stray sheep
Kuroko no Basuke © Tadatoshi Fujimaki and I gain no profit from writing this fanfiction
the book akashi mentions in the story was natsume soseki's sanshiro, which also serves as the base of this fanfiction, kinda. as usual, english is not my first language and i would be very happy (also appreciatively) to correct it if you found any grammatical mistake or anything. ;v;
for ichi, i don't know how this goes but i hope you like it. (ouo) eh inggris gapapa kan ya ;w; /nanyanyatelat /duar
Akashi had a secret hideout, and he wanted Midorima to know.
It was mid-November back then, and the chilly autumn wind made Midorima reluctant to go outside. Why can't we just sit here, playing shogi by the fireplace and enjoying the warmth, he thought. But the thinking was all for himself, because he could never turn Akashi down, especially not when he was like this, tone cheerful and eyes large, laden with excitement.
It's a place no one knows, he remembered the redheaded boy said, and I want to show it only to you—even my mother doesn't know about it. Well, that's something Midorima couldn't possibly refuse. So they got up, took their coats from the coat rack and went out through the back door. The shogi board with the unfinished match Midorima bound to lose was left on the carpet, and the half-bitten apple Akashi would never finish remained forgotten on the table.
Midorima let Akashi held his hand by the wrist and led him through the enormous garden of the Akashi residence. The Akashis had gardeners, Midorima never knew someone who had a gardener to tend their garden, and yet they had gardeners. The size of the garden was almost like that of a public park, enclosed by a rectangle of red bricks on three sides and the house on one side. It had all sorts of trees and flowers that Midorima's mother would be envious of, but Akashi never puts much attention to it, and so did everybody else. Everyone in the Akashi household were always too busy or too tired to be strolling around their lovely garden, hence the one who enjoyed it the most might as well be the gardeners themselves.
His feet followed Akashi's strides, while his head thinking; how rare of Akashi being like this. The boy had always walked in calm and gentle footsteps; outside of playing basketball, Midorima had never seen him running. But the Akashi who was with him was the Akashi who skipped and leaped, the Akashi who presented more humane sides, the Akashi who showed the playfulness of his age and the sincere smile he never gave anybody else except for his mother. He liked Akashi when he was solemn, he liked Akashi too when he was lighthearted.
They crossed the wooden bridge arching over a pond, in which he caught a glimpse of half-submerged rocks and dozens of koi fish swimming around. Finally the two boys stopped, close to one side of the wall. Akashi let go of his grip, eyes leered to Midorima's direction, while the other stared back. Behind Akashi was a row of gingko trees, vividly yellow in contrast to the blue sky. Noticing how his red hair fitted perfectly to the scenery, it was as if the boy was part of autumn itself. He flashed Midorima his typical inscrutable smile. "You surely can climb, can't you?"
Midorima, baffled, could only respond him with a mere, "I'm sorry?"
"The place is on the other side of this wall," the boy answered, "we have to climb the tree and jump over."
"Akashi, your garden has a back gate."
"But then what's the fun in it?" he asked, and started to climb the nearest tree. The boughs were hanging above the wall, just as if serving as a means to cross between two worlds. "The other day I passed the staff room, your homeroom teacher was talking to a colleague with the door half open in front of her. She thought Midorima-kun matured too quickly—"
"I don't want to hear it from you."
"—but then she found him still bringing a rabbit doll to class and said it was his lucky item of the day. So maybe you do have some fun left in you after all, Midorima-kun."
Fixing his glasses, he retorted, "What about you? You act more like an adult too."
"No adult would climb a tree; I'm still just a child, you see."
At that point Midorima gave up. He would always comply to Akashi's selfishness after all, and he knew the only time the redhead could be an egoist was only when it was with him. Akashi was always fulfilling someone else's requests—or rather, expectations and orders—therefore, the bespectacled boy felt the constant need to let Akashi satisfy his own ego. The other went first and disappeared behind the walls, almost without a sound except for a soft thud and for a moment he was a bit worried that the redhead might get hurt. But then Akashi called to him, cheering him to catch up. Awkwardly he climbed up the tree, carefully holding on to the bough with his hands so his feet could drop from the lowest height possible. But then he found out that the ground on the other side was actually elevated from the ground in the garden, and the thick grass suppressed his impact. He could see clearly that someone had stepped on the spot he was standing now over and over, and that someone must be Akashi.
The other boy immediately resumed walking, and he explained without looking back, "Some of the area around here is actually still part of my family property, so no one really comes here." There was a stream nearby; they walk along as it snaked down a slope. At the base of the hill Akashi leaped over bushes, maneuvering between trees as if the whole place was his second home. Soon they found more gingko trees, with the stream now flowing quietly and the only sound they heard was the whistling of the wind through the leaves. The ground was uneven and perhaps a bit muddy from the morning rain, but Akashi didn't seem to mind as he sat down and instructed Midorima to do the same.
He hesitantly did as he told, just then the redhead lay down with his arms as pillows. Again Midorima did the same, looking up to the sky, with clouds splattered like white paint on a blue canvas. Now and again the wind would blow, carrying to his nose the smell of grass. The sun had gone lower than he expected; in silence, he counted how much time left before they would need to go back. For a while neither of them said a word. Midorima was still trying to appreciate this so-called secret hideout of Akashi, though he admitted he liked the tranquility, he still didn't see the point of coming all the way here.
Then suddenly Akashi spoke, "Did you realize the real reason why I didn't use the back gate?" Before Midorima could even think or answer, he continued, "Because it's always locked. And if I asked for the key, they would ask me where I'd go. It would contradict the purpose of this place being a secret hideout if I told somebody else."
"But you're telling, no, even bringing me here."
"Well, in that case you are special." He chuckled at the end of his words.
Midorima didn't answer, neither did he tell Akashi about how the last sentence flustered him, he was too busy hiding his flushed cheeks. "So now we're here in this secret hideout of yours," he said, "what do we do?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing." Akashi repeated. "I just come here every time I need some time alone, to think, to steal occasional naps."
"You'll catch cold if you sleep here, Akashi."
"But I never did," he mulled, "Midorima, you know what those clouds look like every time I see them from here?"
"I don't know, cottons?" Midorima said. "Sheep? It could be anything."
"Exactly; sheep. They could be anything, but for me all they ever be are sheep."
"Why?"
"Because sheep resemble people who lie here all day on the grass, people who hide from the outside world, people who run away; a lost child." He said, using the English word.
"What 'lost child' has to do with sheep?" Midorima's English was the best in class, and certainly he knew what lost child meant, but he didn't see the connection between the two words with sheep in Japanese.
"I read a book, which my mother said to be one of her favorites," Akashi said, "there was a scene when these two characters talked about how lost child is translated into Japanese. And so I know, a lost child is a sheep, a stray sheep."
.
.
"We crossed the borderline that divides reality and the place we are now in," Akashi told him, eyes still watching the far-off clouds, "we ran away from everything and everyone we know, we come to an unknown place where no one would find us. In a sense, you and I have become lost children." He seemed to be amused as he muttered in a slightly lower voice, "We are stray sheep."
Midorima actually wanted to voice his disagreement, for he had never felt the need to flee from anything in his life, and therefore it made him no lost child. But he didn't like the idea of trampling down Akashi's ideas as much as he liked how the other boy had included him in his—their silent retreat from the real world. Midorima had never thought of running, but if it's with Akashi, he probably wouldn't mind becoming a stray from time to time.
"Every time I come here, those are the kinds of things that appear in my mind. And that's the sort of effect I wanted from a secret hideout," he said. "Being here gives me a different feeling of solitude that I was feeling anywhere else."
"I see what you mean." He had met Akashi's mother for a few times. Shiori told him that her son is actually good-natured, but he was lonely, and Midorima was the very first friend that he ever brought home. Even as they became close, sometimes Akashi just seemed to be distant and enigmatic. For that reason Midorima was always trying his best to keep him company, to listen, to fathom; to walk with him so he wouldn't be lost.
Akashi didn't say anything further. He only gave him a smile which meaning Midorima could never fully comprehend.
The longer they stayed, the more the sky became muddied. The bright sun overlaid completely by a mantle of clouds; soundlessly they watched as the realm above turned gray and somber. The sheep that were pure white now looked like they had been splashed with water from a dirty puddle. The wind seemed to blow colder air and the grass they laid on did not feel as comfortable as before. They might need to be going soon, but Midorima found himself didn't feel like moving.
Between the two of them, probably it wasn't only Akashi who was lonely. Midorima always had realized that they were two children who drifted away from their peers. Before they knew it, there was a gap between the them and the others, and they just couldn't get along. Not the kind of not getting along as in fighting, yet they just could never understand how each other's minds worked. The other children often treated him like a creature from another planet (not it bothered Midorima, though), and Akashi had been sort of an extraterrestrial entity from the start, standing too high and acting far too mature for his physical age. Maybe they were lost children after all, sheep that stray too far from the other cattle.
And he knew that they were now lost, in a world where only the two of them could enter, in a secret hideout distant from the ever-present reality.
(Because who needs a shepherd, anyway?)
.
.
Five months from that time, in the gradually warming weather of spring, just after the new school year started, Akashi Shiori passed away. It wasn't much of a surprise, for her health had always been one of Akashi's main concerns. But it also stung Midorima with a sense of guilt, as he wanted to be a doctor, and one of his main goals was to cure Akashi's mother.
The funeral was silent and somber. Akashi Seijuurou didn't shed a single tear, nor did he say a single word. From the line of mourners Midorima watched him, standing with back straight and face devoid of all emotions, just like the mannequins behind the display window of a store. Yet his eyes were not on the procession, Midorima might as well imagining at that time, but the pair of red eyes he had known was seeing something else. His body was there, but his mind took him somewhere else; beyond the secret hideout, beyond the horizon they saw in that autumn, beyond the distant a sheep could travel as a stray before it caught by the shepherd once more.
At the end of the procession before heading back to his room, Akashi approached Midorima and thanked him for coming. Midorima remembered that he had said something about Akashi didn't have to be so formal with him and he was there if he needed company. But the other boy only showed him a smile—the first he had that day—and said,
"You know, Midorima, now that the shepherd had gone, I've really become a lost child; a stray sheep."
Midorima never answered. The two were still friends, but they never again went to the secret hideout or bringing up the subject of stray sheep; not for the rest of their grade school, not for the later middle and high school, and not even for the eight years after they graduated from university.
Not until a postcard depicting two sheep on a grassy field entered his mailbox, and the news of Akashi's death reached his ears.
.
.
(Maybe they needed a shepherd after all.)