Post by false on Aug 13, 2011 17:29:16 GMT -5
a series of oneshots dedicated to chiaki and asuka. this is kind of a dump thread for my bullshit ideas, people; don't post, pl0x.
A/N this idea has been sitting in my head ever since I wrote asuka's profile, bonus points if you catch any of the foreshadowing xoxo she thinks in overly verbose existentialism, so prepare yourselves for three paragraphs of that. if anyone reads this, idek orz
p.s. how do I dialogue
~*~*~*~*:*~*~*~**~*~**~~*~*~**~*~*~
There is something about children that leads them to always believe that only good things happen to other people, that the world was made out of candy corn and rainbows and the only people who suffered were the ones who were pure evil, malice and hatred incarnate. In most this innocence, this naivete, lasts until pre-adolescence, when reality smacks them in the face with a brick. The world that had once seemed so bright became nothing more than an amalgamation of suffering, hatred, heartache, and woe; the rose-coloured glasses that had been the catalyst for such innocence cast aside like a soiled cloth. The veils are lifted from all around them, and they’re all alone.
Books were a means of escape, a way to forget the outside world that threatened to engulf her without succumbing to petty, pyrrhic vices like alcoholism. In them she was flying in the sky, falling in love with the wrong person, solving the unsolvable, smiling at all of the people that adored her. The more she read, the more she longed to be somewhere else - anywhere else - where the world seemed brighter; more than anything Asuka longed for the paradise that was unreachable through the bars of her dystopian prison.
Save me, Furui. Rescue me, Mishima.
There was no escape from the simple truth that the world was a terrible, terrible place; idle fantasies collapsed weakly underneath the weight of reality; most of all, her parents and all of the misery that they wrought. I have to get better, and better, and better, she told herself, wincing in pain as the wind pushed pins into her black eye. Maybe then, they’ll look at me.
These thoughts swam inside Asuka’s head as she sat alone during lunch, pouring over a novel that was far above her grade’s reading level, utterly alone atop a picnic bench while her peers were off having fun. The other kids in her class ignored her, for the most part. Asuka was the smart kid, the one that was always crying for no apparent reason; she made them all look like insensitive idiots and while they lacked the balls to say anything to her face, they tended to talk shit when they thought she was out of earshot.
“She’s so weird!” said the fat kid during gym, smuggled donut mid-way down his throat. I hope you choke on it.
“Where’d she get that black eye?” said the class bimbo, whose skanky designer clothing foreshadowed a bright future as a classy, overpriced, desiccated escort. Go to hell.
Being alone wasn’t so bad. Solitude and serenity went hand in hand. Asuka had finally managed to force herself back into the book when she saw the frame of someone walk up to her, standing just a few feet away. The urge to maul the intruder mounted.
“Hey, are you alright?” said the dark-haired boy who had appeared out of nowhere, looking right through her with his ice blue eyes. Asuka looked up from her book to see that it was Chiaki, the goofy, overly nice kid that everyone avoided because he was five feet and three inches of incipient, neverending pseudo-romantic bullshit. His intelligence was average and he was terrible at sports; they’d never spoke before, but she’d seen him looking at her from across the room, wearing an unreadable expression. Unamused, her gaze shifted back to the words on the page in an attempt to forget the boy’s existence. “Asuka-chan, your face - it looks like it hurts. Have you put ice on it?”
“It’s none of your business,” she snapped, wincing at the way her damaged eye opened at the sudden outburst. “Go away, Chiaki.”
“…b-but! You really shouldn’t leave it like that! C’mon, let’s go to the nurse.” His fingers wrapped around her arm, wrenching her from her spot atop the bench in the back of the playground. Her book fell to the ground, landing on top of an anthill.
“Leave me alone!” Asuka shouted, wrenching herself free. There were tears budding in the unscathed eye; she let them fall to the ground.
Chiaki stared at her for a second, inner confusion mirrored on his face. “Asuka-chan… Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
Everything. Asuka picked up her book from the ground, dusting off the dirt and congealed ant guts. It was from the library and there was no way in hell she was going to turn it in without at least trying to dispose of the entrails. Especially me.
“Look… I’d rather not talk about it, okay?” She sighed.
“Why? I’ll listen!” Chiaki smiled eagerly, honestly. It was obvious that he meant no harm, even though he was the tallest boy in their class and everyone avoided him for no apparent reason. Maybe it was the scarf - way too big for him and in the most fluorescent yellow colour imaginable. Maybe it was the way his head was always in the clouds, the way he was always reading this bizzare, badly translated picture book of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Even now, that tattered little book was held lightly in his left hand. Why the hell is it so special to him? It had been printed on cheap cardstock and mass-manufactured by third world children; the three-dollar pricetag on the back, still in pristine condition, belied its material worth.
“Yeah, right.”
“Really, I will! C’mon, Asuka-chan. It’s bad to be sad alone, y’know?”
“I’m not sad.”
“…then why are you crying?”
His fingers brushed away some of her tears, his touch far too gentle to belong to a boy in the sixth grade. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’ll never get better if you keep it inside.” Chiaki sighed, shook his head.
“Oh, yeah?” Asuka’s eyes shot daggers at the other boy; how dare he push an issue that was hard to even think about, let alone say? “And what will you do to help me? Stop my dad from doing this?” She pointed to her damaged eye, still crying out of the other.
Chiaki recoiled, shocked. “W-why would your dad do that?”
“I… I don’t know.” Her voice was wavering; she was on the verge of a complete breakdown. “Now go away! Please!”
He stood there for a moment before letting his book fall to the ground. “No.” A blink of her eye and his arms were around her, and she was breathing in the scent of a twelve year old boy boy who liked romance novels and always, always smelled like he’d walked straight out of a bakery. The tears fell further, each drop heavier than the last; she was bathing the front of his t-shirt in saline and badly applied value mascara, but it hardly mattered, he had hugged her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Words wouldn’t come to her, and it felt like the world had stopped completely. What was even happening? Why was he doing this? Every time she made an attempt to say something it caught in her throat, becoming a mournful, immovable lump. So she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, and sobbed some more. He was warm and so very kind. There was nothing wrong with this picture, was there?
“W-why… why are you being so nice to me?” Tear ducts a desert, Asuka slipped out from between his arms, wiping her good eye with the back of her sleeve.
“Because! That’s what people should do.” Chiaki’s smile was so bright that her heart felt as though it was going to burst. “I don’t know why people are mean to you, you’re so smart and pretty!” He grabbed his prized book off of the ground and pointed to the heroine on the cover. “You could be a movie star, just like her! Or a scientist! Or both!”
“I… What?” Asuka blinked slowly. What was he talking about? She could still hear her mom’s voice slurring earlier that morning - You’re worthless, and we’d be so better off if you just dropped dead. Be fucking grateful for once, you little bitch - a sentence often repeated, though it was pointless in that such horrible remarks were scarring and unforgettable in almost every way. Her mother was hardly ever around but her presence was everywhere: in her peers’ dirty looks, their ‘accidental’ pushes and pulls, the howling wind. The HCl and hot air filling her stomach churned.
“I think people are mean to you because they’re jealous.” Chiaki was still smiling, eyes brimming with enthusiasm. He hadn’t quite seemed to pick up on just how miserable she was; or maybe he had and this was his way of trying to make her feel better.
“Jealous? Of what?”
“Duh! You’re pretty and smart! The teachers always say such nice things about how smart you are~” By now he was beaming - she’d never encountered so much positive energy concentrated in one place before. It was refreshing, if a little unnerving.
“Um… I don’t think they do.” Asuka sighed, bending the upper right hand corner of the page into a dog ear to keep her place. Her stomach growled again, this time much louder. She wished that the hunger would just go away.
“Hey, are you hungry?” Chiaki asked, changing the subject so fast that it took a second for what he was implying to fully register. “I had a snack, and it was pretty big… But I’ve got this big box lunch I made and your belly keeps rumbling and I was wondering if maybe you forgot your lunch today? Because if you did, you can have it!”
Again, it took time, precious time, for Chiaki’s suggestions to ring true in her ears. Had he just offered her food? Asuka’s pride told her to say no, but the promise of being full of something other than a recycled water bottle full of tap water and a slice of week-old bread - her parents thought this was enough to live on - was too tantalizing to resist. “…are you sure that’s okay?” she asked, not without a hint of hesitation, voice still a little shaky in the wake of her breakdown.
“Of course! If you want, I can make you a lunch every day! Would you like that?” Chiaki took her hand, smiling so big that the corners of his mouth could have very easily fallen right off.
“If it’s no trouble… b-but why are you doing this for me?” His hand was warm, just like him. It felt wonderful, though the gesture came off as completely platonic. They were too young for it to be anything else.
“Because I want to, silly! You always look so… sad. I don’t like it.”
Speechless, Asuka let the boy drag her into the school in search of the lunch box that he planned on giving her. What the fuck was wrong with this kid? Why had he hugged her and offered her lunch when she had nothing to give in return? Asuka knew nothing of kindness, or having friends. The very idea of her experiencing either of these was inconceivable; but the pounding in her head and the overwhelming emptiness in her chest slowed with every step, every day. It wasn’t happiness, but it wasn’t anguish, either. It was numbness, apathy; and despite their negative connotation, neutrality was far better than misery. When he let go, the world would once more become an awful place, full of monsters, her parents, the things that threatened to swallow her whole. Until then, though, it was all blasé, mountains and rivers and stars coalescing into various shades of gray. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an improvement.
Veins full of Chiaki’s light, Asuka accepted this temporary bliss.
A/N this idea has been sitting in my head ever since I wrote asuka's profile, bonus points if you catch any of the foreshadowing xoxo she thinks in overly verbose existentialism, so prepare yourselves for three paragraphs of that. if anyone reads this, idek orz
p.s. how do I dialogue
~*~*~*~*:*~*~*~**~*~**~~*~*~**~*~*~
I. Innocence
9.28.03
9.28.03
There is something about children that leads them to always believe that only good things happen to other people, that the world was made out of candy corn and rainbows and the only people who suffered were the ones who were pure evil, malice and hatred incarnate. In most this innocence, this naivete, lasts until pre-adolescence, when reality smacks them in the face with a brick. The world that had once seemed so bright became nothing more than an amalgamation of suffering, hatred, heartache, and woe; the rose-coloured glasses that had been the catalyst for such innocence cast aside like a soiled cloth. The veils are lifted from all around them, and they’re all alone.
Books were a means of escape, a way to forget the outside world that threatened to engulf her without succumbing to petty, pyrrhic vices like alcoholism. In them she was flying in the sky, falling in love with the wrong person, solving the unsolvable, smiling at all of the people that adored her. The more she read, the more she longed to be somewhere else - anywhere else - where the world seemed brighter; more than anything Asuka longed for the paradise that was unreachable through the bars of her dystopian prison.
Save me, Furui. Rescue me, Mishima.
There was no escape from the simple truth that the world was a terrible, terrible place; idle fantasies collapsed weakly underneath the weight of reality; most of all, her parents and all of the misery that they wrought. I have to get better, and better, and better, she told herself, wincing in pain as the wind pushed pins into her black eye. Maybe then, they’ll look at me.
These thoughts swam inside Asuka’s head as she sat alone during lunch, pouring over a novel that was far above her grade’s reading level, utterly alone atop a picnic bench while her peers were off having fun. The other kids in her class ignored her, for the most part. Asuka was the smart kid, the one that was always crying for no apparent reason; she made them all look like insensitive idiots and while they lacked the balls to say anything to her face, they tended to talk shit when they thought she was out of earshot.
“She’s so weird!” said the fat kid during gym, smuggled donut mid-way down his throat. I hope you choke on it.
“Where’d she get that black eye?” said the class bimbo, whose skanky designer clothing foreshadowed a bright future as a classy, overpriced, desiccated escort. Go to hell.
Being alone wasn’t so bad. Solitude and serenity went hand in hand. Asuka had finally managed to force herself back into the book when she saw the frame of someone walk up to her, standing just a few feet away. The urge to maul the intruder mounted.
“Hey, are you alright?” said the dark-haired boy who had appeared out of nowhere, looking right through her with his ice blue eyes. Asuka looked up from her book to see that it was Chiaki, the goofy, overly nice kid that everyone avoided because he was five feet and three inches of incipient, neverending pseudo-romantic bullshit. His intelligence was average and he was terrible at sports; they’d never spoke before, but she’d seen him looking at her from across the room, wearing an unreadable expression. Unamused, her gaze shifted back to the words on the page in an attempt to forget the boy’s existence. “Asuka-chan, your face - it looks like it hurts. Have you put ice on it?”
“It’s none of your business,” she snapped, wincing at the way her damaged eye opened at the sudden outburst. “Go away, Chiaki.”
“…b-but! You really shouldn’t leave it like that! C’mon, let’s go to the nurse.” His fingers wrapped around her arm, wrenching her from her spot atop the bench in the back of the playground. Her book fell to the ground, landing on top of an anthill.
“Leave me alone!” Asuka shouted, wrenching herself free. There were tears budding in the unscathed eye; she let them fall to the ground.
Chiaki stared at her for a second, inner confusion mirrored on his face. “Asuka-chan… Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
Everything. Asuka picked up her book from the ground, dusting off the dirt and congealed ant guts. It was from the library and there was no way in hell she was going to turn it in without at least trying to dispose of the entrails. Especially me.
“Look… I’d rather not talk about it, okay?” She sighed.
“Why? I’ll listen!” Chiaki smiled eagerly, honestly. It was obvious that he meant no harm, even though he was the tallest boy in their class and everyone avoided him for no apparent reason. Maybe it was the scarf - way too big for him and in the most fluorescent yellow colour imaginable. Maybe it was the way his head was always in the clouds, the way he was always reading this bizzare, badly translated picture book of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Even now, that tattered little book was held lightly in his left hand. Why the hell is it so special to him? It had been printed on cheap cardstock and mass-manufactured by third world children; the three-dollar pricetag on the back, still in pristine condition, belied its material worth.
“Yeah, right.”
“Really, I will! C’mon, Asuka-chan. It’s bad to be sad alone, y’know?”
“I’m not sad.”
“…then why are you crying?”
His fingers brushed away some of her tears, his touch far too gentle to belong to a boy in the sixth grade. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’ll never get better if you keep it inside.” Chiaki sighed, shook his head.
“Oh, yeah?” Asuka’s eyes shot daggers at the other boy; how dare he push an issue that was hard to even think about, let alone say? “And what will you do to help me? Stop my dad from doing this?” She pointed to her damaged eye, still crying out of the other.
Chiaki recoiled, shocked. “W-why would your dad do that?”
“I… I don’t know.” Her voice was wavering; she was on the verge of a complete breakdown. “Now go away! Please!”
He stood there for a moment before letting his book fall to the ground. “No.” A blink of her eye and his arms were around her, and she was breathing in the scent of a twelve year old boy boy who liked romance novels and always, always smelled like he’d walked straight out of a bakery. The tears fell further, each drop heavier than the last; she was bathing the front of his t-shirt in saline and badly applied value mascara, but it hardly mattered, he had hugged her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Words wouldn’t come to her, and it felt like the world had stopped completely. What was even happening? Why was he doing this? Every time she made an attempt to say something it caught in her throat, becoming a mournful, immovable lump. So she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, and sobbed some more. He was warm and so very kind. There was nothing wrong with this picture, was there?
“W-why… why are you being so nice to me?” Tear ducts a desert, Asuka slipped out from between his arms, wiping her good eye with the back of her sleeve.
“Because! That’s what people should do.” Chiaki’s smile was so bright that her heart felt as though it was going to burst. “I don’t know why people are mean to you, you’re so smart and pretty!” He grabbed his prized book off of the ground and pointed to the heroine on the cover. “You could be a movie star, just like her! Or a scientist! Or both!”
“I… What?” Asuka blinked slowly. What was he talking about? She could still hear her mom’s voice slurring earlier that morning - You’re worthless, and we’d be so better off if you just dropped dead. Be fucking grateful for once, you little bitch - a sentence often repeated, though it was pointless in that such horrible remarks were scarring and unforgettable in almost every way. Her mother was hardly ever around but her presence was everywhere: in her peers’ dirty looks, their ‘accidental’ pushes and pulls, the howling wind. The HCl and hot air filling her stomach churned.
“I think people are mean to you because they’re jealous.” Chiaki was still smiling, eyes brimming with enthusiasm. He hadn’t quite seemed to pick up on just how miserable she was; or maybe he had and this was his way of trying to make her feel better.
“Jealous? Of what?”
“Duh! You’re pretty and smart! The teachers always say such nice things about how smart you are~” By now he was beaming - she’d never encountered so much positive energy concentrated in one place before. It was refreshing, if a little unnerving.
“Um… I don’t think they do.” Asuka sighed, bending the upper right hand corner of the page into a dog ear to keep her place. Her stomach growled again, this time much louder. She wished that the hunger would just go away.
“Hey, are you hungry?” Chiaki asked, changing the subject so fast that it took a second for what he was implying to fully register. “I had a snack, and it was pretty big… But I’ve got this big box lunch I made and your belly keeps rumbling and I was wondering if maybe you forgot your lunch today? Because if you did, you can have it!”
Again, it took time, precious time, for Chiaki’s suggestions to ring true in her ears. Had he just offered her food? Asuka’s pride told her to say no, but the promise of being full of something other than a recycled water bottle full of tap water and a slice of week-old bread - her parents thought this was enough to live on - was too tantalizing to resist. “…are you sure that’s okay?” she asked, not without a hint of hesitation, voice still a little shaky in the wake of her breakdown.
“Of course! If you want, I can make you a lunch every day! Would you like that?” Chiaki took her hand, smiling so big that the corners of his mouth could have very easily fallen right off.
“If it’s no trouble… b-but why are you doing this for me?” His hand was warm, just like him. It felt wonderful, though the gesture came off as completely platonic. They were too young for it to be anything else.
“Because I want to, silly! You always look so… sad. I don’t like it.”
Speechless, Asuka let the boy drag her into the school in search of the lunch box that he planned on giving her. What the fuck was wrong with this kid? Why had he hugged her and offered her lunch when she had nothing to give in return? Asuka knew nothing of kindness, or having friends. The very idea of her experiencing either of these was inconceivable; but the pounding in her head and the overwhelming emptiness in her chest slowed with every step, every day. It wasn’t happiness, but it wasn’t anguish, either. It was numbness, apathy; and despite their negative connotation, neutrality was far better than misery. When he let go, the world would once more become an awful place, full of monsters, her parents, the things that threatened to swallow her whole. Until then, though, it was all blasé, mountains and rivers and stars coalescing into various shades of gray. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an improvement.
Veins full of Chiaki’s light, Asuka accepted this temporary bliss.
