Following the events of Chapter 106. I like the idea of Tetsuki seeming like he answers to no one at school but is at the mercy of his girlfriend.
Her face dropped the moment she first caught glimpse of him from 20 metres away. Even from that distance she could see the guilt on his face.
"See you tomorrow," she said to her teammates aloofly as she separated from them and walked briskly in his direction.
Brows furrowed in concentration, Hana scanned him from a metre away.
Eyes averted to the side and lips tensed;
No scratches or bruises that she could see;
The left hand which he usually let rest in casually in his pocket was hanging delicately by his side as if he were trying to cradle it without anyone knowing.
Except she knew.
"Hey…" he said, knowing she had already seen right through him and that she was already mad.
"Follow me," she ordered and walked past him with her arms tightly crossed.
Tetsuki was careful not to let her hear him take a deep breath in preparation for what was to come as he walked two steps behind her. This angle of her was a sight he rarely saw. Usually she'd be walking closely beside him with their steps synchronised, or standing right in front of him with her forehead conveniently at the same level as his lips. He had only seen this image of her back turned towards him and ponytail swaying with each step once before – the night they broke up.
He could hear it in her steps too. Being an athlete, Hana was light on her feet and her footsteps were almost silent. But now the thud of her every step was a beating reminder of what was to come.
Without turning around to check if he was keeping up with her, Hana entered a convenience store where she picked up bandages and proceeded to pay. The entire time Testuski followed exactly two steps behind, breath and footsteps undetectable as if he were a ghost.
Hana ordered him to sit on the stool with just one look. The silence continued as he held out his injured hand for her to bandage.
He couldn't tell if the pain from his injury or the weight of the tension between them made him more physically uncomfortable.
After she had finished, Hana stepped back and stood straight with her arms crossed again. He watched as she let out a breath and what Tetsuki could only assume was the rest of her patience with him.
This was the first time she had looked at him in the eye all day. Tetsuki wasn't used to this and he feared the unknown. Their height difference usually meant he looked down to her, but not today.
Today he had royally messed up and he was going to paying for it. If the stool he was sitting on wasn't present, he'd be kneeling on the floor by now.
"I told you not to fight," she stated, stare unwavering.
"I know," Tetsuki replied with his head instinctively bowing slightly lower.
"I told you just because you know how to fight doesn't mean you should."
"I know."
"I told you to stop trying to save everyone around you by sacrificing yourself."
He didn't answer. He knew. She knew that he knew. Answering wouldn't help his case.
"You have 30 seconds to tell me what happened," she said.
"Chika and Houtsuki were cornered by Uzuki and some thugs. I went with the Koto club to help them. When I got there Chika had already been knocked around a bit and Uzuki was charging at them with a metal pipe. I manage to block his swing just in time. I also shoved him away from them. Then Abiko tried to attack us with the same metal pipe so I punched him in the stomach. The police arrived immediately after," he summarised briskly. Adding unnecessary details would simply be adding unnecessary time to the crime.
Tetsuki brace himself for his punishment. He expected her to start going off about how stupid he was and how stupid fights were.
But she didn't say anything.
Hana was a pretty low maintenance person. She liked spending time with him, but she liked spending time with herself as well. She didn't make him text her the moment he woke up every morning or just before he went to bed every night. She liked eating food but wasn't picky and she didn't care for the material price of gifts. All she wanted was to enjoy his company. In their relationship she only had one rule – no getting into fights.
After a few moments of deafening silence. He slowly raised his head.
The last thing he was expecting was for her expression to be faltering. The previous stone-cold façade was cracking and he could see the tears that she was desperately holding back.
After taking a quick moment to pull herself together, Hana quickly shoved everything into her bag. "Don't contact me until I've decided whether I'll forgive you or not," she said and left without any eye contact.
Tetsuki slumped on the table beside him after watching her walk out. "Shit," he muttered to himself. He had really done it this time.
It had been two weeks since he'd heard from Hana. On the outside he'd played it off as if he were unaffected by his timeout, but his inner turmoil was beginning to leak out. He found himself snapping at Chika and the other boys when they had study sessions. The stress of not knowing what was going to happen was earning him more snacking sessions than he'd care to admit.
Studying became difficult too. He couldn't concentrate without his mind drifting to Hana. He always saw himself as someone who thought his actions through so as to avoid negative consequences. This meant that he had never really experienced these said negative consequences before, but he sure was experiencing them right now.
His phone buzzed and he opened to check the message a bit too quickly. It was a text from Hana, "8pm, the park in front of my house."
So the time had finally come – it was time for him to receive his judgement. The deed had already been done and the confession had been made. All he could do now was show up to the trial and accept his punishment. He made a note to himself to wear his black shirt. That was her weakness and he was going to have to armour up for this battle.
She was already sitting on a bench waiting for him when he arrived. Although she was just wearing her sweats and had her hair messily tied up, Tetsuki still felt his heart jump when he saw her sitting with her legs crossed on the bench under the moonlight.
He took a deep breath in as he approached her and managed a casual-enough sounding "hey."
She turned her head quickly in response and smiled a gentle "hey," back.
He took a seat beside and waited for her to speak first.
"I forgive you," she said after a few moments.
Tetsuki felt every muscle he didn't know was tensed relax. He had spent every second of the last two weeks overthinking this interaction and he had finally been relieved of his stress.
"But I think we should break up," she continued.
He felt his entire being re-enter fight or flight mode.
"Not this again," he thought to himself.
"Why do we need to break up if you've forgiven me?" He asked in desperate confusion.
"I thought about what you told me and I think you did the right thing. Obviously, you couldn't just let those thugs continue to rough up Kudou or attack you without self-defence."
"Then what's the problem?"
Hana rotated her body towards him, "I hate that you were in that situation. You don't just fight guys like that once. Either you lose and they keep targeting you to stroke their own ego, or you win the fight and they keep coming back with larger and larger numbers to get their revenge. Either way the fighting will never stop. I watched it happen to my brother and to Kudou and I'll don't think I'll be able to take it if I watch it happen to you."
"But it won't happen to me. I called the police and everything is resolved now. I won't be put in that position again."
"How can you guarantee that?" She gently took his injured hand into her lap. "Our muscles have memory," she said, gently caressing his injured fingers, "my body remembers how to hold a tennis racket and return a ball without any thought. So tell me, if you're still planning on being a doctor, how can you save lives with hands that remember hurting others?"
He didn't know what to say. She was right. He couldn't go around beating up thugs and then trying to be a help other people with their injuries.
"I'm sorry," he heard himself say again. All she wanted was for him to be safe and all he could do was apologise to her.
"I know," she smiled fondly back at him. "I know you and Kudou are like brothers and that you'd do anything for him. I know that. I don't want to be the girl that stops you from standing up for your friends, but I also can't be the girl that's constantly terrified her boyfriend will show up severely injured after a fight."
Tetsuki took his hand back from her grasp and placed it in his own lap. "Why do you always make the choice for me?" He asked in frustration.
"What do you mean?"
"Anyone else would ask me to choose. They would say 'it's me or them' and they'd desperately want me to choose them. But you've never asked me. You chose for me last time and now you're doing it again," his chest tightened as he tried to convey his frustrations. "Why don't you want me to choose you?"
"Of course I want you to choose me, Tetsuki," Hana said with her voice cracking slightly. "I like you more than I could ever put into words. But I think we both know I liked you more than you like me. I'm not making you choose because I'm terrified that your choice will crush me."
The two of them sat in silence as they pondered what was just said.
Every single moment of their relationship was replaying in Tetsuki's head. He was second guessing every word he ever said to her and every interaction they ever had. What had made her come to the conclusion that she liked him more than he did her? He wasn't a particularly affectionate person, but he always assumed that she knew the things he had left unspoken.
But now he had realised that he had missed the chances to say those things to her. He should've told her when she looked nice, or that it made him feel happy just spending time with her, or that he thought about her almost every second that they weren't together. He should had told her that it almost killed him the last time they broke up, and that it might actually kill him if they break up again.
Even now, when she was slipping away from his grasp and saying those things really mattered, all he could manage was "I don't think I like you less than you like me."
"So if I asked you to choose, would you choose me?"
Every fibre of his being urged him to say 'yes' but no words came out when he opened his mouth. Why couldn't he just say it?
"Oh" he thought to himself. This is why she thought he didn't like her as much as she liked him.
"We're so young Tetsuki," she smiled gently as a sign of accepting his answer. "We're 16 - we're just kids. No one ends up with the person they were with when they were 16. But there are a lot of friendships that persevere long past their teens. So I'm asking you to choose your friends. Choose them because we're still young. And some day in the future you'll meet a girl you'd choose over them and that's how you'll know she's the one," she said barely holding herself together, "By then, I'll just be some girl you dated when you were in school."
I see myself as someone who writes 'moments' as opposed to longer stories with fleshed out conflicts and resolution (which has yet to be written). Gave it a go and would love feedback.