FASH: Where did this come from? I was trying to finish chapter 62 and then I open up a new document and this spills out onto the page. I'm not sure how coherent it is, it all just sort of came out without me having time to think about it too hard. Ignore me, I'm strange.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Sometimes Sena is afraid of going to sleep at night, not because he's scared of the dark or monsters under his bed or in his closet, but because he's terrified that the next morning he'll wake up and all of this will just have been a dream and he'll have to settle back into the life he lead before American Football because he's really not as fast as he dreamt he was.
He knows it's a bit stupid, the pain he's felt is too real, the emotions he's gone through are too strong and it's been going on far to long for it to be a dream, but he can't help it.
Sena is well aware of how much he's grown in such a seemingly short amount of time and sometimes it seems like it's just too much. How could someone like him turn out to be a football hero in just over half a year? How is it possible for him to beat people with so much more experience than he has for this to be real?
On nights like that he takes out his cell phone and goes through his contact list, eyes carefully moving over every name and with every name he read he sends a quick prayer to whatever sort of deity may be watching over him, thanking them for allowing him to meet and becomes friends with such an amazing person.
Afterwards he'll put his cell phone away and lie in bed, allowing memories that are still far to vivid for him to just have dreamed them up to cross through his mind and he thinks over the one person that he hasn't thanked for yet.
He doesn't have any of Hiruma's numbers so the blonde, the one who began everything, the one who saw his potential, the center of it all, is usually the last one he thinks about. Which he thinks is a bit unfair, because it was really because of Hiruma that he was able to amount to anything at all, so to make up for it he thanks whoever is listening for Hiruma the longest.
Sometimes, once he's finished giving his thanks, he wonders if anyone would think it was strange that he did this, that he was afraid of waking up and discovering that he was still just a gopher instead of being Eyeshield 21. It would be hard for anyone outside the Diemon Devil Bats to understand, because they are essentially a team of misfits, half of them never even contemplated playing football before Hiruma burst in and made their train of thought take a serious detour.
And then, after contemplating what people might do if they found out about this, he wonders if any of the others think like him. Wonders if Monta is afraid that someday he'll wake up and be on the third string of the baseball team. Wonders if Juumonji is afraid that he'll wake up to a world he really did want to prove himself to, only he didn't know how to go about it. Wonders if Kurita is afraid that he'll wake up and be all alone on the line all over again.
The only thing he can be sure of is Hiruma. The blonde is more knowledgeable than any other human he's ever met and he's confident in everything he does, as if he has no doubts. He was certain that if he ever bothered asking Hiruma if this all was a dream he would reply that it sure as hell wasn't before telling him to get to practice.
And Hiruma is so real, with so much depth and so many levels and Sena could never have dreamed up such a complex, devious and wonderful person even if his life had depended on it. So naturally he'd believe everything that Hiruma says.
Someday he might tell the blonde about his habit, if Hiruma didn't already know that is, and maybe he will ask if everything is just a dream, but the more he thinks about Hiruma the more he knows that there is no way he could dream a person like that up.
Which is why, whenever he begins to doubt and goes through his process, at the very end, after he's given thanks for everyone and finished contemplating, he falls asleep thinking of Hiruma, and he knows that by now any dreams that follows seems dull in comparison that Hiruma is real, thus his unspoken feelings for Hiruma are real, thus his life must be real.
Because as strange as he thinks it is that he's become an awesome running back in such a short amount of time, he finds it even more strange that he's fallen for a demonic quarterback in the same amount of time.