destiny_key | Recolle

[Despite it only being Monday, Sora's already tired. School seemed to drag on forever, and while he'd avoided falling asleep in class, he could still feel his eyes drooping as the day went on. The final bell had been an absolute godsend.

He's walking home from school, dreaming of his bed, when he sees Minato. The man seems to be in a similar state to himself, a drowsy state that left little room for noticing what was going on around them. Actually, his cousin looks like he's about to jaywalk through the red light.

Sora rubs at his eyes and moves to greet him before he gets hit by a bike or something.]

Minato...?

[ Sora's optimism is showing, because Minato's thought was more towards a large truck than a bike. The sound of his name does pull him back, though, two quick blinks of realization before he's back in the present and turning to see his cousin walking towards him. ]

Oh. What're you... [ Backpack. School. Right, it should be around that time. ]

Going home?

Yeah... Just got outta school.

[Sora moves until he's standing next to Minato, looking like he'd like to rest his head on his cousin's shoulder, like he does with Minako. But, this isn't Minako, and he's not sure if they're close enough yet for him to get away with that.

Instead, he opts to scrub a hand through his hair and give Minato a smile.]

You?

Same.

[ The "going home" part of it, anyways, not the getting out of school. He'd dropped out of school, not something he's made very public and least of all to his family. So he shift his weight and reaches over to pull out a white paper bag that he'd had clamped against his side.

He gives it a little shake, and something rattles inside. (this is probably something he should not rattle. ]

Had to go buy something, so I'm headed home now.

What's that?

[Craning his head around Minato curiously, Sora tries his best to see what the object is. Unfortunately, it's small and completely enclosed inside the nondescript bag, making it impossible to actually tell what it is.]

Medicine.

[ That's all he offers, instead of pulling out the actual pill bottles and showing Sora what they are; he's still entitled to that little bit of privacy.

"Medicine," he says, like it's just his usual course of antibiotics, not medication, that sounds a lot more serious than a bad cold. But phrasing it like that is also a step in thinking of what he has as something that can be managed— not cured, maybe, but at least made manageable. ]

What kind of medicine? Are you sick?

[Sora frowns, asking the questions before he can stop himself. He's curious, and worried about his cousin. But, maybe asking while standing in the middle of the sidewalk, in a public space, wasn't the best idea.

Still, he wants to know, if Minato is willing to tell him.]

It's, um...

[ He goes back to staring at the crosswalk light, thinking back to way, way before, where he'd mentioned the hospital once to Sora, and Minako found out and had to drag the truth out of him. ]

Sort of. It's for when I'm too tired to get out of bed. Or my brain is foggy and I can't think. Or when feel like giving up on everything and not want to exist anymore. That sort of thing.

[It takes a long moment for this information to process in Sora's head before it clicks. He looks back and forth, from the paper bag to Minato's face and back, trying to put the pieces together. Everything Minato said... it sounds so familiar.]

Does it...

Does that work? The medicine?

[ He wishes he could give a more concrete answer than ]

I don't know.

[ It's the sort of meds that work for some people, don't work for others, and have the potential of making things even worse, driving people towards exactly what they were trying to get away from. It isn't a cure-all, and he won't be as irresponsible as to generalize. ]

Depends on the person. Haven't started taking it yet, and I won't even know if it'll work for me until a month or two.

Oh...

[His voice is audibly disappointed, eyes moving up to the light just as the signal changes to allow them to cross. He'd wanted to know, really, if they worked. Even though he didn't even know if his mother would be able to afford something like that.

Still, he sticks by Minato, almost unconsciously following him as they walk.]

[ It's hard to ignore the fact that Sora's sticking close to him. They don't live in the same direction, even though their paths happened to cross here, so Minato ends up changing directions at the next street corner so he can walk Sora home instead of wherever he had planned to go. ]

...It's not a miracle pill. [ He picks up the conversation again after a few moments of silence. ] I'm supposed to eat better and excise more to make it work better. All that healthy stuff I've always neglected. Do you still play soccer?

[Minato's question catches him off guard, and he can't help but answer truthfully.]

No. I, um... I wasn't allowed to.

[And here he's thought he'd almost forgotten about that. Actually, soccer hadn't even crossed his mind for a few months now, what with everything else going on.]

You have to have passing grades to play sports, and I, um, didn't.

[ He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out, and closes it again after a moment.

For some reason, it never occurred to Minato that playing a school sport was something that required good grades, when athletics and exam scores mean very little to one another. Then again, he was never part of clubs when he was in high school, so he wouldn't know. ]

I'm not going to badger you about school, but... [ Didn't Sora have a tutor? Shiori is smart too, and they were patching things up the last time Minako talked to him about the two twins. If Sora so much as hinted at needing help, he would have thought Shiori or Minako would jump at the chance to help him. ]

Was it 'cause of last month? Everything happening with monsters and stuff. If it's a recent dip, we can fix your grades.

[ If it's recent. ]

Oh! Um, no, I um...

[Sora's face falls even further, if that's possible. He always gets uncomfortable when talking about his grades. It makes him feel terrible, knowing that he's doing his best and it's still not enough. It's worse when it ends in shouting, like when Shiori accused him of not trying at all.

Why couldn't they understand that he just wasn't that smart?]

It was, um, in the fall. I was failing, for a bit... So they said I couldn't play soccer anymore. My tutor, Sorey, he helped me get back up to passing, so I'm okay now, but I just... I dunno. It doesn't really seem worth it to just play soccer for a month before the end of school.

[Not to mention, he's not even sure he wants to rejoin the team. He'd only joined in the first place because his friends had wanted to.]

[ The fall... That's right around or a little before Minato had come to the city, and that feels like ages ago, with a clear divide between that "before" life and his "current" one. ]

Makes sense. [ The way Sora explained it, it does. Leaving and coming back sounds incredibly awkward to Minato, and he probably would have enjoyed the extra free time. ]

I probably would've done the same, but I probably would've also spent most of the time on the bench anyways, so there's not much difference. [ He taps a finger to his sternum. ] Not an athlete.

Hehe, I'm not really either.

[He says that, but he was a pretty good member of the soccer team. Not to mention, all the dog walking he does and DDR he plays. Sora might not be the strongest guy around, but he's far from out of shape either.

Still, Minato's joke lightens the mood enough to make Sora smile.]

So, um, what about you? What've you been up to lately?

Um.

[ It's Minato's turn to fall silent and look sort of awkward. His month has been... honestly rather terrible, but he glances over at Sora's smile and he can't bring himself to say any of it. The paper bag crinkles in his hand a little as his grip on it tightens, then relaxes as if the noise is that jarring. ]

Been staying home. Sleeping a lot, I guess. Took the week off work.

[ Called in sick. None of these are lies. ]

That sounds cool. I wish mom would let me do that sometimes.

[Hey, there's no judging from Sora here. He spent the majority of October doing much of the same thing.]

And if you're sick, you're supposed to rest anyway.

You get a spring break some time, right?

[ Whenever it is... Minato remembers liking spring breaks here, if only because everybody's gone for vacation and they leave the dorm nice and quiet for him to sleep a straight 9 days if he wanted to. ]

Well, yeah... Next month, though.

I dunno, though... Sometimes it's just hard to get up and go to school.

[The promise of spring break is a good motivator, but it's still so far off... But he can't really afford to miss any more school, anyway. He promised Sorey he'd at least try.]

[ Minato stops walking and turns to face Sora, lips parted as if he means to say something, but what follows is silence. Sora echoing his own experiences... It's times like these where Minato's stuck trying to find the exact words to say or actions to do. He tries to think of what he wished people would have said to him or done for him when he needed some sort of support.

What comes out is a sigh, and Minato looks down at his feet.

Nothing he can think of seems good enough. ]

Who else knows?

[Sora stops in his tracks when Minato does, blinking up at him with wide-eyed surprise. The first response that comes to his lips is 'Knows what?', but it dies as he processes what's going on. Who else knows that he's tired all the time? That he struggles to keep his focus? That sometimes everything pushing at him makes it hard to breathe?

He closes his mouth again without having said anything. Unconsciously, his hand comes up to grip at his necklace, a nervous tick he's developed in the last year. Playing with the chain as he looks to the side and tries to answer Minato with the truth. He'd find out eventually anyway.]

...Minako. And Sorey.

[ He wants to say "Good." when he hears Minako's name, trusting her to make things magically better in the way that she always does. But Minako was never able to really understand Minato being the way he is, and it's unfair of him to push everything onto her on the basis of being the "better" cousin, or the one Sora's closer to, or the one who can make people smile.

There's a shift of his weight from one foot to another, bag crinkling in his hand, the other one coming up to rub at the back of his neck. ]

Do you want somebody else to talk to?

[Sora looks back at Minato, watching for a moment before managing a small smile.]

Yeah. I... That'd be nice.

[Because as much as he adores Minako as though she were his sister, she just... doesn't always understand. She tries, and he knows she'd drop everything for him if he needed her to, but he can't ask that of her.

Minato, for as short of a time as they've known each other, seems to understand him in a way no one else does.]

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