“All right, look. We need to talk,” I said.
“Huh? Whaddya want? Actually, no, save it. I’m too tired right now,” my brother yawned as he waltzed away toward his bedroom. His arrogant attitude was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Okay, no! I’ve had it up to here with you!” I yelled, and he spun around in surprise at once. “All you ever do is treat me like your personal slave and keep me up all night with your stupid partying… Please, Akito. This has to stop. I can’t do it anymore.”
His cheek twitched angrily.
“Quit blowin’ things out of proportion. We were just enjoyin’ ourselves a little bit. Maybe you should invest in a pair of earplugs if it bothers you so goddamn much. You’re not the boss of this house, so stop actin’ like it.”
That did it. Something snapped inside of me, and the floodgates burst open. I unleashed all of the fury and resentment I’d been holding back for more than a year now.
“Oh yeah? That’s pretty rich coming from a mooching bum who isn’t even trying to find a job. How long are you gonna keep milking that busted shoulder of yours as an excuse, huh? Until our mom works herself to death?”
My brother’s eyes shot wide open, and his face flared beet red.
“The hell did you say to me?!”
He pushed me down with such incredible force that I honestly thought he might have broken my sternum. My legs gave out, and I fell backwards directly into the coffee table—where one of its unforgivingly pointed corners dug deep into the side of my lower back.
“Agh, hngh…”
A sharp pain ran through my hip. I couldn’t move. I was stuck grunting helplessly on the floor as my entire body broke out in a profuse sweat. I tried a few times to straighten myself back up, but it only made the pain that much more unbearable. My brother clicked his tongue at me and walked out of the house. A while later, my mother finally got home from work.
“Akari! Are you all right?! What happened?!” she shrieked, letting her shoulder bag drop to the floor in the dash over to help me. She rushed me to the small health clinic here on Sodeshima, and from there, I was transferred to an actual hospital over on the mainland.
I was diagnosed with a suspected “transverse process fracture” of one of my lumbar vertebrae. Essentially, I’d cracked the little protruding nub bone extending off from one side of an individual segment of my lower spine. When they showed me my waist area in the mirror, I saw a big, deep-purple bruise, like someone had smushed a handful of blueberries against my lower back. The doctor told me that surgery wouldn’t be necessary, and that there should be no further complications so long as I wore this funny corset-style back brace for a while and took time off to recuperate. The resulting hospital bill wasn’t unreasonable at all, and they discharged me that same day.
The problem was that I really couldn’t afford to take any time off right now. It would be three weeks before I could return to my part-time job, and two whole months before I was allowed to start swimming again. This meant that I had to completely give up on the idea of making it to nationals this year, all while being forced to lie in bed like a cadaver. All I could do to cope with the despair of wasting one of my two remaining chances was weep softly into my pillow. What I truly wanted was to bawl and wail at the top of my lungs, but whenever I did more than gently sob, the contractions of my diaphragm made it feel like long, rusty nails were being hammered into my spine. My only real remaining option was to try my very best to snuff out my emotions altogether. To stop feeling anything at all. If a random bystander were to look at me, lying motionless in that bed, they’d probably think I was spacing out or something, but on the inside, I was crying out in agony from morning until late at night.
How could all of my athletic efforts go to waste?! I sacrificed all those work and study hours for nothing! What did I ever do to deserve this?! What do I have to show for all those grueling hours of practice I put in now?! Nothing!
I had one more chance to go to nationals, and it wouldn’t be for a whole year. The thought alone was enough to put my stomach in knots. Making it worse, only a single person seemed to care I was going through this hell: my mother. She even took some precious time off work to take care of me and sat loyally at my bedside when I was in too much pain to even walk around the apartment on my own.
“Tell me something, Akari,” she inquired one day while I was still bedridden. “What really happened that morning?”
I had to think for a while about whether I should tell her the whole truth or not, because I knew it was extremely likely to break her heart. My mother worked just as hard as I’d been working, but for the family’s sake, and for far longer than me. She didn’t deserve any extra stress on her plate. Recognizing that this was one thing I really shouldn’t remain silent about, I decided to tell her the truth even so.