Chapter Text
Hero’s family left Faraway Town at 8 am. Well, more like 8:05. Kel forgot to take Hector out and underestimated just how long Hector would take to find a good spot to do his business. The nearest airport is about an hour away from Faraway, in Nearby City. Dad’s driving, Mom’s in the passenger seat, and Hero and Kel were in the left and right back seats. They were in the same positions they were always in on these types of trips. I guess this might be the last one, though, since they’ll be driving back without me.
Hero honestly expected this ride to be more emotional, or at least to be filled with a bunch of last minute advice from his parents. It’s almost the same atmosphere as any of their road trips to Nearby City. Mom and Dad just talk about the latest work and family problems, sometimes deciding to talk to the boys if they looked bored, while Kel did his usual alternating between playing his DS while Hero watched, unashamedly singing along to whatever song was on the radio (hoping for others to join in, probably), or talking to whoever didn’t look too occupied. Still, there’re a lot more silences than usual. Hero can detect some sense of unease coming from his parents. Hero has looked up at the road a few times now, and more than once has noticed Dad looking right back at him through the rear-view mirror, even when there were no cars behind them.
The college Hero is going to is about 7 hours away, with 6 of them being by plane. He vaguely remembers touring it a few months ago, but it blends with all the other colleges his parents wanted him to look at. Can’t complain too much about Mom’s choice, I guess. I was barely capable of doing much of anything when we were approaching the enrollment deadline, let alone choosing something as important as a college. It supposedly has great science programs, and those who get that kind of degree there are supposed to have very little trouble getting into med school. Mom was quite insistent on telling me that part, as if she had to defend her decision. I’m… still not convinced being a doctor is the right path for me, but telling my parents that right now would just scare them. At least I get to
Wait, did that sign say airport? Looks like time snuck up on me again. Dad parks the car and gets us all on to a bus for the right gate. He always does the heavy lifting like that when they go travelling. Should I be doing it instead this time, to prove that I’m capable of acting like an adult? Hm… Well, it’d be weird to start now. Guess I should’ve thought of it sooner. Hero gets his baggage registered (only the essentials, the rest was coming via van) and start walking towards security, bracing himself as he realizes that they’re very close to the point where he goes ahead alone. Hero starts turning around to wave goodbye, but before he could finish, he saw Mom running at him, arms wide and tears in her eyes. Hero can’t even hear everything she’s saying while they hug since her face is buried in his chest, but he bets it’s more for her than him anyway. They eventually separate after Dad jokingly asked if he could have a turn before the plane takes off. His eyes look red, but he’s holding it together better than Mom is. His hug is much tighter and Hero can feel himself being lifted off the ground, just like when he was a kid. He whispers in Hero’s ear, “I’m so proud of you, son.” in a choked up voice. Neither Hero nor Kel had ever seen Dad cry before, but that’s probably the closest it’s been. He eventually set Hero back down so Kel could have a turn.
Kel looks like he wants to say a million things at once, but he can’t find the words for any of them. Hero smiles and reaches his arms out for a hug, and Kel charges at him right away. They hug for a long, long time. Neither can bring themselves to let go of the other, since both of them know it means goodbye. Silently, Mom and Dad both come back in for a big family hug. A part of Hero wishes they could do this forever, and he never has to get on that plane. Don’t be silly, they’ve all given you too much for you to be thinking like that. They all lose track of time for a while before Dad lets go and mutters something about missing a flight. Mom gets off after one more squeeze, and Kel lets go once she does, breathing in intensely as if he’s been suffocating. Everyone laughed at that for a bit. Good. Now we can all pretend that the tears in our eyes are just from laughter. Hero waved them all goodbye with a bittersweet smile on his face before turning around and going into security.
Hero manages to find the boarding area after clearing his mind a bit. The seats near the gate have already been taken, so he just stands near the wall and checks his watch. Apparently, boarding starts in only 20 minutes. Looks like goodbyes really did take a long time. It’s a good thing we left earlier than necessary. Hero’s pretty sure that his plane ticket is as cheap as it can possibly be, though that’s still plenty expensive given that it’s set for Collegeton in August. Hero would feel guilty if his parents had gotten him anything nicer, but they made the excuse that they probably wouldn’t be able to cover anything else once he was on his own, so he didn’t complain much. Based on the seat number, it looked like his seat would be a middle seat towards the back of the plane. By the time Hero boarded, most of the passengers had already taken their seats and stored anything they carried on with them. Hero took his seat between a middle aged woman who had already fallen asleep against the window. Shame, I was hoping to at least watch the takeoff. His other neighbor was a teenager that was playing on a DS, though unlike Kel he had the forethought to put some earbuds in. I’m tempted to watch him play like how I do with Kel, but that might freak him out, not to mention his parents. Looks like no one’s in the mood to chat. It’s a good thing I bought that book before leaving. The book Hero had gotten was a mystery novel. Seeing as he intended for it to keep him occupied, he figured that a book that was designed to get the reader to think would be a good choice.
Hero listened to the flight attendant talk about the safety procedures, thinking that if they actually do crash, at least one person in this row should probably have an idea of what the general plan is. Once she finishes, Hero takes out his book and starts reading. Seems like a pretty classic murder mystery. A bunch of rich people from the same family all go to this place called Rokkenjima Island, and surprise, the elderly woman at the head of the family is killed for inheritance money. Her body was discovered by the butler (with his master key) in her locked bedroom, with the only other key to it found right on her dresser, as if it were a declaration to any detectives in the area. The classic closed room murder. Hero was getting into it now and thought about going through the list of the possible methods a killer could’ve used to do this, but figured he was too early in to get anything concrete. After listing everyone’s shocked reactions, the book skipped ahead a little bit to the detective’s arrival. The detective asked some preliminary questions. “Who found the body, and at what time?” “What measures, if any, were taken to protect the crime scene from tampering?” “Did anyone notice potential signs of suicid-“
Hero instinctively slammed the book shut upon seeing the word, drawing the attention of nearby passengers. You can’t freak out every time you see the word, man, Hero thought with some frustration. His hands were still noticeably shaking. Hero forcefully gripped both arm rests, leaving the book on his lap, its cover staring up at him almost mockingly. Hero wasn’t able to stop his thoughts from wandering to the past, with the very thing he intended to stop him from doing ending up as the catalyst for it. Damnit Hero, you’re literally going to college right now. Are you really gonna spend the entire trip there thinking about… He was picturing Mari’s smiling face, and sighed as he let the dam break. The passengers had stopped looking at him at this point, either out of indifference or fear of drawing the attention of a visibly unstable man.
Hero had spent almost all of his last year in Faraway in a catatonic state, caused by a Mari’s death. He stopped going to school in his senior year (I only graduated because not enough of my teachers could bring themselves to fail me, and I wasn’t even grateful enough to show up to the graduation ceremony), got fired from a job for the first time in his life, and worst of all, lost all contact with his friends. I just couldn’t stop thinking about Mari, and her death, and the fact that it’s all my-. Sigh. He had only recently broken out of the stupor thanks to Kel. It seemed like after a while everyone had given up on talking to me, but Kel cared enough to reach out one night and… and I made him cry for it. Hero has a lot of regrets, but making his little brother cry from words alone was a big one, especially since his first reaction to seeing it was berating him for doing it now instead of at the funeral. I hope he doesn’t remember what I said, or at least believes me when I say I didn’t mean it. I don’t even know where all of that came from, I was just talking and hoping to hurt him, like there was some part of me that thought he had to make up for not being as upset about Mari as I am. I’m never doing that again, to him or anyone else. Thinking about Kel made him think about his other friends. He tried as hard as he could to reconnect with them before leaving, but…
He never even got to see Sunny, let alone talk to him. On different days at different times, Hero went to Mar- Sunny’s house to see if he was in the mood this time, but the most he got was only seeing his mother. She was very happy to see Hero, but she said that Sunny had been doing really badly ever since his sister died and his dad left. That last part came as a shock to Hero. He later found out that Sunny’s dad left him a very large gift of college money, which seemed incredibly strange to him. (Hero tried to get the money returned, but his parents didn’t budge and said it was already put in savings.) Looking back, my recovery probably gave her some hope. After all, Sunny probably wasn’t very different from how I was before Kel woke me up. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Sunny would have a harder time without a sibling to help him… Hell, if I hadn’t taken a whole damn year to come and visit him, I could’ve done that for him. Now I’m just too late, abandoning him in his bed only a month after jumping out of mine.
Hero ran into Aubrey at the park pretty soon after recovering, but it wasn’t the reunion he’d hoped for. She was surrounded by a bunch of other kids, some of which Hero recognized as local troublemakers, she had dyed her hair pink and put in teal contacts, and she seemed almost angry and sad at the same time when he spoke to her about being glad to see her again and him wanting to say goodbye before he left for college. To their credit, her new (Well, new to me at least) friends made talking to her difficult after that. She obviously has the right to be upset with me. After all, if anyone could’ve stopped Mari from committing suicide, it should’ve been me. I should’ve been there for her. I should’ve seen the signs and asked her to open up to me, or at least have been there to stop her from taking the final step. Aubrey must’ve known that as well as I did. Hell, maybe they all do, and she’s the only one not afraid to act like it. She always was true to her feelings.
Basil, in comparison, went better. Hero was actually able to have a few conversations with him, but he could still tell things weren’t going well. For lack of a better term, Basil seemed to be on the verge of having a panic attack at all times while talking to Hero. It’s not like anxiety was a new thing for Basil, Hero could remember a few times when they were kids when he’d talked Basil into calming down over various things, but it had never been this bad. Hero’s attempts to calm him down almost seemed to result in the anxiety getting worse, for some reason. Hero really tried to reconnect with Basil, wanting to say that he had managed to salvage at least one of his friendships before leaving Faraway, but it almost felt like he was the only one between them who wanted that. Aside from a quick goodbye (no attempts to hug from either of them) the day before he left, they stopped talking to each other entirely after the first couple weeks of Hero’s recovery. At one point while giving a late graduation gift, Basil’s grandma had said she worried about both him and Hero, and that she felt Basil was trying too hard to act like Mari’s death didn’t affect him. I wish he felt comfortable opening up to me, but it seems like that idea might be the very thing that had him so scared around me. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you sooner, Basil...
I’m still worried about Kel, too. Everyone in our friend group seems to have been traumatized or at least changed in some way, but he seems to be the exact same as he was when he was twelve. Is that really how he feels, though? He never liked making people worry, or having adults on his case. Did my shutdown cause him to put up a front that even I can’t see through, to give Mom and Dad less to worry about while they tried to help me? It wouldn’t be the first time I was blind to the suffering of someone I love. After I talked to all of our old friends, I asked him if he was doing alright, and even then he seemed more worried about me than anything. Still, there’s a chance I messed up badly enough that night for him to not feel comfortable sharing personal things with me anymore. And now I’m leaving, and from the look of things, no one in our friend group is in a good situation to give him a shoulder to cry on. I… I really hope he’s not suppressing anything.
Of course, there’s one more person in the group that I failed to say goodbye to. Mari. I was too fucked up to even speak at her funeral, and I have no excuse for never going to her grave. How can I even say I lo
“-Sir! Sir! Are you alright?” Surprised, Hero looks over and sees the flight attendant that was talking about safety earlier waving her hand at him, with a notepad in her other hand. Both people in his row were looking at him, as well as a few other people in nearby seats. “Oh, good. We’re taking beverage orders. Can I get you anything?”, she said with a thin smile. “Oh. Uh, yeah, I’ll have a water. Thanks.” Real slick, Hero. Still, if she’s taking orders already… Hero looked at his watch and found that over an hour had passed. Did I really just spiral for that long? I didn’t even notice…
Alright, that went on longer than it needed to, but maybe it’s a good thing to have processed things a little before college overwhelms me. Now… Hero opened his book again, eventually finding a spot close to where he interrupted himself earlier. I think the word was around the bottom half of this page, so I’ll just skip to the next one. Maybe I’ll miss a little bit of info, but at least I’ll be able to keep reading. Hero eventually settled into place and began working on the mystery, trying to think of as many possible solutions as he can, only partially acknowledging the fact that he was doing it to keep his thoughts from going back to the past.
Hero eventually reached the point where the detective declared that he’d figured out who the culprit is, which basically signals that it’s the last chance for the reader to figure it out themselves. Hero was pretty confident in his answer, though he saw that the plane still has about 30 minutes before it lands, so he reread a few parts he wasn’t quite sure about until he’d felt that enough time has passed for him to not be sitting awkwardly for the rest of the flight. He turned the page and found out that he’d apparently come to the same conclusion as the detective. Hero put the book away, just as satisfied with finishing the book as he was with finding the culprit. Hero began to steel himself for the walk to the campus. Given how long he was staying here, he didn’t think a rental car would be a very good choice in the long term. People walk all the time in these cities, right? I probably won’t look THAT out of place. (He would definitely look out of place.)
It turns out there were a few cabs waiting at the airport already for any carless travelers. Huh, I probably should’ve expected that. But… How much do these cost, anyway? I’ve never taken one, and I don’t know how far the college is… Hero asked a nearby employee about how far away the college was, and she said it’d be a few miles. She also asked if she could interest him in a rental car, but he politely refused and walked away. Feels like everything costs money in this city. Maybe I should’ve worked more before coming here… I could probably walk a few miles. I’ve been sitting down all day, and it saves money anyway.
Hero walked for a few minutes before realizing he didn’t actually know a route to the college. After a bit more walking, he decided to just bite the bullet and hire a cab so he wasn’t left stranded at night. After a few minutes (and some advice from a local who told him that cabs with their lights on are the only ones that are empty), he managed to get one to stop. “Going to UCT, huh? Yeah, that’ll be about thirty bucks once we get there. Put your suitcase in the trunk and hop in.”
Hero reached the campus and gave the money to the driver after taking his suitcase back out of the trunk. Alright, I have GOT to figure out how to navigate this place, or I’ll be broke in a week from that alone. By this point, it was getting towards night time, and Hero was quite tired. He asked the first oldish-looking student for directions to his residence hall and started walking in that direction, suitcase in tow. Hero headed all the way up the stairs to the 4th floor, and almost knocked on the door before remembering he was supposed to live here and had a key.
Inside the slightly smaller than expected room, he saw two beds that were both lofted up near the ceiling. The one facing the door was “decorated” with an unorganized pile of blankets of varying colors with a single caseless pillow at the head. Underneath that bed was a small table with some kind of portable computer sitting on it. Sitting in front of the computer was a thin young man with his back to the door who had very light blonde hair that went down to his shoulders. He was wearing a headset, which he was just starting to take off as he turned around after pausing whatever game he was playing.
“Oh, hey man.” He casually raised his hand a bit without waving it before lowering it again, still sitting down. “Was wondering when you’d show up.”
Hero stood awkwardly. “Hello. I’m guessing you’re my roommate?”
The man’s face deadpanned. “No, I just took this key off of some dude who passed out on the sidewalk.” Hero was a bit tired from the travel, so he didn’t react immediately. “Yes, I’m your roommate!”, he said while laughing and stood up. “Name’s Chris, nice to meet you. You’re Henry, right? Said on the sheet they gave me.”, he explained.
Hero shrugged at that. “Oh, yeah. Most folks just call me Hero though. Henry just feels kinda weird now.” Hero set his suitcase down for the moment.
“Sure, sure. Hero it is. I’d help you unpack, but it looks like you didn’t bring much, so I’ll just stay out of your way.” Chris sat back down, still facing the chair towards Hero. After a minute, he said “So, where you from?”
Hero was in the middle of taking some clothes and putting them on hangers in the closet, but he tried to keep the conversation going. “Faraway Town. It’s, well, far away from here. Small town, not at all like this place.”
“Ooh, that must be rough. This place is more expensive than most towns, especially the smaller ones. I live here, so I’m used to it. It’s also why I showed up so early.” He chuckled a bit, though Hero wasn’t quite sure where the joke was.
“Oh, so you can probably show me around a little, right? I’m gonna go broke if I don’t figure out how to start navigating the sidewalks.”
Chris seemed to find that funny. “Well, there’s not much to it. The streets are numbered in a grid system. Odd numbers from north to south, even from west to east. You just gotta know the addresses is all. Well, I guess you don’t know any of those… Sorry.”
“Yep.” Hero grunted as he bent down to grab more clothes. It was starting to feel like he was just doing squats.
“Well, we don’t have class for a few days yet. A bunch of folks still haven’t moved in. Maybe tomorrow I can show you a few spots near here. What stuff do you like to do?”
It was a perfectly valid question, which is why Hero was surprised to find he didn’t quite know the answer. Well, I spent most of those days hanging out with Mari and the kids… It was more spending time with them than doing anything specific. I guess there’s cooking, but…
Hero realized he hadn’t answered yet. “Hm. Well, in Faraway, it was a small town, so there wasn’t much to do aside from just hanging out with my friends. I guess there are a lot more options now, though.”
“Huh. I guess that’s small town life for ya. Well, I’m sure you can find something fun out here if you look hard enough. Until then, you could always find a job. This time of year there are plenty of help wanted signs, especially near the college.” Chris turned back to the computer. “Anyway, you seem tired, so I’ll get out of your hair.”
Hero didn’t mind the conversation ending. Isn’t this guy supposed to have the same major as me? Seems awfully casual for an aspiring doctor. Hero finished taking the last of his belongings out of the suitcase. “Yeah, sure. Have a good night, Chris.” After saying the last part he realized he just wished Chris good night in the same way he usually does Kel and sighed. Chris just nodded, and Hero found himself going to sleep much faster than he thought he would.
He saw Mari, like how he usually does in his dreams. The background was completely white, and while Hero was standing and looking at her, she started floating backwards. Hero desperately called out to her while running towards her, but she stayed the same distance away from him. After a few minutes, she suddenly stopped floating and fell. Hero ran forwards even faster, hoping to catch her, but before he could reach her a rope appeared around her neck. A loud cracking sound resounded through the white void as something else caught her instead.