PoT: school allergy
Okay, yeah, this fic was not supposed to be angst. It was supposed to be a way for me to convince people that Fuji is nice. Deep down. Way deep down.
SO WHY IS IT ANGST? >:O
Cathy, I hope you're happy, because I feel absolutely awful for Yuuta right now and want to apologize to him a hundred times over for making him go through what I did. *cries/bakes him cookies*
Title and inspiration credited to this post.
School Allergy: absentee lists only show what's not accounted for
Teachers, on principle, do not like Fuji. He knows too much, doesn't say enough, and is polite to the point of being rude. They all get a student like that, every few years, one who they'll know will either make it big or break trying, but there's something a little more off about Fuji that makes teachers just a touch more uncomfortable than they know they should be.
The worst is fourth year grade school, because that's the year Fuji stops listening in class. Somewhere between spring and summer, he realizes he knows everything already, and what he doesn't know, he can pick up by skimming the text before class. He takes to the habit of staring outside during lessons, eyes occasionally drifting back to the classroom to settle lazily on the board and then slowly drift back again.
There's a game he plays with himself: he picks an object, and without stopping to think, lets his brain connect it with the first thing that comes to mind and keeps going until he loses focus. The first time, he starts with tree and, making sure to stay in a line, goes in the order thin tall sky cloud rain umbrella Tuesdays strawberries Yumiko cake kitchen, each image flashing briefly in front of his eyes before disappearing again. He ends on an image of wasabi, brain feeling deliciously worn out.
After Fuji looks at the clock, he's faintly disgusted to realize he didn't even last ten seconds until he reached a mental block. Within the next two weeks, he manages to push his limit up to almost a minute before collapsing, and afterwards, he spends about fifteen to twenty minute backtracking the images, trying to figure out which object led to what.
The trouble starts in early fall, when Fuji has reasonable control over his mind, his limit nearing a minute and a half. It's a particularly slow day, and he doesn't even bother keeping his eyes forward. A few hours into class, the teacher finally breaks down and calls, sharply, "Fuji."
Fuji's mind is in the transition between marble and statue when he hears his name, and his eyes automatically flick toward the clock. 1:34. He clenches his fist under his desk. He could've broken into a new record if it hadn't been for the interruption. "Yes, sensei?"
"You're not paying attention."
Fuji can feel everyone in the class staring at him, and he knows there's a slow burn beginning to form around the base of his neck, and before it can spread any further, he says steadily, "I'm sorry, sensei."
"If you're so confident about your Japanese skills, why don't you come up here and teach instead?" The teacher's voice is hard, his words clipped and brittle, and Fuji sees the resentment in his eyes, can feel it in the way he's standing, how he's holding the chalk, one hand poised at the blackboard, handwriting neat and ordered in its consistency.
Fuji takes a quick look at his book. Sentence structure. Easy enough. He can do sentence structure. No problem.
He stands up, and before the rest of the class or the teacher can process what's exactly going on, he's bowing and saying quietly, "Thank you for this opportunity," and he picks up a piece of chalk and begins to explain the different kind of verbs and where to use them. The teacher still can't quite believe his fourth year student is actually teaching a lesson, and the rest of class isn't sure at all what's happening, but no one is objecting, and Fuji is speaking in a soft voice, clear and self-assured, and this goes on until the lunch bell rings.
Fuji purposefully lingers after class so that he's the only person left in the room after everyone leaves, and as he's passing the teacher's desk, he pauses, book bag slung over one shoulder. "You know, sensei, it might be best for you to choose someone else to teach tomorrow. You wouldn't want people to think you favored certain students." He bows again, and this time, when he raises his head, he's smiling.
***
Call it fate, call it luck, call it nothing at all, but the year next, Yuuta gets the same teacher as a fourth year too. It's not so bad at first; Fuji is a fairly common surname, and Yuuta is so different from his brother that it's hard to think they're brothers. For one, lessons aren't nearly as easy for Yuuta as they were for Fuji, and he tries, he really does, the kind of student who struggles at the right parts and asks the right questions and always misses a few problems on the test but can sort of grasp the concept enough to scrape by. Teachers have always liked Yuuta. He's normal, predictable, sincere in his mistakes.
There's only so long before the particular teacher can't take it anymore though, can't stand looking at the same curve of the chin, the same color hair, fine and light in texture, the same slender arms and wrists, the same soft voice asking for help, answering questions, talking, and all he can think about is how breakable Yuuta is.
It's a day where everyone is uncharacteristically restless, rebellious during class, refusing to participate in the activities planned, and with ten minutes to the midday break, the teacher sighs and gives up. Yuuta's leaning forward, shoulders pinched slightly, working on his homework so he won't have to do it at home, and with his head bent down like that, it's such a flashback to Fuji that the teacher can feel the muscles along his arm tightening involuntarily, and it's then that everything starts.
"Class, how about this? If Yuuta gets this question right, I'll let you all out early," he attempts in a cheerful tone, and Yuuta's head whips up, eyes confused, and before he can protest, the teacher is already asking a question he knows Yuuta won't possibly get right.
Yuuta is quicker to blush than Fuji.
He doesn't answer correctly until the fifteenth try, and by then, break is half over. He keeps his head down when someone pushes him on the way out the door, and the teacher pretends not to see.
It's all downhill from there. The other fourth years don't really know what's wrong; they only know the teacher doesn't like Yuuta, and so they try to distance themselves, because Yuuta is too normal to have a saving grace.
***
The teacher accuses Yuuta of cheating in late summer.
He and another classmate had gotten the exact same answers on a multiple-choice objective test, and the teacher gives a long speech on respecting over people's space. When Yuuta tries to tell him that he wasn't the one who copied answers, the teacher crisply asks him if he's saying the other person cheated, and Yuuta bites the tip of his tongue, face starting to flame red, and shakes his head. The teacher continues to say coldly that the only thing worse than cheating is lying, and Yuuta nods, once, slowly.
No one mentions that Yuuta is the one who sits in front, making it impossible for him to look at anyone else's paper.
He gets beat up later that day, by the same classmate and his friends.
Yuuta can feel his lower lip ripping, blood pulsing upwards in his mouth, sharpness across his stomach, and he vaguely registers that someone is holding his left arm behind his back, pressing it painfully against his spine, and he's fighting for breath, the oxygen not quite making it in and out between his lips. Someone also has a hand clamped tightly over his mouth to make sure he doesn't scream, and there's tears running down his face now, caking over his skin, and Yuuta doesn't know where his limbs are anymore because they've gone numb under all the weight. He tries telling them to stop, but the words aren't coming out, and everything's dark behind his eyelids.
When he finally makes it home, his pants are torn along the bottom, there's dirt down the back of his shirt, in his hair, on his face, everywhere, and he's crying so hard that the first time he attempts to open the door, he misses the doorknob and has to lean against the wall, steadying his vision and wiping the salt from the mouth wounds. He finds Fuji in the kitchen, pouring himself a class of orange juice, and not stopping to explain, asks miserably, "Is anyone home?"
Fuji looks up, and blinking rapidly, slowly puts the juice carton down before shaking his head silently. Yuuta rubs the back of his arm across his cheek in reply, saying stubbornly, "Good," and makes his way up the stairs.
He leaves a trail of dirt from the front door to the kitchen and then to the stairway, and Fuji mechanically pulls out a broom and dustpan, sweeping the wood floor so their parents won't get suspicious later when they come home. He drags a chair from the kitchen to the hall closet after that and, positioning it in front, pulls the first aid kit from the top self. By the time he reaches the top of the stairs, Yuuta has his shirt off and the hot water running, and Fuji sets the kit on the bathroom counter before taking out bandages and alcohol swabs. "This will sting a little," he warns, peeling the thin cotton pieces from its packaging.
"I don't care," Yuuta tells him flatly.
Fuji nods absentmindedly, and despite what Yuuta says, he still winces when the alcohol first touches the raw blood. It takes a while, bandaging everything and getting the red off his skin, but in the end, Fuji's relieved to discover that the only major injuries are two cuts on his back, which can easily be hidden under clothing, one on his forehead, and a large gash across Yuuta's left leg that should heal within a few weeks. There are still minor bruises and cuts along his body, but nothing that can't be excused or brushed off.
He cleans up the bathroom, gathering the bloodied tissue paper and plastic scraps into a separate trash bag, and taking the first aid kit, uniformly walks downstairs again, putting the kit on the top self again, dragging the chair back into the kitchen, and he twists the trash bag until it's a compact ball, and outside, stuffs it deep into their neighbors garbage pail.
Inside, he takes a quick sweep of the rooms to make sure nothing is out of place, and goes upstairs again, pausing outside Yuuta's closed door. He knocks hesitantly, and after hearing a muffled "Go away," walks in, because he figures that's the closest thing to a welcome he'll get in this situation.
Yuuta has his blanket wrapped around his shoulders, head ducked inside the shadows, and Fuji can tell he's crying again. "I'm not going to school anymore," he says defiantly, voice cracking over the words. "I'm not," he repeats for a good measure, and he lifts his head to look at Fuji, almost challenging him to tell him otherwise.
Fuji pushes his hands into his pockets, and still hesitant, walks over to Yuuta and sits on the edge of his bed, careful not to touch him. "There's something called tookookyohi that happens around this time every year," he begins. "It's when students drop out of school because of bullying from their classmates." He pauses again here, and waiting until Yuuta has his head outside of the covers, he finishes, "But this usually only happens starting in the junior high level. You're two years too early."
The silence stretches out between them, and Yuuta suddenly pushes Fuji off the bed and says to him quite deliberately, "I hate you." From the floor, Fuji has to raise his head to look at Yuuta, and it's more thoughtful than anything resembling hurt. He picks himself up, and adjusting his shirt briefly, walks out. With Yuuta, Fuji knows when to keep his mouth shut.
***
Yuuta isn't in his room when Fuji gets up the next morning, and at the breakfast table, Yumiko asks if Yuuta had to leave early for something, and Fuji shrugs and says he doesn't know. She starts to ask if they should tell their mom when he tips back his milk glass and tells her not to worry, and Yumiko sighs but doesn't ask again.
Fuji has math class first in the day, and they're learning about finding unknowns in fractions, which he already read about early in the year, so it isn't long before his mind shifts into his game, the numbers blurred and forgotten. He turns his head to the window and not missing a beat, breaks his pencil tip when he sees Yuuta on the playground. It's too late to stop his mind now; Yuuta is already caught in his game, except the first thing his brain thinks of is him saying I hate you the day before, over and over again, the image sticking almost excruciatingly in his head with no where else to go, and Fuji slams his hand down on his desk, hard, using the momentary pain to pull himself out of the mental loop.
The rest of the class flinches at the sudden crack, and Fuji stands up, breathing deeply. He starts walking toward the door, and the teacher, not nearly as bold as the one in the previous year, only manages out a nervous question of, "But Fuji, where are you going?" before taking a step backwards, and Fuji turns at the door, catching sight of the math problems on the board and lightly tells him, "Correcting numbers."
When Fuji finally gets outside, Yuuta is hiding in the plastic tunnel used for crawling through one portion of the slide to the other, and crouching down at the entrance, he wonders if he should tell him that these kind of tunnels give off echoes with even the smallest sound, and decides against it. Yuuta will learn it in fifth year science next year anyway.
He leans inward, hair peeking slightly through the hole, and Yuuta starts crying even more when he sees him, and Fuji reaches a hand out, smiling slightly. "Yuuta, come on. I'll walk you to class."
A/N: Cathy, damnit, before you ask, Yuuta was getting beat up, NOT ASSAULTED. >:E Not like me telling you that does anything, because you'll claim I'm in denial anyway.
Also, what do you want for your next fic? I can either write you the long angst fic where no one ends up getting what they want (and it has tenipuri het! That's right! HET!), or the boyband AU Tezuka/Oishi/Fuji fic, where... no one gets what they want either (-_-!) except for maybe Oishi, but that's only because what he wants isn't on my hit list. Pick one. I'll be losing brain cells over either of the options, and they'll both eventually get written, and they're both essentially for you, so. Doesn't matter to me.
SO WHY IS IT ANGST? >:O
Cathy, I hope you're happy, because I feel absolutely awful for Yuuta right now and want to apologize to him a hundred times over for making him go through what I did. *cries/bakes him cookies*
Title and inspiration credited to this post.
School Allergy: absentee lists only show what's not accounted for
Teachers, on principle, do not like Fuji. He knows too much, doesn't say enough, and is polite to the point of being rude. They all get a student like that, every few years, one who they'll know will either make it big or break trying, but there's something a little more off about Fuji that makes teachers just a touch more uncomfortable than they know they should be.
The worst is fourth year grade school, because that's the year Fuji stops listening in class. Somewhere between spring and summer, he realizes he knows everything already, and what he doesn't know, he can pick up by skimming the text before class. He takes to the habit of staring outside during lessons, eyes occasionally drifting back to the classroom to settle lazily on the board and then slowly drift back again.
There's a game he plays with himself: he picks an object, and without stopping to think, lets his brain connect it with the first thing that comes to mind and keeps going until he loses focus. The first time, he starts with tree and, making sure to stay in a line, goes in the order thin tall sky cloud rain umbrella Tuesdays strawberries Yumiko cake kitchen, each image flashing briefly in front of his eyes before disappearing again. He ends on an image of wasabi, brain feeling deliciously worn out.
After Fuji looks at the clock, he's faintly disgusted to realize he didn't even last ten seconds until he reached a mental block. Within the next two weeks, he manages to push his limit up to almost a minute before collapsing, and afterwards, he spends about fifteen to twenty minute backtracking the images, trying to figure out which object led to what.
The trouble starts in early fall, when Fuji has reasonable control over his mind, his limit nearing a minute and a half. It's a particularly slow day, and he doesn't even bother keeping his eyes forward. A few hours into class, the teacher finally breaks down and calls, sharply, "Fuji."
Fuji's mind is in the transition between marble and statue when he hears his name, and his eyes automatically flick toward the clock. 1:34. He clenches his fist under his desk. He could've broken into a new record if it hadn't been for the interruption. "Yes, sensei?"
"You're not paying attention."
Fuji can feel everyone in the class staring at him, and he knows there's a slow burn beginning to form around the base of his neck, and before it can spread any further, he says steadily, "I'm sorry, sensei."
"If you're so confident about your Japanese skills, why don't you come up here and teach instead?" The teacher's voice is hard, his words clipped and brittle, and Fuji sees the resentment in his eyes, can feel it in the way he's standing, how he's holding the chalk, one hand poised at the blackboard, handwriting neat and ordered in its consistency.
Fuji takes a quick look at his book. Sentence structure. Easy enough. He can do sentence structure. No problem.
He stands up, and before the rest of the class or the teacher can process what's exactly going on, he's bowing and saying quietly, "Thank you for this opportunity," and he picks up a piece of chalk and begins to explain the different kind of verbs and where to use them. The teacher still can't quite believe his fourth year student is actually teaching a lesson, and the rest of class isn't sure at all what's happening, but no one is objecting, and Fuji is speaking in a soft voice, clear and self-assured, and this goes on until the lunch bell rings.
Fuji purposefully lingers after class so that he's the only person left in the room after everyone leaves, and as he's passing the teacher's desk, he pauses, book bag slung over one shoulder. "You know, sensei, it might be best for you to choose someone else to teach tomorrow. You wouldn't want people to think you favored certain students." He bows again, and this time, when he raises his head, he's smiling.
***
Call it fate, call it luck, call it nothing at all, but the year next, Yuuta gets the same teacher as a fourth year too. It's not so bad at first; Fuji is a fairly common surname, and Yuuta is so different from his brother that it's hard to think they're brothers. For one, lessons aren't nearly as easy for Yuuta as they were for Fuji, and he tries, he really does, the kind of student who struggles at the right parts and asks the right questions and always misses a few problems on the test but can sort of grasp the concept enough to scrape by. Teachers have always liked Yuuta. He's normal, predictable, sincere in his mistakes.
There's only so long before the particular teacher can't take it anymore though, can't stand looking at the same curve of the chin, the same color hair, fine and light in texture, the same slender arms and wrists, the same soft voice asking for help, answering questions, talking, and all he can think about is how breakable Yuuta is.
It's a day where everyone is uncharacteristically restless, rebellious during class, refusing to participate in the activities planned, and with ten minutes to the midday break, the teacher sighs and gives up. Yuuta's leaning forward, shoulders pinched slightly, working on his homework so he won't have to do it at home, and with his head bent down like that, it's such a flashback to Fuji that the teacher can feel the muscles along his arm tightening involuntarily, and it's then that everything starts.
"Class, how about this? If Yuuta gets this question right, I'll let you all out early," he attempts in a cheerful tone, and Yuuta's head whips up, eyes confused, and before he can protest, the teacher is already asking a question he knows Yuuta won't possibly get right.
Yuuta is quicker to blush than Fuji.
He doesn't answer correctly until the fifteenth try, and by then, break is half over. He keeps his head down when someone pushes him on the way out the door, and the teacher pretends not to see.
It's all downhill from there. The other fourth years don't really know what's wrong; they only know the teacher doesn't like Yuuta, and so they try to distance themselves, because Yuuta is too normal to have a saving grace.
***
The teacher accuses Yuuta of cheating in late summer.
He and another classmate had gotten the exact same answers on a multiple-choice objective test, and the teacher gives a long speech on respecting over people's space. When Yuuta tries to tell him that he wasn't the one who copied answers, the teacher crisply asks him if he's saying the other person cheated, and Yuuta bites the tip of his tongue, face starting to flame red, and shakes his head. The teacher continues to say coldly that the only thing worse than cheating is lying, and Yuuta nods, once, slowly.
No one mentions that Yuuta is the one who sits in front, making it impossible for him to look at anyone else's paper.
He gets beat up later that day, by the same classmate and his friends.
Yuuta can feel his lower lip ripping, blood pulsing upwards in his mouth, sharpness across his stomach, and he vaguely registers that someone is holding his left arm behind his back, pressing it painfully against his spine, and he's fighting for breath, the oxygen not quite making it in and out between his lips. Someone also has a hand clamped tightly over his mouth to make sure he doesn't scream, and there's tears running down his face now, caking over his skin, and Yuuta doesn't know where his limbs are anymore because they've gone numb under all the weight. He tries telling them to stop, but the words aren't coming out, and everything's dark behind his eyelids.
When he finally makes it home, his pants are torn along the bottom, there's dirt down the back of his shirt, in his hair, on his face, everywhere, and he's crying so hard that the first time he attempts to open the door, he misses the doorknob and has to lean against the wall, steadying his vision and wiping the salt from the mouth wounds. He finds Fuji in the kitchen, pouring himself a class of orange juice, and not stopping to explain, asks miserably, "Is anyone home?"
Fuji looks up, and blinking rapidly, slowly puts the juice carton down before shaking his head silently. Yuuta rubs the back of his arm across his cheek in reply, saying stubbornly, "Good," and makes his way up the stairs.
He leaves a trail of dirt from the front door to the kitchen and then to the stairway, and Fuji mechanically pulls out a broom and dustpan, sweeping the wood floor so their parents won't get suspicious later when they come home. He drags a chair from the kitchen to the hall closet after that and, positioning it in front, pulls the first aid kit from the top self. By the time he reaches the top of the stairs, Yuuta has his shirt off and the hot water running, and Fuji sets the kit on the bathroom counter before taking out bandages and alcohol swabs. "This will sting a little," he warns, peeling the thin cotton pieces from its packaging.
"I don't care," Yuuta tells him flatly.
Fuji nods absentmindedly, and despite what Yuuta says, he still winces when the alcohol first touches the raw blood. It takes a while, bandaging everything and getting the red off his skin, but in the end, Fuji's relieved to discover that the only major injuries are two cuts on his back, which can easily be hidden under clothing, one on his forehead, and a large gash across Yuuta's left leg that should heal within a few weeks. There are still minor bruises and cuts along his body, but nothing that can't be excused or brushed off.
He cleans up the bathroom, gathering the bloodied tissue paper and plastic scraps into a separate trash bag, and taking the first aid kit, uniformly walks downstairs again, putting the kit on the top self again, dragging the chair back into the kitchen, and he twists the trash bag until it's a compact ball, and outside, stuffs it deep into their neighbors garbage pail.
Inside, he takes a quick sweep of the rooms to make sure nothing is out of place, and goes upstairs again, pausing outside Yuuta's closed door. He knocks hesitantly, and after hearing a muffled "Go away," walks in, because he figures that's the closest thing to a welcome he'll get in this situation.
Yuuta has his blanket wrapped around his shoulders, head ducked inside the shadows, and Fuji can tell he's crying again. "I'm not going to school anymore," he says defiantly, voice cracking over the words. "I'm not," he repeats for a good measure, and he lifts his head to look at Fuji, almost challenging him to tell him otherwise.
Fuji pushes his hands into his pockets, and still hesitant, walks over to Yuuta and sits on the edge of his bed, careful not to touch him. "There's something called tookookyohi that happens around this time every year," he begins. "It's when students drop out of school because of bullying from their classmates." He pauses again here, and waiting until Yuuta has his head outside of the covers, he finishes, "But this usually only happens starting in the junior high level. You're two years too early."
The silence stretches out between them, and Yuuta suddenly pushes Fuji off the bed and says to him quite deliberately, "I hate you." From the floor, Fuji has to raise his head to look at Yuuta, and it's more thoughtful than anything resembling hurt. He picks himself up, and adjusting his shirt briefly, walks out. With Yuuta, Fuji knows when to keep his mouth shut.
***
Yuuta isn't in his room when Fuji gets up the next morning, and at the breakfast table, Yumiko asks if Yuuta had to leave early for something, and Fuji shrugs and says he doesn't know. She starts to ask if they should tell their mom when he tips back his milk glass and tells her not to worry, and Yumiko sighs but doesn't ask again.
Fuji has math class first in the day, and they're learning about finding unknowns in fractions, which he already read about early in the year, so it isn't long before his mind shifts into his game, the numbers blurred and forgotten. He turns his head to the window and not missing a beat, breaks his pencil tip when he sees Yuuta on the playground. It's too late to stop his mind now; Yuuta is already caught in his game, except the first thing his brain thinks of is him saying I hate you the day before, over and over again, the image sticking almost excruciatingly in his head with no where else to go, and Fuji slams his hand down on his desk, hard, using the momentary pain to pull himself out of the mental loop.
The rest of the class flinches at the sudden crack, and Fuji stands up, breathing deeply. He starts walking toward the door, and the teacher, not nearly as bold as the one in the previous year, only manages out a nervous question of, "But Fuji, where are you going?" before taking a step backwards, and Fuji turns at the door, catching sight of the math problems on the board and lightly tells him, "Correcting numbers."
When Fuji finally gets outside, Yuuta is hiding in the plastic tunnel used for crawling through one portion of the slide to the other, and crouching down at the entrance, he wonders if he should tell him that these kind of tunnels give off echoes with even the smallest sound, and decides against it. Yuuta will learn it in fifth year science next year anyway.
He leans inward, hair peeking slightly through the hole, and Yuuta starts crying even more when he sees him, and Fuji reaches a hand out, smiling slightly. "Yuuta, come on. I'll walk you to class."
A/N: Cathy, damnit, before you ask, Yuuta was getting beat up, NOT ASSAULTED. >:E Not like me telling you that does anything, because you'll claim I'm in denial anyway.
Also, what do you want for your next fic? I can either write you the long angst fic where no one ends up getting what they want (and it has tenipuri het! That's right! HET!), or the boyband AU Tezuka/Oishi/Fuji fic, where... no one gets what they want either (-_-!) except for maybe Oishi, but that's only because what he wants isn't on my hit list. Pick one. I'll be losing brain cells over either of the options, and they'll both eventually get written, and they're both essentially for you, so. Doesn't matter to me.