Chapter Text
The first thing he took in when he opened his eyes was the unbearable cold all around him, shaking and grabbing him with freezing grasps. His limbs felt stiff and numb, and he hardly registered that he was lying on the ground, because the air around him was soft and mild, as if someone was holding him gently and caressing his cheeks. Confused, he tried to make sense of that, but his mind was buzzing as if someone had released a swarm of bees inside his skull. The ground beneath him was also uncomfortably wet and cold and soft, and he vaguely realised that it was snow.
With that knowledge and the rise in consciousness came the realisation that the air around him wasn’t soft at all, but achingly cold, biting at his skin each time it came in contact with the bare skin of his face. He let out a shiver and raised a shaking hand to touch his face with freezing fingers as some warm water seemed to run down his frozen cheek –– no, not water. It was blood, heavy and sticky, as he realised when he glanced at the crimson red covering the tips of his trembling fingers, scarlet drops running down his knuckles as he gaped at his hand.
Why was he bleeding? He didn’t remember getting a head injury. Nor did he remember hitting his head or someone hurting him like that. He had no recollection of anything at all, it dawned on him all of a sudden, a horrible dread settling in the pits of his stomach. He strained his memory to trigger something, but to no avail –– there was not one single memory.
All he had was the miserable present, with the cold almost suffocating him, freezing him on the inside as much as it did on the outside. He could hardly feel his legs. Panic rose in him, choking him to the point where he almost couldn’t breathe.
A snowflake danced in his vision, momentarily distracting him from the mysterious blood on his face –– it came to him then that he didn’t even know if it was his blood or someone else’s, and he certainly didn’t know what he preferred –– and he had trouble following the path of the snowflake as it kept swirling around mid-air while his eyes struggled to stay focused on it. It danced around him, free and with no restraints, almost mocking him as he lay there, still and unmoving. The snowflake became all blurry and he blinked hard, trying to regain clear vision – whether that was so difficult because the flake was already so close to his face that it was impossible to focus on it, or if he was too dazed to properly pay attention, he couldn’t tell. What he did know was that he had to get up from the ground, lest he freeze to death, and he couldn’t let a pathetic snowflake distract him any longer.
Where was he, anyway? He slowly managed to lift his head and cringed at how his hair clung to his neck, cold and wet as it was, and he couldn’t suppress a violent shiver running down his back. He had to move if he didn’t want to die a most painful and excruciating death, except moving proved to be much more difficult in practice than in theory.
He had no idea where this strength came from, because he was so exhausted he feared he might pass out at any second. But somehow, he managed to push himself to his knees and get his feet beneath him, even though his legs were shaky and his knees were wobbly and he was sure they would give in after just one step, especially with the ground being frozen and uneven with heaps of snow that buried a more stable ground beneath it.
Only his knees didn’t give in, and his legs continued to carry his weight as he marched on across the forest, his arms hugging his chest to provide some ridiculous illusion of comforting warmth, the way he imagined the hug of his mother to feel like, even though none of that did anything to actually make himself feel more comfortable. His feet dragged across the snow-covered ground, and he simply didn’t have the strength to properly lift them. As a result, he slipped more often than he was comfortable with, and one time, he came dangerously close to actually falling face-first into the snow.
Somehow, he managed to catch himself in time, but not without letting a curse slip from his lips. He was tired, he was cold, he was hungry and thirsty, and all he wanted to do was lie down somewhere where it was warm so he could regain some strength and maybe get the chance to fall asleep for a while.
His whole body trembled like a leaf as he marched on, even as every inch of his body urged him to sit down and take a break, as his joints screamed at him about how much they wanted to give up and give in to the sweet embrace of death that was waiting for him not far away from where he stood now.
But he couldn’t just give up. Something inside him urged to keep going, to go on ahead, with the flimsy hope that someone might be there to help him. To catch him as he would inevitably stumble and fall.
As he went on a few steps, he realised that it was all quiet around him in the dim light that shone through the bare treetops. He was all on his own, with no one in sight who could possibly come to his aid. The little bits of hope he still had left disintegrated on the spot as that realisation sunk in.
A whimper escaped him as his vision began to swim. He couldn’t die, not here, not now, not when he didn’t know what had happened to him, not when he didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t die. Not here. Not like this.
He wouldn’t die in a grim forest. “Just…stay alive,” he muttered to himself over and over again, more like a prayer than anything –– if he said it often enough, it would come true, right? He only had to find…someone. There was someone out there that he knew, who would want him to survive. Who would need him to survive.
Whether it was his imagination playing tricks on him, or if it was actually the truth, he did not know, but it gave him more strength to put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, one hope then another, not knowing where this path would take him.
His foot caught onto something that was either a broken off tree branch or a rock, there was no way for him to know because the snow was too thick, but he stumbled forward and fell onto his knees. His hands flew forward to catch him, but his arms might as well have been the thinnest branches of a tree because they did nothing to help him slow his momentum and simply slipped on the snow.
When his face hit the snow, the wind was knocked out of his lungs, and a shaky and wheezy breath escaped him after taking the fall. There was nothing he could do anymore. His body was like lead, heavy and immobile, and there was not one ounce of strength left, neither physically nor mentally.
It was so cold. Where was he, anyway? Oh. Right. He didn’t know.
He would simply die here. There was nothing he could do about it. Pathetic . That was what he was. Utterly pathetic, dying in the snow, alone, like a peasant with no purpose in life. He knew he deserved a better death. A heroic one. A peaceful one. Surrounded by loved ones. But not this.
He didn’t even know if there were any loved ones waiting for him. If they did exist, then why was he in this miserable predicament all by himself? Surely, someone would want to be with him. Or was he truly that alone?
A shot echoed in the distance, or maybe it was only a memory that washed over him as quickly as it disappeared again. Maybe he was losing his mind, maybe the cold was affecting his brain to the point where he couldn’t think clearly, the way he also couldn’t move properly.
Shouts could be heard from far away, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. They were too far away, but then again, those voices might only have been a figment of his imagination, and not reality. He balled his freezing hand into a fist as best he could and grabbed a handful of soft snow, which he almost couldn’t feel at all. He was so cold.
Blood trickled down the side of his face and landed in the snow, where it coloured the white in an ugly and aggressive red. He didn’t like the colour. It was too stark a contrast, it wasn’t welcome, it shouldn’t be there, he shouldn’t be bleeding.
He had to do something about the bleeding. But he had nothing at his disposal, nothing he could possibly use to stem the blood flow. He didn’t know if he was losing too much blood, or if it seemed to be much more than it actually was.
Either way, he started to feel dizzy, though he couldn’t tell if that was because of the cold or the injury or both. His vision blurred and went dark, and he tried to blink away the fog in his mind, though to no avail.
His arms holding up his torso gave in and he fully crashed into the snow where he remained, his face turned to the side, his gaze fixed on a tree that was also covered in snow. Why was it so cold? Why was there so much snow?
And why was he outside, all on his own? He would have panicked if he had the energy for it. But he had no strength left.
“Please,” he whispered, though no sound escaped him, as if the cold around him had frozen that one word and his voice, too. “I’m s–sorry.” It didn’t matter. There was no one near him who could possibly hear him. Besides, he didn’t even know who he was apologising to, and why. He didn’t know if he had anything to apologise for. A memory of someone he loved washed over him, but it vanished as quickly as it had entered his mind.
Then there was nothing but dark.
“See ya soon.”
The strange male voice disappeared almost instantly, and he was all alone again in the dark, with nothing but a strange sensation of familiarity at the strange voice that seemed to come from deep within his mind. A rush of ease enveloped him in a warm embrace, only to leave him as cold as ever the second it left him.
When he came to his senses anew, the first thing he noticed was how much warmer it was compared to the last time he’d been awake, and he distantly realised that something was covering his body up to his chin. His eyes were closed and his body felt weightless, like it was drifting on a cloud way up in the sky, and he realised he had to work himself up to opening his eyes.
There was distant chatter somewhere nearby but not close enough for him to make out the words. Everything sounded muffled, as if there was cotton stuffed all the way down his ears. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth as he let out a groan, and he finally managed to crack open his eyes only to close them again.
The blinding candlelight hovering on the chandelier above him did nothing to make his waking up any easier. His eyes needed time to adjust to the waking world, and the brightness was not helping, not after he’d been drifting through total darkness only a few seconds ago.
With his eyes closed again, he tried to listen to his surroundings and focus on his other senses, but apart from distant and messy chatter, which he was sure came from a different room, there was nothing to focus on. A wave of exhaustion washed over him, making his limbs feel heavy as he lay on his back, the soft fabric covering him with a warmth that was more than welcome and he found himself extremely grateful for the comfort. He might have fallen asleep again, though there was no way to be certain.
But when he woke up again, he felt considerably less tired, though his eyelids were still heavy. Now wary of the bright light that shone above him, he began to blink slowly and gradually open his eyes to allow them to adjust. There were whispers overhead, closer now, but he still couldn’t make out the words – they were too far away, unreachable still, but he wanted to hear what they were saying, and if they were talking about him.
Maybe they were talking to him. He certainly didn’t want to be rude and ignore them, but something inside him told him that he didn’t really care about unnecessary niceties. But then he realised he didn’t know anything at all about himself, and he sat up with a jolt.
The movement shot a sharp pain up his side and a hiss escaped him before he could hold it back. His vision became fuzzy and all the shapes and colours in front of him and overhead and all around him blurred together to form a kaleidoscope of blinding lights that only served to make him nauseous.
“Lie down, boy,” said a stern female voice right next to him, but the tone lost its effect on him because the words sounded all jumbled, as if someone really had stuffed cotton in his ears that was blocking most sounds to reach his eardrums. Sweat started to trickle down his brow and he wanted to wipe it away, but his arm was too heavy and with no strength to make any movement of any sort. Besides, he was too busy trying not to vomit over the edge of the bed to really care either about the sweat, nor if someone was polite to him or not. Rough hands grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him back into his pillows, where, once settled back in, he let out a sigh – he didn’t know whether that was because he wanted to show some sort of gratitude, or because he simply couldn’t hold back on expressing his exhaustion.
He wanted to give his thanks, but his tongue felt oddly heavy in his mouth, and he wasn’t sure if it would obey should he try to speak. So he remained silent instead and forced himself to open his eyes once again.
This time, he was successful, and the blurred outlines finally melted into actual shapes that he could make out, though there weren’t a lot to begin with.
The wall across the room was bare, with a single window allowing a monotone view onto a field that would surely look nice in warm weather, but with the snow covering it, the white of nature merged with the white of the walls, and it didn’t feel like there was a window at all. He felt locked in, like he was being kept in a cage, with his wings clipped, leaving him unable to fly.
Exhausted as he was, he doubted he would even have the strength to sit up again, let alone fly. Was he delirious? It was hard to tell, so he decided not to dwell on that too long and move his thoughts away from the claustrophobia and sense of imprisonment that threatened to overwhelm him with each second that passed.
The woman next to his bed said something else, and for a short second, the idle fleeting thought of her being his mother crossed his mind. But his mother wouldn’t have talked to him in such a harsh tone, that he was certain of. While he couldn’t remember much – or anything really, he realised in a panic – he knew for certain that his mother had been a good woman, and an even more loving parent. How he knew that he couldn’t tell, because he didn’t know who she was, what she looked like, and what her name had been.
He didn’t even know his own name.
The second that thought settled in properly, his breathing sped up and his whole body went rigid and cold. He didn’t want to panic, he really didn’t, but he also didn’t know how to react to waking up in a strange place with no memories after wandering through a snowy landscape, almost certain that he would freeze to death. How was one supposed to act in a predicament like this?
Panic was the only thing that seemed valid, and yet he swallowed thickly, trying to suppress it before it could break the surface and overwhelm him completely. His chest was uncomfortably tight, his lungs ached, and all of a sudden, he couldn’t breathe.
In an attempt to get air into his lungs he sat up again, which made the world spin and tilt around him, and the bout of nausea that crashed down on him all of a sudden caused his vision to go black once again. He really wasn’t sure if he could stay conscious any longer.
“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” a gentle voice said next to him. He didn’t expect anyone to talk to him, and the proximity of the other person made him flinch, because he hadn’t noticed anyone approaching him. A gentle shush, a steady hand rubbing circles onto his back. “Breathe with me.”
It was hard at first, but focusing on the other person’s voice helped ground him and shift his attention to something other than the burning in his chest, the missing memories, and most of all, the panic, which was slowly starting to ebb down, like the water of the ocean that slowly receded after hitting the shore.
He didn’t know why he could recall the idea of a beach and the ocean and the feeling of sand between his toes so vividly, when other things were just gone from his mind. It felt like a rather peculiar and tasteless joke, one that he couldn’t appreciate, not even if he tried.
“Just keep on breathing, that’s all you have to do.” The voice was still kind and patient, and he focused on that, and he breathed with the stranger who was helping him. It didn’t take long, maybe only a couple of minutes, before he finally calmed down and could focus on his surroundings once more, the fog having almost entirely cleared from his mind.
“Just keep on breathin’,” he repeated, and he earned a nod in return. He could do that. He wasn’t alone, and that helped.
Once he could breathe, it all got easier. He was surprised to see that the stranger next to him was no more than a teenager, with light brown hair and bushy eyebrows. He looked kind and nice, and the fact that he actually was all those things helped him calm down even more.
“Thank ya,” he breathed out shakily. He felt odd saying it for some reason.
“You’re welcome,” said the other boy. “We found you in the snow outside, you were pretty beat up so we brought you inside. I’m Motoya.”
“I’m…I–I don’t know who I am,” was his feeble answer. He felt pathetic, and oddly out of place, and he hated how vulnerable he probably looked, because he sure felt like it.
“We found something on you, it was embroidered with a single kanji,” said Motoya hesitantly. “I don’t know all the kanji yet, and certainly not this one. I’m not sure about the meaning, but I think it reads as Tsumu? Maybe that is your name.”
It didn’t exactly ring a bell, though it also didn’t feel unfamiliar, but he supposed that would work just fine for the time being. Maybe Tsumu really was his name, or at least a nickname, and by using it, it would trigger some memory that he’d lost during whatever it was that had happened to him.
“Okay, Motoya, yer allowed to call me Tsumu,” he introduced himself, though the name felt odd on his tongue, as if he had never used it before, or only something similar, but not exactly it. At least it was something he could go by until he discovered more about himself.
“Do ya…do ya know how old I am?” he asked hesitantly, scared to find out what he would hear. He didn’t know why he felt so awkward asking it, but he seemed oddly out of touch with himself and with the person he actually was – though he supposed that made sense, what with the amnesia and all.
“I’m not sure,” said Motoya, and he could tell that his new friend was speaking the truth. “You look a bit like you’re around my age. Maybe a bit younger, it’s hard to say. You look a little frail. I’m ten years of age.”
Ten? He didn’t feel ten. For some reason, he had imagined himself to be much older, perhaps because he didn’t usually imagine an experience such as this to happen to such a young boy. And yet here he was, just a young boy, with no home, no family, nobody to love him and offer love in return.
Tsumu tried not to take Motoya’s words as an insult, though he certainly didn’t appreciate being called frail. But then again he supposed that was accurate, what with how weak he currently felt. He wasn’t even sure if he could stand should he attempt it, so he wasn’t going to, lest he embarrass himself and end up as the laughing stock of whatever place he currently found himself in.
“You speak funny,” said Motoya, and he raised an eyebrow at that. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you sound…different.”
He had never thought of the way he spoke, or maybe he’d just forgotten, but he hadn’t noticed that he was speaking in an accent that was different from Motoya’s. Why that was significant, they couldn’t tell, because they were too young to understand. But the nurses overheard, and they gave each other a knowing look, knowing very well that they would have to keep it secret, or train him to speak like them due to reasons unbeknownst to either boy.
“Do you want to be my friend?” said Motoya after they sat in silence for a while. While his voice sounded a little bit hesitant, as if he was afraid of the answer he might hear, his words couldn’t have been more straightforward. It was the innocence of childhood that simmered through them, a reminder that they both had yet to grow up.
Tsumu didn’t know if he asked that question out of pity, out of desperation – there didn’t seem to be any children around, as far as he could tell – or out of genuine interest in being his companion. Whatever his reason was, he didn’t want to be on his own, not after he had run through the cold woods all by himself, which had been the most frightening experience he had ever had to live through, he was certain of that.
“Yes,” he said after pondering his answer for a while. He didn’t want to be all by himself, the idea of being all on his own seemed foreign and strangely frightening. Besides, Motoya was being kind to him, which was not something he felt used to, but it was nice and comforting nonetheless. “I will be your friend.”
A middle-aged woman interrupted them just as Motoya gave him a candid smile – he didn’t have it in him to smile back, he felt too queasy and out of place still – and she shooed the other boy away, grumbling something about him needing rest to recover from something she called hypothermia.
He asked about what he had to do to heal, and the instructions were simple: lie in bed under thick covers, which he didn’t mind. While he most certainly didn’t find any sort of enjoyment in this situation, he didn’t mind the blankets that lay atop him, because they kept him warm and relatively comfortable, and at least that was something he could hold on to, though a sense of safety never came.
With his attention now diverted to the warmth and ephemeral relief that this place emanated – mostly, it was Motoya, who made him feel a little bit at ease – he drifted off into a peaceful slumber. He expected to have nightmares, or experience some distress, but maybe one needs memories for night terrors to happen. While that, in turn, wasn’t the most comforting idea, the exhaustion settled in quickly, and sleep came to him in the blink of an eye.
What he didn’t know when he arrived there, was that he would spend many years there, until he was around the age of twenty-one. He spent most of his time helping out, as he was forced to do by a stern and strict nurse who wouldn’t allow him to catch a break, no matter how much he asked her for it. At some point, he stopped asking altogether.
As soon as he had fully recovered from his injuries and physical weakness, he was dragged out of bed to help along with as many chores as he could handle without collapsing. The first few days, the nurses had pushed him too far, and his knees had buckled underneath him and he’d landed painfully on the wooden floor as the strength he’d gathered over the few days of rest vanished without a trace, and he almost blacked out under the strain.
Motoya had been there during that incident, and he’d immediately rushed to his aid, helping him to his feet and to a chair, where he brought him a glass of water. Funny, how a kid like him knew better how to take care of someone than the supposed professionals in that place. The nurses weren’t pleased, but they let Motoya take care of him so they wouldn’t have to. He would have laughed at the irony behind nurses not wanting to care for a patient, but with the way they always looked at him like he was dirt, he couldn’t say he was surprised. Not in the least.
It was hard not to grow close to each other, what with them being the only non-adults at the infirmary. Motoya and him were often tasked with taking care of sick patients who were lying in bed with a fever taking them down. Him and Motoya took turns nursing them back to health whenever the nurses couldn’t –– neither of them particularly enjoyed the task, and he quickly found that he didn’t enjoy taking care of other people.
Maybe that wasn’t entirely correct. He simply preferred making sure people who actually mattered to him were alright. These strangers meant nothing to him, and he didn’t know anything about medicine to actually be of valuable help. If it were Motoya who was lying in bed, sick and shivering and sweating, he would have helped him in a heartbeat.
If that made him selfish, then he accepted that. With these tasks, he quickly found out things about his personality that he’d forgotten about or pushed back into a distant corner of his mind that he rarely visited – little by little, he was adding missing pieces to the puzzle that he managed to bring to the forefront of his mind, realizing a bit more who he was, and little by little, he got to know himself more.
Soon enough, he grew more comfortable in his position as Motoya’s friend, and he soon started to tease him and argue, albeit playfully. Motoya always laughed and participated in the banter, though he was never as feisty as him.
“I’m used to rude behaviour from my cousin,” Motoya said one day. “If you ever meet him, you won’t get along at all.”
“Good thing that I am your friend then, and not your cousin’s,” was his reply, and Motoya laughed as he agreed with him.
It was moments like that one that made the infirmary feel more like a home. Motoya’s presence and his laughter really brought colour to a grey and sad place, and the warm feeling he always got when his friend was around made him feel at peace, and like there was a place in the world where he could belong.
If Motoya liked him, then surely other people must, too. Even though Motoya told him from time to time just how insufferable he really was, that hardly bothered him. He didn’t mind being insufferable, because it wasn’t like he particularly cared about other people’s opinions.
Growing up together, Motoya started to show up less because of obligations he wasn’t allowed to tell him about. When they were both in their early twenties, he started to doubt whether the infirmary would remain a home for much longer. With the way Motoya started to look more stressed on a gradual scale, he knew that his safe bubble of the infirmary would pop very soon under the pressure of the outside world, which he knew nothing about, since no one ever told him anything, even though he’d asked sometimes.
The nurses weren’t helpful, either. They would never respond to his questions, no matter how much he annoyed them. Instead, they always only pushed him around and gave him more and more chores, just to stop him from asking questions, no matter how curious he became.
The first time he disobeyed, he met his first punishment as the nurse slapped him across the face, leaving an angry red mark on his cheek that remained sore to the touch for the first days that followed the incident. The second time he continued asking questions after being told to stay quiet, one of the nurses grabbed a belt and approached him as he stood in the corner of the room like a frightened animal. His hands were bleeding after that, and for the first week after that, he was unable to complete his chores because of the pain, which resulted in only more punishment. That, in turn, aggravated him, and he had to bite down on his tongue to keep any snarky remark to himself.
The following times he raised his voice and disobeyed any direct orders, it always ended with him being dragged to a room just across the hallway, where they would continue to punish him so he would learn his lesson. But he was witty and simply couldn’t hold back on whatever curses he wished to throw at people who wouldn’t treat him right. Besides, they could hurt him all they wanted. What was consoling was that he always had Motoya to fall back on, who never reprimanded him, though he did occasionally mutter curses under his breath that were hard to make out, but sounded similar to you’re so dumb.
“Oi, boy,” a nurse shouted at him, and he rolled his eyes in response, knowing full well what he was about to hear. “The floor’s a mess, you should hurry up.” The nurse’s voice was loud and shrill, and he was instantly annoyed the second she opened his mouth. She was one of his least favourite people here – while she wasn’t necessarily the one who took a liking to slapping a belt against his palms, her attitude aggravated him, and he simply couldn’t hold back.
“Oh, shut up, ya squealin’ pig,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes once again just to prove his point.
“What did you just call me?” The problem with this particular nurse was that she didn’t particularly resort to physical abuse –he had learned that word at some point, courtesy of Motoya, who felt incredibly bad for him – but that she would always, without fail, make a scene until someone more competent showed up.
“Ya heard me,” he said with a sly grin before hell would surely break loose. He enjoyed these split moments of power, he enjoyed the feeling of being better. Superior.
“We all already told you, stop speaking like that,” said the nurse, and her voice was even higher than usual with the anger that was clearly expressed on her face. “Or stop speaking altogether.”
The constant fighting about how he talked was aggravating, and he refused to give it up. It was as much part of him as were his lost memories, and his accent was the one part of his identity that he could fall back on. Giving up his accent and switching to the one in which the nurses spoke felt like a betrayal to who he really was. If he received regular beatings for it, then so be it.
He would take any punch so long as he could hold on to the last thing that made him who he was. The last thing he had left of himself. Even with the years that had gone by, his memories had never returned to him, but what bound him to his past was his accent, the last thing he was sure was authentic about him as a person, because there was no way he had been faking the way he talked from the moment he woke up in this place. It was the one thing he knew was true about himself, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to take that away from him.
“If ya hate me so much, then just kick me out, will ya,” he said with a teasing grin, sticking out his tongue just a little, to provoke the nurse more with his taunts. She didn’t give him an answer, and for good reason.
There weren’t many competent people at this place, which was, perhaps, the prime reason why they didn’t want him to leave, and he was very well aware of that. Every time he only so much as hinted at leaving this place to go build his own life, they held him back, even though they jumped at every opportunity to criticise him, no matter how well he executed tasks.
But the nurses were all old, and Motoya wasn’t here very often, at least not as much as he used to. He was, by far, the one who had the most physical strength, so he was tasked with executing all the cleaning and repairing. He was tall and had built up an endurance over a year that the older nurses could only dream of – as much as they hated to admit it, they needed him.
He did entertain the idea of leaving. He wanted to leave. He really did. Only it wasn’t so simple, because he had nowhere to go, and he had no one to go to. Motoya was his only friend, but they had never seen each other outside of the infirmary. He wasn’t sure if their friendship was only applicable to the boundaries of the shaggy building he currently called his home, or if it was also existent in the outside world, which he seldom got to see.
The sense of ease and security he’d experienced here from the beginning always lingered, and though his memories remained a mystery – not that his amnesia was a problem that was being taken care of – the sensation of this being his home was there, but it wasn’t a sense of belonging.
Something else – or rather, someone else – that was keeping him here was Motoya. While he wasn’t around as much anymore as he once had been, he had quickly become a constant in his life. A dear friend whom he could fall back and rely on without having to worry about losing him. Whenever he visited, the whole infirmary seemed to brighten up considerably, and he wished he could come over more often.
But whether he wasn’t allowed or simply couldn’t, he would never find out. Either way, it worked for him just fine, and Motoya definitely made his life much, much better without even trying hard. Especially the knowledge that he would always come back gave him courage to stay, even when his only friend was gone for a longer period of time.
He knew that he wouldn’t be staying forever, though. Not with how he was treated whenever Motoya was absent, not with the simple dreams of someone calling for him which occurred only rarely at the beginning, but had now become an almost nightly experience. It was always the same thing – a young male voice calling his name, then it would all fade into the distance and remain an echo only. But one thing was clear, and he held on to that with all his willpower.
Someone was waiting for him. Somewhere. And while he didn’t know who this person was, and how they knew each other, he made a mental promise to himself that he would find them.
It only took a few more months for him to actually leave the infirmary, though he had never imagined the circumstances to be the ones they were. Every time he entertained the idea of leaving the nursery behind and taking his life back into his own hands, he imagined himself to do so willingly, and to do it on his own accord, whenever it felt right.
But when the time actually came, it was a need, and simple leaving turned into abandoning and running away, as he was forced to turn his back on the infirmary, and he did so with a tremendous amount of fear. The last time he had truly been afraid was when he’d been alone in the woods, bleeding and cold, though he could hardly remember that now. The memories of that day had become all fuzzy after haunting him for a few weeks, or years, maybe, he had lost track of time. But then they’d faded, and he had never had to taste true fear ever again.
Now this horrible and familiar feeling of dread and bitterness came back instantly when Motoya barged into the infirmary in the middle of the night, his friend looking distraught and with a wild look in his eyes that instantly alerted him. He looked up from the record he had been writing in to keep track of the patients, and his heart skipped a beat as Motoya frantically crossed the room until he stood right in front of him.
“You need to leave, now,” said Motoya with an urgency in his voice that had him on his feet instantly. An uncomfortable and sudden bout of anxiety crawled up his throat, which felt like it was closing up and cutting off his airways. “Go to the nearest city, Itachiyama, look for Sakusa Kiyoomi. He’s my cousin. He’s planning on leaving this area and you need to go with him.” Motoya shot a nervous glance at the door. “Go south with him, to the kingdom of Inarizaki. Sakusa Kiyoomi, got it?”
“Motoya, I–what do you–” he sputtered, but Motoya interrupted him.
“I don’t have the time to explain, but you need to leave. I’m sorry, Tsumu, I wish I had told you sooner, but I didn’t think they were still looking, but they are, and now they’re on their way here–”
It was his turn to interrupt. “Who is on their way here?”
“The guards,” Motoya breathed, pushing him towards the door, holding his hand as if his life depended on it. His racing heart hurt at the sound of Motoya’s voice breaking under the panic, and he had so many questions to ask, though he had trouble forming actual words under the sudden and unexpected pressure he was under.
“What guards?” He couldn’t keep the bite out of his voice, his tone clipped and tight with anger that he simply couldn’t suppress. “Motoya, tell me what the fuck is goin’ on. Right now.” Motoya didn’t react. “Please,” he said, though it came out more as a whine.
But his friend only pushed him further towards the back door, and he could feel his hand trembling. His heart was thundering in his chest, and his breathing sped up gradually. Soon, he’d be just as much out of breath as Motoya was.
“Listen, Tsumu. You need to leave. The nurses won’t help you. The guards will check them and they will be fine. I might be able to stall them a bit but I can’t promise.”
“Why, Motoya, what–”
A bang sounded behind him at the front door, and both Motoya and him flinched at the sudden loud noise. His words were drowned out by it and his voice died in his throat as rapidly as the noise had silenced everything around him. All air seemed to have been removed from the room, and the tightness of Motoya’s grip around his arm hurt.
“Just, go. There’s no time.” Motoya’s voice was only a whisper, but the urgency remained, and he found it hard to resist. “Go. Atsumu, go.”
With those words, he pushed open the door in front of him and shoved him outside before closing the door behind him almost immediately. He didn’t have enough time to react, he didn’t have time to turn back and go back inside and get any answers from Motoya before his friend turned the key in the lock, successfully banishing him from the place he had once called home, though curmudgeonly so.
He stood in place in front of the door, his friend so close and yet out of reach. The name Atsumu echoed in his head, and he couldn’t make sense of it. Was that his name? Motoya had never called him that. Was it purely a mistake, a slip of the tongue? Did Motoya have a relative other than Sakusa Kiyoomi who went by the name of Atsumu? Or was that his name? There was a faint familiarity to the sound of it, and he wasn’t sure at all. How could he be, if he could count the only memories he had on one hand?
“Are ya havin’ a good evenin’, misters?” said Motoya, though his voice was a bit muffled through the heavy thick wood of the door he was standing outside of. It was enough to jerk him – Atsumu? – out of his thoughts and his friend’s muddled voice brought him right back to reality. But even muted as it was with the thick wooden door between them, he heard the strangeness in Motoya’s voice, and it took him a moment to realise that he was faking his accent.
Confused, he stood right outside to listen, though he soon wished he had turned to run far, far away, even if it was simply to protect himself of the horrible truth that would cause numerous nightmares. He had the urge to bang his fists against the door and tell Motoya to fuck off, he was not to be kicked out like he was a bag of trash, ready to be disposed of. But something about the earnest urgency in Motoya’s voice held him back, and he doubted it would be smart to make his presence known. So he held his breath and stayed quiet.
“Oh, you’re one of them,” a man with a deep voice said. He didn’t know what that meant. He wanted to go back inside and get Motoya to go with him – this man sounded dangerous, intimidating, and while he wasn’t usually one to give in to fear, he was on the verge of panic now. He didn’t want to imagine what Motoya must have felt like.
“No, I am not,” said Motoya, a quiver in his voice that he could make out even through the thick door. “Yer wrong, yer misunderstandin’ me, si–”
He was still speaking in the accent that wasn’t his, and he wanted to yell at him, to tell him to shut up, because he was doing a shitty impression of what he actually sounded like anyway. He would have felt insulted if the situation wasn’t so nauseatingly serious, and the sick sensation sank deep in his gut, and he felt like throwing up right then and there.
“Kill him.”
Every fight he had left in him vanished at the sound of those words, and his blood ran cold. He must have misheard. This couldn’t be happening. A shiver ran down his spine and he wanted to rush back inside, but he knew the attempt was pointless – Motoya had locked this door and he didn’t have the key. If he rushed to the front door then he would lose precious time, time that he didn’t have. He would never arrive in time. There was nothing he could do but stay and hope and pray that Motoya would be okay.
Deep down, he knew he was being naive. Motoya had said something in response but the blood rushing through his veins drowned out every sound, and he couldn’t hear anything that was going on on the opposite side of the door.
Except for the gunshot that followed right after Motoya had finished his last sentence. There was not a second of hesitation it seemed. He flinched hard, and for a terrifying moment, he feared that he may have made a noise. But the crack of the gun was too loud and drowned out everything around him. The thud of a body falling on the wooden floor right after the bullet had been shot was too final, and he was sure that this was a memory that he would never forget.
The hope of Motoya making it out of there alive vanished quickly – he had been naive. The gunshot confirmed that, and the deathly silence that followed proved it.
Even so, he waited a few seconds, hoping that Motoya would speak again. But he knew it was to no avail – Motoya was gone, and pretending otherwise would only tear at his heart even more than this whole situation did anyway. His one and only friend had protected him from someone, and he had been killed in the process.
He didn’t understand what just happened. There was no time to process this, but there was also no way to do so – Motoya’s answers hadn’t been enough, they had been too hectic and vague and only served to make him anxious and confused. Though he supposed he should be grateful, because the fact that Motoya had rushed him out of the infirmary had probably saved his life. And ultimately cost Motoya his own. He felt sick at his friend’s sacrifice, the reason unbeknownst to him, which made it all the more painful.
He turned and ran, using the windowless side of the building to his advantage, with silent tears running down his face as his legs carried him away from the one place he had been able to call home, and the one person who had been his only friend in all those years. But the fear drove him further and further away from Motoya and the men who had killed him, and soon, he found himself in a dense forest, the dry leaves crunching under his boots as he slowed to a halt.
Nothing about this made sense. Why would any commander order his men to shoot someone who was clearly innocent and had not committed a single crime in his entire life? What had Motoya done to possibly deserve this? He didn’t understand the reason why Motoya had to give his life for something he didn’t get. And he certainly didn’t understand why Motoya had felt the need to throw away his life like that.
All he had ever done was be a good friend to him, nothing more, nothing less. That wasn’t a reason that warranted death. If anything, Motoya was the one person he knew who deserved a long, healthy life. And yet here they were.
He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know where he was supposed to go. The only thing he did know was that he was supposed to find Motoya’s cousin. Sakusa Kiyoomi.
Only he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to find another person ever again, lest he get attached and lose them again. This was the second time he had lost everything in his life, even though he couldn’t remember the first time. But he really wasn’t sure how he’d be able to get through something like this a third time.
Not when his heart was aching this much in his chest, as if it was being torn apart from all sides. The grief for his friend was not quite there yet, at least not full force, as the reality of all this had yet to sink in. But one thought that came back to cross his mind over and over again was if he had to tell the news to Sakusa Kiyoomi, if he ever managed to find him. If he even wanted to find him, the cousin Motoya had told him he would never get along with.
He was almost certain that finding Motoya’s cousin was the last thing he wished to do, but it was the only option he could think of right now. He had no idea of knowing where he was, let alone of knowing where he was supposed to go. He would have to find a street sign somewhere to give him a bit of guidance in the right direction of Itachiyama.
If he didn’t have this hope of ever being able to go back to who he was and find his future at the same time, he would have given up right then and there. But the faint voice that visited him in his sleep, telling him that they would see each other soon again, kept him going.
Maybe it was only a hallucination, or him wishing for someone to be there. Maybe it was someone calling to him from the afterlife. He didn’t know, and he might never find out. But, on the off-chance of that person still being around, he would keep going, and find himself in the process. Motoya had mentioned the south, Inarizaki, and though Atsumu had never been – not as far as he remembered, anyway – that was his one lead, aside from Sakusa Kiyoomi.
He took a few unsteady steps forward, stumbling over a rock that was lying in his path. He leaned heavily against a tree, the uneven bark of it pressing against his back in the most uncomfortable way, but he found that he needed the support a little more than he had initially realised. He had his right hand closed in a fist, remembering the grip of Motoya’s hands just a few moments ago, holding on to it. He opened his palm to look at what Motoya had given him without him realising, and he almost let out a sob.
Remembering Motoya’s words from when they were both ten years old – or at least, so he assumed – he forced himself to take deep breaths in, and deep breaths out. He closed his eyes to truly focus on his breathing, which had become painful and most uncomfortable. Whether that was from the running or the fear that was still coursing through his veins, he couldn’t tell.
But he couldn’t panic, not here, not now. Motoya had bought him time, for whatever reason, and he would find out why. And he certainly wouldn’t just let Motoya’s life go to waste just like that. If he gave up now, then it would all have been for nothing.
This line of thinking spurred him into action, and he steadied himself, before he took one step at a time, one after the other, each bringing him further away from Motoya and closer to yet another complete stranger.
He didn’t want to meet Motoya’s cousin. He didn’t want to start over. Not again. Though this time, he didn’t know if it was even worse than waking up in an unfamiliar room, surrounded by perfect strangers, with no memories. Because this time, he did have the memories of all the years spent at the infirmary, and he did have the memories of the abuse he had gone through. He did have the memory of constantly being surrounded by people he had slowly grown used to, and yet he had almost always felt lonely, though he was never alone.
The only times he hadn’t felt lonely was whenever Motoya was around. During the hours that they got to spend together throughout the years, he had truly felt like maybe he had a place in this world where he belonged. He’d discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, what it felt like to receive unconditional love and appreciation, no matter how often he teased Motoya.
All of a sudden, he wished he had been nice to him more often, instead of poking fun at him the way he needed to. Why he needed to, he didn’t know – but Motoya had always been at the receiving end of his cockiness, and he wondered if Motoya knew just how much he had meant to him. How much he still meant to him.
A pang of guilt overwhelmed him, and a tear found its way down his cheek, though he brushed it away almost instantly. He wanted to allow himself to be sad, he wanted himself to properly mourn the loss of his one and only friend, but he knew that he couldn’t. He had to move and get out of this area. Motoya’s sacrifice had to mean something, and he couldn’t waste it.
He’d have time to grieve later. Where and how he found the strength to move, he truly didn’t know, and he doubted he would ever find out. But it was there, urging him to go on. And so he did.