Chapter 4.10
“Is… that what happened earlier?” I ask. “At the pond?”
There’s a beat.
“…Is that the question?”
My grip tightens slightly on the blanket.
“…Yeah.”
Sakuragi-kun sighs.
“It’s kind of a long story,” he says. “Is that… okay?”
“I’ve got nowhere to be,” I grin. “If you keep us up all night, we’re skipping school, though.”
Sakuragi-kun laughs.
“Deal.”
I laugh along for one happy moment.
Then the laughter dies down, and I feel my heart beat faster as I wait for Sakuragi-kun to start.
“So… how much have I already told you? About… everything?”
“Um… just bits and pieces,” I say slowly. “Your mom got hurt, you guys moved here, and now she comes to our clinic.”
“Okay.”
“And…” I hesitate. “Your dad stayed in Nagoya… and… is having another kid?”
Sakuragi-kun pauses for a moment, then chuckles nervously.
“…Right. Kinda forgot I told you that.”
“You don’t have to talk about that part if you don’t want to!”
“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s not a secret or anything.”
“…Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I am,” he says, but then he pauses again.
I feel a little bad making him think about all this stuff again. But… he did offer, right?
So I stay quiet and keep waiting.
“So… I guess, first things first: we actually came here for your clinic.”
“Yeah?”
My chest swells with pride a bit.
“Mhmm. My mom actually grew up inYunohana, and apparently your place is, like, legendary around here.”
“Literally,” I chuckle. “That place is so old, I bet it has more ghosts than staff!”
“Yeah,” Sakuragi-kun chuckles nervously, then pauses again.
I think I’m getting a bit better at telling different kinds of pauses apart, and this one definitely feels like an ‘I have more to say’ pause to me.
“So… you know that my mom walks with a cane sometimes.”
“Mhmm.”
“Well—not sure if I should be telling you this, but—the reason for that is that she… was in an accident.”
“Like… a car accident?”
“No, it was during a game. She played professionally—right, you knew that already—and she was a center fielder, right?”
“Is that, like, what it sounds like?” I ask, then my face flushes.
“Sorry, stupid question,” I mutter.
“No worries,” Sakuragi-kun chuckles a little. “Yep, it’s the person in the middle of the outfield. They cover a lot of space, so when they call a fly ball, the other outfielders are supposed to get the hell out of the way.”
“Oh…”
I’m pretty sure I can tell where this is going, but I really hope I’m wrong.
“Yeah. She called a ball one game and… I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened, but long story short, the right fielder ended up colliding with mom at full fucking speed. Fucked up her hip so bad she could barely walk for months.”
“Oh my god,” I gasp. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. It… wasn’t great. So yeah. Physical therapy.”
“Physical therapy here.”
“Yeah.”
I swallow.
“But… your dad didn’t come with?”
“Right—him,” he spits, and I almost flinch from the venom in his voice.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to!” I say again, but Sakuragi-kun seems dead set on finishing the story.
“I’m fine,” he says again, then lets out a shuddering breath. “Just… gimme a minute.”
“Of course.” I try to make my voice as comforting as possible, but honestly, his sudden outburst has me a little rattled.
“So… my dad,” he starts. “My dad has always worked a bunch of overtime and stuff, so I don’t even know when things started going wrong. Mom definitely knew before I did, but for a long time the two would do that thing where they were obviously mad at each other but they’d play nice in hopes I wouldn’t notice.”
“Oh.” I wrinkle my nose. “I hate when grown-ups do that.”
“Right?” He lets out a harsh snort. “It’s like the one thing they could actually agree on was keeping me in the fucking dark.”
I hear a muffled whump as Sakuragi-kun punches his futon.
“But… it didn’t work?”
“It did for a while, I guess. But eventually, there were just too many things piling up—Mom suddenly stopping conversations when I walked into the room, Dad taking calls outside, stuff like that. But still… I kinda hoped that I was just being paranoid or something, you know?”
“But… you weren’t?”
“Apparently not,” he sighs.
Another pause where Sakuragi-kun thinks.
“…I remember one night…” he continues. “We had just gotten a pack of my favorite soda, Neko Cola. It’s, like, so good.”
“Yeah?” I smile.
“So good,” he chuckles. “Mom keeps saying it’ll rot my teeth or whatever, but I’m like ‘It’s worth it! Just give me more!’”
“Sounds more like a dentist than a baseball player,” I grin.
“Oh, she definitely keeps a tight grip on them. Uses them as ‘rewards for good behavior’ or whatever.”
“Grown-ups,” I huff.
“Grown-ups!” he agrees immediately, then his voice slows a bit as he settles back into his story.
“So… I reeeally wanted one one night,” he starts slowly. “So I figured I would just… sneak in and grab one.”
“Of course,” I grin.
“Of course,” he agrees immediately.
“Only… my dad was sitting there on his phone. He didn’t see me or anything—he was so caught up in whatever he was reading that I don’t think he was noticing much of anything. So… of course I got a little curious about what it was.”
“Of course.”
“So… I crept up behind him and peeked at his screen.”
Sakuragi-kun pauses for a moment, and I can hear my heartbeat get faster again.
“…And?” I ask. “What was he reading?”
“It was… some kind of article, I guess? I don’t remember the exact name, but it was something like…” Sakuragi-kun puts fake cheer into his voice. “‘You’re Gonna Be A Dad!’ And… like… my parents aren’t shy about that kind of thing—if Mom knew she was having another kid, she would have told me.”
“…Oh.”
“…Yeah. And… the article was, like, for first-time parents, you know? So I just remember thinking… ‘But you’re already a dad. You’re my dad.’”
My stomach twists again.
“So… then what happened?” I ask.
“Well, that night I got the fuck out of that kitchen as fast as possible.”
“But then after that, we just kinda… settled into pretending this was normal. Dad gone all the time. Mom putting on a brave front. Me playing dumb. And that just kind of… lasted until we came here.”
“And… your dad?” I wince a little as I ask it. I’m not sure I actually want to know that answer at this point.
Sakuragi-kun sighs again.
“Honestly, by the time we left, I was a little surprisedthat Dad came to see us off at all.”
“He did, though?”
“…He did,” Sakuragi-kun starts. “But… I think if anything it just made things worse. Like, this was not a ‘see you soon’ kind of goodbye. It was too… fake.”
“Oh…”
“And it ended with him hugging me for a really long time. Which… I think that’s when I realized… ‘Oh… I’m probably never going to see him again.’”
“…Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m… I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks,” he mutters.
The room goes quiet.
“…And…” I say eventually. “That’s the reason for the… um… ‘cookies’?”
“…Partially.”
“There’s more?!”
“I told you it was a long story!”
“I’m fine with long stories—it’s the sad ones I have a hard time with!”
“We can stop if you want,” Sakuragi-kun chuckles sadly. “I know it’s… kind of a lot.”
“No!” I snap almost immediately. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”
“…Are you sure?” he asks, and I can hear the tinge of hope in his voice.
Maybe that means I got it right.
“I’m sure,” I say, voice firmer than I actually feel. “What happened next?”
Sakuragi-kun sighs.
“Um… so… you know how your friends didn’t like you changing plans?”
“Yeah.”
“Well… for me, I think it was kind of… talking about all… that stuff.”
“The… stuff with your parents?”
“…Yeah. Like, at first it was fine. People would check in on me—call me, text me, ask if I was doing okay. But… I think after a while I kinda started needing it too much.”
I frown.
“‘Too much’?”
“Like, I would try to catch up with my friends or whatever, but they’d be all ‘I read this cool book!’ or ‘I got a new bike!’ and I’d be all ‘My mom won’t stop crying!’ Okay, like, I didn’t actually say that, obviously, but it became, like, a thing. ‘Don’t ask Sakuragi-kun how he’s doing or he’ll just make you sad’ or whatever.”
“But that… that’s so messed up!”
“It… certainly wasn’t great,” he says again. “And I tried to dial it back! And it would work, for a little while—people were back to being all sunshine and fuckin’ rainbows—but I felt so… invisible. So… I stopped trying. And so did they.”