[yst] [fic] At the Stars 7/?
it occurred to me belatedly that the year would be 1998 and yes, touma would have a cell phone.
i'm depriving ryo of a cell phone out of love.
also, added one line to the last paragraph of the last section. knew i forgot something XD;; won't be adding this new chapter and the edited chapter 6 to ff.net just yet... i think it needs another lookover first.
At the Stars
Part 7
Touma didn't come back for days.
On top of that, he was incommunicado. Every so often Ryo was at the pay phone, only to hear the automatic response saying Touma's mobile was off or unreachable.
Only Touma's recorded voice message greeted him whenever he called the apartment. "This is Hashiba. I'm not home right now. If it's important, I'll get back to you."
Ryo didn't know what he was still expecting.
He would call the apartment to leave updates on Seiji's condition, hoping Touma would come back to check the messages on his phone. But no one ever picked up, and sometimes Ryo found himself hanging up the receiver with a bang.
Seiji was in intensive care. He still wasn't conscious, and couldn't breathe on his own even if the blockage in his airways had been cleared. The doctors said it was a good thing they got to Seiji in time, and Touma was able to administer emergency care before they got him to the hospital. If all that hadn't happened, Seiji would have certainly stopped breathing for good.
The doctors said a lot of other things. Things that Touma would have understood and remembered better, if he had been there. But Ryo was all on his own.
He'd already called Shuu and Shin. They both needed a day or two to fix their personal affairs, and then they were coming over. Both had promised that they could stay and relieve Ryo at the hospital if he needed to rest.
Until then, he needed to be here.
Why did it have to be just them? Ryo asked himself this for the nth time. Didn't Seiji have family, other friends, who knew about his condition?
If he did, Touma never told Ryo about them, or even gave him a way to reach them. There was only one number Ryo could call in case of emergency: his. And he wasn't picking up.
Maybe, Ryo realized, he was still angry.
The morning found Ryo sleepless, seated on one of the sofa chairs in the waiting room outside the ICU, the accusation from a few nights ago still ringing in his head.
Worse yet, he saw Touma in his mind's eye - the look on his face, just before he turned away. Hurt. Panicked. And so very, very lost.
No matter how many times the scene replayed in Ryo's head, he couldn't find betrayal or resentment there. He wished he could, so he could hate Touma properly, knowing that he was hated first.
...Then again, hate was never really on his end of the equation, and he had to wonder why. It was all right if Touma hated him. But he could never hate Touma.
It was just that the words still tore into him.
He was slumped in a sofa chair, head tilted back and eyes closed, when he heard someone approach. The clicking of high heels on the hospital floor tiles made his heart sink; it was perhaps a doctor or a nurse.
"Sanada-san?"
Ryo opened his eyes. Standing near him was a tall, long-legged beauty in a business suit, straight black hair done up in a neat bun. Ryo would have figured her for another stranger if he had not seen her face, the fine jawline and cheekbones and of course the distinctive violet eyes. On impulse, he stood to acknowledge her arrival.
"I wonder if you remember me." She folded her long-fingered hands on her lap and bowed with a slow formality. "My name is Date Yayoi. I am Seiji's older sister."
She was often away in university, was what Ryo remembered. He must have seen her only once, when he and his friends dropped by Seiji's house to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. She happened to be home and visibly displeased whenever one of them happened to cross her path.
She was lovely (but everyone in Seiji's family had that sort of predisposition) and unfailingly polite... but she smiled very rarely, had her nose in the air all the time.
Even for someone like Date Yayoi, who fought to keep her poise at all times, medical school was a taxing affair.
"Oneesan is like that to people she doesn't know," Seiji had said by way of explanation. "She's also stressed out from exams, and that means she hates everybody right now."
Ryo felt she was exactly the same woman who had intimidated him the first time he saw her. Only this time she was smaller than he was, and she looked much, much older. But she must only be around 30 years old.
He bowed slightly to her in response. "Yayoi-san," he greeted. "It's been a while." He couldn't muster the energy to seem lively as he said that. Then again, the situation didn't exactly call for his usual effervescence.
Yayoi nodded simply. She looked around. "Is Hashiba-san here?" she asked.
Ryo clamped his lips together and shook his head.
"I see." She seemed honestly disappointed. "I received a call from him early this morning saying only that Seiji was at this hospital. I took a leave at my own hospital and headed here. I was hoping I could speak with Hashiba-san."
"He..." Ryo glanced past Yayoi, over her shoulder. Some part of him was perhaps hoping Touma would miraculously appear within his line of sight upon his name being called by someone else. But no such luck. "I think... he had some urgent business to attend to. I'm waiting for him, too."
She nodded again. "If it is not an imposition, would it be all right if I waited with you?"
It was all right, of course. She was family. He only warned her that he didn't know when Touma was coming back, and she only said it was all right, and sat down.
And truth be told, Ryo was glad for her presence here. It meant Touma had not left him as alone as he had feared.
He wanted to ask her so many things. He wanted to know, for example, if Touma had by some chance told her where he had gone. And how long they had been corresponding. And if she had an idea why Touma would not even think about mentioning her to Ryo. Did Seiji know that she would know? Was he aware that she would be here at this moment?
But Ryo felt he was not in a position to trouble her with his questions - sitting as she did in a separate sofa chair, leaning forward at a practiced angle, head held high and deep in her own thoughts. Seiji would look like that when he was on edge.
Even if he wasn't going to come in with questions, he had to say something.
"Yayoi-san."
Those pensive violet eyes turned toward him.
"...I'm sorry you had to find out like this."
She regarded him for a second. Then her lips curved upward into a half-smile - a mirthless obligation. "Please don't apologize," she said to him. "I already knew."
Ryo blinked. Well, that was one question answered. Clearly she and Touma had been talking for a while now. Otherwise, he imagined, her perfect face would betray displeasure. Perhaps even resentment.
"Hashiba-san must not have told you." She looked away. "We have an... arrangement, he and I. He would keep me apprised on the state of my brother's health, and I would keep the details a secret from the rest of our family. Hashiba-san has promised that I will always know of any important developments, and he has kept this promise so far."
Ryo's eyes widened as the last sentence left her lips. She knew?
"I see that you were not told a lot of things." Her voice had a light teasing lilt, which was charming in light of how formal she seemed to be out of habit. But it quickly vanished as she spoke again. "Seiji no longer goes home to our family's house in Sendai. Five years ago, my brother declared his intention to leave the dojo. Since then he has not even visited, and I am the only bridge between him and our family. Any communication that occurs between anyone from the Date family and Seiji, goes through me. That means our family does not know he is very ill, and growing worse by the day."
"But... why?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly; her way of asking him to continue.
"Why would Seiji keep something like this a secret from his own family? What he's sick of - it's not embarrassing, and it's not his fault. I don't -" Ryo took a deep breath. But that did little to help his eloquence. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "I just don't get it."
Her face took on a look, then, that almost seemed like pity.
"Then you do not know my brother very well, Sanada-san."
The times when amusement crept into her voice always caught Ryo off-guard. While it seemed that she was teasing him, it also seemed like she was berating him; it was a tactic that confused him thoroughly. And briefly he wondered how Seiji was ever able to cope with almost a lifetime of this.
Still, Ryo could not help but feel honored. She did not seem to be the type of person who would let down her guard. She spoke of this personal thing about her brother with her walls still up - but that she spoke of them at all meant a great deal.
"My brother left the dojo not because he wanted to, but because he could no longer perform his duties there. He could no longer move his body as well as he had used to. He attributed it to age and disuse, not to illness... but no matter which excuse he chose, he knew it would not be... proper. For him to stay on as the dojo's heir."
Proper. It was a word Ryo had never gotten used to. He knew his father despised the word, but he knew precious little of how the word affected him personally. It was only in moments like this that he got an idea.
"It pained Seiji to leave," Yayoi continued. "We all knew this. He loved kendo. He was going to take over the dojo from our mother, when he graduated from university. But our dojo could not afford a master who was not well enough to demonstrate, and he could not stay watching other young people doing things he could not."
She started to talk about a letter that Seiji had addressed to his maternal grandparents. It was a clear and concise letter. It said Seiji's passion still lay with kendo, but he felt his life's purpose was in bringing joy and knowledge to other people through writing. And because his writing was unrelated to kendo, and his focus may be impaired by his duties at the dojo, he thought it best to pursue his own path first of all by letting go of his duties, and leaving home.
...At least, this was the official reason. In a household where having an official reason was almost as important than having a real one, Seiji's family accepted his letter, and allowed him to leave.
Yayoi fell silent. Behind her clear violet eyes lay three decades' worth of memories without words. Ryo could only watch her, seeing in her quietness a side of Seiji he hardly knew about. He saw how Seiji had sacrificed so much, for example, for the sake of honor - his own and his family's. He saw how proud Seiji really was, how he was ready to die with that pride.
If it were just words, it would not be enough; it would not make sense to Ryo at all. What was pride in the face of loneliness and death? Where would the honor be in suffering all by yourself, when there were so many who cared about you?
To hell with honor. Where was the justice in it?
But it was not all words. There was the slouch Yayoi had failed to guard herself against, the melancholy bow of her head. The bitter, conditioned acceptance, that this was all proper and therefore worth it.
"Seiji was always the knight in shining armor," Yayoi said softly. "All of a sudden, to become the one who needs saving..."
Ryo thought her voice broke then. Just a little. Just enough. But she covered her mouth with her hand and turned away before Ryo could see genuine hurt flash across her face. It took a while before she could turn back to him, and when she did Ryo thought he saw in her eyes an apology, a plea not to be asked to speak.
So for the rest of that day, he asked no more questions. And he imagined that in-between the few other words that they exchanged, she was grateful.
That night, Seiji opened his eyes.
It was no less than a miracle, the doctors said. They had been anticipating that his lungs and heart would continue to fail, considering how stressed and weakened they were from the last ordeal.
But he was awake. And his vitals were holding strong. He was responding well to treatment, and soon he could head home.
When Ryo and Yayoi were allowed to see him, he was already in a private ward. As per Touma's directive, the hospital staff placed Seiji in a ward with a large window facing east, and drew the shades, so that light would flood his room at dawn. He had even thanked them, in a small voice from a throat still recovering from the presence of the large tube that had been helping him breathe.
But the sky outside the hospital was dark. It wasn't just nighttime; it was raining. The rain fell steadily in the absence of wind. Years of being outdoors told him it was the kind of rain that lasted until morning, though Ryo hoped that this time, he was wrong.
The doctors were up front about their puzzlement, and even Yayoi, who specialized in internal medicine, admitted to being stumped as well; Seiji had recovered too quickly. They were not prepared for him to give up, but they were not prepared for him to win, either. From the brink of death, and a three-day coma... but of course, they weren't going to question miracles.
The first thing Seiji asked, when they had rushed to his bedside, was "Touma...?" and Ryo understood it mostly from the movement of his lips, not the sound of his voice.
Ryo looked away briefly. "I don't know." But he had to meet Seiji's gaze again when he assured him that "I'll find him."
Anxiety fell like a shadow over Seiji's face. How he could still worry about someone else, after what he had just gone through?
Ryo noticed how bright his friend's eyes were, how alive. He was still thin, still pale, but there was color in his cheeks again after so long - although it might just have been a trick of the electric lights. It was late, and Ryo had been sleepless for three days, and happy, and maybe he wasn't seeing things right.
Yayoi held her brother's right hand, his writing hand. Seiji's fingers wrapped around her own lightly, but with an unusual display of strength and control. Yayoi, of course, would not notice this, not having lived with him for the previous months.
"Oneesan. I dreamed that..." Then he seemed to come to his senses, and realize she was not the person he should be speaking to. "Ryo, my notebook..."
This wasn't normal for Seiji, this urgency. He would take the time to ask them how they were doing, how long they had been waiting, and apologize for making them wait long no matter their answer. If indeed all was well.
"My notebook, and a pen." He propped his elbows on the bed, tried to raise himself and sit up without a backrest. "I need..."
Ryo quickly laid a hand on his friend's shoulder, keeping him from straining himself further.
"I'll get it," Ryo assured him in a whisper. "Rest. You've got to."
Seiji slowly settled back down in a half-lying, half-sitting position. His hand, the one that was not holding Yayoi's hand, covered Ryo's. Ryo had wondered if the uncontrollable heat from his touch troubled Seiji, but his friend's face relaxed, and he seemed to sink less into the bed as into that touch, as if nestling into something warm.
"Any kind of paper will do, for now," Yayoi said to Ryo. "I will stay here with my brother. Sanada-san, you must rest, too."
Ryo was about to protest. He wasn't tired. Seeing Seiji had energized him. He wanted to stay. He wanted to find Touma, as he promised. Right now he felt like he could do anything.
Then Yayoi smiled up at him. That smile was not an obligation, and it was impossible to resist.
"Seiji is awake," she gently said. "It is time for you to sleep."
Seiji's hand slid from Ryo's. "Go," he whispered wearily, looking up at him.
Reluctant as he was to leave, Ryo knew Yayoi was right. He needed to eat a proper meal, take a proper shower, and lie in a proper bed. Tired or not, three days of the hospital's various antiseptic smells had accumulated on his person. In his mind, it made him smell like a battlefield.
First thing in the morning, he was going to change into proper clothes and return to the hospital. Yayoi might want to go back to work, or might at least want to rest, if she was staying until Seiji was ready to check out.
Ryo made up his mind that he was going to offer to show Yayoi to the apartment, so she could have a bathroom to use and a bed to sleep on - although he wasn't sure if Touma would like that, being the way he was about other people knowing their business. He wasn't sure if Yayoi still counted as "other people."
But he couldn't afford to keep worrying about what Touma would think.
It was still raining when he stepped out of the hospital. Home was just a bus ride away, and he braced himself for that long journey. He folded his arms over his chest and hunched his shoulders against the wet and the cold.
Then, as he was about to leave the shade, he heard a familiar voice calling his name. He looked up to see a man with an umbrella walking across the hospital parking lot, toward him.
"...Shin!"
A smile in response, clearly visible in the distance. Ryo stopped before the first raindrop could hit him, and waited for his friend to approach.
"Where are you off to?" When Shin was relaxed, his voice had a chiding lilt to it, as if nothing at all was wrong anywhere in the world. Ryo could only ever find that refreshing.
Shin stopped a few paces away from Ryo, standing in the rain with his umbrella, not caring in the least if the droplets bouncing off the ground was soaking his shoes and the hem of his overcoat.
"I'm on my way back to the apartment," Ryo answered. "You can go on up and see him if you want. He's awake."
"He is?" Shin looked for a moment like he might dash into the hospital, straight out of the rain. But instead he looked up at the windows of the hospital, as if he already had an idea which one of them Seiji was behind. "That's good! Is he with Touma now?"
"No, with his sister. I don't know where Touma is."
This must not have been a pleasant thing to hear. Shin's eyebrows rose, then he frowned, tilted his head slightly to one side. The expression on his face seemed to ask if it was all right for Touma to be gone, and if Ryo was all right with that.
Ryo only sighed and smiled apologetically.
There were times when it seemed to Ryo that his life was made up of snapshots. Touma asleep on the couch. Seiji tending to his bonsai. All of them, as teenagers, lying on the grass beside each other, facing up at the cloudy sky on a cool day.
And now here's Shin. Standing in the rain with one hand in his coat pocket, and the other holding up an umbrella, face poised to change expression. Ryo didn't know why it was important that he would remember this moment, this scene, but there was hardly ever a reason.
"I'll go with you back to the apartment." It was a declaration, not a request. Shin stepped up into the shade close to Ryo, held his umbrella over both his friend's head and his own. "We can take my car."
(tbc)
i'm depriving ryo of a cell phone out of love.
also, added one line to the last paragraph of the last section. knew i forgot something XD;; won't be adding this new chapter and the edited chapter 6 to ff.net just yet... i think it needs another lookover first.
At the Stars
Part 7
Touma didn't come back for days.
On top of that, he was incommunicado. Every so often Ryo was at the pay phone, only to hear the automatic response saying Touma's mobile was off or unreachable.
Only Touma's recorded voice message greeted him whenever he called the apartment. "This is Hashiba. I'm not home right now. If it's important, I'll get back to you."
Ryo didn't know what he was still expecting.
He would call the apartment to leave updates on Seiji's condition, hoping Touma would come back to check the messages on his phone. But no one ever picked up, and sometimes Ryo found himself hanging up the receiver with a bang.
Seiji was in intensive care. He still wasn't conscious, and couldn't breathe on his own even if the blockage in his airways had been cleared. The doctors said it was a good thing they got to Seiji in time, and Touma was able to administer emergency care before they got him to the hospital. If all that hadn't happened, Seiji would have certainly stopped breathing for good.
The doctors said a lot of other things. Things that Touma would have understood and remembered better, if he had been there. But Ryo was all on his own.
He'd already called Shuu and Shin. They both needed a day or two to fix their personal affairs, and then they were coming over. Both had promised that they could stay and relieve Ryo at the hospital if he needed to rest.
Until then, he needed to be here.
Why did it have to be just them? Ryo asked himself this for the nth time. Didn't Seiji have family, other friends, who knew about his condition?
If he did, Touma never told Ryo about them, or even gave him a way to reach them. There was only one number Ryo could call in case of emergency: his. And he wasn't picking up.
Maybe, Ryo realized, he was still angry.
The morning found Ryo sleepless, seated on one of the sofa chairs in the waiting room outside the ICU, the accusation from a few nights ago still ringing in his head.
Worse yet, he saw Touma in his mind's eye - the look on his face, just before he turned away. Hurt. Panicked. And so very, very lost.
No matter how many times the scene replayed in Ryo's head, he couldn't find betrayal or resentment there. He wished he could, so he could hate Touma properly, knowing that he was hated first.
...Then again, hate was never really on his end of the equation, and he had to wonder why. It was all right if Touma hated him. But he could never hate Touma.
It was just that the words still tore into him.
He was slumped in a sofa chair, head tilted back and eyes closed, when he heard someone approach. The clicking of high heels on the hospital floor tiles made his heart sink; it was perhaps a doctor or a nurse.
"Sanada-san?"
Ryo opened his eyes. Standing near him was a tall, long-legged beauty in a business suit, straight black hair done up in a neat bun. Ryo would have figured her for another stranger if he had not seen her face, the fine jawline and cheekbones and of course the distinctive violet eyes. On impulse, he stood to acknowledge her arrival.
"I wonder if you remember me." She folded her long-fingered hands on her lap and bowed with a slow formality. "My name is Date Yayoi. I am Seiji's older sister."
She was often away in university, was what Ryo remembered. He must have seen her only once, when he and his friends dropped by Seiji's house to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. She happened to be home and visibly displeased whenever one of them happened to cross her path.
She was lovely (but everyone in Seiji's family had that sort of predisposition) and unfailingly polite... but she smiled very rarely, had her nose in the air all the time.
Even for someone like Date Yayoi, who fought to keep her poise at all times, medical school was a taxing affair.
"Oneesan is like that to people she doesn't know," Seiji had said by way of explanation. "She's also stressed out from exams, and that means she hates everybody right now."
Ryo felt she was exactly the same woman who had intimidated him the first time he saw her. Only this time she was smaller than he was, and she looked much, much older. But she must only be around 30 years old.
He bowed slightly to her in response. "Yayoi-san," he greeted. "It's been a while." He couldn't muster the energy to seem lively as he said that. Then again, the situation didn't exactly call for his usual effervescence.
Yayoi nodded simply. She looked around. "Is Hashiba-san here?" she asked.
Ryo clamped his lips together and shook his head.
"I see." She seemed honestly disappointed. "I received a call from him early this morning saying only that Seiji was at this hospital. I took a leave at my own hospital and headed here. I was hoping I could speak with Hashiba-san."
"He..." Ryo glanced past Yayoi, over her shoulder. Some part of him was perhaps hoping Touma would miraculously appear within his line of sight upon his name being called by someone else. But no such luck. "I think... he had some urgent business to attend to. I'm waiting for him, too."
She nodded again. "If it is not an imposition, would it be all right if I waited with you?"
It was all right, of course. She was family. He only warned her that he didn't know when Touma was coming back, and she only said it was all right, and sat down.
And truth be told, Ryo was glad for her presence here. It meant Touma had not left him as alone as he had feared.
He wanted to ask her so many things. He wanted to know, for example, if Touma had by some chance told her where he had gone. And how long they had been corresponding. And if she had an idea why Touma would not even think about mentioning her to Ryo. Did Seiji know that she would know? Was he aware that she would be here at this moment?
But Ryo felt he was not in a position to trouble her with his questions - sitting as she did in a separate sofa chair, leaning forward at a practiced angle, head held high and deep in her own thoughts. Seiji would look like that when he was on edge.
Even if he wasn't going to come in with questions, he had to say something.
"Yayoi-san."
Those pensive violet eyes turned toward him.
"...I'm sorry you had to find out like this."
She regarded him for a second. Then her lips curved upward into a half-smile - a mirthless obligation. "Please don't apologize," she said to him. "I already knew."
Ryo blinked. Well, that was one question answered. Clearly she and Touma had been talking for a while now. Otherwise, he imagined, her perfect face would betray displeasure. Perhaps even resentment.
"Hashiba-san must not have told you." She looked away. "We have an... arrangement, he and I. He would keep me apprised on the state of my brother's health, and I would keep the details a secret from the rest of our family. Hashiba-san has promised that I will always know of any important developments, and he has kept this promise so far."
Ryo's eyes widened as the last sentence left her lips. She knew?
"I see that you were not told a lot of things." Her voice had a light teasing lilt, which was charming in light of how formal she seemed to be out of habit. But it quickly vanished as she spoke again. "Seiji no longer goes home to our family's house in Sendai. Five years ago, my brother declared his intention to leave the dojo. Since then he has not even visited, and I am the only bridge between him and our family. Any communication that occurs between anyone from the Date family and Seiji, goes through me. That means our family does not know he is very ill, and growing worse by the day."
"But... why?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly; her way of asking him to continue.
"Why would Seiji keep something like this a secret from his own family? What he's sick of - it's not embarrassing, and it's not his fault. I don't -" Ryo took a deep breath. But that did little to help his eloquence. He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "I just don't get it."
Her face took on a look, then, that almost seemed like pity.
"Then you do not know my brother very well, Sanada-san."
The times when amusement crept into her voice always caught Ryo off-guard. While it seemed that she was teasing him, it also seemed like she was berating him; it was a tactic that confused him thoroughly. And briefly he wondered how Seiji was ever able to cope with almost a lifetime of this.
Still, Ryo could not help but feel honored. She did not seem to be the type of person who would let down her guard. She spoke of this personal thing about her brother with her walls still up - but that she spoke of them at all meant a great deal.
"My brother left the dojo not because he wanted to, but because he could no longer perform his duties there. He could no longer move his body as well as he had used to. He attributed it to age and disuse, not to illness... but no matter which excuse he chose, he knew it would not be... proper. For him to stay on as the dojo's heir."
Proper. It was a word Ryo had never gotten used to. He knew his father despised the word, but he knew precious little of how the word affected him personally. It was only in moments like this that he got an idea.
"It pained Seiji to leave," Yayoi continued. "We all knew this. He loved kendo. He was going to take over the dojo from our mother, when he graduated from university. But our dojo could not afford a master who was not well enough to demonstrate, and he could not stay watching other young people doing things he could not."
She started to talk about a letter that Seiji had addressed to his maternal grandparents. It was a clear and concise letter. It said Seiji's passion still lay with kendo, but he felt his life's purpose was in bringing joy and knowledge to other people through writing. And because his writing was unrelated to kendo, and his focus may be impaired by his duties at the dojo, he thought it best to pursue his own path first of all by letting go of his duties, and leaving home.
...At least, this was the official reason. In a household where having an official reason was almost as important than having a real one, Seiji's family accepted his letter, and allowed him to leave.
Yayoi fell silent. Behind her clear violet eyes lay three decades' worth of memories without words. Ryo could only watch her, seeing in her quietness a side of Seiji he hardly knew about. He saw how Seiji had sacrificed so much, for example, for the sake of honor - his own and his family's. He saw how proud Seiji really was, how he was ready to die with that pride.
If it were just words, it would not be enough; it would not make sense to Ryo at all. What was pride in the face of loneliness and death? Where would the honor be in suffering all by yourself, when there were so many who cared about you?
To hell with honor. Where was the justice in it?
But it was not all words. There was the slouch Yayoi had failed to guard herself against, the melancholy bow of her head. The bitter, conditioned acceptance, that this was all proper and therefore worth it.
"Seiji was always the knight in shining armor," Yayoi said softly. "All of a sudden, to become the one who needs saving..."
Ryo thought her voice broke then. Just a little. Just enough. But she covered her mouth with her hand and turned away before Ryo could see genuine hurt flash across her face. It took a while before she could turn back to him, and when she did Ryo thought he saw in her eyes an apology, a plea not to be asked to speak.
So for the rest of that day, he asked no more questions. And he imagined that in-between the few other words that they exchanged, she was grateful.
That night, Seiji opened his eyes.
It was no less than a miracle, the doctors said. They had been anticipating that his lungs and heart would continue to fail, considering how stressed and weakened they were from the last ordeal.
But he was awake. And his vitals were holding strong. He was responding well to treatment, and soon he could head home.
When Ryo and Yayoi were allowed to see him, he was already in a private ward. As per Touma's directive, the hospital staff placed Seiji in a ward with a large window facing east, and drew the shades, so that light would flood his room at dawn. He had even thanked them, in a small voice from a throat still recovering from the presence of the large tube that had been helping him breathe.
But the sky outside the hospital was dark. It wasn't just nighttime; it was raining. The rain fell steadily in the absence of wind. Years of being outdoors told him it was the kind of rain that lasted until morning, though Ryo hoped that this time, he was wrong.
The doctors were up front about their puzzlement, and even Yayoi, who specialized in internal medicine, admitted to being stumped as well; Seiji had recovered too quickly. They were not prepared for him to give up, but they were not prepared for him to win, either. From the brink of death, and a three-day coma... but of course, they weren't going to question miracles.
The first thing Seiji asked, when they had rushed to his bedside, was "Touma...?" and Ryo understood it mostly from the movement of his lips, not the sound of his voice.
Ryo looked away briefly. "I don't know." But he had to meet Seiji's gaze again when he assured him that "I'll find him."
Anxiety fell like a shadow over Seiji's face. How he could still worry about someone else, after what he had just gone through?
Ryo noticed how bright his friend's eyes were, how alive. He was still thin, still pale, but there was color in his cheeks again after so long - although it might just have been a trick of the electric lights. It was late, and Ryo had been sleepless for three days, and happy, and maybe he wasn't seeing things right.
Yayoi held her brother's right hand, his writing hand. Seiji's fingers wrapped around her own lightly, but with an unusual display of strength and control. Yayoi, of course, would not notice this, not having lived with him for the previous months.
"Oneesan. I dreamed that..." Then he seemed to come to his senses, and realize she was not the person he should be speaking to. "Ryo, my notebook..."
This wasn't normal for Seiji, this urgency. He would take the time to ask them how they were doing, how long they had been waiting, and apologize for making them wait long no matter their answer. If indeed all was well.
"My notebook, and a pen." He propped his elbows on the bed, tried to raise himself and sit up without a backrest. "I need..."
Ryo quickly laid a hand on his friend's shoulder, keeping him from straining himself further.
"I'll get it," Ryo assured him in a whisper. "Rest. You've got to."
Seiji slowly settled back down in a half-lying, half-sitting position. His hand, the one that was not holding Yayoi's hand, covered Ryo's. Ryo had wondered if the uncontrollable heat from his touch troubled Seiji, but his friend's face relaxed, and he seemed to sink less into the bed as into that touch, as if nestling into something warm.
"Any kind of paper will do, for now," Yayoi said to Ryo. "I will stay here with my brother. Sanada-san, you must rest, too."
Ryo was about to protest. He wasn't tired. Seeing Seiji had energized him. He wanted to stay. He wanted to find Touma, as he promised. Right now he felt like he could do anything.
Then Yayoi smiled up at him. That smile was not an obligation, and it was impossible to resist.
"Seiji is awake," she gently said. "It is time for you to sleep."
Seiji's hand slid from Ryo's. "Go," he whispered wearily, looking up at him.
Reluctant as he was to leave, Ryo knew Yayoi was right. He needed to eat a proper meal, take a proper shower, and lie in a proper bed. Tired or not, three days of the hospital's various antiseptic smells had accumulated on his person. In his mind, it made him smell like a battlefield.
First thing in the morning, he was going to change into proper clothes and return to the hospital. Yayoi might want to go back to work, or might at least want to rest, if she was staying until Seiji was ready to check out.
Ryo made up his mind that he was going to offer to show Yayoi to the apartment, so she could have a bathroom to use and a bed to sleep on - although he wasn't sure if Touma would like that, being the way he was about other people knowing their business. He wasn't sure if Yayoi still counted as "other people."
But he couldn't afford to keep worrying about what Touma would think.
It was still raining when he stepped out of the hospital. Home was just a bus ride away, and he braced himself for that long journey. He folded his arms over his chest and hunched his shoulders against the wet and the cold.
Then, as he was about to leave the shade, he heard a familiar voice calling his name. He looked up to see a man with an umbrella walking across the hospital parking lot, toward him.
"...Shin!"
A smile in response, clearly visible in the distance. Ryo stopped before the first raindrop could hit him, and waited for his friend to approach.
"Where are you off to?" When Shin was relaxed, his voice had a chiding lilt to it, as if nothing at all was wrong anywhere in the world. Ryo could only ever find that refreshing.
Shin stopped a few paces away from Ryo, standing in the rain with his umbrella, not caring in the least if the droplets bouncing off the ground was soaking his shoes and the hem of his overcoat.
"I'm on my way back to the apartment," Ryo answered. "You can go on up and see him if you want. He's awake."
"He is?" Shin looked for a moment like he might dash into the hospital, straight out of the rain. But instead he looked up at the windows of the hospital, as if he already had an idea which one of them Seiji was behind. "That's good! Is he with Touma now?"
"No, with his sister. I don't know where Touma is."
This must not have been a pleasant thing to hear. Shin's eyebrows rose, then he frowned, tilted his head slightly to one side. The expression on his face seemed to ask if it was all right for Touma to be gone, and if Ryo was all right with that.
Ryo only sighed and smiled apologetically.
There were times when it seemed to Ryo that his life was made up of snapshots. Touma asleep on the couch. Seiji tending to his bonsai. All of them, as teenagers, lying on the grass beside each other, facing up at the cloudy sky on a cool day.
And now here's Shin. Standing in the rain with one hand in his coat pocket, and the other holding up an umbrella, face poised to change expression. Ryo didn't know why it was important that he would remember this moment, this scene, but there was hardly ever a reason.
"I'll go with you back to the apartment." It was a declaration, not a request. Shin stepped up into the shade close to Ryo, held his umbrella over both his friend's head and his own. "We can take my car."
(tbc)