[fic] Ecology of the African Savanna, chapter one
Title: Ecology of the African Savanna. Chapter One: A Little Prelude
Pairing: Koyama/Shige/Ryo
Author: ezyls_girl . :DDD
Rating: PG ~ M
Warnings: Angst and perhaps probably some bad words and a little sex later on. Oh, the humanity~
Summary: Koyama wants to be a baboon. This is PART II. School!AU, and Shige-centric. 8)
Notes: I'm late because I'm really not happy with this chapter. It's turned-out petty-sounding. Ick. X____X
PART I, The X Factor: / prologue / chapter one / chapter two / chapter three / chapter four /
The terror consumed him in that moment. The utter helplessness, the complete abdication crept up to him until he couldn’t feel anything. He was at once the sky and the grass and the dirt and the little bits of paper that an angry writer had ripped out from his typewriter. He was there, and not there. There was nothing. All he could feel was complete and consummate futility.
He’s the biggest idiot in the universe.
It was a while before Koyama could look at him properly. And it took longer for words between them to morph into an understandable language. It was like going through Ancient Greek all over again, the phrases and the grammar clipping everything into odd jumbles of characters and fragments, the alpha barely covering anything and the beta obscuring it further-he’d sooner swallow arsenic if gamma, delta, and epsilon were mentioned. Honestly, he had never known how painfully slow it could be to develop a human tongue. He had read about them, of course, threw away countless summer days studying those same characters, and in his junior high years he had spent the glorious hours others used to throw around Frisbees outside in the sun under a library roof, trying to cram as much as he could into his head, hoping that it would all keep for college.
Kei-chan would laugh and call him bookish.
Koyama. Sweet, sensitive Koyama, whose smile was a refreshing glass of water, voice timid and whimsical, soft lips he’d only tasted once and never again.
The same Koyama whom he had loved and destroyed.
We all sell ourselves one day, they say.
He just wishes he hadn’t done it to Koyama. Anyone but Koyama.
For him, life was cut in thick chunks. Each of them like the heavy building bricks of a house, marked by a dent here from an injury or an odd splash of color there for a phase. The blocks are all neatly labeled, in chronological order, events that had taken place passing through with only a shell of a memoir left behind. His brain never malfunctions. Everything’s in tip-top shape, and though it might seem robotic and unnatural for the casual bystander, he thinks that it’s the only way to organize things. He’s that anal retentive.
Like the first time he meets Koyama. They were only five or six, probably, and teacher had prompted him to tutor the poor-achieving students in the prospect of extra-credit and exclusion from the little black book.
X + 1 = 2, he thinks. Or maybe it was 2 + X = 3. He couldn’t remember the first equation they had solved together quite exactly because he had been staring at Koyama the entire time like he’d been turned into a specimen of prehistoric petrified wood.
“I’m not very good at counting,” the thin boy confesses. His hands are pressed underneath his thighs and against the small school chair, and he looked guilty, like he’d just done something wrong and was about to get scolded for it.
“I’m kind-of scared.”
“Of math?” He’s a little incredulous.
“Y-yeah.” Koyama mumbled, smiling sheepishly. The imagery took over then, and the maths book lying in front of them glared back, resembling an evil lord with a heavy whip of math equations. He couldn’t help it, then, and so he laughed, stopping himself momentarily at the insensitivity he was showing.
That’s how that first startling thought reaches him. In some way, he thinks that he’ll suffer if the beautiful boy in front of him becomes upset.
But Koyama hadn’t anticipated it like that, and his eyes had widened instead at the sound of his laughter, and there seemed to be a new-found seriousness that took him, “Are you African?”
Oh, God.
He couldn’t stop the giggles for the entire period. Koyama’s words kept playing back and forth in his mind like a broken record, and each time he heard the word African he got a little giddier.
And really, it’s quite amazing. Even when they’d been just kids, the grins and happy times Koyama inspired were greater than any he’s known from home or school. Probably most of the sharpest memories that he’s gathered over the years have developed from Koyama’s silly antics, Koyama’s crazy babbling, and complete nonsense that he spouts day-in and day-out, non-stop like a radio station situated on the tomorrow-line. Is the weather different from yesterday? ‘Cause Koyama swears that he saw snowflakes at 9:00 PM. The latest concert tickets for that new girlband are being distributed for free at the teen’s center, they have to go and wait in line-and oh, is Kamenashi-kun wearing a new jacket? Another one? That’s the third one this month with a fur collar. Kame should be more considerate of animal protection laws!
Most people would’ve been more or less stoned after spending a day with Koyama. But for him, it goes through one ear and never leaves from the other side.
During junior high, he started to attend classes at the nearby university. Ecology of the African Savanna is the title of the new unit in the world environment studies class at college. He’s the youngest member in a room full of slugged-out-teenagers and sweaty-adults clearly past their prime. As the professor displays slides of malicious beasts and bloody battles of life-and-death on a power-point presentation, click-clicking the remote and droning on in a voice impossibly monotonous, he doodles in his notebook and imagines what kind of animal he’d want to be.
“If I were to be an animal in the savanna,” Koyama said later, “I want to be a baboon.”
“A baboon? You mean, like the Hamadryas savanna baboon?”
“Is that what they’re called?” Koyama asked, “I just thought they were really cute to look at.”
He smiled and shook his head.
Those were the days.
And for that, he hated Nishikido Ryo.
“This new guy, what’s his name again…?”
“Oh, you mean Nishikido Ryo-kun?” he said.
“He sounds like a nice fellow.” Koyama sounded a little cautious.
“Is he?” he smirked playfully, “Do you think he’s cute?”
He had never expected in a million years for Koyama to turn the hue of a blazing sunset.
AGH. -stabs self- The cliche-d lines! The school theme! It's all driving me a little nuts.
Pairing: Koyama/Shige/Ryo
Author: ezyls_girl . :DDD
Rating: PG ~ M
Warnings: Angst and perhaps probably some bad words and a little sex later on. Oh, the humanity~
Summary: Koyama wants to be a baboon. This is PART II. School!AU, and Shige-centric. 8)
Notes: I'm late because I'm really not happy with this chapter. It's turned-out petty-sounding. Ick. X____X
PART I, The X Factor: / prologue / chapter one / chapter two / chapter three / chapter four /
The terror consumed him in that moment. The utter helplessness, the complete abdication crept up to him until he couldn’t feel anything. He was at once the sky and the grass and the dirt and the little bits of paper that an angry writer had ripped out from his typewriter. He was there, and not there. There was nothing. All he could feel was complete and consummate futility.
He’s the biggest idiot in the universe.
It was a while before Koyama could look at him properly. And it took longer for words between them to morph into an understandable language. It was like going through Ancient Greek all over again, the phrases and the grammar clipping everything into odd jumbles of characters and fragments, the alpha barely covering anything and the beta obscuring it further-he’d sooner swallow arsenic if gamma, delta, and epsilon were mentioned. Honestly, he had never known how painfully slow it could be to develop a human tongue. He had read about them, of course, threw away countless summer days studying those same characters, and in his junior high years he had spent the glorious hours others used to throw around Frisbees outside in the sun under a library roof, trying to cram as much as he could into his head, hoping that it would all keep for college.
Kei-chan would laugh and call him bookish.
Koyama. Sweet, sensitive Koyama, whose smile was a refreshing glass of water, voice timid and whimsical, soft lips he’d only tasted once and never again.
The same Koyama whom he had loved and destroyed.
We all sell ourselves one day, they say.
He just wishes he hadn’t done it to Koyama. Anyone but Koyama.
For him, life was cut in thick chunks. Each of them like the heavy building bricks of a house, marked by a dent here from an injury or an odd splash of color there for a phase. The blocks are all neatly labeled, in chronological order, events that had taken place passing through with only a shell of a memoir left behind. His brain never malfunctions. Everything’s in tip-top shape, and though it might seem robotic and unnatural for the casual bystander, he thinks that it’s the only way to organize things. He’s that anal retentive.
Like the first time he meets Koyama. They were only five or six, probably, and teacher had prompted him to tutor the poor-achieving students in the prospect of extra-credit and exclusion from the little black book.
X + 1 = 2, he thinks. Or maybe it was 2 + X = 3. He couldn’t remember the first equation they had solved together quite exactly because he had been staring at Koyama the entire time like he’d been turned into a specimen of prehistoric petrified wood.
“I’m not very good at counting,” the thin boy confesses. His hands are pressed underneath his thighs and against the small school chair, and he looked guilty, like he’d just done something wrong and was about to get scolded for it.
“I’m kind-of scared.”
“Of math?” He’s a little incredulous.
“Y-yeah.” Koyama mumbled, smiling sheepishly. The imagery took over then, and the maths book lying in front of them glared back, resembling an evil lord with a heavy whip of math equations. He couldn’t help it, then, and so he laughed, stopping himself momentarily at the insensitivity he was showing.
That’s how that first startling thought reaches him. In some way, he thinks that he’ll suffer if the beautiful boy in front of him becomes upset.
But Koyama hadn’t anticipated it like that, and his eyes had widened instead at the sound of his laughter, and there seemed to be a new-found seriousness that took him, “Are you African?”
Oh, God.
He couldn’t stop the giggles for the entire period. Koyama’s words kept playing back and forth in his mind like a broken record, and each time he heard the word African he got a little giddier.
And really, it’s quite amazing. Even when they’d been just kids, the grins and happy times Koyama inspired were greater than any he’s known from home or school. Probably most of the sharpest memories that he’s gathered over the years have developed from Koyama’s silly antics, Koyama’s crazy babbling, and complete nonsense that he spouts day-in and day-out, non-stop like a radio station situated on the tomorrow-line. Is the weather different from yesterday? ‘Cause Koyama swears that he saw snowflakes at 9:00 PM. The latest concert tickets for that new girlband are being distributed for free at the teen’s center, they have to go and wait in line-and oh, is Kamenashi-kun wearing a new jacket? Another one? That’s the third one this month with a fur collar. Kame should be more considerate of animal protection laws!
Most people would’ve been more or less stoned after spending a day with Koyama. But for him, it goes through one ear and never leaves from the other side.
During junior high, he started to attend classes at the nearby university. Ecology of the African Savanna is the title of the new unit in the world environment studies class at college. He’s the youngest member in a room full of slugged-out-teenagers and sweaty-adults clearly past their prime. As the professor displays slides of malicious beasts and bloody battles of life-and-death on a power-point presentation, click-clicking the remote and droning on in a voice impossibly monotonous, he doodles in his notebook and imagines what kind of animal he’d want to be.
“If I were to be an animal in the savanna,” Koyama said later, “I want to be a baboon.”
“A baboon? You mean, like the Hamadryas savanna baboon?”
“Is that what they’re called?” Koyama asked, “I just thought they were really cute to look at.”
He smiled and shook his head.
Those were the days.
And for that, he hated Nishikido Ryo.
“This new guy, what’s his name again…?”
“Oh, you mean Nishikido Ryo-kun?” he said.
“He sounds like a nice fellow.” Koyama sounded a little cautious.
“Is he?” he smirked playfully, “Do you think he’s cute?”
He had never expected in a million years for Koyama to turn the hue of a blazing sunset.
AGH. -stabs self- The cliche-d lines! The school theme! It's all driving me a little nuts.