If Love Could Be The Cure We Need - A MakoHaru Medical AU

Chapter 12: Everytime We Touch

Makoto Tachibana

The leaves under my feet keep making crunching sounds. I'm following Nagisa and Rei through the woods, they're the ones handling the compass. Haruka's walking beside me and Rin is somewhere behind us, because he has to catch his breath every once in a while.

My heart is racing and my nerves are even more present than every time I have been forced to watch a horror movie.

Nagisa came with a brilliant idea this morning, telling us that we still had about three hours until most of our family members come by for their monthly visit. Our last conversation during rest period on Friday had made him crave coffee so much, and he just needed to have some right now.

That's why we're now doing something that is completely ignoring every rule we've been told; we're going to the village outside of the school grounds.

"There's no fence or security," Rei had reassured us, he knew this because he has been here so long and apparently has gone outside school ground before.

Rin also said that if they didn't know we were gone they wouldn't even notice, Nagisa doesn't mind getting in trouble and Haruka just shrugged and went along. I'm the only one who wasn't immediately jumping to break the rules, but they convinced me to go along anyway.

We're completely ignoring the rules just to get a cup of coffee, and if you ask me that's ridiculous. But Nagisa really wants his coffee, so does Rin who basically was living on the "black gold" before he was send off to this boarding school.

While Rei and Nagisa lead the way through the woods I try my best not to freak out. Everyone else is just calmly walking, but my inner voices are just screaming at me for doing the wrong thing.

When I look at Haruka beside me, seeing if I can get a conversation going to distract my mind from this mischief, I catch Haruka steeling glances at me. Our eyes meet for a split second, but Haruka quickly looks away.

"So, uhm," I stammer, now suddenly feeling really awkward. "What coffee are you going to get?"

Haruka glances at back at me, his cheeks are completely red for some reason and I wonder whether he's doing good or not. The color on his cheeks looks almost feverish, but he hasn't said a thing about not feeling good.

Haruka shrugs, but doesn't say anything.

I wonder about what I'm going to say now, whether I'm going to continue this conversation or just give up. But luckily Nagisa's voice interrupts my thoughts.

"We're here!" he says, running the direction of bright light on the edge of the forest, pushing Rei towards it on full force. I'm starting to worry that if Nagisa doesn't get more careful when pushing Rei's wheelchair, he might catapult him through the air one day.

Haruka and I also get out of the wood not long after, and Rin follows quickly. It's strange being outside of the school grounds. The air seems fresher, the sun brighter, but that's probably just my imagination.

While we're walking through the shopping street we have to hide our med sensors from people; they might inform the school that they're missing five kids, which could lead to problems. But other than that everything is just amazing.

It's nice to be in the normal world again. Before we go somewhere to get coffee Nagisa and Rei want to go somewhere, some kind of shop that sells photo books.

"Makoto?" Haruka silently says my name when we walk past a clothing store and Rin's catching his breath there.

"Yeah, something wrong?" I ask. My hands start trembling, because I'm afraid he's going to bring up Friday again.

But he doesn't, he just asks if we can go into the clothing store so he can look for a hat he can wear when he's going to go bald. I keep forgetting that Haruka's on chemo, but when I look at him closely I can see that the amount of hair that he has is getting less with every day that passes.

"Yeah, okay," I say while I glance at Nagisa and Rei. "Hey, we're going to go inside this shop. Meet us at Starbucks in fifteen minutes?"

"Yep!" Nagisa replies without even turning around.

Haruka, Rin and I go inside the clothing store. We wander around for a little before Haruka finally chooses that the blue beanie he'd seen at the entrance of the shop is the best one.

He buys it and after that we go to the closest Starbucks, where Nagisa and Rei arrive not much later.

We go inside and the smell of coffee hits me in my face. It's a small shop, but it's not too crowded. Which is a good thing, because we want to avoid crowded areas if we don't want to be noticed too much.

A nice woman behind the counter greets us and we all order our drinks. Nagisa orders the Cinnamon Roll Frappuccino, Rin just wants a black coffee, Rei wants a mocha coffee and I go for a Latté, so does Haruka because he hasn't really been to Starbucks before.

Sipping on our coffee we walk all the way back to the school, through the woods. I'm not yet ready to be back in the school grounds, because it felt normal to be outside. I didn't feel sick, but somehow the air feels thicker inside the walls of that school and the smell of antiseptic makes you feel nauseated and lightheaded.

Apparently everyone agrees, so on Nagisa's request we stay in the woods for a little longer. We chat, and laugh, and stay away from the disinfectant-smelling buildings until we actually have to go back.

And when we do, I feel good anyway, because even though we broke the rules I feel like we did good by going outside.