I
Title: The Five Lives Yuki Eiri Never Lived
Part 01: The Scientist
Challenge: 5_nevers
Fandom: Gravitation
Rating: G
Word Count: 571
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Summary: "The Life of Uesugi Eiri", as written by Dia Mamoush. Tatsuha has a few complaints.
Extra Notes: I reread this and decided to change it. The science made my own brain hurt.
Enjoy!
01 - The Scientist
“By the time Uesugi Eiri was twenty-three, he’d become a legend. His name was placed in the Encyclopaedia Eximius Online and his face emblazoned the walls of teenage revolutionist bedrooms from here to New Shanghai.
“He was, quite possibly, one of the most famous men in history, if not one of the most controversial. His work had travelled every avenue of philosophical debate, every branch of scientific argument. In the end, the authorities left the arguing to those more ethical and absurd than themselves.
“Controversial or not, some might say, he deserved everything he’d ever gotten.
“He’d been born in Yamashina-ku - a ward in the southeast of Kyoto. The house he’d grown up in had been small, almost too small for a family with one child, let alone one with three. It still stands, you know, though it’s boarded up now, silent as a grave.
“The tragedy of his mother’s death had changed his father into something bitter and harsh as steel, with an iron fist that drove his eldest son away into his work.
“But then, this is all speculation, so you can come to your own conclusions. Niisan taught you that much, right?
“Science had been the young Uesugi’s calling - oh, please - and he’d revelled in the knowledge that maybe someday, he’d make a discovery so shocking, so outrageous, that people would remember him for centuries afterwards. Maybe he could invent time travel or find a cure for blood cancer or unlock the key to immortality.
“The thought had pleased him immensely, and he’d imagined how envious his classmates would be when he alone was lavished with honour upon honour and reaped the rewards of all his hard work. He alone would stand in the spotlight, illuminated and golden like a god, untouchable - what kind of sap wrote this book anyhow? Dia Mamoush - ha! It would have been a woman.
“He had strived - don’t give me that look just because the book couldn’t get the details right - he’d had to. Teamwork had not been one of his better skills - ah, I spy a grain of truth to this tale - he was a loner by nature and couldn’t stand being surrounded by mundane fools who were happy with child’s play - that’s a little harsh - when he worked with all his might to make something better of himself - well, we aren’t a suck-up at all, are we?
“Stop scowling at me; it’ll ruin your pretty face and then Niisan will have my balls for breakfast in the afterlife. Ahem. He’d been awarded the highest commendations available for his effort, and still he’d pushed himself harder. An academic mind garners trouble and he’d matched blow for blow. He’d smiled, and his rewards had hurt…”
* * *
Uesugi Tatsuha put down the book he was reading and gently stroked a hand over Shuichi’s hair, careful not to wake him. It was almost humorous that the product of his elder brother’s life’s work was this; a thin, pretty boy with hair black as ebony and skin white as snow, mute but wonderfully, impossibly alive.
Tatsuha glared at his brother’s laughing face captured in a photo frame on the boy’s desk as he fiddled with a syringe and some of the numerous bottles that comprised of his brother’s unfinished research. Eiri's heart had been problematic even in its original body. The transplant and adapting to this new body put tremendous strain on the already weak muscle, and Tatsuha thanked whoever might be listening every day that some higher authority figured that it was worth keeping Uesugi Eiri’s masterpiece alive, faulty or not.
He grimaced at the stuff and cursed his brother for dying. As always, it fell to Tatsuha to pick up what Niisan had left behind.