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  “Let’s go together,” he had said. “You can do voice training over there.”

  But the last thing Kento wanted to deal with was the pitying glances of his group mates. He wanted even less to wallow in self-pity by thinking that they were all actually happy that he was out.

  “I’m not going,” he said firmly. He felt miserable just watching Tomoya get ready to go out, so he left the room in a hurry.

  There was a small wooded area behind the dormitory, where the coloured leaves from Gingko and Oriental plane trees fluttered to the ground.

  Kento had always been so busy with lessons at his agency that he had no idea about this peaceful place. But the trees looked somewhat forlorn in the low-hanging autumn afternoon sun, and he was far from in the mood to enjoy nature.

  “Damn it!”

  He angrily kicked at the heaps of fallen leaves on the dark earth. Just then, he thought he heard soft chuckling.

  He turned around to see Orihara in a casual outfit of pants and a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He had a black doctor’s bag in one hand and was standing a little way off, looking at him.

  “You again?” Kento said. “You sure come around often.”

  “Yeah. I got asked to do a house call.” Orihara adjusted his glasses. “You look like you have some free time on your hands,” he remarked.

  “Yeah. Suddenly I have nothing to do,” Kento said spitefully.

  “Then, how would you like to come over and have some tea?”

  Kento knew that even if he went back to his room, Tomoya wouldn’t be there. And he didn’t feel like going back to study all alone.

  “Okay,” Kento said decisively, and followed after Orihara. “I haven’t got permission from the dorm to go out, but they shouldn’t have a problem if I’m with you, right?”

  Orihara returned with Kento to Miyashita Clinic, where Nurse Nakagawa greeted them with a smile.

  “How nice of you to come by,” she said.

  “Mrs. Nakagawa, we’ll be having coffee in the living room. If a patient comes, could you let me know?”

  Orihara walked past the consultation room and invited Kento into the living room in the back. The room was spacious and Western-style, and about as large as the consultation room. There was a sofa, a large table, and a sideboard overflowing with golf competition trophies, Hakata dolls, and other knick-knacks. There was also an ancient-looking stereo system.

  Orihara went into the kitchen adjoining the living room and turned the coffee maker on.

  “Have a seat right there. I’ll bring your coffee over.”

  There was a rack beside the antique record player containing stacks of LPs.

  “Wow. This is so cool!” Kento extracted a few records and examined them with interest.

  “You find vinyl records cool?” Orihara appeared with a tray, laughing. “But they’re outdated. It’s all about CDs now, isn’t it?”

  “Actually, no,” Kento countered. “You need vinyl records to do a DJ mix.”

  A look of understanding crossed Orihara’s face as he put the tray down on the table.

  “I see. I remember now, you’re a dancer, right? Dance music, huh.”

  Kento was abruptly brought back to the reality that he was no longer allowed to dance. He put the LPs back on the shelf and looked at his feet.

  “But it doesn’t matter anymore. I can’t dance, anyway,” he said brusquely.

  “Don’t talk about it like that,” Orihara said reprovingly. “It’s not like you have to give up dancing for the rest of your life. Once your leg is better, you can dance whenever you want.”

  “But there’s no point if I can’t dance now,” Kento shot back irritably as he glared at Orihara. “Now I can’t even try out for the audition, and I’m going to fall behind everyone else. It’s all over!”

  He knew he was being immature, but he couldn’t stop the words from coming out.

  “You’d never understand how I feel, Doctor!”

  Orihara looked steadily back at Kento. “No, I do,” he said quietly.

  “As if you would!”

  Orihara sighed and picked up his mug of coffee. “No, I do understand.”

  Kento faltered at his grave tone. Orihara took a sip of coffee and continued.

  “I went to Shonan Private School for senior high school. Same as you. I was on the track team, and it was my dream to enter the Ekiden relay race.”

  “You were a runner?” Kento was surprised. He had assumed that Orihara was a bookish student because of his slender frame and glasses. “You don’t look like an athlete.”

  Orihara smiled wryly at Kento’s frank response. “I guess not,” he said. “But anyway, I ended up injuring my knee. Everyone told me not to push myself until I was better, but….”

  Kento found himself listening intently to this unexpectedly personal story. Orihara said he had felt like he was being left behind, just like Kento, and had secretly continued to train at night.

  “In the end, I had to be put into the hospital for quite a long time. My worst fears came true: I was never allowed to run again.”

  Kento stood rooted to the spot in front of the record player. Orihara fixed him with an earnest gaze.

  “I understand the panic you’re feeling. Really well. That’s why I don’t want you to push yourself too far.”

  “Oh, now I see.” Kento felt his resistance towards Orihara diminish instantly.

  “Come here and have some coffee.”

  Kento promptly went to his side and sat down on the sofa. He looked at Orihara as he brought the mug of coffee to his lips. Orihara’s eyes softened as he looked back at him.

  “In a year or so, you’ll be able to dance just as well as you used to. Remember what your manager said? You can use that time to do voice training or other stuff.”

  Maybe he was right. He began to feel like it was a better idea than pushing himself now and never being able to dance again.

  “What made you want to start dance?” Orihara asked him with a smile.

  “Hmm, let’s see,” Kento said thoughtfully, “well, I guess it’s because you don’t have to speak the same language to dance together.”

  “Hm?” Orihara looked a little puzzled, so Kento began to explain.

  “My dad was a photographer, and when I was little our whole family used to travel to a lot of places together. He’s working in New York right now.”

  They had travelled from Mongolia to China, Siberia, and crossed the Bering Strait to Alaska to descend to South America. In every country, Kento had been able to make friends just by jumping into the circle of people and dancing with them.

  “Even in Harlem, New York. Everyone was really good at street dance, and they would let me into the group and teach me even though I didn’t speak the language.”

  He would feel a sense of unity when he danced with them.

  “It’s a really great feeling.”

  Orihara nodded. “Running on the track is the same. I used to get that feeling when I ran with other people. Once we crossed the finish line, it didn’t matter who was on your team or who wasn’t. After the competition was over, you’d just feel like you’ve accomplished something big together.”

  “Yeah! That’s exactly what it’s like!” Kento couldn’t help but shout with joy at being understood. “?Oh, sorry for yelling.” He stuck his tongue out sheepishly. Orihara’s eyes narrowed tenderly as he looked at Kento.

  “Good, do you feel better now?”

  “A bit.”

  “Doctor, there’s a patient here to see you,” Nurse Nakagawa’s voice came from the consultation room.

  “Alright, I’m coming.” Orihara stood up.

  “Can I visit again?” Kento asked. Coming to Orihara’s clinic seemed more enjoyable than being alone in his dorm room. “I have nothing to do, anyway. And you don’t seem too busy, either, Doctor.”

  “Feel free to come anytime,” Orihara said, laughing.

  Chapter 5

  Kento began to visit Miyashita
Clinic every day to see Orihara. Much of it was because he felt awkward to be in the same room as Tomoya, who was steadily advancing his career. Another part of him had started to see Orihara like an upperclassman to look up to, especially after learning that Orihara had suffered the same troubles as he did.

  Orihara had consultations until five o’clock, during which Kento studied and did his homework back at his dorm. Once the clock struck five, he went bursting out the door.

  Orihara seemed to appreciate his company as well, since he lived alone. Soon, he began inviting Kento over for dinner.

  Thankfully, Kento did not get in trouble for being away for days without permission. Apparently the dorm had found it unnecessary to give him a warning, since he was only visiting the school doctor. The dormitory head, in fact, was the husband of the school nurse, Mrs. Fujimoto.

  One day, Orihara explained to him why that was.

  Until a few years ago, Fujimoto had been a nurse at Miyashita Clinic. She loved children and took good care of Orihara as well. Once her own daughter became a nurse and left home to be independent, Fujimoto took the leap to go back to nursing college to become a qualified school nurse. She chose this path in hopes of taking care of many more children. Although Miyashita Clinic suffered from her loss, in a convenient turn of events, Fujimoto’s daughter got married, left her job at the hospital, and began to work at Miyashita Clinic instead.

  On the other hand, Fujimoto’s husband, a long-distance truck driver, had gotten into a collision which left him with retinal detachment and deteriorated vision. He was forced to retire from his job.

  Luckily, Shonan Private School happened to have open positions for a live-in dormitory head and a school nurse. Both Fujimoto and her husband took the chance to make their career changes.

  “That’s why both my uncle and I owe Mrs. Fujimoto a lot. If she asks me to make a house call, I can’t say no.”

  Orihara smiled at Kento, who was over for a visit.

  “But not many people have both a school nurse’s license and a regular nurse’s license. It’s incredibly helpful to have Mrs. Fujimoto around.”

  Orihara explained that school nurses were not quite as qualified as doctors or nurses, which meant they were not allowed to perform medical procedures.

  “A regular school nurse wouldn’t be allowed to carry out medical procedures, but since Mrs. Fujimoto has a nurse’s license, she can help me give needles.”

  “Wow, really? I always thought school nurses were doctors, but I guess they’re completely different.”

  “A school nurse’s job is to protect the health of the students, not to make their injuries or illnesses better. Their job is actually completely different.”

  Apart from a school nurse, Shonan Private School also had two counsellors to take care of students’ mental health. They lived off-campus and worked in shifts at the counselling room.

  Kento had yet to go to counselling room. He was usually bursting with energy, so he often visited the infirmary more frequently to get his cuts and scrapes treated. He remembered Fujimoto treating his wounds, and asked, “But school nurses are still allowed to wrap bandages and disinfect wounds, right?”

  Orihara laughed again. “That’s household medicine, so everyone’s allowed to do it. If you were a child and you scraped your knee, your mother would be the one to disinfect it and put a bandage on it, right?”

  “Oh, right.”

  Nurse Nakagawa often prepared dinner for them, but “preparing” only went as far as laying the ingredients out. Kento endured the first few meals cooked by Orihara, like his soggy stir fry and undercooked curry, but before long, his patience snapped.

  Kento spoke up one evening as Orihara clumsily wandered back and forth in the kitchen.

  “I’ll make dinner,” he offered. He walked over and took the knife from Orihara. “I thought you’d be good at cooking since you said you lived on your own for a long time. But you’re not. I don’t believe it!”

  “It’s not that bad, is it? It’s still edible.” Orihara looked uncertainly at him in an apron.

  “It’s edible, yeah, since it’s not rotten. But it tastes like crap!”

  Kento kicked a dejected-looking Orihara out of the kitchen and into the living room.

  “You can go study or something, Doctor.”

  Cooking came as second nature to Kento. He had grown up with outdoorsy parents, and they had camped often when they travelled. He wasn’t the best at making complicated dishes, but he was always looking for ways to get the best taste with as little effort and time as possible.

  He saw the bag of bread crumbs, eggs, and two thick slices of pork chops sitting on the cutting board and deduced that Orihara was going quite beyond his abilities by attempting to make breaded pork cutlets.

  “I can’t believe this. You’re overestimating yourself. I bet you anything you’d probably end up undercooking it. And look: the bread crumbs are moldy!”

  He rifled through the cupboards and found a box of corn flakes that wasn’t expired.

  “I’m going to make Wiener schnitzel,” he announced. This would only use a small amount of oil, which meant less to clean up and less harm to the environment.

  He ran the knife into a few spots on the pork chops to cut the tendons, then began tenderizing it with the back of the knife. When the meat was well flattened out, he dipped it into the beaten egg mixture, then coated it with corn flakes that he had ground into crumbs.

  “With a side of potatoes, of course.” He cut a cross into the whole potatoes before wrapping them in plastic wrap and putting them into the microwave.

  “Now for a little colour.”

  He found a can of peas, which he drained and doled out around the potato, letting their heat warm them up.

  “Done!”

  Orihara took a bite. “It’s delicious,” he exclaimed. “Kento, you’re amazing. Now I can see why your parents trusted you to live by yourself.”

  Kento beamed proudly, sure that he had impressed Orihara. “You’re pretty bad at cooking for someone who’s lived by himself for so long,” he quipped.

  “Can’t deny that,” Orihara ducked his head sheepishly.

  “Where’s your hometown, Doctor?” Kento asked while he was at it, since the topic had never come up before.

  “Kanazawa,” Orihara answered as he poked at his potato. “I’ve been living out here since high school, but I never had to cook for myself since I was living at my uncle’s place. In university, I was too busy to cook, so I just ate out. To tell you the truth, I’ve only started my cooking routine recently.”

  “What? So all of those times you fed me, you didn’t know what you were doing?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Orihara said, laughing, which made Kento burst out laughing along with him.

  After dinner, Orihara got to work on the computer. He said he was aggregating all of the cases he had handled at the university hospital.

  “It’s a system called physician certification, and you have to submit a report that summarizes all of the cases you’ve handled at the university hospital. You need to do it to be certified as a surgeon,” Orihara explained.

  Kento decided to put on his headphones and listen to DZ’s new song on his Walkman. He wouldn’t be background-dancing for them for some time, but he still wanted to do whatever he could to prepare.

  “Kento, do you still go to your management office?” Orihara asked. “You come here almost every day, even on weekends. I don’t see you going over there much anymore. You might not be able to dance, but you should still take some acting lessons or do some voice training.”

  “Yeah, I know, but…” Kento took off his headphones and answered rather carelessly. “I’m not scheduled to debut anyway, so the voice instructor doesn’t take me seriously. All he does is tell me to sing from my belly. I’m starting to get sick of it.”

  “From your belly? Is that a vocalization method?” Orihara tilted his head slightly.

  “Probably. I thi
nk he means I have to put air in my belly.” Kento thumped his belly over his T-shirt.

  “Hmm, I don’t think that’s quite it.” Orihara cocked his head again. “Kento, have you ever heard of abdominal breathing?”

  “Of course I have.”

  Orihara opened a medical book that was lying nearby and brought it over to where Kento was sitting on the sofa.

  “When you inhale, this part called the thorax ? the part surrounded by your rib cage ? expands, and lets air into your lungs. This other part, called the diaphragm, is also important.”

  Orihara pointed at a page with an anatomy chart.

  “The diaphragm is the muscle that separates the chest and abdomen. When you use your diaphragm effectively, it’s called abdominal breathing. It doesn’t mean the air goes into your stomach.”

  “Oh, okay. When he said I had to let my belly swell, I thought he meant I had to put air into it.”

  Orihara managed to repress a laugh and keep a straight face while he continued to explain.

  “You have to concentrate on using your diaphragm. That way, you’ll be able to get more air into your lungs.”

  Kento lowered his gaze onto his stomach. “How do I move my diaphragm?”

  “Let’s see....” Orihara thought for a moment, then said, “Open wide and breathe out as much air as you can. So much that you can’t exhale anymore.”

  “Okay.” Kento inhaled deeply before exhaling as much as he could.

  “Once you think you can’t breathe out anymore, purse your lips and blow like you’re blowing out a candle. You should be able to get more air out.”

  “You’re right!” Kento exclaimed with wide eyes, once he had exhaled with pursed lips. He had exhaled until he felt like he had emptied every cubic centimeter of air from his lungs, yet he had still been able to breathe out a lot of air from his chest.

  “Did you feel your abs flex when you did that?”

  “Actually, come to think of it, I did!” Kento nodded. It was exactly as Orihara said.