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Nothing matters anymore.
I’m tired. I’m bored. My muscles ache and my immune system has gone to shit. I’m always sick.
I can’t focus. Everything is a blur of colors and shapes that are different really but to me they all look the same. It’s all black and gray and not even really there.
Days happen in a minute. Hours trudge by at the rate of years. It’s like I’m not actually here. I feel like a ghost.
When I wake it feels the same as going to sleep. It all runs together. Never better, only worse if I think about it.
I want to sleep. I want to sleep and never wake up.
Two weeks had passed since Max moved back to the US with his parents. By all appearances, they were getting along better than ever before, and were even considering getting back together. Max had been overjoyed at the news, and even though he would miss his friends in Japan, he admitted that he preferred having both his parents around and loving each other, even if it meant being half a world away - literally - from his friends. He still texted almost every day since the move, and it seemed like he was really settling in to his new life there. His old team was happy for him.
Ray was traveling. Shortly after Max’s announcement, Ray decided to broaden his own horizons and left for South America the week after. He would explore the cities first before venturing into the mountains to discover what secrets they kept: secrets about beyblading, secrets about life, secrets about obscure, arcane procedures for curing meat for long periods of time, etc. He didn’t know when he would be coming back.
The boy genius went to college, unsurprisingly. He actually made the resolution a while ago, having been accepted into every top-notch school he applied to, but couldn’t bring himself to go until he could convince himself that he wasn’t abandoning his friends. As it seemed that his friends were already abandoning him, the decision pretty much made itself.
Tyson was based at his grandfather’s dojo, but spent most of his time at a day school in the city, catching up on all the school he missed while on tour and while asleep in class. The program was intensive, requiring hours of vigorous study a night in order to maintain his place on the honor roll and to graduate on time for spring enrollment at the university in Kyoto, where he had been accepted. After goofing off in school for about eleven years, Tyson had finally gotten serious about his studies.
Daichi won the lottery. No, really. He journeyed to Africa to live among his ancestors’ tribe and learn the untold ways of their superior beyblading techniques for as long as his money would allow. He was still determined to beat Tyson in a fair match, having been unable to do so till then. The kid would never stop.
Hilary lived with Kai. They lived together. They didn’t see much of each other, Hilary being enrolled in a full-time work-study program that was forty-five minutes away and Kai being… Kai, most of the time. They split the rent on their two-bedroom apartment and alternated paying for cable, initially, before they realized that neither of them watched much TV and canceled the subscription.
They both had their own lives. They only lived together because neither of them felt like looking for a roommate. Hilary may have maintained a slight attraction to Kai on the offset but the stress and the long hours of her occupation drained all desire straight out of her. Upon arriving home on a Friday night, she went straight to bed and slept until morning on Saturday.
Kai wasn’t even home most Friday nights. Hilary didn’t know where he went off to, as it had always been, but by now she didn’t really care. Kai could take care of himself. And so could Hilary.
All was well.
I can’t sleep. I lie awake at night, every night, thinking about what is and what could be.
‘Awake’ isn’t even the right word. ‘Un-dreaming’ is what it’s like. I’m numb, I can’t feel a thing. I can’t move my legs or my arms or a finger without sucking all the life from my body.
I don’t want to move, either. I want to sleep. I want to shut myself off so I stop thinking and stop feeling. Stop existing, too.
Hilary isn’t awake when Kai gets up on Saturday morning. It’s early morning - about 3:30, though his clock is often off if he forgets to replace the batteries, which Kai can’t remember if he did. It’s dark out, though. Dark and chilly, for late summer. He knows because he left the window open during the night, and his boxy room is now cold and dry. He slips on a pair of thin, heather-gray sweatpants over his threadbare boxers and pulls a navy blue sweatshirt over his head, wrapping his arms around himself to conserve heat.
He had lost weight recently. His formerly bulging biceps had shrunk and been replaced by a thin layer of subcutaneous fat, as had most of the muscles in his legs and trunk. He didn’t look intimidating anymore. He looked like he was wasting away. Under normal circumstances, Hilary would have immediately recognized the physical changes in her roommate, but times were different. She had a lot on her plate. Kai knew she was busy, but he missed spending time with her. The shared meals, the nights spent watching shitty reality shows, the way they used to greet each other in the morning and all that it meant had gone away when Hilary got her job.
Kai was proud of her. She was doing what she loved, and working to help advance women in beyblading careers throughout East Asia. He knew she wouldn’t have it any other way.
He, however, was dying a slow and painful death at the hands of an invisible illness, drowning in an endless sea with no one to offer their hand and pull him out. He knew how to swim, but even fish get tired. He didn’t know how much longer he could tread this water before giving up and letting the current pull him under.
He gets up, still hugging himself with his sweatshirt that barely fits him, and shuts the window over his bed. The sheets are messed up but he leaves them that way. No one to see them but him.
The ache in his muscles is persistent and plagues him nearly at all waking hours at this point, but it is not the only reason he loathes being awake.
Dranzer lay on the desk beside the dresser, bitchip facing Kai as if to say “What’s wrong, Master? Why won’t you play with me?” Kai looks away, almost flinching from the assault of emotion his imagination occasionally brings him. Dranzer was years ago, Dranzer is now no more than a toy. He keeps the blade in plain view to remind himself that he ever had a purpose in his life, and to keep him from doing anything drastic. Dranzer was a toy, sure, but she was family in a much more real sense than Kai had ever had otherwise. If he… did anything, Dranzer would be all alone in the world, trapped inside his blade. He promised he would never try to evict his bit beast from the blade, but it had been too long since he’d even take her out for a spin. He knew that, and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to a full-out battle.
Sirens wail outside. Normal. Kai hears a boom and a crash, and the sirens blare out a few seconds later. He doesn’t glance out the window, but a couple minutes later he hears a second round of sirens that this time persist outside his apartment, along with the commotion of the emergency medical services. He hopes there isn’t a tragedy, but since when has hope garnered any real change? There is a possibility that the victims survived and are being treated, and there is a possibility that they perished and the emergency services were cleaning it up. Nothing would change whether he looked or he didn’t.
He looks. Curiosity reigns supreme.
Two people are dead - maybe three. There’s a lot of blood. A lot of blood for three-thirty in the morning, a lot of blood for such small people. In fact - children.
The world is dangerous, and the world is cruel. Kai knew that from a young age. It was his duty. He was never innocent. He was terrible and grim and disgusting and vile and frankly, didn’t deserve to live, and yet it was the children in the overturned minivan that were dead. He would have taken their places in a heartbeat, would have given anything to die instead of them.
And yet, he is alive, isn’t he?
Funny how that works.