Chapter Text
It felt like there was something in his throat. Permanently lodged within muscle and tissue, an itch that’s been steadily crawling upwards and into the frontlines of his skull.
Sae inhales a breath and keeps it in, reaches up with a hand to hold his nose and then tries to pop his ears to clear the sludge in his throat but the feeling never really goes away. He’s done this a countless number of times within the last few hours, and each time it works but only for a mere five minutes at most before the feeling returns. He should probably stop. There was no point in it anyway.
He turns his head to look outside the window. It was pitch black, but even so his view would have been obscured by the wings of the plane. The only thing he sees now are the steady flashes of red on the edge of the wing and the light wisps of clouds that pass by. He idly follows the rhythm of the flashes and counts one every second. Seconds that drag by like the wings that drag through puffs of cloud.
His mind drifts, and his thoughts land back on the look on his brother’s face moments before he had boarded the plane. The way Rin’s eyes had shone with admiration and silent promises. Then there was the sadness, because despite what he thought Rin was never good at hiding his emotions. A mix of something between the lines of don’t leave yet, and go chase after our dreams.
Sae closes his eyes. The image only imprints itself harder, and somehow this is the thing that helps clear away the clog, even if it still isn’t fully gone. It’s better still. It makes him wonder if distractions and forgetfulness are really all that’s needed to get rid of the annoyances in life. He releases a breath through his nose now that his head feels clearer.
It couldn’t have been more than five hours since the plane had taken off, and Sae only knows because he’s only been offered drinks and a small pack of peanuts to snack on. At least two more hours until their first meal would be served, but Sae didn’t feel an ounce of hunger despite his last meal being over ten hours ago.
The pack of peanuts sits heavy in the palm of his hand, the plastic full of wrinkles due to his fidgeting and his empty water cup is nestled in the pocket of the seat in front of him. Something weird happens, and the sudden realization that from now on he will be having most of his meals alone comes with it. Not really, of course, because there are people all around him and he’s sure he’ll have plenty of meals with his future teammates, but he doesn’t know them. Ten hours from now they will all part ways in a foreign country, and Sae will never see the faces of these strangers ever again. They might as well have not even existed.
Sae crushes a peanut through the plastic with his nail. If he looks through the little window on the packet he could see it crack through the middle unevenly, a burst of miniscule crumbs falling through and collecting at the bottom to join with the rest of the peanuts that he had crushed unevenly. Imperfectly. He was running out of peanuts to destroy.
There is nothing to worry about, and even if there was, there is no use in worrying over something that isn’t in the present. At least, that is what he’s been trying to believe.
This is a good thing. Leaving Japan was the right decision. He knows there is nothing left for him there, so what is the point in staying? With nothing left to gain, the obvious choice was to leave in search of better opportunities and harsher challenges. This was the best thing that he could do for his career, and if that meant leaving behind the life he had before this to build the life that was always destined to be his, then this was just a stepping stone towards that.
There was nothing to be scared of. He’ll get used to it eventually. The people, the streets, the language, the culture, he’ll adjust. In another timeline, the one where he is grown and a star that shines brightly across the world, Sae is happy and fulfilled. That version of him had already gone through what he was about to go through, and he made it out fine, so he will too.
He tries to calm the beating of his heart, its pace slightly faster than usual with pumps that threaten to rise up and into his throat. He tries, but really he doesn’t know how, so he crushes the last whole peanut in the packet with his thumb. It doesn’t work.
Sae opens his eyes and gazes up at the roof of the airplane. The feeling was coming back. He raises a hand to his nose and pinches the tip of it to pop his ears.
Exhaustion washes over him, and Sae closes his eyes to rest them for just a moment but he ends up sleeping past dinner. The feeling stays.