It's almost six am in the morning. I really should be sleeping. But this chapter has been sitting in my computer for so long and I've been wanting to upload for so long...
Please enjoy. =)
IV
He utterly regretted having swept into his heroic mode to aid an elementary student who had dropped his bag into the canal. It was in no way a difficult task, but with a careless step, he had lost his footing and slipped at the muddy bank. Now he was wet and cold and had earned himself a ghastly wound on his shin where a rock, a brick or whatever it was that he had not bothered to find out about, had slashed through his jeans. Even the profuse expressions of gratitude from the kid had done little to placate his frustration at his current situation.
In a state of suppressed agitation, Ichigo pushed the door open as quietly as he possibly could and prayed that no one who would pounce on him the second he stepped in.
His prayers were not answered. As he clicked the door back into place behind him, his father appeared flying down the stairs with his feet aiming right for his head. Ichigo swerved to the right, avoiding the kick cleanly, the attack leaving only a slight flurry of the wind in his hair and a loud crash behind him. He sighed dismally as he removed his soaked shoes and placed it on the rack.
"My good son!" His father patted him jovially on the shoulder, his overly-boisterous laugh echoing through the walls of the house. "How was the swamp that you seem to have been swimming in? Is that why you were so late?"
Ichigo rolled his eyes, certain that he was going to get a migraine if he listened to his father's voice for any longer. "I just need a change of clothes."
"Stay! Stay!" He hung an arm around Ichigo's neck. "Yuzu and Karin will be back soon. We can have supper and play charades and…"
Ichigo lugged himself forward, dragging his father along with him, while trying, with very little success, to pull off the grip the old man had on him. "I have to go back to the hospital in the morning tomorrow…"
Quite abruptly, Isshin released him and teleported himself to a squatting position in front of his injured left leg, his eyes scrutinizing the wound that was visible beneath his torn jeans. Deftly, Ichigo side-stepped him to move his leg out of his sight and continued on his way with an almost imperceptible limp, hoping that his father would not pursue the issue.
"You're not going to seek the help of the great Kurosaki-sensei?"
Ichigo waved his hand, wanting to simply dismiss the matter. "It's nothing. I can take care of it."
"You should let a professional like me take care of it!" He insisted, much to Ichigo's dismay.
Ichigo had never been much of an even-tempered person and the irritation was growing exponentially. "I said it's nothing, so just let it be."
"Come on, let Daddy take care of you!"
His temper flared at the ostensible jovial tone his father was using. He was suddenly so sick and tired of this pretense game his family had gotten so used to playing. "I said it's nothing! So stop treating me like a child!"
And what came after was unexpected. His father grabbed his shirt and slammed him into the wall, his face inches away from him. His glare was castigatory and his uncontrollably riled demeanor was something that Ichigo had not seen in a long time. Not since middle school, which was almost ten years ago. "I didn't raise you to speak to me like that, do you understand? And you may no longer be a child, but you will always be my child."
Ichigo said nothing, dumbfounded. His father let go of him with a light shove and stood back, the anger dissipated from his eyes and he looked almost regretful for his evidence of an all-too human emotion. "Now, change. I'll be at the clinic."
His father's brash order came together with a surprising sense of intimacy, almost like a lost kite that had flown too high in the strong winds and snapped, but was found again, fallen right at the doorstep. He was again a thirteen-year-old son, defiant, difficult and defensive, an overly angry teenager whose heart tingled with delight even when he stood there ashamed. He was actually secretly happy to be with his imperfect father, in this imperfect family.
In the bathroom, Ichigo undressed and washed the dirt away. He inspected his own wound. He thought he caught a glimpse of white bone beneath the thin layers of bleeding flesh and realized it was probably a cut much deeper than he had initially expected. But the cut was clean.
He returned to his room to clear out his jeans. Everything was wet. His phone, his wallet, his cash, his cards. Thankfully, his phone appeared to be still alive, though he had some doubts on how functional it would remain. He laid out the things from his wallet one by one, till finally he pulled out the last piece of paper from a small compartment inside his wallet. Carefully, he opened it, afraid that it might tear. He pressed the paper flat against his desk. It was soaked, but intact. And the words were still clear against the old piece of paper.
He was so relieved.
He wanted to believe that he was not a man inclined to melancholy, that he would not spend his days thinking of the things that might have been. But each year when he came back to a place he had spent most of his years in, and each school break that he spent alone in his empty apartment, and each night before he went to bed, he still found himself entangled in the if-thens, the maybes and the whys.
A photo stood at the corner of his desk, a family photo of four. Yuzu had displayed it there. It was her fervent way of keeping him in this house which he still wanted to call home. It was taken when about six, seven years ago, a time when his hair was still a crazy mess of orange spikes and his mouth was more like a crooked grimace than a smile. He picked up the frame and looked at one smiling face to another. Were they happy, really? Behind that scowl, was he in fact, actually happy?
He did not want his life to just be a fabrication of lies, half-truths and unspoken secrets.
His life; they had to be as real as this old photo framed in a ridiculous border of happy bunnies, as real as the person who stood behind the camera and pressed the shutter for them.
Those years with her; they were not just lies, half-truths and unspoken secrets. They were real.
They had to be real.
He placed the frame face-down, and finally proceeded downstairs, where his father was sitting at the clinic, patiently waiting for him with his equipments all ready. His father washed and examined the leg briefly, before he swiftly pushed in a syringe of procaine hydrochloride in the proficient motion of a doctor.
He began to put the first stitch into the numbed flesh. "This is nothing? You really think a clinically inexperienced medical student like you will be able to suture through your own leg?"
Ichigo wondered if he was still angry, and unused to a seemingly irate father, he was uncertain how he should respond. But his father was the one who carried on the conversation. "So, how're things over at college?"
"Nothing special."
"What's her name… Kumiko?"
Ichigo cringed, wondering where his father had heard about her. "There was nothing between us."
"Oh, that wasn't what I heard," he snickered, bouncing back to his original annoying self.
"Who tells you all these nonsense," Ichigo rebutted with a growl.
"Aw, you know," he drawled, the corners of his mouth pulled down in a conceited look, "people like talking to me about my son who refuses to come home. So, tell me about Kumiko."
"Pervert."
"Repeat that and I'll make sure to mess up your leg." He waved his forceps threateningly in the air.
Ichigo grunted. "I said there was nothing going on between us. She had a boyfriend."
"Ooh, tried to steal someone else's girl, didn't you?"
"I said!" Ichigo snarled, but was intercepted when Isshin pointed his forceps so near the bridge of Ichigo's nose, that his eyes crossed from staring at the equipment that appeared dangerously close to stabbing his eyes.
"Stop moving about," he commanded.
Ichigo settled back to the backrest of the bed. "That was like last year's news. And as I said, there was nothing."
"So, there's nothing between you and Hitomi as well? Or was it Mari?"
Ichigo crossed his arms defensively, wondering where his father got all these unnecessary information, which was unfortunately, quite updated.
Tatsuki.
It was absurd that he had taken so long to see the link. The only person whom he still kept in regular contact and still stayed merely minutes away from the clinic. Of course, it was inevitable his father and Tatsuki would chat. She kept Ichigo updated about his family, and apparently, she kept his family updated about him as well. And in all the most unnecessary ways too.
"Look at my masterpiece," his father proclaimed happily as he snipped off the thread and began to finish up the work with the final treatment of his wound that was now closed. "Minimal scarring, enabling you to be the Casanova you are without scaring all the ladies away."
Ichigo groaned silently at his father's constant act of idiocy. But he knew that besides his father's constantly blabbering mouth, he truly had excellent handiwork. His father was a brilliant doctor who had worked the hectic pace of a city hospital, right up till he met Mom, got married, had him, and finally settled for something more peaceful. Ichigo sometimes wondered if his father had ever thought it to be a sacrifice.
Probably not.
Ichigo sat himself up at the edge of the bed with his legs on the foothold, and his wound still numb beneath the bandage.
Silently, he observed his father who was clearing the area with deliberate slowness. How did a son talk to his father about his slow plummet into mindless debauchery without acknowledging to the shame and guilt he had been trying to push away? Or talk about how he is acutely aware that he was too much of a coward to face the reality he had been trying to escape? And admit that he is not enough of a man to just put the past behind?
"Supper is good," his father suddenly said. "And charades. Ah, karuta!"
Ichigo hated that stupid card game. "It's not New Year. And you always win at karuta. The only one who could ever beat you at that ancient game…" His voice faltered, realizing his mistake.
"That's because you are unskilled!" His father mocked him instantly, allowing Ichigo's carelessness of speech to slip away without pursuit. He slid his phone and wallet into his pockets. "I'll go pick up the girls and get us some food."
"They're nineteen."
"My babies will never be old enough to walk alone in these dangerous streets!" He asserted. "YOU on the other hand," he stabbed a finger at Ichigo, "should take a walk around town to exercise those feeble legs of yours."
His father was the kind of man who talked a lot. And a lot of times, the things that he talked about were a lot less than the things he was actually saying.
Ichigo hopped off the bed, the local anesthetic on his leg making him feel a strange loss of proprioception, like he would lose his leg if he did not keep his eye on it. He tested it cautiously and found that it worked just fine. Of course it would. Even if he could not feel it, could not see it, his leg was there. And so were a lot of other things in his life, even if he tried to convince himself otherwise. "I'm going upstairs."
"You're going to grow fat if you just sit around all the time!" His father yelled, feigning displeasure when there was actually elation in his voice. "I'll be back at ten!"
His father did not need two to three hours to pick up Yuzu and Karin. He was just giving him time. To think, to vacillate, to decide.
Ichigo curled into the familiar comfort of his old bed and stared at the damp piece of memento on his desk. Exhausted, he closed his eyes and hoped to dream.
- YL -