Warning: AU and spoiler to the Shin Tenipuri 53 and 55
# Red Cloth of Fate
Born with both eyesight extremely intolerant toward the sun, Yanagi's grandparents, being the traditional family they were, had suggested to have a blindfold to cover his sight. They decided to deem him as blind all while they tried to find a cure for him, a dream that is made to be longed forever. Ever since he was born, poverty had taken away almost all of Yanagi's sight away.
That red piece of cloth was a part of Yanagi's life, a part of his body, his eyes. How the red piece worked adversely to when it is given to a bull was something that Yanagi understood very well. He knew, at the moment he and his family had given up on his sight, he would be shunned from the public.
He couldn't be anymore correct. On his first day of stepping his foot outside his house, even though he couldn't see it, he could feel everyone was leering at him. In his kindergartner, no one would socialize with him. It was a blessing how he was gifted the ability to navigate his way alone without bumping into anything.
Yanagi was taken out of his school on his second day due to his incapability to write on the paper without ended up scribbling the desk, or to read an alphabet incoherently like the other students.
And from then, his room became his only universe. Everyday, his parents would bring him everything he needed, food, drink, bath; similar to a treatment that only a child of royalty would get. Being exposed to cruelty at such age, Yanagi knew, that the pamper given would not last forever, and it would do no good for him at all.
His looks could do nothing to help him with socializing, for the 'red' part of him deflected everyone away like a red side of a magnet towards the blue one. He was not familiar with the art of gaining friend, for the only people he had ever met were all but his families. Forced to believe that only intelligence will spare him a spot in this cruel universe, he crammed his juvenile brain with everything that his ears could catch.
His 9 years old sister would tell him everything he wished to know, from physics to history, from the trends to the past tradition. It was when he was 5 when his sister told him about an ace in her school's tennis club whom she adored, even if the boy was 2 years younger than her. Ever since then, every word from her mouth became nothing but the prodigy named Mitsuya Akuto.
She told Yanagi every effort that she gave in knowing tennis, enlighten him with every aspects of tennis that he had not desired. He would have forced her sister to stop twisting every geographies into tennis tactics had he owned her less than what he did. Therefore, he could only sit and listen, letting her sister pour her enthusiasm over that kid to him.
Then it came one point of his life when every piece of useless information that he had nonchalantly saved formed his future. That afternoon, a year after the 'fangirlism' had started, the said genius came for a visit much to his sister's thrill. He knew how much his sister had anticipated such moment to come, and surely the cruel fact of her having a queer brother would do nothing but disaster.
And so, he locked himself in the storage room, the only place where he could reveal his eyes to the world without having blood oozing out from them with a book on his hand. The darkness was his world. The broom, the mop, the bucket, they were all everything that he dared to see. It was enough. He compensated other things by imagining them. His sister gave him enough detailed information for him to know the world like a normal people do.
However, fate decided that he had thought wrong. He hadn't seen enough. All of a sudden a feminine face with thin-framed glasses burst into his sight when he was staring through the door, an effort proved not to be as useless as he had thought. Instantly he covered his eyes with both of his hands at the blinding light. He could feel warm liquids seeping through the edges of his eyes.
"Why are you here, is what you are going to ask, right?"
Yanagi had unconsciously guessed that person as his sister. But upon hearing such greeting, the thought quickly evaporated away. He had not known color for he had never seen anything much besides black, but he knew when his sister described Akuto as a 'beautiful boy with glasses'.
Yes, it had to be the 'famous' Mitsuya Akuto.
"Eh…" Being locked up inside his room for 6 years straight did no good no his socializing skills, despite the theories were all hammered inside his brain. He tried to find a word to say while blindly groping for the cloth. He could feel the warm liquid trailing his cheeks, yet he could do nothing but to tilt his head to slow it down. He couldn't possible wipe it with his pajama's sleeve now, could he?
Once he rested his hand on something soft that he presumed was his cloth, he quickly grasped it and brought his hand to wipe the liquid that he could feel resting at his chin. To his surprise, the disturbing thing was wiped ahead before his hand reached his chin with a soft, cool article.
"Wha-?" Yanagi jerked his head involuntarily, only to find something keeping his head on its place that he assumed was Akuto's hand. Then the soft article rubbed his face gently, trailing the blood to its origin.
"What are you doing, is what you will ask, right?" Akuto asked with a smug, Yanagi predicted, as he wiped his face clean. "Well, Yanagi's little brother, I'm here to take a mop as I spilled my drink just then. I had never expected to find you here."
Akuto let her grip of Yanagi's head after he had finished cleaning. Despite the cloth in his clutch, Yanagi didn't wear it. He sat there, pondering with his eyes closed about the boy he had heard so many about.
"You are Mitsuya Akuto, the ace in my sister's school's tennis club, am I right?"
Yanagi couldn't meet his face, literally. His closed eyes were directed to somewhere on his right where light was suppressed by the darkness the most. Akuto had to realize Yanagi's discomfort for he suddenly closed the door behind, leaving them in the complete darkness.
"Yes I am." Akuto answered afterwards. "You must have heard me from your sister before, am I right?"
Yanagi answered him with a weak nod.
"I have heard about you too, Yanagi Renji." Yanagi could hear a change in tone in his voice. It became slightly lighter, like how people talk about sensitive things. "It's been six years since you're outside, she had said. And you refused to go even when she asked you to. Care to explain why?"
And he was right. The tone was indeed reserved for sensitive topics. Yanagi turned his head away from where he felt Akuto was standing at, his gaze lowered to the ground. He opened his eyes, "I think is it enough for me to bother everyone at home. I do not need to become a burden outside as well."
"But isn't that boring?" His reply was one that Yanagi hadn't expected. "I mean, to be unable to see the world and such. Can you see my face here?" The warmth radiating to his face told Yanagi that Akuto was leaning closer. Slowly he opened his eyes. His caramel orbs meeting Akuto's dark ones behind those lenses. Yanagi couldn't tell what color they were, but he could tell they were mesmerizing.
"You can see at such darkness?" Akuto asked while eyeing the thick book that rested at some page in the middle on his lap. Yanagi followed his stare, and nodded again to his question.
"An encyclopedia, eh?" Akuto skimmed the page that was currently being read. "I don't like reading such books though. Too many texts is making my eye sore." He indirectly praised.
However Yanagi declined the praise. He shook his head, "I cannot read much, actually," Yanagi admitted. "Mostly I can only read the title. The rest are just looking through the pictures."
Akuto realized that the book did contain a lot of pictures, similar to a five-year old book. Yanagi was not far older than that, though. But being unable to read everything but the titles was a rather disturbing fact for a six-year-old.
To look at the bright side, the fact that he could read at such darkness without straining his eyes was a good thing, or else Yanagi wouldn't be able to see anything but behind the cloth. But still… "You don't go to school, don't you?"
Yanagi nodded weakly, slightly ashamed of the cruel truth he had.
"Well then, how about I help your sister to teach you?"
"You what-?" Yanagi's head jerked up in surprise at the suggestion.
Akuto let out a chuckle at his reaction. "I'll teach you how to read, and everything that I've learnt so far." He offered with a smile. "So how about it?"
They say that ever person has someone who share the red string of fate with him, a person who is destined to be with you.
Yanagi couldn't suppress the smile to form on his lips. In his case, perhaps, it's the red cloth of fate. The time came, at last, where the piece of cloth didn't serve as a 'social y repel'.
"Thank you very much." Akuto-niisan…
Akuto: "So why aren't you being enrolled to a special school?"
Yanagi: "If I had, then I will not have a chance to go to Rikkaidai."
Akuto: "Well, you can say that you're cured or something like that…"
Yanagi: "Too bad, such thing only happens in happy story. I don't think this is classified as one."
Akuto: "Oh…Does that mean that lots of demise will fell upon us?" *paled at the thought*
Er..so this is what happens when you bombed the PoT universe. You get a nearly-blind Yanagi!
I was planning to write a oneshot, when another idea came up and forced me to write another one, and finally this idea came yesterday morning and I ended up writing this. Thank god yesterday was Saturday~ So I could skip a day of self-studying without feeling remorseful :D
This will be a series of one-shots, and a series at the same time :P The pairing will go various, of course.
Now then, should I post another one shot (hint: InuKai or a high schooler) or to continue this? (hint: AkuYana or InuYana)
And of course, do be kind enough and review~