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“They said if I want full use of my leg again, I’ll require another surgery,” Haiji recites, despondent. “I’ll be starting over again, only this time it’ll be harder because of the existing scar tissue.” The words taste clinical, bleaching his tongue. He worries his lip to stifle a swell of emotional bile, welcoming a suffocating pause in the antiseptic air of the hospital room.
Kakeru shifts restlessly in his seat—an uncomfortable plastic chair pulled close to Haiji’s bedside. “Haiji-san.” Kakeru grips his hand—the one free of the IV drip. “I want to be there for you this time.”
Haiji smiles, though it’s unconvincing, pained. “I appreciate it, but I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“Please. Let me be there for you. You don’t have to be alone this time,” Kakeru urges.
His plea is met with dense silence.
Lips pursed, trembling, Haiji is staring off, looking at anything but Kakeru. The throb in his knee meets the rhythm of his heart, and he tries desperately to swallow the pulsating thrum that climbs to his throat.
“I already see you as someone strong. Nothing would ever convince me otherwise!” Kakeru presses, reading the fears stitched along his body. “Please, Haiji-san I… you said before that you saw me and saw your dreams manifest within reach.” Kakeru cups his cheeks, gently yet firmly to force eye contact. “Let me make you my dream!”
Haiji sees him, sees his fears mirrored in those galaxy-silver pools leaking sorrow, and his eyes blow wide, matching tears welling at the corners and threatening to overflow.
“You saved my dreams—you saved me! It’s my turn, let me return the favor!” Kakeru cries with abandon, words a climbing crescendo of desperation.
Haiji’s tears spill honestly. He squeezes his eyes shut to cease the flow.
“Please, don’t shut me out, let me be with you… let me have all of you!” Kakeru’s voice is cracking painfully, the shards burrowing in like shrapnel and stabbing at Haiji’s heart.
“Ok. I’m sorry, please don’t beg me anymore. You can be there… through all of it,” Haiji relents, his voice meek to befit his crumbling wall of resistance—how foolish of him to have thought it unshakable.
The last of his resolve slipping through his fingers, he’s free to embrace a sobbing Kakeru who has crumpled against his chest to mimic his bedsheets. He stills unsteady shoulders, trembling like a flicker of light passing through darkness. For a second, he marvels at how he ever managed to catch such an entity in his arms.
“Thank you. I’m sorry for being selfish,” Kakeru mumbles, almost inaudible between hiccuped sobs. Still, he seems relieved, his iron grip on Haiji’s hospital gown weakening.
“Don’t apologize, I’ve been the selfish one,” Haiji soothes, combing through silken, raven hair that his fingers are so fond of. “You’re right… that I’m not alone—we’re not alone anymore. I’m sorry I didn’t consider your feelings.”
He continues his caress, tender and apologetic, listening silently for Kakeru’s breathing to steady. A warm calm settles to spite the frigid, sterile room, and he feels secure to carry on. “You’re going to see a new side of me. You’ll understand why I’ve never shared it with anyone.”
“Good. I want to understand.”
Haiji forces air through his nose, amused and a little exasperated. “I always thought it was easier to confront the darker parts of myself as long as no one else had to see my weaknesses. If it means pushing you away, I don’t want that anymore.”
“Aren’t I one of your weaknesses, though?”
“Oh—” Haiji starts then laughs, a sharp and satisfying burst from his diaphragm that he hasn’t experienced in days. “I’m not sure if that helps anything make sense, but it is true…”
Kakeru is his weakness, the witness to his soul’s vulnerabilities: the fissure in his wall, the chip in his mask—yet he’s also his greatest strength.
Looking down his back—the same strong back that guides him like an ethereal beacon in the night sky, leaving him breathless—he decides that it’s a back he wants to lean on.