Fan fic Asylum - Chapter 10
Title: Asylum - Chapter 10
Characters: Kato Shigeaki, OC, Tegoshi Yuya, Masuda Takahisa, Koyama Keichiro, Yamashita Tomohisa, Ryo Nishikido, Fujigaya Taisuke, Kimura Takuya, Gackt.
Rating: N17
Disclaimer: I own the story ONLY
Chapter 10
That night Shige was walking back to his room with Tegoshi.
“So, Kei-chan told you his story.” He asked. Shige nodded.
“Will you tell me yours too?” Tegoshi was silent for a while.
“I will,” he finally said. “Not now, though. Oh, hey, that’s Ueda.”
The guy had long shaggy hair and he was really thin. Shige could see deep dark bags under his eyes, which were blood shot, actually. He was leaning against a wall, talking to himself. Tegoshi went up to him and gently put his hand on the other man’s arm.
“Are you okay?” He said. The other shook his head swatted Tegoshi’s hand.
“They are coming for me.” He said. Then he looked up straight to Tegoshi’s eyes. “Why me? Why not you? You are crazier and they like crazy. Yes, crazy is good.”
“They? Who are they?” His roommate asked.
“They! They! They start small and then it’s too late, they have you. They know… you know too, don’t you? How do you keep them away? Tell me, please!” The man pleaded grabbing Tegoshi by his shirt.
Shige was about to help out, but the younger man took Ueda’s hands and said calmly: “I don’t know what you are talking about. But tell me, who are they, we’ll try to help you.”
The other man gave out a desperate moan: “I should have gone with you. You are protected, they don’t go to you. I should have just stayed with you and I would be protected too. Tell me how to drive them away and I’ll be your friend, I’ll go with all of you, I swear.”
“What’s going on?” one of the male nurses said. Shige turned around and had to rub his eyes. The man’s face was… hazy. The lines of the face were blurred out. The eyes seemed to have different lines giving them different shapes at the same time. At first he didn’t know what was going on but as the other man got closer, it dawned on him. They had been told the drugs would stop working and that’s probably what was happening. He still couldn’t see the face completely distorted as he would have before but it was getting to that, probably. And he was glad.
He got closer to Tegoshi and said: “We have to get inside.” Tegoshi looked at him with a frown but as soon as he saw Shige’s face he just nodded.
Shige said to the guard, “He wasn’t feeling well, we are just helping him to his room.” The man narrowed his fuzzy looking eyes and said.
“Okay, but hurry.”
“Go to sleep and you’ll tell us everything tomorrow. We’ll try to help you, I promise.”
Ueda nodded and went inside his room and they turned around and went to theirs, all the time the nurse was watching them.
~~~**~~~
In their room, Shige and Tegoshi were silent.
“What the hell was that?” Shige asked.
“I’m a medium, not a psychic.” Tegoshi answered
“You’re a medium? What’s that?”
“Not the time. What happened to you?”
“Um, I’m not sure but I think the meds are wearing off. I didn’t see the face as I saw them before but, yeah it was definitely that. That guy is bad news.”
“I know. I never really liked him.”
Tegoshi didn’t say anything about the medication not working, but if it was happening to him it was probably happening to everybody.
“We better go to bed,” the younger man said.
That night, was not a good night.
A loud knock on the wall woke Shige up. He opened his eyes and heard another louder knock. He heard Tegoshi moving in his bed.
“What is that?” Shige asked.
“I’m not sure, but it’s been going on for a while. Something’s wrong.”
“What’s wr… ” he was interrupted by a loud inarticulate scream that made the hair at the back of his head stand. It was followed by another scream, just as terrifying as the first. Both screams came from different people. Ueda and his roommate. Shige got up and saw Tegoshi do the same thing. The screaming and banging got a lot worse. Outside, they could hear people running. Through the small window in the door they saw nurses and the on call doctors passing by. By the sound of it, they were trying to open the door but couldn’t.
One of the voices got quiet. One final shout and then everything was silent. Even the doctor and nurses were quiet…
“Ueda?” Tegoshi said. Nothing. “Ueda!” he screamed, and by now Shige knew how loud Tegoshi could be. That seemed to set everything in motion. The people outside started to try to open the door again. It opened easily this time.
“What the fuck!” They heard someone say. Then there was the sound of someone being sick and then another voice, one of the doctors.
“Get everybody back to bed and cover the viewing windows. They don’t need to see this.”
Nobody slept after that. Shige and Tegoshi just sat side by side, much like everybody else in the ward, and said nothing till morning while they heard people outside coming and going, cleaning up whatever it was that had happened in the next room.
~~~**~~~
“I could go in the room and try to see something.” Fujigaya said.
“No.” Everybody answered at the same time. Fujigaya rolled his eyes.
“I won’t touch anything with blood on it, just something to give us an idea of what happened.” He said.
“No. I don’t know exactly what happened but it was gruesome. You cannot risk it.” Yamashita said.
“And there was pain, so much pain.” Koyama added.
“But I can give us an idea of what happened.”
The three men’s room was in front of Ueda’s. They had told the rest that all they could see was a dark room and blood, then the window was covered and that was all. But Koyama had felt something even before it had started.
-Flashback-
“Pi, Pi,” Koyama whispered. “Pi, wake up. Something is happening.”
“What?” The other man asked rubbing his eyes.
“Something is happening. I feel anger and… pain and there are murmurs. Something’s happening.”
Yamashita woke up with that and sat up on the bed. Fujigaya, in the upper bed, woke up and sat up too.
“Murmurs, what do you mean?”
“Like the ones I heard before… in the accident… they are like that.”
“What’s going on?” Fujigaya asked.
Yamashita looked up and was about to answer when Koyama grabbed his head and cowered into one corner of the room and the bangs started and then came the screams. Yamashita and Fujigaya ran to the door.
They knew the screams were coming from a room in front of them. It wasn’t Tegoshi or Shige, thank god. Then they saw the nurses and doctors run and stop in front of Ueda’s room. They couldn’t open the door. Then the screams stopped and everything was silent.
“Ueda?” They heard. It was Tegoshi. “Ueda!” He said louder. They pushed and the door opened easily. The lights went on and all they could see was blood.
“Get everybody back to bed and cover the viewing windows. They don’t need to see this.”
They couldn’t see anything after that. They turned to Koyama. He was still squatted in the corner and his cheeks were wet.
“Can I get closer?” Yamapi asked softly. Koyama nodded.
“The pain is gone now, so are the murmurs.”
“Come on.” He helped Koyama up and helped him to his bed. They sat side by side with Fujigaya in front of them and they just stared at each other.
********
“I’ll be fine. I’ll touch…”
“It’s too risky. What if you get hurt?” Maki said.
“I’m sorry,” interrupted Shige. “Would you please explain to the new guy what it is he wants to touch and why and why is it dangerous?”
“I can see the past by touching things. If I touch something I have visions, people who used it sometimes even images of what happened around it.”
“Visions?”
“Yeah, it’s not always the same. Sometimes it’s like I’m watching a movie, other times it’s like I’m sort of living it… like in a vivid dream, for me it takes a long time, but in reality it’s just a few seconds. And a few times… I really experience it. For example if a person cut themselves with their knife and I touch it, I may get a cut myself. That rarely happens, I think the object has to be related to something extremely traumatic that’s why it doesn’t happen often but when it does… well, it isn’t pleasant. It’s what got me here really.”
Fujigaya took a deep breath before he continued.
“My father runs an antique shop. It had been my grandfather’s but when he died my family moved in to take over. I tried not to touch anything but sometimes I bumped into things and had visions… sometimes a little more. That was when teachers at school started to notice cuts and bruises and even scars. They asked where I’d got them and I knew I couldn’t tell the truth so I came up with excuses. Eventually they reported it, I was 13.
“They investigated and they decided to take me away. I was sent to a foster home for a while. After sessions, interviews and I don’t know what else, I went back home. I really tried not to touch anything but well… Eventually, they said that my parents weren’t doing that and figured I was doing it to myself. My family, my mom, my dad and my older brother all hated me by then. They figured I was doing all that to get attention and to get them into trouble. You see, my parents were never physically abusing but they weren’t exactly warm and caring. I don’t know… I never felt like part of the family really.
“Anyway, I ended up in a center and I was monitored. One night I went to bed and apparently the previous owner of the sheets had cut himself on them. You would think after all the blood the people of the center would throw the sheets away, but no, they just washed them and put them on my bed. He had been really disturbed. He was feeling so much pain inside that he just started cutting himself and well…” Fujigaya lifted his shirt and sleeves to show Shige the scars. They weren’t very deep or big but there were many.
“Not all of them are from that episode, but many are. Needless to say after that I was permanently hospitalized-never mind that they never found a knife or anything I could have used to cut myself. More therapy, more drugs and eventually they told my family that I could come home but they actually refused to take me in.
“I ended up at a youth center and I continued with the therapy. I had a nice doctor who I ended up trusting. I caved one day and told him what was happening to me. He seemed to understand and in our next session he brought a knife with him. He told me it was a knife used at a crime scene and he wanted to test me. I didn’t want to but he had been the only person to listen or cared so I did it. And nothing happened. I told him that if that knife had been in the crime scene it had nothing to do with the crime. He just nodded and went on with the session.
“That day, before I left, I saw a weird sculpture. I had seen it before and it had always caught my eye. ‘You like it?’ he asked, ‘my wife made it, she’s a bit of an artist.’ I nodded and reached to touch it and then I was in the floor looking up to a dark shape. I was crying and the shape came closer, he had the sculpture in his hand. It was the doctor. He swung the heavy sculpture and the vision ended, the side of my head started bleeding and the doctor saw the wound come out of nowhere. I looked at him, ‘you… you…’ he called one of the nurses and they took me out. Next thing I know I’m a danger to myself and others.
“After some time, a doctor came to see me and he transferred me here. It was Kimura sensei. My family stopped coming to see me after 3 months and my brother shows up when I call but for a price.”
They were silent then.
“He’s still curious,” said Koyama. Fujigaya chuckled.
“Then ask. I don’t mind.”
Okaayy, where to start?
“What happens if you touch a person?”
“Nothing. It only happens with objects. I don’t know why.”
“I’ve see you touching things…”
“I don’t have visions every time I touch something. Not all objects have that energy and it’s usually one vision per object, sort of speak. And with the drugs is even less, which is why I think I can do this if I do it before the drugs totally wear off.”
“I don’t know. Let’s think about it. Okay?” Everybody nodded, except Tegoshi, who was extremely quiet.
~~~**~~~
November 1963
Kame was walking down the empty hall. He was a young doctor, which was not unusual in this institution since Shingo sensei had hired the youngest, the ones with knowledge on the newest trends and latest treatments. That was why he had accepted to move there with his wife; he wanted to be the best and this new psychiatric hospital was new but the most promising one.
Now, after five months there, he was beginning to doubt his decision to take the position. For some reason, patients kept getting worse. They started having hallucinations and even the most docile inmates could have violent outbursts of rage. Even some of the nurses had started acting weird.
He heard a murmur up ahead. It came from one of the rooms, which was supposed to be empty. Maybe some of the nurses went there to talk, or maybe some of the patients had sneaked out?
He got closer. The murmurs were still there but he couldn’t make out any words. He opened the door and saw Shingo sensei. He was alone. Well, not really alone. Kame could have sworn that he saw a shadow disperse when he came in, a few wisps of shadowy smoke lingering for a few seconds.
“Shingo sensei?”
“Ah, Kamenash-kun. What a coincidence, I was just about to go to the meeting.” He gave Kame a big smile that had always seemed creepy to the younger man. Shingo sensei also seemed pale and had bags under his eyes.
“Are you okay, sensei?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Were you just talking to someone?”
“Only to myself. Odd habit, I know, but it helps me think. Shall we walk together?”
Kame nodded and they both left the room. As they walked Kame thought he could still hear the murmurs behind them but forced them out of his head. He was probably just tired. He just went to the meeting hoping it would end soon so he could get home.
The meeting had been short and without any surprises, though Shingo sensei had said that he would call for another meeting soon with “new and exciting news” that would apparently change everything. Kame went home right after it; he didn’t want to think about that place for the rest of the day.
“Ah, okaeri!” He heard Meisa’s voice say.
Kame smiled at his wife. “Tadaima.”
“Dinner will be ready in a little while.”
He nodded and murmured an answer as she took his jacket. Before she could move away he brought her in for a hug.
“Was everything okay at work?”
“As okay as usual.”
“That bad?” Kame didn’t answer. “You could quit.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. We can go back to Tokyo and with your grades and recommendations you could get a job in any hospital.”
“And I wouldn’t make half of what I make here.”
“If it means you will be better it doesn’t matter.” Meisa stepped back but left her arms on Kame’s waist. “You are not sleeping well. I don’t know what it is but there is something on your mind and it started when we moved here.”
“Yeah. I just...”
“I know, but I’d rather have less money than you not sleeping and looking like a zombie.”
“A zombie?”
“It’s a thing... in movies anyway.” Kame chuckled. Maisa loved movies. “Kazuya…”
He sighed. “Okay, let’s give it a couple of months.” He put his hands on his wife’s distended stomach and felt his child kick. He or she was never still according to Meisa. “After the baby is born. It’s not a good idea for you to be travelling now anyway. And things may get better. And if they don’t, then we’ll move back. I promise.”
That night sleep didn’t come easily.
If you move, how long do you think it will be before you can support your family the way you want to?
Meisa is right, though. That place... there is something wrong with that place.
It will get better. It will give you money and reputation.
Yeah.
Just wait and see. Keep your mind open. Everything will change.
Characters: Kato Shigeaki, OC, Tegoshi Yuya, Masuda Takahisa, Koyama Keichiro, Yamashita Tomohisa, Ryo Nishikido, Fujigaya Taisuke, Kimura Takuya, Gackt.
Rating: N17
Disclaimer: I own the story ONLY
Chapter 10
That night Shige was walking back to his room with Tegoshi.
“So, Kei-chan told you his story.” He asked. Shige nodded.
“Will you tell me yours too?” Tegoshi was silent for a while.
“I will,” he finally said. “Not now, though. Oh, hey, that’s Ueda.”
The guy had long shaggy hair and he was really thin. Shige could see deep dark bags under his eyes, which were blood shot, actually. He was leaning against a wall, talking to himself. Tegoshi went up to him and gently put his hand on the other man’s arm.
“Are you okay?” He said. The other shook his head swatted Tegoshi’s hand.
“They are coming for me.” He said. Then he looked up straight to Tegoshi’s eyes. “Why me? Why not you? You are crazier and they like crazy. Yes, crazy is good.”
“They? Who are they?” His roommate asked.
“They! They! They start small and then it’s too late, they have you. They know… you know too, don’t you? How do you keep them away? Tell me, please!” The man pleaded grabbing Tegoshi by his shirt.
Shige was about to help out, but the younger man took Ueda’s hands and said calmly: “I don’t know what you are talking about. But tell me, who are they, we’ll try to help you.”
The other man gave out a desperate moan: “I should have gone with you. You are protected, they don’t go to you. I should have just stayed with you and I would be protected too. Tell me how to drive them away and I’ll be your friend, I’ll go with all of you, I swear.”
“What’s going on?” one of the male nurses said. Shige turned around and had to rub his eyes. The man’s face was… hazy. The lines of the face were blurred out. The eyes seemed to have different lines giving them different shapes at the same time. At first he didn’t know what was going on but as the other man got closer, it dawned on him. They had been told the drugs would stop working and that’s probably what was happening. He still couldn’t see the face completely distorted as he would have before but it was getting to that, probably. And he was glad.
He got closer to Tegoshi and said: “We have to get inside.” Tegoshi looked at him with a frown but as soon as he saw Shige’s face he just nodded.
Shige said to the guard, “He wasn’t feeling well, we are just helping him to his room.” The man narrowed his fuzzy looking eyes and said.
“Okay, but hurry.”
“Go to sleep and you’ll tell us everything tomorrow. We’ll try to help you, I promise.”
Ueda nodded and went inside his room and they turned around and went to theirs, all the time the nurse was watching them.
~~~**~~~
In their room, Shige and Tegoshi were silent.
“What the hell was that?” Shige asked.
“I’m a medium, not a psychic.” Tegoshi answered
“You’re a medium? What’s that?”
“Not the time. What happened to you?”
“Um, I’m not sure but I think the meds are wearing off. I didn’t see the face as I saw them before but, yeah it was definitely that. That guy is bad news.”
“I know. I never really liked him.”
Tegoshi didn’t say anything about the medication not working, but if it was happening to him it was probably happening to everybody.
“We better go to bed,” the younger man said.
That night, was not a good night.
A loud knock on the wall woke Shige up. He opened his eyes and heard another louder knock. He heard Tegoshi moving in his bed.
“What is that?” Shige asked.
“I’m not sure, but it’s been going on for a while. Something’s wrong.”
“What’s wr… ” he was interrupted by a loud inarticulate scream that made the hair at the back of his head stand. It was followed by another scream, just as terrifying as the first. Both screams came from different people. Ueda and his roommate. Shige got up and saw Tegoshi do the same thing. The screaming and banging got a lot worse. Outside, they could hear people running. Through the small window in the door they saw nurses and the on call doctors passing by. By the sound of it, they were trying to open the door but couldn’t.
One of the voices got quiet. One final shout and then everything was silent. Even the doctor and nurses were quiet…
“Ueda?” Tegoshi said. Nothing. “Ueda!” he screamed, and by now Shige knew how loud Tegoshi could be. That seemed to set everything in motion. The people outside started to try to open the door again. It opened easily this time.
“What the fuck!” They heard someone say. Then there was the sound of someone being sick and then another voice, one of the doctors.
“Get everybody back to bed and cover the viewing windows. They don’t need to see this.”
Nobody slept after that. Shige and Tegoshi just sat side by side, much like everybody else in the ward, and said nothing till morning while they heard people outside coming and going, cleaning up whatever it was that had happened in the next room.
~~~**~~~
“I could go in the room and try to see something.” Fujigaya said.
“No.” Everybody answered at the same time. Fujigaya rolled his eyes.
“I won’t touch anything with blood on it, just something to give us an idea of what happened.” He said.
“No. I don’t know exactly what happened but it was gruesome. You cannot risk it.” Yamashita said.
“And there was pain, so much pain.” Koyama added.
“But I can give us an idea of what happened.”
The three men’s room was in front of Ueda’s. They had told the rest that all they could see was a dark room and blood, then the window was covered and that was all. But Koyama had felt something even before it had started.
-Flashback-
“Pi, Pi,” Koyama whispered. “Pi, wake up. Something is happening.”
“What?” The other man asked rubbing his eyes.
“Something is happening. I feel anger and… pain and there are murmurs. Something’s happening.”
Yamashita woke up with that and sat up on the bed. Fujigaya, in the upper bed, woke up and sat up too.
“Murmurs, what do you mean?”
“Like the ones I heard before… in the accident… they are like that.”
“What’s going on?” Fujigaya asked.
Yamashita looked up and was about to answer when Koyama grabbed his head and cowered into one corner of the room and the bangs started and then came the screams. Yamashita and Fujigaya ran to the door.
They knew the screams were coming from a room in front of them. It wasn’t Tegoshi or Shige, thank god. Then they saw the nurses and doctors run and stop in front of Ueda’s room. They couldn’t open the door. Then the screams stopped and everything was silent.
“Ueda?” They heard. It was Tegoshi. “Ueda!” He said louder. They pushed and the door opened easily. The lights went on and all they could see was blood.
“Get everybody back to bed and cover the viewing windows. They don’t need to see this.”
They couldn’t see anything after that. They turned to Koyama. He was still squatted in the corner and his cheeks were wet.
“Can I get closer?” Yamapi asked softly. Koyama nodded.
“The pain is gone now, so are the murmurs.”
“Come on.” He helped Koyama up and helped him to his bed. They sat side by side with Fujigaya in front of them and they just stared at each other.
********
“I’ll be fine. I’ll touch…”
“It’s too risky. What if you get hurt?” Maki said.
“I’m sorry,” interrupted Shige. “Would you please explain to the new guy what it is he wants to touch and why and why is it dangerous?”
“I can see the past by touching things. If I touch something I have visions, people who used it sometimes even images of what happened around it.”
“Visions?”
“Yeah, it’s not always the same. Sometimes it’s like I’m watching a movie, other times it’s like I’m sort of living it… like in a vivid dream, for me it takes a long time, but in reality it’s just a few seconds. And a few times… I really experience it. For example if a person cut themselves with their knife and I touch it, I may get a cut myself. That rarely happens, I think the object has to be related to something extremely traumatic that’s why it doesn’t happen often but when it does… well, it isn’t pleasant. It’s what got me here really.”
Fujigaya took a deep breath before he continued.
“My father runs an antique shop. It had been my grandfather’s but when he died my family moved in to take over. I tried not to touch anything but sometimes I bumped into things and had visions… sometimes a little more. That was when teachers at school started to notice cuts and bruises and even scars. They asked where I’d got them and I knew I couldn’t tell the truth so I came up with excuses. Eventually they reported it, I was 13.
“They investigated and they decided to take me away. I was sent to a foster home for a while. After sessions, interviews and I don’t know what else, I went back home. I really tried not to touch anything but well… Eventually, they said that my parents weren’t doing that and figured I was doing it to myself. My family, my mom, my dad and my older brother all hated me by then. They figured I was doing all that to get attention and to get them into trouble. You see, my parents were never physically abusing but they weren’t exactly warm and caring. I don’t know… I never felt like part of the family really.
“Anyway, I ended up in a center and I was monitored. One night I went to bed and apparently the previous owner of the sheets had cut himself on them. You would think after all the blood the people of the center would throw the sheets away, but no, they just washed them and put them on my bed. He had been really disturbed. He was feeling so much pain inside that he just started cutting himself and well…” Fujigaya lifted his shirt and sleeves to show Shige the scars. They weren’t very deep or big but there were many.
“Not all of them are from that episode, but many are. Needless to say after that I was permanently hospitalized-never mind that they never found a knife or anything I could have used to cut myself. More therapy, more drugs and eventually they told my family that I could come home but they actually refused to take me in.
“I ended up at a youth center and I continued with the therapy. I had a nice doctor who I ended up trusting. I caved one day and told him what was happening to me. He seemed to understand and in our next session he brought a knife with him. He told me it was a knife used at a crime scene and he wanted to test me. I didn’t want to but he had been the only person to listen or cared so I did it. And nothing happened. I told him that if that knife had been in the crime scene it had nothing to do with the crime. He just nodded and went on with the session.
“That day, before I left, I saw a weird sculpture. I had seen it before and it had always caught my eye. ‘You like it?’ he asked, ‘my wife made it, she’s a bit of an artist.’ I nodded and reached to touch it and then I was in the floor looking up to a dark shape. I was crying and the shape came closer, he had the sculpture in his hand. It was the doctor. He swung the heavy sculpture and the vision ended, the side of my head started bleeding and the doctor saw the wound come out of nowhere. I looked at him, ‘you… you…’ he called one of the nurses and they took me out. Next thing I know I’m a danger to myself and others.
“After some time, a doctor came to see me and he transferred me here. It was Kimura sensei. My family stopped coming to see me after 3 months and my brother shows up when I call but for a price.”
They were silent then.
“He’s still curious,” said Koyama. Fujigaya chuckled.
“Then ask. I don’t mind.”
Okaayy, where to start?
“What happens if you touch a person?”
“Nothing. It only happens with objects. I don’t know why.”
“I’ve see you touching things…”
“I don’t have visions every time I touch something. Not all objects have that energy and it’s usually one vision per object, sort of speak. And with the drugs is even less, which is why I think I can do this if I do it before the drugs totally wear off.”
“I don’t know. Let’s think about it. Okay?” Everybody nodded, except Tegoshi, who was extremely quiet.
~~~**~~~
November 1963
Kame was walking down the empty hall. He was a young doctor, which was not unusual in this institution since Shingo sensei had hired the youngest, the ones with knowledge on the newest trends and latest treatments. That was why he had accepted to move there with his wife; he wanted to be the best and this new psychiatric hospital was new but the most promising one.
Now, after five months there, he was beginning to doubt his decision to take the position. For some reason, patients kept getting worse. They started having hallucinations and even the most docile inmates could have violent outbursts of rage. Even some of the nurses had started acting weird.
He heard a murmur up ahead. It came from one of the rooms, which was supposed to be empty. Maybe some of the nurses went there to talk, or maybe some of the patients had sneaked out?
He got closer. The murmurs were still there but he couldn’t make out any words. He opened the door and saw Shingo sensei. He was alone. Well, not really alone. Kame could have sworn that he saw a shadow disperse when he came in, a few wisps of shadowy smoke lingering for a few seconds.
“Shingo sensei?”
“Ah, Kamenash-kun. What a coincidence, I was just about to go to the meeting.” He gave Kame a big smile that had always seemed creepy to the younger man. Shingo sensei also seemed pale and had bags under his eyes.
“Are you okay, sensei?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Were you just talking to someone?”
“Only to myself. Odd habit, I know, but it helps me think. Shall we walk together?”
Kame nodded and they both left the room. As they walked Kame thought he could still hear the murmurs behind them but forced them out of his head. He was probably just tired. He just went to the meeting hoping it would end soon so he could get home.
The meeting had been short and without any surprises, though Shingo sensei had said that he would call for another meeting soon with “new and exciting news” that would apparently change everything. Kame went home right after it; he didn’t want to think about that place for the rest of the day.
“Ah, okaeri!” He heard Meisa’s voice say.
Kame smiled at his wife. “Tadaima.”
“Dinner will be ready in a little while.”
He nodded and murmured an answer as she took his jacket. Before she could move away he brought her in for a hug.
“Was everything okay at work?”
“As okay as usual.”
“That bad?” Kame didn’t answer. “You could quit.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. We can go back to Tokyo and with your grades and recommendations you could get a job in any hospital.”
“And I wouldn’t make half of what I make here.”
“If it means you will be better it doesn’t matter.” Meisa stepped back but left her arms on Kame’s waist. “You are not sleeping well. I don’t know what it is but there is something on your mind and it started when we moved here.”
“Yeah. I just...”
“I know, but I’d rather have less money than you not sleeping and looking like a zombie.”
“A zombie?”
“It’s a thing... in movies anyway.” Kame chuckled. Maisa loved movies. “Kazuya…”
He sighed. “Okay, let’s give it a couple of months.” He put his hands on his wife’s distended stomach and felt his child kick. He or she was never still according to Meisa. “After the baby is born. It’s not a good idea for you to be travelling now anyway. And things may get better. And if they don’t, then we’ll move back. I promise.”
That night sleep didn’t come easily.
If you move, how long do you think it will be before you can support your family the way you want to?
Meisa is right, though. That place... there is something wrong with that place.
It will get better. It will give you money and reputation.
Yeah.
Just wait and see. Keep your mind open. Everything will change.