Chapter Text
There is a concept in French expressed in a single word: ennui. Translated literally, one finds the word "boredom"; however, it is not boredom in its simple form, but an existential boredom that silently devours all the joys of life. One stops having fun with anything; even the actions that once struck sparks in one’s body and heart cease to be exciting. Charles Chevalier does not consider himself an exception, though his perception of his own feelings is not as clear or sophisticated as an academic text—the way Julien Loki’s thoughts must be—he is smart enough to know how he feels.
In response to boredom, then, a Frenchman might follow the steps of a Baudelaire poem—Charles hated reciting poems at school, which is why he preferred to skip class and walk around the port of Lorient. However, he could incorporate the logic of The Flowers of Evil and go to his Paradis Artificiels; a glass of wine stolen in a successful prank, a drag from a journalist’s cigarette—he couldn't care less what it was, as long as it sounded a bit fun or capable of entertainment. Doing his school lessons under Loki's supervision, he couldn't skip class as he did in Lorient, choosing to deviate from the path to school one or two days a week, wandering through half-full bars and hoping some older gentleman, tired of the current rules, would offer him a sip of wine in honor of his youth.
Despite leaving right after getting something—for if he heard an old man blathering about how, in his youth, all his friends enjoyed life like hedonists, drinking and smoking, Charles would feel ordinary and completely lose interest in the habit.
Now, locked inside an institution in Japan, he missed the ports of Lorient, meeting other bored boys and playing football along the edges of the beach, feeling his feet sink into the sand. Perhaps it wasn't so much the boys or the beaches, but the freedom itself. Charles is seen as a devilish boy, he knows, as he scribbles drawings over the lesson sheet Loki gave him. That is to say: a troublemaker, mischievous, and smart only for the wrong reasons. Many would deduce he does poorly in school, but Charles is simply uninterested. Anyway, now that the league is over and the U-20 World Cup begins soon, within a month, he expects to have new adventures wherever Loki takes him.
He was terribly bored, scribbling on the last sheet with answers that made no damn sense. It was a question about Baudelaire, looking for definitions of the ideal and reality; it just so happens that Charles has not the slightest interest in reality as it is; if he owned the world, everything would be different. Everyone would fall at least once down a rabbit hole, and thus, they would never busy themselves questioning him: "Charles, why are you like this?" And they wouldn't try to shove child psychologists into his head to analyze his behavior; they would simply accept it and be surprised by him just as he is. They wouldn't make him sad by explaining to him what he is, because everyone would be!
He wrote back the truth to Baudelaire: neither matters, the ideal or reality, when thought of as simple mathematical questions. If something requires too much effort to be thought out and doesn't offer a diversion of equal size, it immediately loses its charm. Boredom arises again. Loki would probably be annoyed with the answer, but Charles would have fulfilled his part of the deal and would enjoy the small celebration with the team. The deal, by the way: Charles would only celebrate with the others once he had answered the questions, and he did answer, both with and without letters. He drew the Cheshire Cat on a particularly boring sheet because, after all, what use is a book without illustrations? All books should have illustrations.
He orchestrated the sheets to have a surprise effect on Loki: he put them in the order 6, 3, 7, 4, 1, 5, and 2. Obviously, the last sheet was the illustrated one; the others had words, and even if they weren't words that pleased his coach, they were completing a question, so he had solved them. He smiled mischievously as he ran to the door, the socks sliding on the slippery floor amusing him. Shidou had said they would be in the match analysis room, they’d put some movie on and drink a bit; they’d bring soda for Charles too. At the time Charles asked: "Soda, for what?" with a child's face in an exaggerated grimace of dissatisfaction. It didn't last long; Shidou rubbed his hair with a brotherly air while pushing him down, smiling and saying: "You brat!"
At the entrance to the locker room, he almost slipped as his socks slid; they must have been brown, for sure. He grabbed the doorknob and threw himself inside, laughing to himself. Unsurprisingly, Loki was the first to notice a bouncy boy entering the dark room, lit by the half-light of the screen. The movie didn't seem exciting at all, because they didn't let Shidou choose. It was funny to see the movie decision by the online group; if they let Rin choose, the night would be narrated through fake screams and guts flying in some horror movie, and if Shidou chose, depravity everywhere. Therefore, they were excluded from any decision regarding the night’s socialization; in the end, they could have let Shidou choose because Rin didn't even show up—he left trembling through the corners and no one knows where he ended up; they thought he was sick because he’d been sniffling a bit.
Loki was sitting near Shidou when he signaled for Charles to come over, and then Shidou noticed him too and smiled. It was good to have a friend, even one three years older, on the team he played for. Shidou wasn't boring; he never behaved with the authoritative and fatherly air of Loki—boring. He didn't act as if Charles were less smart or free than him just because he was younger, even if he called him a pipsqueak or a brat. Charles saw some comments on social media about himself, despite Julien and all the advisors, psychologists, and responsible adults recommending he never do that. He understood, in part, why: heaps of criticism, weirdos and creeps, messages from strange guys on Twitter and Instagram—all that can be enjoyed in the wonderland that is the internet. However, Charles didn't care about the concept of being hated; what could they do beyond that? He preferred a strong emotion, like hatred, over apathetic boredom.
The other day, scrolling through posts about himself, he noticed how much people liked to treat Shidou as his brother on the pitch. Well, if you want to know, Charles already had too many brothers, linked to him, it seems, by surname and nothing else. That's the problem with having many brothers: you have no outstanding quality, just like your brothers. At least, Charles felt that way whenever he met the family: too many people at the table, at school, at home. There was a certain excitement and noise Charles got used to growing up and, to be honest, learned to appreciate. However, look: if you're at the circus, no one cares if you're the clown. It didn't matter what pranks he pulled; at some point, they weren't surprising at all, a perception that made him uncomfortable.
Sometimes he had somewhat pessimistic thoughts regarding his family, though he didn't perceive them as antipathetic; it just so happened that he once shared them with Loki and received that description. He had the impression that his parents, especially his mother, wouldn't have the time or need to mourn if one or two children died—they had so many! Not even Charles, idle most of the time, knew for sure: were they eight or were they ten? If one or another went missing, maybe the parents would just say, after a few days, "Oh, were there really eight?"
In short, there was nothing that seemed special about his blood relations beyond constant coexistence, but even that was fading as, being older, he spent his time between school and the beaches. Later, with football taking over his life, traveling and training with Loki. It was fun to play with professionals, to overcome them and gain a higher value, like in a video game, going up level by level. However, he noticed that even football, just for being football, wasn't so satisfying on its own. His fun began to require new colors, new emotions, to become fun again. If he went back to playing in Lorient with the boys, he would get bored. He felt a bit anxious about the future: if one day the pitch stopped being fun, what would he do? People expect him to keep playing football as a career, for years and years on end, a true rag doll in the hands of clubs.
Once, on a hot night, he heard his father say what must have been a recitation of some French artist: "Une cigarette, c'est la seule consolation quand on n'a plus génie." About two years later, he recited his father to a player he met outside of France, told him what it meant: "A cigarette is the only consolation when one no longer has genius." Probably the guy smoked and Charles wanted to make fun of him, even if he didn't mind smoking too once in a while. He didn't give a damn about his own contradictions; if we're all going to be hypocrites, let's at least be fun.
Maybe he should teach the phrase to Shidou; he’s the type of person who likes to know about artists. If Charles's tasks involved art, Shidou wouldn't mind helping—more out of his own interest than assistance; however, with his explanations, Charles could see some fun beyond the wordy and dull texts of artistic explanation and analysis. What nonsense to want to explain art as if it were arithmetic!
At this party, he would have to start saying goodbye to Shidou, although he would see him again at the U-20 World Cup—they would be opponents on the pitch and would barely have time to socialize. Maybe after the cup he’d have some time off, but he doesn't think Shidou would agree to go out with him, and anyway, he would need Loki's supervision as his guardian. By the way, Loki could have an empathetic sense of sensitivity for these situations; he surely thought it strange that Charles finished his tasks so fast, but he said nothing, just let him and Shidou gather. Was he in a good mood?
"Hey, Loki," he said, hanging off Shidou's shoulders, trying to climb onto his back as he saw some Japanese members do. "When we win the cup, are we taking Shidou to France?"
Shidou seemed amused, though with his usual brusque attitude.
"And is it gonna be for free?" Shidou noted. Charles laughed: he was fun and carefree, unlike the other older guys he’d met out there, always full of questions that hid reprimands and some disdain. Shidou accepted, without needing to understand; he simply imposed his own conditions on someone else’s game.
"If everything goes well and he’s willing, who knows?" Loki replied, with little attention. He moved away, shortly after, to another part of the team, perhaps wishing to let them have an appropriate and private farewell with their devilish pranks.
"I'm thirsty!" Charles shouted into Shidou's ear, cutting through the voices around them, completely oblivious to the movie. No way it was just their team here; surely other people had snuck in.
Shidou pushed him out of his personal space while shouting back: "Let's drink something! They put a table right over there!"
And there was, in fact, a small wooden table overflowing with beer cans, bottles of wine, and others of gin, some plastic cups falling about, some on the floor and others on the table. There was a soda in the center with a paper taped to it, where the name 'Charles' had been written and then scratched out, replaced by the words "Devil's property" underneath.
Charles took one of the lying, half-crushed plastic cups, straightened it out, and grabbed a bottle of wine. He only liked flavored gins; wine was more pleasant if it were sweet, like grape juice that left him with a pleasant feeling of dizziness and a funny feeling when moving. Drinking gave him a strange sensation of childishness, like a ride in an old playground; it allowed him to have fun with the silliest things.
"That's not for you, kid," Shidou said, taking the bottle from him. "You'll puke all over the floor later."
"Come on!" he huffed, dissatisfied. "Don't be annoying."
Shidou had a nasal laugh escaping through every pore, though he gave an impression of abnormal tranquility for his usual posture.
"What the hell makes you think you can drink?" he asked, his voice and posture soft as he served himself.
"The others are drinking, I don't want to be alone, it's unfair and boring." He reached out his hands to try and reach the bottle, but Shidou held it up.
"That's not true; if Rin were here, I wouldn't let him either." Shidou laughed, suddenly with a lazy smile spreading across his face. "Damn, that would be so much fun."
"He'd break your face," Charles provoked. Shidou took on a slightly harder expression, but didn't really take it seriously. "And it wouldn't be my first time drinking, anyway," he muttered.
One could notice then that Shidou almost always had sincere expressions on his face; although he wasn't an open book, he had a free spirit that let him behave and express himself as he pleased. He formed a bit of a dull tone of voice, letting out an ironic but less entertained tone.
"Been stealing sips of Daddy's beer?" he joked, even though his face looked the closest to annoyed Charles had ever seen.
However, that was Shidou Ryusei: what did morality matter to him? Charles allowed himself to think the posture was just formality; he’d like to double the bet, he’d provoke back, as they always did. He would still gain some personal fulfillment; it wasn't often he managed, regardless of the prank, to surprise Shidou. The guy was impressed by his passes, he liked him, but he was never actually surprised.
"Not just that," he leaned back against the wooden table. Although he couldn't go far if he wanted to be heard clearly. "What percentage of the French population do you think has smoked during their lifetime?" Charles Chevalier laughs, in another of his pranks. "Alcohol is nothing!"