Her face still looked pretty feverish to me, but it sounded like her condition had stabilized, at the very least. Her breathing had gotten a lot steadier too. I reached over and dragged my backpack across the floor to her bedside.
“I went to the store,” I said. “Picked up some fresh fruit, some of those Weider energy gels—got a whole bunch of stuff.”
“…Did you have to go far?”
“Yeah, a little. ’Bout an hour’s walk from here, maybe.”
“Oh…”
After Akira breathed this despondent syllable, tears suddenly welled up in her vacant eyes, streaming sideways down her cheeks and onto the pillowcase.
“Wh-what’s the matter?” I asked, panicking a bit.
“Nothing…” she said, rubbing her nose into her pillow to wipe her face before turning her back as if to shut me out.
I pulled my wristwatch out of my pants pocket. It was 12:00 a.m.—far later than when we usually went to bed. Tonight of all nights, I definitely needed the sleep; I’d worn my poor muscles down to the bone. And yet, the thought of getting up and walking out of the room didn’t sit right with me, so I just leaned my back up against the bedroom wall and closed my eyes.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Akira murmured softly against her pillow. “I was so horrible to you…”
“…It’s fine. We were both tired and stressed out. And I mean, we’re in this thing together, aren’t we? So of course we’ve gotta look out for each other. Not like anyone else is going to.”
“When have I ever looked out for you? Feels like I’ve just been dragging you down this whole entire time.”
“Come on. That’s not true at all.”
“Yes it is. Besides, none of this ever would’ve happened if I hadn’t insisted on going to Tokyo in the first place,” she said, voice laced with self-loathing. “You were totally right about me… About everything. I didn’t know what I was signing up for, thinking I could actually make it there. I didn’t know how hard it would be. And… And this whole time, I…I was just acting tough to cover it up, like you said…”
I didn’t say a word. I just listened quietly.
“Ugh, what am I even doing here…?” she groaned—then curled up into a ball and buried herself within the safety of the covers.
Neither of us said anything for a good long while after that. We just stayed there together, sharing in a sort of tranquil, mutually understood silence. From time to time, I could hear the reassuring rustle of fleece rubbing against linen as she shifted beneath the bedsheets.
“I ran away from home, you know.”
She said this in a muffled voice from under the covers, just when I thought she might have finally fallen asleep. I waited patiently for her to feel ready to say more.
“Our family’s so dysfunctional,” she began. “Literally your stereotypical ‘Dad’s a toxic prick, Mom’s a total enabler’ type of household. Any time that asswipe barks out an order, my mom’ll drop everything to bring him a drink or the paper or whatever.”
Just judging from the way she was describing this “asswipe,” I could already tell that I probably wouldn’t care much for Akira’s father either.
“He’s like an actual child half the time,” she went on. “A real spoiled brat. He’ll throw a huge fit the moment he doesn’t get his way, and he’ll stay out late doing god knows what without letting any of us know he’s not coming home… Then slam the door like he’s trying to break it off the hinges when he finally does… God, I can’t stand the men in my family. My stupid brother’s the same way—just a worthless stay-at-home loser who can’t go five minutes without jacking off. I’m so sick and tired of both of them.”
I couldn’t help but wince at these harsh descriptions of her own flesh and blood. But deep in my gut, I felt the truth in her words; I wasn’t just getting a one-sided account here. And something told me it was only going to get worse from this point on.
“I feel so bad for my mom, always having to put up with their bullcrap,” said Akira. “She’s way too nice for her own good—never complains, never has a bad word to say about anybody. Which is why I always tried to do whatever I could to support her… Help with chores around the house and stuff, since I knew nobody else would. I really, really wanted to be the one who always had her back. But then… But then…”
Akira paused for a moment and sniffled softly.
“That night… The night before I met you…that stupid prick had the nerve to make fun of my mom’s cooking, just because it didn’t turn out all that well… Like, he was really laughing about it too. Saying it tasted like ass… Trying to make her feel like a total idiot. So I stood up, right… And I said ‘Hey, if you don’t like it, you can go eat somewhere else’… But then my mom, she…she slapped me…and started yelling at me… Like, ‘How dare you speak to your father that way?!’ I couldn’t believe it. I mean, why would she do that to me when I was only trying to stick up for her, you know…? It felt like she was saying ‘I don’t want your help,’ and that hurt so bad… And then I looked at my dad and my brother, and they were both staring at me and shaking their heads like I was the one out of line or whatever… And then I was just like, ‘Wow. Guess I really don’t belong here after all’…”