Chapter Text
“What is it like?”
Adam sighs, because he’s been asked this question a million times before, he’s been asked in a million different ways, from a million different people. Delicately, softly, treading on eggshells, they’re taking words that shouldn’t mean death, but mean it just the same. They try to talk about the gaping hole in Adam’s chest as if they can’t see how badly he’s bleeding out.
There’s the awkward silence, the piteous gaze, ignorant of how the world is currently crumbling around him, the echo of a sympathetic tut, and followed by the devastating blow of an almost patronising pat on the shoulder.
Adam wants to laugh a million times, because each person thinks they’ll be the one to somehow settle the dust in Adam’s mind and make him see that perhaps using some glue would mend the cracks and the piles of collapsed concrete in his great city of a mind. They think, perhaps this is where Adam learns how to grow up, learns to love the world around him a little more, and maybe wistfully look at the stars with a beautiful laughter that can only belong in a movie.
Takashi has always been a shooting star, a once in a lifetime kind of deal for Adam, who has always been good at catching falling things.
Today, he has no such patience for such games, and so he throws back, “What is what like?” His eyebrows raises as if he had never left the classroom, and he sips his coffee noisily as he awaits for a response, amused with the reaction he receives.
Adam was angry at the world for spinning the same way it always does; he was enraged when he woke up to the sun shining on the day of he found out about the piloting error that cost the Garrison millions of dollars, and Adam even more. so he decided to do the same back, and secretly hopes Takashi hates him for it.
Of course, Adam knows Takashi would only smile at him with pride, which only makes him feel even angrier.
Point is, Adam feels angry most of the time.
“Moving on,” the reply comes, taken aback, coiling back in embarrassment.
“What?” Adam blinks.
”Uh, what’s it like to move on?”
Yes, the first rule of journalism is to never tell lies, but even Adam knows this is bullshit. Moving on is something you can never do when the one good thing in your life has gone somewhere you can’t follow.
Adam can wake up everyday, make his coffee, and teach a room full of teenagers the same things he learned when he was younger, hoping they survive past 24 years old. He can do all these things, but he can’t quite bring himself to wash Takashi’s uniform, or his pillowcase, and he likes the way Takashi’s plain grey toothbrush sits next to Adam’s purple one, even if it’s all dried up.
“Surprisingly well,” Adam finally replies, after watching the reporter squirm awkwardly under his gaze.
“Surprisingly well?” The reporter asks, intrigued. He must be no older than me, Adam thinks.
“I technically outrank Takashi now,” Adam says. “I’ve been busy.”
“Ah,” The reporter replies with a smile, “Is that moving on, or is that just being busy?”
“You got me,” Adam replies with a laugh, because even if they don’t admit it, people like to know when you’re not okay. It makes them appreciate what they have, slaps it in their face when they are given a real display of what it means to have nothing, and they’re able to walk away from you like it’s nothing. “It’s been hard.”
“I can only imagine.” See?
“Yeah,” Adam says curtly, putting his mug down on the table a little too hard. “Though I imagine you have a shit imagination.”
“Ah, I’m sorry.”
“Get in line behind everyone else,” Adam laughs, because he almost feels bad for making the report uncomfortable. “Of course, Takashi’s at the very, very front.”
The reporter blinks, and says “Uh.”
Adam sighs. “You can laugh- Takashi would’ve laughed too.”
“I see,” the reporter replies, and Adam has just realised he no idea what his name is. “Are you okay to begin the interview?”
The reporter turns on the recorder as Adam says, “Yeah, I’ll always be up for talking shit about Takashi,” Adam says, rolling his wrists. “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’d find that funny too.”
“Do you want that on the record, or?”
Adam shrugs, “Do whatever you want, it’s not like he’ll read this.” He imagines Takashi would flick his forehead if he could.
(To Adam’s dismay, the reporter does not put that in the final publication of their interview.)
Adam cries a week later, when he receives a call from Takashi’s mother, Aiko. She tells him how it was nice to hear about Takashi from someone who loves him as much as she does, because she too knows how to catch things when they’re falling. Her voice is as warm as Takashi’s, and she’s there to catch Adam.
”It’s okay to be angry, I know you’re holding back,” Aiko says, and the gentle cadence of her voice reminds him of Takashi’s, of the ocean waves gently rocking him back and forth. “You can carrying on living with your love, your anger and no one can take that away from you.”
“Really?”
”If people say true love lasts forever, then I don’t see the problem with this,” Aiko laughs, because someone had to pass down their unabashed optimism to Takashi. “But you have to promise to call once in a while, alright?”
So Adam keeps making his coffee, keeps sighing at his students. He finally throws away Takashi’s dried up toothbrush, and washes his pillowcase. He gets their uniforms dry cleaned at the same time, and leaves one set folded away.
But God, he’s still as angry as the day he found out Takashi left him.