Comatose

8. Pushing Through

❝Your struggles don't define you, but they shape the person you become when you face them and overcome them.❞

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OCHO:

PUSHING THROUGH

Walking into her office after practice to organize her notes and prepare the final steps before the Spring Cup, Kaiya felt the weight of the world crash over her as the door shut behind her. Her eyes closed as she breathed in the feeling of being alone, away from the commotion that was by now familiar to her. Footsteps rushed outside her igloo; the excitement and relief of the students made the walls rumble and the floor shake.

With a sigh, Kaiya stepped away from the wooden door and sat at her desk. Placing her notes on the clean surface, she picked up a pen and threw herself into the wondrous world of paperwork.

The Spring Cup, a basketball competition that put everything on the line. And a challenge her team may not be ready for, as much as she had acknowledged their improvement over the past hours. She hadn't been lying; their synchronization was better, their game slowly developing. But their determination and will were conspicuous by their absence.

There was no hunger, no ambition. It made her want to pull at her hair and wonder why they had chosen basketball of all things, if they had no passion to surpass their own limits and aim for an ambitious goal. Kaiya had already reached a conclusion while watching them dance around the court like headless chicken, but that realization only fuelled her anger.

"It's just a game," one of her students had dared to comment.

The pen broke in half as the memory flashed before her narrowed eyes. How insulting it was; basketball was her dream, the thing she had dedicated her life to because she couldn't imagine herself doing anything non-basketball related. And there she was now, coaching a team of teenagers that mocked it and called it a game.

Kaiya had met people who referred to it as such before, and she had accepted it because they weren't the same hypocrites wasting her time day after day. Never in her life had she loathed something as much as she did her job now; but what was she supposed to do? As depressing as it was, it was the only job that linked her to her dream and kept it alive somewhere in the back of her mind.

A knock on the door put an abrupt end to her train of thoughts, and she frowned before voicing, "Come in."

A man dressed in red clothes stepped inside, and her confusion grew as he placed a box on her table.

"Fujiwara Kaiya?" he asked.

Blinking, she nodded and watched as the man turned around and left without uttering another word.

Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine?

Mildly annoyed by the lack of manners of the delivery man, Kaiya clicked her tongue and looked at the box with suspicious eyes. After turning it around and finding no note attached to it, she proceeded to open it and paused when a familiar sight greeted her.

Annoyance faded into excitement as her hand wrapped around the chocolate bar, only for her lips to spread into a delighted grin as more bars came into sight. Kaiya only became aware of the situation when her phone started buzzing, and she absently picked it up.

"Am I forgiven yet?" came the high-pitched voice of her stepbrother through the device.

Biting her lower lip, she opened a chocolate bar before taking a bite of the delicacy.