Hello, all. Here's chapter eleven. I hope you enjoy it. :)
Lunar Eclipse
Chapter Eleven
"By the time coach had picked up the phone I was getting hysterical again. I knew I needed to take responsibility and let the team know, but it was really hard getting to the point that I could function enough to make good on that promise. Anyway," Sugawara paused, looking specifically at Amaya and Akiteru, "After coach picked me up we went straight to your house... and the rest you know." The group sat quiet for a while after Sugawara stopped talking, digesting the magnitude of his story. After a little while, Ukai stood and broke the silence.
"Well, Sugawara, you have one more group of people you wanted to talk to, right?" he said as he took his cell phone from his pocket, holding it up for the group to see, "I'm going to call a few parents." With that, Ukai left the waiting room. Amaya waited until the door eased shut before addressing Sugawara.
"Koushi, honey, that was a very brave thing for you to do, telling us this so soon. I'm very proud of you." She reached over and squeezed Sugawara's hand.
"Thank-you...I do feel a little better, like a weight's been lifted. But...I don't think I've actually said this out loud yet, so here it goes... Akiteru, Mrs. Tsukishima... I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for what happened. I'm sorry I couldn't stop it. I'm sorry I couldn't get over my fear when it mattered most. I'm sorry that your lives can never be the same because I made a mistake."
"Sugawara, the only mistake you made is blaming yourself." Akiteru said, "You didn't cause any of this to happen. That lunatic would have walked into that store with a gun whether you and my brother were in it or not. If you hadn't stopped there he wouldn't have gotten hurt, that much is true. But that doesn't make it your fault that it happened. There was nothing you could have done. You could never have known."
"Honey, you're never going to get over this until you forgive yourself. In order to find peace, you need to allow yourself to believe that it wasn't your fault." Sugawara brought his knees up to his face, and hugged them against his chest. He tried to shield his eyes from the Tsukishimas, embarrassed that they would see him cry yet again.
"I... I can't. If he dies... I'll have to live the rest of my life knowing that my one stupid decision was what took his future from him, from you." Amaya nudged Akiteru and he stood, switching seats with his mother so she could be closer to Sugawara. Sitting down again, Amaya reached over and draped her arm around Sugawara's shoulders. She'd lived long enough to know the kind of psychological agony Sugawara would experience before he could begin to heal. Nobody recovered from trauma easily. She ran her fingers on her other hand through his silver bangs and caressed the side of his face.
"Koushi, I forgive you. Even if he dies, I forgive you. Please... Please forgive yourself."
At those words, the dam burst. Sugawara cried once again, feeling his tears follow the same burning trail down his face that they had been all night. He let out another small cry that was more a release of voice than an active effort.
"How? He's your son! You gave birth to him! How could you possibly forgive me for cutting that life short?"
"Because I'm a mother! Do you really think you never did anything to hurt your own mother, Koushi? She forgives you on a daily basis because you are the light of her world. She gave everything to nourish you into your adulthood, just like I did with Kei and Akiteru. Being a mother is not easy. I am not forgiving you because it's easy. I'm forgiving you because you deserve forgiveness. Because mothers forgive."
As Sugawara started to slip away from reality, crying harder and harder, he let his head rest against the back of the chair. With his head tilted back towards the ceiling, he released all the emotions his story brought back to the surface. Amaya, upon seeing Sugawara suffer, sat herself on the edge of Sugawara's chair and pulled him into her arms. She pulled him close to her, feeling him tense and clutch the edge of her shirt in distress. It's okay, Koushi, it's not the end of the world, she thought as she let him cry into her shoulder.
"Well, that's everyone." Ukai said as he re-entered the waiting room several minutes later, "I called everyone's parents, except of course for you, Mrs. Tsukishima, since you're here, and your parents, Sugawara, since you already told them. I didn't give any specific details, I just apologized for calling so late and said that there was an emergency that I didn't feel was appropriate to disclose over the phone. A few of them were pretty grumpy when I called, seeing as how it's almost four in the morning, but everyone said they'd make sure their kids showed up, so as far as I know everyone should be there." Ukai turned to Sugawara, who was once more sitting normally.
"That means if we're going to have this team meeting, we need to leave now, Sugawara." Sugawara nodded and rose from his chair.
"We'll see you later," Ukai said as the two exited the room, "Call me if anything happens."
"And, Mrs. Tsukishima," Sugawara began, turning his head back from the doorway to face Amaya, "Thank-you. Thank-you for everything you've said to me tonight."
"You're very welcome, Koushi." She smiled as Ukai and Sugawara left the room. Once they were gone, Amaya opened her purse and began to ruffle through it, taking out her wallet and looking through her cards. Her face fell, and she looked in her purse once again. She sighed after several seconds and turned to Akiteru.
"Akiteru, honey, I need to run home. Sooner or later they're going to need me to fill out paperwork for this mess, and I don't have any of your brother's insurance information on me. I shouldn't be gone long, but promise me you'll be okay here by yourself?" Akiteru gave his mother a half smile.
"Mom, I'm twenty-two. I'll be fine."
"You'll call me if the doctors come out to tell us anything?"
"Yes, I promise." Smiling, she bent down to kiss him on the cheek.
"Okay, baby, see you in a bit. Love you!" Amaya, too, walked out of the waiting room, leaving Akiteru alone with nobody but the two strangers to wait with him.
Tadashi Yamaguchi sat awake in his bedroom even though it was close to four in the morning, and told himself that he was sure tonight was the worst night of his life. He and his mom had actually gotten home from the hospital hours ago, but Yamaguchi still couldn't sleep. He kept thinking about his father's fate. His illness wasn't life-threatening, but the doctors had admitted that his stroke was an incredibly rare side effect to the medication. They had really only warned them about it because it was a possibility. They never thought it would actually happen.
Yamaguchi and his mother sat in the waiting room for over an hour earlier that evening before their doctor came in to tell them anything. It was agony, waiting in ignorance for that long, and he had a hard time keeping himself calm. He kept spiraling, letting himself think of all the possibilities of what could have gone wrong in his father's brain. What if he couldn't speak anymore? What if he couldn't walk? Or feed himself? What if he couldn't remember his family? He let himself snowball until his mother caught the pained expression on his face and had to talk him out of it. After about the fourth time, she took him down to the cafeteria to get him some french fries to calm him down.
He sat waiting in the Miyagi General Hospital cafeteria while his mother stood at the counter and ordered their food. It was as he sat at the two-person table staring out the window beside him that he realized he hadn't eaten anything since before practice. When his mom came back with their tray, french fries and a soda for him, a smoothie for her, Yamaguchi snapped back to reality and tried to focus on his food. Maybe the french fries would calm him down a bit. Maybe he was just freaking out so much because he was hungry. Probably not, he thought as he opened his soda with a crack, but thinking that's true might make me feel better. He took a sip of his soda. Vanilla Coke. Mom knew his favorite foods. He would wait to touch the french fries, though. They were still hot. He needed to wait until they were cool enough that the grease had begun to soak into the fries - then they would be delicious.
His mother tried to have one of those deep, feel-y sort of conversations with him, but Yamaguchi was such a strange combination of exhausted and high-strung that he really didn't have the mental energy to spare. Besides, he knew she was only trying for his sake; she had never been very good at those herself. After several attempts at starting a meaningful conversation, she had finally suggested that maybe he call Tsukishima. She reminded him that Tsukishima was really the only close friend he'd ever had, and if he wasn't going to talk to her about his father, he might as well talk to someone he was actually going to listen to. That last part stung a bit. Yamaguchi always hated being in high-stress situations with his mother because she always had this habit of blowing everything way out of proportion. He never felt like he could share his true feelings because she would always make the conversation about her if things didn't go her way. He loved his mother dearly - she was just never very good at handling emotions.
As it turned out, they didn't have much to worry about after all. For the most part, his father's brain was fine. Memory was intact, basic bodily functions were all intact. The only problem he seemed to have was a little bit of trouble with some twitching in his right arm. No problem, the doctors said, they had therapy to help stroke victims with motor control, they just needed to keep him overnight to run a few more tests to make sure there weren't any other effected areas of his brain. Yamaguchi was relieved. His mother - not so much. She started yelling at the doctor for not knowing what he was doing, saying that they should know what's wrong after all that time they spent refusing to give her any information. Yamaguchi only barely got his mom to leave without throwing something by repeatedly reminding her that he had a huge exam at school tomorrow. Even then, she still stomped off fuming, practically dragging Yamaguchi by the arm the whole way to the parking lot.
After he got home he immediately went up to his room to try to study. Unfortunately the exam was a math exam, with a focus on probability, no less. He hated math, even though he was somewhat good at it. He preferred English, really. Sometimes he found himself jealous of Tsukki's family, since they all had a pretty good grasp of such a complicated language. Tsukki's father had always been fluent, but since he'd started working in America several months ago, he made it a point to speak English in the house sometimes, even when Yamaguchi was visiting. Tsukki had a pretty solid understanding of English by this point, a trait which he flaunted during their last English exam when he neglected to study because his father had already taught him everything the exam covered, and he still managed to get a high grade anyway. He wished he was as good at picking up information as Tsukki was. He was smart, too, but he often felt like he worked harder at it than his best friend did.
After an hour or two of getting far too distracted by his situation with his father to properly study, Yamaguchi gave it up as a bad job and just sat at his desk on his phone instead. It was around 2am when he'd considered finally calling Tsukki like his mother had sarcastically suggested hours ago. He was never very good with emotions, but maybe his friend could provide him with some logical insight that would help him think his way through this. Tsukki was always good at thinking his way through things.
In the end he'd decided not to bother Tsukki. Although he had no doubt his friend would answer the phone knowing he was in distress, even at such a late hour, he still felt weird about calling him. It's not like it was an emergency. Nobody was dying; his father was relatively fine. He wasn't even upset, really, he was more... restless. Like there was something in the back of his mind that just wouldn't settle. Maybe it was because he spent his evening at a hospital. Yamaguchi never really liked hospitals.
Sometime around 3:30am he'd moved from his desk to his bed. He didn't bother to change into his pajamas; he wasn't that tired yet. But he was pretty sick of sitting in his desk chair. He opened the balcony door that stretched out above his driveway and let the cool wet breeze from the recent rain release some of the stuffy air in his bedroom. Maybe some cool air would help settle his head. He hoped it would rain again soon. Feeling the rain mist inside from the balcony was one of Yamaguchi's favorite things to fall asleep to.
His mother interrupted his thoughts at around 4am. Upon hearing a soft tread on the hardwood floor outside his door, Yamaguchi looked up from his open facebook app to see his half-asleep mother in her pink fluffy robe leaning against his door frame.
"Oh good, you're awake. I just got a call from your coach. He said he's having an emergency meeting at the gym and he wants everyone on the team to be there, so you should probably throw your shoes on and head over to the school."
"Emergency meeting? Did he say what it was for?"
"No, but he did stress that something very serious had happened, and that he didn't feel it was proper to disclose it over the phone."
"Okay. Just give me a minute."
"You need a ride?"
"No, it's not a far walk. I should be okay."
"Great. I'm going back to bed. Love you."
"Goodnight, mom." With that she was gone.
Emergency meeting? It had to be something serious. Coach Ukai never called any sort of meetings late at night. It was a miracle they had even gotten him to agree to the 9pm practice. He loved sleep far too much to willingly interrupt it with a meeting. As he put his phone, wallet, and house keys into the pocket of his shorts and walked out the door, Yamaguchi continued to ponder the motive behind coach's meeting - all the way to the school.
I hope you enjoyed chapter eleven. Any and all constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.
(Also, to answer my question from my previous chapter, the Kaede I was referencing was Kotetsu's daughter from Tiger & Bunny, another favorite anime of mine, just in case anyone was wondering.)