Title: Perspective

Summary: In the end, Shin barely lasts two months in Africa. Drabble.

Author's Notes: Set after the drama Series 1 Special.

Disclaimer: Don't own Gokusen!

In the end, Shin barely lasts two months in Africa.

It's not because the work is too hard, or that he dislikes what he's doing - on the contrary, it feels good. He's moving his body all the time, flexing muscles he's barely used before, sweating like a man in a bone-dry desert... which is not too far from the truth, in actual fact. He likes the way his arms and legs ache when he gets up in the morning, a reminder of yesterday's activities, and he's pleased when he pats his abdomen and finds that it's as hard as a rock.

Mentally, the work is wonderful for him - it's a chance to concentrate, to focus his mind on the task at hand. There is no time for wandering thoughts, for feeling angry at his father or worried for his sister, for missing his friends or for thinking - at all - about Yankumi.

By pushing himself to his limits and driving his body like this, it leaves very little opportunity for her to sneak into the corners of his mind, and for a while that's good enough.

But ultimately, it becomes the reason he decides to return to Japan.

Yankumi has been in his head for so long now; where at first he was able to push her out, she comes back with a vengeance - thoughts of her creep back, at first by stealth, and after that, in a more overt fashion. The difficulty of the work isn't enough anymore, and finally he realises that he came here for the wrong reasons.

He'd thought that this - the work, the perspective, the distance - would allow him to get her out of his system. Now he understands that even though he still doesn't know what he wants to do, he has at least always known where he wants to be, which is with her.

Maybe she doesn't feel the same, maybe she does (or could). Either way, he can't fight for her halfway around the world. He needs to go back.

So he says goodbye to Africa. Feels sorry that he's left that house half-built. But there'll be more people to take his place here, and he can live with that. If someone were to take his place by Yankumi's side... he wouldn't be able to accept it.

On the plane, he stares out of the small, fingerprint-smudged window and smiles. 'Yankumi,' he thinks, 'I'm coming home.'