(no subject)
albatross
_____There was a common rule in Daath, made from both common sense and common courtesy, and that was to never read a Score of Death. The reasoning behind that rule was almost simpler than its outlines: avoid panic always, embrace ignorance always, and give them only what they need to know. Daath flourished under stationary pretend-peace, and pretend-peace was kept when people did not know that their next breath might, in fact, be their last.
Granted, there were always those that would buckle under the strength of reading the future, and those that would let words from their lips without thinking. When that pretend-peace of Daath's was broken, there were no good results. It was as easy as puncturing a simple hole into a dam. Those people were muffled before they could cause too much trouble, but there were always those that slipped through the cracks. And it was always those that stare at their Death Scores and mutter, silently, wondering what exactly they should say, not even realizing that they shouldn't, in fact, say it.
Not that anyone could blame them. How does one tell a child, after all, that they were meant to die?
***
When the Fuji family was told that their eldest son would not live past next year at their yearly Score reading, they very nearly killed the Scorer on the spot. There were things people weren't meant to be told on their birthdays, and one of those was a detailed account of some sort of event in ND 2002, where some sort of tragedy would happen, and the reality that the ten year old child standing in front of them was to be a statistic. They had been prepared for uneventful news--"your child will be a success, your child will grow ten centimeters (he had always been rather short), your child will grow to like milk"--but instead they had received "your child will die".
Shuusuke--the target of this news--was rather cold to the fact he was just given a death sentence. Yuuta, merely younger by one year and also a Fuji child, was the complete and utter opposite. In fact, he looked almost sickly pale at the prospect of his older brother's death, which had been told to them by an antsy looking man who would be invisible in the world (most likely) if it weren't for his power over the Seventh Fonon. The Score had given him a pedestal to stand on, while it demolished the footing underneath his older brother's feet.
His little fists grew whiter as he clenched them, and the older Fuji child very carefully placed both hands on his shoulders as a sign of comfort. In the future, Shuusuke would laugh at that memory--he had just been told he was going to die, and he was the one to comfort Yuuta.
"They didn't say it was older brother."
The proclamation shocked Fuji the most. While Yuuta had mentioned nothing but semantics to the group in the dining room, he had implied a much bigger issue, which wasn't something he agreed with. Desensitized as he was to the prospect of his own death, Yuuta's dying in his place was another issue entirely. And he made that clear, as he clenched the shoulder in his hand tighter. If Yuuta noticed, it certainly didn't waver his seemingly harmless direction.
"It could be anyone," he continued. The Scorer looked ridiculous, nodding shakily at the ideas of the nine-year-old child in front of him. He held the Scorer's tablet in both hands, whispering "it simply said fuji child" under his breath, and no one looked more pathetic than him.
"Stop it, Yuuta," was the reply of a ten-year-old too shocked to say anything more than that.
"
_____There was a common rule in Daath, made from both common sense and common courtesy, and that was to never read a Score of Death. The reasoning behind that rule was almost simpler than its outlines: avoid panic always, embrace ignorance always, and give them only what they need to know. Daath flourished under stationary pretend-peace, and pretend-peace was kept when people did not know that their next breath might, in fact, be their last.
Granted, there were always those that would buckle under the strength of reading the future, and those that would let words from their lips without thinking. When that pretend-peace of Daath's was broken, there were no good results. It was as easy as puncturing a simple hole into a dam. Those people were muffled before they could cause too much trouble, but there were always those that slipped through the cracks. And it was always those that stare at their Death Scores and mutter, silently, wondering what exactly they should say, not even realizing that they shouldn't, in fact, say it.
Not that anyone could blame them. How does one tell a child, after all, that they were meant to die?
***
When the Fuji family was told that their eldest son would not live past next year at their yearly Score reading, they very nearly killed the Scorer on the spot. There were things people weren't meant to be told on their birthdays, and one of those was a detailed account of some sort of event in ND 2002, where some sort of tragedy would happen, and the reality that the ten year old child standing in front of them was to be a statistic. They had been prepared for uneventful news--"your child will be a success, your child will grow ten centimeters (he had always been rather short), your child will grow to like milk"--but instead they had received "your child will die".
Shuusuke--the target of this news--was rather cold to the fact he was just given a death sentence. Yuuta, merely younger by one year and also a Fuji child, was the complete and utter opposite. In fact, he looked almost sickly pale at the prospect of his older brother's death, which had been told to them by an antsy looking man who would be invisible in the world (most likely) if it weren't for his power over the Seventh Fonon. The Score had given him a pedestal to stand on, while it demolished the footing underneath his older brother's feet.
His little fists grew whiter as he clenched them, and the older Fuji child very carefully placed both hands on his shoulders as a sign of comfort. In the future, Shuusuke would laugh at that memory--he had just been told he was going to die, and he was the one to comfort Yuuta.
"They didn't say it was older brother."
The proclamation shocked Fuji the most. While Yuuta had mentioned nothing but semantics to the group in the dining room, he had implied a much bigger issue, which wasn't something he agreed with. Desensitized as he was to the prospect of his own death, Yuuta's dying in his place was another issue entirely. And he made that clear, as he clenched the shoulder in his hand tighter. If Yuuta noticed, it certainly didn't waver his seemingly harmless direction.
"It could be anyone," he continued. The Scorer looked ridiculous, nodding shakily at the ideas of the nine-year-old child in front of him. He held the Scorer's tablet in both hands, whispering "it simply said fuji child" under his breath, and no one looked more pathetic than him.
"Stop it, Yuuta," was the reply of a ten-year-old too shocked to say anything more than that.
"