TricK- "Half and Half"
Title: Half and Half
Universe: TricK (kind of)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: mentioned UedaxNaoko, OMC
Warnings/Spoilers: Vague spoilers for the end of the 3rd series?
Word Count: 1,550
Summary: Future fic- parents are weird.
Dedication: for gaisce! Happy birthday Mel! ^^ Sorry it’s late!
A/N: So I spent a good hour or two staring at a blank word document before I moved to my bed to start thinking (since LJ was distracting too), and then I promptly fell asleep, like the person of great mental faculties that I am. That is why this is late, and very, very crappy.
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.
Ever since before the time when he knew what the words actually meant, his mother would sternly lecture him around whatever fistful of food she currently had in her mouth, telling him to “never be like your father.”
Likewise, his father sniffed and told him not to listen to his garbage-disposal of a mother because those who couldn’t do anything critiqued everything, and he was the one with the P.H.D and the one who everyone praised for how smart he was.
Needless to say, his was a very confusing childhood.
It was only grandmother, he decided, who had any sanity at all. But even still, not much.
Whenever he looked distressed at his parent’s constant bickering, she liked to cackle in amusement at him and give him a handful of sour candies before saying, “They’re well suited because no one else would have them.”
He didn’t understand that for a long, long time, but the candy made him feel better (after he learned how to like the combination of tart and sweet), and the calligraphy was also a nice break from the frenetic sniping he had to deal with on a constant basis at home.
But it was still a bit unsettling to know that he was half of his mother and half his father, and as he grew up, he began to wonder if at any time now, some sort of massive battle would erupt from within his biology and all of the parts of himself that were his mother’s and all of the parts of himself that were his father’s would suddenly declare war on one another and attempt to annihilate the opposing side. He imagined that after the epic battle, there would be much gloating and snickering by whichever side may have been victorious.
It was really very worrisome, and made him wonder what it was about his parents that had made them ever want to get married to each other.
“You, my dear,” his grandmother said, though she might have been sarcastic (he could never tell), “bear a heavy burden.”
And then she always gave him more candy and cackled at him and promptly told him his strokes were far too broad in some places and far too narrow in others. It made his writing messy.
“She’s right. If I’d done it I would have made your brush turn faster here,” his father told him afterwards, with his authority voice as he turned his son’s calligraphy paper around in his hands.
His mother on the other hand, just snorted. “You’re an idiot,” she told his father, before turning to him and patting his head. “Grandma is probably just messing with your head.”
The way she said it, he was fairly certain it was supposed to be reassuring.
Regardless, over the years he worked on making his penmanship neater in case his grandmother wasn’t just messing with him, and it wasn’t until he turned twelve that he realized that maybe the old woman was a little deeper than the silly theatrics she loved so much. He just didn’t know what she was trying to say yet. But he knew it was there somewhere, under all the cackling.
His parents, as it turned out, weren’t exactly right. But then again, they weren’t exactly wrong either.
“I would have turned a little earlier there as well, but not where he marked,” she said, of his father’s critique. “And of course I’m messing with your head. But is that all? I wonder!” She laughed at him.
He sighed.
“Maa, don’t make that face at me, it’s disrespectful,” the old woman chastised warmly, before handing him a new brush and roll of paper. “As for those two, they’re both not wrong. But they’re more right if you put their answers together,” grandmother told him, and laughed some more at his expression as she offered him another pocketful of sour candy.
In the meantime, his calligraphy was getting very, very good.
It wasn’t until his first year in high school when he realized what all the signs were pointing to. Or rather, what his crazy old grandmother was pointing to.
The day he figured it out wasn’t anything special-they had a biology test that morning- and while he was reading a couple of manga he’d gotten earlier in the week waiting for class to start, some of his classmates filtered in and immediately started asking for his help.
“Of course that’s the wrong answer, are you really asking me that?” he told his friend Koji with a frown after the very first homework question was posed, and he was so unimpressed by the other boy’s lack of vigilance that thereafter he charged 200 yen for every question he got asked and 300 for every ridiculously dumb one. No one argued with him because he was smart and a lot of them were desperate to pass this test, given that spring tournament season was coming up and they definitely, definitely wanted to be eligible to play on their teams.
“Ne, Ueda…” Koji began good-naturedly at him after he’d pocketed around 3000 yen.
“Hmm?”
“We get our practice tests back today too, ne?”
“Yeah.”
“And uh, sensei said that those who scored perfects on them don’t have to take the actual test today, ne?”
“Yeah,” he responded, and really wondered how their teacher got away with crazy “progressive education” schemes like that. The only way he could fathom it was the fact that the principal didn’t expect enough perfect scores on those kinds of things to actually have it be a threat to the system as a whole.
“So,” Koji continued, and gestured to the manga he’d been reading, “Do you think you got perfect or something?”
“No way,” a bunch of the other kids declared, when they overheard.
He sighed. “I got perfect. I even got the extra credit. My score is going to be 102.”
“No way,” everyone said again, and thought he was just being cocky.
Which might have been part of it (his mother called it the disease-he’d-inherited-from-his-idiot-father), but besides that, he was certain he was correct.
“That test was impossible. They made it impossible on purpose so no one would get today off.”
“I got the test off today,” he insisted.
“Bet you 10,000 yen that you didn’t.”
He blinked.
They took the pause as him reconsidering, and grinned amongst one another like the sharks they were. “150,000 yen, then, Mr. Confidence!”
He knew he shouldn’t.
It was amoral.
But he supposed it was more their fault than his in the end, since they were clearly the stupid ones here.
He smiled. “Sure, it’s a bet.”
Later, when he got off with not having to take the test, he added the 150,000 yen wad of cash to his pocket, where it happily joined the 3,000 he’d earned before that.
And as he sat reading his comics while his classmates scribbled furiously away at their exams, a strange thought occurred to him. It was startling and yet it wasn’t, and he blinked once or twice and paused in the middle of his reading for a moment when it flashed in his head. But nothing much more than that happened, and once the moment was up he said, “Hmmm,” to himself, and flipped to the next page of his comic.
When he returned to his house after school that day he didn’t bother to announce that he was back because he’d come back to an empty home and a note that simply read “Haunted Mansion, Korean BBQ. Do your homework,” yesterday, and that meant his parents probably wouldn’t be back at least for two or three days. His mom and dad had gotten calls to go check that kind of supernatural stuff out all throughout his life, and he still couldn’t figure out why his mother insisted on writing down her reason for going each and every time. He knew she didn’t go for anything less than all-you-can-eat.
In the meantime, once he’d sorted the mail and checked the messages, he plopped down onto the living room couch and called his grandmother, pulling the nice wad of cash he’d earned out of his pocket and running his fingers through it while he waited for her to pick up.
Two rings exactly, and then a soft, deceptively sweet, “Hello?”
“Hey, grandma.”
Gone with the sweetness. “Ah, so you finally deign to call this lonely old woman to check up on her after all this time hmmm, my irresponsible grandchild?”
He smiled into the receiver, and didn’t even bother to respond to her accusations. “I get it now,” was all he said.
Silence.
And then, after a very long while, there was the sound of quiet laughter from the other end. “Wonderful,” she exclaimed, and he could imagine her little smirk even still, “I’ve been out of your candy for months."
He laughed a little bit too.
And then they both hung up without another word between them.
That done, he folded his money back up, tucking it back into the billfold of his wallet. And he thought to himself that the first thing he was going to buy with his earnings was a nice big box of Sour Patch Kids.
Because after all this time, he’d learned to liked the combination.
END
EDITS PLZ.
Universe: TricK (kind of)
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: mentioned UedaxNaoko, OMC
Warnings/Spoilers: Vague spoilers for the end of the 3rd series?
Word Count: 1,550
Summary: Future fic- parents are weird.
Dedication: for gaisce! Happy birthday Mel! ^^ Sorry it’s late!
A/N: So I spent a good hour or two staring at a blank word document before I moved to my bed to start thinking (since LJ was distracting too), and then I promptly fell asleep, like the person of great mental faculties that I am. That is why this is late, and very, very crappy.
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.
Ever since before the time when he knew what the words actually meant, his mother would sternly lecture him around whatever fistful of food she currently had in her mouth, telling him to “never be like your father.”
Likewise, his father sniffed and told him not to listen to his garbage-disposal of a mother because those who couldn’t do anything critiqued everything, and he was the one with the P.H.D and the one who everyone praised for how smart he was.
Needless to say, his was a very confusing childhood.
It was only grandmother, he decided, who had any sanity at all. But even still, not much.
Whenever he looked distressed at his parent’s constant bickering, she liked to cackle in amusement at him and give him a handful of sour candies before saying, “They’re well suited because no one else would have them.”
He didn’t understand that for a long, long time, but the candy made him feel better (after he learned how to like the combination of tart and sweet), and the calligraphy was also a nice break from the frenetic sniping he had to deal with on a constant basis at home.
But it was still a bit unsettling to know that he was half of his mother and half his father, and as he grew up, he began to wonder if at any time now, some sort of massive battle would erupt from within his biology and all of the parts of himself that were his mother’s and all of the parts of himself that were his father’s would suddenly declare war on one another and attempt to annihilate the opposing side. He imagined that after the epic battle, there would be much gloating and snickering by whichever side may have been victorious.
It was really very worrisome, and made him wonder what it was about his parents that had made them ever want to get married to each other.
“You, my dear,” his grandmother said, though she might have been sarcastic (he could never tell), “bear a heavy burden.”
And then she always gave him more candy and cackled at him and promptly told him his strokes were far too broad in some places and far too narrow in others. It made his writing messy.
“She’s right. If I’d done it I would have made your brush turn faster here,” his father told him afterwards, with his authority voice as he turned his son’s calligraphy paper around in his hands.
His mother on the other hand, just snorted. “You’re an idiot,” she told his father, before turning to him and patting his head. “Grandma is probably just messing with your head.”
The way she said it, he was fairly certain it was supposed to be reassuring.
Regardless, over the years he worked on making his penmanship neater in case his grandmother wasn’t just messing with him, and it wasn’t until he turned twelve that he realized that maybe the old woman was a little deeper than the silly theatrics she loved so much. He just didn’t know what she was trying to say yet. But he knew it was there somewhere, under all the cackling.
His parents, as it turned out, weren’t exactly right. But then again, they weren’t exactly wrong either.
“I would have turned a little earlier there as well, but not where he marked,” she said, of his father’s critique. “And of course I’m messing with your head. But is that all? I wonder!” She laughed at him.
He sighed.
“Maa, don’t make that face at me, it’s disrespectful,” the old woman chastised warmly, before handing him a new brush and roll of paper. “As for those two, they’re both not wrong. But they’re more right if you put their answers together,” grandmother told him, and laughed some more at his expression as she offered him another pocketful of sour candy.
In the meantime, his calligraphy was getting very, very good.
It wasn’t until his first year in high school when he realized what all the signs were pointing to. Or rather, what his crazy old grandmother was pointing to.
The day he figured it out wasn’t anything special-they had a biology test that morning- and while he was reading a couple of manga he’d gotten earlier in the week waiting for class to start, some of his classmates filtered in and immediately started asking for his help.
“Of course that’s the wrong answer, are you really asking me that?” he told his friend Koji with a frown after the very first homework question was posed, and he was so unimpressed by the other boy’s lack of vigilance that thereafter he charged 200 yen for every question he got asked and 300 for every ridiculously dumb one. No one argued with him because he was smart and a lot of them were desperate to pass this test, given that spring tournament season was coming up and they definitely, definitely wanted to be eligible to play on their teams.
“Ne, Ueda…” Koji began good-naturedly at him after he’d pocketed around 3000 yen.
“Hmm?”
“We get our practice tests back today too, ne?”
“Yeah.”
“And uh, sensei said that those who scored perfects on them don’t have to take the actual test today, ne?”
“Yeah,” he responded, and really wondered how their teacher got away with crazy “progressive education” schemes like that. The only way he could fathom it was the fact that the principal didn’t expect enough perfect scores on those kinds of things to actually have it be a threat to the system as a whole.
“So,” Koji continued, and gestured to the manga he’d been reading, “Do you think you got perfect or something?”
“No way,” a bunch of the other kids declared, when they overheard.
He sighed. “I got perfect. I even got the extra credit. My score is going to be 102.”
“No way,” everyone said again, and thought he was just being cocky.
Which might have been part of it (his mother called it the disease-he’d-inherited-from-his-idiot-father), but besides that, he was certain he was correct.
“That test was impossible. They made it impossible on purpose so no one would get today off.”
“I got the test off today,” he insisted.
“Bet you 10,000 yen that you didn’t.”
He blinked.
They took the pause as him reconsidering, and grinned amongst one another like the sharks they were. “150,000 yen, then, Mr. Confidence!”
He knew he shouldn’t.
It was amoral.
But he supposed it was more their fault than his in the end, since they were clearly the stupid ones here.
He smiled. “Sure, it’s a bet.”
Later, when he got off with not having to take the test, he added the 150,000 yen wad of cash to his pocket, where it happily joined the 3,000 he’d earned before that.
And as he sat reading his comics while his classmates scribbled furiously away at their exams, a strange thought occurred to him. It was startling and yet it wasn’t, and he blinked once or twice and paused in the middle of his reading for a moment when it flashed in his head. But nothing much more than that happened, and once the moment was up he said, “Hmmm,” to himself, and flipped to the next page of his comic.
When he returned to his house after school that day he didn’t bother to announce that he was back because he’d come back to an empty home and a note that simply read “Haunted Mansion, Korean BBQ. Do your homework,” yesterday, and that meant his parents probably wouldn’t be back at least for two or three days. His mom and dad had gotten calls to go check that kind of supernatural stuff out all throughout his life, and he still couldn’t figure out why his mother insisted on writing down her reason for going each and every time. He knew she didn’t go for anything less than all-you-can-eat.
In the meantime, once he’d sorted the mail and checked the messages, he plopped down onto the living room couch and called his grandmother, pulling the nice wad of cash he’d earned out of his pocket and running his fingers through it while he waited for her to pick up.
Two rings exactly, and then a soft, deceptively sweet, “Hello?”
“Hey, grandma.”
Gone with the sweetness. “Ah, so you finally deign to call this lonely old woman to check up on her after all this time hmmm, my irresponsible grandchild?”
He smiled into the receiver, and didn’t even bother to respond to her accusations. “I get it now,” was all he said.
Silence.
And then, after a very long while, there was the sound of quiet laughter from the other end. “Wonderful,” she exclaimed, and he could imagine her little smirk even still, “I’ve been out of your candy for months."
He laughed a little bit too.
And then they both hung up without another word between them.
That done, he folded his money back up, tucking it back into the billfold of his wallet. And he thought to himself that the first thing he was going to buy with his earnings was a nice big box of Sour Patch Kids.
Because after all this time, he’d learned to liked the combination.
END
EDITS PLZ.