FIC: Todashi (oneshot, gen)
Title: Todashi
Rating: G
Word count: 1100
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Who is that boy on the train? A brief look into the life of the minorest of minor characters, and how that life was forever marked by one chance encounter.
A/N: I take a lot of liberty with this because we only see the kid for 10 seconds and he has one line. :P
TODASHI
He was always on that train. And every time, it was the same.
His nose was perpetually buried in a comic book or a borrowed novel, which he would have insisted he used only to repel the advances of talkative strangers. But the strangers on the train never spoke to him. In truth, he was as reliant on the escapist power of those stories as he was on water or air. His father disapproved. He was sixteen years old after all, and had to start thinking about his future, about finding his place in the world. But Todashi didn’t want a place in the world. Not this world. He wanted to slip into the world that he held in his hands every time he rode the train, a world filled with angels and assassins, demons and beautiful girls. A world where life was intense and vivid, full of adventure and risk and heroism--life that coursed electric through your veins. His cherished reading materials offered tantalizing glimpses of it, but even their remedy was temporary. The train would inevitably jolt as it rode over some fault in the track. The image would collapse around him, leaving him feeling as if he had been jarred from a pleasant dream into a sudden and unappreciated wakefulness. Always thrust back into the reality streaming by the windows of the train, a reality filled with the blandness of schoolwork and obligatory visits to out of town family.
Yes, he was always on that train. And every time, it was the same.
Then one day, it wasn’t.
Three Caucasian men strode into his compartment, looking well-dressed and determined. Urgency followed them like a shadow, and they did not glance once at Todashi as they unraveled a series of thin plastic tubes that protruded from a metallic briefcase. His mind raced wildly as they inserted thin needles into the arm of a sleeping man, then quietly into themselves. The device looked sleek, sophisticated--like something ripped from a particularly exhilarating screenplay. It took him awhile to place it, as his mind shuffled through memories of online message boards and heated debates on television. Dreamshare. It was real. It existed, just as the dark corners of the internet had whispered, not only in tightly controlled military training centers overseas but out in the world--feral, free, underground. The playground of spies and playboys and thieves satisfied only by the most intimate of heists.
The book laid abandoned on the seat next to him--its grimy window into the fantastic was no longer necessary. Todashi was witnessing it firsthand.
“Hey, kid.” The tall one with the longish hair spoke, slowly, seemingly uncertain if Todashi was proficient in English. “Hey kid, will you do us a favor?”
Todashi nodded slowly, and walked into their world.
He tried his best to look bored as they drifted off into their adventurous slumber. Men like these, they wouldn’t want someone on their team who let his excitement get the better of him. If his stories had taught him anything, it was that only the whiz kids with the cool demeanors were chosen.
Chosen.
The word echoed inside of him. These men, they must have chosen this train. Chosen this compartment. Had they chosen him?
He gazed at the sleeping figures. He wondered what fantastic things were happening down there, wherever they were. He imagined the very neurons of their respective brains reaching out and forming synapses with one another, axons and dendrites weaving in and out, creating the fabric of an entire universe which only they inhabited.
And when Todashi pushed the button on the .mp3 player, it was he that pulled the string that unraveled the world.
When they woke, he tried to keep quiet, but his excitement became too much to contain--
“How’d it go?” he blurted.
“Not good.” the dark haired man answered roughly as he pushed past him. They spoke amongst each other, and Todashi struggled to understand--his English was good, but the language they were speaking was the language of their trade.
“Every man for himself!”
They tossed him a roll of cash, more than he’d ever earned at one time in his life, and left.
Todashi figured they had to run. He assumed that along with the thrill of their work came great danger. They would come back for him, eventually. He knew he had been given no real reason to believe this, but he had to believe it. To have come so near to mystery and intrigue and then to shrink back into the tantrums of his younger sister and his father’s cloudy aura of disappointment--he couldn‘t. Todashi had always believed that if you just scratched the surface of the mundane world, there was a dark and beautiful layer underneath. Destiny had finally seen it fit to pull back the grinding grayness and let him take a peek, and damned if he was going to give up on it. As the train glided slowly to a stop, he wondered vaguely if they would issue him a firearm.
At first, he’d only looked for them on that same train, his heart sinking every time he stepped off the platform without seeing so much as a glint of light off of a silver briefcase. Soon he found himself loitering at the station, in shops, behind the school--anywhere he could be approached anonymously and swept wholesale into another life. He grew distant from his friends. Tension in the home intensified as the quality of his schoolwork plunged. He argued with his father, who warned him that his slipping grades were damaging his chances to secure the internship at Proclus Global. He didn’t even want to apply for the internship at Proclus. He knew next to nothing about the place, and besides--he didn’t want to be an engineer. He wanted an adventure. He wanted to observe boys sitting alone reading comic books, and smile. Little does he know, he’d think to himself, there’s a whole world out there that could put that comic book to shame. And he would be a part of that world. He would belong.
Months passed.
Eventually, the hope faded. It grew duller and duller with each passing day, until once again he was consumed by routine--school, family, sports, friends. His parents breathed a sigh of relief as his marks began to improve. He threw himself headlong into ordinary teenage pursuits, his novels once again the only window into a world that was once so tantalizingly near. The memory of that brief spark of contact would dim with age, but he could never extinguish it completely. It remained, until he grew old, locked away in his mind--thrust into a forgotten cupboard in the dustiest corner of his dreams.
Rating: G
Word count: 1100
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Who is that boy on the train? A brief look into the life of the minorest of minor characters, and how that life was forever marked by one chance encounter.
A/N: I take a lot of liberty with this because we only see the kid for 10 seconds and he has one line. :P
TODASHI
He was always on that train. And every time, it was the same.
His nose was perpetually buried in a comic book or a borrowed novel, which he would have insisted he used only to repel the advances of talkative strangers. But the strangers on the train never spoke to him. In truth, he was as reliant on the escapist power of those stories as he was on water or air. His father disapproved. He was sixteen years old after all, and had to start thinking about his future, about finding his place in the world. But Todashi didn’t want a place in the world. Not this world. He wanted to slip into the world that he held in his hands every time he rode the train, a world filled with angels and assassins, demons and beautiful girls. A world where life was intense and vivid, full of adventure and risk and heroism--life that coursed electric through your veins. His cherished reading materials offered tantalizing glimpses of it, but even their remedy was temporary. The train would inevitably jolt as it rode over some fault in the track. The image would collapse around him, leaving him feeling as if he had been jarred from a pleasant dream into a sudden and unappreciated wakefulness. Always thrust back into the reality streaming by the windows of the train, a reality filled with the blandness of schoolwork and obligatory visits to out of town family.
Yes, he was always on that train. And every time, it was the same.
Then one day, it wasn’t.
Three Caucasian men strode into his compartment, looking well-dressed and determined. Urgency followed them like a shadow, and they did not glance once at Todashi as they unraveled a series of thin plastic tubes that protruded from a metallic briefcase. His mind raced wildly as they inserted thin needles into the arm of a sleeping man, then quietly into themselves. The device looked sleek, sophisticated--like something ripped from a particularly exhilarating screenplay. It took him awhile to place it, as his mind shuffled through memories of online message boards and heated debates on television. Dreamshare. It was real. It existed, just as the dark corners of the internet had whispered, not only in tightly controlled military training centers overseas but out in the world--feral, free, underground. The playground of spies and playboys and thieves satisfied only by the most intimate of heists.
The book laid abandoned on the seat next to him--its grimy window into the fantastic was no longer necessary. Todashi was witnessing it firsthand.
“Hey, kid.” The tall one with the longish hair spoke, slowly, seemingly uncertain if Todashi was proficient in English. “Hey kid, will you do us a favor?”
Todashi nodded slowly, and walked into their world.
He tried his best to look bored as they drifted off into their adventurous slumber. Men like these, they wouldn’t want someone on their team who let his excitement get the better of him. If his stories had taught him anything, it was that only the whiz kids with the cool demeanors were chosen.
Chosen.
The word echoed inside of him. These men, they must have chosen this train. Chosen this compartment. Had they chosen him?
He gazed at the sleeping figures. He wondered what fantastic things were happening down there, wherever they were. He imagined the very neurons of their respective brains reaching out and forming synapses with one another, axons and dendrites weaving in and out, creating the fabric of an entire universe which only they inhabited.
And when Todashi pushed the button on the .mp3 player, it was he that pulled the string that unraveled the world.
When they woke, he tried to keep quiet, but his excitement became too much to contain--
“How’d it go?” he blurted.
“Not good.” the dark haired man answered roughly as he pushed past him. They spoke amongst each other, and Todashi struggled to understand--his English was good, but the language they were speaking was the language of their trade.
“Every man for himself!”
They tossed him a roll of cash, more than he’d ever earned at one time in his life, and left.
Todashi figured they had to run. He assumed that along with the thrill of their work came great danger. They would come back for him, eventually. He knew he had been given no real reason to believe this, but he had to believe it. To have come so near to mystery and intrigue and then to shrink back into the tantrums of his younger sister and his father’s cloudy aura of disappointment--he couldn‘t. Todashi had always believed that if you just scratched the surface of the mundane world, there was a dark and beautiful layer underneath. Destiny had finally seen it fit to pull back the grinding grayness and let him take a peek, and damned if he was going to give up on it. As the train glided slowly to a stop, he wondered vaguely if they would issue him a firearm.
At first, he’d only looked for them on that same train, his heart sinking every time he stepped off the platform without seeing so much as a glint of light off of a silver briefcase. Soon he found himself loitering at the station, in shops, behind the school--anywhere he could be approached anonymously and swept wholesale into another life. He grew distant from his friends. Tension in the home intensified as the quality of his schoolwork plunged. He argued with his father, who warned him that his slipping grades were damaging his chances to secure the internship at Proclus Global. He didn’t even want to apply for the internship at Proclus. He knew next to nothing about the place, and besides--he didn’t want to be an engineer. He wanted an adventure. He wanted to observe boys sitting alone reading comic books, and smile. Little does he know, he’d think to himself, there’s a whole world out there that could put that comic book to shame. And he would be a part of that world. He would belong.
Months passed.
Eventually, the hope faded. It grew duller and duller with each passing day, until once again he was consumed by routine--school, family, sports, friends. His parents breathed a sigh of relief as his marks began to improve. He threw himself headlong into ordinary teenage pursuits, his novels once again the only window into a world that was once so tantalizingly near. The memory of that brief spark of contact would dim with age, but he could never extinguish it completely. It remained, until he grew old, locked away in his mind--thrust into a forgotten cupboard in the dustiest corner of his dreams.