#wadebramwilson

BRAM MY BELOVED FELLOW HAIJI STAN mwah i love to talk about this boy every. single. day. thank u for the opportunity <333

#1 for the wips ask game is narrative!fic, what will hopefully one day be a fic exploring (and trying to explain) what made haiji go back to running after the terrible experiences he had with it in high school + what his future looks like and feels like now that he's re-injured his knee.

They’re singing for him, Kakeru and the others, and he feels detached from the moment. The soft glow of candles, the off-beat chorus. The press of people around him and the darkness around them. He can’t escape his future. Even in thinking about escaping it, it approaches. 

What if every moment is transition, from here on out? What if there is never another moment where he knows his footing? The weeks leading up to Hakone had been miserable, desperate, grueling, and anxiety-filled. But at least then he’d known what he was working toward. At least then he’d had a goal to work toward.

Now, what does he have? Most of a college degree, and final exams in two weeks. So little to show, for so much time spent. He feels like no time has passed. He feels like his high school self, still a child, but the chance to live like that is far behind him now. He cannot dodge his own future, even as he refuses to run toward it. While he is still refusing, it arrives. 

The singing stops, and the silence that it leaves seems to reverberate shrilly. They’re looking at him, some of them smiling gently, even. Haiji makes himself breathe out deep and fast. He exhales, and plunges them all into darkness. 

…

“Did you wish for something, Haiji-san?” Kakeru asks him later, sliding up quietly beside him at the sink. 

Haiji twists the tap off. “Ah,” he says lightly into the silence. “If I tell you, it won’t come true.”

“You’re surprisingly superstitious,” Kakeru observes, but says nothing more about it. Instead he says, “Here, you dry instead,” and takes a dish right out of Haiji’s hands. 

Haiji picks up a dishtowel without protest, and dries and stacks dishes mechanically. 

I hope you have the loveliest day, @wadebramwilson​!