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It was all over. Jotaro still didn't believe it, yet that day everything seemed the same. After almost three months he was returning to school as if nothing had happened, like a normal student.
The only thing that had changed was his usual itinerary, which was slightly lengthened. He had in fact arranged with Kakyoin that every day he would come to his house to accompany him to school not to disturb his parents, who had happily accepted.
The weather was ideal that day, not muggy but not cold either. Jotaro enjoyed the breeze on the part of his face not covered by his hat and, once at the gate of the Kakyoin family's house, he let a glimpse of a smile at the boy's mother who was talking to him leaning against the metal fence.
As soon as she saw Jotaro, she greeted him elegantly and Kakyoin turned towards him smiling as he tightened the bandage slightly more behind his head to cover his eyes better.
"Have a great day honey!"
"Thanks, mom!"
Fortunately, Kakyoin's recovery had been quick. He went around with the crutches, which he sometimes used as a white cane; the stomach wound made him tired to walk but it wasn't something that put him in particular difficulty. As soon as he could walk normally again, he would begin using the white cane.
When Kakyoin explained all this to Jotaro he listened to him interested, and he couldn't help but respect the high maturity that Kakyoin showed in accepting his condition. That's why he liked the red-haired boy so much. He was certainly not the type to mess around with.
As they walked to school, however, Jotaro didn't even remotely take into consideration that Kakyoin's self-acceptation of his blindness wasn't going to be the main problem.
Kakyoin and Jotaro had officially become a couple for a few weeks, but they preferred to remain discreet, especially at school. Kakyoin had always been a loner while Jotaro the exact opposite. In fact, as always, that day he was sitting at his desk surrounded by screaming girls as he ate his bento made by his mother. The morning lessons had just finished and Jotaro wanted to spend his lunch break with Kakyoin, but not seeing him in class he thought he had gone somewhere in the courtyard and put his mind in peace.
"Jotaro, can I eat with you?"
"No, I arrived before you!"
"Shut up!"
"Jotaro!"
Jotaro wasn't paying the slightest attention to all of them, even though their voices came from every angle and thundered annoyingly in his brain.
Once the meal was over without saying a word to the girls, he got up violently frightening them and blurted out in a low voice: "Too bad, I'm done. Go away."
The girls exchanged confused glances, but decided to leave him one by one.
Jotaro snorted noisily in relief. He had to go to the bathroom.
Incredibly he managed to remember where the bathroom was, and once he reached the door he was about to lower the handle when he heard a loud thud from inside.
He froze. There were several people inside. Was there a fight? Yare yare, Jotaro didn't want to be suspended on the first day of school in months. He was about to turn and walk away when he heard laughter inside that sounded anything but innocent. Some jerk was doing some bullshit.
"How many are these?"
Jotaro adjusted his hat, trying to figure out what they might be talking about. Cigarettes? It wouldn't surprise him.
"Take that bandage off him."
"No, wait! Light damages my eyes!" and then a loud sob.
What he heard made every single drop of blood in Jotaro's body freeze.
That voice.
"That hurts!"
Kakyoin was in that bathroom!
He found himself in the bathroom by instinct without even thinking about moving his muscles, with the door slamming so hard against the wall that it crumbled the plaster.
Suddenly five boys, three crouched and two leaning against the wall, turned towards him, someone with a menacing expression and others completely careless of his presence.
"Do you need something?" Jotaro turned towards him with an aggressive expression. "What's your problem, man?" another intervened, and then the first one continued "Yeah, do what you have to do and leave us alone."
He didn't even look at their faces when he finally caught a glimpse of Kakyoin on the ground among the other three boys, with his uniform unbuttoned, crutches broken in half on the floor and the bandage loosened around his face, covered in blood.
"Excuse me?" Hearing that voice Kakyoin jolted and let out another sob that had been holding back until that moment, due to the amazement of his lover's arrival. Instinctively he tried to get up on his elbows and burst out between sobs "Jotaro!"
and hearing the desperation in that voice Jotaro could not help but get even more angry, and took one of the two boys who had approached him by the collar of his uniform and lifted him in the air, punching him in the face. The boy exhaled sharply, struck by amazement and suddenly subdued by anxiety. Before he could hit him, though, he heard a groan of pain from Kakyoin.
"Dare to hit him and we make this loser throw up his gut too!"
Jotaro, holding the boy in the air, slammed him violently against the wall to see Kakyoin now lying on his back, with one of the boys with the shoe pressed to his belly, where the scar was still very visible. He was keeping a fixed expression of pain on his face, folding his eyebrows and closing his eyes, now exposed to the light.
Jotaro saw red. Anger, rage, animal instincts were in his body and he could have killed them one after another.
When he noticed one of the boys giggling from the back of the bathroom, spitting in Kakyoin's face and forcibly trying to open his eyes, Jotaro couldn't resist anymore.
"The World!"
"Wha-"
Everything stopped. Even though he had a few seconds, he had already decided what to do, and it would be painful for each of them.
As soon as the boys could move again, they started screaming in pain. Someone felt their fingers in pieces, others felt a strong pain in the stomach or somebody else was bleeding from the nose and mouth.
They all ran away in horror as soon as they noticed that the boy was still in the bathroom.
"Kakyoin!" Jotaro ran to take him in his arms. Incredibly, his trembling body reacted to the contact, approaching Jotaro's chest as he picked him up.
"Jo-Jotaro..." the voice was weak, and when he tried to speak again he coughed violently, spitting blood.
He should have killed those bastards on the spot.
"I'll have an ambulance called right away. Hold on."
The school was delirious. Fights often occurred, but rarely as serious as this one; all the boys who were in that bathroom were sent to the hospital, and Jotaro was suspended again. Fortunately, after explaining his reasons and what had happened, he simply had to pay a reimbursement to their respective families, who in turn had to pay it to Kakyoin's family.
The boys were released from the hospital after a couple of weeks, while Kakyoin's recovery was much slower. He had been badly injured, most of the old scars had reopened and he was heavily traumatized.
Jotaro was seriously worried and went to visit him every day.
The first time he heard Kakyoin's voice again was after several weeks, when with a weak voice he managed to mumble a "It's like a déjà vu, isn't it?" and smiling he fell asleep in Jotaro's arms.
As if that weren't enough, the doctors argued that they had probably released him too early and therefore decided to wait at least another month to send him back to school.
In the end, it took two months.
Jotaro had already returned to school and knew nothing of kakyoin's release yet.
That day Jotaro was leaning against a cherry tree while smoking a cigarette, repeating aloud the science topic he had a test on that day. Since Kakyoin had entered his life he had really made him a better person in some aspects, such as school performance. Probably sooner or later he would even be able to make him quit smoking.
He didn't know that the boy he was thinking about was coming towards him. The boy was walking around the school garden with his new white cane, happy that he no longer had to carry those bulky crutches around, and hearing Jotaro's voice in the distance he started hurrying towards him, always paying attention to where he walked.
Jotaro turned abruptly only when he heard an object violently hit the trunk of the tree behind him, and following the source of the noise he saw a cane. When he looked up in disbelief and hope, he saw Kakyoin that was holding it and was smiling in his direction, with the bandage surrounding his lightly scarred face.
Jotaro, without even thinking, jumped to his feet throwing the science book and the cigarette to the ground and hugged him tightly, feeling a few seconds later the white cane fall and two arms reciprocating the grip weakly.
"I... missed you."
"Same, Jotaro."
"I will never leave you alone, you will always be with me, do you understand?"
"Gladly."
"Jotaro, now you better go back to study. If I find out that you have failed in the test, I will hit you with the white cane."