The Ultimate Stride | Prince of Stride Fanfiction |

12 | Old Foes

    "She should be doing just fine with Heath's help," Kohinata reassured her softly, his facial expression contradicting what he was saying. His voice was calm and collected, but the look on his face suggested that he just ate something extremely sour.

    After the incident at the race, we went along with Dan-sensei to the hospital to get Kyouko some proper care. The doctor told us she would be fine after taking some prescribed antibiotics along with some good rest.

We were glad she didn't have to stay at the hospital overnight, but the doctor said that it would be a very wise decision on Kyouko's part to not run until she was fully recovered. That was enough the break the girl's heart.

I remember how sad her pouty face was...

We all wanted to skip school and help ease her back into good health so she could run sooner, but Dan-sensei had to remind us that we would be having another race very soon.

    So, we had to attend school and keep up on our training as always.

But there was also another problem.

    We didn't want Kyouko to be home alone while she was recovering. We were fully aware that if we left Kyouko in that apartment all by herself, she would surely get lonely.

And we didn't want her getting bored with her own company, because we knew that if we left her all alone she would most likely try to do something crazy and possibly worsen her condition (which absolutely none of us wanted to happen).

    She's the type of person that would try to run through her health problems.

    Kyouko's determination was an admirable trait, but it was also one of her biggest flaws when it came to taking care of herself, so everyone was always fretting over keeping her healthy outside of club activities.

    We all had specific roles for taking care of Kyouko.

    I would always lend her some of my protein drinks in the morning so she could get her proper nutrients for the day, Riku would make sure she was drinking enough water to stay hydrated on hotter days, Kohinata would remind her to do the right stretches for our workouts, Heath would take her on a warmup run before the start of practice to avoid possible injury, and Nana would make sure she remembered her training clothes every morning by shooting her a text.

    It was Kadowaki's job to keep her entertained with Shoji lessons so she wouldn't get bored and try to jump out the window like she had in the past.

    We were like an oddly functioning family that revolved around keeping our little Kyouko taken care of, and it was something that I looked forward to doing every single day.

So at first, we weren't quite sure on how to go about the dilemma with keeping Kyouko company while we were at school, but Heath came up with the fool-proof plan to have her stay at his house for the time being.

I think that's the reason why I feel so uneasy.

    Nearly everyone was against it, but Heath was very diligent in pursuing his plan of being Kyouko's temporary caretaker while all of us were imprisoned at school. So in the end, he got exactly what he wanted.