Sorry about taking so long for the new one, my schedule has not been very kind to me lol.

(And yes, they all got A's on their test!)

-------------------------------------

CHAPTER 2

"Why… Why can't I hear you?" Eiji screamed.

He looked at his two best friends and they both looked surprised. They started talking again, but Eiji heard no sound.

"I can't hear what you are saying!" Eiji interrupted them.

Just then a nurse and a doctor came in. They started talking and writing and Eiji heard none of it.

The doctor pulled off some of the bandages to expose Eiji's ears, which both had scrape marks all over them but didn't look like they were completely damaged. He looked inside each ear with his otoscope.

Eiji's mom came in to see what the commotion was about.

"It doesn't look good." the doctor told her. "It looks to me that his eardrums are badly damaged. I would be surprised if he could hear any frequency."

"How can your eardrums get damaged from getting beat up?" Oishi asked.

"It depends." The doctor said. "From the marks it looks like the sides of his head were repeatedly slammed into a hard surface, like a wall or the ground. It puts the eardrum under a lot of stress and in some cases it may burst."

Oishi and Fuji didn't know what to say. How could someone do that to such a cheerful person?

"Will they recover?" Eiji's mom asked. "Will he be able to hear again?"

"Let me put it this way." The doctor said. "Our hearing is best the moment we are born and throughout our lives it progressively gets worse. It does not replace dead or dying cells like our brain, skin, or bones. Once the eardrum is damaged it cannot be repaired."

Eiji's mom was speachless.

"Now there is a possibility he can hear a tiny bit, possibly some low frequency, in which case he can be fitted a hearing aide, which will only amplify the frequencies he can hear, but it will only be a matter of time before he is totally deaf." The doctor said.

"What are you saying?!" Eiji screamed. The sight of people talking but no sound emerging made his anxiety level shoot through the roof.

The doctor wrote down a note on a piece of paper.

-What is the last thing you remember?- It read.

Eiji thought about it. He remembered having a test in Math and actually pulling off a B-… He remembered tennis practice and having to drink Inui Juice that was red with white swirls in it and tasted like the inside of a shoe… He remembered hanging out with Oishi at the little diner they liked before Oishi had to go study… And he remembered… Them.

Eiji grabbed the pen and started writing a response. The doctor quickly wrote another note.

-We can still hear you.-

It took a moment for the message to click: he could talk and they can write.

"There were some guys in the alley." He stated. "They kept following me. They got mad when I ignored them. That guy… he grabbed my hair and slammed the side of my face against the brick wall. That's the last thing I remember." Eiji's voice sounded strained, like he was trying too hard to control it.

It was weird not being able to hear even his own voice. He didn't know if his pitch was off and tried to keep it straight. But it was starting to make sense.

The doctor wrote another note:

-Eiji, your eardrums have been badly damaged. There is nothing we can do to fix them. We need to run some tests. You might be deaf the rest of your life. I'm sorry.-

Eiji read the note several times, his face emotionless. All of them expected him to have a ton of questions about it, but he only had one:

"Can I go home?"

------------------------------------------------------------

Eiji sat in his room, picking at the bandage on his elbow and thinking about what was going to happen next. He knew his parents wanted to pull him out of school, but he didn't want to leave his friends.

Everything was happening too fast. He had a pile of papers on his desk about a school not too far from his house for deaf students. He couldn't stand reading it over again. He knew his parents had signed him up for a sign language class there.

He felt his cell phone vibrate and he looked at it. Someone was calling him. The number looked like a telemarketer. He tried holding back tears, knowing that he couldn't answer no matter who it was.

Eiji looked out the window and saw Oishi and Fuji come up to the house. He got up and left his room. He stood at the top of the staircase. When he saw his mom walk to open the door he sat down on the top stair, looking through the railing as Oishi and Fuji came in. He watched them talk with his mom for a minute before Fuji looked up and waved to Eiji. Oishi followed Fuji's glance and smiled at Eiji.

"Hi." Eiji said, emotionlessly. The two walked up the stairs and joined him at the top. Eiji didn't feel like being comforted right now, he just wanted to be alone.

Oishi pulled out a little notepad and pencil and started writing down a note and showed it to Eiji.

'Let's get some dinner.' It said.

"No." Eiji said. "I don't want to." Oishi wrote down another note.

'Why not?'

"It's so hard to communicate!" Eiji was getting frustrated. "I hate reading something that can easily be said! And you guys have to write everything out all the time. You are going to get sick of talking to me at some point."

Oishi shook his head. He wrote another note.

'Fuji and I think it would be a good idea for us all to learn sign language.' it read.

Eiji thought about it. It would make communicating easier… but…

"You guys don't have to." he said. "I don't think we are even going to be going to the same school anymore. I have no way of understanding the teachers and I doubt they will want to write out everything they say."

'We want to learn.' The note read. 'We want to communicate with you better.'

Eiji thought about it. He did like the idea, but Fuji and Oishi already had a lot to worry about with school and tennis.

"Ok." He said. "Lets go get some dinner and talk about it."

Ok, I know it seems rushed. I don't have a lot of time to write, but I will try and get the new chapter done sooner.

Next chapter: Eiji discovers an easier way to communicate.

Please review!