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It starts when he was young and different.
Kids are mean things, they will make fun and pick fights with anyone different. Or, well, not exactly the kids, the adults are the ones teaching them hate. But a seven year old can’t just fight a random adult in the street who sneered at his mom because she’s not Japanese, so he sticks with breaking the nose of that asshole’s son next time the boy so much breathes wrong in his direction. The girls usually don’t bother him, having to worry about a system that deems them “weak” before they can even find their strength.
It continues when he gets older, but not less different.
Because delinquents are like sharks and apparently can smell when someone can give them a good fight. They focus on Jotaro, of course, since not only he’s clearly different, but he’s starting to fill in his Joestar genes, already growing much taller, and the boxing he picked as a way of anger management is showing results. He wins some, he loses some, but he always fights. He gets better at fighting. He understands that there’s more to it than punching. Eventually, he stops losing.
And it gets worse when Jotaro gets even older, and even more different.
Star Platinum is everything Jotaro hates most about himself. Star Platinum is his aggression, his fighting spirit, and brings with it more opponents. The Stand cannot talk, just scream the same taunting word, and cannot do anything but beat people up. Jotaro fears what Star can do when he’s not controlling it, and tries to keep his Standed locked away inside his soul as much as he can, just how he keeps his fists inside his pants as much as possible.
Jotaro grew up fighting, and he hates it.
Because he has to fight. Life did not give him another choice, so Kujo Jotaro fights.
Kakyoin, though, Kakyoin takes much pleasure in fighting.
Unlike Jotaro, who’s all frantic aggression and desperate desire to end things fast, Kakyoin fights with elegant coolness and much delight. Because Kakyoin chooses to fight, because Kakyoin knows a world beyond it.
Because Kakyoin Noriaki knows much more than Jotaro ever will.
Because while Jotaro turned his back to the world and only turned back to punch, Kakyoin closed himself and watched. Learned.
And Jotaro finds it beautiful.
Is with Kakyoin that Jotaro learns that there are many other ways to fight, and many other types of fighting.
For the first time, he enjoys it.
He enjoys fighting if it is by Kakyoin’s side. They are a great duo, similar and different, fitting together like a puzzle. He’s rash where Kakyoin is too hesitant, the redhead is adaptable when Jotaro is too reckless.
For the first time, Jotaro doesn’t look at his hands with nausea. For the first time, he enjoys Star Platinum’s excited battle cries. For the first time, the adrenaline brings a smile to his face.
Yet he has not the strength to fight for the one who taught him how to enjoy it all.
Instead, Jotaro fights himself and the feelings that grow inside him and make him even more different. Why? Because he does not know how to deal with it. With his feelings, with being even more different, with an opponent that comes from within.
So he fights.
“Sorry, Kakyoin, but I don’t feel the same for you.”
And he loses.