[fic] The X Factor, chapter one
Title: The X Factor. Chapter One: This Is How They Grew Up
Pairing: Koyama/Ryo/Shige
Author: me. ezyls_girl. XD.
Rating: PG, all the way to M (tentative.)
Warnings: Bad words will definitely be showing up next. Maybe some sex later if you're lucky. Angsty, somewhat, but I'm trying to find ways to insert dry humor into it (do tell if I'm failing). Un-beta'd.
Summary: This is how they grew up, in the harsh environment among spitballs and cruel gossip, stupid teachers and polynomial functions.
Notes: If you've discovered all of my terrible writing habits by now, please share. Reviews/commenting is welcomely-welcomed. And I thank everyone else who's been lovely to the preview. *throws around random huggles*
And I apologize for the shortness of it. Finals, you know. =_____=
In their first year of division two, sensei introduced the students of class 4A to domains and ranges of polynomial functions. It didn’t matter that he had only began to understand what a times table does, nor that Shige had already been training himself for half-angle formulas several grade levels above himself, because children their age all knew what domains and ranges were.
He didn’t get it. And he really didn’t want to bother with it, either. It was enough that he was already expected to clean all the dishes in the ramen shop without any of them slipping through the soap and breaking on the floor.
The year after, they changed district directors. Smiling Old Lady was replaced by Grumpy-Dwarf-dono, who tried to force all of them to address him as Kitagawa-sensei, but they couldn’t resist calling him Pervy Johnny behind his back.
When they began junior high, the math teacher called him stupid, raising her voice over everyone’s to rant about how he couldn’t even learn simple equations and how he was never going to get into university at this rate. Shige risked his entire semester grade by telling her off in front of the class in sophisticated words. He even threatened to file a lawsuit. When they chuckled over teacher’s crimson face in the ice cream parlor after school, he decided that it was the best day of their seventh year.
Nothing particularly exciting happened the year after, though Akanishi-kun managed to set Tsubasa-senpai’s shoes on fire with a broken twig and a flint. They were so sure that he was going to get killed for it, but Akanishi somehow managed to pull through by rallying together a gang from his History class and outnumbering Tsubasa and his friend three to one.
High school was a mess. He counted himself lucky that his position in the fast class hadn’t altered too far that Shige would be separated from him. But aside from that, the teachers seemed to come back over their short-lived break transfigured into medieval lizards snorting flames and difficult test papers. New students came rarely and apprehensively. And when they did arrive, most were either too nerdy or too cool for the rest of them so they left the next day, anyway. Following the unsuccessful entries, new staff members were hired. Complaints stacked-up in the principal’s in-tray like flies on a piece of meat. The cafeteria reeked of rotten food and salted pork from the seventeenth century. There was no air conditioning in the summer. The honors classes were laughable, Shige being the only one who was holding the school’s reputation at the local math events. By the time Nishikido Ryo had been added their ranks, the teachers were at wit’s end and anxiety between everyone had reached an all-time high-people were ready to murder each other in cold blood between passing periods.
Needless to say, their year was a rowdy bunch.
It would seem appropriate that the story of the new kid staying for a second day would circulate around faster than Masuda-kun could run when confronted with miso soup. At least three quarters of the grade went over Ryo in detail, and he and Shige were no exception.
“This new guy, what’s his name…?” He began.
“Oh, you mean Nishikido Ryo-kun?” Shige asked, absentmindedly-poking holes in their History paper with the tip of his pen.
“He sounds like a nice fellow,” he said.
“Is he?”
“I don’t know,” he wondered, “should we try to be friends with him?”
“If he doesn’t interfere with my exam schedule.”
“You’re so mean,” he punched Shige in the shoulder, “Maybe I should dump you for Nishikido-kun. At least he looks cool.”
“I’m sure he does, Kei-chan,” Shige responded primly, the holes on the paper now formed into the pattern of a frown, “now can we finish the homework?”
He remembered clearly, afterwards, about being too preoccupied the day before to listen to Shige’s advice, receiving a large red F and a scolding from tou-san. Shige had still gotten his usual hundred percent and a smile from the professor, and he had been a little annoyed.
Within the next month, Ryo had stolen Tegoshi-kun’s position at the bottom of the class. He was dropped from the course with a frustrated instructor and three referrals declaring his attitude problem and tendency to goof-off in class.
Koyama did not like boys. Or at least, not in the way most expected him to like guys. He did not think of them as being particularly pretty or sexy in any way. He might’ve experimented at some point in his life, thought of Shige in a less-than-clean manner, but since anyone from the Stone Age had done exactly the same, it wasn’t exactly much to account for.
But two far-from-ugly boys, hanging around together all the time-it was bound to raise at least a few questions directed towards sexuality. (Not to mention, neither of them had considered getting girlfriends for any amount of time.) And as far speculation went, he and Shige both skirted the shifty-sounding questions that they had racked up over the years with an acceptable reason-they were just friends. And while he had told anyone who would listen that he preferred girls because they wouldn’t prickle when kissed, he had never bothered to test his own theory, so it was still widely-spread that he and Shige were secret lovers or one of those dreadfully-destined Romeo-Juliet-type pairs.
Similarly, if anyone had dared to come forth and ask him whether he preferred being on top or bottoming, he would glare and retreat from the battle front.
Three months after the storm arrives, Ryo has already been-with-and-dumped thirteen girls and two guys. The last one, Ueda Tatsuya from Class 9C, had run home with furious tears and a trashed-out locker with the words MANHOE slopped all over it in pink poster paint. Ueda-kun transferred-out within the next two days, and Akanishi’s gang was down to five.
He begins to dislike equations involving X factors.
The feeling passed.
He felt a change come over him the next year. It was just a bubble at first, but a strange sort of warmth spread through his body every time he saw Ryo’s head pop up in the crowd. It was like he had been pushed into a tidal wave, a giant blizzard, the eye of the tornado nearing him until he could feel his body being slowly crushed and smothered from the turbulence.
“Ne, Shige, I’m not gay, right?”
Shige shrugged, looking up from their chemistry project, “I dunno. Do you think you’re gay?”
“No, but I’ve wondered about Nishikido-kun,” he admitted.
Shige laughed, “I’m sure you have, Kei-chan.”
Another day, he had fallen asleep during a study session and woke up on Shige’s couch, rubbing his eyes, “Shige.”
“What?” Shige was looking at him really weirdly over the textbook.
“I had the strangest dream. I dreamed that Nishikido Ryo was kissing me.”
“You…dreamed that?”
Those were the beginnings of those first few days of spring, of mismatched thoughts and mazes in the mind, the broken reveries of his childhood finally evaporating into the reality of high school. It wasn’t soon before Shige had been accepted early into a top university and he was still on the waiting list for the city’s third-rate college. It was the prelude of when he had dragged Shige away from the two of them becoming the golden boys of their age (so that Akanishi-kun and Kamenashi-kun had taken over) and into the new terrain of Nishikido’s growing fanbase.
“I think he looked at me. Do you think he did?”
Shige breathed out a puff from his cigarette, circling his mouth in the shape of a donut hole to try out his new smoke ring trick, “I’m sure he did, Kei-chan,” and he took out the dreadful graphing workbook to shut him up.
It wasn’t clear whether or not it had been the inevitable nature of Ryo’s magical whirlwind, or simply Shige’s way of dealing with things, but after that he had always less comfortable to be discussing things with him. He and Shige were still the best of friends, to be sure. They still received regular pretty-handkerchief-wrapped lunches from pretty girls, thrown together in matchmaking-fundraisers more often than was healthy, but there was something completely cold about it. Oh, he didn’t know. It was just a little odd, that was all.
Ryo, on the other hand, had gone through some sort of metamorphose phase. From getting on teacher’s nerves and playing the joker, he had retreated, gone under-side, missing days of school for several weeks until administration was forced to call home. His grades slipped until they were sub-zero.
Theorem: X in the absolute values equations, when placed less-than a negative or zero integer, will have no solution, teacher wrote on the board.
There was no solution to Nishikido Ryo.
--
Bad writing habits/stuff that you may or may not have noticed:
Did anyone count how many times I actually used the word "Koyama"? Is it confusing enough?
Are my obscure references making you queasy?
Is Akanishi Jin even supposed to be hanging around here?
Can you hazard a guess at when/how Pi's gonna appear? Hint: He's not mentioned in the pairings section.
**Please don't answer the following questions, as you might get the answer correct and that'll make people begin to doubt me if they haven't begun to, already.
Pairing: Koyama/Ryo/Shige
Author: me. ezyls_girl. XD.
Rating: PG, all the way to M (tentative.)
Warnings: Bad words will definitely be showing up next. Maybe some sex later if you're lucky. Angsty, somewhat, but I'm trying to find ways to insert dry humor into it (do tell if I'm failing). Un-beta'd.
Summary: This is how they grew up, in the harsh environment among spitballs and cruel gossip, stupid teachers and polynomial functions.
Notes: If you've discovered all of my terrible writing habits by now, please share. Reviews/commenting is welcomely-welcomed. And I thank everyone else who's been lovely to the preview. *throws around random huggles*
And I apologize for the shortness of it. Finals, you know. =_____=
In their first year of division two, sensei introduced the students of class 4A to domains and ranges of polynomial functions. It didn’t matter that he had only began to understand what a times table does, nor that Shige had already been training himself for half-angle formulas several grade levels above himself, because children their age all knew what domains and ranges were.
He didn’t get it. And he really didn’t want to bother with it, either. It was enough that he was already expected to clean all the dishes in the ramen shop without any of them slipping through the soap and breaking on the floor.
The year after, they changed district directors. Smiling Old Lady was replaced by Grumpy-Dwarf-dono, who tried to force all of them to address him as Kitagawa-sensei, but they couldn’t resist calling him Pervy Johnny behind his back.
When they began junior high, the math teacher called him stupid, raising her voice over everyone’s to rant about how he couldn’t even learn simple equations and how he was never going to get into university at this rate. Shige risked his entire semester grade by telling her off in front of the class in sophisticated words. He even threatened to file a lawsuit. When they chuckled over teacher’s crimson face in the ice cream parlor after school, he decided that it was the best day of their seventh year.
Nothing particularly exciting happened the year after, though Akanishi-kun managed to set Tsubasa-senpai’s shoes on fire with a broken twig and a flint. They were so sure that he was going to get killed for it, but Akanishi somehow managed to pull through by rallying together a gang from his History class and outnumbering Tsubasa and his friend three to one.
High school was a mess. He counted himself lucky that his position in the fast class hadn’t altered too far that Shige would be separated from him. But aside from that, the teachers seemed to come back over their short-lived break transfigured into medieval lizards snorting flames and difficult test papers. New students came rarely and apprehensively. And when they did arrive, most were either too nerdy or too cool for the rest of them so they left the next day, anyway. Following the unsuccessful entries, new staff members were hired. Complaints stacked-up in the principal’s in-tray like flies on a piece of meat. The cafeteria reeked of rotten food and salted pork from the seventeenth century. There was no air conditioning in the summer. The honors classes were laughable, Shige being the only one who was holding the school’s reputation at the local math events. By the time Nishikido Ryo had been added their ranks, the teachers were at wit’s end and anxiety between everyone had reached an all-time high-people were ready to murder each other in cold blood between passing periods.
Needless to say, their year was a rowdy bunch.
It would seem appropriate that the story of the new kid staying for a second day would circulate around faster than Masuda-kun could run when confronted with miso soup. At least three quarters of the grade went over Ryo in detail, and he and Shige were no exception.
“This new guy, what’s his name…?” He began.
“Oh, you mean Nishikido Ryo-kun?” Shige asked, absentmindedly-poking holes in their History paper with the tip of his pen.
“He sounds like a nice fellow,” he said.
“Is he?”
“I don’t know,” he wondered, “should we try to be friends with him?”
“If he doesn’t interfere with my exam schedule.”
“You’re so mean,” he punched Shige in the shoulder, “Maybe I should dump you for Nishikido-kun. At least he looks cool.”
“I’m sure he does, Kei-chan,” Shige responded primly, the holes on the paper now formed into the pattern of a frown, “now can we finish the homework?”
He remembered clearly, afterwards, about being too preoccupied the day before to listen to Shige’s advice, receiving a large red F and a scolding from tou-san. Shige had still gotten his usual hundred percent and a smile from the professor, and he had been a little annoyed.
Within the next month, Ryo had stolen Tegoshi-kun’s position at the bottom of the class. He was dropped from the course with a frustrated instructor and three referrals declaring his attitude problem and tendency to goof-off in class.
Koyama did not like boys. Or at least, not in the way most expected him to like guys. He did not think of them as being particularly pretty or sexy in any way. He might’ve experimented at some point in his life, thought of Shige in a less-than-clean manner, but since anyone from the Stone Age had done exactly the same, it wasn’t exactly much to account for.
But two far-from-ugly boys, hanging around together all the time-it was bound to raise at least a few questions directed towards sexuality. (Not to mention, neither of them had considered getting girlfriends for any amount of time.) And as far speculation went, he and Shige both skirted the shifty-sounding questions that they had racked up over the years with an acceptable reason-they were just friends. And while he had told anyone who would listen that he preferred girls because they wouldn’t prickle when kissed, he had never bothered to test his own theory, so it was still widely-spread that he and Shige were secret lovers or one of those dreadfully-destined Romeo-Juliet-type pairs.
Similarly, if anyone had dared to come forth and ask him whether he preferred being on top or bottoming, he would glare and retreat from the battle front.
Three months after the storm arrives, Ryo has already been-with-and-dumped thirteen girls and two guys. The last one, Ueda Tatsuya from Class 9C, had run home with furious tears and a trashed-out locker with the words MANHOE slopped all over it in pink poster paint. Ueda-kun transferred-out within the next two days, and Akanishi’s gang was down to five.
He begins to dislike equations involving X factors.
The feeling passed.
He felt a change come over him the next year. It was just a bubble at first, but a strange sort of warmth spread through his body every time he saw Ryo’s head pop up in the crowd. It was like he had been pushed into a tidal wave, a giant blizzard, the eye of the tornado nearing him until he could feel his body being slowly crushed and smothered from the turbulence.
“Ne, Shige, I’m not gay, right?”
Shige shrugged, looking up from their chemistry project, “I dunno. Do you think you’re gay?”
“No, but I’ve wondered about Nishikido-kun,” he admitted.
Shige laughed, “I’m sure you have, Kei-chan.”
Another day, he had fallen asleep during a study session and woke up on Shige’s couch, rubbing his eyes, “Shige.”
“What?” Shige was looking at him really weirdly over the textbook.
“I had the strangest dream. I dreamed that Nishikido Ryo was kissing me.”
“You…dreamed that?”
Those were the beginnings of those first few days of spring, of mismatched thoughts and mazes in the mind, the broken reveries of his childhood finally evaporating into the reality of high school. It wasn’t soon before Shige had been accepted early into a top university and he was still on the waiting list for the city’s third-rate college. It was the prelude of when he had dragged Shige away from the two of them becoming the golden boys of their age (so that Akanishi-kun and Kamenashi-kun had taken over) and into the new terrain of Nishikido’s growing fanbase.
“I think he looked at me. Do you think he did?”
Shige breathed out a puff from his cigarette, circling his mouth in the shape of a donut hole to try out his new smoke ring trick, “I’m sure he did, Kei-chan,” and he took out the dreadful graphing workbook to shut him up.
It wasn’t clear whether or not it had been the inevitable nature of Ryo’s magical whirlwind, or simply Shige’s way of dealing with things, but after that he had always less comfortable to be discussing things with him. He and Shige were still the best of friends, to be sure. They still received regular pretty-handkerchief-wrapped lunches from pretty girls, thrown together in matchmaking-fundraisers more often than was healthy, but there was something completely cold about it. Oh, he didn’t know. It was just a little odd, that was all.
Ryo, on the other hand, had gone through some sort of metamorphose phase. From getting on teacher’s nerves and playing the joker, he had retreated, gone under-side, missing days of school for several weeks until administration was forced to call home. His grades slipped until they were sub-zero.
Theorem: X in the absolute values equations, when placed less-than a negative or zero integer, will have no solution, teacher wrote on the board.
There was no solution to Nishikido Ryo.
--
Bad writing habits/stuff that you may or may not have noticed:
Did anyone count how many times I actually used the word "Koyama"? Is it confusing enough?
Are my obscure references making you queasy?
Is Akanishi Jin even supposed to be hanging around here?
Can you hazard a guess at when/how Pi's gonna appear? Hint: He's not mentioned in the pairings section.
**Please don't answer the following questions, as you might get the answer correct and that'll make people begin to doubt me if they haven't begun to, already.