Chapter Text
Your sleep is disturbed by a loud clattering sound. You open a bleary eye to see Gabriel and Brolly playing video games; it looks like one of them dropped a controller in the chaos of a boss fight. Your eyes dart over to the clock on the wall. It's nearly 11:00 in the morning. Might as well get up.
Stretching your limbs, you push the recliner in and walk towards the kitchen, ignoring Brolly and Gabriel's greetings. Maybe there's some cereal or something you can eat. Finding a box of cereal in the cupboard, you pour it into the bowl, and then add the milk - you may be a messed up person, but not to the point of pouring the milk first. As you sit down to eat, you notice the newspaper nearby. Now that you've fixed your speech impediment, it's time to work on fixing your illiteracy, and you've made some good progress if you do say so yourself. As you open the first page, you're broken out of your thoughts by a nearby voice.
"Since when do you read the newspaper?"
You should've hidden it. You should've made sure people weren't watching. You should've folded it up when Kuromaku came in. Wait, no, that would've been worse. That would've made it look like you did something you weren't supposed to be doing.
You begin to worry. Maybe he thinks you're just looking at the pictures. Maybe he saw you moving your fingers under the words. You knew you shouldn't have done that. People your age don't move their fingers under the words, they just look at a page and somehow know what it says. They don't have to start a sentence three times over because the first word is "government" and it has too many letters. He's probably laughing at you on the inside. You'd be laughing too if someone that always messed with you was too stupid to understand words.
What does "since when do you read the newspaper" even mean? You think of responding with "since when do you care?".
But what if he's not making fun of you?
No. Shove that thought out of your mind. No. He is making fun of you. People always ask questions like that when they already know the answer and want you to feel bad about it. Like when someone says, “Oh, you can do that?” and they really mean, I didn’t think you could do that.
Maybe you should just put the newspaper down. No, don't do that either. Because then he'll think he's won. He'll think you can't read it. You can read some of it.
You can read the words "since", "when", and "do". You also know "read", even though sometimes you get it mixed up with "reed". And you know "newspaper", because you’ve been practicing it all week, and you can get through the whole word without stopping now. You could even read his stupid question if it was written down.
You want to tell him that. You want to tell him every word you know how to read, just so he'll understand that you're not pretending, and that you're not holding the paper to look smart. That you're actually trying. But then he'd know you've been practicing. And if he knows you've been practicing, he'll know you're not good at it yet. So you just shrug.
“Dunno,” you say, like you don’t care. You start to fold the newspaper closed.
"Well," he says, glancing at the page, "good for you".
You stop in your tracks.
"What?"
“It's good that you're trying to learn. Most people don't bother with things that are difficult for them. It takes courage to sit down and work at something you don't know how to do yet.”
Courage? Like you're brave or something? You can't tell if he means it or if this is some new way of making fun of you. Maybe he thinks you're so pathetic that trying to read is an achievement. Maybe he's being nice because he feels sorry for you.
"You should be proud of yourself. The fact that you want to learn says a lot about you,” he continues.
Says a lot about you? What does it say? That you're stupid? That you're behind everyone else? That you've finally figured out something everybody else knew from the moment they were spawned? Kuromaku smiles at you, as if he's expecting you to smile back.
"Mind your own business, Kuronerd," you snap defensively. "You're making me lose my appetite."
The smile on Kuromaku's face gives way to an annoyed frown, and he sighs and walks away. You stare at his retreating form. "You should be proud of yourself," he had said. Why would he say that if he thought you were stupid? Maybe he's trying to make you feel better because he thinks you're stupid, and you're so far behind that he has to congratulate you for even trying. You scarf down the rest of the cereal, fold the newspaper, and sneak off to your beloved Waruland to keep reading. Nobody will bother you in there, in your little fortress of joy and whimsy that you've created for yourself.