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Reki Kyan is alone.
But alone doesn’t mean lonely, and he knows that. If anything, he feels like he’s surrounded by a world just for him. In school he focuses on what he likes, he spends his lunch breaks looking at skateboard tricks and dreams of one day being able to do them himself. He doesn’t feel a need to be more than buddies with his classmates.
Outside of school, he goes to work at a place that feels like it was made for him. When he goes home, he goes out to the shed to make a skateboard even more amazing than the last one. When he goes to sleep, the last thing he sees is skateboarding posters, and when he wakes up, they are the first things he sees as well.
At night, he lives a dream. It might be dangerous, it might be illegal, but S is the place where he can live through skateboarding. He can do what he loves most, surrounded by people who share the same passion. He feels as if nothing can stop him. It’s the last detail in his life that makes being alone in his normal life worth it all. After all, when being blatantly told by his classmates that he’s weird and uninteresting, he needs something to balance it out with, everyone does. S just so happens to be his balance.
At first he was lonely. The person who introduced skateboarding to him wasn’t skating anymore. Of course Reki blamed himself, but at the same time he couldn’t stop. He continued, and all he could do was tell him that he didn’t leave his friend behind, because he had made that decision and Reki made his. If he could have another person like that in his life, no doubt he would love it. He may be alone, and he may be okay with that, but to share his passion with another person… that might just make his life outside of S a dream too.
Reki Kyan is not alone anymore.
Who could have thought that he would end up in the cliche of becoming friends with the new exchange student? Who could’ve known that that exchange student would somehow win a beef against someone who even Reki himself had lost to, without having any experience of skateboarding and with his feet taped to the board? How crazy is that!
Tick, tock, tick, tock…
In no time he nailed an ollie. Either Reki was quite the teacher or Langa was the fastest learner he’d ever met. He’d like to think it’s both.
He made Langa a board fit for his skating style, he modified it to make him even better. He won another beef, and then-
...and then Langa caught the interest of someone.
Adam is dangerous. Reki knows that better than most people. So why won’t Langa listen? Happen once, it’s an accident and not Reki’s fault. Happen twice, and he could never forgive himself again. It would be his fault if Langa got injured. It would be his fault if Langa stopped skateboarding. But Langa didn’t listen.
He promised to not stop skating, even if he got hurt.
Maybe that’s enough?
Reki Kyan doesn’t know how to feel.
When did Langa surpass him?
He had been skateboarding for years, but Langa surpassed him in the matter of months.
He had been working so hard, put in so much effort, yet Langa almost effortlessly surpassed him.
It wasn’t fair.
Yes, he was jealous, but what else was he supposed to feel? If that made him a bad person, so be it. There was something wrong with him. He was doing something he wasn’t meant to. Maybe Miya was right, people with no talent should stay out of it. What was he even doing, pretending like he was anything like them? Pretending like he wasn’t holding them back? Pretending like he was worth the time, the attention, the space, the fucking S pin that sits so heavily on his hoodie. It was a burden. He was a burden. He should just quit. What even is skating to him anymore?
S is like a nightmare, and it’s time for him to wake up.
An apology means nothing if all it is used for is to continue with no change.
An apology means nothing when skating with the one who broke your best friends arm is more important than the best friend himself.
An apology means nothing to Reki Kyan.
Reki Kyan is alone again.
Reki Kyan is lonely.