Life at 16 - 01/XX - RukiXAoi, AoiXRuki
Title: Life at 16
Chapter: 01/XX
Author: akichuu
Fandom: the GazettE, alice nine.,
Pairings: AoiXRuki, RukiXAoi, ToraXRuki, ReitaX??, possibly more to come.
Theme: 031: Murder Freaks - D’espairsRay @ 50stories
Rating: For now, PG-13
Genre: AU (high school), fluff, romance
Warnings: Un-beta-ed mistakes, OOC-ness.
Disclaimers: I only own my funky brain and the amusing ideas it spews on daily basis.
Summary: High school: the epicenter of a human child’s adolescence, the most extreme twist in the roller coaster ride of life; the three years of the most remembered acts of foolishness, of teenage melodramas and adventures. Ruki, a 16 year old high school boy, gives us VIP seats to witness the many quirks of his daily life and the dilemmas of his youth as he reveals them in his journal. Everything is here: all the nerve-racking and stomach turning occurrences; the denial, the contemplation, the struggle, the love and the heartbreak!
Comments: Finally! Another high school fiction! Ohhh~ I really miss writing high school stuffs, ever since ‘Hanabi’ ended a while ago. I figured that it would be necessary for me to write something youthful and light, apart from every other story I’m currently working at. I do hope you enjoy this story :) By the way, thanks to my lovely chibi_bisque for the info regarding schools in Japan.
Read at your own cost!!! ~ socialriot's Personal Journal
Entry number: 771
Date: June 30th, 2008
=============================
Hey there.
Tonight I proudly-and bitterly-bring progress reports about today’s happenings. We can always be sure that there are two sides of the coin; so I suppose it’s only natural that the good news and the bad news come together, hand in hand.
Here, I’ll tell you the good news first.
For once, I’m happy to say that my class has finally decided to depart from the dark ages of its shallow intelligence and infinite boredom and enter the wondrous world of unrestrained creativity. You’ve been the truest witness on how eagerly I’ve been calculating on a mutiny against Kai, our class representative, and also our homeroom teacher since they have been-and still are-the source of nearly all the mental breakdowns of my youth. I still think they need some smart DNA injected into their brains, but now, after the rather rare burst of enthusiasm in class today, I resolve to delay my superb plan to another day. I believe they deserve this small chance to prove that they haven’t convicted me into the eternal doom of a dreary, arid world of human idiocy, which will definitely cause me several death wishes and multiple mental disorders in the near future.
What has happened, really, that I changed my mind so drastically?
School Festival’s date has been decided, that’s what. And it’s only 2 weeks away from today.
I guess it really needs this big of an ignition to spark the class’ interest. When the announcement came-yeah, brought by none other but the All Mighty Chairman of the Student School Board, the pigheaded, nose-less brother of mine: Reita-I thought the whole class was going into seizures. I felt rather horrified to behold the dramatic change that took place in front of my very eyes, from the grave-like tranquility to the flickering burst of excitement; it was almost like watching a whole yard of coffins being ripped open by their very own inhabitants that were crawling up to the surface to haunt mankind to its end. Reita must’ve been so proud of himself because he managed to wake the class from its stupor, and when he glided out of the room I saw that smug, crooked smile that I wished I could rip off his face with my claws-if only I had any.
So that was that; and at the 19th of July, every class in school will compete for the Best Theme Award that the School Board presents for the class with the most innovative idea applied to its summer festival stand. The whole deal sounds petty, maybe, but everyone actually takes it very seriously. The competition gets really brutal and even bloody sometimes; like, last year when I was still in my first year, some kids from another class sabotaged the properties my class had worked our asses on for a whole month. When kids from my class went to confront them, the supposedly civilized discussion became a barbaric glue-and-sticks throwing battle in no time, and ended with almost half of the kids in my class and the class we’d fought against going into detention.
Why yes… I happened to be one of them. Mama wasn’t too happy with that, but Reita said he was proud of me because, I quote his exact words: “My Baby Brother isn’t afraid of getting down and dirty, black and bruised anymore!” I made sure he never took back his ‘compliment’ as I drove my fist onto his nose.
I suppose I’ve made my point clear: school festival is crucial, and the Best Theme Competition is a combat we must win… at all cost.
Once the date was published, a theme must be settled on. I dreaded this part a lot because I’ve never been able to guess what dull mess my classmates had for brains and whether or not these brains were functioning enough for them to think up of a decent theme. I sat on my seat, fidgeting when Kai-acting, as always, as Mr. ‘My Dominion is Absolute and You Have no Saying to That!’-got up on the small podium in front of the class and ordered out a vote that everyone must do. I, wasting no time for second thoughts, wrote ‘Bloody Horror Movies’ on my little piece of paper. Will it not be awesome if everyone gets dressed in tattered, blood-spattered costumes with gore dripping down their hair? I know I watched Saw I to V way too many times, but you cannot tell me that those movies haven’t contributed to my fabulous sense of art. I would even volunteer myself to make some artificial mutilated limbs that look real enough for extra properties, if only they’d let me.
My strong-looking but apparently weak-hearted friend, Tora, scowled when he looked at what theme I picked for the class’ stand, but I told him that we lived in a democratic world and he could go to hell if he wanted to argue me about a personal choice that I made. I didn’t think that he taking a peek at my vote was even legal in any process of democracy. I also told him that he could pick whatever theme he wanted and I wouldn’t even say anything to anyone about his sentiment-or was it fear?-against blood and severed body parts and lunatic killers carrying electric saws or kitchen knives on the loose. He scowled once again and wrote, with big, heavily pressured letters, ‘Superheroes’ on his paper.
Ugh… like I would ever put on a spandex, all-body suit and run around with a red, flapping cloth on my back.
I made an oath that if Tora’s theme got elected I would disappear from the face of the earth and make an argument that I happened to be doing the Invisible Woman from Fantastic Four. I know I had a legitimate line of reasoning and he couldn’t tell me Sue Storm Richards wasn’t a superhero, not in a million years if he really loved that genre of super-power gifted humans and mutants like he said he did.
Or I would go as Edward Scissorhand.
Chop, chop. Chop, chop.
He is a superhero, isn’t he? He’s like, my favorite mutant. What’s so different about him and that guy Wolverine? They both have dangerous, sharp objects protruding from their hands and they both can chop a man’s head anytime they want. I happen to like Edward more because he’s pale and weird and his hair looks awesome and his life is a bundle of tragedy; while Wolverine is… well, Wolverine is hairy. I don’t know, but it’s just I always think that guy had too much hair on his face. I don’t really care if he needs to be hairy because he’s supposed to be wolf-like, hence the name, I still think it’s rather gross.
Well, it doesn’t matter anyways.
In the end, when the small folded papers were opened and the votes were being pronounced by Kai, neither I nor Tora could rejoice with our themes getting picked. Here we were facing the logical risk of having a bigger amount of female students in our class: none of the boys’ votes got a chance, and especially not mine. I knew I wasn’t the only one getting sicker by the minute as one very girly and very romantic idea came up after another; Tora, I believe, collapsed on his seat. He kept making those noises that a guy with food poisoning would make, every time Kai added another silly theme on the blackboard. I patted his back and told him we shared the same pain.
“Yes, my friend,” I said, “It’s a cruel world we’re living in.”
So it was ‘Barbie-world’ getting listed after ‘Fairy Tales’ and I and Tora knew there was no way but to give up hopes. By that point I supposed I didn’t have much objection as I had when I saw Tora’s selected theme, not when there were many other dreadful ideas to be feared about. Finally, three themes succeeded in gaining the most plenty votes: ‘60s’, ‘The Greatest Love Stories of All Time’ and, the good old classic of stand theme, ‘Ghost House’. Seeing I still had a chance to survive from Mid-Summer Day’s Nightmare, no matter how perfectly unoriginal the idea was, I raised my hand for ‘Ghost House’, and Tora-shockingly-voted for ‘60s’. In the midst of imagining Tora with Paul McCartney’s hair and outfit (the images in my brain, before long, managed to give me a headache), the vote came to an end.
Again, I have to remind you: the girls’ population in our class exceeds the boys’ by 40 percent.
The conclusion is as following: we will be doing ‘The Greatest Love Stories of All Time’ theme for the summer festival class stand competition-that is precisely how Kai announced it, loud and clear. Tora fainted again on his seat, and I felt a reasonable urge to follow suit.
But to my horror, my nightmare did not just end there.
In other words, we’ve come to the bad news part-well, the theme chosen was already a bad thing, but what I’m about to tell you now is even worse… far, far worse.
After the theme was officially elected, we had to form a small committee whose job was to take all responsibilities of arranging everything stand-related. I sunk into my chair while Tora continued playing dead next to me; I knew both of us would give anything in turn for us to be spared, to be let free from this committee of hell.
“The core committee consists of two girls and two boys, and these four will have full independent right to recruit as many student as they need to help them in the process,” so said Kai; his ever flawless smile, somehow, stayed put on his face; the intonation with which he spoke was brimming with the temptation that suggested we should’ve felt honored if we could be chosen as members of the core committee. “Anybody wants to volunteer?” he offered.
Several girls raised their hands, and I could just see their faces beaming with hope and excitement, and even joy, however ridiculous that seemed to me. From seven girls volunteering, Aoyama and Komori were chosen, and they couldn’t have looked prouder in their lives than the time when Kai wrote their names on the board. And then Kai lurked-with his deceivingly friendly but truthfully cunning pair of eyes-around the room in search for boys who would be interested in joining the committee, but of course there were none. All the male students seemed to have taken Tora’s example and drowned their faces on their desks, hoping for once in their lives that they could be invisible.
I suspected, with how the situation was developing, Kai was only too happy to misuse his authority as the class representative to pick the most appealing victims of this monstrosity by himself. He had the widest, most wolfish grin I had ever seen on a man’s face when he lifted his arm-slowly, dramatically-to my direction, and just as I thought my nerves could never handle more shock, his forefinger rose up my face. At that very instant, a super massive black hole opened up and swallowed me whole and threw me into an immeasurable blank space where everything was against the immortal laws of mass conservation and I was totally lost in it.
I think I might’ve gone into catatonic phase right then and there.
Except that I didn’t; instead, I screamed in rage and disbelief and protested with all my might. I shouted, asking him what the heck his problem was, because he couldn’t have picked me without a decent reason! He must’ve held a grudge against me or something-me or the people I had as family; as far as I could remember, he still didn’t feel too happy about Reita getting elected as this year’s Chairman of Student School Board instead of him… Looking at my reaction, Kai seemed to be amused instead of threatened in any ways and carried on with his task at hand as if he hadn’t heard me complaining.
Oh that cruel hearted bastard… He will pay for this.
“You’re absolutely right, my friend,” Tora said, returning the deed as he patted my shoulder. “It is truly a cruel, cruel world.”
I could’ve bitten off his hand if only I hadn’t remembered that I was actually a civilized man and not Hannibal Lecter.
It was almost like losing all the hopes of my youthful life and I was ripped off from all the wonderful dreams of my future; a huge burden was placed on my back and I couldn’t shake it off. I couldn’t care less if Tora was genuinely concerned or not, when he told me that he wouldn’t mind if I wanted to recruit him to be a part of the committee so that I wouldn’t suffer alone. At that moment, all I wanted was for the world to fall apart; I was praying for an earthquake to happen or a volcano to erupt so that the festival would be delayed or even canceled.
I knew I was black hearted and vengeful; I’ve always known that.
In the mean time, Kai had moved on to choose the next boy he’d be giving the same responsibility-or nightmare, depends on which side you’re looking at it. Suffocating and hardly conscious, I only vaguely heard the name that Kai pronounced-the guy who would become my partner in hard times, share my horrors and sufferings: Shiroyama.
It took my brain a few seconds to click with the name, Shiroyama; Shiroyama Yuu, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know the kid too well. He’s in our class, but he has hardly ever walked into a scene where the spotlight was on him. He’s one of the misplaced kids-that’s my term to name the kids that don’t belong to the famous clan or the nerds; he’s neither both. He never stood out much in lessons, in anything at all actually. In the matter of physical appearance, I don’t think he’s either hideously ugly or breathtakingly good looking, but to tell you the truth I’ve never noticed him-I mean, really, really noticed him-before this committee issue came up. In class, he sits four seats apart from me on my right, and whenever I accidentally looked towards his direction, he always had his raven-black, longish hair covering most of his face, so I never had the chance-nor was I ever interested to earn that chance-to have a good look on his face.
And as I looked at him across Tora’s desk on my right, the kid was staring at Kai as if Kai was an alien that had three heads and eight legs, having just popped out of thin air in front of the class and spoken to him with incomprehensible language. He had better composure than me, though, that much I have to credit him. He didn’t burst out of his shell, screaming madly like I had; he just stared at Kai for a couple of minutes more with that empty gaze before he sighed and dropped his chin to his hand. Just like that; no words of complaint.
And then, unexpectedly, he turned his black-haired head and his face towards me, as if he could feel me staring, hear me thinking about him.
I thought I froze for that one second when our eyes met-those dark, unreadable eyes-before I shook myself and nodded subtly. I had to be polite in any case, despite my black heart craving for some bloodshed-Kai’s blood, mainly-and acts of violence. His brows twitched slightly and I knew he recognized my attempt of a friendly gesture, surprised by it, probably. For another minute he only stared at me-closely to the way he had stared at Kai earlier-making me feel like I was a cockroach expanding into human size, and then, without a decent reply, he turned his head around and faced away from me.
“How rude,” I gasped, and Tora heard me, waking up from his daze.
“Who is?” he asked, and then he followed where my eyes were still glaring at. “Oh, that Shiroyama kid… Well, he’s weird that way.”
“Well, lucky me then,” I scoffed and turned my sight to the window on my left, glaring at the birds flying on the sky instead, almost able to feel the anger projecting through my eye lenses to those winged species and shooting them down like bullets from a rifle.
Yeah, lucky me that I had to work on a theme I felt disgusted about. Lucky me that I got stuck in a team where an insolent guy like Shiroyama was going to keep staring at me like I was the weird one and not himself. And for all the love of everything holy, Kai expected us to cooperate?? Well, he might as well be praying for a miracle-Cinderella’s fairy godmother swirling around with her glittery magic wand or something alike-because this cooperation that he expects from us will surely need one.
I suppose you understand why, for this once, I feel burdened-resentful even-to be involved in the whole school stand matter. I mean, last year I was so excited, had gone all the length to participate in the commotion and the troubles; we did have an awesome theme back then, ‘Yakuza gang’, and I was supposed to be one of the vicious murderers and the whole thing would’ve been awesome, if only we hadn’t been so cruelly sabotaged.
But the problem goes to a different level this year. As if it’s not enough to torture me with a cheesy, girly theme, I am going to have to work with a kid I barely know and probably even despise now, thanks to that little act of arrogance he showed me in class. I just can’t see it going well. It’s impossible. You know… I sincerely hope that someone will be willing to sabotage our stand, and if there isn’t anyone, I myself may be able to come up with a stealthy plan to wreck the whole thing.
It’s the only way that I can comfort myself now, which is to imagine the stand going down in ruins and when that occurs, I’ll have Kai to blame for the whole issue. He was the one who picked me and that snobby, impudent Shiroyama kid to be in the core committee; he will hold responsibility of the whole mess that is just bound to happen. And I… well, I will certainly enjoy the sight when he goes down, dirty and humiliated, at the end of all this.
I know this might make me sound like the evilest creature in school or maybe even in Japan, but at the moment, I don’t care and I shall open-heartedly accept the title and even frame it and hang it on the wall so I can look at it every time I want to. An eye for an eye, as they all say; and Kai should’ve known better than to mess with me.
Hey, I’ll give him a chance to write his will, don’t worry. I’ll even let him pick his way to die; he can choose whichever method that he thinks won’t hurt him too much. I do know a way to be nice… sometimes.
Oh no.
And there’s my mother-oh Mama!-ready to give his poor son another reason to be cranky about; I could sense that excitement in her voice when she called me just now. What’s to be so thrilled about anyways? It’s just Reita coming for dinner. All afternoon I’ve watched Mama cook-okay, she didn’t cook. The chef did. She just stood there, watching, giving orders, tasting, but she never once touched any of the cooking utensils, knowing that it’s safer that way if we’d like to keep the house in tact. She wanted the chef to make all of Reita’s favorites and fully determined to make it all perfect.
The whole preparation-that makes me feel like we’re welcoming the Emperor himself into our humble home-is simply stupid. But if I bother to look at it from Mama’s point of view, it becomes acceptable somewhat. It is fact that Reita hasn’t come around often, lately. Every time she asked him to come over, he kept using the reason of him being a third year student and fully preoccupied and all that crap, but I knew better. I know he hasn’t been busy studying for exams; he’s been busy with other thing, a ‘thing’ that he currently has an immense fascination about… a ‘thing’ that happens to be a bike-a huge bike, at that. He is so damn proud of that thing, moreover because he’s been saving up almost all his life to purchase it. He made me promise to never say a word to Mama about that giant machine. If Mama knows that he’s been spending nearly twelve hours a day just to marvel at that thing-with drool running down his chin and sappy eyes and all-she will be very, very unhappy.
It had been a whole month up to the point where Mama became too upset that her oldest son never spared time for her again. So then Mama, reaching the very limits of her patience, came up with a cruel ultimatum and asked me to deliver it when I visited Papa three days ago. The ultimatum went as following: if Papa didn’t tell Reita to get his ass down to Mama’s house soon, she’d never ever let me visit Papa anymore. She took everything to the extreme as I had expected she would. She knew damn well that Papa would be heartbroken; he can’t even stand it if I come visit him lesser than three times a week! In the end, although I hated to be involved in her threat, the ultimatum worked smoothly. So now, with Papa pressuring him (intimidated him that he would cut off his allowance by half and confiscate his beloved bike), Reita doesn’t have a choice but to abandon his recent mania for a day and pay Mama a visit.
Oh, I think Reita’s just arrived, I hear the bell ringing.
Well, dinner with the family it is… I think I might just mention this school stand committee thing when it comes time for us to sit around and talk after dinner-Mama usually has awesome vengeance plans, and maybe Reita has a his own opinion about Kai’s resentment against him.
Until tomorrow, then. I believe I’ll have more awesome report about the current issue (like people being dead and I being sentenced a lifetime for murder or something like that). Hah… I wish.
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--- Post Entry ---
--- Log out of journal ---
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A/N:
- For once, I have no idea what to say here. Hmm… I’ll love you if you comment, as always.
- My recent boom (as the bike is Reita’s) is Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I think I’ve tainted chibi_bisque’s mind with my boom as well, and although our favoritism differs (she prefers Louis and I have a manic obsession with Armand), we both love all the manXman beautiful love scenes ^^;
My 50stories AoiXRuki project list is here
My other fanfics list is here
Chapter: 01/XX
Author: akichuu
Fandom: the GazettE, alice nine.,
Pairings: AoiXRuki, RukiXAoi, ToraXRuki, ReitaX??, possibly more to come.
Theme: 031: Murder Freaks - D’espairsRay @ 50stories
Rating: For now, PG-13
Genre: AU (high school), fluff, romance
Warnings: Un-beta-ed mistakes, OOC-ness.
Disclaimers: I only own my funky brain and the amusing ideas it spews on daily basis.
Summary: High school: the epicenter of a human child’s adolescence, the most extreme twist in the roller coaster ride of life; the three years of the most remembered acts of foolishness, of teenage melodramas and adventures. Ruki, a 16 year old high school boy, gives us VIP seats to witness the many quirks of his daily life and the dilemmas of his youth as he reveals them in his journal. Everything is here: all the nerve-racking and stomach turning occurrences; the denial, the contemplation, the struggle, the love and the heartbreak!
Comments: Finally! Another high school fiction! Ohhh~ I really miss writing high school stuffs, ever since ‘Hanabi’ ended a while ago. I figured that it would be necessary for me to write something youthful and light, apart from every other story I’m currently working at. I do hope you enjoy this story :) By the way, thanks to my lovely chibi_bisque for the info regarding schools in Japan.
Read at your own cost!!! ~ socialriot's Personal Journal
Entry number: 771
Date: June 30th, 2008
=============================
Hey there.
Tonight I proudly-and bitterly-bring progress reports about today’s happenings. We can always be sure that there are two sides of the coin; so I suppose it’s only natural that the good news and the bad news come together, hand in hand.
Here, I’ll tell you the good news first.
For once, I’m happy to say that my class has finally decided to depart from the dark ages of its shallow intelligence and infinite boredom and enter the wondrous world of unrestrained creativity. You’ve been the truest witness on how eagerly I’ve been calculating on a mutiny against Kai, our class representative, and also our homeroom teacher since they have been-and still are-the source of nearly all the mental breakdowns of my youth. I still think they need some smart DNA injected into their brains, but now, after the rather rare burst of enthusiasm in class today, I resolve to delay my superb plan to another day. I believe they deserve this small chance to prove that they haven’t convicted me into the eternal doom of a dreary, arid world of human idiocy, which will definitely cause me several death wishes and multiple mental disorders in the near future.
What has happened, really, that I changed my mind so drastically?
School Festival’s date has been decided, that’s what. And it’s only 2 weeks away from today.
I guess it really needs this big of an ignition to spark the class’ interest. When the announcement came-yeah, brought by none other but the All Mighty Chairman of the Student School Board, the pigheaded, nose-less brother of mine: Reita-I thought the whole class was going into seizures. I felt rather horrified to behold the dramatic change that took place in front of my very eyes, from the grave-like tranquility to the flickering burst of excitement; it was almost like watching a whole yard of coffins being ripped open by their very own inhabitants that were crawling up to the surface to haunt mankind to its end. Reita must’ve been so proud of himself because he managed to wake the class from its stupor, and when he glided out of the room I saw that smug, crooked smile that I wished I could rip off his face with my claws-if only I had any.
So that was that; and at the 19th of July, every class in school will compete for the Best Theme Award that the School Board presents for the class with the most innovative idea applied to its summer festival stand. The whole deal sounds petty, maybe, but everyone actually takes it very seriously. The competition gets really brutal and even bloody sometimes; like, last year when I was still in my first year, some kids from another class sabotaged the properties my class had worked our asses on for a whole month. When kids from my class went to confront them, the supposedly civilized discussion became a barbaric glue-and-sticks throwing battle in no time, and ended with almost half of the kids in my class and the class we’d fought against going into detention.
Why yes… I happened to be one of them. Mama wasn’t too happy with that, but Reita said he was proud of me because, I quote his exact words: “My Baby Brother isn’t afraid of getting down and dirty, black and bruised anymore!” I made sure he never took back his ‘compliment’ as I drove my fist onto his nose.
I suppose I’ve made my point clear: school festival is crucial, and the Best Theme Competition is a combat we must win… at all cost.
Once the date was published, a theme must be settled on. I dreaded this part a lot because I’ve never been able to guess what dull mess my classmates had for brains and whether or not these brains were functioning enough for them to think up of a decent theme. I sat on my seat, fidgeting when Kai-acting, as always, as Mr. ‘My Dominion is Absolute and You Have no Saying to That!’-got up on the small podium in front of the class and ordered out a vote that everyone must do. I, wasting no time for second thoughts, wrote ‘Bloody Horror Movies’ on my little piece of paper. Will it not be awesome if everyone gets dressed in tattered, blood-spattered costumes with gore dripping down their hair? I know I watched Saw I to V way too many times, but you cannot tell me that those movies haven’t contributed to my fabulous sense of art. I would even volunteer myself to make some artificial mutilated limbs that look real enough for extra properties, if only they’d let me.
My strong-looking but apparently weak-hearted friend, Tora, scowled when he looked at what theme I picked for the class’ stand, but I told him that we lived in a democratic world and he could go to hell if he wanted to argue me about a personal choice that I made. I didn’t think that he taking a peek at my vote was even legal in any process of democracy. I also told him that he could pick whatever theme he wanted and I wouldn’t even say anything to anyone about his sentiment-or was it fear?-against blood and severed body parts and lunatic killers carrying electric saws or kitchen knives on the loose. He scowled once again and wrote, with big, heavily pressured letters, ‘Superheroes’ on his paper.
Ugh… like I would ever put on a spandex, all-body suit and run around with a red, flapping cloth on my back.
I made an oath that if Tora’s theme got elected I would disappear from the face of the earth and make an argument that I happened to be doing the Invisible Woman from Fantastic Four. I know I had a legitimate line of reasoning and he couldn’t tell me Sue Storm Richards wasn’t a superhero, not in a million years if he really loved that genre of super-power gifted humans and mutants like he said he did.
Or I would go as Edward Scissorhand.
Chop, chop. Chop, chop.
He is a superhero, isn’t he? He’s like, my favorite mutant. What’s so different about him and that guy Wolverine? They both have dangerous, sharp objects protruding from their hands and they both can chop a man’s head anytime they want. I happen to like Edward more because he’s pale and weird and his hair looks awesome and his life is a bundle of tragedy; while Wolverine is… well, Wolverine is hairy. I don’t know, but it’s just I always think that guy had too much hair on his face. I don’t really care if he needs to be hairy because he’s supposed to be wolf-like, hence the name, I still think it’s rather gross.
Well, it doesn’t matter anyways.
In the end, when the small folded papers were opened and the votes were being pronounced by Kai, neither I nor Tora could rejoice with our themes getting picked. Here we were facing the logical risk of having a bigger amount of female students in our class: none of the boys’ votes got a chance, and especially not mine. I knew I wasn’t the only one getting sicker by the minute as one very girly and very romantic idea came up after another; Tora, I believe, collapsed on his seat. He kept making those noises that a guy with food poisoning would make, every time Kai added another silly theme on the blackboard. I patted his back and told him we shared the same pain.
“Yes, my friend,” I said, “It’s a cruel world we’re living in.”
So it was ‘Barbie-world’ getting listed after ‘Fairy Tales’ and I and Tora knew there was no way but to give up hopes. By that point I supposed I didn’t have much objection as I had when I saw Tora’s selected theme, not when there were many other dreadful ideas to be feared about. Finally, three themes succeeded in gaining the most plenty votes: ‘60s’, ‘The Greatest Love Stories of All Time’ and, the good old classic of stand theme, ‘Ghost House’. Seeing I still had a chance to survive from Mid-Summer Day’s Nightmare, no matter how perfectly unoriginal the idea was, I raised my hand for ‘Ghost House’, and Tora-shockingly-voted for ‘60s’. In the midst of imagining Tora with Paul McCartney’s hair and outfit (the images in my brain, before long, managed to give me a headache), the vote came to an end.
Again, I have to remind you: the girls’ population in our class exceeds the boys’ by 40 percent.
The conclusion is as following: we will be doing ‘The Greatest Love Stories of All Time’ theme for the summer festival class stand competition-that is precisely how Kai announced it, loud and clear. Tora fainted again on his seat, and I felt a reasonable urge to follow suit.
But to my horror, my nightmare did not just end there.
In other words, we’ve come to the bad news part-well, the theme chosen was already a bad thing, but what I’m about to tell you now is even worse… far, far worse.
After the theme was officially elected, we had to form a small committee whose job was to take all responsibilities of arranging everything stand-related. I sunk into my chair while Tora continued playing dead next to me; I knew both of us would give anything in turn for us to be spared, to be let free from this committee of hell.
“The core committee consists of two girls and two boys, and these four will have full independent right to recruit as many student as they need to help them in the process,” so said Kai; his ever flawless smile, somehow, stayed put on his face; the intonation with which he spoke was brimming with the temptation that suggested we should’ve felt honored if we could be chosen as members of the core committee. “Anybody wants to volunteer?” he offered.
Several girls raised their hands, and I could just see their faces beaming with hope and excitement, and even joy, however ridiculous that seemed to me. From seven girls volunteering, Aoyama and Komori were chosen, and they couldn’t have looked prouder in their lives than the time when Kai wrote their names on the board. And then Kai lurked-with his deceivingly friendly but truthfully cunning pair of eyes-around the room in search for boys who would be interested in joining the committee, but of course there were none. All the male students seemed to have taken Tora’s example and drowned their faces on their desks, hoping for once in their lives that they could be invisible.
I suspected, with how the situation was developing, Kai was only too happy to misuse his authority as the class representative to pick the most appealing victims of this monstrosity by himself. He had the widest, most wolfish grin I had ever seen on a man’s face when he lifted his arm-slowly, dramatically-to my direction, and just as I thought my nerves could never handle more shock, his forefinger rose up my face. At that very instant, a super massive black hole opened up and swallowed me whole and threw me into an immeasurable blank space where everything was against the immortal laws of mass conservation and I was totally lost in it.
I think I might’ve gone into catatonic phase right then and there.
Except that I didn’t; instead, I screamed in rage and disbelief and protested with all my might. I shouted, asking him what the heck his problem was, because he couldn’t have picked me without a decent reason! He must’ve held a grudge against me or something-me or the people I had as family; as far as I could remember, he still didn’t feel too happy about Reita getting elected as this year’s Chairman of Student School Board instead of him… Looking at my reaction, Kai seemed to be amused instead of threatened in any ways and carried on with his task at hand as if he hadn’t heard me complaining.
Oh that cruel hearted bastard… He will pay for this.
“You’re absolutely right, my friend,” Tora said, returning the deed as he patted my shoulder. “It is truly a cruel, cruel world.”
I could’ve bitten off his hand if only I hadn’t remembered that I was actually a civilized man and not Hannibal Lecter.
It was almost like losing all the hopes of my youthful life and I was ripped off from all the wonderful dreams of my future; a huge burden was placed on my back and I couldn’t shake it off. I couldn’t care less if Tora was genuinely concerned or not, when he told me that he wouldn’t mind if I wanted to recruit him to be a part of the committee so that I wouldn’t suffer alone. At that moment, all I wanted was for the world to fall apart; I was praying for an earthquake to happen or a volcano to erupt so that the festival would be delayed or even canceled.
I knew I was black hearted and vengeful; I’ve always known that.
In the mean time, Kai had moved on to choose the next boy he’d be giving the same responsibility-or nightmare, depends on which side you’re looking at it. Suffocating and hardly conscious, I only vaguely heard the name that Kai pronounced-the guy who would become my partner in hard times, share my horrors and sufferings: Shiroyama.
It took my brain a few seconds to click with the name, Shiroyama; Shiroyama Yuu, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know the kid too well. He’s in our class, but he has hardly ever walked into a scene where the spotlight was on him. He’s one of the misplaced kids-that’s my term to name the kids that don’t belong to the famous clan or the nerds; he’s neither both. He never stood out much in lessons, in anything at all actually. In the matter of physical appearance, I don’t think he’s either hideously ugly or breathtakingly good looking, but to tell you the truth I’ve never noticed him-I mean, really, really noticed him-before this committee issue came up. In class, he sits four seats apart from me on my right, and whenever I accidentally looked towards his direction, he always had his raven-black, longish hair covering most of his face, so I never had the chance-nor was I ever interested to earn that chance-to have a good look on his face.
And as I looked at him across Tora’s desk on my right, the kid was staring at Kai as if Kai was an alien that had three heads and eight legs, having just popped out of thin air in front of the class and spoken to him with incomprehensible language. He had better composure than me, though, that much I have to credit him. He didn’t burst out of his shell, screaming madly like I had; he just stared at Kai for a couple of minutes more with that empty gaze before he sighed and dropped his chin to his hand. Just like that; no words of complaint.
And then, unexpectedly, he turned his black-haired head and his face towards me, as if he could feel me staring, hear me thinking about him.
I thought I froze for that one second when our eyes met-those dark, unreadable eyes-before I shook myself and nodded subtly. I had to be polite in any case, despite my black heart craving for some bloodshed-Kai’s blood, mainly-and acts of violence. His brows twitched slightly and I knew he recognized my attempt of a friendly gesture, surprised by it, probably. For another minute he only stared at me-closely to the way he had stared at Kai earlier-making me feel like I was a cockroach expanding into human size, and then, without a decent reply, he turned his head around and faced away from me.
“How rude,” I gasped, and Tora heard me, waking up from his daze.
“Who is?” he asked, and then he followed where my eyes were still glaring at. “Oh, that Shiroyama kid… Well, he’s weird that way.”
“Well, lucky me then,” I scoffed and turned my sight to the window on my left, glaring at the birds flying on the sky instead, almost able to feel the anger projecting through my eye lenses to those winged species and shooting them down like bullets from a rifle.
Yeah, lucky me that I had to work on a theme I felt disgusted about. Lucky me that I got stuck in a team where an insolent guy like Shiroyama was going to keep staring at me like I was the weird one and not himself. And for all the love of everything holy, Kai expected us to cooperate?? Well, he might as well be praying for a miracle-Cinderella’s fairy godmother swirling around with her glittery magic wand or something alike-because this cooperation that he expects from us will surely need one.
I suppose you understand why, for this once, I feel burdened-resentful even-to be involved in the whole school stand matter. I mean, last year I was so excited, had gone all the length to participate in the commotion and the troubles; we did have an awesome theme back then, ‘Yakuza gang’, and I was supposed to be one of the vicious murderers and the whole thing would’ve been awesome, if only we hadn’t been so cruelly sabotaged.
But the problem goes to a different level this year. As if it’s not enough to torture me with a cheesy, girly theme, I am going to have to work with a kid I barely know and probably even despise now, thanks to that little act of arrogance he showed me in class. I just can’t see it going well. It’s impossible. You know… I sincerely hope that someone will be willing to sabotage our stand, and if there isn’t anyone, I myself may be able to come up with a stealthy plan to wreck the whole thing.
It’s the only way that I can comfort myself now, which is to imagine the stand going down in ruins and when that occurs, I’ll have Kai to blame for the whole issue. He was the one who picked me and that snobby, impudent Shiroyama kid to be in the core committee; he will hold responsibility of the whole mess that is just bound to happen. And I… well, I will certainly enjoy the sight when he goes down, dirty and humiliated, at the end of all this.
I know this might make me sound like the evilest creature in school or maybe even in Japan, but at the moment, I don’t care and I shall open-heartedly accept the title and even frame it and hang it on the wall so I can look at it every time I want to. An eye for an eye, as they all say; and Kai should’ve known better than to mess with me.
Hey, I’ll give him a chance to write his will, don’t worry. I’ll even let him pick his way to die; he can choose whichever method that he thinks won’t hurt him too much. I do know a way to be nice… sometimes.
Oh no.
And there’s my mother-oh Mama!-ready to give his poor son another reason to be cranky about; I could sense that excitement in her voice when she called me just now. What’s to be so thrilled about anyways? It’s just Reita coming for dinner. All afternoon I’ve watched Mama cook-okay, she didn’t cook. The chef did. She just stood there, watching, giving orders, tasting, but she never once touched any of the cooking utensils, knowing that it’s safer that way if we’d like to keep the house in tact. She wanted the chef to make all of Reita’s favorites and fully determined to make it all perfect.
The whole preparation-that makes me feel like we’re welcoming the Emperor himself into our humble home-is simply stupid. But if I bother to look at it from Mama’s point of view, it becomes acceptable somewhat. It is fact that Reita hasn’t come around often, lately. Every time she asked him to come over, he kept using the reason of him being a third year student and fully preoccupied and all that crap, but I knew better. I know he hasn’t been busy studying for exams; he’s been busy with other thing, a ‘thing’ that he currently has an immense fascination about… a ‘thing’ that happens to be a bike-a huge bike, at that. He is so damn proud of that thing, moreover because he’s been saving up almost all his life to purchase it. He made me promise to never say a word to Mama about that giant machine. If Mama knows that he’s been spending nearly twelve hours a day just to marvel at that thing-with drool running down his chin and sappy eyes and all-she will be very, very unhappy.
It had been a whole month up to the point where Mama became too upset that her oldest son never spared time for her again. So then Mama, reaching the very limits of her patience, came up with a cruel ultimatum and asked me to deliver it when I visited Papa three days ago. The ultimatum went as following: if Papa didn’t tell Reita to get his ass down to Mama’s house soon, she’d never ever let me visit Papa anymore. She took everything to the extreme as I had expected she would. She knew damn well that Papa would be heartbroken; he can’t even stand it if I come visit him lesser than three times a week! In the end, although I hated to be involved in her threat, the ultimatum worked smoothly. So now, with Papa pressuring him (intimidated him that he would cut off his allowance by half and confiscate his beloved bike), Reita doesn’t have a choice but to abandon his recent mania for a day and pay Mama a visit.
Oh, I think Reita’s just arrived, I hear the bell ringing.
Well, dinner with the family it is… I think I might just mention this school stand committee thing when it comes time for us to sit around and talk after dinner-Mama usually has awesome vengeance plans, and maybe Reita has a his own opinion about Kai’s resentment against him.
Until tomorrow, then. I believe I’ll have more awesome report about the current issue (like people being dead and I being sentenced a lifetime for murder or something like that). Hah… I wish.
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A/N:
- For once, I have no idea what to say here. Hmm… I’ll love you if you comment, as always.
- My recent boom (as the bike is Reita’s) is Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I think I’ve tainted chibi_bisque’s mind with my boom as well, and although our favoritism differs (she prefers Louis and I have a manic obsession with Armand), we both love all the manXman beautiful love scenes ^^;
My 50stories AoiXRuki project list is here
My other fanfics list is here