Chapter Text
Humans are superficial creatures; their eyes are often drawn to beautiful things, to shiny things, to the most eminent physical features of a person. Lustrous locks, dazzling smiles…
Shining wings.
It is inevitable; after all, that was how evolution worked. Traits considered desirable are sought after, and thus more likely to get passed down. This in itself is not a bad thing.
No, what is bad is society’s tendency to attach expectations to these outward appearances. They expect that well-dressed people are competent, that people with tattoos or more than two piercings are criminals. They attach all sorts of stereotypes to people based on even traits that one is born with: skin color, sex, and wing color, but to name a few.
Take Adachi Kiyoshi, for example. He was born with golden wings, bright as the glowing sun. His parents had been so delighted—their son was destined for greatness. After all, golden wings have been associated with royalty since ancient times, and today, they are associated with movie stars and celebrities.
Baby Kiyoshi was blissfully unaware. He was a quiet baby, and his parents doted on him all the more for being such a well-behaved angel. He had no basis for comparison, nor did he feel that his parents’ affections were anything but natural. He had no idea that his neighbors crane their necks to catch a glimpse of him whenever his parents took him out. They only ever spoke to his parents in quick-fire Japanese, with words and expressions way too advanced to be in his own vocabulary.
When Kiyoshi enrolled in kindergarten, the other children flocked to him. They had never seen wings of such color before! Brown, purple, blue, red, and green plumes were common, some more than others, but gold? Gold was a true rarity. As rare as the metal they share a color with.
And oh, children will be children. The bolder, more uninhibited ones would make a grab for his wings, which he instinctively raised out of the way. The more persistent ones who had also (unfortunately) mastered flight early would flap their own wings to try and reach his raised appendages. Kiyoshi himself had yet to learn how to fly, but he could flap them hard to take a large leap backward, turn, and run. At this point, the teacher would step in to gently chastise the offending child, you mustn’t touch others’ wings without permission. How would you feel if I suddenly grabbed your wings?
The quieter, yet no less curious of his classmates would sometimes approach him, politely asking about his wings. They would usually be surrounded by other, more timid children who hadn’t dared approach him. That was when he felt the first twinges of discomfort. He didn’t want to be in the spotlight. He didn’t want others to ask him questions that he didn’t know the answers to. How should he know why his wings were golden? He wanted to be left alone to play with toys, or even better, the color pencils. With color pencils, he could draw up a whole world for his toys.
Slowly, the children began leaving him alone, when his gleaming feathers had lost their novelty value, and they discovered more interesting classmates, more charismatic classmates whose ability to capture their attention extended beyond just the color of their wings. This reprieve was welcome, and Kiyoshi relished in the bubble of quiet around him at last.
But this process, as Kiyoshi would learn, repeated itself every time he entered a new place. Elementary school, middle school, high school. With each new school, his commute grew longer, and the number of people staring at his wings on the way increased. Classmates who had come from the same school previously were no longer interested in his golden wings, but for every one of those classmates, there were ten new classmates from other parts of town, or other towns. There were seniors who had already been in the school since before he enrolled, who have never crossed paths with him, whose interests have been piqued by the rumors going around of a golden-winged first-year.
This process repeated itself on a smaller scale at every start of the new year, when he advanced grades and a new batch of students entered the school. By then, all the other students have grown used to seeing his golden feathers around school, and those who have attempted to befriend him have grown tired of his otherwise uninterestingness. It was only the new first-years who would hide badly to catch a glimpse of the rumored golden wings.
This was how Kiyoshi drifted through his years in compulsory education, then through high school. His parents were worried about his lack of friends, his lack of outstanding grades, his lack of charisma. Was he not destined for greatness after all? They had so hoped that his wings would guarantee him a life free from worry. After all, with greatness came popularity, riches, and power. With all these things, they could rest assured knowing their son could hold his own in this otherwise cruel, cruel world.
Perhaps this was too small of a town for him, they thought. That was why they did not object when Kiyoshi brought up his university plans to them: he wanted to study in Tokyo. Perhaps the big city would have more opportunities for him. Perhaps he would find his destiny there.
It was Kiyoshi who brought it up, moving to the capital, but it was not in search of a great destiny. Despite his golden wings, he knew he wasn’t cut out to be a movie star or a celebrity. He wanted to stop having people look at his golden wings and approach him for perks he couldn’t offer, only to abandon him later when they found out the truth: that he was just another ordinary person in the making. No special talents, no strong opinions, no ambition. Most of all, he wanted people to stop looking at his wings like it was such a pity that they were on him, rather than someone better, someone more deserving.
Kiyoshi didn’t explain to his parents why he wanted to move to Tokyo. His parents didn’t ask, and he was glad for it. He knew he was already a disappointment, with his average looks and average grades and average talent in almost everything. He didn’t want to have to disappoint them further by saying that he wanted to move to a place where nobody knew him, where he could dye his wings a plain color—perhaps an unsuspecting brown—and live a life of quiet anonymity, surrounded only by his color pencils.
After all, the colors in his pencils were all equal. There was no expectation of any color to be anything but a color, a tool, a means of creating a bigger picture. In fact, he wished the rarity of his golden wings would grant him the same neglect that his gold and silver color pencils received.
Since that was not how the world seemed to work, however, Kiyoshi resolved to change his wings to earn the privacy he had always sought. To make his wings into a color he deserved.
Even if he had to endure the strange stares he would surely receive when he first reached the Shinjuku train station, and when he walked toward the cashier at the supermarket with a set of brown wing dye for the first time.
But once that was done and dusted, Kiyoshi sat in front of the floor-length mirror in his new apartment, preened his golden feathers for one last time, before saying goodbye to his golden wings.
From today on, you will no longer be the center of attention.