Thankfully for Kento, he had a good ear to begin with, and he quickly improved at guitar.
“Your fingers are so long. Makes me envious,” Orihara said with an impressed air, seeing Kento get better and better at each practice session.
“Your fingers are long, too,” Kento said. It was true, but Orihara’s palm was smaller. Kento had been quick to master the difficult barre chord ? using the left index finger to hold down all six strings at once.
“It took me quite a while to get the hang of this, you know,” Orihara had said with a rueful sigh when he saw Kento pull it off.
On Saturdays and Sundays, Kento practiced for five or six hours at a time. Orihara seemed a little exasperated, but he assisted Kento for as long as time allowed him.
“But you have to keep up with your studies,” he did add as a warning.
“Then, can you tutor me, too?” Thus, Kento now also had his very own tutor. “Sorry. I know you need to study, too,” he apologized. Even he realized how intrusive he was being.
“Don’t worry about it,” Orihara said, his eyes softening into a smile. “It’s been a while since I played guitar, and I’m enjoying it. And besides, if your grades go down because I pulled you into playing the guitar, it’s partly my responsibility.”
“Do people ever tell you that you worry too much about other people?” Kento asked. He was happy that Orihara was being so kind, but he felt like he would end up taking advantage of his support. But then again, how long would he be able to enjoy Orihara’s company? The though occurred to him one night while Orihara was looking over his homework. He felt a throbbing pain in his heart.
“Hey, how long are you going to work at this clinic for?” he asked, looking at Orihara’s handsome face before him. The man was reading a book while brushing up the hair falling across his forehead.
“How long? I’ll always be here.” Orihara looked up and smiled at him.
“But what about when your uncle gets out of the hospital?”
“I’d just be going back to where I used to work at N. University Hospital.”
N. University Hospital wasn’t too far from here. Kento was a little relieved.
“Aren’t you going back to Kanazawa, though?” he asked again, anyway.
Orihara narrowed his eyes a little. “I won’t go back. I’ll always stay in Tokyo,” he said firmly.
Thank goodness. Kento, filled with relief and joy, pounced on Orihara.
“What’s gotten into you, all of a sudden?” Orihara said, looking slightly caught off-guard.
“Nothing,” Kento said quickly. Thank goodness. If he’s going to stay in Tokyo, I’d be able to see him anytime.
✦ ✦ ✦
Thanks to the knee support and poultice, Kento barely felt any pain in his leg lately.
When he went to the infirmary for the first time in a while to get more poultice, Nurse Fujimoto greeted him with a smile.
“It’s been a while, Kento,” she said. “I remember you used to come almost every day to get poultice. I’m glad you’re refraining from exercise. It was the right thing to do.”
Kento scratched his head sheepishly. “I guess.”
Just as he was about to leave with a bag of poultice, Kento remembered something.
“Oh, since I’m here, would I be able to get some extra Band-Aids?” His diligent practice with the guitar had left him with cracked fingertips.
“Oh dear. What’s happened to you this time?” Fujimoto sounded worried. Kento hastily opened his palms and showed them to her.
“I’m learning guitar from Dr. Orihara. I think I practiced a bit too much.”
“Goodness me,” Fujimoto said blinked in surprise. She took a box of Band-Aids from the medicine shelf, and cocked her head slightly as she looked at Kento. “Dr. Orihara playing guitar… what a surprise.”
“Why?” Kento asked out of casual curiosity.
“I thought he’d completely quit guitar and running ever since that incident.”
“That incident? You mean when he got hurt?”
Fujimoto looked troubled as she lapsed into silence.
“Yes,” she said eventually. “But Dr. Orihara must be quite fond of you, teaching you guitar. Maybe he feels like he’s gotten himself a little brother.”
Kento was a little hurt at Fujimoto calling him a little brother. He had always thought of himself and Orihara as equal friends.
“Am I like a little brother to him?”
“Well, of course,” Fujimoto said with a laugh. Her next words made Kento freeze. “He only has an older brother, so maybe he’s always wanted to have his own little brother.”
“Older brother?” He had never known Orihara had an older brother. It had never come up in their conversations. He had assumed all along that Orihara was an only child, like him.
“Dr. Orihara has an older brother? I’ve never heard that before.”
Fujimoto’s troubled look came back at his question.
“Well, yes. Yes, I suppose he’s an older brother.” Her sentence ended in a vague way. Fujimoto busied herself with the task of folding cut gauze into quarters. “But they’re very far apart in age, which was probably why they didn’t have a lot in common. Maybe that’s why they didn’t talk much.”
Kento was perplexed by Fujimoto’s explanation, which sounded more like an excuse, but he made a point of not pushing further. He was more surprised that he hadn’t known all this time that Orihara had an older brother. Kento realized for the first time that he really didn’t know much about Orihara.
Kento went back to his dorm room with his poultice and Band-Aids in hand, and lay down on his bed.
He said his hometown was in Kanazawa. Yes; he also vaguely remembered Orihara saying that his family owned a hospital. But Orihara had never talked about his parents, much less his older brother.
Maybe it’s because he thinks there’s no point in telling me. It was true, to an extent. But Kento had told Orihara about his family, his school, his management office ? everything. Orihara had always smiled kindly and listened.
Maybe I was too busy talking about myself to listen. Perhaps that was it. He was such a kid for going on and on about himself without even trying to listen to the other person.
I want to know more about him! Yes; he wanted to know more. The impulse suddenly surged in his heart. He wanted to know everything about Orihara ? wasn’t that what being close meant? I think of him as a close friend, but maybe he doesn’t feel that way about me. That was a sad thought. Kento sprang up in bed. He realized he wanted to get better at guitar because that would put him on equal footing with Orihara.
Kento was also curious about Orihara’s friend from high school. He didn’t know the friend’s name or face, but he knew Orihara had played Beatles songs on the guitar with him as a high-school boy.
Kento felt a little prick in his heart.