Author's Note: Huh. As a bullying victim myself, this is a slightly more personal piece, but in the end, it doesn't feel very personal to me anymore, maybe I worked on it too much. Like with the KinAtsu fic last time, I'm not sure if I reached the atmosphere I wanted to have, or if Akoya is in character, so I might rewrite this too one day. Seems like I'm stuck in a writer's block or something…
THE THINGS THEY SAID.
Akoya stood in front of the student council office and took a deep breath. A look at his phone told him he was way too early for anybody else to be here yet, but there he was. It was his first day, so he didn't have a key yet and all he could do was wait for somebody else – probably the president – to show up.
He leaned against the wall opposite to the door. There was a sudden, weird uneasiness he hadn't felt in a while.
But he knew the feeling, he knew it very well.
It came from not knowing what lay ahead. The president and vice president might have been nice and welcoming the day before, but many people had shown a face like that to Akoya before they would proceed to stab his back.
It was stupid of him to think like that, Akoya was well aware of this, but he couldn't help it. Too many a time had he looked at smiling faces of his classmates, just to later realize that their friendliness had never been real to begin with. Often, so often had he turned around to hear the whispers of the people that had faked their companionship just a moment before.
That kind of people had always existed, even when he had been so small he hadn't been able to understand what it means to fake alliances. But the kids from his neighborhood, for whatever reason, always had.
During that time, Akoya had made himself familiar with many different forms of children's cruelty. Sometimes they would laugh at him. His skin was too fair, his family too rich. He had been unable to understand why having money should be a bad thing.
Sometimes, they would invite him to play. During these instances, the other kids would observe him carefully, taking note of every little mistake or peculiarity he'd show. And of course, for some reason, these things were always just the right thing to mark him as "different" or "stupid". All that money had made him too stupid to know how the world works, they had said.
But it wasn't like he would bring the money home. It was just there. He couldn't do anything about it, could he?
Sometimes, they would ignore him outright, as if he had never existed. The children had been walking past him, laughing without him. They wouldn't look at him if their ball ended up in his direction. A few of them had bumped into him from time to time, and only later Akoya had been able to understand that this had always happened on purpose.
He had never had the right to exist on the playground.
Akoya had accumulated an endless amount of ways to chase someone off.
Go away, Gero, you stink! Your family stinks! You all stink of money and vomit and stuff!
When he had been little, Akoya had been unable to understand why people likened him to vomit. Nobody had ever taught him about this word, this was not the way they spoke in his home.
But the other children had made him realize.
Every time he had turned his back on the kids to go home, he would be able to hear them whisper and giggle about him, celebrating their little triumphs.
Only when their parents had been present these children would keep quiet, sometimes invite him to play with a grudging face. The little boy they had been teasing was quick to understand that they only did so because their parents had asked them, fearing the wrath of the Gero Financial Group and its leader.
Nobody had ever actually wanted to play with him.
And then, upon returning home, there had been times when Akoya had been unable to hold in anymore. He would cry and throw himself against his mother's lap, telling here how they had called him ugly and dirty and all, but it had been hard for her to understand her little boy under all the sobbing.
Often she would sit down with him on the bed and take out a brush. With every time she'd do this, Akoya's hair became longer. He had always liked how she went through it, talking to him with this smooth, soothing voice.
It had been so relaxing and returned his world back to normal.
She had always made him look into the big mirror on the wardrobe.
Look at this, Akoya-chan, can you see? You're not ugly, my love, you're not dirty. These other kids just can't see how wonderful you are.
At some point, he had stopped going out to play.
Instead, Akoya would sit in his room and mimic his mother's motions, hair getting longer with each day.
His father hated it.
Boys shouldn't cry. Boys aren't supposed to wear long hair like that. He was giving the old and prestigious Gero family line a bad image. How should he take over his father's seat as the financial group leader and CEO like that one day?
But Akoya was sure he could do it. He had spent the time he wouldn't waste with going outside by studying on his own, even though he found it boring. His interest lay more in the long baths he would take afterwards as a reward for himself.
And besides, learning more meant making less mistakes at school that people could pick up and laugh about, so he would push through.
He had realized that not playing outside meant less sunlight, which in turn meant a paler skin. It was pretty like that.
After a while, his father had stopped bothering him too. His mother had stopped tending to his hair, he was old enough to do it on his own. He was old enough to stop crying.
Indeed, Akoya didn't want to cry anymore. It would be easier if he didn't.
And as he grew older, his parents would be around at home less and less, being busy with more corporal work than ever. The advantage to that was that they could not bother him about anything anymore, but the disadvantage was that the big house was lonely. Well, he couldn't cling to his mother's lap anymore anyway.
He was old enough to handle things on his own, they would say.
School had never been much better than free time. But still, there were times when Akoya would prefer school to his free time, because at least during class the people around him had had to concentrate on something else than him.
Well, except for sports activities, as it were. He had always been the last one his classmates would vote to their team, and that could have never been called "voting" anyway, because one team had always been forced to take the last one left behind. The fact that Akoya both hated and wasn't good at sports hadn't improved the situation at all.
By the time he had entered middle school, he had taken up the habit of sitting in the very last row in class. That way, the others could not throw things at him, like papers or breadcrumbs or whatever else they could find.
Or so he had thought. Akoya had to find out that despite all this, the other kids in his class still could do that, just not as frequently as before. Teachers would raise an eyebrow and ask for silence, but that was that.
It had always been that easy for them, but never for Akoya.
For Akoya, there had always only been this big knot in his throat and the heat in his stomach that prevented him from fighting or talking back. The words would just not come out.
Not to mention it would have been against his family's standing, causing trouble at school like that.
So he just stayed silent and let the words rain down on him. There had never been another choice.
He would hear them while walking across the corridors.
Just like back then, when they had been little children, they would whisper at first and then giggle when he'd turn around to face them. Akoya knew very well that they were pointing their fingers at him, setting up all kinds of rumors.
He was still reeking of vomit, they had said.
He should never dare sitting close to them, they had said.
His presence was making them puke, they had said.
Just get lost, Gero! Why the hell should we want somebody like you around? You're dirty, you hear? D-i-r-t-y!
He had always tried to ignore these stupid people, like his mother had told him to do. Even his father had said that.
He was a Gero, after all, and this family would never let itself getting brought down by the plotting lower classes.
It was almost normal they would act like this, his father had always reminded him of. They were commoners, they could impossibly understand what was going on in the minds of the few ones that ruled the world. They would never be able to understand at all.
Akoya had begun to firmly believe in that, but it had hardly made things better.
Trying to reason like that at school would just make things worse, as he had to find out, so maybe they were really unable to understand him.
As his hair got longer, his classmates would start picking on that as well. They had started to even bring in children from lower years.
Gero, your hair's against school rules – are you sure you're a boy? Go and get it cut, you make me wanna throw up even more like that!
After years of the same repetitions time and again, he had ceased to talk about these things at home, even when his parents were there. He was definitely old enough to handle things on his own, they would only say.
The times of sitting together in the bedroom had long passed.
Akoya had had a good feeling about high school at first – after all, everyone was older now, and even commoners should have noticed how childish and stupid this all had been. The endless whispers, nicknames, the cold betrayals and laughter, it was something the lowest of the low would do, not people lucky enough to enter the renowned all-boys Binan High.
He had been sure it would all be better.
Unfortunately, it had turned out he'd been wrong even before the first school day had been over.
High school boys were even worse, Akoya had realized. The same whispers and giggles, the same nicknames. Nothing had changed at all.
The wave of insults seemed to be even bigger now, the boys being exclusively among each other meant that they threw out foul language without any shame. In middle school, there had been at least some girls sometimes that had tried to defend him, and some guys that had joined them or at least stopped their games to impress them.
That was all gone now. The chains of teenage chivalry had been broken.
His hair was longer than ever by now, and Akoya had decided to keep it this way, no matter what. If it netted him comments, fine.
He had come to the conclusion that being part of one of the richest and most influential families of the region might naturally invoke such reactions in other people. They were jealous – of his wealth or looks or grades or whatever else, he had stopped caring. They could talk all day long, but in the end, it would get them nowhere. At the end of the day, he was the one who didn't have to walk back home on foot if he didn't want to, he was the one who could afford everything he ever wanted.
If they thought he was a helpless elitist, then give them what they expected, Akoya decided. He wasn't interested in taking up any kind of relationship with any of them, after all.
Too much had happened and he was more comfortable on his own, he would say to himself.
But all that couldn't change the fact that he was still alone during lunch breaks, that still nobody would want to team up with him. The knot in his throat, which would appear each time he heard people's laughter about him, was smaller now, but still there.
Growing older meant everyone's jokes at his name's expense had gotten a little more creative, but that could not make them less painful.
He was so sick of hearing them all.
He was still sitting in one of the last rows in class, a habit he just could not get rid of. The first few weeks had shown him that apparently, high school boy did not throw things at him anymore, at least during classes. The time without teachers was another thing.
Sitting back there meant he was sitting with the strange, creepy people, the nerds and everyone else Akoya would see on TV and automatically despise. There was this guy who had high grades, but constantly talked to himself and he found him really grating. He had quickly decided he did not want to sit back there anymore, but there was no chance anymore.
By the end of the first day of high school, he had already been regarded as a weirdo, and no matter what he did, it wouldn't change.
It was all like in middle school. Nothing had changed at all.
Akoya's father had wanted him to join the student council.
The boy himself had never been interested in joining any club, period. It would be too much work, too many other people he didn't want to be around with, but his parents did not listen.
The student council offered the best position in school and the best way of training all the skills that were needed for him to take over the financial group one day.
Akoya had begun considering it and actually managed to find advantages.
If he joined the student council, he thought, he would be at the social top of Binan High. Being up there meant that there was no one who could look down on him, no one could joke at him and get away with it.
If he joined the student council, he was the one who could look down onto the others for what they were and get away with it. Maybe he would be able to establish rules that stopped all these stupid ploys against him. Maybe he could change something.
And even if that didn't work, he would still have ways to make them shut up temporally. He would have a place to retreat to, to relax.
So now he was here, waiting for the other two to arrive. They had been surprisingly nice the day before, but who knew. The president had made it clear that he had known about him and probably his reputation before.
What if they had decided that they didn't want someone who other students laughed at as their new member, another representative?
What if they just wanted to boost their finances and reputation through him and his family, like so many others before? No, that was stupid. Akoya knew both the president and vice president came from quite prestigious bloodlines themselves.
But what if there was some sort of rivalry between their families he didn't know of, which might change their views on him?
What if they had had the same opinion about him as anybody else from the start?
Gero-kun, we don't need somebody like you, you're lowering our reputation.
Leave now.
Akoya sighed and bumped the back of his head against the wall slightly. He shouldn't think like that. It wouldn't be fair; he was doing the same things all these idiots had always done.
But he was better than that. He wouldn't jump to assumptions so easily.
No matter how hard he tried, he always ended up doing that. It might not be so bad if it was about these commoners that would tend to show how low down they were, they deserved that.
But these two from the student council were of his class, his standing. They didn't deserve that.
As the boy heard steps coming down the hallway, he immediately jumped up, as in this remote corner of the school they could only mean one thing. He managed to rearrange his hair before they could see him close.
The president and his comrade and vice president arrived, looking quite astonished. It seemed genuine to Akoya.
"You're pretty early, Gero-kun", president Kusatsu remarked.
Akoya had asked them to drop his surname the day before, but they had either not listened or weren't that far yet. Or maybe it was a sign that they would not let him join after all.
The silver-haired president opened the door to the student council room in silence. Then, he finally turned around and faced Akoya again.
"Well, I like that. It seems you have exactly the kind of discipline we need to make this school a better place." He smiled, only shortly, and entered the room, heading straight towards his place behind the desk.
His acquaintance, Arima, followed while talking away as nonchalantly as he had the day before. He was one of those people that always seemed to smile, but in contrast to many other people Akoya had met, he did not feel weird about that fact. This person's gestures and expressions all seemed very natural.
"Sorry we don't have a new uniform for you yet, we wanted to see if you were actually coming. Most people that tried to join us would withdraw after a day or two for some reason."
The president frowned again as he went through a pile of papers on his desk and Akoya could not quite tell if it was because of Arima's comment or if he was looking for something specific. He just kept standing in the doorframe, observing the situation carefully.
If he made a mistake now, it could well all be over already.
Finally, president Kusatsu produced a single sheet he held out.
"You still need to sign this to become an official member."
Silence followed.
"What's it?", the vice president laughed, "Come in, we don't bite."
The president leaned onto the table some more, green eyes piercing into Akoya's.
"Or did you change your mind already?"
Akoya swallowed. These two seemed like complicated people to be around with, but from what he could see so far, their reactions were all real, with nothing hidden behind them. Years over years of false faces and backstabbing had taught him how to read people's intentions, if he wanted it or not.
But if they were as true as they appeared to be, then there was no reason for Akoya to hold back either.
"No, not at all!"
He bowed shortly, then took a step into the room, one after the other towards the president's desk.
"Welcome to Binan High School's student council, Akoya."
FIN