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yukihira souma was raised in a household where you could be anything you wanted to be, where the sky was the limit. born to two people who loved him as much as they loved each other.
even when his mom died, and even though him and his dad would never stop mourning, the relationship between father and son was still one of trust, of understanding, of an almost equal standing.
his dad, a bit laissez-faire in his parenting, allowed him to make the mistakes necessary to figure out the world on his own, but also didn't neglect to teach souma everything he would need to know.
except for one thing.
when souma entered junior high, the era when puberty began to wreak its havoc, he watched as all the people around him began to become interested in each other.
he watched the girls dab on lip gloss, fluff their hair, bat their eyelashes. he watched the guys act reckless, boast about their assets, make crude jokes.
but the oddest thing about it all was that these efforts to entice were only ever made towards the opposite gender.
when he was well into his sophomore year and couldn't so much as get his heart to beat any faster when he looked at girls, he wondered if there was something wrong with him.
why, when all his friends were talking about the curvaceous body of that one waitress or the girls in their class they'd love to “get with” ㅡ which was language souma didn't particularly care for ㅡ he couldn't agree.
of course he could notice when a woman was fit or had nice proportions, but he couldn't understand the emotion of desire all of his friends seemed to share towards the female population.
he couldn't understand it, he didn't understand it, not until the start of his junior year.
that year, his class got two transfer students ㅡ from italy, of all places.
two brothers, fraternal twins, in fact. the younger, a tall brunette, and his older brother, a shorter blond, both with eyes as azure as a clear sky.
it was the older boy who caught his attention, takumi aldini, and he knew that because for the first time, his heart seemed to stutter in his chest. for the first time, his chest ached painfully and his stomach did flips.
and it only got worse as time went on.
it took him a few months, maybe, to figure out what the odd, churning feeling in his stomach was when he looked at takumi. he was sure by then, that he was in the throes of a full-on crush ㅡ complete with the fluttering abdomen and rapidly pounding heart characteristic of infatuation.
along with this realization, came another one, this one a little less welcome.
there was a reason he had never understood his friends’ obsession with the opposite gender.
it wasn't common and wasn't all too accepted quite yet, especially not in a high school where the rumor mill ran wild, but it was a thing.
souma did research, left to his own devices as his parents, though a traditional heterosexual couple, had never dictated that this was the right way to be; but they had also never talked to him about all the different types of inclinations one could have towards different people.
it was called being homosexual, he found out.
it happened when one was not attracted to the opposite gender, as most people are, but instead towards members of their same gender. he also found out that it wasn't something you could choose to be, he just… was.
there were a lot of people like him, as well.
countless people on the internet who wrote and told of their stories ㅡ of coming out, of love, of loss, of being completely accepted or utterly rejected.
while it was nice to know he wasn't alone and that he hadn't been born defective, it didn't stave off the feelings of being different, of not fitting in. it didn't stop him from feeling awkward and uncomfortable whenever his friends asked him why he never wanted to go on group dates with them.
and so he spent the rest of his junior year that way, hiding who he really was from his friends, from his dad, even from takumi and his brother, who had begun to become closer to him by this point.
it was in his senior year, when this secret of his was forced into the limelight.
their teacher, in the spirit of having their class “bond” since it was their last year, had people say things about themselves that others may not have known. they were allowed to choose the gravity of what they decided to reveal, but everyone had to say something.
a kid in his class stood up, took a deep, shuddering breath, and came out as gay.
the tension in the room was palpable, nobody having expected something quite so… heavy.
souma's heart almost stopped, jumped to his throat, and he began to feel anxious, as if he had been the one who came out.
people clapped for the guy, however reluctantly. it was, for a lot of them, their first time even encountering someone who was homosexual.
as the guy sat back down, souma said nothing, but he couldn't help but feel a sort of respect for this kid, for the bravery he had shown.
he wondered if he could be as brave.
this was tested when, after school, as he was walking with takumi and isami, they spotted a group of bigger guys crowded around a smaller figure.
they drew closer because even from afar, there was no mistaking what was going on, or about to go on.
as they neared the group, they heard the insults, the taunts, they saw the kid from their class cowering as these guys gave him their worst.
souma saw red.
without thinking, he dashed forward and shoved his way in front of his classmate, glaring at the group surrounding them.
he was greeted with malicious grins and eyes glittering with disdain. they turned their taunts on him. “what are you gonna do?”
“if you're protecting the homo, you must be one too.”
guffaws erupted, raucous and sickening. “maybe they're dating,” one of the other guys pipes in with a snicker.
souma had had enough.
if there was one thing he hated most, it was people picking on those who didn't deserve it.
he may have regretted his next words later on, but in the moment, he knew it was exactly what he should have said.
“as a matter of fact, yes, i am gay. and no, we are not dating because though it may be hard to get it through your thick skulls, just because we like people of the same gender doesn't mean we'll grovel at the feet of just any guy.”
souma turns his nose up at the group. “i, for one, would not want any part of the likes of you.”
the bullies bristled at this and they made to move even closer, but takumi and isami took this as their cue to move in too, standing beside souma with challenging looks.
“tch. this is stupid. let's go.” as the bullies left, the four remaining breathed a sigh of relief. they didn't know what they would do if a fight had broken out.
heart still pounding from the adrenaline of anger, souma turned to his classmate. “sorry about that. you're not- not disgusting or weird or whatever- whatever those guys said about you.”
in response, he gets a smile too bright for someone who just went through what he did.
“thanks. and neither are you.”
and with that, their classmate thanked them once more and left.
souma's shoulders sagged once the adrenaline left him.
the gravity of what he did truly hit him. he had come out. he had physically said, out loud, with his very own mouth, the secret that he had been trying to squash down for so long.
but, as takumi and isami turned to him with smiles and told him how much they admired his courage, souma realized that he should never have been trying to hide this away.
it was part of him.
he was gay and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that. there were countless people across the globe living happy, fulfilling lives, and who were what many people considered odd or strange or abnormal.
if they could be happy, then so could he.
it didn't matter what anyone said, or did, or thought.
the fact of the matter was that souma had to learn to love himself, for who he was, because if he didn't, who else would? if even he couldn't accept himself, how did he expect anyone else to either?
if he wanted to change the mindset of the people around him, if he wanted to have them see that there was nothing wrong with loving who you wanted to, he would have to show them that he was proud of who he was. if he was happy with who he was, then anyone who tried to insult him would only be hurting themselves.
it wasn't always easy, of course.
souma endured many instances of ridicule throughout the remainder of his school year and there were times when he believed the insults.
but he always shook himself out of it.
because the world would be a brighter, happier place if souma accepted who he was and trusted the people he loved to not leave him despite that.
so when he steeled his resolve and came out to his dad, and was greeted with a tight hug and an admission of, “you're still my wonderful son, nothing will change that,” it was the final turning point in souma's way of thinking.
and then when takumi came out publicly too, touched by souma’s and their classmate's resilience, suddenly all the hardships he had endured, both from the people around him and from within himself, became worth it and souma decided that he wouldn't change who he was for the world.