Ai ~ when Love becomes Despair

Chapter 5: Past

„Shiny-san?!" Puzzled, Rei stared at the President of his agency. Why was he here so soon? Obviously, he had to come sooner or later, since Aine had been one of his most successful Idols, but Reiji had never guessed to meet Saotome here this early.
"That's right, Mr Kotobuki. Mr Uramoto informed me about the current situation this morning", Saotomes sight wandered from Reiji to Aine, "I just had to see the unbelievable with my own eyes as soon as possible."
Uramoto-Sensei could only raise his shoulders to apologise as Reiji looked with accusingly eyes. Nonetheless, he new better than anyone else that he couldn't reproach Uramoto-Sensei, knowing that the Doc also worked for the Shining Agency. Even though, Reiji wanted to protect his friend. Naturally, he did has the dream to stand on the same stage with Aine once again, may it be for just one tiny song. On the other hand, that was exactly the thing that brought Aine here in the first place and Reiji didn't want Saotome to force his friend right onto a stage and into this life again. If it would come to this, Aine should be able to decide for himself if and when he wants to come back to being an Idol, after a satisfactory rest.
To Reiji*s surprise, Saotome turned around to face Uramoto-sensei without saying anything to Aine. "Aaaalright, Mr Uramoto, when can we start the project?"
Project? What project? Did Saotome already planned Aine's debut?
"It depends on the recovery... I'd say in about one or two weeks", stated Uramoto-Sensei while seeing through Aine's medical file.
"I expect your report then. Goodbye", but before Saotome vanished, he said some final words towards Reiji, while standing in the open door, "Mr Kotobuki, You will discharge your appointments again starting tomorrow." With that, he left the room in Silence.
Meanwhile, Reiji still tried to find an answer to this project. What exactly does the President plan to do this time? Before getting the chance to jump up to drag Uramoto-sensei outside this room and ask him what Saotome meant, Aine spoke up, who didn't seemed to be the least interested in Saotome's visit.
"Rei-chan? May... May I ask you something?"
"Sure." Replyed the brown-haired Idol, trying to no longer let this project thing make him feel insecure.
"For how long have I been here exactly?"
Reiji certainly did not expect a question like this, consequential unprepared did it hit him and it took some time until Reiji was back on track.
Before he could give his friend an answer, Uramoto-Sensei cut in, for what Rei thanked him in silence. But the Doc just said, how he would leave the both of them alone for now, which at the same time was an indirect hint towards Reiji, that he will have the choice to whether or not he tells Aine the truth and to what extend. Even though Uramoto would watch from the room next door. He also advised Reiji to really take a nice long rest as soon as he could manage it, Reiji could replay with yes and a Sigh of surrender.
By the time Uramoto-sensei left, Aine looked up to Reiji, full of expectation. Rei on the other hand, tried to win as much time as he could. "Why do you even want to know that?"
"You all look so different", his friend started, "Uramoto-oji-san, Saotome-san and especially you."
Aine's voice turned sadder and sadder with every word he spoke, and Reiji thought about getting Aine to believe that he would just imaging it, but that would never work out...
Therefore, Reiji's final answer was half mumbled: "approximately eight years."
"Ei-eigh- eight years??" Aine's horror was clear to see and Reiji could understand him, this news was impossibly easy to handle. Once more, silence filled the hospital room, a state this roomed seemed to be familiar with by now, while Aine struggled with himself until he was able to ask the next question. "What had happened.... back then? I just remember.... how I jumped from a bridge..."
It was unmistakable how Aine had to fight with the usage of 'back then', but Reiji had built up his courage for this now, he wouldn't stop halfway through when he didn't know when the next time came around that the was able to explain all this to his best friend.
"To be honest, I don't really know", he started off, "I can only tell you, what I heard from Uramoto-sensei. He was at the beach by accident when you...", It certainly wasn't easy for Reiji to go over the event once again, he had to take several breaks to get the emerging pictures out of his head, saying it out loud was out of the question, so he jumped over that part. "Uramoto-sensei got into the water as fast as he could to get you out of there. But at the time you were back on land you... you were already unconscious and had swallowed a lot of water and of course you had a lot of injuries all over your body." Reiji was barely able to get the next words across his lips. "You seriously almost died there, Ai-chan. I had thought that I'd lost you forever..." Slowly, tears emerged triggered by the old wounds that were torn open once again, "W-When I saw that I missed your call and then heard about what happened... I couldn't do anything else but to question what might have happened if I just would have been able to answer that damn call... I could have prevented all this from happening..."
"Rei-chan... I'm so, so, so sorry for all this", Aine felt, bad for all the worries he obviously had caused, but he also had the need to explain himself, as his memories of the event came back, "But believe me, you wouldn't have been able to stop me right then and there... I guess I just wanted to hear your voice for the last time... I couldn't handle all this anymore back then. All this stress, I couldn't see anything positive anymore, just all the others, who seemed to have so much fun, that I questioned myself... what I did wrong, why I couldn't enjoy being an Idol anymore. I didn't want to cause so much worry for any of you."
Both boys looked at each other – silently once again – afterwards, not knowing what to say now.
Reiji still felt responsible for Aine's decision, even though he couldn't possibly tell Aine and the blue-haired boy himself felt the emotional state from then more and more with every thought to it.
When Aine started asking questions again, Reiji feared he still had to talk about the accident, but instead Aine wanted to know what his friend did during these past eight years that he missed out on.
At the beginning Rei didn't knew if it was okay for him to talk about his happy carrier considering Aine's background, but as he noticed that Aine seemed happy about the fact that Rei lived his dream, he himself loosened up more and more as well. "...About three years ago Shiny-san put me into a Unit with My-chan, Ran-Ran and Ai-Ai. You really have to meet them, we may be pretty different, but it's a lot of fun to perform with all of them as Quartet Night. We even live together for quite a while now to strengthen our team spirit."
"That was your idea, wasn't it?", interrupted Aine half laughing, "You always have been the one to want everyone to work together."
"Yup", confirmed Reiji, "Even though it's not always easy. Especially at the beginning, the whole thing backfired and we had a hard time overcoming that", now even Reiji's face showed a slight smile while remembering all this, "Ran-ran can be pretty quick-tempered, particularly when you touch his bananas. Myu-chan is more of the calm and cold type of person but he loves everything sweet and Ai-Ai prefers to observe everything from a distance. And then there are our Kohai, who become pretty good rivals..."
Rei forgot the time as he talked about Quartet Night, Starish and of course Nanami. He even caught himself thinking about how these stories might cheer Aine up, showing him that it can be easy to have fun as an Idol as long as you have the right people around you.
At the end, Uramoto-sensei interrupted Reiji's flood of words as he entered the room. "Kotobuki, you seriously should go home sometime soon, it wouldn't hurt you to get a bit of rest. Both of you to be honest." When the just reunited friends wanted to start complaining, Uramoto-sensei immediately cut them off: "For now I'm advising it as a friend, don't let me make you to it by playing the 'I'm a doctor'-card."
Sighing, Rei stood up and first of all had to get his legs to move since they became numb over the long period he had sat on a chair. After saying goodbye to Aine and promising to come by soon again, Rei got into the elevator and approached the information desk in the entry hall of the hospital to call a Taxi.

Exhaustedly, Rei finally reached his apartment. Since he concentrated all his energy and concentration on Aine back in the hospital he hadn't even noticed how drained he really was. Uramoto-sensei was right about him... again, some resting seemed overdue. Reiji made his way through their apartment, only saying a soft "hello" to Ranmaru and Camus, who were standing in the Kitchen, and fell onto his bed, falling asleep right away.