A Piece of Mismatched Puzzle
Chara: Johnny, Ten
Category: one-shot, college, Spring Hills au
Genre: slice of life
Words: 3,132
A/N: this story has nothing romantic in it,, i guess. be aware of grammatical errors and limited vocab. i am no native.
Today was one of those days where things went uncomfortably all right. When he was washing his face in the morning, Johnny felt a familiar tingle in the back of his mind, announcing something was going to be moving in the wrong turn, and he was waiting for that thing to occur throughout the day. But he'd gotten himself a cup of americano from every Spring Hills's student go-to café Decressendo and drunk it down without choking or spilling it all down the front of someone. He arrived at his classes on time. He got complimented by a lecturer for pointing out a typo on her presentation. He didn't lose his pen. He didn't trip in the hallway or bump into someone that would glare angrily at him or throw him a punch. But did that mean the day was getting better? Johnny hoped so, but the tingle didn't disappear even when he convinced himself that everything was going to be just the way it usually was. Because deep down he knew it wouldn't. That's just how intuition works; your senses had you thinking today was just a regular day where you'd go through the day doing everything you were supposed to do, but your heart sang you a song of notice and it wouldn't stop bothering you until something unfortunate actually happened. Johnny felt it; he'd been feeling it the whole day. He tried to ignore it nevertheless. For dwelling on it wouldn't tell him anything about what was going to be wrong anyway.
The discomfort put Johnny into a cautious state, though you wouldn't know it when you see him smiling and laughing and responding to his friends seemingly wholeheartedly as if he was the one who could help you make your day better. By the time the last class of the day took place, the nuisance intensified. It'd started to irritate him, but Johnny tried his best not to think about it. He'd learned that freaking out over bad feelings would only cause a tremendous amount of anxiety, and additional nuisance wasn't at all what he needed at the moment.
The class had been running for twenty minutes or so when everyone in the room heard the door creaked open. They turned their heads in unison to see a boy in black and white flannel, black jeans, and a pair of worn out grey Converse came in, his eyes down and his shoulders slumped, and the lecturer shot him an annoyed look either for him being late or disturbing her on-going class. The boy mumbled a series of apology, and she eventually let him make his way up the theater-style stairs to sit in the second farthest row. She continued her explanation on the characteristics of contemporary culture of South Korea, but not for long. She wasted the next half an hour ranting about how much she hated a tardy student, delivered to the entirety of the class but her glowering gaze mostly fixed at the boy, yet the whole class wearily regarded it as total gibberish.
Johnny was sitting in the last row, his favorite spot where he could easily scan the spacious room and observe his classmates all the way down to the front row. He watched the black-haired boy as he sat down in the row in front him. After glancing at the lecturer to make sure she wasn't watching, Johnny leaned in to his direction. "Why bother come late, Ten? I thought you weren't coming to this class ever again," he said lightly in low voice, but Ten only cast him a sidelong glance before busying himself with his backpack and books. That put a crease in between Johnny's eyebrows. Weird, he thought as he pulled back. Ten was supposed to reply with an innocently mischiveous grin like he usually did.
As Johnny watched Ten more closely, he realized that the boy was unusually pale. He'd lost the color of flushing pink that used to brighten up his smiley face. Someone next to him kept inviting him to joke around with his gags, but Ten only flashed him an unwilling smile. Johnny thought the boy just probably didn't get to have a sip of his afternoon coffee because he napped in the dance room, overslept, and had to rush to get to the class. His mood would lift up by itself as his typical after-sleep annoyance subsided. Johnny concluded that thought of his and dragged his focus back on the lecture. Ten didn't look back to see him at all until the class was announced to be over.
The lecturer turned out to be still mad at Ten as she called him out before the class ended. "Whoever showed up late in my class today, please volunteer yourself to clean the whiteboard," she said aloud. No one else came in behind the approved time, so Ten was the only student who was considered late. He stood up immediately and walked down the stairs to come to the front. Johnny noticed as he put his books back into his bag that Ten was erasing the jumbled scribbles on the whiteboard hastily, leaving traces of black ink here and there. Before he could make anything out of his odd behavior, Ten finished his job and was going to put the eraser back on the table, but his hand accidentally elbowed the lecturer's tumbler half-filled with water and causing it to spill on the surface of the table.
The class fell silent instantly. Luckily, the lecturer had finished collecting her materials so the table was empty when the water poured. Almost everyone who saw it gasped, some just gaped at the scene. Ten bowed repeatedly and mumbled another series of apology to the lecturer, but she just scrunched her bright red lips and waved him off. She grabbed her now empty tumbler and walked towards the door, her heeled shoes trod with indignant pace.
There was an extended moment of silence before someone eventually shouted, "What the fuck is so wrong with you today?"
"You triggered her bad mood and she lashed it out at us all!"
"We've been trying to be good! It was hard when she started being obnoxious, you know!"
People complained and whined. Ten tried to defend himself, but his words stammered. His eyes glinted with panicky look. It was something Johnny never saw of him, for he always carries the troubles he caused with a grin so charming it could lead anyone into thinking he did it merely because he's purely reckless and playful. Johnny grabbed Ten's backpack and walked to him, who now was wiping the table with tissues some girl at the front row had given him. Johnny extended the backpack to him. As he did so, he said, in low voice again, "You don't look well."
Ten was head down on the table, not allowing Johnny to get a closer look at his face. "It's been a bad day."
"Why didn't you tell me anything?"
"Why should I?"
Johnny frowned. "I could've helped you?" he said, perplexed. "Am I not your first person on-dial anymore?" Ten had always been coming to Johnny, taking with him all the problems he had caused or that chased after him, for almost four years of their friendship. Johnny knew his crime and michief more than what Ten's family was aware of. It seemed that it just occurred to Ten that Johnny didn't deserve to being talked to like he was nobody. He cleared his thoughts and stopped wiping the table. He eventually looked up and met Johnny's demanding yet concerned eyes.
It took him almost all the composure he'd been preserving to say, "I got into a car accident. Lucas and I." He paused. "We hit an old man. He's dying as we speak."
Johnny couldn't say anything.
His eyes widened as he began to realize that the strange foreboding he'd been getting was meant for this. He just knew it, like turning a piece of puzzle he thought wouldn't fit in the only empty space left to a different angle that matched and eventually completed the picture.
Johnny started to notice what he missed from Ten's strange behavior. Ten's hands were trembling. Fear overshadowed his face. A wave of anxiety swept away the remnants of his serenity. He now looked visibly shaken, and his vulnerability squeezed Johnny right in the heart.
A few seconds later, Johnny drew a long breath. He then extended his hand in front of the shorter boy. "Give me the key," he said peremptorily. Obedient like a little child, Ten took the key of Lucas's BMW out of the front pocket of his jeans and put it on Johnny's open palm. "We'll go to see the old man now. Tell me where the hospital is."
Ten told Johnny everything in the car. Johnny concluded that it wasn't their fault that they ran into someone who crossed the street when the pedestrian lamp had turned red, but it didn't change the fact that they had injured the old man. Hours had passed since the incident but Ten still couldn't remove the image from his head, a thin and wrinkled figure wrapped in thick brown coat lying unmoving in the street. Neither did he or Lucas have the courage to lay a finger on him; they were afraid any artificial movement would cause further damage to the body. Lucas frantically touched his cellphone to call for help. Ten paced back and forth aimlessly, his body trembling with panic, struggling to get himself together. A few minutes later came the cops and ambulance, and medics saved the old man from the growing spectators that had started clustering around him. The two young men were brought to the police station. They spent practically the rest of the morning until after noon being asked and stared at with sullen voice and stern eyes by the officers in a room they'd thought they'd never come in, no matter how problematic and mischiveous they were. But they did, and it became the first real crime they'd ever done.
"Stop shaking." Johnny's voice dissipated the quietness in the car. He was as tensed as Ten, and even though Ten knew he had upset him with his new trouble, Johnny didn't show it.
Ten lifted his hands and made a violent shaking gesture. "I can't," he teased, trying to bring a brighter mood. "I'm shaking because you look as mad as my dad when he found out. I'm driving with my furious dad now. I'm scared."
Johnny threw him a glare. "I'm not. Your dad could've disowned you. I won't."
"That's sweet. Am I that precious to you?"
"You're misinterpreting the situation."
"I know I am." Ignoring Johnny, Ten answered his own question, grinning widely at his own effort of joking.
Johnny sighed a whatever, and Ten chuckled. Apparently, he was attempting a distraction. He's getting more anxious than he'd been as they came nearer to the hospital. He tried to talk it on to random topics of people and events at their campus, as well as to unease the atmosphere and avert Johnny's attention from his trembling body. Yet still, Johnny noticed his shaking hands and after they pulled up in the parking lot, the taller guy took both of his hands and held them in a comforting grip.
"Hey, look at me."
Ten did as he said. He could see his own reflection in his eyes, and he realized how nervous and frightened he was now. The question that he had tried not to think about reappeared. It was blazing in red lights in his head, forcing to steal his attention, invading his mind with the only possibility way scarier than his angry dad: What if the old man died?
"He'll make it," Johnny said, as if he could read Ten's mind. His voice as delicate as the autumn breeze. "It's okay. Everything's gonna be all right."
"What if he don't?" Ten croaked, his voice imperceptibly visible with fear.
"It's still not your fault," Johnny reassured him. "It was an accident. We'll discuss it with his family. Come on, now. Show no fear, young man."
And off they went. Soon they found out that the old man was undergoing a surgery. They waited outside the room together with his family, which consisted only of a woman (his daughter) and her five years old son (his granddaughter) who was sleeping on the nearest couch, bundled in a sheet of hospital's blanket. They were expecting a bigger family, though, and had prepared themselves both mentally and emotionally to get lashed out at for causing such a serious trouble. But the woman just smiled at them weakly when they met, and she said it was okay to respond Ten's profound apology. "I knew it'd happen sooner or later," she said. Her eyes were red. Traces of dry tears stained her thin cheeks. Her voice exposed exhaustion that barely disguised her worry. "My father is very old and lonely. All of his friends are dead. He's tired of waiting for his turn. He's been wanting to end his life."
Her last sentence sent Johnny and Ten into a moment of contemplation as they were sat in a nearby corridor. Neither of them spoke, for they had to process the new information carefully in their minds, and they were too shocked to say anything. After a few moments, Johnny snorted. Such a reaction surprised Ten and had the younger boy turned his head to look at him.
"Life is sometimes ridiculous," he said. "I had this weird feeling that something would go wrong. It didn't happen to me. It turned out it was about you running into an accident that could finish someone off his life. But now I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that you struck him right where he wanted to be. He wanted it to happen anyway. It was an attempt of suicide. If he can't make it, he's saved from his withering life. If he's still alive, he'll most likely try to kill himself again, I'm sure about that."
"So what should I feel now? Happy? Sad?"
"I think we should carry on what his daughter feels. If the man dies and she's happy, we'll be happy for her, too. If she's sad, well, sad is what everyone naturally feels when someone is dead, anyway."
"Sounds so simple." Ten didn't tell Johnny that he still held a big chunk of guilt in his chest, but he couldn't deny the relieved feeling that grew and quickly washed over his fear and anxiety. Nothing felt right about helping someone commit suicide, but both Ten and Lucas had never had the intention to help the man end his life to begin with. It was an accident, and just like how they couldn't predict what their car would run into in the street even though they were driving it, they couldn't foresee what's waiting in the near future, either.
After what felt like eternity, Johnny looked up from his phone screen just in time to see a doctor appeared from the operation room. His spontaneous reaction was to stand up, and he was a little bit late to realize that Ten was still leaning his head on his shoulder, sound asleep. The sudden movement jerked him up, and Johnny was quick to apologize. He told him about the doctor's appearance, and both of them then dashed towards the man in blue sanitary clothing who was talking with the old man's daughter. By the time they arrived, the woman had bursted into tears. Yet her tears were mixed with weak, restrained laugh. "He's free, he's free," she chanted. Ten's heart sank. Johnny stared at the floor.
The old man was gone.
But he was now free from his misery, and that's what his daughter was chanting for.
"Today is wild," Johnny said.
"And nerve-wrecking," added Ten.
They had left the hospital and hit the road. The old man's daughter sent them off and convinced them that they needed not to meet her again, which was relieving for Ten and Lucas's side. They didn't have to deal with cops and laws anymore, of which Ten found so daunting that he promised himself to not cause serious troubles that bring about severe damage. He still felt bad for the old man, though. He couldn't be happy just because his soul was free after suffering from a lonely and depressing life. He knew he didn't have the right to judge the old man's daughter decision to let the old man go so easily, but he trusted himself enough to believe that every old man has the right to die in a more convenient place and situation, by the most peaceful way it could be.
The fact that the man was trying to commit suicide by throwing himself into the mouth of death in the street was not the kind of thought that could help you feel better. The more you think of it, the more depressing and of a pity it is. And even after everything that happened today, and how easier the problem solved than what Ten was afraid of (he imagined himself being called out to court and dragged to jail and it was already terrible, just imagining it), the feelings of shock, guilt, and anxiety still lingered. Ten voiced all of these thoughts out to Johnny who drove next to him. Johnny said, in his deep yet soft, stress-reliefing voice that Ten (and everybody who heard it) liked, "Your body needs time to digest an overwhelming amount of emotions you felt in a span of a day. Give it a few hours or days, or weeks. You'll forget it eventually, and it'll remain a memory. Or a lesson, as you should've learned to drive more carefully."
"Hey, you said it wasn't my fault," Ten argued. "And it wasn't me who drove. It was Lucas. I don't drive. My slaves drive for me."
Johnny wished his feet didn't have to step on the car pedals so he could kick the boy in the front seat and replace his triumphant laugh with a grimace of agony. But he brushed that thought off and reminded himself that it was rough enough to be unable to see the boy's usual self almost all day. Now that his mischief and smiles and beaming eyes had returned, Johnny wanted nothing but them to not fade or disappear again from his view. He'd also learned his own lesson, anyway, which is whenever he gets a bad feeling, he's obligated to check on his friends and family and everyone his heart is connected with to make sure everything is okay.
