Without Words 4/4
Title: Without Words
Part: 4/4
Beta: snowqueenofhoth (Thank you!♥)
Characters: Nikaido Takashi, Senga Kento
Genre: friendship, angst
Rating: G
A/N: Finally, it's ready! ♥
- - -
Senga learned to walk in a week, and after that he was allowed to go home.
Being able to use his limbs again was a relief to the man. He walked rather slowly, sometimes stumbled, and his right hand wasn’t very reliable all the time but at least he could move around on his own which made him feel healthier, and he got better all the time. As long as he took it easy and didn’t try to talk everything felt quite normal.
When Senga wanted to say something, conversely, it wasn’t that simple. Even though he practiced hard every day his speech didn’t improve the way they had hoped. Senga could say words and even sentences when he tried long enough but whole conversations were rather rare and required hard work and concentration. Yet the doctors told Senga not to lose hope. Each word he could say gave him courage to try even harder for another one, and whenever he was about to give up, Nikaido was there to cheer on him.
- - -
The one day that stayed in Nikaido’s mind ever after was the day Senga got home from the hospital.
Nikaido was there with him, letting him walk alone but being ready to take hold of him should he stumble or lose his balance.
“Welcome home Kenpi,” Nikaido said quietly when they stepped into Senga’s own room. Senga looked around for a while, clearly pleased about the fact that his room looked exactly the same as before he had been taken to the hospital.
On the bookshelf there was a framed photo, and Nikaido had to take a deep breathe as he saw it. The photo had been taken almost two years ago. All seven of them were smiling widely at the camera, posing in front of an ugly stone statue.
Of course Senga noticed Nikaido’s tense appearance and followed his gaze from his eyes to the picture. Nikaido heard his shallow, quickened breathing and saw how he raised a hand to his mouth.
“Kenpi...” he whispered, not knowing how to continue. It hurt to see Senga so thunderstruck but at the same time he hoped so much the other would finally know the people that had missed him and been so worried about him.
For once his prayers were answered. Senga turned to look at him, panic clear in his eyes.
“Nika,” he said desperately, “Nika!”
“I know.” Nikaido felt like his voice might betray him in any moment.
“K-Ki. Ki...” Senga was blinking fiercely, as if he was trying to stop tears that were appearing in his eyes. Nikaido knew he should have let Senga find the word by himself, but he just couldn’t take it anymore.
“Kisumai, that’s what you mean, right? It’s us there, you know. You and me, and Taipi. Miyata, and Yokoo, and Tama and Mitsu. We were in Macao, remember?”
Senga looked at the picture with wide eyes, took the photo frame in his hand and sat on his bed, just staring at the smiling faces on the picture.
“Ta... Tama,” he said quietly, “Gaya.”
“Yeah, they’ve been awfully worried, you know. And they want to see you as soon as possible. They didn’t want to bother you until now, knowing it’d have been too confusing to you if people came to you all the time, saying they’re your friends and you wouldn’t even know them.”
Only now Nikaido realized that after Fujigaya’s visit no one had tried to push Senga to try to recognize his workmates. He wondered if Senga would have remembered them earlier if someone had simply shown him a picture of them together, or if all of them had come to visit him together. Or if Fujigaya had tried again a couple of days later. Not like wondering and ifs were going to change anything anymore.
“S-sorry,” Senga whispered with a thick voice.
“It’s okay, Kenpi. They all understand. It isn’t your fault.”
Senga nodded a bit. Nikaido just wrapped his arm on his friend’s shoulders wordlessly, hoping it would at least give some comfort for the other. Senga leaned his head against Nikaido’s shoulder. He didn’t sob aloud but from the way his body kept shivering Nikaido knew Senga was crying.
“It’s okay...” he murmured with a soft voice, “You’ll be okay.”
Senga would be okay. Kisumai would be okay, too.
At least Nikaido hoped so from the bottom of his heart.
- - -
The two young men were sitting in a small café, both with a huge serving of ice cream in front of them. Senga was poking his own ice cream with his spoon and looking slightly bothered as Nikaido looked at him strictly. It had been a long, tiring day and there was a lot of background noise around them, but as long as he had eye-contact, he hoped he would still be able to keep Senga’s attention on himself.
“Okay now, one more time. Tell me what you have done today,” Nikaido asked.
“I can’t,” Senga said right away, shaking his head.
“Oh, yes you can. Besides, you can’t say you can’t do it when you haven’t even tried.”
“I can’t.”
“Try again.”
“I can’t.”
It was like that very often. Whenever Senga was tired, his speech reduced down several stages, and he was also reluctant to even try anything more. He often got stuck with the first thing he got out and sometimes he had a hard time finding a word he was looking for but Nikaido knew it usually got better when he changed his question a bit.
“Where are we now?”
“In ca… café.”
“Yes, great! In a cafe. And what are we going to eat?”
Senga looked at the desserts on the table and pointed at them with his finger, smiling awkwardly.
“Good try but you’ll have to tell it to me. I’m blind, remember? You’ll have to tell me everything or I can’t possibly know what you have there!” Nikaido encouraged his friend with laughter.
“Ice.”
“Just plain ice?”
“No! Ice… Ice cr-crime? Kind of…Cram? No, no. Crea…cream. Ice cream!”
“Congratulations, you’ve earned permission to eat it now!” Nikaido grinned and took a big spoonful from his own.
“Shut up,” Senga chuckled after a long while.
“S-say, Nika…” Senga started later, when they were waiting for the train in the station.
“Hm?” Nikaido glanced at his friend who was looking somewhere at the sky where the sun slowly started crawling lower, leaving pinkish-orange clouds after.
“Mm, well… Went, no, when. I… When I - am. Like, um… you know, like… this.”
A long pause.
“Can I, um… Can I to, I mean, do… a-any work?”
“Sure,” Nikaido said with a nod, hiding any traces of pain from his voice. It would definitely be difficult and take lots of time and effort before Senga would be able to do anything with Kis-My-Ft2 again.
“Sure, someday. But you shouldn’t even be thinking about that now. Kisumai will deal with this, you know. We’ll wait for you. The most important thing for you to do now is get better. Got it?”
Senga nodded although he didn’t look very convinced.
“Besides,” Nikaido continued, “many groups have had to deal with a temporary loss of a member, and they all ended up just fine.”
Senga sighed, and closed his eyes for a moment. They hadn’t talked about it much (it wasn’t like Senga had talked very much about anything lately) but Nikaido understood his friend’s pain and worry. He felt it too, as did all the other members and also their friends both at work and in their personal life.
Nikaido leaned back against a pillar behind him and closed his eyes with a sigh. He was tired, too. It was still hard to smile every now and then, especially when he saw how much Senga had to struggle to form even some simple words.
Everything felt like it was difficult nowadays, and yet there were moments of hope. Two days ago Senga had learned to run again which had been something the doctors hadn’t expected to happen in a long time. It was far from graceful but Senga had been very proud of himself, and eager to practice more. Nikaido knew how much his friend wanted to be able to dance and skate again.
And yet on the other hand, Nikaido thought and opened his other eye a bit to take a quick look at his friend, as long as Senga didn’t talk no one could see there was something wrong with him.
To tell the truth, it was a relief. It was easier for Senga to blend in with other people when his looks were still normal. Nikaido knew people easily made prejudiced conclusions when they met someone disabled - at least Senga didn’t need to fight with fixed ideas of ignorant people.
Moreover, his friend’s sickness had taught them both a lot of things. For example --
“I th… think… Um. Thought. A lot.”
Nikaido’s thoughts were interrupted by Senga speaking again. His words were still fragmentary, but in his voice there was determination that Nikaido hadn’t heard before and he looked at his friend, waiting until the other was ready to continue.
“Help. You know, I want-ed…I want - to help. To help ott…others. The…therapist say. Said. I can.”
“Really? That sounds awesome. You’ll have to do your best then,” Nikaido said and smiled, but Senga frowned at him.
“Nika. Stop.”
“Huh?” Nikaido raised his eyebrows. “Stop what?”
“I’m… not. Not stu…stubb…no, stupid. Not stupid. Yes.”
“Of course you’re not stupid!” Nikaido said, surprised. “What made you think of that?”
“You.”
“Me?” If possible, Nikaido was even more shocked.
“You. How you t-alk. You... you don’t be...bele, beli... um, think that I... I can.”
Senga’s words hit Nikaido hard. Had he actually started to treat his best friend like a mentally disabled kid without even noticing it himself? Suddenly he didn’t know what to do or say, he just stood there paralyzed, feeling helpless.
“I... Want da-nce. Sing, too. I... I want. O-other mm, pe... pea, peal... no, peo-people. Shi-sick, too. I want, I...”
Senga was clearly on his verbal limits and he looked desperately at Nikaido, all the annoyance gone, just asking him to understand.
“You want to keep on working with us, right? To give courage to the other people suffering from different sicknesses?” To tell the truth, Nikaido wasn’t sure about it at all, but as he knew his friend he supposed he would be quite right. As he had thought, Senga nodded vigorously, and despite his good guess Nikaido felt more than a bit ashamed.
“I’m so sorry,” he finally breathed. He didn’t explain what he was apologizing for but Senga seemed to understand.
They were quiet for a long time. When their train arrived they stepped in and the silence continued.
“Okay,” Senga then said with a small voice and a slightly sad smile. “It’s o-kay.”
Nikaido smiled back at him apologetically, knowing he had been forgiven.
“Hey, promise me one thing. If I ever try to do that again, hit me or something, okay? Anything, as long as you make sure I remember again.”
“Yes.”
For the rest of the time they dozed off on the train and Nikaido felt a bit drowsy when they stumbled out at their station. Except that it wasn’t their station at all.
“Huh, where are we?” Nikaido asked with a yawn and looked around, looking for anything familiar.
“Wrong,” Senga calmly stated, and Nikaido couldn’t help laughing.
“No shit, really? I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next train.”
“No. W-walk.”
“I thought you were tired?”
“Yes. Still. I… um… want wa-walk.”
The sun had turned into a shining orange circle in the horizon. The two young men walked towards home in comfortable silence, both just enjoying each other’s company as they had always done.
“Look, there’s a playground,” Nikaido suddenly noticed, pointing at said place. He knew Senga was thinking about the same thing he was.
They knew they were acting like little kids but for some reason it felt good. For a moment the both of them simply forgot about all the worries and serious thoughts, just having some childish fun at the playground.
“Wait!” Senga called him, hanging on the rope ladder of a climbing frame.
“Just come down,” Nikaido laughed, shaking his head and raising his hand to give Senga something to hold on when climbing up just because he could.
Senga’s hand was warm and Nikaido couldn’t help a similar warm feeling that flashed through him.
Even though it had only been a few months, at the moment if felt as if years had passed since the day Nikaido had seen his best friend the first time after the stroke. The summer had been the most difficult in their lives and there had been days when Nikaido had felt like there was no point in trying to keep up hope. Yet every time he had almost given up, it had been Senga who had given him courage.
Without realizing it, Senga had taught his friends and family to accept differences in people.
Without his best friend’s sickness, Nikaido knew he might have never fully realized how important it was for people to be able to talk. Nikaido had learned to take care of the other and he knew how to make his friend feel better on the hardest days.
At the beginning the hospital had looked like a cold and unfriendly place full of people who had lost something important. Nikaido still couldn’t honestly say he liked hospitals but the repulsive feeling had changed into something more accepting.
During that summer the corridors of the neurological ward had become familiar to both of them. Nikaido had seen most of the people who were staying in the ward and he knew how many people there were fighting every day and trying cope with their new lives and new restrictions.
Senga had been one of those people too. He had worked hard to learn to speak and walk again. There had also been days when even the young man had felt defeated, wanting to give up, but every time, the next day he had been even more determined to get better quickly.
Nikaido had seen all those things and somehow he had started to respect his friend in a completely new way. Many times he wondered if he could have had such strength if he had been the disabled one. Probably not.
Nikaido remembered well what kind of a person Senga had been before the sickness. Then, he supposed, neither of them were strong in the way they were nowadays. Maybe strength wasn’t just something people had to be born with. There must be other kinds of strength that one only learned when confronted with situations where nothing else helped them to live on.
And here Senga was now; walking and smiling again, warm and lively like before. His laughter was every bit as playful and bright as it had always been. He didn’t look any different when compared to the past.
The kind of strength Senga now had wasn’t something one could see by his appearance. And yet somehow Nikaido could see it flashing every now and then on the other man’s face.
Life was almost the same it used to be, and yet it wasn’t. Of course many things would have been easier if Senga had been able to talk and move properly, but to his surprise Nikaido realized it didn’t really matter that much anymore. The both of them knew there were many, many things in the world that were more important.
“Kenpi,” Nikaido finally said as the other jumped down on the ground again, “you know. You’re just amazing.”
“Huh?” Senga’s expression was surprised and questioning, before he chuckled with a smile.
“I… know. Nika, y-you too! Thank you.”
Thank you.
- - -
Part: 4/4
Beta: snowqueenofhoth (Thank you!♥)
Characters: Nikaido Takashi, Senga Kento
Genre: friendship, angst
Rating: G
A/N: Finally, it's ready! ♥
- - -
Senga learned to walk in a week, and after that he was allowed to go home.
Being able to use his limbs again was a relief to the man. He walked rather slowly, sometimes stumbled, and his right hand wasn’t very reliable all the time but at least he could move around on his own which made him feel healthier, and he got better all the time. As long as he took it easy and didn’t try to talk everything felt quite normal.
When Senga wanted to say something, conversely, it wasn’t that simple. Even though he practiced hard every day his speech didn’t improve the way they had hoped. Senga could say words and even sentences when he tried long enough but whole conversations were rather rare and required hard work and concentration. Yet the doctors told Senga not to lose hope. Each word he could say gave him courage to try even harder for another one, and whenever he was about to give up, Nikaido was there to cheer on him.
- - -
The one day that stayed in Nikaido’s mind ever after was the day Senga got home from the hospital.
Nikaido was there with him, letting him walk alone but being ready to take hold of him should he stumble or lose his balance.
“Welcome home Kenpi,” Nikaido said quietly when they stepped into Senga’s own room. Senga looked around for a while, clearly pleased about the fact that his room looked exactly the same as before he had been taken to the hospital.
On the bookshelf there was a framed photo, and Nikaido had to take a deep breathe as he saw it. The photo had been taken almost two years ago. All seven of them were smiling widely at the camera, posing in front of an ugly stone statue.
Of course Senga noticed Nikaido’s tense appearance and followed his gaze from his eyes to the picture. Nikaido heard his shallow, quickened breathing and saw how he raised a hand to his mouth.
“Kenpi...” he whispered, not knowing how to continue. It hurt to see Senga so thunderstruck but at the same time he hoped so much the other would finally know the people that had missed him and been so worried about him.
For once his prayers were answered. Senga turned to look at him, panic clear in his eyes.
“Nika,” he said desperately, “Nika!”
“I know.” Nikaido felt like his voice might betray him in any moment.
“K-Ki. Ki...” Senga was blinking fiercely, as if he was trying to stop tears that were appearing in his eyes. Nikaido knew he should have let Senga find the word by himself, but he just couldn’t take it anymore.
“Kisumai, that’s what you mean, right? It’s us there, you know. You and me, and Taipi. Miyata, and Yokoo, and Tama and Mitsu. We were in Macao, remember?”
Senga looked at the picture with wide eyes, took the photo frame in his hand and sat on his bed, just staring at the smiling faces on the picture.
“Ta... Tama,” he said quietly, “Gaya.”
“Yeah, they’ve been awfully worried, you know. And they want to see you as soon as possible. They didn’t want to bother you until now, knowing it’d have been too confusing to you if people came to you all the time, saying they’re your friends and you wouldn’t even know them.”
Only now Nikaido realized that after Fujigaya’s visit no one had tried to push Senga to try to recognize his workmates. He wondered if Senga would have remembered them earlier if someone had simply shown him a picture of them together, or if all of them had come to visit him together. Or if Fujigaya had tried again a couple of days later. Not like wondering and ifs were going to change anything anymore.
“S-sorry,” Senga whispered with a thick voice.
“It’s okay, Kenpi. They all understand. It isn’t your fault.”
Senga nodded a bit. Nikaido just wrapped his arm on his friend’s shoulders wordlessly, hoping it would at least give some comfort for the other. Senga leaned his head against Nikaido’s shoulder. He didn’t sob aloud but from the way his body kept shivering Nikaido knew Senga was crying.
“It’s okay...” he murmured with a soft voice, “You’ll be okay.”
Senga would be okay. Kisumai would be okay, too.
At least Nikaido hoped so from the bottom of his heart.
- - -
The two young men were sitting in a small café, both with a huge serving of ice cream in front of them. Senga was poking his own ice cream with his spoon and looking slightly bothered as Nikaido looked at him strictly. It had been a long, tiring day and there was a lot of background noise around them, but as long as he had eye-contact, he hoped he would still be able to keep Senga’s attention on himself.
“Okay now, one more time. Tell me what you have done today,” Nikaido asked.
“I can’t,” Senga said right away, shaking his head.
“Oh, yes you can. Besides, you can’t say you can’t do it when you haven’t even tried.”
“I can’t.”
“Try again.”
“I can’t.”
It was like that very often. Whenever Senga was tired, his speech reduced down several stages, and he was also reluctant to even try anything more. He often got stuck with the first thing he got out and sometimes he had a hard time finding a word he was looking for but Nikaido knew it usually got better when he changed his question a bit.
“Where are we now?”
“In ca… café.”
“Yes, great! In a cafe. And what are we going to eat?”
Senga looked at the desserts on the table and pointed at them with his finger, smiling awkwardly.
“Good try but you’ll have to tell it to me. I’m blind, remember? You’ll have to tell me everything or I can’t possibly know what you have there!” Nikaido encouraged his friend with laughter.
“Ice.”
“Just plain ice?”
“No! Ice… Ice cr-crime? Kind of…Cram? No, no. Crea…cream. Ice cream!”
“Congratulations, you’ve earned permission to eat it now!” Nikaido grinned and took a big spoonful from his own.
“Shut up,” Senga chuckled after a long while.
“S-say, Nika…” Senga started later, when they were waiting for the train in the station.
“Hm?” Nikaido glanced at his friend who was looking somewhere at the sky where the sun slowly started crawling lower, leaving pinkish-orange clouds after.
“Mm, well… Went, no, when. I… When I - am. Like, um… you know, like… this.”
A long pause.
“Can I, um… Can I to, I mean, do… a-any work?”
“Sure,” Nikaido said with a nod, hiding any traces of pain from his voice. It would definitely be difficult and take lots of time and effort before Senga would be able to do anything with Kis-My-Ft2 again.
“Sure, someday. But you shouldn’t even be thinking about that now. Kisumai will deal with this, you know. We’ll wait for you. The most important thing for you to do now is get better. Got it?”
Senga nodded although he didn’t look very convinced.
“Besides,” Nikaido continued, “many groups have had to deal with a temporary loss of a member, and they all ended up just fine.”
Senga sighed, and closed his eyes for a moment. They hadn’t talked about it much (it wasn’t like Senga had talked very much about anything lately) but Nikaido understood his friend’s pain and worry. He felt it too, as did all the other members and also their friends both at work and in their personal life.
Nikaido leaned back against a pillar behind him and closed his eyes with a sigh. He was tired, too. It was still hard to smile every now and then, especially when he saw how much Senga had to struggle to form even some simple words.
Everything felt like it was difficult nowadays, and yet there were moments of hope. Two days ago Senga had learned to run again which had been something the doctors hadn’t expected to happen in a long time. It was far from graceful but Senga had been very proud of himself, and eager to practice more. Nikaido knew how much his friend wanted to be able to dance and skate again.
And yet on the other hand, Nikaido thought and opened his other eye a bit to take a quick look at his friend, as long as Senga didn’t talk no one could see there was something wrong with him.
To tell the truth, it was a relief. It was easier for Senga to blend in with other people when his looks were still normal. Nikaido knew people easily made prejudiced conclusions when they met someone disabled - at least Senga didn’t need to fight with fixed ideas of ignorant people.
Moreover, his friend’s sickness had taught them both a lot of things. For example --
“I th… think… Um. Thought. A lot.”
Nikaido’s thoughts were interrupted by Senga speaking again. His words were still fragmentary, but in his voice there was determination that Nikaido hadn’t heard before and he looked at his friend, waiting until the other was ready to continue.
“Help. You know, I want-ed…I want - to help. To help ott…others. The…therapist say. Said. I can.”
“Really? That sounds awesome. You’ll have to do your best then,” Nikaido said and smiled, but Senga frowned at him.
“Nika. Stop.”
“Huh?” Nikaido raised his eyebrows. “Stop what?”
“I’m… not. Not stu…stubb…no, stupid. Not stupid. Yes.”
“Of course you’re not stupid!” Nikaido said, surprised. “What made you think of that?”
“You.”
“Me?” If possible, Nikaido was even more shocked.
“You. How you t-alk. You... you don’t be...bele, beli... um, think that I... I can.”
Senga’s words hit Nikaido hard. Had he actually started to treat his best friend like a mentally disabled kid without even noticing it himself? Suddenly he didn’t know what to do or say, he just stood there paralyzed, feeling helpless.
“I... Want da-nce. Sing, too. I... I want. O-other mm, pe... pea, peal... no, peo-people. Shi-sick, too. I want, I...”
Senga was clearly on his verbal limits and he looked desperately at Nikaido, all the annoyance gone, just asking him to understand.
“You want to keep on working with us, right? To give courage to the other people suffering from different sicknesses?” To tell the truth, Nikaido wasn’t sure about it at all, but as he knew his friend he supposed he would be quite right. As he had thought, Senga nodded vigorously, and despite his good guess Nikaido felt more than a bit ashamed.
“I’m so sorry,” he finally breathed. He didn’t explain what he was apologizing for but Senga seemed to understand.
They were quiet for a long time. When their train arrived they stepped in and the silence continued.
“Okay,” Senga then said with a small voice and a slightly sad smile. “It’s o-kay.”
Nikaido smiled back at him apologetically, knowing he had been forgiven.
“Hey, promise me one thing. If I ever try to do that again, hit me or something, okay? Anything, as long as you make sure I remember again.”
“Yes.”
For the rest of the time they dozed off on the train and Nikaido felt a bit drowsy when they stumbled out at their station. Except that it wasn’t their station at all.
“Huh, where are we?” Nikaido asked with a yawn and looked around, looking for anything familiar.
“Wrong,” Senga calmly stated, and Nikaido couldn’t help laughing.
“No shit, really? I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next train.”
“No. W-walk.”
“I thought you were tired?”
“Yes. Still. I… um… want wa-walk.”
The sun had turned into a shining orange circle in the horizon. The two young men walked towards home in comfortable silence, both just enjoying each other’s company as they had always done.
“Look, there’s a playground,” Nikaido suddenly noticed, pointing at said place. He knew Senga was thinking about the same thing he was.
They knew they were acting like little kids but for some reason it felt good. For a moment the both of them simply forgot about all the worries and serious thoughts, just having some childish fun at the playground.
“Wait!” Senga called him, hanging on the rope ladder of a climbing frame.
“Just come down,” Nikaido laughed, shaking his head and raising his hand to give Senga something to hold on when climbing up just because he could.
Senga’s hand was warm and Nikaido couldn’t help a similar warm feeling that flashed through him.
Even though it had only been a few months, at the moment if felt as if years had passed since the day Nikaido had seen his best friend the first time after the stroke. The summer had been the most difficult in their lives and there had been days when Nikaido had felt like there was no point in trying to keep up hope. Yet every time he had almost given up, it had been Senga who had given him courage.
Without realizing it, Senga had taught his friends and family to accept differences in people.
Without his best friend’s sickness, Nikaido knew he might have never fully realized how important it was for people to be able to talk. Nikaido had learned to take care of the other and he knew how to make his friend feel better on the hardest days.
At the beginning the hospital had looked like a cold and unfriendly place full of people who had lost something important. Nikaido still couldn’t honestly say he liked hospitals but the repulsive feeling had changed into something more accepting.
During that summer the corridors of the neurological ward had become familiar to both of them. Nikaido had seen most of the people who were staying in the ward and he knew how many people there were fighting every day and trying cope with their new lives and new restrictions.
Senga had been one of those people too. He had worked hard to learn to speak and walk again. There had also been days when even the young man had felt defeated, wanting to give up, but every time, the next day he had been even more determined to get better quickly.
Nikaido had seen all those things and somehow he had started to respect his friend in a completely new way. Many times he wondered if he could have had such strength if he had been the disabled one. Probably not.
Nikaido remembered well what kind of a person Senga had been before the sickness. Then, he supposed, neither of them were strong in the way they were nowadays. Maybe strength wasn’t just something people had to be born with. There must be other kinds of strength that one only learned when confronted with situations where nothing else helped them to live on.
And here Senga was now; walking and smiling again, warm and lively like before. His laughter was every bit as playful and bright as it had always been. He didn’t look any different when compared to the past.
The kind of strength Senga now had wasn’t something one could see by his appearance. And yet somehow Nikaido could see it flashing every now and then on the other man’s face.
Life was almost the same it used to be, and yet it wasn’t. Of course many things would have been easier if Senga had been able to talk and move properly, but to his surprise Nikaido realized it didn’t really matter that much anymore. The both of them knew there were many, many things in the world that were more important.
“Kenpi,” Nikaido finally said as the other jumped down on the ground again, “you know. You’re just amazing.”
“Huh?” Senga’s expression was surprised and questioning, before he chuckled with a smile.
“I… know. Nika, y-you too! Thank you.”
Thank you.
- - -