FIC: Unfair, SanaYuki, PG-13
angst. still deciding if it's a bit too dark. must edit later.
obieta hitomi wa / ten wo aoi de / sakebu / kami no na wo...
god i love this song.
Unfair
"A waste"...that was what the nurses called him. "What a lovely child...such a waste."
And sometimes, that was exactly how Seiichi felt like.
Perhaps it was a blessing that his family was well off, and that he was the firstborn, the gifted son, the more beloved. They gave him everything he wanted. He was surrounded with toys, he had the latest gadgets, the trendiest clothes, the best books.
Seiichi was grateful...even if he ended up giving nearly everything away for the chance to make friends.
His parents almost scolded him for that. They said that by giving his stuff away, he was "wasting" them. Didn't he appreciate that those things were given to him as gifts?
He didn't really know how to answer. It didn't seem like his parents understood him at all.
His little sister openly resented him for always getting more gifts, always doing better than herself at everything, always getting praised. Once she got so angry that she said he should just stay sick and live in the hospital forever. She ran off leaving him feeling like maybe, that was really what he should do.
He left his favorite stuffed penguin in front of the door to her room on the night she told him that. It was still there when he woke up in the morning. At the end of the day, his mother took the stuffed penguin back into his room.
It never made sense that his sister could hate him so. He figured: if he gave away things, other children would act kindly toward him. It seemed to work that way in school...
And he had many friends in school -- or at least he liked to think so. His parents and doctors forbade him to join in the games and playful roughhousing, and it felt like the other children, especially the boys, existed in another world that was closed off to him.
For a fleeting moment he would have other children crowd around him and fuss over his new plaything. Then in a rush of affection, he would give that plaything away, and the children and the noise and the laughter would vanish.
The girls simply stayed away, whispered among themselves while stealing sidelong glances. They wouldn't accept his gifts. The more honest of them said they didn't want to "catch" what he was "carrying." He fell silent every time he heard that, then very politely tried to explain that his disease wasn't infectious. They never believed him.
Other children's laughter came to him at night, when he lay alone in bed, at home or in the hospital. He tried to imagine that one of them was his own.
When he was in sixth grade he underwent a major operation to remove a large cyst embedded in his little body. The operation was successful, but the doctors didn't seem pleased. He heard his parents talking late at night, heard them crying, and knew what not to expect of himself.
He'd had to miss school for three weeks because of that operation. And he'd come back to find that a lot of the other children had forgotten all about him. Even the boys to whom he had given away his most expensive things.
On the night of his first day back in school, he lay in his room sleepless. Once again the sounds of laughter and play entered his ears and wouldn't leave, hurting worse than the medicine. Tears started to stream down his cheeks.
It wasn't fair.
*********************
Things didn't get any better when he graduated from elementary school. True, he managed to get into an exclusive middle school, Rikkai Dai Fuzoku Chuu...
But afterwards, he made it a point to simply stay away from other people. He wasn't going through primary school all over again.
He had undergone around two major operations in his young life; he felt broken inside. No matter how other people perceived him, he saw himself as a mess of drugs and stitches, patches and strings. He was ugly. He was a waste.
...Though none of it mattered. He'd resigned himself to lasting only so long.
Three years: his physicians, the best in the country, had said. Three years, if he's lucky.
He met Sanada Genichirou when he had long given up on the concept of "fair."
He was passing through the Rikkaidai tennis courts when he saw this middle school freshman, around his age, playing an intense, harrowing match with a high school senior. The freshman was wearing a baseball cap. Seiichi couldn't see his eyes.
But the freshman drew him. The easy grace and unshakable confidence this freshman displayed made him stop on his tracks. Made him walk up to the mesh wall and curl delicate fingers around a diamond of wire.
*********************
The next day, Seiichi signed up for the tennis club. It was the single bravest thing he had ever done in his life. His right hand was shaking slightly as he put down the pen.
He managed to avoid actually playing for a while. Freshmen were restricted mostly to swing training and cleanup. Swing training was all right, but since his body was unused to physical exertion, he had to do a little more practicing at home (in secret, of course) just to get used to the labor.
Seiichi was amazed that his habitual pushing of his body's limits hadn't yet landed him back in the hospital. But he wasn't about to complain, or give up.
The freshman with the baseball cap, whose name was Sanada Genichirou, diligently picked up tennis balls with the other freshmen, rode along with basic stamina training without grievance. Seiichi wondered where the spark that he had seen earlier had gone. But he was too shy and too scared to actually step forward and ask.
Then one day, when it was only Seiichi and Sanada alone in the court, getting ready to go home, Sanada approached him.
"Yukimura, right? How about a game before we go?"
Seiichi stood rigidly, not knowing what to say. Sanada said to his confused look:
"I've never seen you play before. You wouldn't have joined the tennis club if you didn't want to play."
*********************
Yukimura Seiichi fell in love with the sport.
Looking back, he would consider it to be the first real miracle that ever happened in his young life...how he held on to something and it didn't disappear.
The tennis club became something to look forward to. Every day there was something new to learn.
Sanada Genichirou was always there, on time and ready to play, and ready to play him. The other boy responded to Seiichi's willingness to learn, zeroed in on how quickly Seiichi absorbed new information.
Seiichi's only real problem was his low stamina, Sanada pointed out, as certain as if he was saying "the sky is blue." That could be remedied with enough practice and the right diet. The boy should eat more meat. Stack up those thin bones a little.
Sanada was stern, stand-offish, even when it was the two of them alone. He took a lot of things seriously.
Hanging out with him made Seiichi firmly believe that life wasn't worth living if it wasn't worth living hard.
Seiichi became so focused on improving his skills in Sanada's company, that he didn't see what else was happening around him. Other kids seemed to be gravitating toward him and Sanada, wanting to be friends, eager to know how the two of them could play so well.
He figured it was just Sanada who attracted them in the first place.
"You serious? You never played tennis before middle school??" another freshman with large bright eyes who liked to chew gum was saying loudly from the other half of the court. "How come you're this good already? It's not fair!"
Seiichi smiled at him and answered, only loud enough for him to hear:
"Nothing's fair."
*********************
Things didn't change overnight. His body refused to stop breaking. His parents still treated him as special and his sister still failed to regard him with any measure of respect.
But middle school had turned his self-regard around. He wasn't ugly anymore. He wasn't useless. He wasn't the kid nobody wanted to play with, or even touch.
...Not entirely sure what he was yet, but content to know what he was no longer.
"A lovely child...such a waste," the nurses still said to each other within his earshot, knowing nothing.
Stop saying that, he almost snapped at them.
I'm not a waste.
I'm going to show you.
I'm going to get through this.
I promised him we're making it to the nationals together. I'm going to keep my word.
*********************
It wasn't often that first years made it into the Rikkaidai regulars. The training and competition was tougher than in any other club.
But Seiichi and Sanada made it. They were the only two who did.
Training together, studying together, doing most everything together, challenging each other every step of the way -- it would have been tedious for any other child. Especially a child with a fragile constitution he fought desperately to hide. But not Seiichi.
It was perhaps as close to having a best friend as he ever had.
They made it into the regulars. They fought in the nationals. They won and came home heroes. And all the worries and the pain of the past fell away. He and Sanada had done the impossible once -- they could do it again.
His passage into junior year was not as painful as he thought it would be. He came to have more friends. Soon it wasn't just him and Sanada, but him and Sanada and Yanagi, and later him and Sanada and Yanagi and Yagyuu...his circle grew.
He learned more things outside the tennis club, too. He had always liked to draw and paint, but he had never really known he could be good at it. He did well in school, as always, and the praises never stopped coming.
Seiichi had never felt invincible before. But Sanada, who was always beside him, looked at him with that stark confidence he had watched from afar barely a year ago, as if to say "Did you ever doubt it?"
*********************
And then there were the changes his own body underwent. It was strange...painful in so many ways, but the strangeness made up for most of it.
For a long while he wondered what exactly made him feel all hot inside. He'd idly wondered if it was the medicine he was taking. But he'd thought it would be embarrassing to refer the case to his physicians right away, especially since...
The period of denial was brief. And then it was simply the way things were: if he looked into Sanada Genichirou's eyes long enough he would start feeling a flush creep up to his cheeks, driving him to a state not unlike panic. If any part of Sanada Genichirou's bare skin touched his, he would freeze.
The other boy's skin was hot. And so dry and rough.
Seiichi sometimes imagined that he was enfolded in that dry roughness. Not unlike the way he saw it in the movies, where the guy embraced the girl and all became right with the world. He daydreamed, at times, of having every inch of his body touching that heat and stay touching it for hours.
He would lie awake at night, the fingertips of one hand pressing against his lips, tracing circles over the skin of his neck and chest. And the fingers of the other hand wandering all over his body. Imagining warmth. Imagining someone's breath mingling with his own. The rush of blood and heat was like nothing he had ever experienced.
When he understood what it meant, he had laughed softly to himself.
Finding out he was attracted to another boy was really a small price to pay for feeling like this.
At least he no longer lay awake crying.
*********************
The second miracle came when he didn't collapse in public at any time during his junior year, when he flatly refused to enter the hospital for any reason.
His parents had pleaded and bargained with him. What do you want? We'll give it to you. Please just don't do this to yourself. His father had resorted to shouting, you're not a little boy anymore. You should know what's good for you!
But Seiichi had made up his mind.
They trained even harder as juniors. Sanada had come to understand that Seiichi had a weaker constitution than most everyone else in the club, though he still had no idea how ill he really was. All the same, Sanada did not tolerate Seiichi going easy on himself.
They both promised each other they were going to fight in the nationals a second time. And if they had to push themselves above their limits, they were going to. Seiichi felt, at times, that he had no limits, but he knew that was a temporary delusion...
A second win in the nationals. But it wasn't as fulfilling as it had been last year.
He hadn't played up to par. He had been in Doubles 1 with Sanada...but if Sanada had not been there to cover for him, they would have lost. Seiichi knew it.
His body was trying to tell him to stop.
In the fall, he finally allowed himself to go back into the hospital for observation. He was supposed to stay there for just one week. He ended up staying there for most of the fall break.
His system was unused to most of the drugs they gave him -- but it was expected. They were supposed to be more potent, and if he had just gone in regularly during his second year, his body should have already adjusted to the worst of it.
He felt like he was being made to consume acid. A bad round left his body feeling like it was disintegrating. He knew that sometimes his fists clenched until his palms bled, and tears came out of his eyes. But he couldn't really feel it when they did.
Now and then Sanada called from tennis camp, with details on their rivals and new ideas for the club.
Listening to the sound of Sanada's voice, Seiichi closed his eyes. It was easier to imagine not being sick. It was easier to imagine being back in the tennis club, playing one-on-one, feeling like the sunset would never end.
"Our opponents seem strong, but we're going for that third win," he once said softly into the phone. "It's going to be the best fight ever."
*********************
He had collapsed in school, shortly before the Kantou regionals. They had taken him to the university infirmary, and the doctors there suggested he be taken immediately to the hospital.
At the bleakest, loneliest of times, his sister came with their parents to visit. She said nothing. She laid his favorite stuffed penguin down at the foot of his bed.
When he tried to talk to her, she turned around and left without hurrying.
In the hospital, Seiichi spent some time in the company of little children. He had given away some of his old stuffed toys to the pediatrics ward, his favorite penguin being one of them.
Children had all the time in the world.
It was unfair that they ever had to fall ill. It was unfair that they would have to cry at night thinking of the fun they were missing, of how alone it felt to be tucked away in their sickbeds...how the pain wouldn't leave.
Nothing was fair, it was a fact of life...
But listening to children and their happy chatter made Seiichi think, perhaps something should be done about the facts of life that made it hurt...
*********************
"Good luck," Sanada had said. Seiichi put down the phone gently, all the strength sapped out from him.
He should have said more. He should have said everything.
On that day, the day of the Kantou regionals of his third year, he was more scared than he could ever admit to anyone else.
It was illogical to think this surgery would not push through. There were risks, yes. He was already in a weakened state and everything about him was fragile. But the odds seemed good and his physicians were the best...
All the same, he knew at the back of his head: something had already waited too long to happen.
Three years, at the most: he had been prepared to go by this game schedule. As long as he lived hard, he could go at any time without any regrets. Regardless of whether or not he could fulfill his promise.
But now, close to the end, he no longer felt so ready.
He wanted what he could never have. He wanted time.
In just a few weeks, the nationals were going to begin. Just a little more time would let him keep his promise.
He was going to say what he had always wanted to the people he loved. He was going to feel someone's arms around him, know how it feels to not hurt as much as this, at least for a moment...and it was going to be wonderful. It was going to be the most beautiful feeling in the world.
Seiichi had made up his mind to last long enough, at least for that.
*********************
He drifted in and out for what seemed like days. Whenever he woke up, it was to a stabbing, twisting pain, a constant ringing in his ears.
He fought to stay conscious, but he could only take so much of that ringing, the hammering at his insides, the scream of panic that lodged in his throat.
On what was probably the hundredth day, Sanada arrived. He was the one who got to Seiichi's bedside first, crouched down low and sought to meet his eyes.
Seiichi felt his hand on his arm -- it burned like fire. For the first time in days, he remembered to breathe.
Help me
"You've got to hang on."
I can't it hurts
"You're strong. You'll get through this."
It hurts too much I can't don't leave
He reached out his hand blindly. His palm made contact with Sanada's cheek.
Sanada covered the hand on his cheek with his own hand -- much larger, much rougher, much hotter. A warm enfolding desert heat.
Seiichi felt something snap inside -- and there wasn't so much pain, as the sudden feeling of being pulled out from under. A wrenching.
Everything started to go dark. Voices calling his name faded into the distance.
His last thought before the darkness was a wish. It was to last a little longer.
It just wasn't fair.
obieta hitomi wa / ten wo aoi de / sakebu / kami no na wo...
god i love this song.
Unfair
"A waste"...that was what the nurses called him. "What a lovely child...such a waste."
And sometimes, that was exactly how Seiichi felt like.
Perhaps it was a blessing that his family was well off, and that he was the firstborn, the gifted son, the more beloved. They gave him everything he wanted. He was surrounded with toys, he had the latest gadgets, the trendiest clothes, the best books.
Seiichi was grateful...even if he ended up giving nearly everything away for the chance to make friends.
His parents almost scolded him for that. They said that by giving his stuff away, he was "wasting" them. Didn't he appreciate that those things were given to him as gifts?
He didn't really know how to answer. It didn't seem like his parents understood him at all.
His little sister openly resented him for always getting more gifts, always doing better than herself at everything, always getting praised. Once she got so angry that she said he should just stay sick and live in the hospital forever. She ran off leaving him feeling like maybe, that was really what he should do.
He left his favorite stuffed penguin in front of the door to her room on the night she told him that. It was still there when he woke up in the morning. At the end of the day, his mother took the stuffed penguin back into his room.
It never made sense that his sister could hate him so. He figured: if he gave away things, other children would act kindly toward him. It seemed to work that way in school...
And he had many friends in school -- or at least he liked to think so. His parents and doctors forbade him to join in the games and playful roughhousing, and it felt like the other children, especially the boys, existed in another world that was closed off to him.
For a fleeting moment he would have other children crowd around him and fuss over his new plaything. Then in a rush of affection, he would give that plaything away, and the children and the noise and the laughter would vanish.
The girls simply stayed away, whispered among themselves while stealing sidelong glances. They wouldn't accept his gifts. The more honest of them said they didn't want to "catch" what he was "carrying." He fell silent every time he heard that, then very politely tried to explain that his disease wasn't infectious. They never believed him.
Other children's laughter came to him at night, when he lay alone in bed, at home or in the hospital. He tried to imagine that one of them was his own.
When he was in sixth grade he underwent a major operation to remove a large cyst embedded in his little body. The operation was successful, but the doctors didn't seem pleased. He heard his parents talking late at night, heard them crying, and knew what not to expect of himself.
He'd had to miss school for three weeks because of that operation. And he'd come back to find that a lot of the other children had forgotten all about him. Even the boys to whom he had given away his most expensive things.
On the night of his first day back in school, he lay in his room sleepless. Once again the sounds of laughter and play entered his ears and wouldn't leave, hurting worse than the medicine. Tears started to stream down his cheeks.
It wasn't fair.
*********************
Things didn't get any better when he graduated from elementary school. True, he managed to get into an exclusive middle school, Rikkai Dai Fuzoku Chuu...
But afterwards, he made it a point to simply stay away from other people. He wasn't going through primary school all over again.
He had undergone around two major operations in his young life; he felt broken inside. No matter how other people perceived him, he saw himself as a mess of drugs and stitches, patches and strings. He was ugly. He was a waste.
...Though none of it mattered. He'd resigned himself to lasting only so long.
Three years: his physicians, the best in the country, had said. Three years, if he's lucky.
He met Sanada Genichirou when he had long given up on the concept of "fair."
He was passing through the Rikkaidai tennis courts when he saw this middle school freshman, around his age, playing an intense, harrowing match with a high school senior. The freshman was wearing a baseball cap. Seiichi couldn't see his eyes.
But the freshman drew him. The easy grace and unshakable confidence this freshman displayed made him stop on his tracks. Made him walk up to the mesh wall and curl delicate fingers around a diamond of wire.
*********************
The next day, Seiichi signed up for the tennis club. It was the single bravest thing he had ever done in his life. His right hand was shaking slightly as he put down the pen.
He managed to avoid actually playing for a while. Freshmen were restricted mostly to swing training and cleanup. Swing training was all right, but since his body was unused to physical exertion, he had to do a little more practicing at home (in secret, of course) just to get used to the labor.
Seiichi was amazed that his habitual pushing of his body's limits hadn't yet landed him back in the hospital. But he wasn't about to complain, or give up.
The freshman with the baseball cap, whose name was Sanada Genichirou, diligently picked up tennis balls with the other freshmen, rode along with basic stamina training without grievance. Seiichi wondered where the spark that he had seen earlier had gone. But he was too shy and too scared to actually step forward and ask.
Then one day, when it was only Seiichi and Sanada alone in the court, getting ready to go home, Sanada approached him.
"Yukimura, right? How about a game before we go?"
Seiichi stood rigidly, not knowing what to say. Sanada said to his confused look:
"I've never seen you play before. You wouldn't have joined the tennis club if you didn't want to play."
*********************
Yukimura Seiichi fell in love with the sport.
Looking back, he would consider it to be the first real miracle that ever happened in his young life...how he held on to something and it didn't disappear.
The tennis club became something to look forward to. Every day there was something new to learn.
Sanada Genichirou was always there, on time and ready to play, and ready to play him. The other boy responded to Seiichi's willingness to learn, zeroed in on how quickly Seiichi absorbed new information.
Seiichi's only real problem was his low stamina, Sanada pointed out, as certain as if he was saying "the sky is blue." That could be remedied with enough practice and the right diet. The boy should eat more meat. Stack up those thin bones a little.
Sanada was stern, stand-offish, even when it was the two of them alone. He took a lot of things seriously.
Hanging out with him made Seiichi firmly believe that life wasn't worth living if it wasn't worth living hard.
Seiichi became so focused on improving his skills in Sanada's company, that he didn't see what else was happening around him. Other kids seemed to be gravitating toward him and Sanada, wanting to be friends, eager to know how the two of them could play so well.
He figured it was just Sanada who attracted them in the first place.
"You serious? You never played tennis before middle school??" another freshman with large bright eyes who liked to chew gum was saying loudly from the other half of the court. "How come you're this good already? It's not fair!"
Seiichi smiled at him and answered, only loud enough for him to hear:
"Nothing's fair."
*********************
Things didn't change overnight. His body refused to stop breaking. His parents still treated him as special and his sister still failed to regard him with any measure of respect.
But middle school had turned his self-regard around. He wasn't ugly anymore. He wasn't useless. He wasn't the kid nobody wanted to play with, or even touch.
...Not entirely sure what he was yet, but content to know what he was no longer.
"A lovely child...such a waste," the nurses still said to each other within his earshot, knowing nothing.
Stop saying that, he almost snapped at them.
I'm not a waste.
I'm going to show you.
I'm going to get through this.
I promised him we're making it to the nationals together. I'm going to keep my word.
*********************
It wasn't often that first years made it into the Rikkaidai regulars. The training and competition was tougher than in any other club.
But Seiichi and Sanada made it. They were the only two who did.
Training together, studying together, doing most everything together, challenging each other every step of the way -- it would have been tedious for any other child. Especially a child with a fragile constitution he fought desperately to hide. But not Seiichi.
It was perhaps as close to having a best friend as he ever had.
They made it into the regulars. They fought in the nationals. They won and came home heroes. And all the worries and the pain of the past fell away. He and Sanada had done the impossible once -- they could do it again.
His passage into junior year was not as painful as he thought it would be. He came to have more friends. Soon it wasn't just him and Sanada, but him and Sanada and Yanagi, and later him and Sanada and Yanagi and Yagyuu...his circle grew.
He learned more things outside the tennis club, too. He had always liked to draw and paint, but he had never really known he could be good at it. He did well in school, as always, and the praises never stopped coming.
Seiichi had never felt invincible before. But Sanada, who was always beside him, looked at him with that stark confidence he had watched from afar barely a year ago, as if to say "Did you ever doubt it?"
*********************
And then there were the changes his own body underwent. It was strange...painful in so many ways, but the strangeness made up for most of it.
For a long while he wondered what exactly made him feel all hot inside. He'd idly wondered if it was the medicine he was taking. But he'd thought it would be embarrassing to refer the case to his physicians right away, especially since...
The period of denial was brief. And then it was simply the way things were: if he looked into Sanada Genichirou's eyes long enough he would start feeling a flush creep up to his cheeks, driving him to a state not unlike panic. If any part of Sanada Genichirou's bare skin touched his, he would freeze.
The other boy's skin was hot. And so dry and rough.
Seiichi sometimes imagined that he was enfolded in that dry roughness. Not unlike the way he saw it in the movies, where the guy embraced the girl and all became right with the world. He daydreamed, at times, of having every inch of his body touching that heat and stay touching it for hours.
He would lie awake at night, the fingertips of one hand pressing against his lips, tracing circles over the skin of his neck and chest. And the fingers of the other hand wandering all over his body. Imagining warmth. Imagining someone's breath mingling with his own. The rush of blood and heat was like nothing he had ever experienced.
When he understood what it meant, he had laughed softly to himself.
Finding out he was attracted to another boy was really a small price to pay for feeling like this.
At least he no longer lay awake crying.
*********************
The second miracle came when he didn't collapse in public at any time during his junior year, when he flatly refused to enter the hospital for any reason.
His parents had pleaded and bargained with him. What do you want? We'll give it to you. Please just don't do this to yourself. His father had resorted to shouting, you're not a little boy anymore. You should know what's good for you!
But Seiichi had made up his mind.
They trained even harder as juniors. Sanada had come to understand that Seiichi had a weaker constitution than most everyone else in the club, though he still had no idea how ill he really was. All the same, Sanada did not tolerate Seiichi going easy on himself.
They both promised each other they were going to fight in the nationals a second time. And if they had to push themselves above their limits, they were going to. Seiichi felt, at times, that he had no limits, but he knew that was a temporary delusion...
A second win in the nationals. But it wasn't as fulfilling as it had been last year.
He hadn't played up to par. He had been in Doubles 1 with Sanada...but if Sanada had not been there to cover for him, they would have lost. Seiichi knew it.
His body was trying to tell him to stop.
In the fall, he finally allowed himself to go back into the hospital for observation. He was supposed to stay there for just one week. He ended up staying there for most of the fall break.
His system was unused to most of the drugs they gave him -- but it was expected. They were supposed to be more potent, and if he had just gone in regularly during his second year, his body should have already adjusted to the worst of it.
He felt like he was being made to consume acid. A bad round left his body feeling like it was disintegrating. He knew that sometimes his fists clenched until his palms bled, and tears came out of his eyes. But he couldn't really feel it when they did.
Now and then Sanada called from tennis camp, with details on their rivals and new ideas for the club.
Listening to the sound of Sanada's voice, Seiichi closed his eyes. It was easier to imagine not being sick. It was easier to imagine being back in the tennis club, playing one-on-one, feeling like the sunset would never end.
"Our opponents seem strong, but we're going for that third win," he once said softly into the phone. "It's going to be the best fight ever."
*********************
He had collapsed in school, shortly before the Kantou regionals. They had taken him to the university infirmary, and the doctors there suggested he be taken immediately to the hospital.
At the bleakest, loneliest of times, his sister came with their parents to visit. She said nothing. She laid his favorite stuffed penguin down at the foot of his bed.
When he tried to talk to her, she turned around and left without hurrying.
In the hospital, Seiichi spent some time in the company of little children. He had given away some of his old stuffed toys to the pediatrics ward, his favorite penguin being one of them.
Children had all the time in the world.
It was unfair that they ever had to fall ill. It was unfair that they would have to cry at night thinking of the fun they were missing, of how alone it felt to be tucked away in their sickbeds...how the pain wouldn't leave.
Nothing was fair, it was a fact of life...
But listening to children and their happy chatter made Seiichi think, perhaps something should be done about the facts of life that made it hurt...
*********************
"Good luck," Sanada had said. Seiichi put down the phone gently, all the strength sapped out from him.
He should have said more. He should have said everything.
On that day, the day of the Kantou regionals of his third year, he was more scared than he could ever admit to anyone else.
It was illogical to think this surgery would not push through. There were risks, yes. He was already in a weakened state and everything about him was fragile. But the odds seemed good and his physicians were the best...
All the same, he knew at the back of his head: something had already waited too long to happen.
Three years, at the most: he had been prepared to go by this game schedule. As long as he lived hard, he could go at any time without any regrets. Regardless of whether or not he could fulfill his promise.
But now, close to the end, he no longer felt so ready.
He wanted what he could never have. He wanted time.
In just a few weeks, the nationals were going to begin. Just a little more time would let him keep his promise.
He was going to say what he had always wanted to the people he loved. He was going to feel someone's arms around him, know how it feels to not hurt as much as this, at least for a moment...and it was going to be wonderful. It was going to be the most beautiful feeling in the world.
Seiichi had made up his mind to last long enough, at least for that.
*********************
He drifted in and out for what seemed like days. Whenever he woke up, it was to a stabbing, twisting pain, a constant ringing in his ears.
He fought to stay conscious, but he could only take so much of that ringing, the hammering at his insides, the scream of panic that lodged in his throat.
On what was probably the hundredth day, Sanada arrived. He was the one who got to Seiichi's bedside first, crouched down low and sought to meet his eyes.
Seiichi felt his hand on his arm -- it burned like fire. For the first time in days, he remembered to breathe.
Help me
"You've got to hang on."
I can't it hurts
"You're strong. You'll get through this."
It hurts too much I can't don't leave
He reached out his hand blindly. His palm made contact with Sanada's cheek.
Sanada covered the hand on his cheek with his own hand -- much larger, much rougher, much hotter. A warm enfolding desert heat.
Seiichi felt something snap inside -- and there wasn't so much pain, as the sudden feeling of being pulled out from under. A wrenching.
Everything started to go dark. Voices calling his name faded into the distance.
His last thought before the darkness was a wish. It was to last a little longer.
It just wasn't fair.