fanfic; cultivation; part 12

[acperience]

▶ Part 11

—

Again, Tiir hates hospitals.

He wants to cry. He wants to shout, throw something, attack someone—anything to alleviate this feeling that won’t disappear.

He wants to find the driver the responsible for this and—as extreme as it might sound—kill him. It’s just as well that the driver died upon impact, as cruel as that may make Tiir. He hates him, hates him so much—it doesn’t matter that he never even met the man and never will. Right now, he despises him more than anyone else in the world.

They wouldn’t, but what does it matter, what the dead would or wouldn’t do?

He had a concussion, they told him. That and some scrapes and bruises aside, he’s relatively uninjured. Minato, likewise, doesn’t even need to stay at the hospital. They keep telling Tiir how it’s thanks to him.

How he saved Minato.

Tiir wants to laugh at that.

He wants to break down so badly, but he can’t.

They’re trying to cheer him up, he knows. Lighten up the situation. He hates them all for it, for they should at least let him have this. Let him have his resentment towards the murderer (for he refuses to see it in any other way) and let him have his grief—grief over the ones who weren’t saved.

Why weren’t they saved?

It’s a question that repeats itself endlessly in his mind, even though he knows it can’t be answered. As always, there isn’t a reason. There never seems to be one.

It should’ve been him. Surely, his life is worth less than theirs—what theirs was.

It doesn’t matter, though. He can’t do a damn thing about it. He can’t change time and undo the event. He can’t bring them back, any more than he can bring Ene back. Nothing can. The dead stay dead, and the living are left to mourn.

It’s been years since Ene’s death, but Tiir still isn’t ready to bury a friend again.

With slow, measured steps—as it feels like it’s all he can do to remain standing—he approaches the door, before slowly opening it. A lone bed rests in the room, with a near-still figure lying in it, tubes hooked up to his body. Tiir’s tempted to look away—he utterly despises hospitals—but forces himself to smile weakly instead.

“You’ve looked better.”

Walter doesn’t seem amused, but he rarely, if ever, does. He merely acknowledges Tiir’s words with a glance, before moving his gaze elsewhere in that dismissive way Tiir is used to. Though he knows that Walter would rather that he not be there, he moves over to the chair by the bed and makes himself comfortable.

Tiir stares at Walter, who stares at the wall opposite of Tiir. When it becomes clear that Walter isn’t going to speak and Tiir gets bored of waiting, he looks over at the bedside table, where a vase filled with flowers stands. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who it’s from.

“She’ll likely visit you tomorrow,” Tiir remarks. “I heard she tried to see you earlier, but your condition forbade you from having visitors.”

As expected, Walter doesn’t respond, but Tiir figures that it’s still probably good news to him, if he even lends credit to anything Tiir says. Tiir then switches his attention from the flowers to the window, very much trying to avoid looking at the medical equipment.

Walter was just short of being in critical condition, Tiir heard. He didn’t avoid being hit, but he did manage to move away enough to minimize the damage. His injuries are bad, but nothing life-threatening. He’ll be released from the hospital eventually.

He’ll return to the orphanage, just as Tiir will.

Lafra and Pueka won’t.

No one wanted to tell him, but Tiir demanded to know. The orphanage worker who’d visited him had heard it from witnesses of the crash, and even though she evidently didn’t want to talk about it, Tiir refused to be in the dark.

Lafra had tried to push Pueka away, dying instantly. Pueka had still been hit, and died from her injuries at the hospital.

Truly.

Truly, there wasn’t a reason for anything.

“… I assume you’ve heard about Lafra and Pueka,” Tiir says, even though he doesn’t want to talk about it any more than the worker did.

“They’re dead,” Walter states with all the tact and flatness Tiir has come to expect from him.

“That… describes it well, yes.”

Again, silence falls over them. It occurs to Tiir that he’s never had a proper conversation with Walter in all the years he’s known him (as he bitterly recalls how pleased Lafra had been when he achieved such a thing, because damn it, Lafra—). Walter barely gave him the time of day since they first met, and Tiir never saw much of a reason to try and reach out to him the way Guriko and Minato had.

(“… He’s a good person.”)

It’s almost funny, because with Minato leaving and Pueka and Lafra dead (and Tiir swears, if the driver weren’t already dead, he would’ve hunted him down and killed him himself), Walter is, in a sense, the closest person to him at the orphanage.

And so, with Walter staring at the wall and Tiir gazing out the window as if they’re pretending that the other doesn’t exist, Tiir remembers. Like walking along a path and turning over every stone before placing it back on the ground—he thinks over his memories.

He recalls his first meeting with Walter—a frowning, blond kid whom Tiir hadn’t thought much. Actually, he’d thought him to be one of the rudest people he’d met, though in hindsight, Tiir himself had probably been worse in the long run. He picked fights with Walter on occasion after that, whenever the other boy said something to annoy him. He typically won as well, though he had to admit that Walter put up a better fight than most. It was enjoyable, almost.

Then, somehow, he learned about him along the way. Walter’s parents were dead, which was hardly a surprise. Of interest to Tiir was how they died, specifically. Walter hails from a group of people who are victimized by society. Repressed, discriminated against—a story that Tiir himself is all too familiar with. His parents were at a protest for rights, where they were shot and killed.

Walter never speaks of his parents. Idly, Tiir wonders if he hates the people responsible. If he misses them—his parents.

Not that it matters much. They’ve already left this world, like Lafra and Pueka. There isn’t anything Walter can do, even if he wants to.

In a way, Tiir hates how similar they are at times. Looking at Walter sometimes feels like looking at a mirror. Nevertheless, he glances over at him. Walter still isn’t facing him, but to Tiir’s surprise, he speaks.

“… Tell Maurits I won’t be coming in for work for a while,” he says quietly. Tiir can tell how much he didn’t want to have to say that. His mouth twitches upward into a smile.

“You’ll have to give me his number.”

“Give me a pen and paper, then.”

“I’ll ask a nurse,” Tiir replies in an absent-minded manner, before gazing out the window again. He wonders if this counts as a civil conversation.

The sky is clear and blue and the sun is shining. The weather outside is too perfect, just as it was on the day of the incident. It’s another beautiful day to be alive.

Lafra and Pueka aren’t, though.

But Minato is.

Tiir is.

Walter is as well.

“You know,” Tiir begins without looking at Walter, “I really don’t like you.”

Walter doesn’t make a sound. Tiir doubts he even cares, much like Tiir couldn’t care less as to what Walter thought of him. It’s fine, though—they don’t have to like each other. Because even so—

Turning to Walter, Tiir smiles faintly.

“Even so, I’m glad you survived,” he tells Walter, as the latter finally looks at him.

—And as much as a part of him wishes it were Lafra or Pueka, he means it.

—

▶ Part 13