Yumi was sipping her coffee, thinking about the dream she had had the previous night. It wasn't surprising that it was about Touma. He had been her most life-changing patient. After meeting Gaara for the first time the past day, she couldn't stop thinking about the two of them and how much alike they were.
XxoooxX
A young teenage boy sat on his couch, staring grumpily at Yumi. She was sitting across from him in a wooden chair, giving him a quizzical look.
"You don't seem very happy about me being here," she told him. The boy gave her a big nod and folded his arms across his chest.
"I don't know why my mom is making me see a counselor," he grumbled. "There's nothing wrong with me."
"I'm not here because something is wrong with you," she explained. "I really have no actual purpose of being here if you don't want me here." The blue-haired boy gave her a weird look.
"What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously.
"If you want, we could just sit here and do nothing. It's up to you really. If you want to talk with me, I'd be more than happy to talk with you. I guess you could think of me as kind of being a friend or even just an extra body." The boy looked down at the ground with soft velvet eyes.
"Can I read my book?" he asked.
"If I can see what you're reading first, then I don't see why not." The boy leaned forward over the couch and pulled a book out of his backpack. He tossed it to her, obviously not caring about damaging it. Yumi looked at the cover title and then read the summary on the back. Her green eyes went from side to side as she read a brief description of the book. When she finished, she smirked and tossed the book back to him. The boy smirked back at her and opened it.
"One more thing," she said, causing the boy to look back up at her. "I'm Dr. Yumi Morita, but you can just call me Yumi. I don't really care about formal titles."
"I guess you can just call me Touma," the boy sighed before looking back down at his book.
"It's nice to meet you Touma."
She sat there while the young boy read his book. After about a half an hour, he looked up at her and sighed.
"You know my mom is probably just going to fire you soon," he informed her. "You should save yourself the trouble and quit now." Yumi frowned and shook her head.
"If I stay long enough, you'll also learn things about me. For instance, I really don't like quitting. I like to keep at it until I know I'm going to lose or until the very end. The only things I've really quit before finishing are board games."
"I'm guessing that you suck." The brunette grinned and nodded. Touma rolled his eyes at her and continued to read his book.
XxoooxX
Yumi sighed and got up. The brunette threw her Styrofoam cup away as she walked out of the lounge room and headed to Gaara's room. She was a couple of minutes late, but she didn't think that it was too noticeable.
When Yumi opened the door to her patient's room, her eyes widened at what she saw. There were three male medics surrounding the redhead. Two of them were holding the boy down while the other one was trying to force his pills down his throat. Gaara was struggling beneath the medics' holds, but they were too strong for him. He turned his head away from the medic who was forcing the medication on him, whimpering as his chin was grabbed again and his head was forcibly turned.
"What in the hell do you guys think you're doing to my patient?!" she exclaimed, rushing over to where they were. The medic that had the pills turned toward her and smirked.
"This kid is your patient?" he jeered. "How can you handle him if we can't even get him to take his medication?" Yumi glared at him and snatched the Dixie cup filled with pills away from him, throwing it across the room. The medic stared at her with wide eyes, not believing what she had just done.
"Get out now!" she snapped, pointing toward the door. "I don't want any of you near him again, is that clear?" The man glared down at her for a few moments before motioning for the other two to follow him out. They released her patient and slowly followed their "leader". Gaara looked up at her through terror-filled eyes, breathing heavily.
"Did they hurt you at all?" she asked, looking down at the redhead with concern. Gaara sat up and shook his head. "I know that you don't want to take any medicine, but they are just vitamins. If anything like that happens again, just take the pills and tell me about it later. I promise that I will take care of it." Gaara's eyes widened with shock for a moment before he turned away in aggravation.
He looked back in her direction when he heard her footsteps fading away. He watched with confusion as she sat down in the same spot as the day before.
"You're angry at me, so I'll come closer when you're not so worked up," she informed him. The redhead looked down at the ground with sad eyes and nodded.
"You came back," he whispered.
"Well, yeah! I can't come on Sundays, but I'll come every other day. I would make it a promise, but I know that something bizarre is going to happen to prevent me from coming if I do." Gaara blinked at her and slowly pulled her knees to her chest.
"Why?" he whimpered.
"Because I want to help you get better," she told him. Gaara's eyes narrowed at her.
"I'm not sick," he growled.
"I'm sorry. Let me rephrase that. Right now, I'm here to keep you company. We can talk if you want to talk, or we can just sit here and do nothing. If you want me to, I can even bring in stuff for us to do together."
"So you want to be my friend?" he asked softly. Yumi smiled.
"If that's what you want to call it." Gaara looked down at the ground with sad eyes.
"No," he clarified.
"Alright, that's fine too. We're just acquaintances then." The room went silent for a few moments before Yumi broke it. "I'm guessing you don't go to school." Gaara looked up at her again with pain in his eyes.
"Tsunade gave me some work books so that I can keep learning. I don't know what good it does me since I don't know if I'm doing it right." Yumi nodded in agreement.
"If you want, I can check your work for you. I'll be more than happy to help you if you need it too."
"Why?" he asked, giving her a quizzical look.
"Because I think knowledge is important. I don't have to if you don't want me to though."
"I just want to be alone right now," Gaara told her. Yumi slowly stood up. She knew that her visits were going to be short the first few times since he wasn't used to people interacting with him.
"I'll see you tomorrow then," she told him, turning to leave.
"My workbooks are under my mattress." The brown-haired woman stopped and looked back at the young boy. He was looking down at the ground, doing his best to avoid eye contact with her. She slowly approached his bed and lifted his mattress up, finding three workbooks.
"Did you finish all three of these?" she asked with surprise, picking them up and putting the mattress back down. Gaara nodded, biting his bottom lip nervously. "I'm impressed. Do you have anymore work to do?" He shook his head.
"Tsunade hasn't given me anything in awhile," he whispered. Yumi walked toward the door and slowly opened it.
"I'll see you tomorrow then," she told him one last time before disappearing.
Gaara sat beside his bed, staring at the white tiled floor with sadness. This counselor was a lot different than the other ones he had had in the past. She was more forgiving and understanding. So far, she hadn't forced him to do anything he didn't want to. She even made the medics leave him alone. The other counselors would have been against him and would've tried to coax him into taking the pills. Actually, that was what they had done. The psychiatrists were the worst though. The counselors tried to reason with him, but the psychiatrists weren't as good with that.
"Why is she being so nice to me?" he wondered. "It won't be long now. She seems different from the others, but she'll break just like them. I want to believe she's not like all of them, but in reality, she's just like everyone else."
Gaara didn't like to get his hopes up about anything. Every time he did, it always ended in tragedy. He was tired of having his heart broken. He didn't want to lose the little bit he had left. Every time he trusted someone, he ended up being disappointed and deceived. He didn't want to go through that anymore. Still, he just couldn't stop himself from having hope. He was human, whether some people believed it or not.
XooooooooooooooooooX
Yumi was sitting in her bed with the lamp on and her lower body under the covers. Her pillow was propped up against the headboard and she was leaning against it. In her lap was one of Gaara's workbooks and in her hand was a red pen. She didn't have an answer booklet, so she had read the book herself and relearned how to do some of the problems. It was 6th grade math, which was supposedly a level beneath what Gaara should be at. She felt rather stupid herself and couldn't believe that she had actually forgotten how to do some of those problems.
After about two hours, she had finished the first of the three workbooks. Yumi set the workbook on her nightstand and wriggled underneath her covers. She reached over and turned out the light before resting her head upon her pillow. Closing her eyes, she slowly drifted off to sleep where she was met by yet another dream of the blue-haired patient.
XxoooxX
Yumi sat at the dining room table with a young blue-haired boy, watching him while he did his homework. The table was square and small. There were four chairs situated around it, although there were never more than two of them being used at one time. Touma told her that his mother never ate dinner with him, so he normally sat alone.
"Do you have to stare at me like that?" he asked, giving her a weird look. Yumi blinked and shook her head.
"Which homework are you doing?" she asked, looking at the paper he was working on. Touma covered it up and looked away with slight embarrassment. "What's wrong?"
"I don't like showing my work to people," he mumbled.
"Why not? You know that it's all right if you're wrong, don't you?"
"It's not that!" he snapped. Yumi looked at him with surprise. Touma looked down at the ground with sadness.
"I would be happy if I was wrong. I'm only in the eighth grade, but the math isn't challenging enough for me. They have me taking Honors Algebra with a bunch of high school kids. I'm rejected by kids in my grade and by the people in my Algebra class."
"Don't you have any friends you can hang out with?" Touma bit his bottom lip and shook his head.
"I don't really consider them my friends anymore," he sighed. "They're too worried that I'll make them look bad because they're not as smart as I am. I don't really understand what that has to do with us being friends."
"I wouldn't try being friends with those types of people anyway," she told him softly.
"My mom thinks there's something wrong with me because I don't hang out with anyone and I spend all my time locked up in my room. I wouldn't be up there all the time if I had a couple of friends." Yumi thought for a moment.
"Are you happy with yourself?" Touma looked up at her with questioning eyes.
"Me?" The brown-haired female smiled and nodded.
The room was relatively quiet. No one said anything and the only sound that could be heard was the one that the water filter from the fish tank in the hallway made. The blue-haired teen was staring off into space, deep in thought.
"I don't know," he whispered shamefully. "I've never really thought about it."
"Well, maybe you should think about it. You're the one who is going to have to live with yourself for the rest of your life, so shouldn't you be happy with yourself?" Touma thought for a moment before nodding.
"I guess that makes sense. Are you happy with yourself?" Yumi sighed, running her hand through her curly brown locks.
"There are some things that I'm not proud of and would like to do over, but everyone has those feelings. I'm happy with myself for the most part though. I have a job that I love, I have a good friend, and I try my hardest on everything that I do." Touma smiled.
"I hope that happens with me." Yumi grinned and chuckled softly.
"I'm sure it will, Touma. Just be true to yourself, alright?" He nodded again and went back to doing his homework.
Well, what did you guys think? There will be a few more tidbits of Touma in future chapters as well.
Thank you so much to all of those who reviewed! It really makes me happy and helps give me an extra boost of energy when writing. Thanks to the following reviewers:
Naomi-rox, Fire-Ember-Leigh, lyw, Gaara-frenzy, Fan, NeferNeferi, Yume Ninja, Raye1084, and AP-Rhapsody.
A special thanks to NeferNeferi and Raye1084 for beta-ing.
Please let me know what you all thought? The more reviews I get, the more tempted I am to post early. If I don't let my temptations get the best of me, look for the next chapter around Sunday.
PLEASE REVIEW!! THANKS!
