Chapter 5

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 think 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.
     “That’s your diaphragm and abdominal muscles working. Your diaphragm borrowed power from your abdominal muscles to push up your lungs, which made you breathe out more air. When you inhale deeply after that, you can take in more air than before.”
     “Uh-huh.”
     Orihara explained with a simple analogy.
     “It’s like a sponge. If you wring it well, it’ll be able to absorb more water than if you only wrung it a little.”
     Kento exhaled again like he was told. He pursed his lips and expelled the last bit of air from his lungs, then inhaled as deeply as he could. He felt his abdominal muscles working harder.
     “Consciously keep up the abdominal breathing, and soon you’ll get more used to using your diaphragm effectively.”
     Kento nodded enthusiastically at Orihara’s words.
     “You’re right, this is amazing! You have this scientific way of teaching. Guess it helps being a doctor!”
     “Actually, no,” Orihara said, laughing as he shook his head. “Remember I used to be on the track team? I learned abdominal breathing from my coach.”
     Kento looked at him with renewed admiration.
     “But still, you’re pretty amazing, Doctor.”
     “I suck at cooking, though,” Orihara added, and Kento burst into laughter.

     When Kento went to voice training classes the following week, he was complimented for the first time by his trainer, Hamanishi. This was a first triumph for Kento, whose singing had never been as good as his dancing.
     “The tension in your voice box is gone, and instead there’s more power in your abdomen. You’re headed in the right direction.” Hamanishi looked satisfied as he closed the lid of the piano, finishing their lesson.
     “Sound-collecting mikes at concerts will help, and tracks can always be adjusted in the recording studio, but either way, putting stress on your voice box wouldn’t have made you last very long.”
     Kento felt immensely proud of himself, but froze at Hamanishi’s next words.
     “You know, I was actually having second thoughts about recommending you. But if you keep up your singing and continue to improve, you’ll have no problem. It’s really a pity that you’ve hurt your leg.”
     “Are you talking about the audition?”
     “Yeah,” Hamanishi said, unfazed. “Well, Oka and Nishimura are definitely in, and I recommended Tomoya for his sugary-sweet voice. I’d say the results were good. I would have wanted one more person, though, to balance the sound.”
     He was right about Tomoya’s high, sultry voice. His dancing was average, but when it came to singing, he was a head above the rest. But Kento was astonished to know that Tomoya had already passed the audition. He hadn’t known until then. Tomoya had told him nothing.
     I know he probably kept it from me out of kindness. But it feels worse. It’s like he feels sorry for me.
     Kento’s spirits sank rapidly, when just moments before he had been itching to tell Orihara the good news. When he returned to the dorm and saw that Tomoya was home early for once, he found he couldn’t look the boy in the eye. He turned on his heel, went right back out of the dorm, and headed straight to Miyashita Clinic instead.
     “What’s the matter? You’re awfully early,” Orihara asked in surprise. He was still sitting in the consultation room.
     “Um, I just felt horrible about myself and I couldn’t stand being my room. Can I listen to some records at your place, Doctor?”
     “As long as you keep the volume down.”
     Kento turned the volume low enough so the sound wouldn’t reach the consulting room, then lay down on the sofa to lend his ear to the classical music.
     He picked “Finlandia,” which had been used in a movie, to cheer him up. The movie was about a gallant, unconquerable hero facing terrorists all by himself.
     Orihara eventually came to join him in the living room.
     “Doctor, I have good news and bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?”
     “Good news, of course.” Orihara laughed and sat down in the arm chair in front of Kento.
     “My voice trainer complimented my singing for the first time. It’s all thanks to you teaching me abdominal breathing. That’s the good news.”
     “What’s the bad news?”
     Kento put the record sleeve on the table and sighed.
     “Remember I told you we were doing auditions at the agency for the new group that’s going to debut? My roommate Tomoya got in. He’s going to debut.”
     “That’s good news, isn’t it?” Orihara asked curiously. Kento thought about it.
     “…Maybe.” Then, he gave a deep sigh again. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s good news. It’s my heart that’s bad.”
     “Your heart?” Orihara leaned forward and peered into Kento’s face. “What do you mean?”
     “Well, remember I said I was feeling horrible about myself? I’m just jealous of Tomoya. I’m such a kid, aren’t I? I wonder why I can’t just congratulate him when he deserves it.”
     As Kento sat dejected, Orihara smiled and gently took his hand.
     “You know what? Not everyone in the world is like Mother Theresa or Gandhi. Adults get jealous, too. So there’s nothing wrong with your heart.”
     “Yeah, but…” Kento irritably pulled his hand away from Orihara’s, then crossed his arms behind his head and flopped back onto the sofa. “That’s not it,” he said. “Tomoya didn’t tell me. That’s what gets to me. It’s like he feels guilty about it. If he saw us as equals, he wouldn’t do that. He’s probably doing it because he feels sorry for me.”
     Orihara’s eyes crinkled into a smile behind his glasses. Then, he turned aside and lapsed into thought.
     “Does feeling guilty really make you unequal?” he murmured.
     “Doesn’t it? If it was me, I’d tell my friends I got the audition and I’d ask for their support.”
     “Well… I don’t think Tomoya kept it a secret from you because he felt sorry for you. Maybe he didn’t want you to get jealous and hate him for it.”
     Orihara turned his gaze back to Kento, and he spoke with a sincere and definite tone.
     “When Tomoya saw you in pain at night, he didn’t turn a blind eye. That proves he cares about you.”
     Kento was in awe at how forgiving Orihara could be. But when Orihara said it like that, the more true it began to sound. His words penetrated straight to his heart.
     “Alright,” Kento said as he thought. “I’ll tell Tomoya this: I’m a little jealous, but that’s because I’m a normal person, and I’m not Mother Theresa, and that it’s normal and it doesn’t mean that I hate him. Does that sound alright?”
     Orihara smiled. “That sounds perfect,” he said brightly.