A Photographic Ending
AN: Augh. I do dislike writing. But I'm glad I'm doing this. Ever since the idea festered into my head, I couldn't let it go. Satoshi is just one if not the ichiban of my favorite characters, and I love.. not only discussing him (I've ranted about him in exam essays), but just.. meddling with him. What he would do, how would he react.
The writing style may be inconsistant varying among the chapters (there are to be three or four), but I'll polish up older ones as I go.
And for the record, Yes. I do hate Daisuke, very much. But this is not about that - it's about Satoshi. And how his mind really works.
© Hibiki Sakura, I do not own DN Angel, don't sue me.
Tech. Notes:
Autistic Savant Syndrome - affect only 10 percent of those with autism; a person with autism who has a special skill. For example, a person with autism could have an exceptional memory for numbers.
Kyoritsu Chemical University, Shibakoen 1-5-30, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-8512, Japan.
Takeuchi Naoko, b 1967, creator of Sailor Moon.
Opening Lines - Party Monster, James St. James
Chapter 1
"Canst thou not minister to a mind disea'd;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"
-Macbeth
I've heard that there are people who have too much space between their ears, and given the time, do nothing but freefall forever inside their heads. That it's an endless yawning stretch of interior of nothing upon nothing, adding yet another metaphor to the list of how we, as humans, interest the mind. It says a lot about your personality, how you act and think and even what you do. It's endless and easy to get lost in, or a fertile nothingness to spontaneously create beautiful arts. Or a library, with book upon book of knowledge. Mine is much like the latter, but there is never the dust of forgetfulness, or the ease of regressive thought. Just memory after memory; Ninety-seven percent of every sense and sensation ever to take place around or within me.
I'm what medical professors so affectionately call a 'savant'. A much less condescending term than those of a person with the mental handicap of autism, which is what I really have. A savant is merely someone with autism who has managed to develop enough social skills to blend in with society, to function almost normally among his peers.
In my case, it's merely under the guise of an attitude. When I was younger, I was considered shy. I was a preteen in college - they expected nothing more of me. I grew up faster than boys of my age because I felt I had to do so in order to keep the uglier side of this mental handicap a secret. It's not like I had much to fear; no one ever saw it, and no one really ever looked. I was sold on being a child genius to my adoptive father, encouraged into a family bond with him because he had the resources to lend so that I could achieve the most in life, or at least the most he saw for me. I was his best work: a child without a wife that he would have to lavish and care for and deal with nagging about how she never sees him, how he never has time for her. I was a quiet boy who never argued, had the best of manners, never cried or got into trouble. He would parade me about banquets and other posh private parties, making me hold his hand and call him 'daddy'. He would treat me with an unbound affection. It was probably cute at first, but I can tell by the skeptical looks of our audiences that he's taking it a bit too far now that I'm older.
There are times when I am obligated to voice an opinion, an opinion of a genius protégé and the fifteen year old High Commander. Occasionally it is valued above something hardly more than a parlor trick, but I rarely have a true interest in the political subjects and rumors. Yet, as always, I strengthen my vocabulary and my knowledge of such things, driven by habit.
My shy demeanor soon became more aloof as I grew up. Cold, as my father pointed out. He was the one who suggested I attend those high school years which he had been so thrilled to see me skip. He assured it would be good for my character, and in my best interest, though I honestly believe he just wanted to have the image of a child to parade around a few more years now that my maturity has gotten the better of me.
In the end, it was probably the best choice to avoid becoming stagnant in life. Personal goals do not mean much when they pass you by, as easily as they did, when you could memorize ninety-seven percent of the material you encounter. By that point in my life, all I really had was written word and mathematic facts.
It hadn't always been that way, however. In college, I lived in a dorm with a fellow freshman by the name of Yoritomo Matsuo. He was eight years my senior, born into a prosperous family related to Takeuchi Naoko, hailing from Tokyo. We kept our distance from one another at first, he assuming I was "a know-it-all brat" at the same time I myself was fearing him to be a jaded, egotistical superior. However, by second semester we began to get to know each other better. Matsuo-senpai (he encouraged a more casual suffix, but due to our age difference, I could never comfortably manage) though as awed by my photographic memory as the next person, found me, befriended me and treated me no differently than he did his own acquaintances. He was extremely outgoing and affectionate; even had no shame in calling me pet names and laughing when I would blush, but never treated me condescendingly. He even asked for my help around exam time, offering to give me as much candy as I wanted for it, and laughed when I didn't get the joke. I declined the offer and helped him anyway.
By our second year, I considered him my first childhood friend, and he was astonished at how much I opened up to him from the shy, studious boy he first met. Of course, he had other friends and spent time with them, giving me the private time that I still depended on. He occasionally introduced me to his friends, encouraging me to get out more, but I've never been too social unless the situations requires and never offered more than a friendly greeting.
The people I saw him with varied from time to time, and I really didn't pay much attention. However, halfway threw the first semester of out third year, he introduced me to a second year who had transferred from Kyoritsu Chemical University - Daisuke Maita. The boy was of a shorter, more delicate stature than Matsuo, and his lineage richer. While Matsuo's eyes were a gunmetal, and his hair often a mess of brown, Daisuke had the raven hair and deep ebony eyes of a classic Japanese. His eyes especially - their depths were in-comprehendable, but so very expressionate, set perfectly surrounded by dark lashes, that I found him rather captivating in appearance. And it didn't seem strange at all - Matsuo often seemed to simply stare at him, especially during the times he insisted on making us dinner (something he tried at least once a week).
Daisuke seemed to become the center of Matsuo's world over the next few months, to the point I rarely saw him with any of his other friends. Daisuke was friendly to me from the start, and treated me much the same as Matsuo did, so I didn't mind seeing him so often in our room. He taught me how to cook as well, since Matsuo certainly lacked the skill.
Two months later, one of my classes let out early, so I headed up to the dorm believing I would have it to myself until later in that afternoon. I walked inside greetinglessly, thinking nothing of the extra pairs of shoes at the entrance but having a bit of an off feeling that I couldn't quite place. I walked down the short hallway that split Matsuo's room from mine when I caught the faintest sound coming from the cracked door to my left. In a double take, the scene was imprinted into my mind for the rest of eternity - the two of them were stripped bare but for Matsuo's socks, clinging to each other's bodies, striped with gold from the sunlit blinds, taut and slick with sweat. Daisuke's slender thighs were pulled up and wrapped high around Matsuo's waist, back arching to the point it craned his delicate throat, and Matsuo was buried to the hilt within him. I was stunned, and found myself frozen in the hall to watch them ride out wave after wave of a pleasure I was too young to even comprehend. I had become comfortable enough with my peers to feel not so out of place among them, but in that lone instant, I felt my awkward species couldn't even compare to these beautiful, knowledgeable creatures and their foreign rituals.
I never told them I knew anything. Over the next few weeks, I became sharply aware of each of their small affections and flirtatious touches and double-sided teases that I couldn't understand how I'd ever missed. More than once I would suddenly be blushing red and revert back a bit to the shy, aloof creature I had been upon arrival. Daisuke was the one who noticed first and grew slightly worried - worried enough to ask me about it after trying to include me in their together time that I felt terrible for having interrupted before. As sensitive as he was to those around him, he must have missed the blush I had the whole time those deep ebony eyes caringly studied me.
I was quickly developing an infatuation with the two of them. I began picking up on their feelings, habits and subtle shows of affection; even catching on to the strange, casual-coded comments about their relationship and their secrets. When Matsuo did sweet things, like leave Daisuke flowers, or promise to take him out on some romantic date, or say exactly what he wanted to hear, I felt happier too. When Daisuke would have been upset by a threat from his sister, the only one in his family who knew about the two of them, I felt sad and defensive too. Neither of them ever let on about their problems in front of me, but I felt I was part of their world, as alien as I was. I was happy for them, and, sometimes, happy with them.
Then, sometime over the summer break of the next school year, something just.. changed. There was a different air between them: Daisuke seemed tense when he was normally relaxed and easy-going. As hard as Matsuo tried, the other boy soon began to grow distant. He came around to our dorm less and less, and I think they even argued once, but for the sake of my presence in the room they resolved into silence before it escalated anywhere. One day I walked into the living room to see Matsuo lounged across the couch, alone, and looking positively heartbroken. My own heart leapt to my throat, fearful they had broken up, and as much as I wanted to comfort my roommate as he stared up at the ceiling, I only silently crept back to my bedroom. I heard the phone ring an hour later, and knew it was Daisuke by the tones of Matsuo's voice. Not soon after that, I found myself with a new roommate who was even more reclusive than I was, and Daisuke seemed to have left the school as well. I felt almost hurt, as if I deserved to have been told what had happened, or even that they were going to leave so suddenly. My closest guess could only have been that someone found out a little too much - toward the end, even I was a bit worried they were being too reckless in their affection - and they both had to transfer.
I graduated uneventfully, and moved on, feeling almost guilty as I gradually got over a heartbreak that wasn't even mine to feel. But the two of them changed my life, and as time went on and my prepubescent body grew up, I realized it more and more. I even thought of the two of them together again, the scene that I would remember ninety-seven percent of forever, alone in my wing of my father's house.
And you can only imagine what clicked into my endless, yawning stretch of interior when I first laid eyes on Daisuke Niwa.