[Fic] On the other side of sadness... (3)

Genre: AU. Angst. Friendship.
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG-13 for swearing
Beta: me, myself, and I
Summary: A book, a dream, and years of repressed emotions piled inside Jin that Sunday morning...
Disclaimer: The boys don't belong to me yet. So, so far, just the plot is mine
Warning: Unbetaed. English is not my mother tongue. Also, this is very angsty so far. Still, try to enjoy (?)

~*~

The heated nights of summer had been quickly replaced by a fresh breeze of early fall and yet, Jin had woken up with a thick layer of sweat that morning.

His body ached all over the place because of his squirming throughout the night and his throat was dry and sore because of his whimpers, that much he could guess; but whether it was caused by a bad dream or a sad memory from his past, he wasn’t really sure.

He couldn’t be, having enough of both of them for a lifetime.

He strolled to his kitchenette with heavy steps, stretching his body and clearing his throat from time to time, even though he would probably need a painkiller and a cold shower to ease the pain. Since he was already shivering because of the chilly weather, though, he would probably opt for a hot bath instead.

Just mere two months ago, he did nothing but sleeping and working at night in the conbini, neglecting classes, meals, family, and friends. At the last session, he had talked to Ishikawa-sensei about his sleeping habits in hope she could offer a chemical solution not only for them, but for his lack of energy to go through his dull days. He blamed it on the suffocating summer days that made his body feel heavy and lethargic most of the time, but he had fooled no one.

Not even himself.

And so, the doctor hadn’t offered any pills for him.

He would spend most of his nights lying awake on his bed or his sofa, stretched out on the carpet with Pin keeping him company, or crutched down on the veranda, the stench and smoke coming from the endless cigarettes he lit but never smoked keeping Pin from fulfilling her self-appointed role as Jin’s only companion. He had only tried smoking once before when he turned 20, never really gotten into the fun or feeling of it, but the smell and sight of a lit cigarette made him feel a little less empty, less lonely —like he had a ghostly companion with an awful habit.

He had not fully lied to the doctor, though. Those times had been suffocating alright, but for different reasons altogether.

Now, the suffocation had him sleep-deprived even though he had stopped going to classes, only because he couldn’t pay attention for more than 10 minutes straight. Without classes or work to attend to, he didn’t feel obliged to leave the apartment. Thank God for the internet, all right, that he used to order everything he needed, including food.

And so, with really nothing to do, all the free time on his hands was spent inside the walls of his apartment.

However, for the past two weeks, he hadn’t been able to sleep for more than 3 hours each day. Ironic, how the only instance he had actually managed to close his eyes throughout the night, Jin had been tormented to the point that he now wished he hadn’t even tried to sleep at all.

Wrapped up in the darkness of night, he kept on mumbling “I miss you,” “I’m sorry,” “please, forgive me” like a mantra of lament and regret.

He groaned as the smell of coffee filled the place.

He brewed enough to keep a whole soccer time awake for nights in a row and served himself a large mug of the hot beverage.

Walking to the sofa where he spent most of his hours, Jin halted his steps.

He stopped in front of a calendar on his wall. Nothing has been marked in it during the course of the year, not a single red circle marking a special date, a birthday, a meeting, not even a random event.

When had he last gone out with people, met them for something other than work or classes?

“Years, huh?”

His husky voice echoed through the empty apartment, dusting off another corner of what seemed to be a distant past; something from another person Jin could no longer identify with or even recognize.

He had no feelings of disapproval or self-judgment. He did not condemn himself from straining so far from home, family, and friends. He had no need for any of those relationships he cut off, not anymore.

Still, he hadn’t been this lonesome character all his life. Even after his friend had left him, he kept himself surrounded by friends who love to spend fun times with him. His cellphone had e-mails and phone numbers from quite an amount of friends until his graduation, friends that would multiply with those of his soccer club teammates from middle school and high school. He used to keep his afternoons busy with practice, visits to the closest karaoke booth, and all kinds of activities with friends. Those Saturday mornings he didn’t spend retaking some failed exams, he would be on the soccer field scoring the winning goal of the game. And after it was all over, his parents would take him, his brother Reio and his teammates to eat hamburgers and fries to celebrate the victory or to get over their defeat.

But, by the end of high school, he went to a university in Tokyo and cut off his ties with everybody from school. He visited his parents whenever he could, but he would remain inside his house for most of his visits, only leaving to get something for his mom from the store or when his friends came knocking on the door for a visit to the old karaoke parlor.

He would talk to them then, complain about how university was so difficult for him that he had to retake a few courses several times, hear stories from his friends that studied in the same city or that had started working. Working sounded so much more easier than trying to understand difficult formulas and numbers that made no sense, and eventually, he dropped from university and searched for a job to help his parents with his expenses.

The distance between him and his friends that were leading such a different path from his grew with every visit and, ultimately, the knocks on his door stopped.

He took a sip of his coffee and went to sit on his sofa.

He had to push out some scattered paper sheets and notebooks and books that had been lying on the furniture to make room for himself.

By the time he had quit his eleventh job in a lapse of three years and decided to give it a second try at the university, his visits back home had stopped altogether.

His mother and little brother took a shortcake and 25 candles to his small apartment on his following birthday, the perfect excuse to make sure he was still alive and had a decent lifestyle.

They placed it right there on his coffee table and turned off the lights when the candles were lit. His mom and Reio were the only ones there singing Happy Birthday when he blew out the candles and had felt the urge to make a wish for that one friend he had been missing since he was a kid, and no one but his father sent him a happy birthday text.

He could still spell his friend’s name back then. Maybe.

He couldn’t recall for sure.

The embarrassment he felt for his lifestyle grew more and more with every year as he became older and the courses of his degree were even more difficult for him, the goal of graduation seemed as distant as his days of friends and soccer matches and burgers with fries. There was no way somebody would hire a 30-something dude who had spent his adulthood from one part-time job to the next, especially when said man didn’t have the first clue of what to do with an English literature degree.

From every possible point of view, there was just no coming back to that feeling of happiness he had as a child —and he just couldn’t handle such certitude.

He had finally settled back on his navy blue sofa, the mug of coffee still half-filled.

Before distant memories overflowed him beyond his control, he had decided to take that hot bath he so much needed. It didn’t take long for the hot water to fill the tub and he dipped immediately, hissing in discomfort when the scorching water burnt on his skin.

That was what he definitely needed, including the pain that his impulse for getting in had caused him.

Jin let the water ease the pain of his muscles, relaxing his body into the tub until he almost fell asleep. Muting the voice of his mind to keep nagging him with things he’d rather not remember anymore, he was somehow comforted.

Almost an hour later, he left the bathroom with sweatpants, a cotton t-shirt and a thick sweatshirt keeping him from getting cold again, ruffling his hair with a fluffy towel to speed up the drying process.

The sun shone through the glass door of his veranda. The clear sky was covered with clouds that interrupted and shaped the path of the sunlight, making it flicker on one of Jin’s empty walls in different forms. The light disappeared and shone again at irregular intervals, always showing a different pattern before disappearing again.

For a while, Jin tried to distinguish hidden figures, as if making his very own Rorschach test until he realized he was actually trying to spell the characters of the sneaking name that tormented him day and night. When it became too painful to even try, he decided to torture himself with finding those details he still held so close to his heart.

The squinting, laughing eyes…

The crooked nose…

The beauty mark…

Even the bushy eyebrows…

The light and shadow danced in front of his eyes outlining the silhouette of his long-forgotten friend.

He, his friend, was just like that autumn sunlight; warm and bright, but impossible to grab in between his hands, slipping away until its fading form would just die.

It felt cold, suddenly. Jin felt cold, and that had nothing to do with the chilly breeze outside.

There was an invisible wall between him and the world, the dying, distant memory of his childhood friend turning into a shadow that painted him inside out. He felt disconnected, and yet eager to reunite with him; only him.

Was Jin becoming too attached to his memory?

Was Jin entangling him with too many responsibilities?

Was he forcing just too many things to a person that no longer had anything to do with him?

Jin drank in one gulp the last drops of his cold coffee and heaved a shaky sigh, too used to the prickling sensation in his eyes.

It had taken long, this time, before tears began streaming down his cheeks again.

But he wiped them right away, even before they would hit the ground. He walked to his stereo and, as he had done ever since returning from his last session with Ishikawa-sensei, Jin put on the radio in order not to listen to the same music he had since that Sunday morning.

“There’s no point…” he muttered under his breath and went back to the sofa.

In between the layer of scattered papers he had thrown before, he searched for that one he had read so often, feeling eager to cross out another line from the long list of tasks ahead of him.

“I need you to do a few activities for me, okay?”

Jin had flinched and tensed.

“It’s nothing…” the doctor left the rest of the sentence fade on thin air and sighed a chuckle. “It’s really nothing, believe me. I’m not going to send you away on a road trip to meet new friends or something.”

Jin nodded, but didn’t relax a bit.

“It’s mostly mundane tasks…” Jin saw her with suspicion. “After what you told me today, about your lack of healthy eating and sleeping habits, I figured most of your routine was in the same disarray. Am I wrong?”

Of course, she wasn’t.

He had just spent 40 minutes telling truth after truth of his daily routine. “A fucking honorable, outstanding citizen of this fucking city my ass!” had been his opening line before he related about his daily 16 hours of sleep, the lack of friends or family visits in his life, his absence to classes, the possible reasons behind his firing. He also told the doctor the difficulties he felt with his studies, how he loved reading anything the teachers asked him to, but words eluded him whenever he tried to put them on paper. He told about his impulsive actions, his dog’s walks in the middle of the night, his walks through the campus first thing in the morning only to come back home without getting into class.

He even told the doctor every little memory he still held about his childhood friend, including the dream that had started everything.

Jin shook his head, hiding his eyes from the doctor’s.

“So… I will give you a plan for the next month. Don’t think about strict schedules for the whole day. No, nothing of that sort. This plan will consist on just one particular task I’m gonna ask you to carry out completely for that day. Of course, you might do more things, different things, but that one particular activity is a must. And you can do it at any time of the day and where you feel more comfortable for it. Is that clear?”

“Yeah…” he cleared his throat, but that didn’t get rid of the uncertainty. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Besides that activity, you also need to carry a diary. It doesn’t have to be a… You know, you can carry a journey online or in your laptop or… Anything goes, really, what I need you is to write about that task I asked you to do for that day.”

“Only about the activity?”

“Yes, only about the activity. But you need to be as clear and detailed about it as you can. Not only how you did it or when and where, but also…” she looked up to her side and considered her words for a while. There was no point in the exercise if she had to tell Jin exactly what she needed from him. Self-discovery was an important step towards his recovery. “I don’t know, your thoughts while you carry it out or the weather, or if you liked it or not. Anything and everything related to that activity… Will you do that for me?”

Jin nodded, but she looked at him expectantly.

“Yes,” Jin said with a shaky voice. But then, he gave it another shot, a firmer one. “Yes, I will.”

“Thank you, Jin,” she said with a bright smile. Leaning forward and putting a hand near her mouth in a secretive gesture, added cheekily, “Spoiler alert… tomorrow’s your first task and you’ll have to give your mom a phone call.”

The phone call had been fine. Just fine, really.

It had been a long time he had called his mother, so she figured something wrong had happened right until the call had finished. The conversation had been at first mostly worried questions from his mom, a sort of questionnaire to make sure he had been sleeping, eating, studying and working, or that he did not have any terminal disease.

After the air was cleared about things being just fine —though his mother kept nagging at him from time to time, asking random questions to see if she caught him off-guard—, the conversation turned a bit awkward. Jin found the courage to confess his current status regarding job and studies and winced when his mom screamed to high heavens. It was not every day Jin told her he was fired and also had to retake several courses next semester, so he should have at least expected that much.

He had taken one of his composition notebooks from college and used as a journal in which he had described the whole experience right, writing words like “annoying,” “excruciating,” and “pain in the ass.” He promised he wouldn’t do it ever again and complained that no one should be forced to call their parents. Ever. He called it a complete waste of time.

And yet… and yet, he also found himself writing about how calming had it been listening to his mother’s voice those times she wasn’t questioning him or yelling on his ear. He had smiled a couple of times here and there during the phone call as his mother told him that his father was up to train his pet dogs after all these years.

“I’ll send you videos next time… It’s hilarious to watch.”

Reio was seriously considering moving with his girlfriend, who had gone several times to dinner with them. His mother promised she would send him an invitation next time she would come. She also said she wasn’t sure what to do with such a big house just for her and Jin’s dad.

“It’s not that big,” Jin had told her.

“Yeah, you’re right. But it’ll feel lonely without you and your brother.”

It wasn’t a reproach; his mother wasn’t the type to use those manipulating tricks with her sons. And yet, Jin couldn’t stop the apology that left his lips.

He had made plans growing up and had told his parents all about them until they could recite them by heart. He would go to college in Tokyo, graduate, and start working in some big company. He would meet up a nice girl there or from college, bring her home for dinner and some family reunions, marry her, and start a family together. Jin had promised his mom she would be the pretty, young grandmother of two kids by his 30th birthday.

He hadn’t kept a single promise, how couldn’t he feel bad about it?

Jin stopped writing when he reached the end of the page. He blinked a few times, trying to find an explanation as to why he had written so much already. It had been a single phone call to his mother. He had been on the phone for only 40 minutes, true. But 40 hellish minutes. The awkwardness, the yelling, the meaningless stories and feelings and…

When had he stopped hating all that?

At what exact minute from those 40 he was on the phone had he stopped dreading the whole thing?

He checked what he wrote so far, the things he hadn’t told his mom but he would make sure to do next time he’d call, sometime over the week because calling her the very next day seemed like pushing it too…

Wait… why the hell was he making any plans to repeat the experience?

Jin did end up calling his mother the next day, though, telling her the things that slipped his mind the day before. They didn’t speak for longer than 20 minutes that second time, or that third time he had called over the weekend.

The doctor hadn’t lied one bit about the mysterious plans she came up for Jin’s days: calling his mom, cleaning up the apartment and throwing useless things, taking Pin to the vet, doing groceries, taking a stroll alone to the park at an appropriate hour. He did all those different tasks; nothing too difficult, just little things that he would have to do sooner or later.

He had only called to the phone number in the card Takizawa-san gave him because it was the activity marked for the day.

10. CONTACT THAT JOB OPPORTUNITY YOU TOLD ME ABOUT.

He shouldn’t be surprised to see it included in the list, even though he had told the doctor about it two months ago.

There would no way they’d be still interested in hiring him after two months of waiting, if they had been waiting at all. And even if they’d be, there was still the chance they’d lose all interest once they gave a look at his CV. Or met him.

Jin was running through the cool, short discourse he would say upon being rejected when the line connected.

On the other side, a low, masculine voice replied. It was the owner of the bar and Jin had only needed to mention Takizawa-san to get the other to agree meeting him the very next day at the bar.

“3 pm sharp,” the man said and only waited for Jin to give any sign of an agreement to cut off the line.

He didn’t give Jin enough time to apologize for taking so damn long to call.

He didn’t give Jin enough time to be sure whether this was a good thing or not.