A/N: Well, let's see. None of my friends are responding to my e-mails, there isn't anything good to read on this site, and I continue to be disgusted at the immaturity of trolls. I guess this would put me in the perfect mood to write this fanfic!
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I'm just filling in some blanks here.
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It was the perfect plan. He would finally fit in!
No one would question his allegiance to Saiou-sama once he did this.
Everything had been going wrong for Misawa this past year. Well, not anymore! He had finally found his destined path.
Of course, he had thought many other times that he was on the right path. Oh, how wrong he had been!
Oh great. Now he was thinking about the past again. Saiou-sama would not approve of this weakness.
But...he could do nothing to stop the memories now...it had all started with that horrible, mocking laughter...
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Misawa never did fully comprehend what had happened. In less than twenty-four hours, his whole life had been shattered.
It had started off as a normal day. Misawa was following his usual schedule of exercise and meditation before class. It was the exact same routine every single day.
His friends had joined in the routine that day. Little did Misawa know, this was the last day they could really be considered his friends.
When they got to class, all the students were missing. So naturally, they had to go into the forest and track said students down.
It had been such a nice day. The sun was shining even in the parts of the forest with the thickest foliage.
Then SHE appeared.
Misawa just considered Taniya annoying at first. Really, she seemed to be no different than all the airheaded girls at the Academia.
It was hard to take her threats too seriously, even with the pet tiger. Misawa decided he'd just duel her so she'd leave him alone. He had a quadratic function back at his dorm that he wanted to finish graphing.
Things did not go quite as he'd planned. Misawa let himself get overconfident, and Taniya used that to her advantage. She led him into making mistakes he never would have done if he hadn't been so sure he would win. And, ultimately, this resulted in him losing.
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Trigonometry wasn't working. The quadratic formula wasn't working. Not even calculus was distracting enough!
With the state Misawa's mind was in, however, he wasn't sure he could even add one plus one. Taniya had claimed him as a "victory prize" of sorts, and had done...something...to make Misawa both unwilling and unable to fight against this. She had also locked the door to her arena after forcing everyone else to leave, so no one would interrupt.
Misawa, in his reduced state of free will, took a while to realize that Taniya was tying his wrists to one of the pillars that supported the ceiling of the arena. he didn't quite understand this. It wasn't like he was going to run away or anything...
Now, Taniya had finished tying Misawa up and was stripping off his clothing. But by now, Misawa was way past even caring.
Naturally, Misawa's memories of the next few minutes were more than slightly jumbled. But he did remember what happened afterwards much too clearly for his own good.
He had told Taniya that he loved her. That was when the laughing started.
It went on and on and ON. Finally, Taniya choked out that love was for fools. Apparently, she had only wanted him as her slave!
While Misawa was still reeling over this new information, Taniya untied him and forced him to duel her again. And again. And yet again.
Each time, he lost. He was confused, tired, and cold. Taniya hadn't even given him his clothes back.
And Taniya just kept on laughing.
After hours of this, Taniya finally gave Misawa his stuff back and let him leave.
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Everybody wanted to know what happened. Misawa told then part of the truth by saying Taniya had made him duel her several times.
He really didn't remember the rest of what happened that day. Taniya dueled Judai and lost. There was also something about a tiger.
After that, Misawa went back to his dorm and slept for twenty-four hours. The quadratic function which he had been anticipating so much remained unfinished.
When Misawa finally got his thoughts reorganized, he noticed that everything seemed to have changed literally overnight.
The people who used to be his friends just didn't seem to care anymore. Oh sure, they were still nice, but...distant. Often, it seemed like they forgot that Misawa even existed.
The break between school terms wasn't much better. Misawa's parents just attributed his increase in quietness to normal adolescent moodiness. He spent most of his time in his room.
He didn't want to go back to school. But he knew he had to. His parents were proud of the work he was doing. His older sister was going to Stanford University. Yes, the one in America. Misawa was expected to do just as well as his sister.
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Nothing had changed in his friends' attitudes over the break. If anything, they got colder.
What was worse, Misawa was now interested in the girls he had once shunned. He had never learned how to act around them. More than once, he was called a pervert when he was simply trying to hold a polite conversation.
The only thing that didn't change was his grades. Misawa was thankful for that. His parents would be very angry if he started failing.
An incident in January pretty much summarized the big mess Misawa's life was in. He came down with a bad case of strep throat. He had had to spend almost a week in the infirmary.
Judai had visited Misawa once during that week. The rest of the so-called friends didn't even bother.
To keep himself occupied, Misawa had worked out every single problem in his math textbook.
His teachers were very impressed when they heard this. They gave Misawa a whole bunch of extra credit.
That was a good thing, right? Then why did Misawa feel no joy in it?
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By the beginning of spring, things had gotten so bad that Misawa was actually considering suicide.
He almost immediately decided against it, though. Based on his recent run of luck, he would probably miss the blood vessels and sever a major tendon in his wrist. Then that wrist would be permanently disabled.
Then an infection would most likely set in. He would have to explain to the nurse how that infection had gotten there.
None of that sounded appealing. So Misawa just kept trudging through life.
He had eventually decided that the Kessha needed to be stopped. However, Judai and the rest of the people were too busy fishing to listen to him. So he took the Kessha on himself.
Of course, that was a stupid thing to do. The Kessha represented all that was just and holy. It was the only place where he belonged!
Well, sort of. People still got annoyed at him. Girls still called him a pervert.
But that did not matter. Misawa now had a purpose in life. He would show Saiou-sama that he was the most devoted of all! He would be the favorite for once.
And, with that happy thought, Misawa started putting the dye in his hair.