Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Curl ❯ Chapter 17

I don't like to remember those times.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against England, their fish and chips, or their occasionally stuck-up attitude. With their accents, and pinkies in the air and their porcelain tea cups… It's not like I felt alienated or anything, no no no.

Then again, I wasn't exactly in a position to criticize… I was probably one of the richer kids in this jail - boarding school… place. Of course, I was also the most slanty-eyed, which didn't win me many points. It either meant I was a technological and mathematical genius, or that I was just a flat out nerd. I forget what other stereotypes there were… but I'm a "jap" all the same. Poor me, and my lack of rice and kelp in my new diet. Of course that joke, after the thirty-fifth time, was still giving me shits and giggles. Or about the patronizing manner several classmates offered, in all of their kindness, to teach me, the foreign barbaric atomic victim, how to use a knife and fork. Do any of these people know what century we're in?

It's like I live on an island inside of an island. And on that island in the island, I live in a small tiny box, with steel bars, crowded by rabid and obnoxious parakeets that can't shut up due to diarrhea of the mouth. And to think, this is an improvement.

I'm glad I got away from it. From him… and *by* him, no less. The devil and the saint, my father is. I can't think of him as a man any longer, as he is only the shell of one. As I will be in several years. Like father, like son, I suppose.

As soon as the plane touched the ground, I knew I was in for something I just wasn't ready for. I knew English, but I hadn't used it enough to be very great at it… and that's all I needed, to make an utter and total fool of myself. Not to mention, my voice hadn't stopped cracking yet. Call it anti-social, but if they want me to talk, they'll have to beat it out of me just like my dear old papa.

*-*-*-*

So now I'm stuck with this… counselor. Apparently, because of my record, they want to "work out my issues." It's like they want to rehabilitate me instead of educate. This is a sick place indeed. The walls always smell of pine wood cleaner, and the windows always sparkle… it's like living in a museum.

I suppose my classmates aren't so bad… not that I intentionally got to know any of them. They were the same as before… just mindless idiots who didn't know what pain was. If they crossed my path, they'll sure as hell find out, that's for sure.

It's been two months since I first arrived, and every single day I'm stuck going to see this… woman. I'm not a big fan of her species, I can tell you, and I doubt if I'll ever be. She's nice, for one of them. Mrs. Sanjou. They assigned her to me because she was also from Japan, and they thought I'd feel more at home speaking to "my own kind." Thank you, welcome wagon.

The way she looks at me… it makes me feel… weird. I know I'm fifteen, and going through "changes" and all that over trumped jazz, but this cannot be normal. It isn't the warm tingly feeling in my loins when I see something I shouldn't… Or the shiver that courses in my blood and runs down my spine urging me to quench some primal thirst. No. It's just a shudder. It is a cold, chilling shudder that slowly works its way from the nape of my neck, down my gullet, and into my stomach where it does a triple spin cycle, with rinse.

I don't trust her. I tell her things, only because I feel I have to. I don't talk about home, and I pretend to miss it. She has a daughter, who she talks about all the time. Like if she told me about herself… I will eventually tell her about myself. Although she doesn't talk about her husband much, but that didn't remain all that surprising for long.

*-*-*-*

She'd asked me to come over to her house. That may be unusual in western cultures, but in Japan… teachers were second only to parents. Just a spill off the old ways, I guess. So I really thought nothing of it. I mean… she was married after all, and though that had apparently meant little to *my* mother, I thought maybe. Just maybe, it meant something to her.

She told me her daughter needed tutoring. It would seem she neglected to mention that, in fact, her daughter was five. What five-year-old needs tutoring? I should've known. I just should've known.

I didn't struggle, I didn't do anything. I let my hormones along with her hands do the work. Let her grope me, and touch me. Touch me so that I would touch her. She showed me things, many things. How to please, how to touch, and of course, first and foremost, she taught me how to lie. Somehow I would manage looking her husband straight in the eye, as he would smile and shake my hand, which would later be on and in his wife. Somehow I would manage not to purge when their little daughter ran up to my leg and hugged me, and called me her big brother. This, of course, would be the same big brother who lay beneath her mother day after day, as she had her way.

I hadn't felt much for the longest time, other than anger, so things like remorse… guilt… all of these things eluded me. None of it seemed to matter now. I hadn't left Japan with much innocence to begin with, so what difference would it make now?

Like mother, like son, I suppose.

*-*-*-*

I would come over a lot after that. I even met her husband on some occasions, when I was allegedly baby-sitting. "What a nice young man," he would say to me, and pat me on the head. I suppose I should've felt shame, but all I thought of what a piteous excuse for a man can't see what his own wife is doing behind his back.

I suppose not all men can be smart like my father. Hah.

He would leave, and Tsubame would be at her friend's house down the street, leaving me alone with her mother. My counselor. What better way to comfort me than with her own bosom? So, I allowed her to grope me with those desperate hands. She could hold me like a son, and use me like a sin… as long as she did the first. I swore her fingers knew every inch of me by that time. I would moan, groan, and grunt in a mechanical fashion, which didn't seem to make any difference to her. The parts she needed were parts I had, and I couldn't care anymore.

I suppose that's why I let it happen. It was why I continued to let it happen. I couldn't remember what the warmth of a woman had felt like in so long. Pushing away my mother, I never even once let her embrace me again after she left. After she left me with him… especially not when she was bulging three feet in front of her with my bastard brother. She would look like she would cry, or like her heart was breaking, but she didn't know. She didn't know what pain was.

So she'd gotten a divorce. Big deal. She lost a husband she obviously didn't want that much to begin with. Oh yeah, she loves me. Like a fish hook loves an old boot… when it can't find its way to pierce the skin of the fish it's looking for, it just settles for tearing through water-beaten leather. That Sanosuke… HE's the boot, not me. I was first, I came first, I should be first. I lost both of my parents in one fail swoop, and he gained a happy home, with smiles and hugs and puppies and picket fences and - it makes me sick.

Dammit, I was the one who lucked out. I was the one who deserved to be loved, for I did nothing to deserve to be punished like this. What did I ever do? I suppose my only crime, as with many children, was sheer ignorance. Inherent vulnerability to those who are higher up in the gene pool always seem to pull rank.

And here this woman, offering all the warmth she had. Or taking mine, I wasn't quite sure then. I fooled myself into thinking I loved her… that I was living in some dream, some stupid chick flick that had no substance and yet still managed to hold the audience because of sheer predictability. I knew how this was going to end, but I fooled myself.

Why can't I have a dream? Why can't I live a dream? Why can't I seek a new life and have goals and hopes of my own? Why should only my mother… the infidel, why should she get all the glory? What did she do?

She did what this woman was doing to me now.

It just… it makes no difference now. As long as I'm here, I can keep pretending. Japan is a couple of specks on the other side of the world, and my parents are dead. They're dead to me, dead to this world that I created.

I don't miss them. I don't miss home. I just tell her that so she thinks I need her to do this, and to be here. Hah.

She knows my alleged weaknesses because I let her. Because I grant her such permissions. Because I *let* her exploit me, and my youth. She finds me the fool, that I am not wise to this game she plays. She thinks I don't hear the rumors that tickle the hallways about the others… just like me, however daft to her true devices. For her, it is about her… for her, with her, to her.

For me, it is about nothing, means nothing, and so I feel nothing.

Women.