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Running takes just a pair of legs, but a race culminates the efforts of a team's beating feet. A race is the sum of its parts: sweaty, breathless, agitated. Precisely because it depends on a team, each member hones themselves to their fullest; while practice is done together, every individual must find time to focus on their weaknesses and their strengths. The whole can only be when its pieces fall into place.
So Kakeru has his team train on the school's track, trailing endless red circles; on the streets, with their differing inclines and debris aiming to trip; and even in the mountains, their inclines steepest yet. He had learned from his days at Aotake to better this new team; he has not forgotten his roots, that which anything grows from. He texts his old friends frequently – but the one he talks to daily, through tiring days and long nights, is Haiji.
Utter black, the city's poor imitation of night, is outside Kakeru's dorm window. He sits at his desk, a textbook splayed open and forgotten under his phone, pulled up to Haiji's contact name. He's been staring at it for a bit, the phone's bright lights burning into his eyes, the faceless gray circle lacking Haiji's picture nevertheless drawing forth every moment of every time Kakeru has been ungodly fortunate to be by him.
There should be no reason for his hesitation. The reason for his fluttered heartbeat and dried mouth he recognizes well, but not the hesitation. It isn't as if he's never relied on Haiji; it isn't as if they'd not practiced together before. A simple request is all he has to say, a conversation casual as their everyday. I can do this, Kakeru thinks, remaining very still.
Blinking deeply, swallowing pitiably, he breathes in as he does before a referee's gun starts a race and calls Haiji.
Who immediately answers.
"Kakeru!" he says, bright even at this hour. "How's your training going?" He's talking like he's the one who called.
"Uh," Kakeru says, mind blanking at the twist of events. "Good."
Haiji laughs. "You've gotten modest, you know? I've been following the team – your team now, really – and in no time at all you've made us a name to be reckoned with."
"Haiji-san," Kakeru says, as a polite plea to stop with the compliments, as the segue to what he'd called for to begin with.
"Yeah?"
"Would you – I mean, if you have the time, because I don't want to take away from your work – would you want to come with me to Lake Shirakaba? For training. I've gotten permission to borrow the cabin again. It'd be this Saturday morning, and you'd meet me at my dorm at five. If getting up that early isn't too much trouble for you."
"I'll go."
The answer is so quick that it is Kakeru who fills the conversation with silence, hearing Haiji's voice echo in his head, the words shortening and becoming devoid of meaning with every iteration. Only when they cease completely does he remember he's still on the line. "Thank you very much!" he says, loud as his heartbeat. He winces at himself.
"You don't need to be that polite," Haiji says, admonishment belied by an affection Kakeru reddens in hearing. "If I hear you need me, I go straight to you. So! Saturday at five. Is that all you called me for at ten p.m.?"
In truth, no. There is always something else Kakeru wants to ask him, something he blushes in just thinking. "Yes," he lies. "That's all."
The smallest pause. "Right," Haiji says, ever cheerful, and Kakeru's stomach sinks a little. "I'll see you then. Goodnight, Kakeru."
"Night," he mumbles, embarrassed and pleased at once in hearing his name after such a fond word said even fonder. He turns to the window, and the oppression of night seems to have receded, and the dark seems to have softened.
Having slept on his back, the first thing Kakeru sees upon waking is the ceiling. The second thing is the blur between it and his alarm clock, one minute short of its raucous call, which he promptly shuts off. The rest of his room slowly sinks into his vision, these things shadowed in the murk between night and day, the hour telling him it is morning while the sky outside the window denies it. These things he sees daily bear no importance; he sees them and forgets he has.
He walks blind like this until he is outside his dorms and sees Haiji, not-quite-morning's hazy dimness falling back where the building's white lights outline him. His head is bowed as if in contemplation, but at Kakeru's next thumping step down the cement stairwell, he looks up, grins, and the sun has risen then and there upon Haiji's face.
"Good morning, Kakeru," he says, the perfect counterpart to the last thing he'd said to him. "What's the plan for today? Are you driving?" The daylight has not yet approached, and Kakeru cannot fully tell if a smile is there, but he's certain of it when Haiji next says, "I don't think you really liked me driving last time around."
He jingles a set of keys on his finger. "Yes, I'm driving," he says, smiling himself. "I'm borrowing a teammate's car."
"You had the cabin and car ready! You really thought this through, huh?"
Kakeru motions to the backpack snug against Haiji's back. "So did you," he says, keys going back under his palm, cold metal teeth digging in his warming skin.
Haiji laughs. "Yeah, you're right. Coaches have to be prepared."
Coaches, he says, like it's his actual duty, not amicable help. Kakeru nods, keeping the sanctity of that chosen word to himself.
The sun is waking up, yawning rosy golds shamelessly in the face of the mountain-cloven night. With every degree of its ascent, the blue lightens and the stars disappear. Here, where the city lights are a memory, the truth of the heavens is spread above: brilliant pinpricks of near and far celestial bodies against a background gradient of dark to darker. Home has not such skies, and Kakeru lives daily with the belief this sight can only be found in isolated places. But it is a false belief. This does exist above the city; the heavens are the same everywhere they envelop the Earth, concealing and revealing by tricks of light.
Under the broad expanse of the sky they are welcomed. They have been here before; they have gone around and around these ancient paths tread by animals and humans alike, and even where there is nothing that marks the land for hiking – but where there is land, and where one has legs, one can run. It is their land just as they belong to it, the roots and stones and sudden curves recalled by their muscles as readily as their eyes.
"Here we are," Haiji says, and simple as it is, as straightforward, there is something in it beyond acknowledging their mere presence in a place they knew and know. He glances sidelong at Kakeru. "How do you want us to start?"
Another conversation is happening below the surface. But how to speak to something that won't break through?
Kakeru points to where the path stretches out to the wild. "Let's just walk first, so I can warm up." Quickly he turns to Haiji, worried. "That won't hurt your legs, right?" he asks, eyes flitting down to Haiji's scar, running of its own.
Haiji pats his leg. "I'll be fine. Don't expect me to do more than that, though."
"I know," Kakeru says, unable to match Haiji's good nature about it. He begins walking, soon joined by another pair of feet whispering over the leaves.
They trek down the mountain where its main trail goes through forest and past streams. Gravity aids them, ushering them with gentleness, shoes rasping gnarled roots and sliding down drying grass.
It is here where Haiji almost falls; it's a small, surprised sound he makes accompanied by a too-sharp scratch on the ground, and immediately Kakeru is throwing out a hand, weight centered and grounded upon his soles. Faster than that, Haiji grasps it, body righted and taut as Kakeru holds him up. Their eyes meet, of course they do when one supports and the other is supported by nothing but twined fingers; they meet because they have to in a moment like this. They have looked at each other before – it's inevitable in being sighted and bound to someone's orbit – but they have never looked at each other like this.
Fastest of all is how Kakeru looks away, heat to rival summer itself spreading on his face, mercifully unseen in the wane autumn morning. He pulls Haiji up, telling him but speaking toward the trees, "Please be careful." His voice sweeps through those that have already lost their foliage, it is brushed aside by the evergreens that retain true their name, but still it reaches Haiji.
"I will. Sorry," he says, and Kakeru can hear the apologetic smile in it.
When he turns back around, it is there. Haiji's hand in his, however, is not. A cold breeze roams through Kakeru's fingers, mocking the emptiness that had been fleetingly, wonderfully filled.
They continue their descent, easier now, with Kakeru darting his eyes to Haiji at every leaf-crunch or twig-snap but a breath louder than it should be. Nothing else happens, though, and they stand at the base of the trail: flat at the mountain's base, a curling ribbon where it disappears around a bend.
Damped vibrations travel up Kakeru's legs, like the twitching of their use, but he is unmoving; this is a phantom sensation from last he'd run here. He breathes in crispness he has met before. Here, he knows what to do.
As does Haiji. "You've warmed up walking," he says. "But do some stretches, just to make sure you're good."
Kakeru nods, and carefully, vertebra by vertebra, bends his spine down to reach his toes. Having exercised already, there is little burn in his muscles. Still, there is a faint awareness of the sinew that comprises him, pulled to its maximum, these natural ropes that have gifted him running. He straightens, pulling back his left leg by the foot, that same gentle burn twitching up his back. He switches legs, he stretches his arms, and all throughout his body promises the potential for more.
"I'm flattered you asked me along instead of your coach," Haiji, somewhere beside him, says.
Stretching complete, Kakeru's arms go back to his sides while his eyes go to Haiji. "I've never seen my coach run. I have seen you." Oh, has he. It is seared into his memory; it has twined itself into the fibers of his being.
Now he has spoken it, this obvious truth already known to Haiji, but how it colors Kakeru. More so when Haiji says, with a widening grin, lopsided, much as Kakeru's insides, "Yeah, you have."
Kakeru looks away again, but as his eyes are robbed of Haiji, his hearing grows acute: he hears Haiji's laugh softer than the drifting autumn wind. Then something shuffles, something is zipped open.
"Obviously I can't go with you," Haiji says, "so my advice is going to be pretty limited. I want you to run the same practice route we did. Do you remember it?"
Kakeru slides his eyes to him. "I do."
That grin again. "I'll time you and see how you're doing. But first-" He points to where the road hides behind the mountain. "Go there and back so I can see your posture. I doubt I need to fix anything, but I'll do what you asked me to do."
Before even running, Kakeru's heart is thumping steady as fate.
"Go when you're ready," Haiji says, which is not how a race would be. But they are in the mountains, warded by nature, waited on by none but each other in this unofficial practice. Practice for Kakeru's betterment in what the two of them have given their hearts and their very bodies to. In this, they deserve to call of their own.
Wordlessly, without flourish, Kakeru runs. Breath measured and calm, cold air invigorating, pushing his blood to further warmth pumping through all of his muscles working in exquisite tandem to do this most basic, most human of motions. He is connected to his body, and it connects to the ground one swiftly changing foot at a time, and never does he part from it. With each step he remembers others he has taken – not simply here, but in every single occasion he has freed himself of his body's usual constraints to push himself to his limits and run.
The bend is not far. He has reached it and is returning to Haiji, who watches him pensively, in no time at all.
Haiji removes his hand from his chin as Kakeru comes to a gradual stop before him. "Yeah," he says, grin gliding into place, "you're still too good."
Kakeru is flat on his feet yet feels like he might trip over them. Instead, it's over his words: "You're- you- thank... you."
The grin gets wider, but then Haiji is dipping his head to glance at the stopwatch. "Alright. All I can really do is time you and watch you on the last spurt as you're approaching me. I did have a task for you: I want you to be aware of what you're doing as you run. Even more than usual, anyway. Since I can't be there to guide and correct you, I'll need your complete self-reflection so I at least have some idea of what I missed." He picks his head up, eyebrows drawn together. "Is that okay? It's not the best plan, I know."
"It's fine," Kakeru assures him. He means it. "It's you I wanted here, as you are."
Haiji's face smooths over, and it is like no worry had ever been allowed to gnaw at him – which, Kakeru thinks, is how it should be. "Right," he says, smiling through his words, "I'll count you off." His fingers poise around the stopwatch.
Kakeru takes Haiji in one last time before time separates them. As he turns and carefully crouches into runner's start, his thoughts begin to dwindle, the mountain sounds muffle, a single-minded quiet peace narrows: he is to run.
"-go!" Haiji says, countdown reached, and though Kakeru had not heard its precursors, he hears this, and he obeys before Haiji is done speaking.
The wind he makes slicing through matter itself whips in his ears. The sun has broken over the horizon, and under light's clear brightness, he runs.
And a thought glides up not in words so much as emotion: why run?
A leaf hopelessly drifts off a tree, flitting into the path Kakeru's foot strikes, the abruptness skittering it up and away.
Running makes his limbs ache; it shortens the breath he needs to stay alive; it makes him sweat; if he is careless it could make him bleed. This comes from nothing but one's own body, and it has occasionally betrayed the people who use it. There are people who won't do it at all, dreading the effort, the pain; they question running, too, but with sneers: why do it, with all the trouble that comes with it?
Kakeru deftly evades a low-hanging branch, and his first thought is that it's a different answer for every individual who goes on a track. His second is: If I'm thinking that, I guess I've changed. That brings on a small smile, a sharper exhale through his nose. Three years ago his answer would have been immediate and stalwart: I run for the glory. Why not do something you're good at to your fullest extent? Each race became a challenge, a chance to best old records – the personal ones, yes, but most importantly others'. Sports was about being the best and only the best; anything short of standing at the top was worth nothing. There was one winner, and everyone else.
Ah, the slope is steep here. His breathing comes from deeper in his stomach, every molecule of oxygen that he can muster in manically sent to all of his cells; the chemistry is in motion, the non-sentient and nonliving building up to a person who seeks the thrill of a trail completed. His arms pump in opposition to his legs, forward and out and forward and out. His legs battle the slope and win with no one but himself to witness it.
And that's okay. He's come to realize that's okay.
Well. It would be nice if Haiji was alongside him. Better than nice, really. But he too has accepted what Haiji sacrificed, what reality he walks in. Accepted, though not always liked.
The trail's grade lessens, allowing a glimpse of a familiar stream flowing into a lake; Kakeru catches the water by the dazzling play of the early sunlight upon its surface, like instead of a lake there is a sheet of crystals winking in and out of existence. He does not stop as he goes parallel to the stream, but he knows that if he did, and peered down the surface to the stream's bottom, it would seem there is no water at all.
The mountains have completely awakened, their creatures chirruping, rustling, cooing. With a smile Kakeru wonders if they question him breaking the quiet in this manner. Animals run when afraid; perhaps they think him running from being chased.
It's nothing of the sort.
He runs because of who waits at the end. Who he envisions and chases after himself with every step forward.
Kakeru is whooshing past the audience of silent, stately pines, opposites of the shouting friends and families that crowd along a race's way. That had never been his support, and he never minded, focused on winning as he was. Now he cannot fathom such emptiness in the sidelines. The single person he searches for as he approaches the end of any race – because there he will unfailingly be – is his personal stadium filled to capacity. Kakeru does not need ten thousand voices cheering his name. Haiji's alone has the power of a million and more.
Thinking of Haiji's name rather than allowing his vague shape to permeate his thoughts makes Kakeru's heart skip another beat, and for just a moment breathing is a rougher endeavor, but soon Haiji, in grinning face and name, has comfortably settled into his thoughts, as this is where he belongs.
How had Kakeru ran so selfishly and blithely? How had there ever been a meaning to any of this before they'd met?
He springs over a jagged rock, heart erratic. Nothing I did before Haiji was real running.
It hadn't been real for his ego. It hadn't been real for his ignorance – because as selfless as Kakeru's reasons for the sport are now, he'd never seen someone so ideally and literally embody running until seeing Haiji. The love of it came from Haiji's soul, manifesting outward to not only perfect posture, but a genuine enjoyment, a carefree air he created from the one he broke through: that was Haiji's running. Simple love.
It was – it is – impossible not to love that love in turn. And the one who burst with it.
Kakeru's passion is now as if he has never run before.
At this thought, Kakeru stands a little straighter, and that he'd needed to fix his posture at all reminds him he is supposed to consider how he runs, not why. Well-meaning distractions are nevertheless distractions.
His mind clears, like ripples upon water fading to nothing, absolute stillness regained, that trance unimaginable to those who have not lost themselves within themselves: separating mind from body; existing without being tethered to reality as he observes, severed from himself, how he runs. He cannot see the intricacies of his body at the cellular level, but he feels their work as he runs like this, wind snapping in his ears and stinging his lungs, surroundings blurring. This, the closest to flight his legs will grant him.
Kakeru's dreamy dissociation is so deep that he loses time, and when he blinks to vaguely familiar bowed trees and curving dirt paths, he sees he has completed the trail. At the horizon, standing on green, domed by blue, is Haiji's distant figure with his grin that stirs every color in the universe.
Kakeru's mind returns to himself. Finish this, he thinks. His heart is thumping double-time from the manic exertion of his legs' extension and contraction; his legs are pumping because his arms are tightly swinging by his sides; his arms are tracing tiny half-arcs because his posture is upright and steady; and his posture is like this because he is outside, the fresh air is within his lungs, the forest litter is cushioning his feet. And this is all he can be.
"Kakeru!" says not just a voice, but his, sharper than the wind whistling in his ears. Not even a crowd could hide this voice from him. "Kakeru, you're almost there!" Haiji's waving his arms, the stopwatch's lanyard flapping; he's speaking as enthusiastically as he would a true race, not this private exhibition, this meeting of two souls.
Stomp, beat, breathe, slice – finish. Kakeru decreases his speed, Haiji's whooping diminishing as he goes past him, slowly stopping some meters away. He's bent over his knees, breath coming in greedy pants, sweat beading dark on the dirt. When he has strength enough to look over his shoulder, he sees Haiji walking over as fast as his legs will take him, the scar shot across his leg stretching with his hurried strides.
"You're five minutes faster!" Haiji says, tapping the stopwatch, showing Kakeru his time. "Look at you, improving while I'm gone and making me miss things!"
It's not all about speed, Kakeru wants to say, much as he was told before by Haiji himself, but he can't yet speak.
And then Haiji's rubbing circles on Kakeru's back. All it does is make Kakeru cough and stand up with dizzying speed.
Kakeru does not know if Haiji's laugh is innocent, but such is his longing that he loves to hear it.
"We should head back," Haiji says, removing his hand, facing the cabin's direction briefly. When he turns back to Kakeru, his grin has softened at the corners. "You need to eat."
"You're right," Kakeru says, heart stuttering, and not from running's exertion.
They walk to the cabin. It's to the east, and the sun would swallow them whole were it not for Haiji's presence overwhelming it.
"I'm glad you remembered about training in places like this," Haiji's saying, "but I'm more glad you remembered me." He says this, the only one who can, and it's through a smile Kakeru hears before seeing how it's thinly dappled by light coming through the pines.
"Of course I remembered you, Haiji-san. We talk every day, and you're-" The words that would have followed were dangerous to admit, and he catches them in his thoughts before they're spoken, holding them inside him as he has these last few years.
But he cannot amend the fact he was about to say something else and about Haiji, whose grin grows from nothing good. "I'm what?" he asks, innocently, like his eyes aren't gleaming with mischief.
Kakeru is certain Haiji can find the answer for himself. Likely he has already, and he simply wants to hear Kakeru finish the sentence.
It is plain enough to see what it was going to be.
"You're important to me," Kakeru finds himself saying; just as he does not command his body to run when it is what it does of its own, his words break through the wool in his throat as the lean clouds dissipate, the sun stronger for it.
Its pale gold pools on Haiji's face, kind and true and blessed by joy.
Kakeru casts his face aside, feeling color also on him, but nothing from the outside world.
"You're important to me, too."
Kakeru has not yet breathed in – with Haiji saying this, he might not be able to – when the wind picks up, delighting itself around them in currents of leaves broken free. Their arms shield their eyes from the bothered dust as they share a laugh, shy but wholehearted. The wind dwindles, and what they've left unspoken twines itself at their feet, ripe for the taking.
"So," Haiji says, dropping his arm, but never letting go of his smile. "What were you thinking of as you ran?"
They continue eastward, the sun at its utmost autumn brilliance, as Kakeru tells him everything.