Chapter Text
IF YOU COULD PULL THE world apart at its seams and see it from an omniscient perspective, you know that you will find the truth as to why you are the way you are. If you could look up at the stars and know what the constellations tell you upon its appearance at your birth, maybe you will know why you have what you do. And maybe, if you could peer into yourself more—picking apart at your thoughts and urges, and even farther than what you know—then perhaps you could find why you don’t have the things that others do.
You’ve never been good at playing. Maybe that’s why the other kids in the neighborhood would never let you join back in your childhood days.
You’d simply watch, sitting by the pavement where the dots of cement would rub against your skin and cause it to itch, but the frustration of being purposely isolated seemed to sting more. You’d scratch it off if you could, but there was nothing more painful than an abstract scratch or wound that you can’t even find with your bare hands.
See, you had joined them at one point, and it’s safe to say that you had messed up your chances of playing with the other kids again the first time you did. You’d kick the ball towards the wrong person, run much too slowly with your poor untrained legs, and get caught too easily due to your less than subpar reflexes. You just weren’t good at it, you decided, until eventually ( ‘eventually’ approaching much too fast for your liking ), they also decided that you didn’t deserve a time of their day.
“It’s no fun playing with you, (First Name).”
It’s not just playing games. You knew how a lot of things worked on a surface level, but you don’t believe that it went far enough to place yourself at a level that was exceptional. You can walk. You can talk. You can read and write like the majority of the other kids, but everything you do seems as if it was handed down to you due to general expectations placed on an individual. You only knew how to do those things because the majority expected you to. These were only the necessities that slowly constructed the foundation of a person in order to survive.
It was inevitable for one to learn, but it was rare for one to master.
There was a time when you’d come home with bruises and scratches littering your body like an age-old wall—peeling at its surface, presenting its innards. Your mother would greet you with her yelling and your pained steps that dragged across the floor would merge in with the cacophony of echoes erupting through the structure of your home. Your mother was only worried, and you only wanted to play with the other kids. So, you’d practice playing different games by yourself and imagining as if hands would reach out to you as you pretended to play tag. And each time you did—you’d come home with bruises and scratches—nothing seemed to change.
Because what’s the point in practicing all of that if no one was willing to play with you?
In the end, you’re not sure if you’ve ever truly gotten the hang of it. Soon, you had begun to grow tired, until eventually, all of the efforts you wanted to exert had ceased.
( The jack of all trades and a master of none )
Then you wonder what it must be like to be strong.
“Hey, Satsuki! Help me out with my Mathematics homework, would ya? Say, what’s it about? Uh— Aquatic Equation? Or something, I don’t know.”
“It’s the Quadratic Equation , halfwit.”
You don’t think Satsuki really liked you, but you believed that he didn’t dislike you either. Atsushi Satsuki always bit on the other end of your stick whenever you’d dangle one in front of him and hover around to bother him about things. He never pulled you in with the things he liked to do, but never pushed you away either. So, you like to see him as the closest thing to a friend.
Your lips form an ‘o’ and your brows shoot up in surprise. You seat yourself on the chair right beside him as he gathers his notebooks, stacking it one by one starting with the tallest down to the shortest before placing it underneath his desk. “Oh. Is that what it’s called? Come on, teach me, please. I don’t really get anything that our teacher taught earlier.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and his back seems to slump against the backrest. “Seriously. How did you even get into Hakuho?”
“Dunno, actually, though I barely passed. My Ma just threatened to kick me out of the house if I didn’t study.” A shiver runs through the ridges of your spine and you shudder. “You don’t know how scary my Ma is.”
His lips tug to a frown as his eyes land on you blankly, searching through your terrified expression through his boredom. “I can see. Must be scary enough to make you beat information into your very intelligent brain. Impressive, I must say.”
“I feel like you’re insulting me, but I don’t know.”
“Whatever made you think that?” He questions you, tongue dripping with false surprise.
You shrug. “Dunno. Welp, anywho… So, will ya help me?”
“You don’t exactly give me the freewill to say ‘no’, anyway, so let’s just get on with it.”
You lean closer to his desk as he pulls out his Mathematics notebook. As he rapidly flips over the papers with the surface of his thumb, you catch glimpses of his neat handwriting filling each page like water about to spill through a glass. Some side calculations could be seen on the edge of the grid, right beside where his notes lay and some additional information to fill in the gaps between formulas to help him understand more.
As you expected, Satuski was truly a genius.
He halts from flipping the pages. He points to the top left corner of the paper where an equation was written and underlined with blood red. “The first thing you need to know before applying the quadratic formula , is to identify what a quadratic equation is. Now what is the quadratic equation in its standard form?”
Your mind blanks. “Uh…”
Air sharply leaves through his nose as closes his eyes momentarily. You mindlessly scratch at the back of your palm with your index finger as you listen to his deep breaths. Finally, his eyes pop open and he looks down at his notebook once again.
“It’ s ax 2 + bx + c = 0 .” He shakes his head, tapping his pen on top of the written equation. “Remember it. Seriously. It’s one of the most important aspects of the whole lesson. Actually, you know what? Write it down.”
“Hehe, I sort of… don’t have a pen and paper right now. Kinda left my notebooks at home.”
He rips off a page from his notebook and shoves it along with his pen towards you.
“I’m assuming that since you aren’t even familiar with the standard equation itself, that you also don’t know how to identify each part of it.” He pauses, rubbing his forehead when you nod. “See, a and b are coefficients. The coefficient is the number multiplied by the variable. That being said, this means that x is the variable here in the equation. While, c is the constant, meaning that it is a fixed value.”
You hear his voice slowly merge with the noise created by the students in the classroom. It was everywhere—noise in its most literal and abstract form, and either one bringing the haze that sort of clouds your mind as you zone in on the jumble of numbers and letters written ebony on Satsuki’s evergreen-colored grid notebook. You hear your own breath amidst all of the noise, and a moment later, you are opening your mouth slightly to release a pinch of air.
You hear the pattern of your own breathing, like a melody combining with the echoing rhythmless rhythm around the expanse of the room.
“ Dobunezumi mitai ni utsukushiku naritai… ” You hum under your breath, eyes glaring at nothing.
“ Shashin ni wa utsuranai utsukushisa ga aru kara… ” You don’t notice your voice slowly growing louder as the voice that comes from your throat slowly starts to come from your diaphragm. You also unfortunately don’t notice how Satsuki has stopped talking, looking at your zoned-out face with a twitching eye and a pained grin.
“ Linda Linda! Linda Linda Linda! ”
“Are you seriously singing right now?”
You jolt, blinking repeatedly for a while before eyeing Satsuki owlishly.
He stands up from his seat abruptly, flipping his notebook closed with a flutter of papers clapping against each other and ending with a slap!
“Have fun studying the Aquatic Equation on your own, halfwit.” He calls out from over his shoulder, exiting the classroom through the back door. He slides it open, glancing at you one last time with a smirk before disappearing from your line of sight.
“H-Huh?” You scramble up from the chair, “W-Wait, Satsuki! Come on, man, I’m sorry! Teach me again! Please .”
“I’m not hearing anything!” You hear him yell from a distance.
Your shoulders fall and you frown, slumping down on the chair you had previously sat on. You don’t pay any mind to the scrutinizing gazes that seemed to burn all throughout your body. Your forehead lands on the desk with a slam and you groan.
“Ugh, I hate my brain.”
The afternoon came with orange light casting over the buildings and shadows hiding behind corners. The lights bouncing against the multiple glass windows from the surrounding buildings glare into your pupils, thus, you walk forward with squinted eyes and a palm hovering over your face. It’s warm against your skin, so you shed off the cardigan around your body and hang it over your right shoulder.
Your shoulder aches a bit from your bag hanging behind your back. It swings a little with every movement you make and the multiple keychains hanging on its zippers jingle. Each one had been gifts from your mother ( rather, you begged her for it ), and they were all inspired by the array of different comics that you read. Your mother rather dislikes it when you read those other than the classic literature books, but you like to think that she’s just being stubborn. After all, you had found her old stash of comics from back when she was younger hiding inside your parents’ shared room and inside one of the cabinets where she’d place her makeup. She’s not any better than you, truly.
“Hey! Is that a Kaiji keychain?”
You turn around and the color of unique lavender hair greets your perceptions first. His grin as wide, equally purple eyes crinkling along as he points towards your bag. You blink repeatedly and you freeze in place.
He’s that rich boy that’s always surrounded by a ton of other students during break time.
He’s kind of like a star.
Cool .
Your lips fall to an equally wide grin. “Yeah!”
He falls to step right beside you and begins asking questions. “Where’d you get it? I happen to be looking for some merchandise but have been having difficulties finding one because it’s pretty old.”
“Oh! I’d gotten it a long time ago. Not sure where, but it was probably around the time when I’d say Kaiji was at its peak.” You explain. “I don’t think it’s super popular now, s’probably why you can’t find any.”
There was something that felt so surreal about speaking with a person whom you know leads a life that is far from similar to yours. For one, you’re unsure about how it feels to be born into a family that drowns in seemingly endless amounts of cash. That, and simply his appearance and subconsciously open mannerisms that seem to just naturally pull anyone into his bubble.
“Aw.” His small pout turns to a sharp smile, purple eyes gazing into yours as if it could cut through the transparent air. All of a sudden, intimidation crawls through your skin and your hair rises. Your shoulders tense. “Well, how about an exchange?”
Like a mouse caught between a floor full of traps, you respond with dripping unmasked curiosity. “Like what?”
“You give me that keychain and I’ll give you anything you want in return. But within reason of course, like lunch, or a plushie—girls like that, right?—or a phone.”
You’re not sure when buying a random stranger a phone was considered ‘within reason’, but perhaps swimming in an ocean-full of money strung along with the power to easily bargain such a costly item.
“So, whaddya say?” He tilts his head, extending his arm and hand up to you.
Tempting.
You look at his hand and into his eyes before smiling. The corner of his lips seemed to curl upwards even more, spilling out the silent hope that appeared to be brewing into his mind.
“Dunno, man. I kinda like the keychain. Let me think about it, ‘kay?” You shrug, turning around to continue your journey towards home.
Your Ma taught you not to accept things from random strangers anyway.