Chapter Text
Eiji descends like a wild animal.
He’d been pole-vaulting more than half his life, so long that he‘s memorized the art of safely landing like it’s as simple as riding a bike or even breathing.
Today, his body moves on its own. His body flails against gravity, legs splayed out on the floor, ready to catch him.
Here’s the problem: his legs aren’t supposed to catch him, especially not when he’d come from six meters up in the air.
When he comes to his senses, it’s too late to correct it. He lands at the edge of the mat and crashes into the plantbox.
A characteristic pop rings in his ear.
Then an adrenaline-induced rush of breath.
A haze.
Eiji’s no stranger to it. When he hits the ground, his ankle smacks against the cold hard ground at an unnatural angle and his mind gets it immediately.
If his ankle is sprained, he just needs to pull himself back up. Once he stands up, he’ll do a little bit of testing: hop on one foot, tiptoe on the other, just to put a finger to where it’s coming from. They’ll help him to the bench. He talks to his coach, tests the ankle, and there’d be some discussion on if he could make the next round.
If it’s a mild one, he knows he’ll be back next week.
If it’s a severe one, Eiji knows he’ll probably be gone for a month… or maybe even a few months?
But that’s not a lot… right?
Wait. Why is he thinking about that… Why is he thinking of recovery times when all he did was flub a jump?
The bar clatters from next to him, and the blue sky is just above him, an endless sea of blue. Most spring days, the light is blinding. Today, however, he’s staring up at the sky like he’s impervious to the glare of the sun.
It’s a good break from the haze of confusion.
And it’s a good respite from the post-injury clarity that’s coming.
But clarity isn’t always a good thing. As soon as the fog dissipates, grief hits him like a truck.
People go through the five stages of grief like they’re going through the backroads of some remote town or taking the cheap local train that never fails to remind him that he’d probably cover the distance of three stations much faster if he’d just sprinted it.
Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining.
Depression.
Acceptance.
Eiji likes to compare that ‘post-injury clarity’ to something like cruising along the expressway or taking the bullet train.
He doesn’t have the time to simmer at every pit stop which comes with loss and foreboding. All he has time for is that whirlwind of denial and the acceptance that comes with clarity.
Or what is supposed to come with clarity.
Post-injury clarity doesn’t come like it usually does. He doesn’t go through that whirlwind of emotions: the confusion, the chaos. Today, the fear of flying up in the air doesn’t consume him either. Nor does he go through hundreds of questions of—
Can he stand up?
Can he try to stand up?
Are people watching?
That whirlwind of thoughts keeps spinning and spinning and suddenly he’s looking everywhere at once, from the muted crowd, the two poles from where the bar once hung, and people running towards him. He’s starting to contemplate every part of his reality.
What’s real? What’s not?
He’s going so far as even imagining that picture Ibe-san had taken and displayed on some artwork.
Fly boy in the sky. Was that really him?
Fuck. He has a scholarship, he can’t just sit around here and do nothing.
It isn’t just some bullet train or a car on the expressway. Somehow the car has gone rogue and it’s swivelling and swerving towards other expressways, far flung from the original destination.
His coach is hovering over him, and in a panicked voice, he’s ordering Eiji to look at him. His teammates are visible from his peripherals. Someone is telling them to stand back.
Eiji had sprained his ankle only a month or so back, a clumsy landing and a stupid kick at the plant box, and a few of his teammates had clustered around him and helped him back up to his seat.
This time, none of them help him up, but he hears whispers.
They’re talking about how his sprained ankle never healed.
They’re right. Maybe Eiji did cheat a bit. The doctor said for four weeks, Eiji was back on the track as soon as he could walk.
Stupid.
But only stupid because he took the risk of not listening to the doctor.
“Eiji! We’re going to have to carry you out…” his coach calls out.
Where? Why?
One hand weaves itself from underneath one arm then the other. Someone hefts him back up to a half standing position, and Eiji attempts to put weight on the injured foot, and he pulls back at the last minute.
The flaring ache is one warning. The soft scolding from his coach is another.
Sometimes the best explanations are the shortest ones. Eiji takes the express train down to acceptance.
There was a pop, and now there’s a flaring pain in his ankle, that he can’t seem to shake off.
He’s injured—badly, and he isn’t sure what, but there seems to be a whisper hanging in the air… Something—or somebody’s telling him he’s done with pole vaulting.
Post injury clarity.
Ibe once made a joke that it’s a lot like the morning after a night of drinking.
Eiji doesn’t have an opinion on that because he's never gone drinking.
Ibe made sure to include some crude jokes along the way… mentioning that it’s somehow similar to post-nut clarity.
Eiji doesn’t think too much about that either because he’d never even had his first kiss.
But he doubts it. Ibe says a lot of things and not all of them are true. Eiji’s not experienced with drinking, nor is he experienced in love.
His university life isn’t one anyone would dream off after the rigors of Japanese high school. Most Japanese high school students practically sell their soul to the god of grades and university rankings during their three years of middle school and three years of high school, all for the sake of an easy college life.
For most Japanese students, university life is the most dynamic and eventful stage of their life.
On Friday nights, college students are joining clubs, partying, enjoying their new found freedom.
Eiji on the other hand, sold his soul to the gods of polevaulting, and maybe it isn’t as good of a bargain as what the other students are getting.
Until today, his Friday nights were spent preparing for competitions.
This Friday night, he’ll be spending the rest of his Friday night laying on a cot in the hospital room.
Clarity comes to him like a slap on the face, as he studies the pale white of the examination room. His only companion is whatever people he can make out from just outside the wide window.
Then Ibe enters the room, and suddenly, two’s a crowd.
Clarity brings with it multiple realizations at once, but Eiji can’t so easily process any of them when Ibe comes with a curt greeting then starts talking logistics.
“Did you call your mother?” he asks.
Eiji stares at his phone on the table next to the cot. His mother had never been the best confidant when it came to pole-vaulting.
In truth, he didn’t bother calling her. He knows what she’ll say. He can even hear it now. She’ll ramble, then there’ll be an ‘I told you so’ and she’d mutter something about how his father was wrong for letting him do it and she has always been right—-pole vaulting was a bad idea.
Even if it is the reason he’s a competitive pole vaulter in Tokyo right now, and even if it is the reason she isn’t paying a cent for university.
“Does your mother know?” Ibe asks again.
Eiji blinks back confusion. He was in a trance for just a few seconds, but he wished he could have lain with his thoughts for a while longer. Though Ibe is a better companion than his mother a hundred times over, Eiji still finds himself hesitating to talk.
Maybe because he still doesn’t know the best way to answer the question. His coach probably contacted his family already, and Eiji isn’t so eager to send his own message.
Ibe could have sensed the heavy air in the room, or maybe he’d even talked to the doctors.
All Eiji is sure of is that he’s prattling, first about how he shouldn’t have to face this alone and how keeping a relationship with his parents is the key to happiness then about how he should at least call his sister.
The nurse has been careful with him. They’d given him something for the pain, which has soon mellowed down to a dull ache.
Painkillers are supposed to be a godsend, but with none of the pain to distract him, his thoughts have taken centerstage. His mind is a hairball, and any hasty pull to disentangle it, and he’ll find himself more out of sorts.
“Eiji, are you in pain?”
Eiji silently shakes his head.
“They said they’ll take you for an MRI soon, but hopefully it isn’t as bad as they’re expecting, right?”
No. It's bad. Only a few minutes ago, a doctor and a nurse had entered. They helped into a belly-first position on the couch, mentioning something about a Thompson Test. They squeezed the back of his leg, and somehow that had been enough for them to say "it's torn... badly," and "‘it could even be a full rupture.’
Eiji didn’t get a good look from his prone position on the cot, but he isn’t an idiot. He was never good at science, but he’s an experienced athlete. ‘Full rupture’ is never a good thing for athletes.
“Are you feeling nervous? The good news is you’re fine. It doesn’t seem like you’re in any pain.”
Ibe probably doesn’t know it, but he’s asking just the right questions and he’s making the perfect comments with such impeccable timing, that he’s singlehandedly disentangling that hairball inside Eiji’s head.
Slowly first.
“I saw it on instagram first… some of your followers reported on the incident. It’s a shame it happened during a competition. It’s the talk of the community.”
Eiji sighs. He’d acquired a small following since he’d broken a record back in high school, and since scouts started talking about how ‘he could even make the olympics!’ He does try to remain as private as he can, but he can’t really prevent his fangirls from creating some online community and talking and theories. Long ago, someone did tell him, the more he doesn’t say, the wilder the theories could be.
He’s heard both ends of the spectrum, and he found he’s managed the best by simply disconnecting.
Ibe continues. “But… others did mention that it could be an overuse injury… and someone mentioned how you landed wrong only a month ago… and how you were limping out. Maybe an injury that has yet to heal.”
Eiji didn’t expect his fangirls to have the observant eye of a private investigator.
He lays back down on the cot. “That’s for the doctors to figure out, isn’t it?” he responds, without a hint of enthusiasm. Ibe’s pulling at the most uncomfortable of those strings, and as cruel as it sounds, he just wants silence.
He just wants Ibe to shut up.
He just doesn’t say it.
“But you know… a lot of your fans are curious… and Ei-chan, I want to know what happened too. I’m worried.”
Eiji doesn’t respond. Theories? He doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t even understand why Ibe thinks muling over the cause and the nature of the injury is a good way to spend the next hour as they wait for the nurses to roll him into the MRI room.
Ibe watches as the nurses move Eiji from the cot to the wheelchair. From his peripherals, Eiji could see how Ibe had stiffened up as Eiji pathetically attempted to put weight on that injured foot.
For a moment, that wince out of him sounded like the squeal of a dying pig. He bites his tongue and falls back on the wheelchair to the chagrin of the nurses.
Ibe keeps quiet as they wheel him away. The nurses are quiet too, probably mumbling invections about how Eiji shouldn’t have even attempted.
He’s accepted it’s bad, but it didn’t hurt to try… right? It’s stupid only because they’d caught him.
As he is wheeled into the MRI room, Eiji stares glumly down at his left ankle.
It was also incredibly stupid to go back to training only a week after he’d sprained his ankle. The dull aches that resonated through his left foot should have been a ringing alarm bell in itself.
In the simplest of words, he should have just seen it coming.
And as they lay him under that large machine, and as the technician talks him through that ‘scary machine’ (that Eiji could have sworn he’d been under before), Eiji realizes he’s terrified.
His heart beats wildly as the machine closes in on him and all he can see is darkness. He thinks of the blue sky just above him only hours before, and he remembers, he was terrified then too.
Back then, he was flying. The blue above him was a deep sea, and gravity was like a million hands gripping him at every extremity and pulling him eagerly back down to the ground.
Gravity gives no fucks about how painful the fall is going to be. It never did. That’s why pole vaulters always had a cushion at the end.
This didn’t used to be a problem. He reminds himself.
He’s been polevaulting since middle school. He wasn’t always terrified of the pull of gravity, but that day, he was.
Or at least, his body was terrified for him. It twisted and turned as if trying to cushion him, while he was a good few meters up in the air.
He landed awkwardly on his injured ankle, and now he can’t even feel that damn thing.
“Okumura-san, we advise you not to move while the scan is ongoing,” one voice calls out from the microphone.
Post-injury clarity.
Everything suddenly makes sense, but god, Eiji wished with all his heart that it didn’t.
It’s not a severe ankle sprain like he expected.
They come to him talking about an achilles tendon that ruptured, and ‘what about the ankle?’ he asks.
The doctors hum in thought, but it’s clear from their faces and a slick digression that that wasn’t their priority. That’s the problem, two many factors and suddenly EIji doesn’t know which injury to think about.
His whole foot is done for. That’s for sure.
His dormitory isn’t exactly handicap friendly. There are too many factors to consider, and Eiji has a few more tests, so they keep him for the night, and situate him in a room.
He’s alone for a moment so he sits with his thoughts.
A few seconds later, he grabs his phone and unlocks it to twelve unread messages, some from teammates, one from his coach, and in their group chat, their coach posts the results. His body weighs with the flashbacks of just that afternoon. The bar was almost six meters up in the air, higher than he’d practiced since he sprained his ankle. Still, he took the risk, knowing if he jumped like every other time he’d practiced, and if he cleared that, he’d probably have medalled in the competition.
His mind had been screaming to go for it, but his body had been begging him not to attempt that jump, and it gave so many signs: everything from the throbbing ache of an unhealed ankle and the sharp burning at the back of his ankle.
He’d ignored all of them and where he is now, he doesn’t need to know what they’re up to.
His coach left a few missed calls, and Eiji opens the messages from his coach.
I called your mother. She’s not picking up.
She hasn’t replied, either.
Eiji suspects she’s on another of those dates. He’d barely been able to contact her when she was.
We had to take your teammates back to the dorm, but I’m on my way back to the hospital if you need…
They’re a prefecture away and EIji knows it’ll probably take him an hour to get back. He stares at the time stamp and decides he doesn’t want to see anyone else. Ibe is enough.
A family friend is here with me now. You don’t need to go back but thank you for offering. Eiji texts back.
His coach calls, and only asks a few more questions. A total waste of time if Eiji were honest, but luckily enough, the Japanese language leaves him with enough phatic expressions at his disposal to convince his coach that he’s fine.
He’s lying. He’s not, but he’s too tired to entertain a few more worried visitors.
He’s expecting the doctor to come in soon, and he’s imagining the worst case scenario. He’s heard of injuries that have taken years to recover from, and if it does take years ‘what will happen after he’s released from the hospital?’ He doesn't even know if he could face his teammates or his coach. His father’s still sick and would his mother make the journey to Tokyo to see him? Honestly, he’d rather she didn’t. He doesn’t want to hear it.
And his sister?
He reaches for his phone and he opens the unread messages. The first one is from his mother.
Heard you’re injured again.
He doesn't read concern in that. Maybe there's some mild irritation, but that's how she always has been when it comes to injuries.
He was lucky until this point. Before this, he's only gotten the occasional butt sore, sprained ankle or overuse injury.
But this seems different. It doesn’t seem at all like some routinary check-up. The doctors are in and out. They recommended he stay for a few nights, since the commute back to his dormitory is far too long, and if Eiji were honest with himself, he doesn’t want to go back.
The nurses are keeping him comfortable, talking about getting him into a room . The air doesn’t feel as light, and he feels sadder…like he’s mourning something.
His pole vaulting career maybe?
He’s mourning something but it’s stupid. Nothing's final. There’s no ultimatum from the doctors either.
Soon after the nurses leave, Ibe enters the room.
“Count yourself lucky they’re allowing you to stay overnight. In the United States, I hear, they barely keep someone at the hospital for longer than necessary.”
“Because healthcare is so expensive there?” Eiji suggests. A mindless conversation is still a better distraction than having nothing at all.
Ibe chuckles. “One of the reasons I was constantly on the edge back when I was there.”
Ibe was in the United States during Eiji’s senior year of high school, and he’d only recently returned, right around the time Eiji started his first year of university, just that spring. Since then, they’d had months to catch up and rekindle their relationship, especially since Ibe’s been busy setting up a small exhibit in Tokyo.
The same place at the same time.
Eiji can’t help but thank the gods of timing that they had caught up when they did. Although Eiji prefers to keep the injury private, Ibe’s better company than having none at all.
“Can you tell me about your time in America?” Eiji asks.
Ibe cocks his head to one side. “At this point, what don’t you know about my time there?”
He's recently finished working on a joint case about the NYPD with some American man named Lobo or Robo, Eiji isn’t so sure. He isn’t the most familiar with Western naming conventions.
The names are in one ear and out the other.
Ibe continues to ramble the same story, like he’s only trying to distract Eiji, and Eiji leans back on the bed and just listens, though he’s only getting at the most twenty percent of the conversation beyond the ‘maybe one day, you’ll be competing in the United States, and I’ll be the one taking your picture.’
WIth that last phrase, Ibe’s only trying to lighten the gloomy atmosphere of the room, but it stings. Optimism and unrealism stings when he’s already lazily floating down this cold sea of acceptance.
The nurses don't tell him how long he's going to stay here. He told them he has school on Monday, but the nurses mention something about… excuse slips.
Over an injured foot? Eiji’s fairly confident he can make the trek to class in crutches.
“We should message your roommates. Maybe you’ll need something from your dorm?” Ibe suggests.
EIji shrugs. “Some toiletries maybe and pajamas.”
“Anything else?”
Eiji leans back on the bed and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t want to ask for too much. His dorm is a good few trains away from the hospital and Ibe will be carrying all that alone, so he decides to only ask for the necessities.
His mind wanders to even a comfortable pair of pajamas and a pillow.
Necessities. He repeats to himself in emphasis.
Next to his desk, he keeps a little shelf, piled with a few textbooks, notebooks, some booklets, and one of them he realizes he wants to get a good look at. It’s not that heavy either.
It’s a stupid thing to ask for, but if he doesn’t ask Ibe, who else can he ask?
“I’m going to leave now… but if you need anything…” Ibe waves his phone up in the air as he swings the door open and leaves the room.
Only a second later, Eiji unlocks his phone. He lists the basics, and for a moment, his thumb hovers the ‘send’ button, but he pulls back. ’
He adds one more thing to the list: the athletic scholarship handbook.
Nine… months.
“Nine months?” Eiji keeps his voice soft and cold, but he can’t do much to tame the tremble of his lips.
The doctor is doing his best with his bedside manner. He’s taken the seat next to Eiji’s bed, and he’s keeping his eyes locked on him. “Of course you’ll be out of the cast sooner than that, and you can probably start on light training much when the cast is off… but to make a full recovery… to get back to your original shape…that might take some time.”
If that’s even possible.
The doctor is far too optimistic, and Eiji knows his body much better. He knows how spraining the same damn ankle again and again could weaken it beyond ordinary repair. He knows his ankle was barely healed when he launched himself up in the air…
But how could that have led to a rupture of the achilles tendon?
Still. He knows it’s bad but there’s something jarring about the doctors confirming what he already suspected.
They’re discussing dates for appointments. They discuss a doctor’s appointment, surgical options and even physical therapy. The more they discuss, the farther off a full recovery seems to be.
It’s ten in the evening. The doctors already gave their talk, and Ibe’s still talking like Eiji’s going back to pole vaulting. He says he googled statistics, and he’s talking about them with a huge smile, and he’s terribly optimistic.
“Most make a recovery in nine months,” he says.
A year.
Eiji makes another conclusion. That means he’s out for the rest of the season, and he’s barely even into his first season as a university student. He opens the handbook to the part where the terms of his scholarship are all laid out.
The neurotic side of him has made sure that he’d memorize the terms and conditions even weeks before he’d finally committed to university, but just in case it did change while he wasn’t looking, Eiji scanned the the first few provisions, his eyes landing on one particular clause, that had him dropping his shoulders in relief.
They wouldn’t revoke the scholarship, right?
Still, he’s an import from an unknown prefecture. He’s no inborn genius either. His father and mother could probably save for a decade and this still wouldn’t be able to pay for his tuition in one year.
In one of the most prestigious private universities in the Kanto region, he’s a fish out of water.
He's ordinary in a sea of extraordinaries.
It was his pole vaulting skills that had him breaking the confines of ordinary. In his third year he had broken a record, and that had been the reason he was even scouted in the first place.
He’s a nobody in one of the best colleges. He was granted an opportunity, yet he can’t even fulfill his end of the bargain.
“...Eiji, are you okay?” Ibe asks.
Eiji didn’t even notice he’d lowered his head.
“Are you in pain? Should we call the nurse?” he presses.
“I’m fine,” Eiji mutters softly.
The world is heavy, so heavy.
While Eiji pretends to be asleep, Ibe leaves him for the night.
Humans were never meant to fly twenty feet up in the air. He’s an ordinary person aiming for something extraordinary.
Of course his body would give up on him eventually.
Eiji’s sister makes the trip to see him.
She makes the announcement through text, and less than 24 hours later, she bounds into his hospital room with a duffel bag, and she unpacks it in front of him while rambling about how fast the bullet trains are.
Eiji’s silently listening, but his mind is louder. Emi Okumura isn’t a lot like Eiji. She hates traditional Japanese food, and when she’s done singing praises about how convenient the shinkansen ride was, she gushes about all the food she gets to eat in Tokyo.
Eiji couldn’t help but poke a little fun into the conversation. He leans back on the bed. “Are you here for me or for the food?” he glances at her in mock accusation.
Emi puffs up her cheeks and averts her gaze. For a moment, it’s like they’re children again.
“They’ll release me tomorrow,” Eiji says. “After that I’ll take you wherever you want? What do you want this time? Italian food?”
“American food,” Emi says.
“Burgers?”
Emi hums. “I'll trust you. You've been in Tokyo longer than I have”.
“You know the American food isn’t exactly in Tokyo,” Eiji warns jokingly. “You’re better off going to the bases around here where there are a lot of American soldiers… or maybe go to Okinawa or something.” He doesn’t tell her, but he’s been bookmarking a few stops already for when she does come.
“Well, it’s probably better than we can get back home,” Emi responds in a soft huff, her arms crossed.
“There’s also a lot of good American food in Sasebo,” Eiji suggests. “And it’s much nearer than here. ” He mentions another American basetown which arguably is nearer to Izumo, but still a pain to get to by train.
He doesn’t really care about winning the argument with accurate facts anyway. He’s playing with her, and Emi knows it.
She rolls her eyes. “Fine, I was worried about you,” she admits. “Mom’s too busy… Dad’s too sick to make the trip, so I thought…”
“You have school?” Eiji asks.
“You’re barely one year out of Izumo and you forgot our high school calendar already?”
It’s summer. Eiji lets out a huff. He should have known. He’d been neck deep buried in training that he’d almost lost his grip on the flow of time beyond the off-season and competition season.
It didn’t help at all that the changes of seasons in Tokyo weren’t as drastic as in his hometown.
“Give me a break. I was too busy training…”
Emi sighs. Riddled with concern, she takes the seat by his bedside. “And you overworked yourself again,” she chides. “Just like back in high school, when you kept losing to Mizuno.”
“What can I say? College competitions are a lot more demanding than high school ones,” Eiji says with a shrug. “The tournaments are more competitive, and since I’m on scholarship… here, they care a lot about the results.”
“But you won’t be able to compete anyway if you get injured, right?” She says it in the simplest of words, and EiIji finds that even with that doe-eyed look and the nervous cock of her head, Emi does say the occasional smart thing.
Eiji’s too much a prisoner of his own thoughts that he doesn’t realize his own tendency to shrug off injury and exhaustion is destructive, not until he’s stuck in bed, completely unable to walk.
Emi continues the assault of sermons. “You got a really bad sprain just last month, right?”
“Oh, you know about that?” Eiji asks. “I know the coaches report when we end up in the hospital, but I didn’t even think she got it. She never sent anything back.”
“She told us about it…” Emi hangs her head back in mock exasperation ”...then went on another rant about how it’s only expected.” She turns to Eiji in question. “This injury… is it related?”
“I…ruptured my achilles tendon, or that’s what the doctor said. It’s been hurting for a while… landed wrong… and it just gave out on me. It could be related… but they’re two different places even if they’re on the same foot.”
“Achilles…leg…” Emi trails off. “Just like the Greek hero?”
“Achilles heel?” Eiji corrects. He can't so easily suppress the grin that's creeping up his mouth.
Emi is a wide reader but she barely reads in English beyond their assigned readings. The English translation doesn’t come naturally for her.
“Ever since my favorite tutor left for college, I haven’t been doing well in English..”
“You can always call,” Eiji offers.
“You know I can’t,” she responds pointedly.
EIji can’t blame her, because god knows she tried.
He runs in the morning, trains in the field at night, and in those small pockets in between he’s in some library catching up on coursework. He’d only reserved ten to twenty minutes a week to talk to family, and that’s never enough to help with homework.
Besides, it isn’t simply an issue of his sister’s bad English either. She has other things she clearly wants to say. She grabs EIji’s arm and hugs it, then she gives him a soft look, a mixture of wonder, disbelief and just this familiarity. It’s the same look they’ve exchanged for the almost two decades they’ve known each other, through their parent’s quarrels, their father’s hospitalization for liver failure, then their mother’s infidelity.
She takes a breath so deep that Eiji feels the release of the tension and loneliness. He can only imagine how tiring it is to live with just his mother.
With one exhale, she spills. “I missed my brother.”
Since he first arrived at the hospital, Eiji hasn't been sleeping well. He sleeps for two hours at a time at night and naps during the day, too frequently in and out that the promised one weekend in the hospital somehow feels like a week.
The light sleeping pills he asked from the nurses don't seem to help either.
Eiji doesn’t tell any of them about the nightmares, about the flashbacks that replay incessantly inside him. Some of those dreams, he lands awkwardly on his left leg spraining his ankle. Other times, he lands on his head, and the most jarring one is when he's twisted on his side, legs splayed out and he hits his leg on the plantbox.
The concussion could kill, but the plantbox landing although not the most dangerous, was the most terrifying, maybe because it was the most visceral of them. After all, that was exactly what happened.
The nightmares also took many forms, and the most terrifying part about them is they knew exactly what buttons to press.
When Eiji goes to sleep reliving the injurious fall he wakes up to the popping sound. The whiplash on his tendon as he hits the plant box. When Eiji goes to sleep thinking about practical things such as school work or his dorm, he wakes up to the dreams about losing the scholarship.
And the dreams are just as visceral: he imagines the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the admissions office and the fancy desk of the Athletics office and he can imagine the slow yet professional lilt of the voice of the athletic director when he tells Eiji he can no longer study there.
After all, he doesn’t contribute much. He’s an average student. He doesn’t pay any tuition, and the only thing that ever made him valuable was his ability to launch himself five meters into the air.
Without that….
It’s not your fault.
But wasn't it his responsibility as an athlete to stay healthy at the end of the day?
After one of those godforsaken naps, he found himself lazily flipping through the handbook just to read the revocation clause again.
The handbook he asked Ibe to bring is a godsend, and is probably the reason he isn’t going mad in the small cramped hospital room. Emi is a godsend too, spending half her time in the hospital, and wandering the streets just outside the hospital.
That afternoon, Emi bends her head to one side and she reads the cover of the book out loud. “Handbook for student athletes,” she says and that's all that's needed for self consciousness to well up inside Eiji like water in a heated pot.
Has he really been reading the handbook nonstop since last night? Eiji stiffens up, suddenly aware of how pathetic he looked.
“It’s because of what the doctors said, isn’t it?” Emi is in fact much smarter than Eiji could ever be. Just a little lazier… maybe? But much smarter. “I don’t think it’ll be fair if the school takes it back over an injury… and if it was in the contract, I think mom would have sniffed that out almost immediately. And you would really not be allowed in Tokyo.”
That is true, Eiji realizes as he looks through the handbook again. His mother had been against him going to Tokyo from the start.
He flips mindlessly through the pages, and his eyes land on those words again and again. Emi’s words were like cool wind on a dry sweltering day. They soothe him for moments at a time, but never longer.
She leaves again, and he falls back on the bed, staring down at his casted foot, and he realizes it’s not the revocation of the scholarship that’s the problem.
Ibe enters soon after her sister leaves. “I saw her on her way out,” he said. “Where’s she going?”
Eiji shrugs. “She’s always finding something to do. This place is a lot different from home. There’s a lot more to do.”
Ibe nods empathetically. “The doctors are signing off on your discharge papers. Are you ready to leave?”
Eiji nods sullenly. The crutches are to the side of the room. His overnight bag from the day before is there, and he stares expectantly up at Ibe.
Ibe reads his mind. “The offer still stands. I have an extra room. I’ll stay there. You and your sister can take the main room.”
“Please,” Eiji says.
He can’t go back to the dormitory yet, not when he feels like he no longer belongs.
He doesn’t know for how long he leans on the wall, his legs splayed on the tatami mat in front of him.
Ibe doesn’t ask much more than the occasional ‘are you hungry?’ Eiji declines every single one.
His sister is constantly hinting they go out and she isn't very subtle about it but all he’s thinking about is how it had taken both of them the whole fifteen minutes to get Eiji up two flights of stairs to Ibe’s apartment.
It’s been an hour since the ordeal and his heart is still beating like he’d just run a marathon, which is funny because he could have sworn he could have run a marathon only yesterday—before the accident.
It’s not the physical exertion that’s getting to him. He takes one breath then a next, and he stares at the sliding door, the low lying table and the TV just in front.
The sliding door rattles as Ibe enters the room. “Your sister’s in the bath. You want to watch TV?” he offers.
Eiji shakes his head.
“They really should install an elevator. This building isn’t very handicap friendly,” Ibe says lightly, clearly an attempt at consolation. He moves Eiji’s crutches closer to Eiji and within his reach. “It was tiring wasn’t it?”
It wasn’t, so Eiji shook his head. What he felt was different, and it dawns on him slowly as Ibe turns the television on. “The first time I saw you was on a TV broadcast of your high school nationals. I wasn’t here in the country during your senior year debut… but my brother told me about it. I asked him to tape it for me.”
In his senior year, Eiji broke a record and that was what solidified his scholarship prospects, but it isn’t something he wants to remember now. “Ibe-san, maybe you have TV shows with you? Have you been watching anything lately?” He keeps his voice light and casual, any hint of how he truly feels and Ibe would be on his case.
Ibe hums in thought. “I’ve been into American shows…”
“American shows…?”
Ibe shrugs. “Law and order, CSI: New York…”
“Because you just came from New York?” Eiji suggests.
“What can I say? I fell in love with the city.”
It’s a better trajectory for a conversation than Eiji’s past, and if Ibe continued with it, he probably would have listened silently, asked a few more lessons and maybe even asked Ibe to put CSI: New York or Law and Order on.
They are quickly interrupted, as Emi enters the room towel over her head. “Eiji you’re going next?”
Eiji is very much unwillingly thrown back to reality. How is he going to make it to the bathroom?
He only realizes how much of a trek old Japanese apartments are, when Ibe hefts him up by the shoulder, with a loud huff of exertion.
“You need help?” Emi offers.
“No, Emi-chan, I’m fine,” Eiji says.
Ibe’s apartment is small but even the trek to the sliding door is a work out in itself. Eiji counts nine careful hops on one foot, and when he’s out in the hall, he counts six, and what should have been five more, but he loses his balance before he can count them. He almost sends both of them crashing on the floor.
His sister comes up from behind him and catches him with both hands, and she gives him an admonishing look. “Easy there, big brother,” she says. “The doctor said no weight on it, right?” She walks with them the whole way there, and there’s a certain point where Eiji realizes he’s being carried to the bathroom but that’s merely a passing thought.
He can’t use the bath just yet, and they settle for the shower.
“Eiji, you’ll be fine, right?” Ibe asks.
EIji doesn’t want to be the subject of the watchful eyes of Ibe or his sister, so he mutters an “I’ll be fine,” and he makes a show of deftly unbuttoning his shirt, but it’s all a play.
They tell him to call out to them if he needs any help, but he’s resisting every urge to. The hardest part had been finding enough space to extend his legs and to get his pants leg out. He can’t get his cast wet either.
At one point, as he shifts his body to the side, he notices his hands are shaking.
His whole body seems heavier, pulling him back from even doing something as simple as bending forward to turn the shower on.
And when he shifts his weight again to grab the bottles of shampoo and conditioner form the corner of the room, when he pushes at the edge of the unused tub to get himself to a half standing position just to reach for the towel hanging on the wall, his body pulls him back angrily, and he gives in. He falls back down with a soft thud.
“Are you okay in there?” Ibe heard it.
“I’m fine,” Eiji calls out. He doesn’t mention it, because he decides it’s not important at all.
But his whole body’s shaking, and he has to sit there for a moment and gather his thoughts as water gushes out of the half-open tap
He’s navigating through some strange haze of emotion, but somehow, when he wrenches his eyes shut, when he licks his lips and just sits there for a second, he starts to comprehend something, the bare surface or the meat of his thoughts, he can’t so easily tell.
Simply going up the stairs, he’s out of breath.
Just getting to the room, his heart is beating wildly, his head is spinning and he’s practically in some other dimension.
And now, just attempting to reach for the towel, he fails. His body’s shaking.
And he doesn’t wanna try again.
“Eiji-san, you need any help?” Ibe calls out from the other side.
“Ibe-san…Could you stay outside for a bit?” he asks.
Luckily Ibe doesn’t ask. Even if he does, Eiji isn’t so sure he’d answer.
How can he? He isn't even so sure of why he's shaking. This isn't normal.
It's as if he’d developed a fear of falling.