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Once, passing through the hospital grounds, he came across a fallen cicada. It was his habit to walk slowly through the garden, following a path worn smooth by the indelible tread of a thousand patient feet. He liked to imagine that the rhythm of his steps sustained the rhythm of the building. Every click of his heel was the tap of a nurse’s finger against a syringe, the low comforting pulse of a dialysis machine, the beat of his father’s heart. For this reason he moved carefully, knowing that a stumble could kill. And so, fixing his gaze on the ground to scan for obstacles and to avoid the eye-watering brightness of the sun, he saw the cicada.
The cicada was a small, broken thing. Its wings beat weakly against the ground. Some careless passerby had crushed its abdomen with the toe of a boot, but still it flapped on. He felt its life twitching against his palm as he scooped it up with gentle fingers and set it in the grass. Then it was back to the comforting rhythm of his feet, one before the other, his shoes tapping with surgical precision against the stone.
On the way back he faltered. It had rained the night before, and there were small puddles scattered along the walkway. The cicada had dragged itself to one of these puddles and cast itself in, its beautiful filmy wings unfurled upon the water. There was something lovely and grotesque about the juxtaposition of the dead insect against the delicate shining membranes that flowed forth, veined with gold, from its corpse. He stood watching it for a long time.
—
The room where his father existed was devoid of color. At first it had been a bright spring green, chosen by the hospital psychiatrist to suggest optimism and rebirth. But the fading of the patient somehow seeped into the plaster. By mutual agreement, room and inhabitant alike passed into translucence: one in the form of paint that flaked away to show concrete walls, and the other in the form of skin that stretched too thin over the veins beneath.
One afternoon, Akashi came to pay his respects. The intensity of his hair and eyes stuck out like a wound. At first Nijimura resented him this vibrancy, highlighting as it did the faintness of the man in the bed. But when he looked closer he saw that the eyes were ringed with shadows and that the hair hid hollows in his pale cheeks. Watching him, Nijimura wondered what could have reduced him thus, so that the patient and the visitor appeared to be two incarnations of the same ghost, skirting the edges of invisibility.
—
For Kise, who had never known a challenge, Akashi was the first. Each stern word fueled his obsession. It was a fleeting passion, for Kise loved carelessly, with the nonchalance of a boy who collected a dozen hearts a day. But for a month he dogged Akashi’s footsteps, so confident in his beauty that he believed he could capture Akashi’s interest by means of mere proximity, until Aomine awoke and stole him away.
For Kuroko, lost in the shadows, he extended his hand; for Murasakibara, dismissed too often for his childishness, he extended his regard. For Midorima he was an object of worship that passed slowly into the mortal realm, each glimpse of vulnerability tantalizing to the point of intoxication. He rebuilt himself a thousand times in their names. With each erasure Nijimura watched him grow a little more fragile, his thin shoulders bowed beneath the weight of their adoration.
Aomine was the last, a quick conversation after a landslide victory that left them all blinded by his radiance. “Someday, I will make you kneel at my feet,” Akashi said, imperious to the point of parody. And instead of laughing, Aomine said softly, “I’d like to see you try.” His voice had the quality of a prayer, and his gaze drifted past Akashi to some far-flung vision, of the monster that Akashi would become for his sake.
—
Before he graduates, Nijimura seeks Akashi out to warn him against the dangers of martyrdom. But Akashi simply looks at him, unflinching, and says, “I know what you need.”
“So do I,” Nijimura says dryly. “A cure for cancer would be nice.”
“That’s not it,” Akashi says. “Your father, Nijimura-sempai. Haizaki-kun. Myself. You’re looking for someone you can save.”
He steps back and spreads his arms, a shadow against the sky. The clouds seem to sprout from his shoulderblades. Nijimura almost laughs, but instead he chokes it down and says, “And do you need saving?”
Something gleams in Akashi’s left eye, a dusty gold flicker of cicada wings.
“Not yet,” he says, and it sounds like a promise.