Chapter Text
Gilbert stared out the window, thoroughly bored at his desk. Classes had not started yet, and they had arrived far too early thanks to his younger brother Ludwig, who had told him he had a class presentation and was apparently very excited. He wanted to arrive before everyone else to prepare, and had practically dragged Gilbert out of bed against his will.
Gilbert yawned when he remembered that. Damn Ludwig.
The rest of his classmates were busy with their own things. And well, his friends too. Ivan was arm wrestling a poor kid who looked frightened by his eerie smile and unusual strength…
Roderich was talking to Elizabeta near the door, and Elizabeta looked rather bored, as if she already wanted to leave.
The sunlight streaming through the large classroom windows fell across Gilbert’s face. After all, it was summer, and it was quite hot.
Gilbert was extremely bored at this point. He wondered when the teacher would even arrive. He played with the new mechanical pencil his grandpa had bought him over the weekend, pressing the button on top until all the lead came out.
After a while, the teacher entered, announcing her arrival with the click of the door opening and her heels echoing throughout the classroom. The entire class stood up from their seats. Ivan, who had been on the floor in the back, jumped up quickly, and everyone said in unison, “Good morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning, class,” she greeted in response, and everyone sat back down.
Gilbert yawned again. How boring would today be?
“Today, a new classmate will be joining us. I hope you welcome him warmly.”
Everyone looked quite surprised at what she said. New students almost never joined their class.
As soon as she finished speaking, a boy entered through the classroom door.
He was a bit shorter than Gilbert, with light blond wavy hair down to his ears. He wore glasses and had big blue eyes.
Gilbert straightened up in his seat from where he had been sprawled, paying much closer attention as he looked at him with clear curiosity.
The new boy had a warm smile on his face as he looked at everyone.
“Go ahead, you can introduce yourself,” the teacher said.
The boy stood very still and did not respond. He kept looking at everyone, still smiling, as if he had not heard what the teacher said.
A few seconds later, the teacher whispered softly, “Oh right, right, I’m sorry.” Embarrassed, she gently touched the boy’s shoulder, and it was like a switch being flipped. The boy nodded, took the backpack he was carrying, and opened it to look for something. Was he so shy that he did not even know how to speak? Gilbert wondered impatiently as he watched him rummage through his red backpack.
The boy took out a yellow and orange notebook with “Notebook” written on the front, which caught Gilbert’s attention, and he leaned forward over his desk, stretching his neck to see what it was about.
He opened it, and on the first page was written:
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Matthew Bonnefoy-Kirkland :)”
The handwriting was neat and pretty, the letters large enough for everyone to see.
His classmates also watched curiously to read what it said. The ones in the back stretched their necks to try to read it, like Elizabeta, who sat beside him. Or Ivan, who was farther behind.
“I would like for us to get along through this notebook!”
He turned to the next page.
“Please, when you want to talk to me, write in this notebook.”
The intrigue over why he was writing this made Gilbert increasingly impatient. Matthew, still smiling, turned the page to what Gilbert assumed was the last one and held the notebook beside his smiling face so everyone could read it.
“I cannot hear. I am deaf.”
Most of the class gasped and looked at one another in surprise, whispering under their breath or turning to their friends.
Gilbert, who had still been clicking his mechanical pencil, was so startled he dropped it. What did you mean they now had a deaf kid in class?
Matthew stood quietly at the front, still smiling shyly, trying to understand the reactions innocently as he looked around at everyone. He seemed quite embarrassed, or perhaps a little nervous from the sudden attention.
After introducing himself, Matthew went to sit at his assigned desk, which happened to be directly in front of Gilbert.
Throughout the entire first class, Gilbert kept his gaze fixed on the new boy in front of him. Probably like most of the class.
Once the class ended, some boys and girls approached Matthew, who seemed shy around the children standing beside him.
Roderich wrote something in his notebook with a big smile.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
He showed him what he had written, smiling.
Matthew looked at it thoughtfully, thinking of a response while smiling back at Roderich. Elizabeta was sitting behind them on top of a desk, watching the whole scene with the new boy.
“Hey Matthew, can you only speak in sign language?” Elizabeta asked in a teasing tone, intending to bother him, but Matthew did not even hear or understand her. Roderich made eye contact with a small smile and replied, “You’re not being very nice to the new kid, Eliza,” hiding his laughter with his hands.
Matthew noticed Roderich was talking to someone and turned to look at Elizabeta. Realizing she had spoken, he began writing something in his notebook. Elizabeta tried to see what he was writing by stretching her neck from the desk where she sat observing everything.
Matthew lifted his notebook to show what he had written.
“Could you repeat that, please?”
“Uh, no, I don’t think so,” she replied sarcastically between giggles.
Roderich tried to change the subject after Elizabeta spoke and Matthew looked quite confused. He began writing again, asking basic questions like nicknames or favorite foods, which Matthew answered all of.
“Do you have a favorite animal or a pet?”
As soon as he read it, Matthew formed a wide smile and quickly wrote in the notebook.
Gilbert, who was sitting a bit behind them at the back of the classroom, was roughly play fighting with Ivan while one of their friends, Sadik, leaned against the window cheering Gilbert on to beat Ivan. When he heard Roderich’s question, he slightly lifted his head as if he had been mentioned.
“I have a stuffed polar bear if that counts. His name is Kumajiro and he’s like my best friend.”
Those beside him exchanged a look and began to laugh, as if Matthew had told a great joke, especially Elizabeta, who burst out laughing.
“Are you five or something?”
Matthew innocently did not even understand what or who they were laughing at. Obviously, he did not know they were mocking him. He grabbed the notebook and wrote:
“What happened?”
Roderich only looked at him with a smile, not intending to tell Matthew they were laughing at him, and wrote:
“It’s nothing, Matthew.”
“Hey Gilbert, did you hear?” Elizabeta said, still quite amused as she turned to him. “He says he has a stuffed animal.”
Gilbert knew perfectly well that he himself also had a yellow bird plush named Gilbird at home, who had been like his best friend since he was very small, and only Ludwig and his grandfather knew about it. But for obvious reasons, especially after Matthew’s recent humiliation, he would never say that at school.
“How ridiculous,” he replied to Elizabeta. She laughed and went back to play fighting with Ivan. Even so, Gilbert kept thinking about what Matthew had said.
After free period ended, the algebra teacher arrived, looking as if he had come purely out of obligation and might fall asleep at any moment.
He introduced a new topic and some exercises that Gilbert truly did not care about. After all, he understood almost nothing from the course.
He doodled silly drawings on the last page of his notebook, or sometimes, when he got bored, simply rested his head on his desk. This went on for two hours. The teacher did not really care whether they slept or paid attention. He just talked and talked. Gilbert thought there was something about his voice that made you sleepy just by listening to it.
He lifted his gaze and found himself staring at the wavy blond hair in front of him.
Matthew seemed confused and from time to time looked around, trying to understand the topic because he apparently understood nothing. The teacher did not seem to care whether he understood or not. He just kept talking and writing on the board, paying little attention to the deaf boy in class.
Five minutes before the end of class, the teacher stopped writing and turned to the class. “For homework, you will complete the exercises in the book from page fifteen to seventeen for next week.” The whole class groaned in boredom. “And since you do not want to do that and there are so many complaints, additional homework: level one and two for tomorrow.”
Matthew looked quite confused, as he understood nothing of what was happening. He looked around timidly, seeming hesitant to ask anyone what the teacher had said, and waited for someone to notice and take pity on him and explain.
Elizabeta, who had looked just as bored as Gilbert the entire class, seemed to notice Matthew’s problem. She sighed and stretched to tap his shoulder with her pen. “Let me borrow your notebook.”
Matthew smiled gratefully and kindly handed her his notebook to communicate. Before she took it, he tapped the desk lightly with his fingers as if knocking on a door before passing it to her. Or at least that small detail was something Gilbert noticed, watching curiously from the corner of his eye like an owl observing every movement.
Elizabeta began writing in Matthew’s notebook about the homework and some notes on the topic.
And Gilbert watched as Matthew waited for her to finish writing.
At the end of the day, after classes were over, they had choir practice with the whole class for the upcoming competition against the other classes in a few weeks. Now that Matthew had joined the class, he had to learn it too. A boy in charge had explained to him what he needed to do and sing before they started.
Matthew stood next to Roderich to guide himself and know when to start singing. He stood still, waiting for him to begin so he could start too.
One boy conducted the choir while another played the piano behind him. The pianist began to play.
Matthew assumed they had started singing when he looked to his side and saw Roderich open his mouth as if he were singing, and so he began.
Unfortunately, no one had actually started yet. And Matthew was the only one singing among all the other children. But that was not the main problem. The issue was that Matthew did not speak or sing clearly due to being deaf, and he sang in a way that was hard to understand, shouting sounds most could not make sense of.
The entire class looked quite confused by Matthew’s peculiar and unusual way of singing, and everyone stared at him.
Matthew looked around, confused, not understanding what was happening. Roderich gently touched his shoulder so he would stop singing and said, “You started too early, Matthew. I’ll tell you when to begin,” bringing a finger to his lips as a sort of gesture to help him understand.
Everyone returned to their spots to try again. “Alright, let’s start over…” the boy at the front tried to encourage them, turning to the pianist to signal him to begin.
“Well… looks like we won’t win the competition this year,” Elizabeta complained as if wanting everyone except Matthew to hear and agree.
Gilbert stared at Matthew ahead of him, who looked quite embarrassed.
“I don’t understand why everything has to be so complicated…” Gilbert muttered in response.
A few seconds later, the lively piano melody began, and this time everyone started singing together.
After school ended, Matthew had to go home alone.
His twin brother Alfred attended a different school because all his friends had moved there, and he convinced their parents to let him transfer too. But that school did not have accommodations or better support for deaf children, so Matthew had to go to another one.
It saddened Matthew that they no longer attended the same class or even the same school. He missed walking home together. But it did not affect Alfred as much, since he had many friends. In contrast, Matthew had not had a single friend at his previous school and was always ignored by everyone, sometimes even by teachers.
That was also one of the reasons his parents changed Matthew’s school. Supposedly, this one claimed to have good professional support for deaf children.
He saw Elizabeta, Roderich, and their group of friends walking out together and approached them. Quickly, he opened his backpack, took out his notebook, and hurriedly wrote before they left.
“Sorry to bother you, but can I walk with you? :)”
He jogged a little and tapped Roderich on the shoulder, since he was the one he felt closest to and had talked to the most. The others stopped to see what was happening. He showed him the notebook. Roderich looked confused until he read it, asked for the pencil, and wrote:
“Of course you can!”
Matthew smiled at him, and the others continued walking while chatting and playing around.
Of course, being allowed to walk with them was not the same as being fully included.
No one worried about the fact that he could not understand what they were talking about or the jokes they laughed at.
But Matthew did not think too much about it. In part, he was happy to have friends to walk with. Even without understanding anything, he was grateful they had been considerate enough to let him join them. And that made him happy.
He was no longer invisible.
Although he walked considerably farther behind them, trying to keep up, watching them, studying what they said, trying to read their lips, which he was not very good at and could not understand at all.
They arrived at a playground near the bus stop where some of them took the bus home.
Elizabeta glanced at him as she climbed onto one of the bar structures and sat on top. She did not seem very pleased that Matthew had come with them, nor did she seem to have any intention of talking to him. Suddenly, she jumped down and shouted toward Matthew with a rather forced smile.
“I think we should get going!” She turned and grabbed Roderich by the arm. “See you later, Matthew!” Elizabeta shouted, waving her arm goodbye as she walked away with Roderich and the others. Matthew, a bit confused, tried to catch up with his notebook still in hand but stopped where he stood.
He stayed there and stopped following them. Maybe they wanted time alone as friends who already knew each other. He could not complain either. It was their first day knowing him. They probably were not used to him yet. He smiled and waved gently goodbye as well.
“Goujbai Eguijabeta! Goujbai Goguejich!”
Maybe tomorrow he could try to include himself more in the group, he told himself as he watched them leave.
He remained alone at the playground, with the sound of cars passing and trees moving in the wind.
He climbed onto the bar structure where Elizabeta had been, took a packet of cookies left over from recess out of his backpack, and simply sat watching the cars pass for a while as he ate, thinking about his day.
After school, Gilbert was walking with Sadik and Ivan. The three of them were surprisingly quiet compared to other days, until Sadik began to speak.
“Hey…” Sadik started. “Don’t you think it’s stressful and uncomfortable having to write all the time to talk to the new kid?”
“Yeah well, it’s kind of uncomfortable being near him, I don’t know, it makes me feel gross to get close to him… What do you think, Gilbert?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s pretty weird, right?” His tone was slightly uncertain at first, but then he spoke more firmly. “Out of nowhere a deaf kid shows up and now the classroom will change. I hope he leaves soon,” Gilbert replied.
“And he seems to have… what was it called…? Oh yeah! A delay, he’s slow. Didn’t you hear how he said he has a stuffed animal as his best friend? How ridiculous…” He made a face sticking out his tongue as if he were about to vomit after saying that.
Ivan chuckled quietly. Gilbert froze. “Yeah…” He wanted to keep talking but hesitated for a second… and still continued. “Yeah, he’s an idiot!” Gilbert blurted out without holding back, making silly faces that made his friends burst into laughter.
They continued talking about other things, though Gilbert kept thinking about what he had said about Matthew during the quiet moments when he was not speaking or pretending to be funny.
After a while, Gilbert said goodbye to Ivan and Sadik and began walking home alone.
He wondered what they would eat today.
He tried to think about something other than what he had said. Ludwig no longer walked home with him. Well, they had not walked home together for a while. Each went with their respective friends. He went with Ivan and Sadik, and Ludwig went with his best friend Feliciano, and they had no problem with that.
The sun shone on his face as he walked. It was hot, but he felt relaxed. He was near the bus stop where he crossed, and after a short walk he would be home.
A noise made him look up, only to find Matthew standing with his back turned a few meters away near the playground bars. He had not even noticed Gilbert was there.
Gilbert crouched down, grabbed a handful of small stones from the ground, and threw them at him to get his attention. “Hey, you!”
Matthew quickly turned around, somewhat confused, but when he saw it was Gilbert he smiled and began making signs with his hands, which Gilbert did not understand at all.
Gilbert opened his mouth slightly, not knowing what to say, and frowned in frustration at not understanding anything.
Matthew looked at him and took a few steps toward him, but Gilbert stepped back.
He remembered Sadik and Ivan’s words and felt a sharp pang in his stomach that made him retreat.
"…He’s slow. Didn’t you hear how he said he has a stuffed animal as his best friend? How ridiculous…"
"…It makes me feel gross to get close to him…"
“Don’t come near me, you freak!” Gilbert shoved him, not hard enough to knock him down but enough to make him stumble back a few steps and drop his notebook to the side. Matthew looked confused but remained still. Gilbert had thought he would walk away after pushing him and yelling that, but Matthew stayed.
“Can we beij..." he began to speak and made hand gestures, moving them more slowly now. Still with that stupid smile.
Gilbert glared at him, visibly annoyed, wanting him to leave. He did not understand anything Matthew was saying, nor did he want to. "...frienjs?”
“I don’t understand anything you’re saying, you damn weirdo! Stay away from me!” But Matthew did not understand him and kept stepping closer.
Gilbert reacted by crouching to grab some dirt from the ground and throwing it at him.
Matthew covered his face with his arms, but even with dirt in his hair, he remained still, looking at Gilbert.
“What are you looking at? Get away from me!” Gilbert hurried to grab the notebook and throw it at Matthew before running off toward his house.
He looked back for a second and saw Matthew on the ground, kneeling as he picked up the notebook.
When he could no longer see him after turning the corner, he slowed down and stopped running. He walked the rest of the way home.
Matthew stayed where he was. He watched in the distance as Gilbert ran. He had wanted to tell him that his backpack was open and he had not noticed, but Gilbert ran too fast, and Matthew did not think it was a good idea to chase him.
And another thing was that Matthew honestly did not know what had just happened.
Was that how friends played? Matthew wondered as he brushed dirt from his hair and clothes. It seemed very peculiar. He also wondered why Gilbert had pushed him if he had only asked whether they could be friends.
He crouched down to pick up his notebook and gently brushed the dirt off so as not to damage it.
He stood up and put it back in his backpack, ready to leave. Maybe tomorrow he could talk to Gilbert, but this time with his notebook so he could understand. Because it seemed he had not understood anything at all.
He could try again tomorrow.
And he began walking home.
Matthew did not know it yet, but that day would mark the beginning of his personal hell.
And later on, Gilbert’s as well.