Nintendo 64

      Everything happened too fast, he didn't even understand what exactly happened. He ran fast, ignoring the people he pushed out of his way, he was completely out of his mind right now. The phone in hand burns palm.       He really didn't know it would turn out this way. Didn't realize how much hurt a dear person. The words came out that evening on their own, on emotion, but even they had terrible consequences. Wanted to turn back time, go back to that unfortunate day and hit myself. Then reach out to brother and hold him close, and never let go again. Or go back even further into the past and just not fly to Spain, but stay at home.       Lungs were burning, his heart was pounding, but he kept running, pushing aside those he couldn't run around, jumping out onto the road, ignoring the honking cars. If he had kept silent then, or if he had said, but not like that, in other words. If only had dropped ego for a while. If only, if only, if only. There are too many options that would lead to a completely different future. He might have been alive. Perhaps they would be playing on the field together now. Maybe they would still be real brothers. But it's too late.       Everything was so fast that he did not immediately understand how he ended up in the hospital. Breathing is intermittent, the heart tends to break the ribs. A tearful mother is sitting in front of the office. She wasn't tall enough anyway, but now she seemed even smaller and more fragile. The woman slowly raised her tear-stained eyes to her out-of-breath eldest son.       Sae walked over to his mother and sat on the floor in front of her. He heard everything on the phone. With maternal tears and sobs, but he heard, he could hear. "Sae, Rin... he..."       Silently hugging his mother, Sae began to slowly stroke her back. He was brash, cold, but he wasn't a soulless machine. He felt too, especially when the people he loved suffered so much. Sae took care of his loved ones in his own way, trying not to get out of his image, only that evening he crossed the line, but only realized this when everything got out of control.

My brother told me

That he's gonna

Kill himself tonight

      ***

      For as long as Sae can remember, he has never cried. He just couldn't. At Rin's funeral, he just stood silently on the sidelines, not taking his eyes off his brother's pale face. It seemed that he was asleep and right now he would get up and start laughing at the stunned face of Sae, who fell for his joke, a kind of revenge. But he was lying down. Such unrealistic hopes were shattered with a crash against the cruel reality.       For as long as Sae can remember, he has never cried. At Rin's funeral, he just stood silently on the sidelines, dying inside with every passing second. Turquoise eyes stared coldly at the dead face of a loved one. But if you look closely, you can see that the look is not cold at all. It's empty, dead. Sae is one of those people who do not show emotions for show, but keep them to themselves, allowing the mental pain to devour all the insides, leaving only ashes. There wasn't even any ashes left inside the elder Itoshi. He became just a shell of his former self.

***

      The world suddenly became too gray, it became uninteresting to play football. The dream of becoming the best remained gathering dust on a distant shelf in his mind. Sae only wanted to lie in bed, nothing more. The curtains are tightly drawn, preventing light from entering the room. There are awards thrown off by brother on the floor. It wasn't his room, Rin's room. The smell of dust soaked into the walls and into Sae himself, as if the room absorbed his condition, enveloping him in an even denser air filled with memories from the past. Itoshi Rin died, and with him Itoshi Sae. Only the shell lay on a cold bed for days, surrounded by four walls, only the shell continued to exist, while life was cut short for both of them, like a thin thread. Only one died of his own free will, and the other could not live without the first.

He said that when he is dead

I'll have his Nintendo 64

And I can play all it night long

Sitting on the basement floor