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Jingi-san is the same, mostly, he thinks—but then again, Yukito is so busy with high school and suddenly being a teenager with friends (he’s still in awe of that all the time) that he doesn’t really think about it too much.
Then, midway through his second year, while he’s still preoccupied with weekend plans and placement exams, Jingi-san sets down his chopsticks and the air in the room is palpably different.
Yukito isn’t sure what to call the feeling that settles in his gut at that moment, because he’s never felt it before—it’s like missing someone but they’re not even gone yet, and he’s never had anyone to miss before, not really… just some vague sensations without any memories to anchor them to. But this… this is uncomfortable. It’s heavy and it’s cold and it makes his hands shake a little, so he puts down his own bowl just so the curry in it will stop threatening to spill out the sides.
“I’m moving out,” Jingi-san says quietly, and his mouth is set in a weirdly serious angle. A glance down tells Yukito that he’s also hardly even touched his meal, which is also weird, and that strange, unnameable feeling rises up to his throat as he begins to feel rattled to his core.
Momoko-san frowns. “Is something the matter, Jingi-kun?”
Jingi smiles wide at her, but it just makes Yukito feel colder inside. His eyes aren’t smiling at all, and it feels sort of like when Jingi-san first brought him back to the Ayaka islands, but threw him off a bridge first. It feels like falling, it feels like hitting the cold river water completely unprepared.
“No! Not at all, Momoko-san!” Jingi-san sing-songs back, and if he’s trying for ‘reassuring’, he’s missing the mark by a mile. “Something just… came up.”
“Something like what?” Yukito spits out, and he really doesn’t mean to snap, but it comes out sharp and bitter anyway. Doesn’t Jingi-san see how selfish he’s being? Leaving right when Yukito was finally beginning to feel settled, for the first time in his entire life, at least for what he could remember of it. Sure, the memories from his childhood did come back when the water dragon was awakened, but that felt more like watching something happening to someone else; now he was getting to live it, create his own new memories, have his own family, and Jingi-san wants to go and tear it all apart.
His tone clearly startles Momoko-san, whose knee hits the bottom of the table as she flinches back. Jingi-san looks like he’s been slapped. Yukito would probably feel ashamed if he didn’t feel so… whatever it is he felt. Dejected? Abandoned? …Discarded?
Jingi-san clears his throat and averts his eyes. For some reason, that makes the ice in Yukito’s chest boil into rage–he doesn’t even have a good reason to—
“I thought…” Jingi-san trails off and Yukito hates whatever complicated series of emotions flit across his face. He can’t read them, can’t even begin to understand them, and he hates it.
“I registered for school,” Jingi-san finally says, and Momoko-san audibly gasps. Yukito feels like this must be some kind of cosmic joke. School? Jingi-san wants to go to school?
(He’s leaving him for some stupid school?! )
"—on the mainland."
“Oh my,” Momoko-san eventually says, the words sounding like they’ve sort of stumbled out of her mouth before she could catch up to them. “I mean—Jingi-kun, that’s—I… well, that’s wonderful, if that’s what you’d like to do.”
Jingi-san doesn’t look like he takes her words as praise, simply nodding without meeting her eyes.
She reaches across the table to cup his cheek in her hand. He finally looks up at her as she smiles warmly at him, genuine as she always is.
“Really, Jingi-kun. I’m very happy for you.”
Yukito can see the bob in Jingi-san’s throat as he swallows. He looks pale and clammy and shaken and it frustrates him that Jingi-san would dare to look like he’s the one whose world has just crumbled to dust when it’s him and his dumb bullshit school that’s blowing up the only home Yukito has ever known—
“I–thank you, Momoko-san,” Jingi-san says, and his voice is thin like he doesn’t have it in him to give it any substance. Yukito can barely see straight through the fury.
“I’m proud of you,” Momoko-san says earnestly, still holding Jingi-san’s face in her hand like it’s something precious. Yukito feels like he’s about to explode.
Jingi-san stutters out some incoherent string of syllables, pale face now going alarmingly red, but Yukito has had enough. He’s already stormed out of the room by the time he realizes what’s happened, anger blotting out anything Momoko-san may have called after him. All he can hear is his pulse thundering in his ears.
He has no idea how long it’s been by the time he hears a tentative knock on his door. He hasn’t even been aware that he’s been staring at the same spot on the tatami since he left the table. His head’s a mess and he feels like he can’t breathe and—
“Yukito-kun?”
Yukito can’t explain why the feeling that chokes him in that moment is disappointment when he realizes the voice coming through his door is Momoko-san’s and not—
“I’d like to be alone, please,” he grits out, hardly recognizing his own voice. It sounds hollow and raw, the way the inside of his chest feels. He swallows around the sensation but it doesn’t help.
“You didn’t finish your dinner,” Momoko-san tuts softly. He hears her weight shift. “I packed it up for you in the refrigerator. Please try to finish it before you go to sleep, you need to eat.”
He hums noncommittally in response, and he hears her footsteps softly pad away. He loses time again until another knock comes, and this time he’s just too wiped to stifle the annoyance in his voice.
“Please just leave me alone,” he groans, and hates how whiny it sounds, even to his own ears. He’s still not used to having people care enough to check on him, and that just makes him angry again, because if Jingi-san really cared so much, he wouldn’t—
“Is that any way to speak to your sensei?” huffs Jingi-san’s voice, clearly trying for a joke but just coming out strained. Another time, Yukito might have felt bad for him, but any sympathy he might have had gets immediately burned up by the anger.
“Go away,” Yukito grumbles, letting his head fall back against the wall with a quiet thud . He never imagined his teenagehood would ever lead him to sulking alone in his room in the dark, but he also never thought he’d have the chance to live like a normal teenager.
Jingi-san, the infuriating idiot, does exactly the opposite and opens the door a crack, peeking in with one impossibly green eye. Yukito staunchly ignores it, but something traitorous in his stomach flips uncomfortably regardless.
“I… I’m sorry,” Jingi-san says after a long stretch of awkward, stagnant silence. “I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“I’m not upset,” Yukito snarls, and sure, in retrospect, he realizes that he certainly sounded upset. But upset just didn’t seem right to explain whatever it was going on inside him that made him feel like his bones were too big for his skin and everything ached with a sense of grief that he felt too scrambled to start parsing through.
Jingi-san just hums in response, and that sounds so… well, normal, so exactly like him that Yukito finds himself chuckling bitterly. The only normal interaction they’ve had in—gods, Yukito can’t even remember—and of course it’s at his own expense.
“I think I need this,” Jingi-san says, and that actually startles Yukito enough that he ends up looking straight at him, even without intending to. “I haven’t been—I feel like I’ve—lately, it’s… I just… I think I need to go.”
“Why?” Yukito doesn’t want to sound so… imploring? Forlorn? But the question is out before he can control the way his voice wavers.
Jingi-san’s visible eye crinkles a little at the corner, and for some reason Yukito feels like he can breathe a little easier but also like the extra air entering his lungs is setting his insides on fire.
“I guess it would be different for you,” Jingi-san says, like that explains anything, but before Yukito can grind out a retort he continues, “you didn’t get to choose.”
And that… that pulls him up short. That sounds like Jingi-san actually kind of gets it, and Yukito is still not used to being known. It throws him off kilter so thoroughly he’s dizzy with it, and this whole evening has just been emotional whiplash in different flavours and quite frankly Yukito is done with it.
“Sorry, I guess… I was, uh, I—sorry, okay, this is—ugh.” Jingi-san runs a hand through his hair, and that, at least, is a very familiar gesture. “I really liked being your sensei, even for a little while, okay? It was scary as hell but it was fun. It felt… it felt good, when you did stuff and you realized what you could do, and even though you don’t—well, you never really needed me, or at least, not me, specifically, but—okay, nevermind.” Jingi-san laughs again but this time it’s empty, devoid of the musicality that comes with his usual carefree demeanor.
“I just thought.. I thought ‘hey, maybe I can do this for real’, and maybe that’s stupid, but I figured Yanagi-sensei would want me to at least try, you know?”
No, Yukito doesn’t, but he feels torn for some reason. On one hand, he couldn’t care less what Jingi-san thought was more important than being here, being with—well, than doing… whatever it was that he did. Here. With him. At home .
…but then, there is a part of him that didn’t really understand, but felt a sort of kinship with the sensation of displacement that weighed down Jingi-san’s voice, the way his eyes were distant and lost, even as Momoko-san praised him.
Another silence stretches between them, until Yukito gathers his courage to ask, “What are you even going to school for, anyway?”
This time, Jingi-san barks out a laugh and it’s pure surprise. He clearly wasn’t expecting that question.
“Well, believe it or not, I figured I could learn a thing or two about teaching,” he says, his tone teasing but in a way that sounds more self-deprecating than lighthearted.
Yukito snorts indelicately. “Actually, that makes sense. You can’t just throw kids into the river after you first meet them.”
Jingi-san laughs again and Yukito hates that it quells some of the churning in his gut.
“I’m sure they’ll give me plenty of lessons on what not to do with my students.”
“They’d better,” Yukito says. And this time, more sharply, “Would’ve been nice if they’d given you those lessons before you went and nearly got us stuck in the ley stream forever.”
Jingi-san doesn’t say anything for a moment and Yukito doesn’t know why, but it feels like he’s overstepped. He knows he was being petty, and actually aiming to be hurtful, but he didn’t really want to—
“It wasn’t the goal,” Jingi-san says, and it comes out too soft to be anything but honest. Yukito bristles.
“Yeah, I know—the goal was to die, because fuck whatever the rest of us felt, right?”
That… that feels a little like kicking someone when they were down, but Jingi-san just smiles at him through the little sliver of light coming in through the doorway. Yukito bites down on the guilt because he isn’t taking it back—sure, it was kind of uncalled for, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“Sorry, kiddo,” Jingi-san says, probably because he knows exactly how much Yukito hates that, “guess I’ve got a lot to learn about thinking ahead, too.”
He gently slides the door shut, and Yukito’s left feeling unmoored, wrong-footed. He’s missed something here, that didn’t make any sense, and—why would Jingi-san leave because of that? What—
He replays the conversation in his head, and it never seems any clearer. If anything, it just makes that weird wave of emotion from dinnertime come crashing over him again, catching him in the undertow, and suddenly he can name it, because he dreamed about it so many times before he was brought back to the island—
He may be the water dragon, but Yukito is intimately acquainted with the sensation of drowning.