Chapter 19: 19: Reality is Mean

Running had always been when I was feeling my best. The feeling of exertion, the steady rhythm as my feet hit the ground in an endless loop, the refreshing feeling of the wind on my face, it all just came together to make me feel like I could do anything.

Jogging was a little less exciting for me than running, but it was basically just a slower paced run. Like a casual stroll through all the same feelings, and with less sweat to boot. The thought of going jogging today had honestly been kind of exciting for me just for the sake of trying to feel that liveliness I’d been missing for the last however many years.

It was a great feeling to finally be doing something I loved again… for a little more than five minutes.

I sat with my back leaned against a wall as I tried to catch my breath while Noitte looked on with a worried face.

“Um, you okay?” She asked for about the tenth time.

“Yeah… I just… need another second to… catch my breath.”

“Right…”

Noitte turned around as she replied, sounding unconvinced as she pulled her phone from her running belt.

We’d stopped at a small building just off the forest path. I think it used to be a storage shed for the guys in charge of maintaining the woods, but nowadays it was mostly a place where teenagers hung out to smoke weed after school. 

I sat inside, slowly recovering my breath while Noitte stood in the doorway, looking between me and the path.

As Noitte worried about me, a less helpful voice decided to chime in.

“Wow Conor! You really are out of shape!” 

Fig cheerfully criticized me as she flew out from my chest and hovered in front of me, taking full advantage of the fact that I couldn’t say anything back at the moment without looking like I was hallucinating. 

Instead of a comment I tried giving her a glare, but she easily shrugged it off as she continued.

“Oh come on! We both knew it was going to be like this, right? It’s literally been years!”

…Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to hear.

“Besides! Isn’t this a good thing? I mean, it’s an objective look at where you are right now, you know?”

Hmm… I knew I’d probably embarrass myself here and that it would be tough to get started again, but I guess I just didn’t really appreciate how bad things were going to be. 

Actually, thinking back, how long did it take for me to get to where I was in college in the first place? How much time did I spend slowly ramping up to the point where I could run with no problem? How much time did I spend staying in shape specifically so that I wouldn’t have something like this happen?

And I really thought I was just going to come back five years later and be anywhere close to where I was?

Fig’s face softened a little as my expression began to sink.

“I mean, I wouldn’t let it bother you too much, Conor. Even if you can’t run like you used to, you have new skills to substitute for it, you know?”

She smiled brightly as she floated in front of me, puffing her chest out proudly as she indicated herself.

I guess? But that doesn’t really do anything to help me here.

“Anyway,” she continued “Do you really need to get back into running right now? I mean, like, you’re about to start doing a bunch of stuff between working and Corruption, right? So isn’t this just kind of… extra?”

…

Is it?

Why was I insisting on actually doing this right now? With everything else going on, and my mana apparently working to keep me from getting too unhealthy, do I really need to do this? 

Even the aspect of getting alone time with Noitte was something I could accomplish just by normally walking here, right? So… maybe I should just be focusing on Corruption instead?

I felt like my thought process made sense, but still…

As I let out a sigh, Noitte turned back around, still looking concerned as she held out her phone.

“Er, hey Conor, do you want to just go back home for now? We already got some jogging in, and when you add in the warm up and all, that’s a pretty decent first day of getting back to exercising, right? Mom said she can pick us up if we want, so if you’re tired we can just go ahead and call her whenever.”

…

In all honesty I was tired. Waking up early, walking out, warming up, my embarrassingly brief jog, they all drained my energy like crazy, but somehow the option of quitting halfway and going home felt terrible. I felt a twinge of annoyance at the fact that Noitte asked if I wanted to quit despite the fact that I knew that she meant well.

Fig had a point, I didn’t need to get back into running to get to where I wanted, and Noitte was probably only offering to have Mile pick us up because she was concerned about me, but somehow the combination of the two just made me feel like leaving wasn’t an option.

It’s not like I couldn’t just spend my time on something else, or even like I couldn’t just try again next week, but I wanted to do this. 

… Actually, yeah. I wanted to do this!

I wanted to get back in shape. I wanted to do the thing I always enjoyed. If I was going to be doing everything else, why not try actually getting back into running?

I tried to tamp down my lingering frustration as I hopped up from the floor, newly energized and breathing much more easily than a moment ago. I tried to sound as motivated as I could as I replied to Noitte.

“I appreciate it, but I’m still good to go!”

She raised her eyebrows a little at my reply. Maybe I was a little too enthusiastic there?

Either way, despite looking a little confused, Noitte herself seemed happy to keep going as she started to smile at my words.

“Cool beans! I’m ready when you are!”

Reenergized, I stepped towards the door with Noitte right behind me, and as soon as we were both ready, we took off once again.

…

Well, I say “took off”, but the reality was that we were going much slower than before. If anything, we probably could have speed walked at the same pace if we wanted to, but we were doing the motion of jogging nonetheless.

I felt silly after getting so excited, but I tried to keep my frustration in check. The pace we were going at before was obviously more than I could currently handle, but I didn’t want to give up and go home after five minutes. Between those two issues, we basically only had one option: take a more sustainable pace. 

To be frank: it felt bad. The image in my mind of twenty-one-year-old me zipping down the path as I tried to push myself just a little faster quickly fell apart as I slowly made my way through the trees. Logically, I knew that trying to go faster would mean not making it to the end, but something in me was having trouble accepting the situation.

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Even without my acceptance, my body seemed to understand its limits. Despite the slower pace I could feel myself having trouble keeping my breathing steady, I could feel sweat starting to build on my face, and my legs became more tired and less steady as we went. I felt like I could make it to the end of the path, but I would definitely need a break before we made our way back.

I turned to my left to see Noitte casually keeping pace with me. Compared to me she seemed to be having no problems whatsoever. Her face showed zero signs of exerting effort, let alone something like sweating, her breathing seemed as steady as when we were standing around, and her beautiful legs took each step with perfect grace and steadiness. For someone who had never stopped exercising this must have been a painfully boring fake jog through the woods.

I couldn’t help but feel more and more embarrassed as we went. Next to me was someone who had never stopped working. At this point she had actually been doing track longer than I had, and here she was babysitting me through stumbling down the trail.

I couldn’t help but grimace as I thought about the situation.

This was what I wanted to do, but maybe it was too late for me to get back to where I used to be. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this after all? 

My thoughts went in circles as I continuously criticized myself.

Maybe I was just a twenty-five-year-old man desperately clinging to his high school fun. A college dropout who needs his younger stepsister to walk him through exercising again. Someone pitifully refusing to accept that the time he’d spent doing nothing had permanently set him back in life and no amount of effort will fix that.

If any of that was true, then what was the point of doing this?

“Whew!”

Noitte stopped as she exhaled as loudly as possible and drew me out of my thoughts and back to her as I stopped as well.

Looking around, we were at the end of the “official” forest path. Further ahead the trees started to thin out as they led to a sidewalk back into town.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that I’d been so absorbed in my stress that I hadn’t even noticed a large part of the “jog” go by.

On Noitte’s part, despite having probably been bored out of her mind for the last mile or so of “jogging”, she wore a content smile on her face as she looked at me.

“Alrighty! That’s two miles down!” she proclaimed a little too enthusiastically.

I made my way over to the nearby bench and sat down as her words sank in.

Right… “two miles”. My legs felt sore, my breathing was rough again, my face was half covered in sweat, and the total distance traveled? Two miles.

As I looked up at Noitte, I couldn’t really find it in myself to return her smile. 

Any confidence I had gone into this with was completely gone at this point.

Apparently picking up on my frustration, Noitte’s smile faded slightly as well. She quietly sat next to me and scooted as close as she could before leaning her head onto my shoulder. The sudden closeness barely registered in my head as I continued thinking about how far back I’d set myself.

After a moment of silence, Noitte’s unusually quiet voice sounded from next to my ear.

“For whatever it’s worth, Conor. I’m happy you finally came out with me… two slow miles probably wasn’t what you were hoping for, right? But… just seeing you out here for the first time in forever was… well, I’m happy that you’re here with me. Even if you don’t think it’s good enough, I’m really happy we did this, and I hope you’ll keep coming out here to jog with me in the future.”

…

Sigh. Why does she have to make it so hard to feel sorry for myself?

Suddenly I felt almost stupid for having let myself want to give up again so quickly after going out exactly once. I have the chance to do better after all this time and a beautiful woman here supporting me every step of the way in an extremely literal sense.

Could I really forgive myself if I let my motivation fall apart just like that?

Sympathize

A bit of mana flowed out of me and circled around Noitte before coming back.

Excitement, pride, joy, concern, affection. A number of emotions circled through my head as I received Noitte’s feelings. None of them had anything to do with the disappointment or derision I’d been feeling up until a second ago.

In other words: the only one looking down on me right now… was me. 

I could feel my frustration lessen and the tightness in my chest loosen. It wasn’t exactly gone, of course, but at the very least I didn’t just feel like not trying anymore. Just like when I suffered backlash from Corruption, this just meant that I needed to keep working, right? Not just on my skills, but on everything I wanted to do.

Feeling a little more determined, I couldn’t help but smile just a little.

“Thanks, Noitte, I appreciate it.”

She nodded slightly in reply as she continued to lean against me.

We both sat there for a while and relaxed as I recovered from the trip there. Finally, when I felt ready to go I gently pushed Noitte’s head off of me and stood up, followed shortly by Noitte herself who still seemed cheerful and energized.

“Ready to go, Conor?” 

“Yep. Are you?”

“Mm-hmm”

We started from a walk and slowly picked up the pace until we were just barely doing what could be considered jogging. Our pace was just as slow as before, but somehow felt a lot less frustrating as we made our way back

A/N: Should be back on a consistent upload schedule now that I feel like I've got back in the swing of actually writing again. Hopefully that means chapters MWF and the chance to actually proofread before uploading going forward.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding!

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