Chapter Text
~*~
The lock on this bloody mailbox never worked properly. Hiruma rattled it again and slammed his hand against the pathetic metal pane that was supposed to open for the person with the key. Every time this happened he thought about changing mailbox rental companies, but all things being equal, this one had the most convenient location and the owners were already within his extortion array. It would be more trouble, but really only slightly more, to move somewhere else. He snagged the envelope between his fingers and pulled it through the gap he had managed to wedge in the opening.
He had applied to schools based on very specific criteria: the football team had to be in the top ten of their respective division, and the school needed to be within a two-hour commute of a certain grandma and grandpa’s house. If this sounded sentimental, it was. That house would contain the only thing that would allow him to survive living so far away for so long. His oxygen mask for his exile on the moon.
Three schools met his criteria. UC Berkley. San Jose. Stanford. He had studied their teams, their rosters, their game histories, their admission requirements and, of course, the coaches in charge of recruitment: their preferences, their scandals, their habits, their childhoods. Each piece of information told him his chances were next to zero, but each piece of information made his blood run hot. Stanford even had a rivalry with Notre Dame, for fucksake. It was an impossible gamble. It was a dream.
This envelope was the last response. The other two had arrived earlier that week, but he was waiting to open them all at once. No point in stretching things out, after all. Outside, he checked the envelope one last time, looking for clues in the address or the thickness of the paper. As he turned toward his business-hotel-apartment he ran face-first into the receding hairline, not of a salary man, but of a familiar teenager. The boy jumped a foot as though caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. His eyes were on the envelope.
“Stanford… really?”
“Fuckin’ Baldy. Are you following me?”
“No! I’m just going to the convenience store! I—I live right over there!” he pointed nervously. “I thought you knew that.”
“Of course I know that! You’d better buy me a drink, then.”
The initial shock of their meeting wore off as they walked. “I guess we are opposites, aren’t we, Hiruma?”
“Damn-bloody-right we are fucking opposites.” Hiruma peered at him sideways. Saying something like that out loud was maddeningly curious. He had better not make him ask what he meant.
“All this time you denied that you wanted to study in America. Even after you took the SATs, you kept swearing up and down that you weren’t going to go. And all this time, I was only pretending to want to go there.”
“So, you didn’t even apply, even after all that?”
Yukimitsu shook his head. “No. I couldn’t do it. It would be something to be proud of, I know. It would make my mom really happy, too. But I kept picturing life there, being so far away and alone. The rest of them, Moriyama-san and Anezaki-san and the rest, they are really brave. Even Aihara-san is stronger than me.”
Hiruma ground his teeth. Stop with the knife to the heart already. “Why’d you do it, then, join the study group? I didn’t threaten you. I mean, not really.”
“No, it wasn’t that.” Yukimitsu shrugged. “Being part of the Devil Bats was the first time I was part of a team. Then it was over. Third year with no clubs, I was going back to being a lonely nerd again. I didn’t know why you were doing it, but I knew I would be the biggest idiot if I missed out on that cram school, if you were leading it.”
“Keh, that almost sounds like a compliment.” Hiruma’s mischievous grin plastered his face.
“Haha, well, yeah. Plus you needed someone like me, with the all the book smarts. I couldn’t let you down.”
Hiruma cackled long and hard at that and Yukimitsu dared to laugh with him. He fed some change in the vending machine outside the store and they shared the conveniently hot drinks in the sun at a tiny park nearby.
“Hiruma. Why Stanford? They have a great team and everything but your chances--”
“--are practically zero. Obviously.”
“R-right...” the kid’s face was confused, “but there are lots of schools you could get into easily, ones with really great teams, too. Stanford’s acceptance rate is incredibly low. How can you think you can start studying in your last year of high school and have any hope? Anezaki-san has been working for years to build her academic record so she could have a fighting chance at that school, and it’s still just wishing on a star.”
“It’s not a fucking wish. The fucking genius is going to be accepted.”
Yukimitsu recoiled a little at the edge in the response. Then his mouth formed a small circle of enlightenment. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Hiruma’s glare was a sharp warning.
“It was for her.”
“Watch your tongue, or I’ll have it removed.” Hiruma realized it was dangerous to be without a weapon. He unzipped his bag.
“You have some good qualities. Lots of good qualities actually.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” That compact black handgun seemed appropriate. It was cold in his hands—but not for long, the way things seemed to be shaping up.
Yukimitsu watched as he loaded the clip. “I think you will be happy in America.” His response seemed to be more a reference to the gun than his previous statement.
“I will definitely NOT be happy in America.” Hiruma snapped. Yukimitsu stared at him with that annoying look of confusion. How come the smartest people were also the most stupid? But some nagging feeling compelled him to open his mouth again. “Yes. The cram school was for her. I owed her that. You owed her that, too. So we paid it back, didn’t we? Properly. That is why she must be accepted.”
Yukimitsu’s eyes were huge. “We owed her for…?”
“You know what for.”
“Hiruma, she doesn’t think of it like that! Definitely, she definitely feels the same as we did about the Christmas Bowl.”
“No, it’s not the fucking same. You know her. She would give and give and give and take nothing for herself. I kept taking because that was what we needed to win, and it was by a convenient coincidence that she was happy to keep giving.”
Yukimitsu watched him, bewildered. “I really don’t think it was a coincidence.”
“Do you think I would have stopped after it stopped being fun for her? Here are some facts for you: I didn’t stop. Her dream was not to fight to the top of some sports tournament. Her dream is to be accepted to this world-class school with impossible odds. I live to defy odds. The conclusion is simple.”
“Yeah. You love her.”
A bullet struck perilously close to the balding teen almost the same moment as he pulled the trigger. Then another, and one more. The empty shells chimed at his feet. “You should really carefully consider the shit that comes out of your mouth.”
“You are following her there.”
“I am not following her. She created conditions of possibility, going there.” Why was he still babbling? He aimed at the side of the trashcan just past Yukimitsu’s shoulder. With the angle of the ricochet, the shot could probably knock down the empty drink can on the bench beside him, but he didn’t fire. “It changed things.”
“It opened a door and you can’t walk away.” Baldy seemed to understand, somehow. “And Musashi, and Kurita?”
“Tch. Apparently they can’t wait to get rid of me.”
“You’ll make them proud, though. Then you’ll come back.”
Hiruma closed his eyes and tested the resistance of the trigger. How hard could he press before it fired? Where would the shot land? Finally, he lowered the gun. He should know that talking never solved anything. “Fuckin’ Baldy. It would be better if you had never seen that envelope.”
Yukimitsu smiled. “What envelope?”
~*~
All three envelopes contained rejections.
~*~
Monday morning Hiruma waited outside her gate, leaning against the stone fence as he always did. She was never late. She was never absent. He checked his phone and frowned but couldn’t bring himself to send a message. She’d come or she’d say something. He could wait.
It was nearly nine o’clock when he heard the front door open, but it was that lady, her mother. She paused in her quick strides when she saw him, a little startled but also visibly relieved. “Oh, Hiruma, you came. Oh, good.” She looked as though she hadn’t slept. “Go on inside. There are some rice balls on the counter. Maybe you can… She should really eat.” The heavy perfume-scent of incense hung around her. It lingered even after she excused herself and hurried off.
Fuck.
Mamori was in the tatami room, kneeling before the family shrine. So, even half-American families kept household alters. The notion was absolutely ridiculous to him, but in her case, of course, it fit perfectly. She loved her family, they loved her back, it was natural that she would keep in touch with her ancestors or whatever. Three sticks of incense burned beside the photo of the recently deceased, some old foreign lady he had never seen before, but maybe the eyes could connect her to the Anezaki women he knew. The grandma? Fuck. Why had he come inside? He was only going to make things worse.
She had once been kneeling properly, he could tell, but since then her posture had crumpled and her feet had come untucked. The look on her face was worse than her dark glare had been: tired red eyes that saw nothing, with no strength left even to sob. The glare had hurt him, but this made him feel something else, like the particular feeling that haunted him when he ran out of plots and schemes. More immediately, the stink of the incense was suffocating. It must have been burning for days. That weekend there had been no study group, of course, no school activities, no tournament games or practices. He hadn’t seen her since Friday. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
With that look it was hard to tell if she was even aware he was there. He wondered how he should announce his presence without being a completely insensitive bastard. Everything he thought to say or do struck him as inappropriate. The proper thing to do would be to pay his respects. That was out of the question. He would not be bowing to anyone, and definitely not to some ungrateful dead granny who gave up too early. He would not pay respects to that dream-destroying witch.
Behind her he noticed a pile of envelopes on the low table. Most were from the minor schools, the ones where she would have live on her own to attend and only visit her grandparents on weekends. The ones she could have gotten into without making much effort. Though he called himself her manager, he had forgotten she had applied to those. The one that mattered was resting on the top. The fourth-highest ranked university in America, the school that little Anezaki Mamori dreamed of entering since before junior high. That he gave up a year of freedom and illicit football club participation in a gamble to make real. The drip, drip of apprehension in the back of his throat was eating a hole in his gut. He forced himself to pick up the envelope. It was thicker than his had been. He slid the papers out and unfolded them.
Congratulations...
The edges of the paper crushed under his grip. Goddamn, winning felt too fucking good, it wasn’t right to keep it inside. He eyed the gentle curve of her spine. He wasn’t in the habit of kicking girls, but maybe it was time to change that policy. He shifted his gaze to the table. Up-ending then kicking it might be a satisfactory substitute. The broken pieces could later be set on fire (not in a room made of fucking straw, of course, fabulous as that might be). Firecrackers would be needed. And very big and flashy explosions. He knew exactly which semi-automatic model fired the most bullets per round at the highest rate per second. Why hadn’t he brought them today? It would have been perfect. One in each arm: Brattatatatatatataaaaaaaa…
“It’s amazing, right?” she said with a dead voice. “I was accepted. They chose me. It’s a dream come true.”
A voice to match those empty eyes. Though he refused to kneel before that altar, he could still sit beside her. He considered this from many angles and decided it was not an obviously terrible decision. He glared at the photo in the frame and sat with his back to it. This was that hag’s fault.
“So your grandpa is alone now.” It was his duty to lighten the mood, and somehow this was the bright side. “He’s a lucky bastard, getting you all to himself. I hope he doesn’t take all your time and lets you study a bit while you are at that fancy school.”
That was when the tears that had seemed to be already exhausted swelled in her eyes again. With a shuddering breath she began sobbing with an urgency that couldn't be slowed despite her obvious effort to fight it. Fuck. Something terrible was happening that was completely beyond his control. No. Don’t panic. Dammit. He wished he could promise never to open his mouth again in exchange for taking it all back, but even if it were possible that would be another bloody lie.
“He’s… he’s…” she managed between gulping breaths punctuated by tears, “he’s m-moving ba-a-ack to Japan-n. A-and gon-n-na live here… s-so Mama ca-a-an take- ta-ake-- take care of hi-im-m.” The end of the phrase was more a series of hyperventilated sounds than proper words. “A-a-and I, and I-I-I do-don’t know-w wha-at to-- to—do-o-o…”
Bloody fucking hell. He was starting to have a very strong grudge against the forbearers of this family. He stretched out his arm. He wasn’t exactly sure where it should go, but somehow he had to pull her close to him. Her breath and her body were warm but her tears against his shoulder were so wet. He held her as she shuddered and wept, waiting for the worst to subside. He knew that she had to choose and that came with pain, but for him the decision was obvious.
“Mamori.”
Her sobbing was arrested in a hiccup of surprise. She pulled back enough to look into his face.
“Stay.”
“W-what..?"
“Don’t go to America. Stay.”
“Wha-a-at are you saying? I-- I-- I--"
“Stay here. Stay in Japan. Don’t go.”
“How can you say that? After everything… I worked so hard.” Her voice cracked under the weight of the victory that had been stolen from her. “You know how hard I worked for this!”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. Who knew better than he did? “You told me your dream was to be accepted at that school. You were accepted. They chose you. You were chosen, you won. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“It’s not just that…”
“Everyone you love is here. Who will you take care of? Who will you protect?” She was so fucking smart but sometimes she had to be shown things outright before she could see them for what they were. “There is nothing for you there. Your spirit will be stretched across the fucking ocean. You will be an empty shell. Part of you will die there and you will never be whole again.”
He had examined this scenario in his mind a thousand times before, for completely different reasons. For a very different person. She stared at him with huge, bewildered eyes, but she had regained control of her runaway lungs.
“Now you’re doing that thing I used to do,” she murmured, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. “You don’t want me to get hurt. You think I’m going to break instead of getting stronger.”
“I don’t fucking care about you getting hurt. I know you can take it. I know you’ll get stronger. I don’t care about that. I care about you being miserable for four years! I don’t want you to be stronger. I want you to be happy.”
“What about what I want?” The questions might have been defiant if not for the stray hiccup that made her sound incredibly fragile.
“Yes. What do you want? Name it. Mamori, name it and I will make it for you here. Fuck America. Fuck Stanford. We live in Tokyo, for fucksake!! If we can’t do it here it doesn’t matter. Whatever it is you want, I will create the conditions of possibility for you right here.”
“Hiruma…”
“You know me. You know I will do it.”
“Yes, but…”
“This is the deal: Stay. In exchange, I will give you my life.”
She froze. Or time froze. His heart froze, terrified, unable to beat. There was a price to pay for your heart’s desire. No. Fuck that shit. Everyone was going to live happily ever after; fuck being sad, fuck being broken. But no matter how hard he fought, it was her choice. Her cut. The knife was in her hands now.
“You’re right,” she murmured finally, a quiet smile appearing on her tear-streaked face. That smile. He pulled her against him again so her words were close when she said, “Everyone I love is here.”
~* fin *~