A/N: Well, it is my pleasure to announce a new fic in the works from myself, KoshKing777. This piece is an Alternate Reality fic, often with generous helpings of Whumpage and Darkfic (there will also be potent Limes in later chapters; warnings will be issued beforehand). There are some instances of strong language as well.
The idea behind this reality is that the moment never happened where Kaede discovers Rin's postcard from her mom. Due to this having never occurred, she still isn't over Rin's hypothetical role in her mother's death; indeed, she seems to be slowly getting more violent towards Rin, frustrated that he's still alive while her mother's memory is drifting farther and farther away (read: Kaede is sanity-challenged and sociopathic). As a result of this continued violent harassment, Rin has contracted a severe bout of gynophobia (fear of women), which has rendered him much more distant from anything involving women.
I'm going to attempt (for the first time) to use the Japanese honorifics in my writing. It is likely that I will mess these up at some stage; when this occurs, feel free to point it out so that I can change it. As a matter of fact, feel free to comment on any and every thing you like or dislike about any aspect of the story at all, including where it's going. I do have a 24-step plot written out, but I'm always up for altering it based on reviewers' input.
Chapters will be moderately long, and often long in coming, since I have an unfortunately demanding life, time-wise. :(
Some characters from the visual novels will appear (most will not play huge roles besides Sakura), so if you are interested in what they look like, you shouldn't have too much trouble looking them up on Google. I can also send you image links if you'd like.
So without further posturing and posing on my part, let us begin!
Disclaimer: I don't own Shuffle!, as it happens.
Moonbite
Chapter 1
My dream self swam through a temple of fetid, thick violet water, passing between two black spiral columns to enter an enchanted, dimly-lit auditorium, filled from the roof to the floor with striped people.
I should specify: striped girls. Everything, everyone was radiating the essence of GIRLS...with Zebra stripes. I could see why Itsuki thought this would be a great secret meeting to gate-crash. My best friend was nowhere to be seen now, though.
My chest began to clench nervously as I tiptoed my way around to the back of the room. What kind of hellish place was this? The central stage, which was currently being occupied by a tiara-wearing Asa, had two large, winged ram statues that gave off a horrific vibe to me. I tried to ignore these statues, all the women, and the broad-winged raven that was circling over the crowd like a vulture, and focused on what my sempai was saying.
"Below the valedictorian precipice of ziggurats, there lies five-hundred steel baseball bats in a slaughterhouse!" the dream Asa said. I blinked – I should have known better than to draw sense from a speaker's words in a dream. Despite it being nonsense, all the women in the audience furrowed their eyebrows and slowly nodded their hands in understanding.
Asa seemed to be important in this cult, for some reason. Everyone's eyes were glued to her like little orange laser beams.
"In other words, who here has come from a home of abuse?" Asa continued. Well, that was definitely me, but I wasn't about to raise my hand if I was the only person in the room who did. Asa and I looked around for a few moments, but none of the zebra women seemed inclined to admit their abuses, if they had any. "Well, come on, I know some of you have had abuse! Raise your hand!" she looked directly at me; Asa was someone I never could say no to, so I accidentally raised my hand, totally forgetting that I wasn't supposed to be here.
Every single zebra girl in the room swiveled their heads as one to look at me with their shiny orange eyes, sending with them a chill of more dread than I'd ever experienced before.
"Rin-kun!!!" Asa exclaimed, waving at me, rather chipper for the eerie setting. "You have been abused, right? What are you going to do about it?"
I was feeling horribly queasy, and had half a mind to run out of the room, but I stayed and stared nervously back at my sempai, my skin clamming up. Would these damned people QUIT staring at me?!?
"Women are your friends, Rin-kun; in order to realize that, however, you'll need to insert yourself in their souls."
Well that was a rather complete 180 change from her previous subject. I suppose what she was saying has some merit, though...I could see myself easing into female company in order to appreciate them more...
"You need to have sex, Rin-kun! That's the best way!!!" Asa sang. I felt the blood drain from my face. That was definitely NOT going to happen. The ghastly women surrounding me, piling up on top of each other to get a better look at me with their bright orange eyes, began chanting: "Sex-sex-sex-sex-sex-sex-sex..."
"stop...p-please..." I mouthed, but my mental grip was still out to lunch.
"SEX-sex-SEX-sex-sex-sex..."
"STOP them, Sempai! Tell them to STOP!!!" I shouted hoarsely through my terror.
"SEX-SEX-SEX-SEX-SEX..."
"I'm sorry, Rin-kun, but it's time for you to give in." Exactly as Asa finished her sentence, the zebra women jumped towards me in midair, their silhouettes blotting out any light from the room. I felt their fangs and claws stab me in my mouth, my heart, and my stomach.
Black blood bubbled out and down my face, and I choked on my ripped tongue as I tried to scream.
"Rin-kun..." a miniscule, ominously familiar voice whispered in the air.
The women...the women...the damn women, circling me, cutting me, eating me! I can't take their orange, glimmering stares. I start to retch out of pure horror.
"Rin-kun, wake up!" Kaede's voice slaps me awake.
I looked up and around, thankful that I was back in my room and that everything was much more sane than it was just before. Unfortunately, Kaede was standing directly over me. I don't like to show any weakness to her, but I was just a little bit frazzled this morning, so I screamed like a little girl, sat straight up, and scootched directly backwards into the far corner of my bed.
"It's alright, Rin-kun...were you having a scary dream?" Kaede asked with abnormal sweetness. Somehow those normal words took on a malevolent, sinister air when leaving her demonically perfect, full, sensual lips.
"Um, good...I mean, yes..." I said, feeling about two inches tall. Why couldn't she leave me alone, for ONCE?!? God, what did I ever do to deserve this?
"I'm sorry about that," she said, seemingly with genuine concern. "I, um...I thought I'd cook you breakfast this morning?"
I was so surprised that I burped, but I quickly swallowed the resulting bile back down. "Y-you did?" What the SHIT? Since when did she even know how to cook? But sure enough, she was holding a plate with an aromatic omelet in front of me.
I was determined to get back in control of the situation, so I scooted back over to my pillow and took the plate from her. "Um, thanks? I appreciate it?"
She just smiled and nodded reassuringly. I was lost beyond belief, but I decided to just go ahead and go with the flow; I slashed through the egg with the fork and took a bite.
"Mmm, this is nice..." I started to say, but I soon realized that something was wrong. I chewed once more, and sticky, slimy, fetid lumps burst across my teeth. They caked onto my molars, and wouldn't unstick. Something was definitely wrong.
I could hardly believe what I was tasting, but I lifted the top flap of the omelet open and, sure enough, the omelet was filled all the way through with steaming shit. I'm not kidding; there was POOP in the fucking omelet that I just fucking took a bite out of.
I roared with rage, disgust, panic, shock, and several other prickly emotions. "KAEDE!!! WHAT THE FUCK?!? Did you take a shit in this omelet?"
I wiped the demanding look off my face as I soon as I saw her own look: her dull blue eyes had emptied out of any ties to reality, blank and disconcertingly wide. I knew from personal experience that that was a bad look.
As I promptly spat out as much of the poop-filled food as I could (it was really clingy to my teeth and tongue, I found), I noticed a quick motion on Kaede's part. Before I could do anything, however, she shoved a drawstringed knapsack over my head and choked it tight around my neck. Without warning, she started punching me with vengeful, murderous strength, and she knocked me off the bed and onto the floor.
My own nausea climbed as I collapsed facefirst on the floor and I began to vomit uncontrollably, in my own face. Despite my fallen state, my housemate continued to whale on me for a good ten more seconds, knocking my glass eye out into the goop.
I was trying not to make any noise, but I was unable to breathe at all, and I could feel warm blood dripping from the back of my skull as she kept beating it...so I began to yell out in pained panic, repeatedly.
This only seemed to excite her more, as she flipped me over and punched me five times in the face. I blacked completely out until she kicked my nuts once.
Kaede suddenly removed the knapsack, and her face seemed to have contorted into something more animal than human. "Good morning," she told me in a deep, abnormal voice and unceremoniously got up and walked off.
I lay in mental and physical exhaustion for a long time, watching in dumb fascination of the fan's blades swinging round. What is the point of anything I do? No matter how many things I do to show her I care...cooking for her, shopping, doing the laundry, giving her due space...she never treats me any different than this. I don't know how much more of this is worth living through.
Everything HURTS. I don't mean the kind of hurt that occurs when you stub your toe, fall down a flight of a stairs, or even accidentally staple your finger. That stuff is nothing. This kind of hurt rips into the very core of your being, annihilating every cell in your body with gushing anguish. It makes you want to kill yourself at the soonest available SECOND, just to find an escape. That kind of pain.
I squinted, pursed my lips, and sat up, lifelessly staring with my one eye at the blood and vomit around me. She had apparently taken to dump her omelet on my stomach, also, being that there was a warm pile of feces heaped on my belly button. This was an awesome start to a day.
My wardrobe has been slit through with scissors and knives countless times by my lovely housemate and past friend. Due to this, I have to sew one pair back together every night, and hide it under my mattress so she won't find it and cut it.
Glaring in exhaustion at the mattress, I reached under it and withdrew my school uniform. Time to get started and get as far away as possible.
Before I went to the bathroom, I quickly scooped up my blood-coated glass eye.
My name is Rin Tsuchimi. I'm a student at National Verbena Academy, one of the first schools to welcome the integration of human, god, and demon students. I find myself to be pretty kind in general (look where that's gotten me), but I sometimes wish I was more like Itsuki.
Said best friend was walking next to me on our way to school, musing out loud: "You know...I'm beginning to think...that the women of our school are FANTASTIC! Do you know how many D-cups go here?" Scratch that.
"N-"
"SIXTY-SEVEN! How genetically superior are we, anyway? Our school is so freaking..."
"Itsuki, I don't remember anyone giving you permission to say words." My other best friend Mayumi-chan walked between us, currently glowering at Itsuki, not without due cause. Compared to him, Mayumi is a shining lamp of brilliance.
"Sacré bleu! It's the girl so estrogen-challenged she makes washboards look curvaceous!" Itsuki said tastelessly in reference to Mayumi. While true, her lack of femininity in general is what makes her one of the few females I'm not scared out of my skin to be around. I'd never admit that to her in so many words, though.
"I don't even know what sacré bleu means, anyway, isn't that mind-boggling?" he continued, still under the impression that he was halfway intelligent.
"Not really," Mayumi and I said in unison.
"...I believe it means 'Sacred Blue,' Itsuki-kun," Matsuri said from my other side. She's an incredibly quiet, withdrawn and polite girl, and the fourth member in our little band of quasi-friendship. Weirdly, though, she dresses and acts exactly like a guy at every moment of the day. Which I'm fine with, being that I can't stand women. Not that I hate them (far from it, I can appreciate beauty as easily as Itsuki), but being in close proximity with women can cause me sharp pain, nausea, panic, spontaneous urination, fainting, and other unattractive reactions. So in turn, I try my best to imagine women I'm often around as being men, which can save me lots of bodily difficulties. This is easiest with the hyper-masculine Matsuri and Mayumi.
"Tch, well that's stupid," Itsuki snorted. He looked up and down the street for cute girls, and having no luck, turned his misguided sights onto Mayumi.
"Hey, you know, Mayumi-chan, those are some really cute pipe socks you have on today!"
"By the way, Itsuki-kun, I've picked out a really cute gravestone for you. Do you want me to introduce you to it?"
It's not that I sought out these two girl friends (note the space between those two words) of mine for their masculinity, it just sort of happened to me. We kind of fell together, the four of us, as the unwanted stepchildren of the school. That was totally cool with me; I absolutely despise anyone noticing me.
"Yo Rin-kun! What the crap are you doing, wearing make-up?" Itsuki demanded of me. I should explain: I've recently taken to applying make-up on the numerous skin miscolorings Kaede has been supplying to me ever since her dad went on his thirteen-month-long business trip. I hope it will keep people's focus off her and I's personal problem since, frankly, it's no one's business but ours.
"Oh, Rin-kun, is that true?" Matsuri put in airily, running a hand through her short, vanilla-brown hair and looking shakily into my eyes. I tried to smile, but it didn't even come close to reaching my eyes; my whole face was still sore like hell.
"That's not really a good idea, man...girls will see that as a sign of weakness! Besides Matsuri, that is!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" she rumbled at him with a glare.
"I don't think you should be talking, Itsuki-kun, seeing as you have all the strength of character of a cactus," Mayumi rubbed in, casting a sweet smile at me as she did.
"Look, it's not me, okay? Rin-kun's actually the highest candidate on this year's Top Ten Most Likely To Be A Closet Homosexual. All I'm saying is, putting on foundation isn't going to win him any hetero points."
"I appreciate the concern, but it's not a big deal, really," I said with a sigh. So much for camaraderie.
The four of us ended up arriving at school fashionably late, as usual. Asa, my closest friend from the next-highest grade, jumped out of conversation with her friends (including Kaede, who was smiling, giggling, and laughing in her fake peppy-schoolgirl mode) and sang out a really loud greeting to me, waving obnoxiously. I looked coolly over at her and made a little wave in response, following Itsuki over to our conjoining lockers.
"So. Rin-kun. I have something I've been meaning to ask you," the gold-haired pervert said.
"...I'm listening," I muttered, peevishly retrieving my things from the too-small box.
"How big are Kaede's areolae, anyway? I mean, I assume you've seen them, being that you live with her and everything."
I stared at him emotionlessly. "I'm don't know what areolae are, and I suspect I wouldn't want to."
Itsuki's left eye looked like it was about to explode from twitching.
"Hey! Stop ruining Rin-kun's purity!" Matsuri interjected, walking between us in her boy's uniform. "Why would such a thing matter, anyway?"
"Ohh, it matters. It matters alright..." Itsuki's eyes glazed over.
"Anyway," she breathed, spinning to face me. " I'll see you at lunch, okay?"
"Sure. Have a good day," I said glumly.
As she turned and walked away, Itsuki pulled up next to me (way too close for comfort). "Damn, she digs you, man. You know, I WOULD recommend that you take her out and bang her, but uh...I reckon that would give you even more homosexual points."
"I don't think she's interested, Itsuki, trust me," I returned dryly. As a useful (in a way) side effect to my fear of women, I've also become weirdly sensitive to their pheromones. As girls around me get more turned on and interested in physical contact, as a self-defense mechanism I've started to smell a very pronounced differentiation in the air around them when this occurs (that way, I'll be ready to make a run for it if they choose to strike; I sometimes have this problem with Asa-sempai and Kareha-sempai). While I have sensed augmented sexual feelings before in Matsuri and Mayumi (something I generally try to avoid as to not trespass upon their personal feelings), I'm almost positive they weren't directed at me.
One of the only girls I know whose pheromones I haven't smelled is Kaede...I'm not sure if this is reflective of our convoluted history together, or because she's legitimately never turned on when I'm around. Or both.
Regardless, I'm glad for women everywhere that Itsuki doesn't have this ability.
In class, just after lunch, Nadeshiko-sensei was in the middle of one of her impenetrable history lectures when I felt a sharp jab from the side. I turned and glared at Itsuki, the deliverer of the jab.
He leaned over and whispered very softly, "I want cream soda!"
"...that's nice."
"I want it really, REALLY bad! Cream sodaa!" he said in a harsher whisper.
"Fine, I give you permission after school to go buy some cream soda."
"YEUS! Score," Itsuki grunted in excess exhilaration.
"Tsucchi," a stern voice elicited from directly in front of me. I swung my head back straight ahead and made an audible grunt in alarm; Nadeshiko-sensei was standing practically on top of me, her monstrous breasts swinging like apocalyptic pendulums in front of my horrified eyes. Why was it ALWAYS me? I heard Kaede make a contemptuous chuckle at my situation.
"Y-yes, Sensei?
"Could it be that you find soda more interesting than my lecture?" Her spooky, fiery eyes pierced directly into my soul, bringing with them the razor-sharp bite of delirious fear.
"Yes, I-I-I MEAN, no, Sensei. I find it very interesting," I murmured. Kaede gave another antagonistic giggle.
My sensei sighed and knocked twice on the top of my skull, her right breast bouncing disturbingly out-of-control from the movement. Each soft impact her knuckles delivered brought with them the searing, static shock of pain that contact with women always gives me. "Tsucchi...always the trouble student. Does anything EVER go on inside your head?"
"I-I'm sure it's just coincidence, Sensei."
"You're consistently unfocused; more so every day, in fact. I think stricter consequences may be in order." After a moment of thought, she supplemented her words: "I want you to take forty laps around the track after school today. In your underwear."
My idiotic classmates laughed. I attempted to reason with her. "But Sensei, I have cooking club after this."
More laughter, especially from Kaede (the person whose fault it was that I was even in the stupid club, under threat of castration).
"Well I guess you won't be going today, will you?"
I sighed and hung my head in resignation for the rest of the lecture, often feeling Kaede's penetrating, goblin-like leer focused condescendingly on my body. When the bell rang, I grit my teeth, kicked my chair out of the way and stomped out of the classroom to head down to the locker room.
"Rin-kun, wait up!" I heard Mayumi's tomboyish voice say. I spun around to see her scramble up to see me.
"Yes, Mayumi-chan, what can I do for you?" I growled, feeling very angry at everyone at the moment.
She seemed to struggle with words for a moment. "I just wanted to say, I'm sorry for what happened in class. Everyone was acting totally uncalled-for."
"Thanks," I sighed, deciding to remove her from my mental list of people I was angry at. "I don't even know if I can complete forty laps of that thing, though. I AM really tired of being everyone's laughing stock, though."
"W-well, I can come watch, and give you water, if you want..."
"Don't you have journalism club, like right now?"
"Yeah, I do, but I can skip it."
I shook my head vehemently. "I appreciate it, but don't worry about me. It'll end up okay somehow. At least this is the last time I'll ever talk to Itsuki-kun in class. I'll, uh...I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"
"Ah, right, okay..." She was acting downright suspicious. "I'll be going then! Bye, Rin-kun!"
I waved goodbye to her and made my way down to the recreational (psshht, yeah right, recreation) wing of the school.
After somehow jogging my way through all forty laps (it was now nearing the latter part of sunset), my sadistic teacher finally allowed me to leave the school grounds. I lethargically donned my uniform and wandered back home...only to find the door locked.
I knocked at the door about twenty times, and then looked up to see Kaede's misleadingly beautiful face staring down at me, empty of every emotion save hateful condescension. She wordlessly pulled her head back, and although I waited a couple minutes to see if she'd let me in, I knew from experience that she was pulling one of her special Rin-abusing sessions.
This used to bother me slightly, but this is really so tame compared to all the other things she's done to me that I couldn't really give a shit less about it.
I decided this was a great opportunity to wander around town like an idiot. After doing this for about ten minutes, I found myself at the giant, yellowed stone dam overlooking the lake. I realized that I was wholly exhausted, so I sat down on the ridge, promptly collapsing facefirst in my own lap and falling asleep.
When I awoke, it was late at night. The moon shone brilliantly, almost at the apex of its route of nightly travel.
I smiled up at it, itching my legs absentmindedly. The moon has always been one of my closest friends, one of the only constant companions in my life. I've spent quite a few nights in its company.
I figured I might as well try out the front door once more before I resigned myself to sleeping outside, so I padded across town and arrived "home." To my nonchalant surprise, it was actually unlocked, so I let myself in.
A terrifying influx of female voices coming from the family room greeted me. 'Great,' I thought, 'Not another girls' night.'
Kaede sometimes invites her friends over (which is fine), but often finds ways to do so at my expense. Tonight's guests were her best friend, Daisy (a violet-haired god with a reputation for being incessantly giddy and excited about everything), my fellow cooking club members Kareha and Asa, and a god with hot pink hair whose name I always forget (although people call her Cin sometimes, which is what I call her).
"Wow, you look horrible. What were you doing?" Kaede snickered at me, her face scrunched up grotesquely. I kind of wanted to take a picture at show it to her. I would certainly see that disgusting sight in my dreams tonight; I always do.
"I was sleeping." I felt no need to elaborate beyond that. I looked to the table and was depressed, but not surprised, to see the model ship I'd been working on (Napoleon's flagship) being used as a holding tray for their various appetizers. Clearly a couple spills had transpired already, judging from the caked yellow goop coating my work. "I see you borrowed my ship."
"Aw, you don't mind, do you?" Kareha said in her aggravatingly sugar-coated voice.
"No, it's okay, Kareha-sempai. Do whatever you want," I said, trying to be accommodating.
At this, Kareha let out a maniacal giggle. "You're so right, Kaede-chan! Rin-kun so easy to walk over! He has no backbone." Ugh.
Daisy drummed her hyperactive fingers on the table. "So we can add that to his list of deficiencies, then? Let's see, he's UGLY..."
"He's really, really stupid," Kaede backed her up, sipping her tea daintily.
"What did we talk about before? We came up with some good ones," Cin mused, trying to recall. I'm certainly glad I can provide entertainment for these classy women.
"He has no masculinity whatsoever," Kareha added.
"He's easily the biggest loser in the school!" Daisy squealed, pumping her fist in the air.
"Oh, I know one! He smells terrible!" Cin jumped in. "And who on Earth has a glass eye at Rin-kun's age, anyway?"
"And most importantly, he's completely useless," Kaede ended the session with finality.
I had been standing with my eyes closed, allowing the words to deflect off. "Well...like I said, feel free to use anything I have at your leisure. You are my guests after all."
"Like anything you say means anything!" Kareha said in a quite pretty voice.
"Well Rin, tonight is a girls' night, as you might have noticed," Kaede said, speaking humanely to me all of a sudden. "So if you could please give us some space, that would be great. You're kind of an eyesore, you know."
Another chorus of harmonizing giggles rose to meet me. "Yeah, I know. Have a good night, ladies!" With that, I strode across the room and climbed the stairs to my bed, there pulling out my sewing kit so I could get another uniform repaired for tomorrow.
I hadn't even been going for thirty seconds when the door swished open. To my surprise (and dread), Asa slid inside, silently closing the door behind her. I know she has some sort of physical attraction to me since I've smelled her pheromones several times before when the two of us have been in close proximity...but I hoped this time she would keep the visit a strictly friendly one. Not likely though.
"Hello Asa-sempai," I muttered in slight irritation, peering into her eyes as I continued knitting. "Won't the others be suspicious that you've disappeared?"
She shook her head and continued to stand, awkwardly. "I told them I had to go to the bathroom." She took a deep breath, and then said in what I'm sure was supposed to be a reassuring voice, "Are you alright, Rin-kun? I, um...I'm sorry for what they were saying."
I gave a wry half-grin. "Don't worry about it, Sempai. I've put up with it for five years; it really doesn't affect me anymore."
"Rin-kun," she breathed, regarding me with a pitiful look that sent a warning shock down my spine. Asa made a kind of jerky dive across the room onto my bed, landing fairly close to me. I began to smell her familiar pheromones thickening; her imminent touch was virtually guaranteed by this point. She looked at me with an admittedly fascinating soup of emotions in her deep purple eyes. "You don't have to put up with this, you know. No one should have to."
"It's my choice, Sempai," I muttered, continuing to knit, trying to think of a way to politely get rid of her before something horribly painful to both of us happened.
"Right; that's what you always say, I know..." she began stroking her calves with her palms, struggling to figure out what to do with them. "If you really insist on bearing all this, um...ah..."
Don't do it. I'm not interested. Leave me alone. Just go away.
"You don't have to bear all this alone, Rin-kun...I want to help you carry the pain." She suddenly knelt forward, bringing her face uncomfortably close to mine. "NOTHING they said down there about you was true. You're one of the best, nicest, sweetest guys I've ever..."
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" I hissed, way more viciously than I meant.
Asa jerked back like I'd slapped her and we both stared at each other, wide-eyed. Her pheromones' continual climb of intensity stopped abruptly and completely disappeared; there wouldn't be any more threat of contact from her tonight. My heart was beating so fast from panic at the prior prospect of her touch that the edges of my vision were starting to tunnel away.
Continuing to stare at me in wonder, confusion, and disbelief, Asa backpedaled wordlessly and slipped out the door.
"Sorry," I murmured to the darkness, feeling very tempted to take my sewing needle and insert into my other eye.
A/N: That's it for now! Hope you enjoyed it, thanks for partaking! Don't forget to leave your thoughts!
=)