An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: Free!
Relationship: Gen (Hiyori Toono & Kaede Kinjou friendship-ish, Feelings About Those Not Present) with a side of HiyoIku
Rating: G+ (tiny bit of swearing, bc Kaede)
Genres: Angst, emotional hurt/comfort, grief and trauma
3492 words
Summary: After the world championships, Hiyori goes looking for Kaede. Each has moral support to offer the other in light of all that's happened and the uncertainties to come.
(This story is CSCG-adjacent, but primarily canon-compliant, so should be readable by anybody who's not bothered by movie spoilers.)
After asking me about some more details about my original characters in Chasing Silver, Chasing Gold, my wonderful beta drew these pictures!! (I have their permission to upload them directly.) Look at them, they’re so cool...! T_T
Credit for figuring out their star signs also goes to my beta, because I don’t know how astrology works at all. The descriptions really seem to fit them, though!
I’d like to share a little more information about each of these characters, but I’m not totally sure where to start. So for now, I’ve sat on these long enough—please enjoy the pictures!
I...didn’t actually think I’d be writing another one of these so soon, but the theme this time is writing Ikuya’s POV as a huge Hiyori fan. (It also ends up including some Hiyori analysis, because...well, like I said, Hiyori fan.)
First of all...I want to say that this is a ship fic, with HiyoIku as (very eventual) endgame. That means that I want Ikuya to be a sympathetic character, but I also need both Ikuya and Hiyori to come to terms with the messed-up parts of their relationship so they can improve it together.
I try to write Ikuya as sympathetically as I can, but a lot of ugly emotions come up for him in the latest chapters, and he doesn’t react very well to what he finds. This isn’t meant to be a condemnation of him, though—he’s got a lot of challenges to overcome, on top of dealing with Hiyori making things much harder than they need to be (for reasons I’ll get into below).
First of all, I do genuinely think that realizing that your childhood friend is an heretofore-unexpected level of ridiculous dumbass would necessarily take a certain amount of time. Admittedly, I also think that part's actually a little funny—and someone needs to call Hiyori out on his bullshit already, seriously—but seeing more of the world and then looking back on your childhood relationships and experiences with new eyes is an absolutely vital part of growing up in general. It's often a jarring experience.
Second, Ikuya has a ton of learned helplessness when it comes to people walking out on him. His backstory explains this really well—the most important people in his life have repeatedly demonstrated to him that there's nothing he can do to keep them with him. This isn't an inaccurate understanding of the world, exactly—you can't make people stay in your life when they don't want to, or at the very least you shouldn't. But since his efforts have consistently failed, he has no incentive to even try. This is also helps to explain his desire for independence in canon—better to stand on his own as best he can than to be at the mercy of people who'll just leave him.
Finally, and I think most importantly, Ikuya's never examined his own opinions about how hard people are supposed to work. He's looked up to people who were performing better than him his whole life (Natsuya and then Haruka), and his reasoning seems to be that if he hasn't achieved their level of success yet, it's a sign that he's not trying hard enough. Maybe there's a trick he's missing, or a way to optimize what his efforts, but he's not going to count on that. He just has to work harder; that's all that matters.
This is a remarkably unkind mindset. It's dangerous to him, and it's potentially dangerous to others, too. Ikuya's attitude would cause some really big moral problems if he were, say, a parent or a mentor to someone else: it's incredibly easy for this kind of thinking to lead to harmful ableism at best, or outright abuse at worst. It causes pretty significant problems as a friend, too, but because friends are supposed to be on an even footing with each other, those problems are relatively easy to fix if both parties are willing to communicate and grow.
But ironically, Ikuya's self-centeredness (which is where his desire for self-reliance/”heroism” has led him) is what saves him from doing much damage with this attitude. Until now, Ikuya has had no reason to accept responsibility for the impact of his unfairly high standards, because he usually only applies those standards to himself. He genuinely doesn't care what anybody but him and his role models are doing. He doesn't go around judging others, at least not outwardly, and up until this moment, he hasn't spent enough time caring enough about others to apply his own standards to them.
(Do I think that both Kirishimas have similar tendencies towards eschewing responsibility, only Natsuya's situation makes it a lot more of a problem in his case? You bet I do!)
Ikuya's had very little incentive to consider his responsibility to Hiyori as a friend, either, until very recently. The only reason Ikuya and Hiyori are close is because Hiyori pushed, which means Hiyori holds most of the responsibility for their relationship. (I actually think that if Hiyori hadn't pushed so much, Ikuya would have reciprocated more often, which would have increased his investment in Hiyori's friendship...but given Ikuya's mindset when he was younger, I can see why Hiyori didn't want to risk it.)
Unfortunately, Hiyori has spent years both a) accepting responsibility for most of his and Ikuya's friendship, and b) internalizing Ikuya's unhealthily high standards. (That second one is tricky—on some level, he knows that Ikuya's expectations of himself are dangerous, but at the same time, he's spent long enough humoring them for Ikuya's sake that it's hard for him to believe that they're wrong. Besides, responsibility to Ikuya means having compassion when Ikuya falls short of his goals; as the responsible one, Hiyori's failures don't merit the same consideration.)
That means Hiyori tries hold himself to Ikuya's standards, or at least tries to hide it when he can't. He doesn't see much point to making excuses or sharing his struggles, either. From Hiyori's perspective, if he falls far enough behind Ikuya's standards, regardless of the reason, he doesn't actually deserve his friendship.
From Ikuya's perspective, Hiyori's shutting him randomly out of his life and refusing to communicate. From Hiyori's, he's obviously failed and is a waste of Ikuya's time. It's not Ikuya's fault that Hiyori is keeping so much of this locked up in his head, but it's also not like Hiyori has reason to expect Ikuya to accept his shortcomings. They both have a lot of relearning to do.
Since some medical stuff makes its way into CSCG starting around chapter 20, and since I don’t actually know what I’m doing, I thought it would be nice to include some actual verified information!
(I know that lots of people just like sickfic, and honestly I’m one of them, but like...I’m more comfortable writing sickfic with left attempts at medical accuracy, I guess)
Here’s an entire website devoted to raising awareness about meningitis, including information about how it presents in different age groups
Here’s what the CDC has to say about seizure first aid (it’s a really well laid-out website that’s easy to understand and has links to further resources, check it out!)
In addition, my beta (who has firsthand experience with seizures) had some recommendations about how to respond if you see someone having one:
1. Do not panic. Sometimes the person seizing can hear you and it can raise their anxiety. But also panicking, especially in public, isn't good for anyone else either. Stay calm!
2. Make sure to move anything you physically can and if not please act fast and ask for assistance moving hard/heavy/sharp objects. Also good to have a second person possibly help keep company. Someone seizing may accidentally hit their head or other body part on hard objects when having spasms and cause more injury.
3. Move them on their side. Do NOT leave them on their back or put them on their stomach. They can choke on saliva or stop breathing if you do this. The side is best!
4. NEVER PUT ANYTHING IN THEIR MOUTH! You cannot swallow your tongue, it's IMPOSSIBLE. Don't even try!
5. Do NOT call for an ambulance unless they suffered other serious injury like if they fell and hit their head and started bleeding. A lot of the time seizures can be managed on their own with out medical assistance. Sometimes people don't have insurance or the time to visit the ER. Some individuals have medical bracelets, if they have one please read it.
6. After if you want, check their pulse or look at their chest/stomach, see if it moves, to make sure they're breathing (Also check for any other injuries that may be visible). Sometimes physical touch is a no, but I'm sure if you're careful it's all okay. Never touch them in the chest/private areas, obviously.
7. Don't leave them, make sure they're accompanied by you until they're fully aware/able to express themselves. Sometimes it takes 15-60 minutes after a seizure for someone to fully function. Ask them yes or no questions. "Can you hear me?" "Can you move your arms/legs/etc." "Do you feel pain anywhere?" "Do you have emergency contacts?" etc... If they aren't responding don't worry either, possibly give the command "Blink once for no/twice for yes" or something with blinking! Sometimes even moving their head or signaling with their limbs is impossible but blinking is possible!
8. If someone says they "feel like they're about to have a seizure" It's already started, lie them down on their side gently and follow the steps above like moving objects!
Please spread these tips to loved ones or online in general. The more people know what to do, the better!
Thanks for reading! I learned some of the first aid and medical stuff I know now from well-researched fic, or at least fic that inspired me to do more research of my own. I’m hoping to have the chance to pass some of that on. :)
Hi Kino. I have known you since I read the " chasing silver chasing gold " fanfic and you can't imagine how deeply I loved your story. Hiyori is really special to me and I know it has been a long time but I am here to say thanks for all the hardwork.
Thank you so much! It's been a while since I've been able to do much in that universe, but it remains near and dear to my heart and I'm very glad that others have been able to share those feelings. It only means more to me as time goes on 💚
-looks to the heavens- why do I keep catching feelings about the swimming anime when I don't care at all about competitive swimming
anyway. idk yet if it's real or not but I'm actively outlining once again...and it's not just about Hiyori this time (though ofc there's plenty of that too). It's spreading.
So it may go without saying, but I haven't been around very much since November/December. There's a few reasons for this, the major practical ones being that I'm doing grad school and also moved and, y'know, the world existing as it is at the moment. But a big part of it was also that I got really burnt out and have been struggling to figure out how to go about fixing that.
Details below (nothing too intense, but some mental health talk comes up). TL;DR, I'm quiet but still around <3
The experience of writing CSCG was fantastic, but it was A Lot. I was staying up late a few nights a week, almost every week, just finishing chapters—on top of work, school, another side project or two, and general life stuff. I can't say I fully regret doing things the way that I did them, because without weekly deadlines it probably would've taken me years to finish, if I managed it at all. It was a whole huge rush, and that left it sloppy in places, but it also added a lot of energy to the process. I think it had a good effect on the story's tone as well, in a way that would've been hard to maintain otherwise. (If anyone here followed me because of my Undertale longfic, that's what happened there. I have not given up on it yet, but I'm not quite ready to get back to it yet, either.)
I just made sure I posted Every Week No Matter What, because I was scared of stopping if I slowed down, and because there didn't seem to be any real consequences to pushing myself that way, and because I figured that stretching yourself to the limit is how you grow.*
But when CSCG ended, I hit upon a few problems all at once. I'd pushed myself to the very edge on writing, right before throwing myself into another huge writing event, NaNoWriMo. I'd been doing it for so long that I didn't really want to skip it, and stopping cold turkey after writing (what ended up being) 6k-10k a week, almost every week, would've probably messed with me too, like an athlete who just suddenly stops training altogether. I had fun, even if most of the words I produced were pretty much unusable.
I'd also pushed...honestly well beyond anything I thought I was ready to accomplish in my writing by actually posting and finishing a longform story. At the outset, I hadn't expected anything but relief and/or pride at the end. That...wasn't what happened. There was definitely relief, and a whole ton of gratitude, and some pride in the abstract, but mostly I just felt exhausted. And annoyed with myself for not feeling happier about it, because the joy about reviews was part of what helped keep me going through writing, and yet something about finishing the story cut off a lot of my positive feelings related to that.
It also hurt a bit because I'd thought of myself (in part) as a person who was unsatisfied with myself because I couldn't finish stories. When it turned out I could, it meant that the uncomfortable feelings that came along about my writing couldn't be blamed on the fact that I'd left something unfinished.
But I think the worst part of finishing the story was how hard those final chapters were—not because of plot considerations (though tying off loose ends was definitely a challenge at times!), but because of how hard the emotional notes were to hit. I spent a year—a really rough year, that I'd known going into it would be rough but that quickly got more worse than I could've imagined at the outset—writing an angsty story about exhaustion, breakdown, and recovery. And then, when I hit the happy ending, I was still far away from any happy ending to the challenges I'd been facing in my own life, and I realized it was hard to write the characters being happy.
I felt terrible about that. I still do, to be honest. These were characters who spoke to my soul, who I fond points of resonance in closer than just about any other form of media that I'd ever experienced. And yet, after literal hundreds of thousands of words explaining their dynamic and finding ways to repair it, I could barely find it in me to write their happy ending. I could barely believe in it long enough to write it, much less imagine what might come after.
I know that plot comes from characters facing challenges, which usually involves a certain amount of distress, but not being able to find the emotion of peace of happiness for them still really distressed me. And I hit the end of the story while still feeling that guilt, and still feeling the pressure to find more within me, to write happy sequels to keep balancing out the trouble I'd put the characters through. And I hadn't even begun to account for the grief that comes up when a story ends, which a post I saw today describes very well.
Basically, I hit some huge walls in the writing process, and blasted through them through sheer force of will. I'd been living that way in general for a year or two even before the pandemic hit, weathering every setback that came my way. The commitments I'd made only slowed down a little when lockdowns started, and some of their consequencess all came together in some nasty combinations a few different times over the ensuing months, which led to me finding out what starts to happen after I push past enough limits, which is: Not Very Good things, mainly of the depression variety.
And so I've spent the last few months (from mid-November on, really) trying to figure out how to deal with said Not-Very-Good-ness. I've persevered through a combination of stubbornness, inertia, and just sheer ignorance of other options, but putting things up on the Internet is one of the hardest things for me to do confidence-wise, so that was one of the first things to go. I'm making progress, but I'm still as intimidated by the idea of putting myself out there as ever.
I've made some changes to my living situation, and gotten therapy and medication, and all of those things have helped a lot. Unfortunately, because of my studies, writing can't be a top priority for me this year, and it probably won't be next year, either. I haven't even had it in me to write many rough drafts lately, which I'm trying to think of a fallow period rather than letting it discourage me too badly. Still, I'd like to find ways to talk with people online more. You're very nice and I'm very happy to get to meet you!
As I figure things out, there will probably be times I'll just vanish for a month or two (or several or more, honestly). But I'm still around; I just withdraw into my shell to rest every once in a while.
* What these past few years have taught me is: yes, pushing yourself can be great for you in small doses! But it's important to do it while valuing your safety, treating yourself and your efforts as kindly as possible, and prioritizing getting plenty of rest afterward. I do okay at parts of that, but I still have (ironically) a lot of work to do on the rest.
