Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ Break Through ❯ Break Through ( Chapter 1 )
Many thanks to Ember for her wonderful and speedy beta work.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation or any of the manga/anime mentioned within this story.
NC-17 for bad language, sexual situations and adult themes.
Break Through
Prologue:
Shuichi Shindou: For as long as he could remember, he knew he wanted to be a Rock Star. Back then it wasn't merely a dream, it was a fact. Always dancing, singing and using everything that fell into his hands as a microphone. Writing bits and pieces of verses, he would sing them in front of the mirror. He would stand in front of it for hours to perfect his "style", wearing his mother's most colorful clothes and sunglasses to look "Glam" as was the style those days. He had no friends… he didn't need them. All he needed was the music and the burning knowledge that somedayhe would be on the cover of all those magazines he so vehemently read, as though his "bible"
But as he grew, he realized that it would not be as easy as he thought. You didn't go to school to be a Rock Star. You didn't get up one day and decided to break through in the industry and it would happen the next. He realized that you needed a lot more than talent to make it. In school, whoever he told of his dreams, would either laugh or discourage him, saying things like "You will never make it" or "You need contacts to make it in the music business" and all sorts of negative comments. His teachers would call his parents more and more often to discuss Shindou-kun's "future." His grades were not good and his attention span lasted as long as a gold fish's. Nothing that didn't have to do with music mattered to him.
By age ten, the toll of his loneliness began to wear down on him. I wasn't that he didn't want friends; he did, but just couldn't find anyone to connect with. He tried to hang out with random people from school, but it was always the same. They were either too boring, or too childish, or simply had nothing to offer him.
It wasn't until he was twelve, when a new family moved next door, that he found the only other person who shared his dream.
Hiroshi Nakano: Was a rebel without a cause. He sported long locks and more often than not wore black with chains hanging all about him. He even had two piercings in his left ear. He was so cool… too cool. Shuichi would think every time he looked out his window at Hiro and his older brother as they worked on a motorcycle…. Damn, I wish I had a motorcycle, or a brother with one! Shuichi would think every single time he spied on the two siblings. Instead he was stuck with an over protective mother, an annoying younger sister and the knowledge that his dream would never come true.
To Hiro though, it was not so simple, he was lonely. If being the second son of a very conservative household was not bad enough, it was found out early in his life that he possessed a higher IQ than most, therefore a lot more was expected of him. He envied the easygoing life of his older brother; he was allowed to do as he wished, come and go at will, and since he would not be the one bringing honor to the "Nakano" name, next to nothing was expected of him.
With no friends, Hiro tried desperately to fit in, to make a normal life for himself.
By age ten he started wearing all black and buying "inappropriate" magazines… they were only music mags, but to his parents they were the devil incarnate. They tried everything to make him stop "acting up" and the more they did, the more Hiro would feel as if they didn't care for him, rather, the pride he could bring to the family name.
By age twelve he got his first piercing; his mother fainted as soon as she saw it and his father didn't speak to him for weeks. Not too long after that the family decided to move away, to leave all the bad influences behind. Hiroshi and his brother were devastated, but there was no convincing their parents otherwise. Hiro even went so far as to take out his earrings and dress conservatively, but it didn't work.
As the truck pulled up to their new home, Hiro felt that everything he'd worked so hard to achieve hadnot meant a thing. Then as he got out of the truck and spied the shy looking little boy next door, looking from an upstairs window, Hiro somehow knew that everything would be all right.
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"Goddamn… I can't believe he killed him!" Shu exclaimed as he gazed through the pages of the latest Yuki Eiri-san manga release. The man was a genius, young, rich, good looking and the owner of Japan's largest manga/anime distributing company. He was even going into the toy market right now; manufacturing the toys for his own creations. Which were - by the way - the only ones worth watching and reading at all nowadays. In short, the man was everything Shuichi wanted to be… well, except a Rock Star.
Every single Wednesday Shu would line up in his favorite manga store and with the other tens of thousands, put more money into Yuki-sama's very deep pockets. He had twelve ongoing mangas and three mayor animated series running. The man was larger than life… bigger than god.
"Who, who got killed?" A familiar voice asked and Shu bumped into someone, before he could take his eyes off the book he was reading.
"Ouch" both parties involved chanted in unison, Shuichi looked up to see none other than his neighbor, Hiroshi, standing in front of him, and rubbing his head with a pained expression on his face.
"Hey!" Hiro said after a little while, Shuichi had been just standing there, too amazed that Hiroshi Nakano would even speak to him. "You're my neighbor right?" Again Shuichi's inner self jumped in joy… Hiroshi actually knows who I am!
"Yeah," the scrawny boy answered shyly.
"I'm Hiroshi, you can call me Hiro. I see you looking out your window quite a lot, I have tried to call you down a couple of times, but you're usually gone by the time I look up" Hiro smiled warmly.
"I'm Shuichi…" he responded as shyly as before.
"I know, your sister told me."
"You know my sister!" Shu was shocked… please let it not be that she was pestering Hiro-kun…
"Yeah, she's cool. Anyways… who died?" Hiro asked pointing at the manga, changing the subject back to the original one.
"What? Oh yeah… Zabusa and Haku… wait, you read Naruto too?" Shuichi never imagined Hiro would care about such stuff.
"Hell yeah, who doesn't! I got grounded with no allowance this week, so I can't buy my own copy until who knows when. Lucky me, my super ultra, cool neighbor buys it too, ne?" Hiro smirked.
"You got grounded… why?" Shu asked, wanting to know everything about the neighbor he'd admired for the past six months.
"I tell you, parents overreact to everything. It's not like I did anything wrong you know. I was, in fact, helping someone in need." Hiro stood solemnly, with a fist on his chest, "I went to the teacher's aid office and got the answers to the math test for someone, not for me of course, I knew all the material in the test. If I may add, she really needed them."
"That's so wrong! Why would you do that? Did you say SHE… you risked your neck over a girl?" Suddenly Hiro fell from the high pedestal in Shuichi's mind, "You're a wimp!" he said disgusted
"Yeah well… she let me kop a feel." And he went right back up there.
"Wow!" Shu's eyes gleamed. "Were they big?"
"Do you think I would have done it otherwise?" Hiro put his arm around Shuichi's shoulder and shook his head, clicking his lips. "Shu, Shu, Shu… you need a lot of work, but if you stick around me, I just might be able to help you."
…And ever since that day, the two were inseparable.
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Next Stop: "Glaring Dream," please be darlings and review^^