Chapter Text
My name is Isagi Yoichi. I was always the boy in class who cracked jokes but no one laughed, the kid everyone thought was weird, the kid who always got bullied. But they didn't know the true me. Sure I wasn't your typical striker. I had my quirks: I read manga, loved anime, quoted niche memes. As I progressed through life, it only got harder. When I reached high school, I got a scholarship for one of the elitist schools in Japan, but tuition was still too expensive for my parents. So I worked like a dog day and night tutoring my dumb classmates, even some upperclassmen, for barely anything. Alas, that still didn't help. Slowly, slowly, my parents began to go bankrupt. It eventually became too much for my dad to handle, so one day he said his goodbyes and left me and my mother for another woman. A richer family. Just to satisfy his ambition and ego. So I practised harder and harder so I could become the best striker in the world and prove to my dad just how much he was missing out on. My inspiration ever since I was a small kid was none other than the very esteemed Noel Noa. I idolised him, my idolisation slowly becoming an obsession before finally morphing into a love that could replace the hole in my heart left by my father.
At night, I fantasised about being part of a happy, loving family. Not one where your father just ditches because life got too hard. But life isn't fair. And when I prayed at night, begging god to help me to heal my ailment. I was left alone once again, no sign, nothing fixed. I wondered if maybe there was something wrong with me. Why was I not enough for my dad to stay? Why is my life like this? Why couldn't my family have stayed together? As tears ran down my cheek, subtly soaking my pillow. I didn't move, just letting myself marinate in the pool of tears that was forming around my cheek. Self-depreciating thoughts ringing through my head, slowly gnawing at my familiarity with happiness, darkness pooling into my heart and soul. My emotions are a push and pull of magnets, always opposite, no in between.
During my last year of high school, the bullying got harsher. They called me "emo", and they mocked me, taunting me at every chance, calling me a "femboy" just cause I was in touch with my feminine side. But I didn't listen, or at least I told myself that.. but whenever Hypnos gently lulled me into sleep, I heard their voices in my head like a pestering fly that won't go away. A malaria-ridden mosquito is constantly trying to bite you. But I knew they could never understand me. How could they? After all, they wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where I was raised. My home. No one should have to go through that torture, like the slow draining of happiness from your body, like the blood slowly draining from your face, when you dive in the water and there's that brief moment where you're deprived of oxygen, and it feels like the water is slowly suffocating you. I went through that. They didn't.
Although my mother and I were broke, we were happy. And that's all I thought we needed until my world was flipped upside down