Chapter Text
“I keep telling you to pass it already!” A girl whose name I didn’t know shouted angrily at me. I turned my back on her to let her know I intended to ignore her, then let the basketball thump steadily against the court.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
You can’t just hog it, you know!” she shouted again, louder this time. “We’re supposed to be a team!”
Thump. Thump.
I could feel the stares. No one was moving; no one was talking. We were in the middle of a match, and I had the one ball…
Thump.
“Give it up already!” She finally flipped and shoved me. Hard.
The ball rolled away as I stumbled, barely managing to regain my balance. A surge of anger blazed through me like wildfire, until something inside me broke.
I clenched my fist, my nails digging deep into my palm. My breath felt sharp. I wasn’t thinking straight and just raised my hand. My heart was pounding loudly in my ears.
I was going to hit her.
But then… I felt a light tug at my shirt.
That was my childhood friend, Adachi Sakura, who was now standing in the middle of the court. She wasn't dressed in the school's gym uniform; instead, she wore just the regular one. She seemed completely out of place.
Sakura was not actually part of the basketball team and tended to just follow me to practice, where she patiently sat by the wall until we were done.
Now, what did she want from me at this time?
As I looked around, I suddenly remembered I was supposed to be in the middle of a fight. The girl who had shoved me glared. The rest of the team watched. But all I felt was Sakura’s silent presence at my side.
It was strange how all that heat and anger had drained out of me instantly—like waking up from a nightmare, sweaty, yet unable to remember anything about the dream itself. My friend’s delicate hand kept holding on to my shirt as I turned to face her. She just stood there. I knew she hadn’t stepped onto the court to stop me, not really. And she definitely wasn’t here to help me make some grand stand against the whole team, like in one of those old delinquent movies. She was just here letting me know, in her typical quiet way, that I wasn’t alone. That whatever happened next, she’d be right there with me.
Somehow, everything seemed so trivial now. I let out a deep breath, gave Sakura a quick pat on the head, and turned back to face the team.
“That’s it. I quit.” I said aloud.
Their reactions were mixed: some surprised, some worried, but most of them honestly looked relieved. You see, I wasn’t exactly the most popular member of the club. I just wanted to keep to myself and move around a bit, which made me, let’s say, a bad match for a team sport. And yeah, I'd dyed my hair. That definitely didn't help my image.
I had joined the team shortly after starting middle school when I realized all of my elementary school friends had gone their separate ways. Keeping people close took effort. It was a constant balancing act of saying the right thing, doing the right thing, and pretending to care when I didn’t. Joining the team might have been my last-ditch effort to avoid turning into a loner.
And yet, even if I quit, I knew deep down that I wouldn’t be alone. There was one single relationship that required virtually no effort on my part.
I grabbed Sakura’s hand and tugged her along as we left the court, slipping out of the gym without another word.
◆◇◆◇◆
Since it was a bit earlier than usual, we walked at a relaxed pace, hand in hand.
“Will you come with me tomorrow to the faculty office? I need to hand over my resignation.” I kept a close eye on her, and sure enough, her head dipped the tiniest bit, about the width of a rice grain. An affirmation, then.
I'm getting really good at this.
Sakura was a quiet girl. Extremely so. I could probably count the number of words she said to me in a whole week on one hand, and that was more than anyone else ever got.
We met back in preschool, when a teacher sent me to play with her because she was always alone. I’ll never forget the way her eyes lit up when I first spoke to her. I knew right away that it wasn’t me she was looking at, but something beyond me. It was something distant and beautiful. Something so precious, she simply couldn’t let go. And surely enough, from that day forward, she was always following me by like a shadow, always a few steps behind.
Since she barely made a sound, it was surprisingly easy to forget she was even there. At some point, I just started holding her hand to keep track of her.
Of course, I usually grabbed her with my right hand, which meant taking her left. But it turned out she was left-handed, and since I’m right-handed, neither of us had our good hand free to do anything useful. It led to plenty of awkward situations, let me tell you, but we were too used to change it now.
“Let’s go to your house; I would rather not deal with my mom after all that.” The truth was, I also didn’t want to deal with her mother either, but at least I knew for sure that she wouldn’t ask about the club.
◆◇◆◇◆
Sakura’s house was further from the school than it should be. She had purposely chosen our middle school just to follow me, and I was pretty sure she was going to choose her high school in the same way.
My indoor slippers had little dog ears, and Sakura’s had little cat ears. Seeing how she was the one always following me around, I couldn't help but think our slippers were mismatched… but that was fine. I liked dogs.
“Huh, looks like the freeloader’s here today,” came a voice from down the corridor. That was what counted as a greeting from Sakura’s mother, Ms. Adachi. She shot me a taunting smile, then disappeared back into the house.
Personally, I didn’t mind her sharp tongue, but I couldn’t stand how she barely even acknowledged her daughter.
My own mom was also being a pain ever since I bleached my hair, so Sakura and I had secretly launched a petty little rebellion: every day, we would randomly pick whose house to crash for dinner without telling either of them. I was sure they figured it out eventually and were letting each other know where we were over the phone, but still, it had to be a headache trying to guess how much food to make every night.
Today, dinner at Sakura’s was sandwiches and plain water. Eating at her place was always a simple deal… To make matters worse, we were sitting at a large table that felt really empty. Sakura lived alone with her mother, so I couldn’t figure why they needed such a large table. My seat was on one side, right next to Sakura, while Ms. Adachi sat in front of us.
◆◇◆◇◆
“… and wouldn’t you know it, she got the second-highest grade in her class!” I said with a big smile. If I didn’t talk during dinner, nobody would. I knew that Ms. Adachi never asked Sakura about her day in school, so of course, I had made it my life mission to talk nonstop about every little detail I could think of. I simply couldn’t stand how she seemed to have given up on understanding her daughter. The fact that it annoyed Ms. Adachi so much was just a small bonus.
“Sigh… I don’t remember asking you. Why are you even telling me this?” Yeah, it was the same thing every day, but I didn’t care; I was proud of my little Sakura. At first, she was very indifferent to her studies, until one day she got a better grade than me in one of her tests. I gave her some head pats as a reward, and her grade was even better on her next test. I found it funny and gave her even more head pats to see what would happen. Then again and again, until, here we were, the second best in her class. I felt that achievement as if it were my own. I wonder, how many head pats would I need to make her a scientist or an astronaut?
My grades? We don’t talk about those. My job was keeping my head pat game on top form and nothing else.
“Hey, freeloader.” I heard from the other side of the table. “Stay over tonight. I have work after this.” I didn’t know what Ms. Adachi made for a living, but her schedule was all over the place. The truth is, I was already planning on staying over, but she didn’t need to know that, so I nodded while stuffing the last of my sandwich in my mouth. Without another word or anything, she just stood up, took our plates, and got to washing them. That was her way of saying that she was done interacting with us for the day. I took Sakura to her room.
“You go first,” I said, throwing her a towel. She froze there for a moment as if trying to say something, but gave up half-way and obediently went to take her bath while I waited.
Sakura’s room was very clean and ordered, mainly because she didn’t really have enough things to make a mess. Most of the manga and trinkets on the shelf were things I had brought here myself. I even had some spare clothes, so I didn’t have to worry about what to wear for bed.
After exactly five minutes, she left the bath, and I took my turn. There were no clocks anywhere near the tub, so how she had her timing down to the second was one of the biggest mysteries that surrounded my quiet childhood friend. Just once, I had tried to time my bath as well, but ended up with a time that was a bit over eleven minutes.
When I was done, I found her waiting on the bed while sitting in a perfect seiza pose. Her back straight and her hands daintily on her knees. She did that so often that I jokingly wondered if that is how she slept when she was alone. Incidentally, when I tried matching her pose, I couldn’t last a minute.
She didn’t have a TV or anything in her room we could use to pass time, so we just went to bed early as usual. My side of the bed was the one next to the wall.
However, as soon as I began relaxing, my mind began recalling what happened at the club. I might have been keeping up a brave front all this time, but in truth, I was a bit afraid of going to school tomorrow. I didn’t think the team members would try to hit me behind the school building or anything. They wanted me gone, after all. And yet still, I simply couldn’t get those stares out of my mind. I knew I was the one in the wrong, but that just made the guilt I felt worse. These were not the first relationships I severed with my inaction, but they were a lot, and all at once. People I would find in the hallways and greet, or see through the window and wave at. They were a part of my life; a small part but one nonetheless. Now, I’ll have to think twice about how to act when I see one of them. What a pain.
Still, I don't think I regret quitting, but what was I even thinking by joining the team in the first place? Would I have been happier if I just played along like everyone else wanted me to? Was it worth the effort? What if…
A warm hand slipped under the sheet and closed around mine.
She was here.
She rarely grabbed my hand, but that made it all the more special when she did. And just like that, everything was well in the world. I took a nice bath, I had eaten, well, something, and I was surrounded by a warmth that wouldn’t be gone when I woke up.
That night, I slept soundly.