November 5, 2009 - 3:19pm — Her
Ignore the formatting; I wrote it on Notepad soooo. :T I just felt like writing and I chose Taku for my subject because the poor guy is undoubtedly the least known/appreciated of my characters. Even after this I don't think he'll be as loved as the others but that's probably my fault because it has like no plot. It's just ..crap yeah kflds. Takumi-san I love you though D> I'm sorry to have to present your actual life to everyone but it's truueeee... poor kid, no one knows this side of him. Except me. Such a deep character but I never talk about him and I'm not sure why. I feel like he's a secret. (For the record, 7 is my least favorite number, as is 17; Taku's age. XVII is it's roman numeral. You'll see~)
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Rivets cascaded across the pond's surface as his slender,
pale fingers dipped inside it. The light pressure of the
water was inevitable once he pressed his palms together to
scrub away at his skin until it was nearly pink from raw
nudity after being exposed to such frigid temperatures.
From the looks of it, he was cleansing himself to the point
of purity, but his tense face proved otherwise with taught
lips pressed into a line, coal eyes dead and alive with
concentration pinned on his task at hand. The foreign male's
ebony brows furrowed together at the sight of select,
familiar patterns of gold, orange and white flickering
towards and away from his hands as the symbolism it gave to
his swimming mind would not budge for a long while. It kept
him in a fowl sort of mood to think that, had the koi been
in the humanistic form of his friends and family, there would
still be only half that loved him as a true and a live,
talented, worthy young adult, while the other half honestly
weren't afraid to turn their backs on him in public to show
how much they believed his existence to be a nuisance and
not worth the flesh and blood he was surviving it. Although,
at this rate, he wouldn't have much flesh left to call
himself the human that he was. Some day it would hit him
that it would be best to live the rest of his routine life
in the forest as a different creature.
Once the winter's snow that had melted into his backyard
pond had enough of biting his hands to the numbness he had
been craving, he stood, shaking off the excess wetness from
his nails with quiet flicks. The rest was wiped on his shirt
before turning to cautiously follow the frosted path of stone
back to the shoji leading into his room. Just before stepping
out of his slippers, however, he turned off a few overhead
porch lanterns, trying to ignore the solemn atmosphere it
sighed when fading into the dark, complimenting the night.
It was then that he changed his footwear before sliding open
the translucent, paper door, going to bend over his koto
after breathing in the sheltered safety of his washitsu. It
would have been even more comforting had their been heat to
melt the stiffness from his fingers, but the fact that he
lived in an aged area of Kyoto, Japan, very near a renowned
geisha district meant that this house had no central heating.
He had to make do with a kotatsu in his old-fashioned abode.
Pupil-colored hair was brushed away from his beady eyes so
that his vision was allowed to open up his view of trembling
palms hovering over the strings of his instrument. The whole
reason for exiting his beloved futon just to head into the
dead of winter, dunk his hands in frigid liquid containing
the only form of life besides himself and his father--the
fish--in his home, then return after his hands were hardly
movable was to play his koto with shaking fingers in
substitution for the feeling of nerves. Practicing with hard
fingers and trembling flesh meant that, should his
music-making limbs be content and sweaty before a performance
and he grow nerves before plucking at a few strings, he would
know how to play through his body's emotions towards being in
the center of time and everyone's gaze. It was a bit
far-fetched and cruel on his body to do such a thing
regularly but it meant that his playing was continuously
flawless and sought-after.
At least when his father wasn't there to intervene as he was
now, leaning against a different entrance to his room before
he'd had a moment to improvise a single note on the
traditional instrument. "Taku-san. How are you?" he asked
forcefully in his own tongue, rubbing at his balding temples
before letting his hand continue to graze back into his
graying, black hair.
His son never lifted his gaze. Instead, he repositioned so
that he was sitting on his calves with hands folded in his
lap to show he wasn't going to play in his own parent's
presence. "I'm healthy. I've been so for a time now but you
haven't bothered to check on me for days, so you would not
know." At his toxic words, his dad stood off from the support
of his door's frame, and Taku instinctively shuttered back
while sealing his eyes shut. His mind had expected the sound
of feet strolling over to slap his cheek clean across, hard
enough for the blood to rise in his face and bruise.
He thought right. After the smack echoed for a time around
his tiny, four-walled world, he slipped his irises open to
glare away into the empty air, biting at the inside of both
cheeks before straightening as was expected to repair his
previous words. "But I respect that you cared for yourself
first, father. I'm sorry." To be sure his respect got across,
not matter how dead and even slightly sarcastic, he pushed
himself away from his heated table to bow farthest he could,
arms extended in front of him to support his lowering back.
He stopped when his forehead was just hovering above his
tiled and matted floor, ignoring his bangs folded against it.
A throat was cleared. "You are a disrespectful child for
speaking to me with such a sting. You wonder why I don't care
for you like your mother did and I laugh at that curiosity."
Taku rose to his feet only after his father let out a breath
of fury through his nose, further showing his physical anger
by leaning to take a plant in his grasp and toss it across
the room. The soil created a mournful path leading to a gift
given to him by Yulia. She was the reason for his ability
to stand without hunching over to hurl and the reason he
was doing so at all. So confidently despite not being able
to hide his internal fear for his own creator.
"I apologize for being the honor student of my fourth year
class of high school, using all of my time to study numerous
things to keep you from hating me, but I refuse to back down
after you kill my only hope." He shook his hand out from his
robe's long sleeve to firmly point at the plant. "That was a
sign of affection from the only person you allow in this home
besides myself and the girl who gave it to me damn made me
healthier than you ever would have!" At this point his voice
was just as loud as the slap had been. "She loved me more
than you ever did and will! She dug into her college funds to
drag her ass here just so she could feel my forehead and be
sure I was as ill as I'd told her I was! She paid her way
through a place she can hardly speak the language of for
weeks by my side to raise me to health and you barely knew
about it because you're never here! You may be the best in
what you do just as I am but that makes no more sense for you
to beat on me than it does for me to loathe how successful I
am." Casually, he kneeled over to place a hand on the shifted
table to lower himself back to his seat, straightening what
had been tipped. It was to avoid his father's expression, to
mask everything he wanted to let out in hopes that the odd
follow-up to his unexpected rant would drive his father out
of the house for a furious drink rather than feel the need to
physically take it out on Takumi more than he already had.
Luckily, he did just that. In a stormed march fast enough to
leave a breeze in his place even after he left.
The boy sat to himself for two counted minutes before
tapping his cheek. After a moment his tapping fingers became
wet with mute tears whilst continuing to attempt and rub
away his new visible wound. Proceeding to drop both hands
to the floor so he could crawl with declining strength over
to the spoiled, cracked, broken pot of chamomile flowers,
he reached out to it slowly after sitting against the corner
it had been strewn against to hug it to his revealed chest
exposed by a loosened robe, watering it with his eye's leaks.
Nothing was to be wasted.
As for his last string of family that regrettably was his own
father, that was beyond repair. He'd had enough symbolism
with scattering fish and broken roots to keep him strong.
But a pedal going through suicide before his blurred, dream-
esque vision by falling from its stem was the last sign he
needed before he let it all out.
How he wished he could be deaf from his own lip's crying.
Sixteen pedals followed that one.
Seventeen.
...;__; This made me tear
<3
-- Dannii <3
D: augh. your writing just
*desk* Why don't you write
Why don't you write more often.
I'LL BE THE HERO.
... AND EAT IT.
DANNII: eeee e ee. My effort
SARIE: ah don't give up on writing ._. Please. This wasn't even srs it was just because I felt like throwing up a short story hurhrrrr. But thanks~
RAKU: BECAUSE I'M LAZYYY.