Chapter 10:

A Very Very Bad Day

Galder

I felt sick.

Not I-ate-something-bad sick.

It was that same cold, twisting feeling from earlier, except now it had apparently decided my stomach was a perfectly good place to settle down and ruin my evening.

...

Maybe asking "How bad could it possibly get?" wasn't my smartest decision.

(You think?)

Shut up.

Maybe it was just exhaustion.

Between training with Amachi, surviving our teacher's attempt to bury us alive beneath schoolwork, and spending another exhausting conversation arguing with Zaw, my body had probably finally decided it'd had enough.

Going straight home sounded tempting.

Very tempting.

But throwing up halfway there sounded considerably less appealing, and the infirmary wasn't far.

Fine.

I'd get checked, make sure I wasn't dying from some mysterious disease, then go home.

Simple.

Which, considering how today had been going...

...

I probably shouldn't have thought that.

I turned down the hallway leading toward the infirmary and nearly walked straight into Amachi.

"Oh."

He stood a few steps ahead of me, apparently still hanging around school too.

"Hey."

Amachi looked at me.

"...Hey."

I stopped.

Something was wrong.

It wasn't anything obvious. He wasn't glaring, frowning, or visibly angry, but after spending the past few months around him, I'd unfortunately developed the ability to recognize the different varieties of Amachi silence.

There was normal silence, tired silence, hungry silence, and thinking-about-punching-a-rock silence.

Then there was whatever this was.

"You heading home?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

Normally, this would've been the part where he asked whether I was coming too.

He didn't.

Instead, he stepped around me and kept walking.

I turned after him.

"Amachi?"

He stopped.

"What?"

"...Nothing."

He waited.

I stared at him.

No.

Definitely something.

"Actually, hold on."

Amachi looked back.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

The answer came immediately.

Too immediately.

I narrowed my eyes.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"...Huh."

Amachi started walking again, and I followed.

Not because I was desperate or anything.

The infirmary happened to be in the same general direction.

For approximately seven steps.

Then he turned toward the exit.

I stopped at the corner.

"You're acting weird."

Amachi paused.

"No, I'm not."

"You are."

"No."

"Amachi, I've watched you argue that a bleeding leg was perfectly healthy. I know what you look like when you're pretending nothing's wrong."

He looked at me, his expression barely changing.

"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think."

...

Ow.

Okay.

I hadn't physically been punched, but apparently Amachi had finally discovered emotional damage, and somehow that hurt considerably more than the actual punches I'd taken while training with him.

Where the hell had that come from?

(That sounded personal.)

I noticed.

"Okay..." I rubbed the back of my neck. "Did I do something?"

"No."

"You say 'no' a lot when the answer is obviously yes."

He looked away.

I sighed as my stomach twisted again.

Perfect timing.

"Look, I already feel like I'm about to collapse, so can we skip the part where I spend three hours guessing what I did wrong?"

That got his attention.

His eyes immediately moved toward me.

"You're sick?"

"Maybe."

For a second, the strange coldness in his expression softened.

Then it came back.

"...You should go to the infirmary."

"That's where I was going."

"Then go."

He started walking away again.

I stared after him.

What the hell?

Normally, Amachi would've at least asked what was wrong, followed me, or said something stupid like sleep fixes everything.

This wasn't normal.

"Amachi."

He stopped again.

At this point, I was starting to feel like I had him attached to an invisible rope.

"Seriously. What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Stop saying nothing."

He turned around.

"Why do you care?"

That shut me up.

"...What?"

Amachi looked directly at me.

His eyes weren't angry.

That would've been easier.

Instead, they just looked tired.

"I said, why do you care?"

"Because you're my friend."

The words came out before I even had to think about them.

...

Huh.

That felt weird to say out loud.

Not because I wasn't sure.

I knew he was my friend.

I'd known that for a while now.

It was just the first time I'd actually said it.

Amachi stared at me for a moment before giving a small, humorless laugh.

"...Right."

My stomach sank.

"Okay... what is—?"

"Congratulations, by the way."

I frowned.

"For what?"

"Hilbert."

Everything inside my head stopped.

...

No.

My stomach dropped.

"How do you—"

"I hope the recommendation was worth it."

My mouth went dry.

He knew.

(Oh.)

For once, my other self had nothing useful to add.

Yeah.

Oh.

"Wait."

Amachi turned away.

"Amachi."

"Don't worry," he said, his voice quieter now. "Zaw said you're making good progress, right?"

I froze.

He'd heard everything.

"No."

Amachi looked back at me.

"No?"

"No, that's not—"

"Zaw told you to get close to me."

"No, it's not like that."

"And you'd get a recommendation if you did."

"It's not—"

"So that's why."

"No!"

My voice echoed through the hallway.

Amachi went silent, and I immediately lowered it.

"No. It's not like that."

His eyes stayed fixed on me.

"Then what is it like?"

...

My mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Because the worst part was that Zaw really had told me to get close to him, I really had wanted the recommendation, and that really was why I'd first approached him.

Those parts weren't misunderstandings.

But that wasn't why I'd kept showing up.

It wasn't why I'd trained with him, yelled at him whenever he hurt himself, sat around doing absolutely nothing with him, or started expecting him to be there every day.

I knew that.

I just couldn't seem to turn any of it into actual words.

(Say something.)

I'M TRYING.

Amachi waited.

"It's..."

Come on.

Anything.

"It's not like that."

Fantastic.

Apparently, those were the only words my brain had left.

Amachi gave me a small, bitter smile.