Disregarding the steps, I leap off the bus.
"Nakamura, wait!" I catch her shoulder and turn her around. Eyes wide, I rest my hands on her shoulders tightly.
"Is Hana okay?"
She pants. She's pale, horrified. Her face has lost its colors and her mouth is open, she's shaking.
I feel horrified. I feel horrified and it's my fault I feel this way. It's my fault I'm in this situation. I watch her stutter and stumble on her words before she can mutter,
"She collapsed." My jaw tightens and I think unwinding it will take ages.
I say nothing.
"She-She fell and she forgot to take her pills or something like that. I don't know!" Her eyebrows furrow, eyes welling as she runs a hand through her hair.
Pills. Pills? What pills?
"What pills?"
"What pills?" I ask again.
"I don't have time to explain. She's in the hospital and she's going to be taken into surgery!"
My heart falls. It starts screaming at the torture it's enduring. I think it's going to stop.
All I can say is no and what and why and lose my composure right there with only my mouth open and my hands to stare at. I took all that time going around in circles, reassuring myself that she'd be fine, thinking of only that tournament that pushed me away from her. This revelation tripped me, it felt like it made me fall exactly where I had erased the marks on the ground. It caught me where I least expected it. And while I've been doing those exercises for instant reactions in volleyball, the real world was so much faster. And in the end, all I could do was mutter as all the dots connected.
The talk about her struggles was ever so shallow. The shift of attention off of her, she was struggling for so long and had to endure so much pain that we only just started to pay attention when it was too late. And while I didn't know exactly what she endured, it must've been hell for her if she was hospitalized because of it. I wished she let it out. Whether it was sadness, or anger at me for being so terrible, I wish she let it go and relieved herself.
I hear a cold voice as I turn my back to leave.
"Where are you going, Ushijima? Are you insane?" Coach Washijo calls.
"I have to go see Hana, Coach. She's been hospitalized."
"If you leave, you'll be benched." Cause and effect. Simple as that.
"I won't leave her behind." I say.
"My decision is final. If you leave, you are not playing. You are leaving your career for this girl?" He doesn't get it.
"Fine."
He begins walking back up the steps of the bus but freezes in his place.
"What? You're serious?"
"I don't care."
The bus' windows are wide open and my teammates are staring. Their heads are practically popping out. They're shocked to see someone stand up to the coach, let alone disobey him.
"A girl for a career. Consider yourself benched, then." He scoffs loudly, arms behind his back.
"Do as you see fit, sir." I refuse to back down.
Nakamura barely tells me which hospital she's in before I take off. I'm familiar with the it. I had been there before, a long time ago. I know where to go. So I run, with all my might and my strength.
The bus was at a high point on the ground, so I have to run down the dull slope as the crisp wind plays at the hem of my white t-shirt and my ruffled hair.
She calls out for me, but I don't bother. I don't know where she's going or how she'll to get to the hospital, but I have no care for anyone. I hear the bus leave, I barely catch the sound of it moving. I'm stuck.
I feel my heart claw its way out of my chest and leave me stranded. It hurts to feel this way, to have an operating brain keep running over as I run from it. Soon, I cross countless streets and turn too many curbs to remember. I feel like a child chasing a butterfly.
Chasing the impossible, the unlikely. The unlikely chance she will forgive me, or that I will forgive myself.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tendō stands up, almost immediately.
"Coach, you can't bench him!" He exclaims, watching Ushijima run away.
"He's our star player!" Goshiki stands up triumphantly.
"Relax. I am not going to bench him." He sighs, sitting down.
"We can't-" Goshiki is about to continue.
"Wait, what? Then what was that all about?"
"I know how boys get scrambled when a girl comes into the picture. I was trying to snap him out of it but I can tell that he's just fine."
"He's crazy about her. Like, really crazy. She got him out of a dark place, you know?" Shirabu says shortly.
Teenage boys talking about love was not the smoothest topic. Naturally, a hush of awkwardness falls over them.
"It was kinda cheesy, how he worded it." Tendō chuckles.
"Teenage love is always cheesy." Coach Akira laughs.
Laughter spreads among them.
"To be fair, I heard him. It was pretty deep." Shirabu adds.
"Especially that last part." Suzuki sniffles.
"That's just how much he loves her." Shirabu's mouth twitches into a feathery smile.
"We should've offered him a ride." Semi blurts out.
"He'll figure it out." Coach Washijo says lightly.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hello, this is Hana Takahashi. Thanks for calling! Leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can," the phone speaks. Voicemail again. Her soft, welcoming voice echoes in my ears for the millionth time. I keep calling her number, praying that by some miracle I hear her voice in a different tone. Every time, my heart drops only to be soothed by the sound of her happy voice. Please, please get back to me.
It's been around fifteen minutes and I'm still going. I've passed three gas stations and two other convenience stores but I refuse to stop. I refuse to stop and relieve my feet of the concrete or relieve my head of the sun's wrath. I refuse to take a break and relax. I won't do it.
It sounds like the ultimate betrayal. I've betrayed her with my fixed loyalty to my career. I've worked with her to fix my grades and keep my place on the school's team and graduate so that I can succeed. I've overworked myself for hours for it.
I pity myself because I am a computerized robot who does nothing but jump, slam, and sweat. I thought this game could be something beautiful I can shape my future with but it has coded me to run on the adrenaline of winning it.
I'd been living in silent chaos. Day after day, night after night, a strangling loop I wrapped around my own throat. She accepted the madness and the never-ending mazes of my nature and my personality. She unravelled that loop, she's the reason I can look at myself and tolerate it.
I'm back to square one, another moment I have come to despise myself.
I've betrayed the meaning of friendship. I was supposed to be there for her.
I was supposed to check on her. Send her a text with a joke somewhere between the lines.
I was supposed to embrace her.
I was supposed to reassure her and read her some of my poetry.
I was supposed to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her.
I was supposed to lend her a shoulder to cry on.
I was supposed to be there.
So many times I'm repeating that sentence, and a part of me wants to carve it into my skin so that every time I'll look at the scar, I can remember what a terrible person I am for leaving her behind in the dust.
I pray more than ever that she is conscious, that she isn't in surgery yet, and that she is in a condition in which I can see her. Because if those doors are closed, I don't know what I'm going to do with myself then.
It feels like my soul is lowering its dreamcatcher, untwining a sliver of hope from its center, and holding onto it. It catches an ignition of love for her. She gives me hope, she is hope.
The hospital is ahead, sitting back like an eagle, ready to engulf me.
I don't slow down.
Each step I take is with a heavy heart. Each comes with a whisper of her voice or the sound of her deep laugh. Memories that take a solid presence, wrapped in pretty white bows that glisten beneath daylights. It's all so enrapturing, like I'm drinking beers laced with adrenaline and substances that turn my line of sight into a thin knot.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author: I'm sorry I keep leaving y'all on cliffhangers but one: it's unbelievably fun, and two: I'm putting as much stuff as I can and three: I want to provide short chapters bcs all of humanity loves short chapters