Nowhere Haven

No More Advice Needed

Oliver calmed down after he had been running for what felt like an eternity. His lungs were burning as if they were about to collapse any second. Even so, it was somewhat reassuring. After the numbing pain and fear back in the apartment, reality advected back into him. Oliver breathed in sharply and clenched his teeth. He did leave the numbness behind but the raging storm of emotions did not vanish.

He dragged his shaking body around a little longer until he found a set of stairs he could rest on for a while. Ignoring the judging eyes of the people passing him by, he calmed down his breathing a little more and rubbed his eyes.

Even though he had brought up the courage to run away from Fukase, he felt horrible. For a second, he wondered whether the redhead was fine like this. He had left him his phone with an emergency call running, but he couldn't tell how it went. Oliver shook his head. That was not the problem here.

Oliver staying with Fukase would have only made matters worse. He was too blinded by his own emotions to make any sort of rational decision anyway. Merely recalling how helpless Fukase was rolling around in his bed left him with a bitter aftertaste of his own immobility.

Oliver rubbed his face once more and sighed in his palms. This was all his fault. He wanted to be the strong one and lead the two of them out of their miserable life but he caused the exact opposite. Fukase could have died back there and it was all because of his lack of responsibility. Oliver's body shivered. He tried to suppress the thoughts of how different things could have turned out if he hadn't noticed him in time.

Oliver's head staggered and then tilted back into his neck; his sight was spinning all of a sudden. Accompanied by growing rustling in his ears, he fought with his sense of orientation and dropped on his back. The hard ground gnawed on his body but he tried to ignore the pain as much as possible.

His gawky hands searched his face to rub the first black spots out of his eyes, and Oliver tried to calm down again. He knew he was overwhelmed and scared of what was going on, but there was no time to dwell on emotions. He wanted to quickly move forward and instead search for a solution to make things turn for the better, but nagging guilt ate up on his last bits of hope.

The dizziness worsened as he weakly pulled himself up the railing to stand back up. Hoping to find more reassurance in wandering around, he set the first step but shortly fell back on his knees again. At this point, it was obvious that Oliver couldn't move much on his own anymore and he brought up the last strength to sit back on the set of stairs. 

His head leaned against the thin metal pole, but the cooling barely did any good. The heaviness in both his mind and limbs overshadowed the last bit of willpower he had just a moment ago, and just like that, he gave up and let darkness take over his senses.

"Oliver?"

Oliver's body flinched and turned to where the sound came from. His eyes met with Kazehiki's and froze in place, surprised to find his coworker here all of a sudden. The two of them didn't move for a moment but Kazehiki collected himself again.

"What are you doing here?"

Oliver forced a smile and shrugged his shoulders, hoping to get to shake off his friend without much suspicious. He really wanted to be left alone right now.

"Nothing. Just sitting down for a bit."

"But you're drenched."

Oliver looked down and noticed only now that he was soaked in water. A quick glance to his surroundings confirmed that it must have rained a bit earlier. He started shivering once he felt the coldness embracing his body.