversation in a different direction and addressed the main reason for his visit.
“Aiba,” he started gravely, “do you like Takeuchi?”
Aiba shut his mouth abruptly at the blunt question. Nino knew his friend could not lie and he saw a range of emotions cross Aiba’s face. He guessed his friend’s answer without the verbal confirmation and his expression hardened, his lips thinning in his anger. Aiba saw the hard look in Nino’s eyes and knew he had been figured out.
“I told you I like her,” Nino said, unable to keep a harsh edge from his tone. “Why didn’t you tell me you do, too?”
Aiba hunched his shoulders and removed his gaze to the cold ground in shame. “I’m sorry.”
Nino pursued his response aggressively. “Sorry? Sorry for what?”
“Sorry,” Aiba repeated.
“Dammit! What are you sorry for?” Nino gripped Aiba’s collar and turned him around so they faced each other. Aiba turned his gaze down.
Nino glowered at him, hating his innocent passivity. “You never intended to tell me.”
Aiba shook his head.
Nino shoved Aiba from him. All he needed, really wanted, was the truth; and yet his supposed-to-be one-and-only true friend refused to face him properly. Somehow, some way, Aiba and not Nino had won Takeuchi’s affection. He felt even angrier that someone as weak as his friend, someone who could not even state the truth, would live with everything he would lose. He stood and glared down at Aiba. “Why must it be you?” he asked the question that Aiba had no understanding of. Then he turned on his heels and stormed away.
*
He raged at home in his bedroom for a few days. He skipped meals and only made necessary trips to the bathroom. Every night, his mother checked in on him to make sure he was present and alive, but unaware of his neglect she left him alone and spent the majority of her time packing away his father’s belongings or going out to meetings. Curled up in his sheets, Nino wondered why he had to die. Even while he turned the question over in his mind, he felt fed up with his life.
Aiba neither stopped by nor called. Nino questioned the differences between himself and his friend; what made Aiba so special?
Eventually, his mother kicked up a fuss about his laziness and him not giving her a helping hand around the apartment. In the aftermath, she cried and cursed him for following in his father’s footsteps of burdening her. Made uncomfortable by her tears, Nino dragged himself out of bed the next morning, dressed in some crumpled clothing lying around his room, and took off. He thought about roaming the city, but realized he had no place in mind and glumly turned his steps towards school.
*
Despite his determination to avoid Aiba, he couldn’t stop himself from peeking into the gym where the basketball team held practices. He secretly hoped for one glimpse of Aiba in order to find a reason to ridicule his friend. He searched for Aiba among the players, going from face to face on the court than those on the bench and then the others roaming or training on the sideline. Unease gradually overtook him as he realized Aiba was not among the players. Only at that moment did he understand how important it was to him that Aiba was always around.
Although he went through the trouble of hiding himself, one of Aiba’s teammates sighted and recognized him and called out his name in greeting. Nino froze up in fear and his eyes quickly scanned the players again. He was relieved to find the bullying senior missing from practice; not surprisingly, since Aiba had previously painted a picture of his upperclassman as a rude and selfish player whose only merits were his skills. Nino was sure someone like that skipped practices on a whim. Releasing a breath, he stepped out from behind the door and returned the greeting. “Where’s Aiba?” he asked.
The player expressed surprise at his ignorantly asked question. “He’s suspended.”
In turn, Nino felt surprised. “Why?”
The boy scratched his neck, unhappy to recount the situation. “He got into a fight with an upperclassman. Arrogant asshole, that guy. I meant the sempai. He was bragging about his new phone and Aiba went off on him. Said something about lying. First time I saw Aiba like that. Coach suspended both of them for fighting.”
Understanding dawned on Nino. He knew why someone as sweet-natured as Aiba lost his temper. His friend’s defense of him opened a flood-gate full of guilt and shame. He confessed, “I haven’t spoken to Aiba for a few days.”
“He’s probably sulking,” the boy said. “But well, Aiba’s not the sort to feel down anyway. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. If he’s got a problem, he’ll figure out a way to fix it.”
Nino felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. He remembered Aiba making a similar statement just a few weeks ago. If Aiba was someone who tried his best to fix his problems, then what did that make him? He answered his own question immediately: he couldn’t remember ever putting in effort to do anything.
“The seniors are retiring from the club anyway,” the boy went on. “There won’t be a problem once Aiba returns.”
“I’m glad,” Nino said. Before he left, he asked Aiba’s teammate one last question. “Did you introduce Aiba to his tutor?”
Uncertain why he asked, the boy replied truthfully, “It’s not like I personally knew her. I connected them through a friend. I was told she was patient and kind. I just thought someone like Aiba could benefit from that sort of person.”
Nino nodded his agreement wholeheartedly. “Yeah. He needs someone like that.”
*
The world outside the library window was white. Snow covered a majority of the school yard and created a blanket over the dead rose bushes. Aiba and Takeuchi stood facing the window. Nino watched as Aiba took Takeuchi’s hand and blew warm breath over her cold skin. She graced him with a sweet smile. Nino’s gut wrenched again, but this time he couldn’t tell if it was because of Takeuchi or Aiba, or the heartwarming scene before him of two people who cared about one another. Aiba’s eyes moved to the window where Nino stood watching and again their eyes met. Nino realized with a start that they stood in the snow because they were waiting for him.
“Nino!” the Aiba outside screamed and took a step towards the building.
Nino saw Takeuchi look anxiously at where he stood at the window and yet she was unable to see him. At that moment, he knew with a certainty that only the Aiba in the future could see him in their past.
“Nino!” Aiba screamed again, with no clear reason why he was shouting Nino’s name. His shouts became desperate chants.
Nino bowed his head and stepped away from the window out of Aiba’s sight.
*
He purposely approached Takeuchi this time as she pruned the roses along with another member from the gardening club. She smiled at his sudden appearance and greeted him warmly, but did not stand from her crouch or pause in her task. Nino stood a foot from her and gestured to the rose bushes. He asked, “How long until the roses die?”
“Not long now,” she answered. “They only last a few weeks. Then we’ll have to cultivate them again. It’s a repetitive cycle.”
“When will they bloom again?”
“If we’re careful during summer break, they’ll come around the time the new semester starts,” she answered.
He watched as she carefully clipped the rose bushes. She kept her hands steady despite his stare and allowed silence to fall between them as she worked. Nino crouched down beside her and treasured the calm and sweet scented atmosphere around them as he watched her. Although it pained him to admit it, he thought her steadiness would do Aiba a lot of good. He broke the comfortable silence by asking the question that had brought him there. “Sempai, I have a friend named Aiba Masaki. Do you know him?”
For the first time, Takeuchi’s hands paused. She replied, “You are his friend?”
Her response confirmed Nino’s guess. “You know him,” he stated as a matter of fact.
“I tutor him twice a week,” Takeuchi confessed. Then she grinned at Nino. “He’s an eager learner. I can’t believe he’s been struggling.”
“He’s an idiot,” Nino said.
Takeuchi threw him a sharp glance and realized he’d declared the term affectionately with no intended insult. She settled back on her heels and gave him a thorough look-over, suddenly wary of him. “Why’d you ask if I knew him?” she asked. “If you’re his friend, wouldn’t he have told you he’s receiving help?”
“It’s his secret,” Nino explained simply. “Sempai, would it possible for you to get me another rose?”
His abrupt request startled her, but Takeuchi nodded. She reached to clip one for him, but he stopped her.
“I know it’s really too much to ask, but could you give it to Aiba?” he asked. “You see him twice a week.”
Takeuchi scoffed, Nino’s friendship with Aiba was becoming more suspicious to her the more he spoke. She said as if scolding a child, “Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you two with all this secrecy, and it’s none of my business, but I’m not obligated to do anything. Aiba pays me to tutor him and nothing more.” She huffed, then continued more gently than before, “But since I’m such a kind person, and it’s not like I’m going out of my way anyway, I’m willing to oblige your request as long as it won’t put me in some sort of pickle.”
“It won’t.” Nino shrugged as if the outcome did not matter to him. “I just thought it’d be a nice surprise for Aiba since he’d appreciate it, but how weird would it be if a guy gave roses to another guy?”
Takeuchi snorted at his pitiful excuse. “You still have a lot to learn about flowers. It’s probably not a red rose you’d want to give Aiba. Lucky you, I’m growing different colored roses at home. If you really want, I’ll deliver a yellow rose for you.”
“What’s the difference? Why does the color matter?” Again, Nino shrugged.
“It matters,” Takeuchi assured him. “Yellow roses are given between friends. It means friendship. If I give him that, you won’t have a need to feel awkward.”
Nino contemplated the offer. The rose had been his idea of forgiveness, and he had hoped Aiba would recognize the implication of him getting Takeuchi to deliver it. He didn’t really think the color of the rose mattered in this situation, but Takeuchi thought nothing of going through the extra trouble so he decided he’d graciously accept her kindness. To her, his head bopped up and down in a bow. “Thank you, sempai.”
*
He just might have come to terms with the fact that the world would go on as usual without him. As the sun set, he went to the library for one last look outside the window; firmly, he believed this would definitely be the last time he came here. After today, he had no need to see a future without himself. He expected Aiba to stand outside in the yard waiting for him, but as soon as he entered the library and looked to the window at the back what he saw instead shocked him. Outside, Aiba stood dangerously on the snow-covered ledge. His hands and most of his body were pressed against the glass of the window, but he teetered capriciously on the edge. Aiba sighted Nino and forgot for a moment that he was on verge of falling. “Nino!” he shouted desperately.
Nino ran to the window and pulled himself up until their faces were leveled. He spoke in a hiss to not draw the attention of the student assistant from the front desk. “Idiot! What the heck are you doing? Get down!”
“It’s really you,” Aiba said and sighed. “I knew it was you.”
“Get down!” Nino demanded again.
Aiba went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. His breath misted on the glass. “I ran to the library, but you were never there. I knew this was the only way to see and speak to you.”
The lengths he would go to astounded Nino and at the same time caused a deep wrenching agony in his gut. He feared for Aiba’s safety. He knew the snow-covered ledge was slippery. Aiba’s grasp on the window was so tight, his knuckles had turned white. Any moment now, his fingers would lose its strength or his feet would slip. The cold on the other side that numbed him to the bone did nothing to help.
Nino heaved a deep breath. There was nothing he could do but force the blasphemous words out of his mouth. “Aiba, I’m dead. You’re talking to a vision.” He saw mist form in Aiba’s eyes and denial on his face, but he forced himself to continue. “Don’t come here anymore. I’m not really here.”
Aiba shook his head and choked out, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, Nino, until I saw from inside. You used to watch Takeuchi from here, didn’t you? You liked her that much. Even though you said you’d move on, you still liked her. But you only thought about me.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Nino told him, and truthfully it didn’t because to him his best friend was worth much more. To his dismay, Aiba burst into tears.
“Then why’d you jump? Why’d you leave? What hurt you so badly, Nino? You should’ve told me.” Aiba’s expression contorted as he sobbed uncontrollably. He turned his head and pressed his tear-stained cheek against the glass. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop you.”
Aiba’s anguish and the wet patch he left on the glass gradually affected Nino’s nerves as well. He couldn’t just laugh it off. “I don’t know,” he answered, unwillingly feeling sobs rise in his throat also. Why did he jump?
Aiba continued to bawl while clinging on to the ledge. Crushed by his tears, Nino stood struck in place. Finally, he saw that Aiba’s grip was loosening. He swiped his arm across his eyes and resolved to get his friend to safety. “Aiba, I promise you I won’t do something like that. Ever.” Sniveling, Aiba shook his head in disbelief and Nino knew the Aiba outside would never believe him. In the future, it had already happened. To this Aiba, he hadn’t kept his promise. “I promise,” Nino repeated. “I’ll never jump. We’ll be best friends forever, okay? I’ll be with you until we die at a very old age.” To his relief, Aiba nodded. “So get down. It’s dangerous. Please.”
Aiba’s fingers slipped from its hold. For what seemed like seconds, he veered back from the window; then began his descent down. Nino shrieked. Instinctively, he swung his fist at the glass with all his might once and then again. The vision and glass shattered as one just before Aiba reached the ground. Nino fell to his knees on the floor in utter shock. Numbness from his left hand spread to his entire body.
The student assistant rushed over screamed when she saw the cuts on his bloodied hand.
*
His mother raged and cursed at him when he arrived home with his left hand wrapped in a bandage. He couldn’t even step pass the kitchen before her anger burst. “Your father and I do everything for you!” she bellowed. “All we ask is for you to get good grades and stay out of trouble. You know I’m going through a tough time right now. But you go and do something like this. Where will we find the money to fix that window? Do you even work? No! I pay for your tuition. I feed and clothe you. And yet this is how you act. Do you want to send me to my grave early?”
It was nothing Nino hadn’t heard before, and he would’ve kept his silence if this was just another one of his mother’s bad days, but her last remark along with what he had gone through ignited his fuse at last. It was unfair to him that his parents had decided on their own, without any concern for him, to live separately. It was unfair that his mother constantly unleashed her frustrations on him. He knew that she was going through a rough time. He never once complained about his frequent cold dinners or the emptiness of their apartment since his father’s departure. But just once, he wanted her to accept him and his problems unconditionally. Unhinging all of his pent up emotions, he threw back at his mother, “If I die, will you be happy then? You won’t have to worry about a burden like me.”
His mother scowled. “You keep your mouth shut, you brat.”
“I mean it,” Nino said, too furious to calm down. “I’m going to die, mom. I’m going to die before you and leave you all alone. That’s what you deserve.”
His mother slapped him. The sound of bone against skin resonated throughout their apartment. For a moment, both of them could not believe what had happened. Nino glared at his mother. He turned on his heels and stormed into his room. He snatched a bag, stuffed a few clothes and utensils into the bag then stormed down the hall passed his mother to the front door.
“Kazunari, where are you going?” his mother asked more than demanded, her trembling voice expressing her fear of being left alone.
Just as his father had left his family with just one suitcase, Nino uncaringly left his mother with just his one bag slung over his shoulder. He stepped into the cool night air and dived into the illuminated darkness.
*
His mother called him, but he ignored her calls. An hour after her calls stopped, Aiba called him. Nino knew she had enlisted the help of his friend. After days of avoiding him, it seemed Aiba had courageously decided to breach the divide that had developed between them. He ignored their calls for another half an hour and finally picked up on Aiba’s tenth call.
“Nino, is that you?” Aiba asked warily over the phone.
“What do you want?” Nino curtly replied.
“Your mother had a meltdown in our kitchen,” Aiba ventured to tell him. “She was a wreck. Your father came to get her.” His volume quieted as he murmured, “I heard you threatened to kill yourself.”
He hadn’t gone that far, but Nino thought that maybe hysterical parents were prone to exaggeration.
“Where are you?” Aiba asked.
“If I tell you, you’d just tell my parents.”
“I won’t,” Aiba promised.
“I’m on the school roof,” Nino said. “I’m thinking about jumping off.” He heard scrambling and knew his friend was rushing to his side. Even then, he said into the phone, “You’re coming, aren’t you?”
*
Nino stared over the edge. He was four floors above the ground. The rose bushes were somewhere below him, but he couldn’t see them in the darkness. The lone lamp in the school’s backyard did not lend enough light for him to make them out. He’d only ever seen the garden from the third floor window of the library. He wondered what the view would look like in the daylight. He wondered why the him in the future dared to jump.
“Nino!”
Nino turned and saw Aiba run to the center of the rooftop and pause. Aiba stiffened and his arms froze in midair. His voice quavered as he pleaded, “Nino, don’t jump!”
“Don’t speak so loud, Aiba,” Nino reprimanded him lightly. “There are still security guards around here.”
Aiba lowered the volume of his voice, but continued to beg, “Nino, come back here.”
Nino sighed and stepped back from the edge. “I was not going to jump. I’m not that stupid.” He moved to Aiba’s side. His friend checked him over for any signs of injury. When he found none aside from the swollen pink bulge of Nino’s cheek, he fell to the ground in unrestrained relief. Nino dropped to the ground beside him and lay on his back to appreciate the starry night sky. “I scared you, didn’t I?”
Aiba pounded his chest with a fist to calm his racing heart. “Don’t do something like that again. I almost had a meltdown, too.”
Nino remembered the as of yet nonexistent Aiba who had climbed to the third floor and cried outside a window. He knew his friend was capable of such a thing. “What would you have done if I really jumped?”
Aiba dropped on his back beside Nino and shared the same view of the star studded sky. “Don’t joke about something like that,” he said.
Nino was relentless in his pursuit of an answer. “But what if I told you that at the end of summer, I will die? It’s written in the stars.”
Aiba sighed. “I’m not going to answer you anymore if you continue. I don’t believe any of it. The stars don’t have the power to determine something like that.”
Nino uttered his own sigh at Aiba’s stubborn attitude, but he appreciated the strength of his friend’s positivity. “Don’t worry. I made a promise anyway. I’ll live until I’m old and wrinkled and all of my teeth have fallen out. I’m going to keep on living no matter what so that someone important to me doesn’t hurt himself, too.”
Aiba turned to his side and faced Nino’s profile. “Who?”
“That’s none of your business,” Nino retorted. He changed the dreary topic by asking, “Are you going to ask Takeuchi out?”
Aiba jolted into an upright sitting position and turned his face away. He fidgeted for a few seconds before murmuring, “I’m going to stop seeing her.”
Nino figured Takeuchi had yet to deliver his gift of forgiveness to Aiba. “Don’t be stupid,” he said and sat upright also. “I’m rooting for you. Of course I still like her, but one day I’ll forget these feelings. I’m not the one for her. You are.”
“You don’t know that,” Aiba murmured.
“I do,” Nino said with complete conviction. He shoved Aiba’s shoulder playfully with his fist. “No matter what you do, I’ll have to forgive you. You were right, you know. I have never put effort into fixing my own problems. From now on, I’ll just have to try my best.” He grinned. “Next semester, I’m going to be at the top of the student rankings.”
“You wish,” Aiba replied, somewhat relieved at the change in their conversation. He turned to face Nino again. “Are you going home?”
Nino stretched lazily. “I have to. I have to apologize to my mom.”
*
True to his expectations, his mother raged at him when he returned to their apartment a few hours later. His father was also present at her side, trying to calm her down but at the same time agreeing with her. Nino accepted their scolding humbly. He did not fail to take note of the swollenness of his mother and father’s eyes. His father had to return to his own abode and go off to work in a few hours, but he stayed with them until Nino disappeared into his bedroom.
Nino dived into bed, dead tired and content to drift off to sleep, leaving his troubles for the brighter day. Moments later, his mother barged into his room and inadvertently woke him up. She shuffled to his side, roughly applied an ointment to the swell in his cheek then stomped out again; done without a word. Alone again, he settled onto his back, closed his sleepy eyes and chuckled to himself.
*
The student assistant glowered at him, but Nino merely waved at her with his bandaged hand and approached the window he had broken at the back of the library. Temporarily, a plastic bag had been taped over the entire window to stop any drafts from getting in. He stepped closer and saw a blurry outline of the present outside world; everything was as it should be. His one and only source to see into the future had been destroyed by him. He was not naïve enough to believe that destroying the window had changed anything, but that was why he was going to make an effort now to do just that. He still had the rest of summer to make something happen.
While walking through the courtyard on his way out, he stopped in his tracks when someone from behind called his name. He turned and saw Takeuchi approach him with a bouquet of yellow roses. “You’re delivering them today?” he asked.
“I already did,” she said. “These are for you. From Aiba.” She offered the bouquet for him to take. Nino gaped at the roses, but instinctively stretched out his arm. Takeuchi dumped them in his arms. “You guys are strange,” she commented. To Nino’s surprise, she smiled. “Not that I find anything wrong with a type friendship like this. Aiba’s a sweet boy. He almost cried when I told him the meaning of the yellow rose. Of course, he paid for these since I wasn’t going to rip out my entire garden for you.”
Nino grinned down at her. He tucked the bouquet under one arm and offered her his uninjured hand for her to take. She eyed him curiously, but took his hand. He shook vigorously. “Take good care of my friend, sempai. If possible I’d like to see the day you get married.”
Takeuchi looked at him strangely, but Nino left without an explanation, still grinning with his roses unceremoniously tucked under his arm.