Work Text:
One strike.
Two strikes.
Three strikes.
It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. It was always never enough. It would never be enough.
Itaru swung his practice sword around with more rage than finesse. With more feeling than purpose. With more recklessness, losing all care for his already tired body. He was always tired. And that feeling never really left him. There was nothing else for him to do than to just keep on going until he passed out, or until something else happened. Whatever would come first. He didn’t care.
He was aiming at nothing, and all he was doing was straining his arms. It was childish. It was immature. It was unlike him, but what the hell was he supposed to be anyway? Who the hell was Chigasaki Itaru supposed to be? Everything around him felt like crumbling and slipping away, his sense of self included. As if he had one in the first place.
To hell with decency. If he wasn’t going to be given even more trouble for breaking things, he would be smashing the mirrors in the practice room. He would be breaking everything around him, because that was all he ever really knew. All he knew was how to be broken, so it was natural that he knew how to break too. Maybe he wanted to do it for relief. Maybe he wanted to do it because he just wanted to. To hell with clarity too.
Or maybe he just wanted to see something else similar to him, something that would make him pity himself even less. Perhaps he wanted to see something more broken, more useless and insignificant than him. Even if it was just an inanimate object. That was all he ever was around other people anyway. Just another face. Just another thing. Just another entity to throw and discard once it had gone defective.
Would he be thrown away from this troupe too if any of them knew? Would he lose everything all over again with his own emotions? With whatever he had left inside of him? Well, if the world wanted to rip him out of his sanctuary a second time, then Itaru would tell it to be his guest. He didn’t know if he cared about that now. He couldn’t. All he could do was swing, and strike, and pretend that he was hitting something. Someon—
“Chigasaki.”
Itaru stopped midway. His bangs were messing with his eyesight, so he brushed them away with a sweaty hand. Well, shit.
“What is it.” It came out more annoyed than how Itaru usually sounded, but he wasn’t going to deal with being decent. In fact, he wanted to hit the person right in front of him. Maybe it would help.
Chikage was standing at the doorway, his usual unreadable expression on his face. It pissed Itaru off even more. It reminded him of someone that wasn’t even remotely like Chikage, but everything about now reminded him of Tonooka fucking Takumi anyway.
“Your form is terrible,” was all that Chikage said.
Itaru gripped the handle of his sword. “No one asked you to look.”
“You look awkward, practicing all on your own.” Itaru was about to retort, probably with anger a few dials too high, but Chikage started walking to where Spring Troupe kept their practice swords for KniRoun rehearsals. He took one, swinging it around.
“Wouldn’t it help to have a partner with you?” Chikage didn’t smile, like how he usually had a curve plastered onto his lips. He was dead serious, with weight in his voice.
Itaru stood still, the irritation about wanting to lash out at the intruder dissipating slightly.
Chikage went into stance, sword pointed at Itaru. “You can do anything you want right here, right now. Then, we’ll polish everything up right after. Does that sound good?”
There was a moment of silence looming around the room. There was no vocal response from Itaru.
Instead, he gripped his sword even tighter, and bolted towards his enemy.
His footsteps were heavy and unplanned, and Itaru almost slipped just running towards Chikage, but he didn’t care. He striked against the opposing sword, the deafening sound of wood hitting wood replacing any need for conversation. Chikage wasn’t even fighting back— he was keeping his sword steady, defending and parrying. Itaru kept on hitting and hitting, each strike getting heavier than the last. Each strike was getting more and more filled with anguish and lament.
It was so unfair.
It was just so incredibly unfair.
Itaru didn’t quite know what he was hitting anymore, but he kept on swinging and swinging. He ignored the way his arms were giving out. He ignored the sweat dripping from his face. He ignored every little thought that was telling him to stop, because he was done with stopping. He was tired of being broken. He wanted to break something in return.
The justification of it didn’t matter, not at the moment. Itaru was too blinded with anger to even think properly. He was too influenced by his emotions. Too caught up in his torment. Too deep in his trauma.
Just what the hell was he supposed to do? Just what the hell was he supposed to be? Nobody told him. All he got was his best friend suddenly ghosting him and leaving him with more scars than good memories. For his entire life, Itaru was just going on aimlessly, following the desires of other people like he was some puppet. Like he was supposed to put a desirable act on for them so he wouldn’t be faced with the pain of being thrown away like a worn out toy.
But he was tired of being scared of that. He wanted to throw the world away. He wanted to be the one breaking things for once. But everything hated him, so all he had at this point was just blindly hitting a practice sword with his own.
To be honest, Itaru wanted to hurt him too. He wanted to take that smug face that asked him out for a drink and slam it onto the dorm’s lounge table when Itaru met eyes with that shameless bastard after all those years. Itaru wanted to just yell and scream, to say all the things that his younger self forcefully buried out of the fear that he would get bullied by Tonooka’s posse even more. He wanted to hurt him back. He wanted him to know what being broken felt like.
But with legal charges being pressed because of that first prospect and his fear at the second, Itaru had to be the bigger man. Because he was always supposed to be the bigger person. Because he was always supposed to be mature and know what to do, because that was what the Chigasaki Itaru of society was. He was supposed to be unfazed and unhurt by anything. He was supposed to be a reliable and sensible adult, when he wasn’t any of those things at all. He wasn’t anything. He was nothing.
He was nothing, because that was the title the world marked him with. And yet, Itaru desperately clung onto some form of acceptance, onto some form of being respected, even if it involved endlessly running around to satisfy what the audience wanted. He was a puppet, and he was subjected to put on a show for society. Like some pitiful rag that wanted to be beautiful.
Like a broken doll that wanted to be loved.
Itaru gripped his sword until his knuckles turned white. He lost all feeling in his hands. He didn’t even know what Chikage was doing. And he didn’t care. He kept on striking, and striking, and striking, until—
Clack.
A large piece of Itaru’s sword broke off, falling onto the floor.
“Chigasaki, stop.” Chikage didn’t have to say it, because Itaru immediately slammed the rest of his broken sword onto the floor.
Itaru stared at the object that once had utility, now two broken scraps of wood on the floor. He burned the sight into his eyes, letting it sear into his brain, the look of it all haunting him.
Something in pieces. Just like him. Something broken, something to be thrown away, just like him.
Itaru didn’t feel any better. This was all worthless. It was all for nothing.
If Chikage said anything else, it didn’t matter. Itaru’s legs gave out, and he found himself kneeling on the floor, his sore and red hands bunched up into tight fists. He didn’t know what to feel. He heard footsteps getting more and more distant. Chikage was already out of the door. The sight felt familiar. Like someone leaving a broken object once it had been all used up. Itaru let the emptiness stew into him, reliving the trauma of the past, as if the ghost of his old, dead self started stirring from the years of unhealed wounds.
What Itaru didn’t expect was Chikage coming back.
In Chikage’s hands were towels, bottles of water, and a med kit. He set a towel and bottle down right beside Itaru. He kneeled in front of him.
“Give me your hands.”
With no room and energy to reject the order, Itaru shakily raised up his hands. Chikage turned them around so that the palms were facing upwards.
“I knew you’d get blisters from all of that. Your hands are all red too.”
‘Huh?’
Chikage sanitized Itaru’s hands with alcohol, and bandaged all the affected parts of his hands with precision and efficiency. He closed the med kit after that.
“Tell me if anything else hurts, and I’ll look into it,” Chikage calmly said. He took a sip from his water bottle.
‘Yeah, somewhere else still hurts. It hurts a lot inside of me. But I doubt you can fix mental wounds.’
Itaru blinked, his eyes turning blank. He reluctantly wiped the sweat off him with his towel. His arms could barely move. He could barely move. Everything felt light, as if Itaru could crumple to the floor— but he had enough consciousness to keep himself upright. He gulped down his water.
Chikage sat down beside Itaru, his body leaning against the mirror. There was heavy silence between them. Itaru’s rational thinking started to come back to him now that he was worn out, but so did his anxiety. And his guilt.
He shouldn’t have done all that, but more importantly, why the hell did Chikage show up? What was with that offer to ‘practice?’ The man wasn’t close to stupid, he knew that something was up, and yet…
“…You’re not even going to ask?” Itaru’s voice was weak.
“Not if you don’t want me to. It’s just practice if you want it to be.”
Itaru didn’t know if he wanted to call it practice, but he was going to be damned if he wasn’t going to take that offer.
“Okay.”
Itaru leaned against the mirror, curling his legs up so he could hug his knees. It felt like he was in the aftermath of… something. Whatever everything about earlier was about. The inside of him felt vacant, but it wasn’t quite empty. It was as if whatever was inside managed to fade away for a bit. He didn’t know if it was enough. It probably wasn’t, and nothing would ever be enough, but it was still something.
After a few minutes of silence passed, and more of Itaru’s proper thinking came back to him, he decided to interrogate Chikage. “Why did you come here?”
“I think I have the right to go walk around the dorms as I please.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
There was a sliver of a moment where Chikage paused, just enough to catch with close attention. “I saw light coming from the practice room, and I heard your footsteps. I wanted to check if someone was inside this late at night.”
Late at night? Itaru checked the time on the wall clock in front of them. 11 PM. He didn’t know it was that late already.
Itaru rested his head on top of his knees. The whole thing was starting to wear him out even more. “And why did you offer to practice with me? That barely even looked like it at all.”
“I know. Though, you could have rejected me, right?” Chikage was just as unreadable as ever. Itaru started to feel frustrated again.
“But to give you a proper answer… it felt like it was the least I could do.”
Oh.
“…I looked pitiful, didn’t I.”
“I wasn’t lying when I said that your form was terrible, but I don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed of.”
Itaru hugged his knees tighter, but realized that he shouldn’t be straining his arms even more, so he relaxed. However, that made him feel even more vulnerable. It made him feel seen. He didn’t know if he liked that.
His eyes landed on the broken wooden sword in front of him. That was still there. It was right in front of him, a reminder of the state Itaru was in. A reminder of what Itaru always was, a broken object to be thrown out and never to be picked up again.
Chikage must have been concerned when Itaru didn’t answer back, and he realized where the other’s attention went.
“All things considered, I didn’t expect the sword to break like that. Then again, it’s pretty worn out, isn’t it?”
Itaru didn’t reply.
He didn’t know how long they were sitting in silence until Chikage got up. Itaru’s eyes followed him to one of the boxes they kept in the room for any needed materials. He brought out a roll of duct tape and a pair of scissors.
Chikage carefully laid the sword out, connecting the two pieces together and wrapped them around with tape.
“What are you doing?” It was just a simple action, but Itaru felt… off.
“I’m fixing it, obviously. We could probably just use a different sword, but I don’t think we should throw this one out. It can still be used if we just taped it back together.” Chikage made sure that the two ends were secured tightly with tape, and cut it off. “There. Good as new.”
Itaru blinked. Before he knew it, it was handed back to him, as if it belonged to him. Chikage was holding the other sword.
“Give it a go, just to check if it’s sturdy enough.”
Itaru was staring at the sword in his hands, as if he was trying to process something phenomenal. It really wasn’t anything special. Of course it was logical to fix broken props. The theater company was still poor, and they had a tight hold on their funds. This was the most predictable thing to do.
And yet, Itaru still found himself so conflicted to accept it. It was just a wooden sword. However, he stood up, firmly grasping the handle. He swung the sword, hitting Chikage’s. It didn’t have his energy from earlier, given that he now had tired arms and hands full of blisters, but it was still a solid swing.
“That should be fine.” Chikage put his prop down. “Come on, we still have practice tomorrow. The leads shouldn’t be pushing themselves like this. You especially.”
Itaru’s grip loosened. He was staring at the sword again, like he was given gold— or a giant garbage bag. He was in disbelief. There was no way it was that easy. It wasn’t that easy. Although, in retrospect, repairing actual inanimate objects was easier than repairing humans that believed they were inanimate objects.
“Chigasaki?” Chikage turned back to him, noticing that he wasn’t following.
Itaru was still looking at the sword, right at the part where Chikage put it back together with duct tape.
“Do you think humans can be fixed too?”
Silence filled the air once more. It was such a silly question. But to Itaru, it meant everything. It meant everything enough for him to ask it to someone who he still barely knew.
“You don’t fix humans, Chigasaki.”
Oh—
“They heal. And it’s slow. Painfully slow. But, I think all that waiting happens for a reason.”
Itaru stares at Chikage, and Chikage stares back. The latter was the first to turn away, putting his sword to where they kept their props.
“Let’s go already.”
The wood under Itaru’s hands was more than familiar under his grasp, but it felt like he was holding something entirely new. He ran his fingers across the duct tape, realizing that he couldn’t find the exact spot where the sword broke. All there was in its place was tape. It was a sign that it broke, but the real evidence was hidden behind the remedy.
Itaru put the sword away.
“Okay, senpai.”
Maybe that was all that sword needed.
Maybe that was enough.