Chapter Text
Riku’s mind is beautiful. He’s heard it countless times before: from friends who appreciate the way he travels through life easily, without worrying about unnecessary things; from teachers who praise his beautiful prose when he writes and his poetry. He’s so positive, so optimistic, so kind. Nobody understands how he can be so kind, how the world hasn’t broken him down until he can’t stand on his own two feet anymore.
This tends to offend him.
Why, he ponders, do they think I can’t survive on my own? Why do they wonder about my optimism? My joy? Do they wish me pain? Sorrow? Anguish? Why would they do that? I don’t do that to them.
Riku loves to think. He loves when his mind escapes him, allowing him to create worlds that only he could possibly imagine. He can be anyone he wants in his mind.
He loves to stretch his toes in the sand, letting the grains make their way between them. He loves to lay his head on the ground, looking up, up, up to the sky. It’s so very endless. So very beautiful. He’s in love with it just like how it’s in love with him and his mind. Maybe even his body. He does not want it to be in love with his body. His mind is worth more.
Gently, he puts a hand up to block the sun’s rays. The action is futile, he realises, when the brightness doesn’t fade. The clouds cover the sun for just a moment, slowly and carefully blocking its onslaught on his eyes. But they move out of the way once again. He shuts them, blinking at first, then slower, then allows them to drift closed. He knows he won’t be able to sleep but he tries anyway.
When Riku sleeps it’s easier to be loved. He doesn’t have to work for it. He just is.
Riku had learnt to ride a bike back in Fukui. He had been around six and it hadn’t been easy. He’d fallen off countless times, the skin on his knees bruised and bloody, but he’d continued trying regardless. His mother had clapped for him every time he got back on, her cheers following him with every pedal, every push off the ground, every turn of the wheels. The concrete was painful when he would hit the floor, small rocks embedded in his wounds, but he couldn’t stop.
He’d learnt within hours.
He went back home, his mother’s arm around his shoulders, wheeling the bike beside him. Once home, she’d cleansed his wounds. He’d winced repeatedly and almost cried but she didn’t flinch. Her tone was comforting as she told him, it’s okay, it’ll be over before you know it, and he’d believed her so it was. She placed Pokémon plasters on his wounds and he kept caressing Charmander that night as he fell asleep.
Riku was never one for religion, not in childhood nor in his adulthood, but his mother was. She loved God, prayed to Him every night for the good health of herself and her son, so Riku did too. Sometimes it wasn’t even prayer, at least not in the traditional sense; he simply spoke, hoping somebody out there was listening. He wondered if she truly believed or if she just did the same.
He would ask Him questions about life, about love. Questions he would ask a father if he had one. Surely the Heavenly Father could give him the answers. But, he soon learnt, God does not reply to insignificant little boys. Not in tangible ways. Even if they are as special, as loved, as Riku felt.
He asked God to help him feel less lightheaded when he played the saxophone. He loved the instrument, the way it sounded, the way the reed tasted on his tongue. He loved that he had such an innate talent for it. But with every practice he’d walk out feeling dizzy and untethered and he hated it. He hated how weak it made him feel. He just wanted to be good at something, something he loved. Oh God, why was that so difficult?
Riku would often forget to eat as a child. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. When he did eat he ate voraciously, sauce dripping over his fingers, his mouth stained. He was always so hungry, so greedy. But often it slipped his mind. When he was doing something else, like writing, or reading, or playing with his friends, he’d forget about the limitations of his physical body. And he wouldn’t want to have to stop what he was doing to simply eat. Even if he knew he’d feel better afterwards.
And maybe, sometimes, he felt the pain was comforting. That tugging deep in his gut. It was familiar.
He constantly got in trouble with his mother. She’d find his lunchbox after he returned home from school unopened and full and she’d ask him, why does it look like you haven’t eaten any of this?
I wasn’t hungry, he would reply. And he thought it was true — he really hadn’t felt hungry. But then his stomach would rumble, betraying him, and he’d feel so guilty deep within. He hated making his mother feel this way. Disappointed in him. Never angry, just disappointed. Always disappointed. Loving, yet disappointed nonetheless. He would eat the lunchbox in front of her in silence, the sound of his chewing filling the living room, whilst she sat on the couch watching TV, or filling in forms for work, or whatever adults did when they weren’t playing with children.
See, was that so difficult, she would simply ask, running her hand through his hair. And Riku would shake his head, smile wide and unapologetic, any semblance of guilt wiped from his expression. Of course not, mama! I love you, he would reply. Then, hesitantly, do you love me?
She would frown. Of course I do, baby. What a silly question. Now let’s get ready for bed.
Riku had so many friends in school. And he loved each of them enduringly, inexorably. Even when they left him out. Called him spacey, weird. He loved to play with them, especially games where he would use his imagination, roleplaying games. But he always ended up playing unnecessary, easily discarded roles, like the pet. He didn’t mind, he took his role in stride, and tried to be the best pet a man could have! But then he’d be pushed aside. We don’t really need a pet for this game, they’d tell him. Just a mom, a dad, and a baby. But you can play with us next time.
He’d hesitate, slightly hurt, then plaster a smile back on once again. Okay!
And then he’d leave. That was fine, of course. Sometimes they didn’t need a pet, it made sense. At least now he could escape to his mind once again. Most of the time he sat on the grass observing the bugs. They were so small and so were their problems, probably. Riku didn’t necessarily know what problems they could have, they were just so little. So tiny. Sometimes he felt so very tiny.
Riku, how come your dad never comes to pick you up, one of his many friends had asked him on one fateful afternoon. What do you mean, he’d replied, his head tilting inquisitively. With a childlike innocence he didn’t want to sacrifice. I mean, they sighed, don’t you have a dad?
Riku pondered that, seriously. Did he have a dad? He didn’t feel as if he needed one. He had a mother who worked so hard for him, who loved him unconditionally. He felt it in the way she held him as he fell asleep, even at the age of seven. The way she’d rock him to sleep, patting his back gently, humming a melody that never failed to make him drowsy.
Why would I need a dad, he’d wonder, when my mother loves me twice as much?
Riku would reply in the same way and the child would roll their eyes, then turn away, unsatisfied. Riku shrugged his shoulders. Some kids were just so curious, but he understood. Sometimes other kids don’t understand things that are different, his mother had told him once. Just as a forewarning. That doesn’t mean different equates to bad. Remember that, baby.
Riku never forgot.
Riku’s father was an angry man. He knew this, but sometimes his memories of him were tainted. With an anger, red hot and painful, that wasn’t necessarily real. Not all the time.
He recalled one memory deep in his subconscious that he rarely forgot. He had been watching TV, one of the children’s shows he loved that he couldn’t remember the name of anymore, with a plot he could never follow, and morals that reiterated what his mother constantly taught him. Be kind, be curious, be good. He’d always wanted to be good.
His father had entered the room and Riku had been comfortable, welcoming. Hi, dad, he’d called out, smile wide and beaming, from his place on the couch. He hadn’t noticed his father’s expression, the irritation deep within the crevices of his eyes, the weariness in his wrinkles. No matter how young his father looked to other adults he would always be old to Riku.
Hey champ, is your mother home, he’d asked, distractedly.
She’s in the kitchen, I think.
Riku always heard his parents fight but he never saw his mother hurt. She was so strong. She could get back up from anything. Riku wanted to be just like her.
They fought again that day. His father hadn’t pulled any punches, figuratively. Riku didn’t see his mother bruised, and she never simply took what happened to her, but his father was just — so angry. He threw plates on the floor, on the walls, and they shattered. He came into the living room, seething, anger exuding from him like vapour.
He’d grabbed a baseball bat and smashed the TV.
Telling his mother about this memory, years later, she’d looked confused. Lost. That never happened, baby, she’d laughed. Riku felt stupid. Could he no longer trust his mind?
Riku’s older sisters were rarely home. He noticed this when he was nine. They were always either in school, at work, or just out with their friends. So most of the time it was just him and his mother. His father had long since left, wanting nothing to do with their family, and so sometimes, selfishly, Riku would feel that it was just him and his mother against the world.
But Riku knew his sisters loved him. They loved to kiss him and pick him up, dress him up in their makeup and dresses like he was their little doll. They would collect him from school on rare occasions when their schedules aligned, and they’d take him to the store and tell him get anything you want, and he’d always get the same thing; chocolate milk. They’d laugh at him, telling him he was so predictable, but they’d ruffle his hair and buy it for him regardless. Then they’d drop him off at home and leave just as swiftly as they’d arrived. So it was just him and his mother.
Mom, why are Ritsuko and Rei never home, he’d asked one day. They’re just busy, baby, his mother had said, dismissive. You know, Ritsuko’s going to be a lawyer. Isn’t that amazing! And Rei, well, she just wants to enjoy her adolescence. I don’t blame her. Riku was slightly lost. What does that word mean, adolescence, he tried, struggling to pronounce the unfamiliar word. Well, it’s just, his mother pulled him up onto her lap, caressing his hair, when you’re between childhood, like you, and adulthood, like Ritsuko. Does that make sense?
Yeah, mom, that makes sense. Riku was excited for his adolescence. He could enjoy it too, just like his sister. He could do anything, be anyone he wanted.
Riku had been a C-section baby. He didn’t know what this meant until he was twelve, in middle school, studying Macbeth. He was the only one out of the three of them, him and his sisters, to be born in this way. He hadn’t cared, but something about the connotations in the book had bothered him. Not born of a woman.Was he not born of a woman? His mother had still birthed him, he was still his mother’s son. But maybe it was different, being cut and ripped from a woman’s womb, than having her push you out herself. Of her own volition. Maybe.
He didn’t necessarily tell people this. At twelve, since starting middle school, he’d learnt to share less. Everyone in his elementary school had known he didn’t have a father, and it had been fine, but. Maybe he liked his privacy.
His literature teachers praised him for his insights constantly. The way he could discover details within the texts that nobody else in his class seemed to notice, or even care about. He loved to write, to string words together and form sentences and have those sentences represent feelings he felt deep within. He wasn’t always sure how to explain them but he could try. He was just so resilient.