Slam Dunk Fan Fiction ❯ Hello, Goodbye ❯ Blood and Thunder ( Chapter 4 )

Title: Hello, Goodbye

Author: ivybluesummers (ivybluesummers@yahoo.com)

Chapter Four: Blood and Thunder

Warnings: Shounen-ai (I think).

Disclaimer: Slam Dunk is not mine.

"Jin-san?" I was startled to see him in this place, and I'm sure I cannot hide my shock in face. I tried to hide it with a smile

"Hi." He smiled.

"Wha-what are you doing here?"

"Oh, just stopping by to one of your most remarkable events."

"My event?" I asked in bafflement.

"I mean your graduation."

"Oh," I tried to chuckle. "Are you the only one here?"

"I think Kiyota and Fukuda already left. They were bored, I think." He laughed. "If they stayed and heard your speech, then their effort of coming here would be worth it."

"I'll take that as a compliment." I slightly blushed. Did he get what I tried to say that time? "So are you leaving?"

"Yeah, my bicycle is somewhere outside."

"Bicycle? But from Kainan to Shohoku is a bit far."

"Kiyota and Fukuda took the bus. And well, for me, I love cycling, you know." He laughed again. Somehow that giggle is a bit familiar.

"Oh." Another naïve reply. "Rukawa-san loves cycling around, too. I think. I have seen him riding once, and he was dozing off. I wonder how he does that." I laughed.

Silence.

"Aren't you coming with them?" he pointed out Akagi and his company, who was squeezing abrasively through the swarmed crowd of graduates, parents and school staffs.

"I'm going somewhere with my parents."

"Oh. I must've been keeping you long."

"Not at all."

"Well then, I must be going." He smiled at me before leaving, swiveling his head once more as he bid goodbye. "Good luck to you."

"Thanks," I whispered and I smiled, the thought of losing myself again from chance's impossibility now starting to drift away. I went towards my parents, and we walked out of the gym happily, my mind murmuring of gratefulness that I have them as my parents.

***

I stared at the sky and I felt my body twitch into thinking that there was no way to escape it, even if I stride myself as fast as I could. I just slipped my belongings in my bag, hoping that they wouldn't get wet. I walked myself to the biggest tree I could find, and then, staring blankly in the sky, big droplets of water came pouring down and I felt myself sigh in frustration, hoping that this rain will halt in a few minutes.

I was done enrolling myself in the Kanagawa University, taking up nursing, and I can tell that I feel excited when I picture myself in the university, meeting people and having to move on from his life. It has been a month since the graduation, and one month more I'll be stepping into the soils of Kanagawa University. Right now there is nothing to do, and I just kept myself busy by enlisting myself to the creative organization that specializes in creative writing. My parents are working abroad. My relatives are in Tokyo. Akagi and his family had a vacation and will be coming back by the end of the vacation. The others also had vacation, except Hanamichi, who keeps on practicing to improve his skills in basketball. Youhei told me once when I bumped into him that they were going somewhere to earn money so that would consider Hanamichi taking a vacation, too. I sighed again. Why is raining in this time of season?

The leaves started to wiggle slowly, and I can feel that in any second the heaped rain will come pouring heavily and I will be soaked. It's still raining. I feel myself trapped and I brushed my hair in frustration. I should've brought an umbrella or something.

The last that I heard from Mitsui is he's working part-time in a ramen house, and ever since then, I've been drowning my stomach with noodles, leaving me broke every weekends and feeling my weight a little heavier. I stopped eating when I found out that he went somewhere not in Kanagawa to study or something like that. God, why am always like this?

The leaves started to wiggle hard and I feel the dreadful anticipation of myself soaked in thunderous waters, feeling my blood rush in anxiety. The delusion became real as I saw the leaves flip from gravity, the water rushing down. I closed my eyes in ersatz annoyance, and water splashed. I opened my eyes and I still feel a little dry, but cold. I wondered, and I looked at above when I saw a black umbrella over my head. I looked at my right, smiling as I felt myself accelerate in depths of familiarities.

"Thanks."

"No problem." He smiled.

"Oh! The water poured down in you instead. I'm so sorry Jin-san."

He held his bicycle closer to his grasp, signaling me to hold the umbrella. I did, and he clutched his bike and rested it beside him. "It's okay. I don't have important things that may get wet anyway."

"Thanks." I smiled, and for a second, felt my lips start to break more ice. "Wha-what are you doing here cycling all around Kanagawa?" I laughed, and I felt like my grammars were somehow not sound enough.

"I'm planning to travel around the whole Kanagawa. There are I think forty one streets here or so."

"And your countdown would be?"

"Twenty more."

"What a record!" I felt dumb. "That must be pretty tiring, ne?"

"Well, yeah, but there's nothing to do this vacation. I'm taking a break in basketball, and my parents are in Hiroshima to take care of my grandmom... so I'm traveling."

"Really, your grandmother is sick? You should've visited her, too."

"There's no one to guard the house. Times like these you've got to be always on guard. Never know what'll happen next." He chuckled.

"Yeah." Then I thought of our house. I locked the doors and windows so there's no problem. I looked at him, and I felt guilty of what he did. "You're soaking wet and it's my fault. My house is a couple of blocks away but it's just a walking distance. You should get yourself dry or else you're going to be sick." I looked him with concern, and he was looking at me, wet black locks ruffled and wet clothes that were making marks of how white his complexion is. He looked so... boyish.

He looked sideways and then his eyes rolled upwards, thinking, but I know he was joking. "Okay."

***

I felt my hands trembling as I searched for the lights in the wall. When the house was fully lit, I let him in inside. "Don't worry about wetting the floor. I'll clean it up later."

He stepped carefully then, sitting in one of the metal chairs near the rack of hats and coats that stood beside the door. I told him to wait in the living room and I'll get him towels and something to warm him up. I prepared him a brisk tea, as he requested, and when I offered him the towels, I told him he could take a warm shower so he won't feel discomforted and cold. He refused, but I insisted. So he did.

I placed his bicycle at the garage before cleaning up the wet floor by the entrance. It was still raining, and his home is much far away from here, and I thought for a second that he could spend the night. But of course that's his choice.

"Thank you for your hospitality."

I took a bite from a sushi and then looked him, smiling. "It's nothing. I should be the one to thank you."

"But you were wet, too." He chuckled.

"Oh," a little laugh, "but not as drenched as you."

***

The windows stand wet and velvety as downpours stretch themselves on it, thumping against the colorless square of household protection as it made cracking sounds that can be equated to noise, but its collective sounds make it a perceptible music. Thunders were roaring bloodily once or twice every ten minutes or so, with an aftermath of lightning and strong winds. It is a shock that you get weathers like this. The room was lit with three lamplights, two on the tables beside two sofas facing with each other and one on the biggest table there is in the living room. The TV's mute even if the actors and actresses in the idiot's box were muttering something I don't pay attention to, and the features of a lovely night manifested right before my house, and outside, too, even if there is no lovely platinum moon and stars surrounding.

Jin's hair was likely comparable to Mitsui, only that it is black and much shorter. His tresses was windswept but was in a much set way, and his eyes focused on the TV as I glue my eyes on the boyish lad that sit on beside me. Why was he here anyway? His place is far from here, and I can't catch a glimpse in eyes that he has friends here either. I never actually thought about it, but the possibility recurs in my mind over and over again.

"Look at the man, Kogure-san, he is making a funny face." He said, chuckling as he swiveled his head to stare up at me, ending us up in a confused situation, eyes gazing straight from each other; he smiled.

"Huh?" I brushed off. "What?"

"The man... the man was making a funny... face." He muttered shyly.

I looked at the TV. "Oh," I hid my unease with a slight laugh.

Then silence.

After minutes, minutes that seemed too long for me, he broke the stillness. "Kogure-san, I really thank you for letting me stay by the night. If I hadn't bump on you, I would be soaking wet when I get home. They won't allow bicycles inside buses."

"Oh, it's nothing. Just a payback of what you did to me."

He stared at me then, with earnest concern that I almost fell from my seat. A lad whose features that are not as bad. I brushed my thoughts off, again. Why am I like this?

"Now I have a reason to always come here."

"Huh?"

"Everyday when I bike myself down each street, I always meet strangers. It is okay for me, though. But now I know what Maki-san means when he told me it is good to have company."

"Yeah, company's good, but only when you think of that way." Another rhetoric line splattered through my mouth.

He chortled. "Yeah." Then another silence.

In the cold breezes that swept my skin away in bitterness, I could smell the masculine scents in room, and I can tell from myself that it is not mine. My nostrils are bleeding from the inside, though one can assume that I'm only exaggerating. I blinked my eyes. The presence was too much, and I could not bare myself from thinking wantonly over circumstances that may mean social possibility. I blinked again.

"Anything wrong?"

"Nah... just musing." I said, hiding.

He laughed. "Musing? I can now tell from myself that your reputation as one of the best students in Shohoku is firmly testified."

I blushed in flattery. "No, not really."

"So what were you musing about?" he sipped another tea, and by then, lines you hear from daily conversations started to add details to the loveliness of the night, sending us both in comfort as we talk about life after life, what matters most and whatever anyone can think of. In my mind, I was wishing that I was like this with Mitsui, but the lad right in front of me is already making me forget that failed desire. We talked without any manifested weariness, and I was yet again plunging into another saga of the world's familiarities. Two voices collided in believing that they're both searching; one second of refrain and we revealed truthfulness about each other, and I felt myself untangled from the misery of the heart.

***

The park is in its best features, the adorned foliage that plunks people in the place struck in nature's beauty and gift. Cirrus clouds were like wings that fly endlessly in the sky, as birds perch themselves on the bench we are sitting at. I feel like I'm going to shrink and done for already, and somehow in my mind I feel like burning through the depths of guilt's hell. "I'm... I'm sorry Soichiro-san, I... I don't think..."

He snorted a laugh, but there was pain and veto in the eyes of that youthful lad. "I'm sorry, too. I should have never-"

"Don't say that, Soichiro-san. I really treasure what we have, but I don't think... I don't think it's going to be easy, and..."

"Afraid?"

I nodded.

"Me too." He muttered quietly. "I'm sorry."

"Soichiro-san..."

"Wherever I may go, wherever you would be... I'll remember. It doesn't matter now," he smiled at me, assuring the hearts of the damned with one melting smile, a youth smiling to take away the desolation, the despair. "I'll remember."

"Me too."

NOTES:

1. Allusions.

2. I may lack credibility with facts, but this is only a fanfic, after all.

3. The ending of this chapter is fast-paced.

4. Somewhere in there I used a line derived from the opening song of the anime Get Backers. Find it.

5. Aren't you noticing something about the title of the chapters?

6. I need reviews.