Work Text:
And when they bombed other people's houses,
we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
Was falling; invisible house by invisible house
by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in
the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
---
We Lived Happily
Ichikawa Akine
--
I thought you were another mindless first-year when I first met you. After getting to know you better, I thought you were a capable point guard that I didn't mind being around all that much. Even after that, I realized that maybe I liked you a little more than I should.
However, there was a day that made me begin to wonder really how accurate my perceptions of you were.
Of course, I had known that you were hiding something from the start. I'm not that blind. You didn't change with us in locker rooms. You were always on your way home on time, never made any pit stops or went to karaoke like the other people that are in our grade. Apart from pedaling me home in the rickshaw, of course. But I still thought it was weird. With your nature, it'd be more fitting for you to have loads of people you have fun with after school.
It was just a passing thought, though. I learned not to question other people's actions too much after a while, because I never really could understand them, anyway.
The next time I started to wonder was when you were changing in a stall again, and Miyaji and Ootsubo wanted to pull a prank on you by having Miyaji pick the lock of your stall (it wasn't very difficult) while Ootsubo climbed over, only for them to stop after seeing your shirtless body.
Purple and black. Purple and black. With hints of yellow and green creeping on the edges.
They looked at you as if you had grown a second head, and slowly backed away, speechless. The rest of us had come over to see what was going on, only for a nasty shock. None of us could really say anything, and thoughts were racing through my head. You stood there and laughed as if it were nothing, cracking a joke about being clumsy and falling all the time, but even you probably weren't dumb enough to think that we would believe such a lie. Simple falls wouldn't be able to cover your body in such serious bruises. I could see your hands shaking as you lied to us. I daresay there was more dark bruising on your body than your pale, delicate-looking natural skin color.
The first person to say a word was Kimura. "Takao, what the fuck?"
You just shrugged it off, saying that it looked way worse than it was, and that it's not anything that we were thinking. I didn't believe you at all, honestly, and who would be dumb enough to?
When we were going home together, I brought it up gently, asking you the real reason for your bruises, and you replied, chanting the same excuses, the same lies smoothly and easily, like they were practiced (they were).
But I didn't push any further. I didn't know how. I figured that you would be able to somehow fix it on your own (I was wrong).
Oh, god. I was so wrong.
The more I found out, the more I knew time was running out.
It was on a day you didn't show up at school, which nearly never happened. I decided to bring you the homework for the day, and an extra copy of my notes. When I had arrived at your door, I could already hear a variety of things leaking from a carelessly opened window. Glass breaking, a man yelling unintelligible words, a woman's voice following his, and most importantly, your apologies and muffled cries. I could hear skin striking skin and the sound of a belt striking a bare back. Even so, oh god, I hated myself so much for this,
I did nothing.
It was so much and I couldn't move and I was sweating so much, just what the heck was going on, I didn't even want to know because you were probably in there, suffering, and I have a nice meal waiting for me when I get home and oh god, it was too much. I put the papers through the letterbox and walked off in the other direction, shaking, feeling sorry for myself because I was scared and selfish and stupid, not knowing what to do in such a crucial time, not being able to help you, being worthless.
So I ran and ran and ran
to my house, where I had a mother who loved me, and a father who loved me, and even a dog. And I couldn't imagine having a home I would be scared to come back to, and treated like that every day. I swallowed my selfish thoughts and hoped that it was all a dream (it wasn't). When I returned home, there a bowl of pasta that was still hot with plenty of vegetables and a cookie wrapped in plastic wrap sitting next to it on the dinner table with a note telling me to eat dinner when I'm hungry because my mom was going out with her friends and my dad had a meeting to attend (which both was rare). Looking at it reminded me of your household which made me feel even more guilty.
Since that was a Friday, the next time I saw you was at school on Monday. Even though it had been two days already, I still couldn't get the sound of your muffled screams and sobs out of my head. I couldn't see your bright smile without seeing past it and thinking of that day, which made me think, how much were you really hiding behind that smile of your's? I knew only a tiny fraction of what goes on in your house, and quite frankly, I was scared to know more. I felt sick to my stomach whenever I would even try and fathom how much more you were hiding beneath your school uniform, and how many times you would cry yourself to sleep.
I learned on that day, that not everything is as it seems.
That's when I began to bring you your lucky item every day when you'd pick me up at my house with the rickshaw every morning. Whether it be large or small, without fail, I would always have to either find it in my house or we'd buy it together. You thought it was just me opening my heart to you and beginning to be closer friends, but I just hoped that maybe if I tried, I could help without actually doing anything (I was wrong).
Oh, how blind I was.
I was wrong and I knew I was wrong but I didn't do anything anyway.
Not until I finally forced you to tell me what was going on, because I wanted to hear it from your own mouth. Like last time, you wouldn't tell me right away. You just said you had no clue what I was talking about until I told you I was at your house that day, and knew about everything.
We were at my house for a project, and you practically fell apart in my arms. I could tell you were choking back tears and you were holding your hands behind your back so I couldn't tell that you were shaking. When I told you that it was fine to tell me, that I wouldn't hate you, that I, although it was quite difficult to say out loud, was worried, your tears started falling, unrestrained, and you allowed yourself to collapse on me. Normally I'd push you off in a heartbeat, but this was different. I let you cry for a while before I made you take off your shirt.
Inevitably, you were apprehensive, but ended up doing so anyway. And when you did, I felt like I was about to be sick again. A mosaic of bruises and flagellation wounds were littered all across your body, and it was much worse than when we first saw it. This time, there were cuts across your chest and bare back, not to mention the fact that you were only slightly skinny before, this time, I could see a clear outline of your ribs and spine.
"Takao..." I breathed, "This needs to stop."
"But I'm powerless against them," You sighed, voice still shaking, "you should know."
"I'm telling a teacher about this," I insisted, "There's no way I can just-"
"No. Don't. I know you're trying to help, but no one would take custody of me. My relatives all want nothing to do with the son of the two people that they got rid of."
"That doesn't matter. You can stay with my family."
"Just give me a little more time."
So that's what I did. The look on your face that the time practically screamed, 'a week or two couldn't hurt much', and I couldn't resist.
It was one of the biggest miscalculations of my life.
Not even a week after that conversation, you were nearly beat to death with a baseball bat. You hadn't come to school in days. I was torn between going to your house and checking up on you just in case, or not, because it might've just been a nasty cold, until I was reminded that you came to school one day with a 104-degree fever. So I went to your house with a bad feeling in the base of my stomach. All of my instincts were telling me something shitty had happened, not to mention Scorpio had been lower than number ten every single day for the past three days, and I wanted to throw up. Not surprisingly, I was right. When I got to your house, one of the windows near the front door was broken, and I could see your body lying limp on the ground.
The door was left carelessly unlock, so I slid in without notice. As soon as I passed through the entrance, the sick smell of alcohol attacked my nose. I could hear moaning from a bedroom that told me that it was safe to carry you outside into safety whilst I wondered just how long you have been suffering, just how long would you have waited before telling us without having me pry it out of you. Never, probably.
I took you to the nearest hospital when they told me it was much more serious than it looked. You had apparently been suffering from massive amounts of internal bleeding, and needed to undergo treatment right away. It almost felt unreal, dreamlike. Everything had been moving so quickly it was hard to process everything that had been going on, and at the same time, I felt like garbage for not doing something earlier. If I had just told someone right away, then this would have never happened.
Luckily, a doctor asked me how this happened. I couldn't take another chance, and told him everything. He later made several phone calls, taking so long that you had finished your operation by the time he was done. I texted my mother to come here immediately, which he did in a timely manner. He dealt with the bills while you were sleeping, and she didn't mind at all, after all it was "one of Shintaro-kun's friends! How could I ignore that?"
You were still unconscious after everything was taken care of, so I decided to sit by your bed and wait. Everything that had happened today had been way too tiring, way too stressful for one day. But It was probably much worse for you.
I had fallen asleep unknowingly and was prodded awake by a sudden elbow to the head. I looked up to you stretching and tears almost slipped out of my eyes.
"Takao, I-"
"Shin-chan? Are you awake?" You said, "I have to thank you. For everything. God, I'm so stupid, Shin-chan, bothering you with everything..."
"What the hell are you talking about? You almost fucking die and you apologize when it was my fault?"
"Who said it was your fault?"
I rubbed my forehead. "If I had done something earlier, none of this would have ever happened."
"Don't say that, Shin-chan. It's thanks to you that I'm safe now. They're never allowed near me again. Well, for a while, at least."
My eyes widened. "You mean..."
"Yeah." You smiled and gave me a thumbs-up, although I could tell that you were about to cry.
At this moment, I did something that I thought that I'd never do. I leaned in and kissed you. It was salty, and it was messy, but it didn't matter. You were there, I was there, and we were drunk in love.
That's all that mattered.
-
we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.