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The konbini is empty when they arrive, a bell above the door chiming merrily as they step inside. Reki leads the way over to the drinks section, grabbing them two bottles of Calpis and a container of Jagariko to share. Langa insists on trying to pay for some of it, but Reki refuses, saying “Mom gave me some money earlier, I can spare 500 yen.” They argue over it for a few minutes, the shopkeeper watching with thinly veiled amusement as the two boys each try to shove their way to the cash register. Reki wins out in the end, holding the Jagariko above his head and thrusting a victory sign in Langa’s face.
They end up sharing the food while sitting on the curb outside of the konbini, feet resting on their skateboards and the Jagariko between them, where they can both reach. The sun beats down on their shoulders, and the pavement burns the backs of their legs. Reki has pulled out his phone to watch skateboarding clips again, and Langa is leaning over his shoulder to watch. They watch youtube videos for a while, oohing and aahing at the crazy tricks until their snacks are finished and there’s really no reason for them to continue to sit around.
Reki stands up and then offers Langa a hand, pulling him to his feet. They grab their backpacks and their boards and head down the empty road towards the skatepark, carving slow, languid waves onto the pavement, the silence between them comfortable.
The road slopes gently, perfect for keeping an even speed, winding down the hill and offering a panoramic view of the town. Reki shifts his body weight on instinct, leaning into the turns and feeling the board bend under him. He grins as he skates past Langa, the wind blowing his hair back from his face. He hears Langa laugh behind him, and from there it becomes a sort of race, a beef with nothing wagered, a competition for the sake of nothing but competition. They cut corners and chase each other through side streets, Reki leading the way and Langa close behind.
They come into the straight stretch of road that leads straight to the park, Reki slowing slightly to do a kickflip before glancing back at Langa. Langa grins in response and then does a kickflip of his own before pulling ahead of Reki, who lets out a squawk of indignation.
Langa wins, though not by much, and they spend the rest of the daylight playing SKATE, trying to outdo each other with pop shuvits and railflips. They lose track of the score after a while, but Reki has a feeling that Langa’s probably winning. It doesn’t matter all that much though, and Reki feels elated with his friend’s quick progress.
Eventually the sun starts setting, and they have to head home before they find themselves skating in the dark. The shadows stretch long as they skate though deserted streets, taking the longest route home to try and stretch the time they spend together out as much as possible.
Saturday morning dawns bright and early, and Reki rolls out of bed immediately, quickly getting dressed, throwing on his house slippers, and running to the kitchen to find something to eat.
He’s shoveling rice into his mouth when the doorbell rings, signalling Langa’s arrival. He yells that the door is open through the food in his mouth, and Langa walks into the kitchen a few minutes later, wearing the pair of blue house slippers that have quickly become designated as his.
“Want some?” Reki asks, swallowing.
Langa shakes his head. “I ate before I came.”
Reki nods, putting his dishes away. “Give me, like, a minute to grab my stuff, and then we can head out.”
Sundays are for skating. No school, homework forgotten until late at night, sunny days that stretch into cool twilight and nights spent at S. It’s the way Reki wants to spend everyday, morning until night, skating with Langa around town, learning new tricks, pushing themselves harder and harder until finally they learn to fly.
The skatepark is empty, as always. It’s a tiny skatepark anyways, with one half pipe and a few minis and boxes. But it works for them, and the hours pass quickly in a haze of drop-ins and grinds.
It’s midafternoon now, and neither of them show any signs of stopping. Langa has his phone camera out, filming Reki as he approaches the ramp.
The thing is, it’s not a hard trick. Reki’s done it a million times, up the ramp, pivot fakie on the coping, back down. Easy peasy. But he’s in the middle of it, his trucks turned sideways on the coping, lingering for a second, and he feels something go wrong.
It feels like it happens in slow motion. His trucks catch, his balance shifts, and suddenly he’s falling, hitting the ground hard and landing on his hands and knees. He holds his breath for a moment, and he feels a million miles away from his body.
His board clatters down beside him and Langa runs over, still holding the camera. “Reki! Are you alright?”
“I-” He shifts his balance to his feet and stands up, stumbling slightly. “I think I’m okay.” He glances up at Langa to see that the other boy’s eyes have gone wide. “What is it?”
“Reki, your knees ,” Langa says.
Reki glances down, just now noticing the pain shooting through his knees and palms. His jeans are ripped, exposing bloodied skin that’s bleeding profusely. The blood has already stained the fabric around the holes red. He holds up his palms to examine them and finds that the skin has been broken in multiple places, although they aren’t bleeding as much as his knees.
“Oh,” Reki says, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight. “I’m bleeding.”
“Reki, we should probably get that cleaned up,” Langa says, turning off the video he was taking. “It looks pretty bad. I can call someone to come get us.”
Reki waves off his concern. “I’m fine,” He says. “I can’t even feel it.” Lies.
“I’m calling your mother.”
“No, wait-” Reki lunges forwards, then grimaces as the mutilated skin over his knees shifts with the movements. Langa gives him an ‘I told you so look’ and dials Reki’s mom.
She arrives in about ten minutes, driving the Kyan family car, a beat up cherry-red Subaru station wagon that smells a bit like old coffee. Langa maneuvers Reki into the backseat despite the other’s protests, while Reki’s mom hovers worriedly. Their skateboards go in the trunk, and then Reki and Langa spend the ten minute drive back to Reki’s house explaining exactly what happened.
Reki tries not to look at his knees as they drive, focusing on the scenery flashing by outside. His knees sting in the open air, and he bites down on his lip to keep from grimacing. In the front passenger seat Langa turns around to give him a pitying look.
They arrive at Reki’s house and his mom immediately heads inside to get the first aid kit ready, leaving Langa to help Reki inside. Reki can still walk, luckily, but Langa opens the doors and pushes the shoji screens open so that Reki doesn’t have to use his cut up hands.
They end up in the bathroom, Reki sitting on a stool in the shower, pants rolled up past his knees. Langa is crouched in front of him, holding the detachable shower head and trying to figure out how to turn it on. When he does get it working, they clean out the wounds on Reki’s knees and palms, washing out as much of the dirt as they can before Langa hands Reki a washcloth and a bottle of soap so he can clean out the rest of the dirt that’s left.
Langa leaves the shower and stands in the sink area, awkwardly rummaging around in the large first-aid box for antiseptic cream and bandages. Reki drags the washcloth over his injuries, wincing in pain as it rubs against the raw skin. Eventually, it looks like he’s cleaned all of the dirt out.
Reki emerges from the shower and sits down on the bathroom floor, careful not to aggravate his hands or knees. Langa pulls out a few more things, almost ready to start.
“Can you do my hands first?” Reki asks.
Langa nods. “Do you think band aids will be enough?” He holds up a pack of Doraemon band aids.
“Probably, just make sure you get them over the deeper cuts.”
“Got it,” Langa says, and starts smearing antiseptic cream over Reki’s palms, trying to be gentle. He covers the cuts with the band aids, and by the time he’s finished, Reki’s palms are almost completely covered by smiling blue cartoon characters.
Reki’s knees are next. One of them isn’t so bad, maybe an inch or so of actual bleeding area and a bit of road rash, but the other is much larger and deeper, blood dripping down Reki’s leg and mixing with the water from the shower.
Langa puts an extra large bandaid on the smaller one, but hesitates over the other. “What do you think I should do?” He asks Reki.
“Maybe try the pads? And then you can wrap it with the other stuff.”
“You won’t be able to skate for a while if it’s wrapped up like that,” Langa says, looking up at Reki.
“I’ll be okay!” Reki says, grinning. “I can take a break from skating for a few days, don’t worry.”
“Okay,” Langa says, and has Reki hold the sterile pads while he wraps the gauze tight around it, making sure that the pads won’t slide around. Once he’s done, he helps Reki up and lets him take a few experimental steps around the room, testing how far he can bend his knee when it's bandaged up.
Reki wakes up the next morning and tries to roll out of bed, insteading hitting the floor in an ungraceful head. He sits up, trying to figure out how to fold his bandaged knee under him so he can stand up. It’s stiff and sore and painful to move, but eventually he manages to stand up and get dressed, pulling on his gakuran jacket over a soft hoodie.
He can’t skate to school like he normally does, so he leaves early to walk, limping slightly. Langa meets him at their usual spot, skateboard strapped to his backpack. The sight fills Reki with more than a little jealousy, and he wishes that he could get back to skating sooner, or that he had never injured himself in the first place.
School is boring, as usual, and they end up on the roof during lunch time. Reki trades his umeboshi for Langa’s tamagoyaki, and they eat in peaceful silence, watching skating videos on their phones. A group of girls sit on the other side of the roof, giggling loudly and glancing over at the two boys. Reki feels his ears start to heat up from the attention, but Langa doesn’t seem to notice, still absorbed in the video he’s watching.
He turns the screen towards Reki, showing a slow motion video of someone doing a laser flip. “Do you think I could do that?”
Reki chokes on his rice, girls momentarily forgotten. “That’s like, one of the hardest tricks to land, ever. You’re good, but I don’t think you’re there quite yet.”
“I want to learn it,” Langa says, his expression unreadable.
Reki sighs loudly. “Geez, you prodigies are scary. Going for a laser flip already? It’s hardly been any time since you learned to ollie!”
“Will you teach me how?” Langa asks.
“You think I know how to do a laser flip? You’re better off asking Miya, or maybe Cherry.”
“Okay,” Langa replies, and clicks on the next video, attention immediately focused on it.
Reki glances over at the girls, and then glances away when they catch him looking and start to laugh harder. He looks at Langa, still absorbed in the video, and sighs. Langa is completely useless when it comes to girls. And boys. And schoolwork. And just about anything that isn’t skating.
Eventually the lunch period comes to an end and they have to head back to class. They take their seats at the back of the classroom and Reki props his chin up on his hand, gazing distractedly out of the window. Langa has his textbook propped up on his desk, hiding his phone, on which he’s still watching skating videos. The rest of the day passes in a blur, with the exception of when Reki made a fool of himself when he was called on during English.
After school, he doesn’t really know what to do. Normally he would head to the skatepark with Langa, but there’s not much he can do with his knee bandaged up. He could go home, but there’s not much to do there, and besides, his mom would expect him to do his homework or something, so that’s out of the question.
They end up at the skatepark anyways, Reki sitting on one of the ramps while Langa practices flat ground tricks. He fiddles with his phone, opening and closing apps while watching Langa out of the corner of his eye. The sun beats down on them from high in the sky, the concrete soaking up the heat and shimmering slightly. Reki tugs his hood up to protect the back of his neck from sunburn, sweating slightly and wishing he had thought to wear something lighter.
He and Langa leave the skatepark earlier than usual, because they have to walk home instead of skate. A cool breeze rolls off the ocean as the sun sinks lower towards the horizon, dying the sky every shade of pink and orange imaginable. Reki catches Langa staring up at it in awe, eyes wide.
“Not like this in Canada?” Reki asks, grinning at the other boy.
Langa shakes his head. “Not quite like this. It was still pretty, but… this is something else.”
“Yeah, Okinawa sure is something. Better to see it by skating though,” He sighs wistfully, something inside him aching to get back on a board.
“It’s only a few more days.”
“Yeah, yeah. Hey, I’ll race you back to my place!”
“Reki wait! You’re still injured! Reki!”
Reki just laughs and skips away, ignoring the throbbing in his knee. Langa chases after him, skateboard under his arm, and they run down the hill as fast as they can, the ocean spread out around them.
Reki turns around, running backwards so he can face Langa. The light catches on the other boy’s hair and forms a halo around his head. He’s smiling brightly, and for a moment Reki thinks that it might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
They split at Reki’s house, Langa heading back to his own home and Reki heading inside to work on the homework he’s been neglecting. His mom is in the kitchen, cooking dinner, his two youngest siblings running around her legs and yelling loudly about some TV show they’ve been watching. His other sister is sitting in the living room, homework spread out on the low table in front of her.
The rest of the evening passes in quiet contentment. They eat dinner together, Reki stresses out over his Japanese Lit homework, his mom puts a drama on TV and they all end up watching it. It’s easy, and familiar, and the only difference from other nights is the multitude of bandages wrapped around Reki’s knee.
He goes to bed that night, full and content, and then wakes up in a panic a few hours later. His knee feels like it’s burning under the bandages, and the muscles around it are sore and stiff. His palms throb too, and a bunch of the bandaids that Langa stuck on them have begun to peel off. He slides out of bed and stumbles his way to the bathroom, swallowing down screams as he puts weight on his knee.
He sits down on the bathroom floor and pulls the first aid kit towards him before beginning to unwrap the gauze and peel the sterile pads off. The skin underneath is oozing slightly, raw and red, turning purple around the edges. Reki gags, and then turns his attention back to the first aid kit. It’s then that he realizes he has no idea what to do. He’s used to patching up minor injuries, but he doesn’t know what to do when a larger one starts to get infected, like he thinks might be happening to his knee.
It’s three am and he doesn’t want to wake his parents up, but he doesn’t know what to do. In a panic, he calls Langa, hoping and praying that the other boy isn’t asleep. He picks up after three rings.
“... Reki? Are you okay? Why are you calling so late?”
“It’s-” Reki says, swallowing back tears that he didn’t even realize were welling up. “It’s my knee. It hurts, it hurts a lot, and I think it might be getting infected, and I don’t know what to do , Langa, what do I do ?”
“Okay, one second,” Reki can hear Langa shifting the phone again, and then he says. “So, first, uh, do you have any hydrogen peroxide? It’s probably in a brown bottle.”
Reki rummages around in the first aid kit, sighing when he finds something that matches the description Langa gave. “I think I got it. What now?”
“Clean the wound out with that. I’m just warning you, it’s going to-”
“OWW!”
“-sting. A lot. After that, put more of the antiseptic cream on it.”
“The stuff in the white tube?”
“Does it say antiseptic cream on it?”
“Uh,” Reki turns his head and squints at the label. “Yes?”
“Yeah, then go ahead and put that on. Does it still hurt a lot?”
“Yeah, kind of,” Reki says, rubbing the cream into the wound. “But it feels a little better? Maybe?”
“Okay, that’s good. Let’s see… do you have more of the sterile pads that we used last time? And gauze? Because I’m thinking that it would probably be best to wrap it up the same way we did it last time.”
“Okay… ah fuck, this is really hard. How did you do it?”
“Practice, and an extra pair of hands.”
“Wait, where do you get an extra pair of hands? Do they like, grow out of your shoulders or something?”
“I meant get another person to help you, Reki. I think you need to get back to sleep.”
Reki sighs. “Yeah, probably.” He tightens the last strip of gauze and tucks it under so that it won’t unravel. “Thanks for helping me. I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s okay,” Langa says, and Reki can almost picture his small smile. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Yeah, me too,” Reki quips, and Langa laughs softly, making Reki’s face heat up.
“Good night,” Langa says. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Yeah,” Reki replies, “Good night.”