Falling
Title: Falling
Rating: PG
Genre: AU (Highschool), fluff (?)
Pairing: Sakumiya
Length: One-Shot (but in a series) ~7800 words
Summary: The story of how Nino and Sho first met and became friends, a story involving stares, lonely lunches, urban myths, one sick Aiba, a bridge and that inexplicable warm feeling Nino got whenever he was with Sho.
Part of a series of one-shots tentatively called Three Years (detailing Nino and Sho's time in high school together)
Previous Parts:
Cold Skin (acts as a prologue though chronologically set afterwards. doesn't have to be read to understand this one)
Author's Note: This turned out a lot longer than I expected... I changed the ages a bit so that Sho, Nino, Aiba and Jun would be in the same year. This also sees the introduction of some original characters just to act as extras, I don't expect them to become large parts of the story but at the same time I hope they are likeable (Ohno will turn up sooner or later). I apologise for any mistakes (I haven't written this much in so long..)
Enjoy!
Falling
There it was.
Nino stared, his brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. It shone brilliantly, the bright sunlight that filtered in through the class windows lending it a striking lustre. An urge surfaced within him to stroke its stark smoothness, to run his fingers over it in what would be a bizarre exhibit of impertinence and utter shamelessness.
“How is it,” Nino wondered, “that somebody can have such an impossibly shiny scalp?”
He continued to gape as the old man took attendance of the class.
Suzuki was a slow man. His arthritic joints carried him in small shuffling steps to the teacher’s desk and his hands fumbled as he sorted through the class’ roll. Every name he called out lolled off his tongue in a low monotone, each syllable pronounced slowly and deliberately. And every bit as slow as his movement and speech was his memory.
“Ninomiya Kazuya?”
“It’s Kazunari, sir,” Nino corrected.
“Ah,” Suzuki peered down at the roll list through squinted eyes. “Right, my mistake.”
Nino rolled his eyes.
“It’s been a week already,” Nino muttered under his breath. “Get it right, old man.”
Nino let himself tune out of the class’ proceedings after that. It was nothing important after all, just morning announcements from the principal about ‘releasing all your potential’ and ‘being proactive’. He rested his head on his hand watching billows of white drift almost lethargically across the morning sky outside the window. His mind soon became occupied with weapon stats, special abilities, X buttons, O buttons, and which order he had to press them in to unleash a successful combo. Like most nights, he had stayed up the night before gaming, trying to beat a high-level boss until the early hours of the morning. It was to the point where ‘just one more try’ became a mantra ringing through his head. So it wasn’t surprising when a yawn begun to tug at the corners of his mouth.
“Maybe I’ll just close my eyes for a bit,” Nino thought, his vision blurring.
But a knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts.
He jerked his head up to see the principal walk in with a boy in tow. The principal talked quietly to the bald teacher while the boy glanced about the class, a slight smile on his lips. Nino gave them a quizzical look. He hadn’t heard of any new students coming in - though he had to admit that he wasn’t really in the loop with classroom gossip.
The previous quiet was disrupted as students exchanged excited whispers with their friends beside them. Nino himself wasn’t so interested in the newcomers, until the boy’s gaze caught his own.
The principal had begun to speak to the class, but Nino wasn’t quite listening anymore. Millions of thoughts ran through his head, most along the lines of “why is he looking at me?” and “is there something wrong with my hair?” Nino stared back at the other boy both a little confused and a little thrilled. Wait, thrilled? He caught a hold of the tiny feeling inside of him, almost indiscernible but undoubtedly there and was only left more confused than he was before. There was something about his gaze, Nino just wasn’t sure what.
But whatever it was, it captured him entirely.
“Why don’t you introduce yourself,” the principal suggested.
Nino suddenly snapped out of his thoughts and looked away. It was nothing, Nino thought to himself. It was like when strangers lock eyes on trains and wait to see who looks away first (Nino lost at that), or like Nino’s own fascination with the shiny ball called Suzuki’s head. He probably wasn’t even looking at him in particular, just the space he happened to occupy. Nino chanced a glance back at the boy.
His eyes still hadn’t left him.
“I’m Sakurai. Sakurai Sho.”
= = = = =
Nino kept to himself.
This isn’t to say that he had no friends, or that he was ignored and ridiculed. Nino was on friendly terms with most in his class, having known them since elementary school, and could hold a conversation with about anyone. It was just that he didn’t have any close friends. He didn’t have anybody that he could confide in, anybody he could meet with after school, or anybody who knew his house as well as their own. Well, apart from Aiba of course.
Nino himself wasn’t really sure whether he would consider Aiba a close friend. But he was the closest thing he had to one.
“Come back to school already,” Nino had said, flipping through an old issue of Shounen Jump on the floor of Aiba’s room. “They’ll get suspicious if you pull three sick days in a row, you know.”
“I’ve told you a million times already, Nino!” Aiba had darted to him from his bed (sprightly for someone who called himself sick) pushing a thermometer to the other boy’s face. “I really am sick! Look, 39°C! This is what you call a fever!”
“If you really are sick then don’t breathe so close to my face,” Nino pushed the complaining Aiba away with a laugh.
They had met in junior high. Nino and Aiba didn’t really ‘become’ friends. It was more akin to Aiba and his unrelenting attitude worming their way into Nino’s life until the other could do nothing but accept his constant presence. But their relationship had continued into high school, and Nino had to admit he was pretty happy when he first discovered they would be in the same class.
The first week of their first term of high school had barely passed however before Aiba found himself confined to his bedroom touting a fever of 39°C. This left Nino alone with his lunch and an empty table beside him. He didn’t mind of course, because after all, he preferred to keep to himself.
Nino took out his lunch, though you could hardly call it a meal with just plain rice to one side of his bento box and slightly burnt sausage wieners to the other. He didn’t make it to eat, but rather to please his mother with a dirty bento box to wash. While Nino’s mother loved her two children, she never had time to make their meals or to make sure they got to bed on time. This little bit gave her peace of mind.
Stuffing one of the sausages into his mouth and ignoring the burnt aftertaste it left on his tongue (though Nino would prefer to call it ‘smoky’), he shoved a hand into his bag and freed his DS from its confines. It was quite old; bulkier than the newer versions and without some of their high-tech features, but he loved it all the same. He stroked the sides fondly to ensure it hadn’t been damaged from the ride with his heavy school books and flipped it open with a snap. He was in the middle of a Mario Cart race when he heard a chair scrapping across the floor beside him.
Nino looked up to see Sho pulling Aiba’s chair towards his table. It took him a full second to process what was happening. But even when the confusion had passed he continued to gape as Sho settled down beside him with a bento box of his own. He had eaten two entire mouthfuls before Nino finally said something.
“...What are you doing?”
“Eating lunch?” Sho replied with mirth in his voice. “You were alone so I thought I’d join you to eat.”
Despite the poster-boy smile plastered on his face, Nino noticed the way the new boy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He could tell behind the confident façade Sho was as nervous as anyone would be on their first day at a new school.
Nino looked around the classroom. Even though high school had only just started the week before most students had known each other since elementary and junior high. It wasn’t a small town, but it was small enough to allow for familiarity within the community. People in the classroom already had established friendship groups and despite the good impression Sho had made that morning (especially on the girls), he probably was still feeling a little isolated.
But, Nino thought it enough that Sho be able to sit with him. While pity still tugged at his heart strings there was no need to entertain the other boy further with polite conversation. All it would serve to do was intensify the already-present awkward tension between them. So Nino, with a glance up at Sho, slipped away back onto rainbow road, ready to make up for lost time and propel Mario past the finish line in first place.
But of course, Sho wouldn’t just leave it at that.
“What’s your name? I’m Sakurai, Sakurai Sho, I’m a new student here though I guess you would probably already know that…”
Nino would have groaned if he wasn’t already laughing. The words had shot out of Sho’s mouth with the speed of a shinkansen train, and with every passing second since Sho’s face became more and more alike that of a tomato’s. It seemed as if he might explode from embarrassment.
“It’s Ninomiya Kazunari,” Nino finally answered. “But you can call me Nino. Everyone else does.”
“Ah, Nino,” Sakurai said, almost relieved. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Nino nodded in reply. He deftly avoided slipping on banana peels between glances up to Sho and the little Mario racing around on his screen. Sho still had his eyes on him, somewhat expectant. Nino relented.
“So Sakurai, where did you transfer from?” Nino asked, stirring up casual conversation. But he continued to watch his screen as he talked, because to Nino no conversation was interesting enough to pull him away from Mario, especially when he was going head-to-head with Bowser.
Perhaps perturbed by the lack of an honorific - even though he had called the other Nino just a moment before - or the fact that Nino continued to play his video game while talking to him, Sho fiddled with his chopsticks nervously. But he didn’t let his smile drop. If anything, he was happy that Nino was talking to him.
“London,” Sho answered. “My father had moved there for work so I moved with him.”
Nino made a sound like he was impressed.
“London, huh? That’s pretty cool.”
“Thanks,” Sho said, a little unsure of what to say which was rare, seeing how the words couldn’t wait to get out of his mouth just before.
“No offence but why did you come here?” Nino inquired. He could already see from the gold details engraved in Sho’s bento box that he was from a family with money, a family that was more suited to the towering skyscrapers of Tokyo and the majesty of Buckingham Palace than the quiet living of the town folk. “This place is really nothing compared to London.”
“I lived here when I was younger actually. My dad’s business finished up in London, so he was sent back to Japan by the company. And of course I had to come with him.”
Sho smiled, looking nostalgic. “I actually really missed this place.”
Nino caught himself staring again. Sho didn’t notice however, his eyes looking out the window at the small town that unfurled before them. Nino frowned and scolded himself for staring and letting Mario lose the race. But more than anything he was confused, like he had been that morning. There was something about Sho that just captivated him.
Maybe it was the way his eyes shone when he talked, or how his slight overbite protruded when he laughed. Or it might have been the soft, warm tone of his voice, and how it flowed gently over Nino like a river.
Whatever it was, Nino was quick to change the subject.
“If you lived in London does that mean you can -help me- with our English quiz next week,” Nino said, throwing in some English with his words, leaning across the table.
His face hovered close to Sho’s.
The other boy laughed. “Of course.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
The bell rung, marking the end of lunch and what was a surprisingly pleasant conservation. Nino had enjoyed himself, even with the absence of Aiba, and Sho looked a bit happier and sure of himself than he had been earlier.
“See you later,” Sho said with a smile, moving back to his own seat.
Nino mulled the words over in his head.
“See you later, see you later…”
He liked them.
Though he didn’t expect later to happen so soon. After all the tables had been wiped down and the mops and brooms crammed haphazardly back into the cupboard, Nino headed to the back building for club activities. He took long strides across the school’s grassy field where sport clubs prepared for practice on the sidelines. It didn’t take him long to notice Sho trailing behind him.
“Are you following me or something, Sakurai?” Nino stopped and called back to him, a slight smile playing on his lips.
“Huh?” Sakurai looked up from a map, oblivious. “Do you know where room E7 is?”
Nino laughed. He was headed there too.
“Follow me,” he said, jerking his head to the school’s back building across the field. “But hurry up unless you want to get hit in the head by a soccer ball.”
= = = = =
Nino was lazy. But he didn’t need other people to know that nor did he want the stigma attached to students that weren’t ‘participating in extracurricular school activities and reaching their full potential’. So, at the start of the year Nino made quicksmart to join the school’s Newspaper Club.
It was more a newsletter club than a newspaper club, producing each week a single-paged, black-and-white update on the school’s activities and student achievements which was pinned to a board outside the administration office. A single page for two hours of effort 5-days-a-week, it obviously wasn’t the most hardworking club.
Aiba had told him that it was a place for slackers like Nino to gather, and he was right. Nino spent most afternoons lounging around reading manga or playing on his DS. But every week he had to pump out a small paragraph on ‘tips for studying’. They had to do something after all.
Including Nino, there were only four members in the club. Well, if you count Sho there were five. And apart from him, they were all there for the exact same reason as Nino. The other three members included an absentee senior, a second-year called Chu, and Jun, a first year from another class (Aiba had declined Nino’s offer to laze around, and was instead sweating it out on the basketball court).
Chu was in charge of the school announcements, upcoming events section and the formatting of the entire newsletter. She rarely came into the club apart from the Monday and Friday where she finished her respective sections. Nino didn’t know what she got up to on the other three days of the week but judging from the tattoos staining her arm and her plethora of piercings, it probably wasn’t anything too good. But she was friendly enough that Nino didn’t really mind or care.
In Jun’s case, he just wanted to be able to do his own thing. The Newspaper Club gave him that chance while allowing him to keep up the appearance of being a good student. Nino didn’t really know Jun well given they had only known each other a week, but they were on good enough terms. It was usually just the two of them in the club room and while they didn’t talk much, it was still nice to have the other there. Jun and his camera were in charge of pictures for the newsletter.
Sho always had some journalistic sense in him. For what he lacked in athletic ability he made up for in his aptitude for academia. He
was a boy who would put his utmost effort in every single thing he did so it was a shock for him to walk into the dingy club room and find Jun sleeping on the floor with a book over his face.
“Shh,” Nino hushed, a finger over his lips. “He’s grumpy when he wakes up.”
Chu came in a little after the two first-years.
Sho was visibly taken aback by the older student’s appearance. Chu was the type of person that Sho’s father always told him to avoid, ‘yankees, no more than common delinquents,’ he had said. But when Chu with a slight bow stuck out her hand and formally introduced herself in a polite tone, Sho forgot all about it.
Chu had originally only intended to come in and finish her own section before leaving (she had already assigned Sho the responsibility of writing up the ‘upcoming events’ section), but decided to stick around and entertain the new member.
“You’re new here, right?” Chu said, twirling a pen around her fingers.
Sho nodded.
“So that probably means you haven’t heard of the ‘Woman on the Bridge’.”
“Not that story again, Chu,” Jun complained, having at some point woken up in the last half hour. “Everyone knows it’s complete bull.”
“It’s true though, I swear! I saw it myself.”
Sho clearly feeling out of the loop and dying of curiosity hurriedly chittered, “Wait, what is it? Tell me, tell me!”
A smile slowly spread on Chu’s face.
“Do you know the wooden bridge on the outskirts of town?” she began. “The rotting one that connects to the farming fields across the river? It’s been out of use since they built the new roads closer to town. But that’s not the only reason no one uses it anymore.”
Chu paused for effect. Sho could only watch her in silence with round eyes. Jun resigned himself to listening to the story for the umpteenth time. He liked Chu’s story telling anyways and Nino tuned in from where he sat in the corner playing on his DS.
“Back maybe about a hundred-and-fifty years ago there was a woman. She was a pretty thing, and every man in town wanted her. But she only wanted one man, a farmer’s son who was set to inherit his father’s business. They would sneak out at night and meet on the bridge that divided her home from his, and spend their time together in the dark of the forest.
“However, when she was of marriageable age her father arranged for her to marry the son of the town’s richest man. Unlike his honourable father, the son was a wicked man who lured people into debt and threw away human beings like used napkins. Despising her new husband and still in love with the farmer’s son, they eloped one cloudy night.
“Furious, the rich man’s son and his men set out to search for the couple. And they found them, on a night bereft of clouds. The farmer’s son had his blood spilled right in front of her eyes and in hysteric grief, she wrestled herself away from her captors and ran. But eventually, she was cornered on the bridge. The rich man’s son ordered that she come back to him. But in a last act of defiance, she threw herself into the river and drowned so that no one could have her.
“After that incident, her ghost began haunting the men that passed through the bridge, searching for her dead beloved. She sent men into a trance and tricked them into jumping and drowning themselves in the river to be with her. It’s said that her spirit still haunts the bridge to this day, forever searching for the man she lost. On a clear night, if you stand in the middle of the bridge alone and look down into the river you’ll find her beautiful face staring up at you.”
Chu finished, looking quite pleased with herself and Nino had to admit, Chu had some good story telling skills. Sho gaped at her saying nothing, having been thoroughly absorbed in her story. He was well and truly spooked.
“I-Is that story true?” Sho managed to stammer out.
Nino knew the story was just a silly urban myth. Everybody in town did, but they all chose to believe it anyways and retain the horror of the bridge for the fun of it. It was a story that could give a sense of mystery to the quiet town, frighten and enchant small kids, and was a simple tale to dish out during sleepovers and camps in the forest.
Nino himself had passed the bridge a hundred times already, on clear nights or not. His family lived on the outskirts of town where housing was cheaper, and their home happened to be right next to the fabled bridge. The bridge was hidden behind a clump of trees, too small to be called a forest but too big for a copse. It stretched high above the river and was anchored in the slopping cliffs that bordered it. His mother always warned him to stay away from it, more for safety reasons than any old myth for clearly time had taken a toll on its supports and bolts. It wouldn’t be a short fall if he happened to slip.
But he used to cross the bridge all the time anyways to play on the other side, and had even helped his older sister manufacture a prank to scare all her friends on the bridge. In fact it was common for local teens to take unsuspecting victims out to the bridge and scare them half to death. So Nino could safely say from personal experience that there was no such thing as a woman in the water, but not that he wanted to anyways. It was much more fun like this.
Suddenly Sho let out a yelp. Jun had snuck up being him and stuck his fingers into his ribs, scaring the other boy out of his wits. Jun then simply lost it, hysterically laughing on the ground at the frightened boy, who at this point was more embarrassed than scared.
“I can’t believe you’re actually scared,” Jun managed to say between laughs.
“I was not scared!” Sho defended himself. “I was just…surprised.”
“Don’t be mean, Mattsun,” Chu said, nudging the hysteric boy with her foot even though she was slightly amused herself.
Jun snapped out of his laughter.
“I told you not to call me that!” he talked sharply back at his senior.
Chu raised a hand in apology chuckling, “Sorry, sorry.”
Jun was not amused but Sho was beside himself.
“Mattsun, that’s a cute name,” Sho laughed.
“Oi!” Jun protested. But the heavy atmosphere soon lifted when Jun began laughing as well. Even Nino cracked a smile from his lonesome corner watching the other three members mess around.
Despite their shaky start Jun and Sho soon became close in the next hour, talking extensively about London and school, occasionally bouncing good-natured quips off the other. When Sho expressed an interest in the camera Jun kept by his side, Jun decided that he was ‘truly, a good guy’.
They spent the rest of club hunched over his camera poring through his roll, the photographer enthusiastically pointing out little things about each photograph and Sho listening with an intent ear. Not wanting to interrupt them, Nino popped out quietly with only a slight wave to Chu who had decided to stick around with her two juniors.
Nino didn’t see much of Sho during class for the rest of the week, especially since Aiba came back to school the next day with a safe temperature of 36°C and a “did you miss me?” With Aiba’s return the class became ten times louder and the teachers could only resign themselves to waiting until the raucous laughter provoked by Aiba’s antics died down before continuing their lesson. Sho also began getting acquainted with a new group of friends, but every once in a while would cast a glance over at Nino’s table. Nino pretended not to notice, but he couldn’t not notice the warm feeling that would creep up in him every single time it happened.
Nino wasn’t the type to initiate conversation. In his opinion, it wasn’t worth the trouble. Even so, every time he did catch Sho’s eye, he hoped he would come over for a chat. But most of the time, Sho just gave him a smile and a small wave before turning away. And when they did talk it was nothing but polite conversation.
The two still saw each other after school. Without talking about it beforehand, Nino would hang back in class until Sho finished his cleaning duties so they could walk to club together. But even then, Nino would spend the better part of the two hours engrossed in his video games while Jun and Sho played the part of diligent students, completing their homework together.
It came as no surprise when what Aiba told Nino hadn’t come out of Sho’s mouth first.
“You know that new kid, uh, what was his name again? Shu?” Aiba leaned forward, speaking in a hushed voice.
“Sakurai Sho,” Nino corrected him.
“Yeah, yeah him! Apparently Sawano’s group is planning on taking him out to the bridge, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh,” was all he could say, looking past Aiba’s shoulder at Sho.
Nino furrowed his eyebrows. Of course. Why hadn’t this occurred to him earlier? It was tradition for new students in junior high to be taken out onto the bridge and pranked, as his sister had done with his help a couple years ago. It seemed the custom had extended into high school and Sho was to become its latest victim.
That afternoon as the two trudged across the grassy fields Nino wondered whether he should say anything. He didn’t want to ruin a harmless prank needlessly, but that was only if it really was harmless.
“Hey, Sakurai?” Nino prodded hesitantly.
“Yeah?”
Nino was silent for a moment, thinking about his wording.
“That story Chu told us on Monday. You know it’s not true, right?”
Sho laughed. “Of course I know.”
Nino made a soft affirmative sound and said nothing else. He was sure Sho could take care of himself, but for some reason he couldn’t help but be worried.
= = = = =
Nino could almost scream.
Blood rushed to his head in flurry of anger and incredulity. His grip on the controller was so tight his knuckles became white, fingers just a dash of movement over the buttons as he desperately manoeuvred the little spiky-haired protagonist to dodge a swung blade and leap over bursts of flame. Nino resisted every urge to just throw his controller at the wall.
“Who gave you the right,” he shouted at the figure twirling on his screen, “to heal in the middle of our battle?!”
Finally with both his patience and potions stock depleted, Nino pressed a heavy thumb to the pause button and opted to leave the heat of his room for a glass of cool water.
It was only 8pm but the house was already dark. His mother had left for her nightly part-time job and his sister was over at a friend’s, leaving Nino alone on a Saturday night. He had planned to invite Aiba over to game but his friend had been unfortunately grounded until further notice ever since his mother found out who had stumbled on three of her now broken flower pots.
Nino downed a sip as he looked through the window.
It was still outside, and the silence almost suffocating. The house’s characteristic creaking was hushed for once, though its bones still sometimes groaned under the weight of the night. Nino stood and waited. As the minutes passed new sounds began to emerge, sounds before hidden and gone unnoticed; the quiet humming of the refrigerator, the whispering of the trees outside, and the tink-tink sound whenever the fish accidentally bumped into the glass walls of their tank. The growing night murmurs mingled together to create a soft confusion of noise, pleasing yet jarring to the ear all at the same time.
The moon’s glow glanced off the leaves of the mess of trees outside across the road from his home. There was hardly a cloud in the sky and Nino watched how the stars displayed themselves, speckling the wash of dark blue hues with their radiance.
Noises grew louder, and the darkness was interrupted with bright beams of light. They danced among the shadows underneath the trees with jerky movements, sometimes spinning and sometimes crossing paths with another. Pinpricks of light shone out where the beams pierced the thick covering of leaves. Flashlights.
“Tonight, huh?” Nino said quietly to himself. He could hear laughter and the rough crunching of brush underfoot as a cluster of people made their way through the trees to the bridge that hid behind them.
Nino leaned against the kitchen bench and sighed. Something told him that he should check it out, though it would be nothing he hadn’t seen before. But it would be his friend (well at least Nino considered Sho his friend, whether the feeling was mutual he had no idea) out there on that rickety bridge.
“Sakurai doesn’t need me to help,” Nino told himself. “He can take care of himself.”
Nino turned quickly to head back into his room but as he took a step he stopped.
“But it couldn’t hurt to take a look.”
Nino quickly threw on a dark jacket and grabbed a flashlight of his own before leaving the house, making sure to lock the door behind him. He probably didn’t need a flashlight. Having grown up in the area he knew it well enough to navigate without a light. Plus, he didn’t wanted to attract any undue attention towards himself but he brought it just in case. He slipped into the dark of the trees on the other side, slinking silently with light feet and a stilled breath.
It didn’t take long before he saw the backs of the other students ahead of him. He took another route through the trees so he didn’t bump into them and emerged out onto the edge of the river cliff. From there he had a clear view of the bridge and the river below. With his foot Nino nudged a stone down the slopes and into the water with a ‘plop’. The current moved almost sluggishly far below him but it was deep, he could tell. Nino crouched behind the bushes lining the river cliff.
“Are you sure this bridge is okay?” Nino could hear Sho saying, nervousness ripe in his voice. “It looks pretty old.”
“It’s fine,” a boy answered, probably Sawano. “We’ve all done this before.”
“Alright then…if you say so.”
Watching from behind a bush Nino could see Sho’s figure slowly edging himself out towards the middle of the bridge. All the flashlights were focused on him. Even though he was fairly far away Nino could still see the way his hands trembled as they gripped onto the rope handrail and the sweaty fear that had begun to make itself readily apparent on his face. Sho couldn’t stop staring beneath him.
“Wait, aren’t you coming out here with me?” Sho called to Sawano.
“Can’t. I told you Sakurai,” Sawano said. “It’s a ritual you gotta do yourself, everybody does it. Consider it a rite of passage.”
Sho continued shuffling slowly across the bridge until he reached the middle. He stood there waiting for further instructions, holding the rope tightly in his hands.
Nino could already sense something was wrong. Sho looked almost paralysed, staring down into the water with unwavering eyes. His arms and legs trembled but his knees were locked and his frame rigid. Most that had done this before were unnerved at best, from the dark and the horror of the legend, even if they knew it wasn’t true. But Sho looked scared, really scared. More than he should have been.
“What do I do now?” Sho managed to say, squeezing out his steadiest voice.
No one answered.
“Sawano?”
Suddenly all at once the flashlights blew out, drowning the place in darkness. Then the prank reached its climax.
It was the standard stuff. Shaking the bridge, beating on the trees and grounds with sticks, people shouting and letting out ghostly groans, even some popping off crackers - nothing Nino hadn’t seen before. In the darkness, the noise was amplified tenfold creating a great cacophony that served only to scare the lone person out of their wits.
Sho had yelled out at the beginning, telling them to stop but now he had gone silent. Nino was worried. Usually after the initial fear and confusion passed, the ‘prankee’ would laugh and it would be over, with the victim maybe slapping some of their friends playfully once they got back on solid ground. But they hadn’t stopped yet, and Nino couldn’t see what was happening to Sho in the darkness.
He decided to take things into his own hands.
Moving silently back to where Sawano’s group was he turned on his flashlight and put on his deepest voice. He shone the light on them in a way that hid his face.
“Oi! What do you kids think you’re doing?!”
Nino cringed in the darkness. He couldn’t believe what he was doing. His voice didn’t come out like he had intended it to, still retaining the high nasally squeak his voice normally had. But luckily the others didn’t doubt it for a second.
“Let’s get out of here,” they said, rushing away in different directions. They didn’t need someone reporting what they were doing late at night to their mothers.
Once Nino was sure they’d all gone he ran towards the bridge.
“Sakurai?” he called out in a loud whisper.
Receiving no answer he shone his flashlight down the bridge’s length where he found him crouched down, face buried into the knobs of his knees. His arms are above his head, trembling hands still gripping onto the handrail. Aside from a slight tremor he didn’t move. Nino wasn’t even sure if he had heard him.
“Hey, are you okay?” he continued with a concerned voice, stepping out onto the bridge. “It’s me, Nino.”
“Nino?” Sho peeked out from behind his knees looking up at the other boy.
His voice was just a tremble, but all the same Nino was relieved to hear him speaking.
“She’s not going to come out of the river no matter how long you wait for her you know” he jested, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
Sho sighed and Nino realised it was not the time for jokes.
“I’m pathetic.”
“No you’re not,” Nino’s voice softened. “They were being dicks, that’s all. Anybody would get scared.”
“Not that,” the other boy shook his head. He gulped before continuing, talking with a slight self-deprecating laugh, “Heights. I can’t stand them. I get so scared it’s embarrassing.”
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Nino placed a hand over one of Sho’s whose fingers were still tightly wrapped around the rope. Sho didn’t protest. His skin was cold and clammy to touch but Nino didn’t mind, rubbing his thumb over his skin in what he hoped was a comforting motion. Slowly he pried each of his fingers off the handrail until he was holding Sho’s hand in his own. He gave it a small squeeze.
“Come on, let’s go,” Nino said, pulling the other boy up.
Nino led him by hand as the two walked slowly back across the bridge. Sho was silent but still following him. Nino looked back and shot him a smile.
“Would it make you feel better if I told you I’m scared of Santa,” he said. “The man sneaks into people’s homes across the globe and nobody finds anything wrong with that?”
“Not a fan of Christmas, are you?” Sho laughed, back to his normal self. It was a pleasant sound, his laugh. In the quiet of the night it danced above their heads and drove away the unease from moments before. It was the first time Nino had seen him laughing that night and he found himself staring at him again, a dazed smile on his face. Despite the cold night he felt warm and fuzzy.
Crack.
Nino’s eyes dropped to the bridge. As quickly as it had come the warm feeling dissipated, only to be replaced with dread. His mother had warned him not to cross this bridge, and she had been right to. Age had made its home in the cracks lining the wooden planks underfoot and in every fraying strand of the rope that kept it all together. And then with the kids from before shaking it for their little prank it had been tipped over the edge.
“Run!” Nino shouted but it was too late.
The bridge beneath them gave way and soon the two of them were falling.
Even as they hit the water, Nino was thinking about whether his flashlight would survive a dip in the river. It had been expensive after all. It was too bad he wasn’t remembering the swimming lessons his mother had forced him into when he was in the second grade because then he wouldn’t have found himself floundering beneath the surface of the river.
It was deep, luckily. The cold enveloped the two entirely, the shock forcing the air out of their lungs. Sho was the first to emerge. His hand still clasping Nino’s, he pulled the spluttering boy up beside him. As soon as his head emerged, Nino gasped expletives into the night while trying to catch a hold of his breath.
“Nino, calm down,” Sho spoke with composure to the struggling boy beside him. “Take deep breaths.”
“I am calm,” Nino bit back, making sense of his arms and legs as they moved to keep him afloat. “And real damn cold.”
“Well, we need to find a way out of here before we both freeze to death.”
“Aa-ah,” Nino leaned back in the water. “How did I get into this mess?”
“I’m really, really sorry,” Sho apologised solemnly, looking down.
Nino grinned, playfully splashing him with cold water that made the other boy jump back in surprise. “Don’t be. Now come on, let’s get out of here. I’m dying for a hot bath.”
Sho beamed back at him.
High steep slopes bordered the river, but they were rocky and offered plenty of footholds. Nino and Sho soon located a ledge they could reach, and eventually with some difficulty pulled themselves up and over the edge of the river cliff and onto solid ground.
They didn’t talk anymore, they didn’t have the energy to. The water had drained all the strength from their bodies. They collapsed onto the soft grass, chests heaving. The air above their faces misted as the cold escaped them in short, shallow breaths. It was a clear night, a nice night. The wind quieted and the stars and moon shrouded them in a soothing light.
Nino turned his head to face Sho who stared at the sky above them. His lips were tinged with blue and trembled with each breath, but soon curled up into a smile.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen the sky like this,” he spoke softly, almost a whisper.
It was a special gift all towns in the middle of nowhere offered, but something hardly mentioned. Stars. A giant beautiful mess of them, as if a child had accidentally spilled their pot of glitter all over the night sky. But Nino wasn’t looking this time, he was staring at the boy beside him. He saw how beautiful the stars were reflected in his face and how the corners of his eyes wrinkled before he laughed.
Despite their situation Sho laughed, he laughed long and hard and without holding back. And Nino felt his heart twinge as he watched.
There it was again. The gentle warm feeling Nino felt in his chest whenever he was with Sho. It was soft, but it hurt too. It ached in a way that Nino couldn’t understand, in the way he looked at Sho and the way Sho looked back at him.
But it was okay, Nino decided, right then and there. He didn’t mind.
= = = = =
“Say ‘ah’.”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Aiba leaned forward and Nino pressed back. Between his chopsticks, Aiba hovered a small tree of broccoli a couple of inches from the other boy’s face. Nino grimaced. With his own chopsticks he pushed what he considered a green abomination away, ignoring his friend’s cries of protest.
“Aah that’s not good, Nino,” Aiba grumbled. “If I don’t feed you, you’d never eat any vegetables.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Nino countered.
“If you don’t eat healthy you won’t grow tall you know.”
Nino grunted in reply, retreating to the DS on his lap. But even as he turned away Aiba only leaned in closer.
“What about tomatoes?” he proposed.
“Tomatoes are fruits.”
“Would that make you want to eat them more?”
“Nope.”
“Cucumber then?”
Nino relinquished a sigh of defeat. Once Aiba was set on something he was never going to back down.
“Fine,” he opened his mouth wide. “Give it here.”
With a grin that stretched from ear to ear, Aiba guided the cucumber slices through the air mimicking an airplane’s spluttering engine before nosediving into Nino’s waiting mouth. Nino chewed. He didn’t really mind cucumbers. They had a nice neutral taste, if you could really say they tasted like anything. When the other boy offered another slice he opened his mouth willingly.
“That’s a good boy,” Aiba tittered, petting his friend’s head like he would a dog’s.
Nino gave him a light whack across the arm. “Idiot.”
He was mid-chew when a finger tapped on his shoulder.
“Excuse me?”
Nino looked behind him to find Sho. It was the first time he had seen him since the weekend.
Sho had apologised profusely. That was all he could do after all after they had recovered from the fall and he his senses. He apologised as they trudged back to Nino’s house, their cold wet clothes clinging to their skin. He apologised as the two of them left trails of dirt all over Nino’s clean floors. He apologised as Nino gave him a set of his own clothes and a fluffy white towel all in a neat pile. And quite frankly, Nino was sick of it.
“Stop apologising already and take a bath,” Nino had spoken sharply, pulling his own shirt over his head. “I said it was okay already, didn’t I?”
Without another word Sho did what he was told. When he returned from his bath, clean and smelling of blueberries, Sho bent at a right angle and thanked Nino for his help and generosity. With slight bemusement at his sudden formal tone, the other boy could only utter an amused ‘no problem’ before retreating into the bathroom himself. When Nino got out he found himself alone, his own wet clothes piled neatly for washing and his house as clean as it had been before they walked in.
Now Sho reappeared in front of him, holding in his hands the clothes he had been lent that night. Nino noticed how he held them with care, as if they would break if he moved his arm in the slightest way. And it might have well with the way they had been ironed perfectly, the folds straight and calculated. It made him a little happy.
“Yes?” Aiba replied to Sho, who stood nervously by them. “You’re the new guy, Shu right?”
Nino elbowed him in the stomach and whispered “Sho” under his breath.
“Ah, sorry, Sho.”
Sho smiled. “It’s really no problem. I was wondering if you’d let me eat with you?”
Aiba jumped up almost immediately, surprising both Sho and Nino.
“Yes, of course! Sure! Here, sit down.”
Unlike Nino the week before, Aiba welcomed him eagerly, pulling a chair from another table towards them. He was like a puppy, bouncing around. Even Sho was admittedly a little taken aback. He hadn’t expected to be taken in so quickly let alone with the enthusiasm Aiba had. In seconds he was seated at the table, as if he had always been there.
“But why aren’t you hanging out with Sawano anymore?” Aiba asked. “Did something happen?”
“No, nothing. Sawano-kun’s a cool guy but,” Sho struggled for words, “I felt like I would like it here more.”
His eyes caught Nino’s, and Nino had to look away, a warmth flaring in his chest.
“Ah, Sho-chan! Where’s your lunch?” Aiba wasted no time in buddying up to their new companion. “Why are you just holding clothes? Why is today’s generation of Japanese youth not feeding themselves properly?”
Before Sho could say anything and before Nino could crack a joke about his dramatics, Aiba stood up and rushed out the door. “I’ll go buy you some melon bread, Sho-chan!”
The two had hardly the time to register his leaving before his head popped in the doorway again. “And don’t worry about Nino, Sho-chan! He won’t bite.”
Nino and Sho stared after the boy as he ran out the classroom and down the hallway with the gusto and power of a racehorse.
“He’s a welcoming guy,” Sho said, still a little bewildered.
“He’s also an idiot,” Nino replied. “But a kind-hearted one.”
Nino flicked his eyes towards the clothes in Sho’s hands. “Are those for me?”
Sho looked away, almost embarrassed. As he moved to return the clothes and Nino to take them, their hands touched. It couldn’t have been for more than a moment but Nino’s blood sung. The warmth of Sho’s hands seemed to linger on his skin.
“You didn’t have to leave, you know, that night,” he said, suppressing the red threatening to rise in his cheeks. “And if you were planning to you should have given me some warning.”
Sho hung his head. “I’m really sorry.”
Nino laughed and shook his head. “You apologise too much.”
The other boy opened his mouth to apologise again but realising what he was doing, gave a crooked shy smile instead, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. Cute, Nino thought. Arms folded on the table, Nino rested his head on his hands so Sho couldn’t see his face.
He was happy, happy that Sho was there. He let the warm feeling that had budded within him since Sho turned up that day the week before fill his entire body, right down to his fingertips and the ends of his hair. He wanted to see him more, talk to him more, know him more, outside of silent walks to the clubroom and stolen glances in class. He wanted Sho to know who he was too.
Nino pushed off his hands so he was sitting back in his chair. This time when he met Sho’s eyes he didn’t look away.
“You know, you still have to make the whole thing up to me somehow.”
“How?”
“Free English lessons until the end of term.”
Sho grinned.
“Deal.”