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At first glance, he doesn’t stand out in a crowd of students; except maybe for his straight, dark hair with those bizarrely bare sides. But in case you watch him walk for even just a quadrant, you’ll notice an oddly jerky movement, as if most of his joints had once been dislocated and then clumsily shoved back in place by some very inexperienced surgeon… with his narrow and unusually stiff waist, he walks a little pigeon-toed, quite awkwardly. While his facial features aren’t at all unpleasant, they come together in a rather comical way — especially when he’s expressing emotions like disgust or confusion, which happens most of the time. Once his eyebrows scrunch up and his lips jut forward, he looks just like a duck, his beak’s orangey lipstick smudging out of his cupid’s bow.
By the second or third glance, he already seems like an impulsive, maladjusted, oblivious clown. He’s not especially shy, and is not even close to being seen as a threat by anyone, but he has this warped sense, prominent lack of situational awareness that tends to irritate most people around. And his chronic stubbornness frequently makes him focus on the least relevant of details. For example: earlier this year, you two sat near each other during an important anthropology exam, and even though you tried to cheat off him, the answer he wrote was so off-topic and poignant that you had the urge to nudge him instead to explain that he’d completely missed the point, and that the teacher would give him a nine-months-pregnant zero within a blink.
He doesn’t usually sit up front in class nor make eye contact with the professors. He prefers the wall-side corners, where he arranges his stuff the same way every day: a dark-blue pencil case stays to the right of the desk and a multi-subject notebook with Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker on the cover decorates its center. He’s left-handed, with a strangely jagged and messy handwriting. Sometimes, you glance over at him: either spinning his pencil, scratching his neck, fiddling with his fancy watch / his industrial piercing with a screw-shaped stud, or playing Sonic Generations — he hides his niche-model touchscreen phone under the desk. Oh, and when he specifically sits at the back just to use his phone, you can’t help but notice his wallpaper: a cute idol girl. You notice, too, that he keeps sending countless messages to a number that has blocked him weeks ago. (That kind of explains why he doesn’t get greater grades. The only time you saw his name on the list of the top scores was in Statistics, first year. You wonder if he’s better at exact sciences, and what the hell he’s doing in a social studies course then).
The day you found out he came from a rich, fairly influential family in Morioh, you weren’t surprised. His style is brand-name, and he never cuts the line at the cheap campus cafeteria, let alone begs the staff for credit. He brings his own utensils and eats alone, always the same three meal variations, earphones in, volume way too high — that melodramatic Gothic Metal leaking out of his Walkman MP3 player. (You may not know much about the genre, but “Everybody’s Fool” by Evanescence is unmistakable from miles away). Sometimes, he tries his luck playing cards with the truco group, but he rarely wins. You’ve also even caught him once ditching a history class to play Doom in the computer lab room.
During heated academic discussions, he doesn’t bother making grimaces when he disagrees with someone's opinion… nonetheless, he always remains quiet about it. Probably against his inner will. He hasn’t spoken up in any group debate since the mandatory theology seminar, when half the class — professor included — turned out offended by his extreme takes on evolution, mass manipulation, and, sure, about the fact that churches and shrines are tax-exempt in Japan. Now, he only gets anxious and, when he fidgets, it’s always with his fingers — twisting them, popping in and out of their sockets like they’re barely attached to each other.
Unlike you, your group of friends don’t seem to notice him often. Though they have mentioned they think he’s kind of spoiled and a weirdo. An old colleague of yours who studied with him in the most prestigious school in S City said he’s always been just like that — spoiled, whiny, slow. She also told you his older sister — the one who “starves herself just to take over the cover of the local fashion magazine every month” — was once called into the principal’s office because of a fight involving stolen marbles and a Game Boy. Both your colleague and other girls from the school used to find him gross for playing with beetles in the garden during recess.
There were also rumors that his mother was arrested for killing and eating the flesh of a child, and that his relatives live in a mansion far from the city’s center to avoid attention, since his father allegedly has to bribe the media to cover up the murder committed by his ex-wife. You even heard that the family launders money through their fruit shop to hide some kind of illegal trade — drugs? — involving their oldest son. None of this gossip was ever proven, but it didn’t come from a single person’s mouth. So you never really know if the weird looks he gets are because of his own oddness or because of the absurd history surrounding his family. (The upside is he doesn’t always seem to notice the whispers and sideways glances — just like he never noticed your… unusual curiosity around him).
You don’t know much about his friends or general relationships. Your only clue is having seen him once walking around campus after a pretty girl with pink hair, but you never found out her name. He looks at her like a man in love. According to him, they’re in a relationship, but you’ve never seen more than a few pitying smiles and a kiss on the cheek when they part opposite ways. The only other time you saw him close to another girl was during a PwD diversity workshop — they showed up together and left before the Q&A time, then he bought her a blueberry milkshake at the ice cream shop next to campus. She was blind, short, and wore Shinora-like clothing.
Later, in early autumn of 2011, you noticed some changes. His eyes were more sunken — tilted down, tired — and he yawned and stretched his spine a lot, like he hadn’t been sleeping well. His supposed girlfriend was also absent from college. He stayed that way for a while, started missing more and more relevant classes. About three months later, the whole town was buzzing about a tragic incident involving the wealthy family who lived near the Wall Eyes. He didn’t show up for two months, delayed his graduation schedule, thus didn’t finish the semester nor the course with your class. You never had the courage to ask him about any of it — and neither had anybody you knew, unfortunately. The last time you ever saw him was on a cloudy Saturday, waiting in the visitor line at the physical therapy ward of S City’s regional hospital.