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The old wooden benches in front of Fujinomiya West Highschool provided some of the worst views of Mount Fuji. At 7:30 A.M., the sky was clear of clouds, and the wind blew softly. The rising sun would paint the side of the mountain in shades of pink, hardly visible from the black iron gates and overgrown hedges surrounding the school.
Kenta took his seat next to Toshiaki, the bench creaking underneath the added weight. He tapped his knuckles against the wood rhythmically, a habit that would occasionally end up in him pulling splinters out of his hands later in the day. More often than not the skin was already raw and scabbed. He’d been in so many fights in the past year that he couldn’t remember when his knuckles hadn’t been like this…
“Hey,” he greeted. Toshi acknowledged him by sinking down further into the bench. They’d been sitting here every single day before the start of highschool, ever since he promised to teach him how to fight, when they first became friends. Toshi had been sitting here alone for 2 years before Kenta came here. Now it was always the two of them, together.
Right. Toshi was a senior.
“You graduate in 3 months, Toshi,” Kenta said. Toshi responded by shifting the way he was sitting. Kenta couldn’t tell what that meant and didn’t want to turn to look at him. It would be obvious he’d do that to see what he was thinking.
“What do you plan on doing,” he continued. Toshi laughed now.
“Do I really seem that lost?” Toshi spoke up, and Kenta now turned his head to the side to look directly at him. That wasn’t what he meant at all.
Toshi smiled at the way he was frowning, then pushed him weakly on his shoulder. “You’re fine, dude, chill the fuck out. I’ve been getting that question probably fifty times since this month started.” He turned his eyes back to look at the gate in front of them.
Kenta just kept staring at him. “Sorry.”
Silence passed between them for a long moment.
“Something extreme,” Toshi finally said.
Kenta’s face crinkled in confusion, not understanding what he meant, and Toshi shrugged. “That’s my answer. To your question.”
Kenta couldn’t think of a response. He stared at the gate along with him. The black metal was coated with mud at the bottom, caused by the inches of snow that had melted just several weeks before.
That… really wasn’t an answer he wanted to hear. Desperately, he wanted to believe that there was something else waiting for people like them, but everytime Toshi spoke about his goals for the future it seemed like he had already given up. As if this was the kind of life he'd lead forever.
By the time Kenta stood up to go inside, the sky had turned blue. He knew this meant Mount Fuji had returned to black. As it always did.
Shizuoka was around an hour’s worth of train rides away from Fujinomiya. Kenta was well familiar with it. Whenever the cherry trees would first bloom, his parents would often take a trip down there, spending the day together. He was left to do anything that didn’t involve bothering them. The month of Toshiaki’s graduation his parents had gotten caught up in work complications and handed their tickets to Kenta, telling him to go take a girl. He didn’t know any girls. Really, he didn’t know anyone besides Toshi, and it felt stupid to ask him. But when he did anyways, Toshi said he’d go.
“I need a break from Fujinomiya,” he had reasoned, half-smiling. “Go and see what else is out there.”
The bus ride wasn’t horrible. Toshi sat in front of Kenta while he opted to stand, hanging on to the tsurikawa to steady himself. Closer to their stop, he kept looking up through his bangs at the handle, and then glancing back down at Toshi. Anxiously.
Toshi stood, hooking his hand through the white loop, causing Kenta to shuffle to the next one over. He reached his other hand up and used his pointer finger nail as a makeshift screwdriver, twisting the two tiny screws holding the tsurikawa around the bar going along the roof of the train. They were already loose, no doubt from other people’s attempts to remove them.
Kenta looked around at the other passengers on the train. Nobody was paying any kind of attention to them.
“People like us have been doing this shit for years, Kenta,” Toshi stated while stuffing the tsurikawa into his pocket.
People like us.
Kenta just nodded back. He liked it when Toshi said things like that, grouping them together.
The first place they visited in Shizuoka was the Nihondaira Zoo. Toshi had asked to go there first for some reason unbeknownst to Kenta. Most of it consisted of him quickly walking past anything that wasn’t a big cat or in the reptile tank, not even glancing over in their direction.
Kenta wasn’t happy about this, but kept in pace with his friend, feigning ignorance to anything he thought Toshi didn’t care about. They did, however, stop for a while to look at the tiger exhibit.
In one of the far corners, a white and an orange tiger lay side by side, the white one licking it’s paws. They were preoccupied with their sunbathing, paying no mind to the visitors. Hundreds of people likely passed this exhibit per day.
Kenta and Toshiaki turned shoulder-to-shoulder, watching wordlessly.
The orange tiger lifted its head, turning to stare right at Kenta, right through Kenta. It scared the shit out of him, whatever he’d seen in those eyes. A shiver went down his spine. He turned the opposite way quickly, bumping his other shoulder hard against Toshi’s.
“‘S cold,” he stated, crossing his arms.
Toshi laughed at him. “Kenta, I’m fucking sweating!”
Later, before heading down to the river, they stopped at a taiyaki stand. Toshi wasn’t the kind of person to do pointless shit like this, and since he didn’t want to face any kind of sneering comments from Toshi about wasting money, Kenta wasn’t either. But here he was, asking the old man running the stand for a chocolate filled taiyaki. He heard something like “of fuckin’ course” coming from behind him.
What the hell, Toshi?
None of the benches at the river had backs to them, allowing Kenta to sit with his back to Mount Fuji, staring at the cherry blossoms instead. Toshi sat next to him, faced towards the view of the mountain, leaning back some so he could look over at Kenta.
They ate in silence. Kenta was too embarrassed to say anything. The chocolate filling got smeared all over his lips in the process. Toshi leaned back some more, taking one of his napkins and rubbing the chocolate off, unnecessarily roughly. Kenta winced, saying “ow” when he stopped and crumpled the napkin up.
“What?” Toshi responded, seeming genuinely confused.
Kenta frowned. He knew what he was doing. “Asshole.”
The other man chuckled, stuffing the napkin into his pocket and exchanging it for a pack of Seven Stars. He flipped the box open, putting one to his lips, then offering the box to Kenta. Kenta carefully took one. He only ever smoked when it was like this- Toshi offering him one.
Toshi beckoned him to turn his head with a finger, then flicked his lighter a couple of times before it sparked up. Kenta turned until their cigarettes were touching. The flame lit them both.
A long period of silence passed as they smoked.
“Why d’you always have your back turned to the mountain?” Toshi finally asked.
Kenta knew he’d get asked this by someone eventually, but had never thought of what he’d answer, especially if Toshiaki had asked it. There wasn’t a good explanation that he could come up with besides the truth. The cigarette kept his nerves down enough for him to speak without stuttering.
“I’m scared of it,” he responded.
Toshi was silent for a long moment. Kenta was expecting him to laugh, to call him stupid, say he needed to grow the fuck up. And he was right, he did need to grow up, or else he’d never-
“Nah, I get it,” Toshi said.
Kenta stared at him in disbelief.
“Cause you feel powerless when you think about how it towers over you, right? And you can’t do shit about it? Yeah. I used to feel that way about a lot of things.”
And then Toshi smiled, but it was one of those that made Kenta feel like he’d done everything right, chosen all the right words, gotten the seal of approval.
These sakura flowers must’ve made him go all soft.
Kenta wiped his bloodied knuckles on his knees. The dirt from his pants got stuck in the open wound, causing him to wince from the stinging sensation. He then reached a hand up to hold desperately onto the arm of Toshi's uniform jacket. It was a struggle to walk straight, and he was so, so tired…
“Stop doing that shit,” Toshi growled at him, putting his arm around Kenta's shoulders and pulling him along.
Kenta's head lulled forward, his eyes dangerously close to closing shut. The sound of his heartbeat was louder in his ears than the shuffling of their feet.
That fight had taken its toll on his body. It was stupid of him not to take any kind of weapon.
He'd known that Toshi would be going with him. For Kenta, it was a chance to prove he could be just as tough as Toshiaki, which he had really believed to be true up to that point. But he was wrong.
There was nothing more he hated than being wrong. Toshi’s voice echoed through his head, spitting insults in the exact cadence he'd heard before, when he didn’t understand something he’d been taught.
“Wake the hell up,” Toshi muttered. He shook Kenta vigorously. Kenta mumbled something incomprehensible in return, but made no attempt to become any more conscious.
They stopped, and Toshi propped his head up with a hand under his chin. He took his other hand and slapped him across the face harshly. Sound registered mere seconds before the pain. The rings on his hand sliced into Kenta’s skin, leaving 3 cuts on his cheek that welled up with blood. His nose stung, and he had to blink away the wetness that had formed in his eyes.
“Shit,” Kenta said. He put a hand to the cuts, wiping at the blood and smearing it around his cheek. The skin was still tender to the touch. The blood made everything hurt more. He was awake now.
Toshi put his arm around Kenta's shoulders again, leading them to a wooden bench that creaked under them when they sat.
He grabbed a small roll of gauze bandages from his pocket. Taking Kenta's hand, he wrapped the white cloth around his fist, covering up the wound.
Kenta stared at him. Toshi didn't say anything. He wanted him to say something.
If Toshi was displeased with how he’d acted, it would’ve been made damn clear a good while ago. But he hadn’t said anything.
Toshi examined his work on the bandaging, then reached into his other pocket and grabbed those Seven Stars. He didn’t offer one to Kenta.
“You should… keep fighting.”
After lighting it up and taking a drag, he kept talking. “I mean pro n’ shit, too. You’ve got initiative.” He poked a finger into Kenta’s arm absentmindedly.
Initiative? The fuck did he mean by that? The only reason he’d acted in that way was because of Toshiaki. Maybe he hadn’t caught onto that. Something about that thought filled him with confidence again.
Toshiaki smoked in silence for a bit. It felt like there was something else he was preparing to say.
“I’m gonna leave the city.”
Kenta felt his heart drop when he realized what he’d said, what that meant. If he was any less tired, he might’ve freaked out. But he couldn’t react now. He kept staring.
“In a couple months,” Toshi added.
Kenta did nothing. Toshi just kept smoking.
After he threw the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with his leather shoe, Kenta fell to the side, his head in Toshi’s lap. His eyes closed on their own.
When Toshiaki woke him, the sun was rising in the east. Kenta knew that, at this hour, the sun would paint the side of Mount Fuji in shades of pink.
3 months later, it was the last thing he saw of Fujinomiya, leaving for the juvenile prison.