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At six pm, Akihiko slipped out the front door and jogged down the steps of Iwatodai Dormitory. He wore a loose t-shirt, baggy shorts, and his brand-new Onitsuka Tigers, the soles thick and cushy with each footfall. It was ridiculously fun to jump on those things, bounce around and toss jabs into the air. They were well worth the 40,000 yen he dropped on them. He was looking forward to breaking them in in Tartarus.
On the sidewalk, he took a deep breath and shook out his arms. The sun was low, wreathing the camphor trees and buildings in gold. Street traffic was light, foot traffic even lighter. What a perfect evening. He felt antsy all day, trapped in his small room, trapped on the crowded monorail to school, trapped behind his desk, trapped in a meeting with the others that dragged on and on and on.
He turned left and started his usual run. It felt good to zip through the streets, to slip around clusters of people going out to shop, eat, see a movie. The city was loosening up, taking its time to stretch before leaping into the long sprint of winter. It could get pretty cold on Tatsumi Port Island, surrounded by so much water. The morning mists in February were incredible. His classmates complained about them, but Akihiko loved them. It was the island’s encouragement to athletes like him. Its many hands collected to push him ever further, ever higher.
A little girl clutching a stuffed turtle tore out of a toy store’s glowing yellow entry. He barely managed to sidestep her. “Woah there!"
She gasped and called out, “Sorry!” before running to clutch her mother’s skirt.
He smiled and tossed a wave over his shoulder. He came down the main street and turned into Kirijo Park, where he could really speed up. The dirt flew under his sneakers and the trees blurred, the city’s neon glow starting to peek through the leaves and rise up all around him. He felt the thumping of his heartbeat in the pumping of his arms and legs, the cool slip of wind dragging across his face and hands and calves.
With the weather cooling off, the humidity wasn’t trapping so much smog between the buildings. The breeze carried the smell of sea salt, bubbling ramen and seared pork, oily fried takoyaki and soft steamed rice, the hearty swell of sesame and the sharp punch of vinegar. Tuesday nights were his cheat night. A single red bean anpan with his name scrawled on the plastic packaging was sitting on the counter next to the fridge. The one treat he still had a hard time resisting. They tasted just like the ones he and Shinjiro would sneak out of the orphanage to buy in the summer, with a year’s worth of yen saved from picking weeds out of old Hirami-senpai’s camellia garden. Akihiko never did see those diamond-petalled flowers around anymore.
He jogged back to the main street and waited at a crosswalk for the light to turn, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his arches practically singing with so much support. White, blue, and black cars rolled to a stop, a few motorbikes mixed in here and there. He noticed the sleek bike rumbling beside him, but it wasn’t until the driver sharply turned their head away that he looked closer.
He couldn’t see their face at all, hidden behind a huge black reflective helmet, but he recognized the mane of brown hair sticking out the back, the sleek maroon coat buttoned up tight. He smiled and waved at Shinjiro Aragaki, his reflection warbling back at him, dark clothes smudged with pale skin and platinum hair. Shinjiro tilted his head down and pretended not to see, squeezing the handles of his bike. It was really nice – brand new, in fact. Glossy red and matte black, a 2009 Yamaha R1, if Akihiko wasn’t mistaken. He didn’t want to know how Shinjiro must’ve gotten the money for it – it took Akihiko a hundred shifts at Chagall Café just to pay for his shoes.
The light and crosswalk lit green. Shinjiro revved his engine and sped down to the next light, hanging a right. Akihiko ran down to the corner, following him. Shinjiro never strayed far from the outskirts of Port Island station. What could he be doing this far into the city?
He ran through the neon streets, each step propelling him further, faster. His muscles started to burn and his lungs filled with the good kind of aching. Shinjiro was fast, always almost out of view, but just when Akihiko thought he lost him, that candy red glinted between the cars, tugging him to follow like a line hooked on a fish.
At first, Akihiko couldn’t make any sense of the twists and turns. But he tore past a darkened café with green plastic chairs stacked out front, a crowded little bookstore with photography books displayed in the front window, and suddenly he remembered taking this route on his bicycle, standing up and pedaling hard, the chain whirring and clicking, looking over and seeing Shinjiro flying with him, the two of them side by side. Inseparable. Two halves of a whole.
Once he realized where Shinjiro was going, he beat him there, panting with his head bent and his hands on his hips. Shinjiro parked on the asphalt and pulled his helmet off.
Akihiko nudged his chin at the bike, still breathless. “I see you got an upgrade.”
Shinjiro shot him a look, his brown eyes almost stone-black under the single streetlamp. The traffic clogged in distant intersections, engines rumbling and horns blaring, but here it was quiet. Many of the storefronts were dark and boarded up. Shinjiro’s bike was one of only three other vehicles in the lot. He slid off the leather seat, snapped the helmet to the handlebar, and tugged a duffel bag over his shoulder.
Akihiko looked up at the building. The discolored channel letters spelled out Shiho Gym, the m flickering gray and red, gray and red. He switched to the Ichiro Sports Center when they started offering a special discount for high school students. They had more treadmills, a bigger boxing ring. He could run there from the dorm too, instead of taking his bicycle. “I didn’t know you still came here.”
“I don’t,” Shinjiro bit. “My regular place shut down.” He stared at Akihiko.
“Oh. Sorry about that.” An awkward silence stretched. He felt like the apology was for so much more. For the arguments. For the pressuring and the bitterness, the calls and text messages he ignored before he finally got his head on straight.
“It’s not like it’s your fault,” Shinjiro snapped. With the tone in his voice, he easily could have said the opposite.
Akihiko cleared his throat. “So. Are you here to work on anything in particular?”
“I’m not training. What I do isn’t your business anymore.”
“I’m not trying to pressure you, I just thought maybe we could work out together some time.” He shrugged. “Like old times.”
Shinjiro didn’t move. He’d always been too good at that. Holding still like he was frozen in time. Pouring every bit of what he was feeling into eyes that were both hard to meet and hard to look away from.
Akihiko sighed. “I know there’s a lot we don’t see eye to eye on, but you’re still my friend, Shinjiro-”
“Did I say you were mine?”
Akihiko snapped his jaw shut. That old anger threatened to come up, but he smoothed it down. “I see you’re not in the mood to talk. I’ll see you around.”
Shinjiro pushed into the gym and let the door slam shut behind him. Akihiko shook his head and walked down the empty street. This part of the city suffered in the shadows. Shinjiro fit right in, didn’t he?
Akihiko shook his head as if he could rattle the bitterness out of it. They both had their own darkness to deal with. He couldn’t blame Shinjiro for weaponizing it when he did the very same. He started a jog and then took off running, back on his usual route, back towards the dorm.
He didn’t plan to go this far tonight. His body started to jitter, his throat aching for water. A dark, ugly knot began throbbing in his chest, spreading up to his head. He was desperate to clear it out, so he ran harder, faster, until he could hardly think anymore, until the only thing he could focus on was his feet thudding, his heart pounding, the world spinning around him. The people clustered all along the sidewalk and stuffed into shops and restaurants were all bound to the ground, whereas he had come loose. Unmoored, he was at risk of tumbling off into the stars and losing himself in some cold, faraway place. The only words his brain could piece together were keep going, keep going, just keep going. The momentum of his stride would keep him where he needed to be.
Before Akihiko was a boxer, he was a runner. He was on the track team at his elementary school. He was fast, but not the fastest. He was smaller than most of the other kids. Always had trouble gaining muscle – still does. But the multi-stage fitness test was his chance to prove himself. To show himself and the others once and for all that he worked the hardest, that he had real determination, and that that was what mattered most.
The test required that he and twenty other students run the length of the gym in thirty seconds. They would do this over and over for as long as they could, following the beeps and instructions of the automated recording, the window of time they had to run dropping with each completed lap. He ran back and forth, back and forth, taking in big lungfuls of air in the few seconds’ break they had between each lap. One by one, the other kids started dropping out. Slinking over to the bleachers, collapsing into heaps on the floor, stooping over the water fountain and slurping from the thin, icy stream. He kept going. He pushed himself further and harder than he ever had before. He had always loved running, but he’d never run like that before, every nerve lit aflame, his lungs tightening like they were turning to stone. With every lap, he thought, this one has to be the last. I can’t go any further. This is all I have in me.
But somehow, he’d manage to run another lap. His astonishment made him feel like he was flying, even though his body was telling him he was painfully rooted to the ground, to gravity, to the limitations of human achievement. The other kids’s eyes started to widen. They started to sit up and stand and cheer and clap for him and the others, only three still going. After a few more laps, the other two dropped out, but Akihiko wasn’t finished.
The world turned muddy at the edges. The gym echoed with shouts of encouragement, so loud his ears hurt. He tasted rust in the back of his throat. Black spots throbbed in his vision and finally he gave in, veered towards the other kids and dropped to his knees.
Mrs. Nakazawa knelt and took his shoulder, worry sharp in her voice. “Are you alright, Sanada? I can have someone take you to the nurse’s office.”
He took a second to catch his breath. His whole body was shaking. He thought he might vomit, but something deep in his soul resonated like never before. That was when he knew. Every inch of his body quivering, the sunlight making the gym’s high windows glow like twin rows of square gems, the air thick with hard work and new potential.
He had power inside him, power that could strike like the sun. He knew then that he’d spend the rest of his life honing it, chasing after it. That he would always push himself to his limit, beyond his limit, that he would always test himself to see how much further he could race, leap, fly, fight. He would always get back up. With determination, he would always succeed.
He looked up at his teacher and smiled. “How’d I do?”
Akihiko slowed to a stop outside the dorm and dropped his hands to his knees, closing his eyes and taking deep, slow breaths. Once he recovered, he straightened, mopped his face with the neck of his shirt, and entered the dorm.
Mitsuru sat at the living room table, shoulders back and hands resting on an open textbook. She glanced up as he walked over to the couch and sank into it. “You didn’t overdo it again, did you?”
He shut his eyes. “Of course not.” Sweat stuck to the tips of his hair and trickled down the length of his spine.
“Hm mm,” she hummed, disbelieving.
He wondered if he should tell her he saw Shinjiro. That things were getting better, but he still didn’t know what to do. She’d given him a lot of good advice, but at the end of the day, there was only so much that could do. If Shinjiro never wanted to forgive Akihiko, there was nothing no one could do about that. He dropped a hand over his eyes and sighed. He just had to keep trying.
He centered his life around fighting. He’d tell anyone it was the most important thing in the world to him, but honestly, that wasn’t true. Fighting wouldn’t mean a thing if he didn’t have people to fight with, fight for. He didn’t want Shinjiro to come back just because they need another soldier. He wanted Shinjiro back because he missed going out to ramen with him every Thursday. He missed the stupid text messages, the last-minute cramming for algebra tests, the late-night bike rides to the gym. Even the simplest things, his greasy leftovers taking up room in the fridge, his morning alarm ringing and ringing because he sleeps like a bear, the shock that never failed to spike up the back of Akihiko’s neck when he landed a good joke and got Shinjiro to crack a smile. He just wanted his best friend back.
He heard footsteps on the carpet, receding and then approaching, a soft crinkle of plastic. He opened his eyes. Mitsuru had her back turned, already walking back to the table. His red bean anpan sat on the coffee table. He never bothered to write his name on it, but Mitsuru always did, neat characters shining on the plastic in blue sharpie. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. He picked it up and tore it open, glancing at Mitsuru. She was already lost in her book, turning the page and writing something in her notebook.
He took a bite and closed his eyes, sinking deeper into the couch. He’d lost too many friends in the past few years. He was glad he still had Mitsuru. He took another bite of the anpan. He’d just keep doing what he always does. Keep training. Keep his head up.
And no matter how many times he gets knocked down, always get back up.