Author's Note: This story is dedicated...to someone in my life who's name I will never mention. To the person who taught me more than I ever needed to know and to the person I will never be able to thank for said teaching. This is dedicated to a person who I loved and a person who I respected...but lost everything for over two painful years.

Hello again, guys. This is kokoro77 bringing you...one of my more serious stories to date. I will warn you right now that the story covers the touchy subject of pedophilia and if that is something that you are not willing to bear, then my feelings won't be hurt if you don't read. But please know this: this story is inspired by a true story of a teacher I once had, the mistakes he brought upon himself, and the community which admired him and loved him the most. It was around this time two years ago that the news broke that he had relations with a friend of mine and that I as well as my best friends had been nothing more than tools and play things for him to manipulate. Despite all that...I couldn't find it in me to hate him and thus began my depression and my internal conflict.

Two years later and I can honestly say that I am healing well and steadily at my own pace. I'm in college now and working hard, and though the memories still haunt me, I know as well that they teach me and that is what I hope to do for you in this story.

That said, please enjoy. I'm not sure how many chapters this will be, but it is sure to be short. I love you guys so much. Thank you for sticking with me through thick and thin.

The Whiteboard
Part I | Autumn

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." -C.S. Lewis

When Roxas was 11, a 17 year old adored him.

There were certain things in this world that Roxas overlooked, and yet there were also certain things he couldn't help but stare at, and stare at and stare at until his eyes would complain. He liked to think that he was a good thinker; someone who appreciated what was most notable in life and left the rest for others to think about. He was a strange boy; naïve, beautiful, curious, and above all innocent.

And this innocence was what lured in the predator, yet Roxas didn't know him to be a predator at the time. In fact, he was a friend, one that Roxas never had. Roxas wondered at first if the friend was real—if maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him again, as they usually did to a boy his age. Of course, because he didn't like to think too hard about things that didn't matter, he'd ignored the reasoning and instead thought how wonderful it was that he'd made a friend.

The way a child's mind works is not like anything else. They tend to know what's wrong before the adult—they know who is wrong before the adult—and yet their words go unnoticed, placed upon deaf ears of power hungry adults. This innocence, perhaps, is misleading. Roxas liked to talk about the things he thought about, the things that mattered to him, and all he said went unexamined, left under a withered leaf for someone else to upturn.

That someone else was the friend.

That someone else listened.

...That someone else was the predator.

It was mid autumn when Roxas was spotted in the playground, sitting quietly on an abandoned swing set, his book of who-knew-what sitting in his lap. He'd been reading that book again, and for whatever reason he'd never grown bored of it. His mother had always read him wonderful stories of fantasy and faraway places, and each time he heard them his mind would flood with unexplainable wonder, his beautiful cerulean eyes would soften, and his eager little fingers would tighten onto his blanket, because he believed it was all real, because he believed that somewhere such places, despite how illusory they sounded, were real. And so he read stories like that—the ones that took him far, far away. He seemed to forget of where he was each time he read, and what he'd been doing there in the first place, but for whatever reason he never forgot the playground.

Never.

All around him was wet equipment—the jungle gym, the monkey bars, the seesaw, and the slide. The symbols of childhood...the one he really never had. It had rained again earlier that morning, but he'd sat under the drizzle, his hood up and his book protected under his jacket, pressed hard against his chest.

Scoffing lightly to himself, he flipped the page and held it down as a light breeze blew past his face, later sending a mixture of bright orange to deep brown leaves rushing past his feet. He was finally tall enough for the tips of his shoes to touch the bark below him, tall enough so that he wouldn't need to ask an adult for a push on the swing. Strangely, he didn't have to ask for much help anymore, seeing as this playground was, well, deserted for the most part. It was a little weird for a teenager to be sitting around here all by himself.

"Are you there?" he asked toward his lap, making it seem as if he'd been talking to the pages. His voice was on the borderline of adult—a voice which occasionally cracked, and yet was soothing and slipped off his tongue like glass. He tucked a strand of blonde hair behind his right ear and once again asked toward his lap, "Are you there?"

He heard rustling to his left and, without looking up, smiled, placed a finger on his place in the book and addressed the sound with a composed voice.

"I thought you'd show up."

The sound of rustling leaves drew nearer after that and Roxas listened to each footstep closely, holding his breath just to hear every pitch and every pause as if they were deep cadence in a long and winding sentence—perhaps spoken, or maybe even read.

Once the footsteps ended, the blonde bent over and set his book on the ground with the spine pointed toward the orange, autumn afternoon sky. He'd pick it up later, then. He wouldn't lose his place. As he sat back upright, his long fingers coiled around the chains which held his swing up and he began to push himself lightly using the tips of his Converse shoes.

"Why?" he asked with a light chuckle. "You surprised that I'd know?"

There wasn't a response, but beside him he heard the leaves rustle again and guessed that he was just being evasive. Hm. He was always like that. Well, maybe not always.

Roxas stopped pushing on the swing and looked out at the bare branches of the large tree across the way as he spoke. His eyes traced the contours of each branch with precision and great intent, searching for an answer to his question in the tangles of wood and rotting leaves. Gradually his speed slowed on the swing and his smile began to fade. He decided to let the silence go and bring up another topic. "You know," he started, "it's been four years since you came around here."

Again, no reply.

"But—" With a forceful drag on the back of his heels, the boy came to a halt with his swing when he added with a sigh, "I still like you."

Again there was silence; silence so perfect and still that it sent cold shivers up and down Roxas's body. He arched his back and turned his head up toward the sky, shutting his eyes for a moment so that he could experience this silence peacefully. He had a feeling that he was being watched, since he could feel some sort of tension rising in the air, and for a moment thought that his visitor wasn't expecting such a reaction. His swing idly moved with the wind and his hair blew back with the breeze as he thought...and thought...and finally broke the silence with a sweet little chuckle.

"You surprised to hear that, too? I guess...you don't really know me at all, do you?"

He looked away from the boy, still not saying a word. Was he afraid to speak? Was he afraid he might do something wrong again? Roxas scoffed and shook his head.

"There's no sense in shutting up like that. You like me too, don't you?"

Silence.

Roxas turned his attention momentarily to the swirl of clouds in the sky. They were so flat and wispy today and he wasn't sure as to where which one began and where it ended. He'd never seen clouds so spread apart from each other before, and the sight confused him. Eying the mixed patterns and mess of fluff, he gave himself another little push on the swing and spoke again.

"It's...quiet. Like how we met the first time. Remember?"

Nothing.

"But, you know, I'll be 18 soon."

Nothing.

"So...I guess...I really wanna ask you something." Roxas lifted his feet and let the world carry the motion of his swing, moving him gently forward and backward to the rhythm of the wind and muffled car sounds down the block. His question came out sounding weak and almost desperate to hear a positive answer. So childish. "...When that happens, you think we can still be together? Like you promised?"

Nothing. Again. He was always about nothing—saying nothing, being nothing.

But Roxas didn't want him to think that way, because Roxas never thought that way. Never.

"...I don't want you to feel guilty for what you did," Roxas said quietly as he, for the first time since his visitor arrived, turned his head to face them. His heart's beating did falter when he made that move, but he easily found his place again. Those beautiful porcelain eyes lowered, but his dreamy smile once again recoiled into the delicate curves of his wet lips. "You were just trying to be a good person, right? And...I think you were just what I needed back then. So, please don't blame yourself, and don't think that it's wrong that I like you, 'cause you didn't even do anything bad; you never had a poor intention in you. 'You gotta follow your heart.' Remember?"

Remember, remember. That was all Roxas wanted him to do: remember. Keep the memories alive, keep the moments and the pictures fresh and moving—like a movie, like they were still playing in real life right before their very eyes. Curiously, Roxas peered into the eyes of his visitor, noticing that they hadn't been moving as frequently as they used to when they were younger. Instead they stared inattentively at the ground, still and lifeless as if they belonged to a dead man, and so very dark and desolate like the part of the sea that never saw light. However, though they weren't as lively as the day they met—at this very place, around this same season—those eyes still held so much promise, so much strength that exhilarated Roxas and assured him that there was still a good soul looking through them.

Was he remembering?

Or had he really forgotten it all?

Solemnly the blonde's eyes narrowed, and even though it seemed that his companion was drawing a blank on everything they ever had, Roxas pretended for a moment that he wasn't ...and suddenly reached out to take a hand into his own. The skin felt so warm, so familiarly rough yet comforting on his fingertips. Roxas did this because he cared. He did this because he wanted to go with him together, whether he knew where he was going or not. It didn't matter. The long, rough fingers didn't contract or pull away from Roxas's touch, nor did they coil and show the same affection toward it. Regardless, Roxas's fingers tightened, and in a soft voice he began to take them to a place far, far away.

"Let's go back. I just want you to remember, Axel."

xxXXxx

The worst thing about his school uniform was the tie. The tie, the tie, the bloody tie. It always constricted his neck and left a god awful tingle on his skin whenever he turned his head or simply sat still, listening to a pointless lecture. The worst part about wearing the tie was having to wear it to look professional, and he knew, god he knew, that all it did was make him look like a fucking douchebag, more so than he already was. Whoever invented the tie deserved to die hanging by one.

Ah, well. At least the tie was black, not plaid or covered in fancy emblems and shit. Simple life, simple life.

He'd skipped the last half of class at the end of the day and decided to lounge under the shade of a tree just outside school campus so that he'd be mostly out of sight from the teachers. As he dragged his back down on the trunk, he tugged at the damn thing around his collar until the knot came undone. He quickly yanked it off and with a crack of his neck he balled the tie in his hand and shoved it into his pocket. Good riddance. At least for the weekend.

With a heavy hand atop his stomach, Axel stretched one leg out on the dry grass and pulled the other close to his chest as he stared up at the spaces in the leaves over his head. They were just starting to turn orange with the changing of the season and already the sight sort of...depressed him. He never liked autumn so much. There was nothing fantastic to look forward to in nature curling up and dying. People always said that autumn was a year's climax; that autumn was the very pinnacle of change and the product of excellent, rushed, and hard work completed.

This notion he hated.

That's when he raised his hand and blurted out, "Ok, so, you're basically saying that fall's when the year shoots a wicked jizz, right?"

Dammit, what was so special about a bunch of dead leaves falling on the ground? It wouldn't change anyone for beans.

Lazily he rolled his head and stared down at the underside of his left wrist where he liked to keep the face of his watch. 1:15. Great. School wasn't out for another hour. It was too quiet out here without all the school buses, the students' voices, and the constant yelling from frustrated coaches and parents on the field. Yeah, that was another reason he hated autumn: the silence that came with it. He rather preferred silence over noise, but something about constant strings of silence was daunting and eerie. Shivering, Axel looked away from gaps in the branches and directed his eyes forward to where the cracked and curved sidewalk at his right suddenly joined with black rubber.

By the time his teal eyes spotted the change in the pathway, the silence broke.

Squeeeeak. Squeeeeak.

Now what, oh, what in the hell was that?

He tried not to let curiosity get the better of him, but the sound was so intriguing yet positively annoying that he had to know what it was and where it was coming from. And so, exhaling roughly, he slid his back up the trunk and ditched his book bag to go searching for the racket. As he followed the noise, he unbuttoned the first two buttons of his white dress shirt just to lessen the tension some. He wasn't particularly interested in getting up and moving and he was pretty sure that whatever was making the sound wouldn't have him jumping out of his chair, yet he walked on because he was bored.

Every day he was bored.

The scratching sound of the dry grass under his shoes ended abruptly when he stepped onto the black rubber and for a moment the screeching sound paused as well. His thin eyebrows rose at that and he began to look around with one hand in his pocket while the other caught up in the tangle of cherry red, blood red tufts of hair that fell just below his neck. It'd been a while since he had a haircut, now that he thought about it—the mess of spikes was already at shoulder length –and his mom definitely would vouch for him when he said that he was putting a lot of things off lately.

To his right was the high school, behind him was the baseball field, in front was a neighborhood, to the left was the playground, a mildewed wooden fence encompassing it, that both the neighborhood kids and the high school kids shared. Drug deals went down there regularly and if Axel had to guess he'd say that so did prostitution. His eyes nearly passed the pitiful sight of rusted equipment and leaves hadn't a sudden movement and irritating sound caught his attention and dragged him away from reality for a frozen cold slice of time.

There, all alone and quiet on the swing set was a kid. Axel squinted and titled his head to get a better look at the sight. Yup. Definitely a kid. The swing set could fit four people on it, but since two of the swings were broken only two people could swing at a time. Axel watched as the little boy—Teen?—absently stared down at his feet while he rocked back and forth on the set, a piercing sound erupting from the metal appearing to not bother him in the least. He shoved both hands in his pockets at that point and decided to get a closer look.

Upon standing two centimeters away from the fence, Axel's breathing hitched and fell cold like ice in the sudden crumbling infrastructure in his chest. That wasn't normal.

That was not normal.

The boy was tall, probably a good five and a half feet tall if he stood upright, with large hands and slender fingers which were wrapped loosely around the chains of his swing. It was hard to tell whether or not he was really that tan or not, considering that the shadow of both the slide and the tree to Axel's left were casted upon the kid's skin like a dark cloud. He didn't look happy, nor did he look sad now that he mentioned it, and in fact the kid didn't look like he had an ounce of emotion in him at all. Maybe he wouldn't have appeared so solemn if he just pushed those bangs out of his face, and maybe Axel wouldn't have thought much of him if he didn't do just that with a dismissive shrug of his shoulders, then blinking two beautiful glass blue eyes—sapphires, diamonds, stars...

A finger pulled back the curtain covering those eyes, and instantly the redhead felt strange. A good kind of strange, but at the same time it was disturbing.

He didn't fall in love, no, no, he didn't, but, god, did Axel revel in those eyes for what felt like forever, and to him that was just as good an experience.

Twice they blinked and for ten seconds—he counted—they apathetically stared into space before noticing a fleck of red in the corner, and sent a gaze sharp enough to cut through titanium right into Axel's cold face.

He felt that stare, but really didn't think too hard about the meaning behind it, so he shrugged it off, thinking that it was just feral nuance.

"Who're you?" the kid's voice resounded through the empty playground and would've come off as 'gentle' hadn't Axel previously felt that gaze stab at his innards.

Axel didn't respond right away and rather went on examining the little specimen like he was some kind of microbe in a Petri dish—the kind of specimen that didn't move or wriggle, you know, and sat stubbornly at the edge of the slide. The fall sunset always lingered here in Twilight Town, regardless of the season, and always cast a retrograde orange tint over the buildings and people, Blondie here being no exception. Splays of sun sunk into the soft golden ends of his bangs, transformed the dark and young face into a subtle beauty, and even brought out the vast sea in those irises—where the ocean met the skyline; infinity into infinity into infinity.

He was caught off-center for that moment when he suddenly replied, "Axel."

Blondie's eyebrows rose skeptically and his expression seemed to fluctuate by the second.

The next time he spoke he was sitting in the vacant swing beside the kid, because it just felt too damn awkward talking from what felt like a block away. The kid didn't seem to mind it, but his body did do a full on knee-jerk as the obscurely tall redhead opened the wooden fence.

"You?"

"Huh?"

"Your name?"

"Oh...Roxas." Axel nodded at that but before he could respond Roxas came back lightning quick with something to strike up a conversation. "Are you one of the high school guys from that school?" he asked bitterly like he was about to puke in his soup if Axel got the answer wrong. But even if Axel decided to take the high road and lie, he knew that the uniform would give the truth away. A smirk pulled at the corners of his lips and he gave himself a push on the rusty old swing as he answered:

"Maybe. Why? You got a bone to pick with one of 'em or something?"

Roxas furrowed his brows and he turned his head away. "No. I just don't like high schoolers. They're all idiots."

Axel's smile widened and even his eyes glinted to hear such an immature voice coming out of this kid. He didn't look too young, but definitely not Axel's age, so he was pretty much struggling to figure out if Roxas had the capability to act like such a brat. He pushed on the swing and let the air cool him off some.

"All right. What if I told you I do go to that school? You gonna shoo me away?"

Roxas seemed to mull this over a bit, gnawing on his lower lip rather seriously, and shook his head. "I don't know. That depends on who you are."

What the hell was this kid talking about? But whatever. Axel was enjoying the company of Blondie, but it wasn't like they were friends or anything. He couldn't help but wonder why his heart started thrashing around in his chest like a bird in a cage, screaming death threats amongst other things up to his brain to get the madness to stop, whatever that was. He shook it off with a diffused roll of his shoulder and just told his lungs to open and close as they normally should.

"Hey," Axel drawled. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

"Shouldn't you?" Roxas shot back matter-of-factly before he sort of shrunk back into himself and calmed his voice down. "I...didn't feel like going today."

"Oh. Playing hooky, huh?"

"Just—Ok, yeah, a little," Roxas stuttered, defeated.

"How d'ya play a little hooky?" Axel twisted the swing toward Roxas when he asked, his voice inclined on the repeated phrase. Roxas's face cringed and then he full on looked away from Axel and tried to take some interest in the slide and the seesaw.

"Screw off, ok? I'm just waiting for mom to show up."

Axel's smile pulled into a circle on his lips—mouthing something along the lines of "Ooo"—and quite frankly his interest was already piqued with this kid—which wasn't to say that he wanted to open up his biography right then and there, just play a little match game to get what he wanted to hear—because Axel was invariably curious about a lot of things and felt that even the tiniest mutter and offhanded phrase meant that there was something else to add to the hungry gossip pool in his brain.

"So, what are you, like, 12?"

Apparently it took a while for the sentence to register in Roxas's head since he stalled for so long to reply. "Sort of. I turned 11 a while ago. I turn 12 next July on the seventh."

The redhead, not once taking his eyes away from Roxas's adverted face, narrowed his eyes and committed the slice of information to memory. "Cool. I'm on June seven. But, yeah, you're still a ways away."

"Yeah, I know." Kids always knew everything. "I know." No need to reiterate your point. "You?"

Again Axel felt like he'd been caught off guard with another one of Roxas's questions, but he sailed right on through, his heart having an epileptic seizure all the merry way, and said, "17."

"17," Roxas mumbled.

"Senior."

"Senior. Really."

"Yeah. Really."

Roxas's face cringed and his eyes flashed when he looked back at the redhead. "I hate you."

Axel again shrugged the cold comment off and let it roll away like rain water, because if anything Roxas was just coming off as precious when he shot things out like that, not offensive.

"You do whatever your heart tells you to do, Roxas. Can't hate me for that." His eyes ventured up to the sweet potato sky and he observed how each spiral of whites and purples blended so beautifully—how the thin filaments would dance and barely tremble as they moved further and further away to some unknown place. He'd never know where they went, because this world was so full of impracticalities of chasing dreams in a forgotten world, capturing the sea, reading all the cryptic, convoluted tendrils within a stranger's eyes.

So then, he really couldn't press about Roxas playing hooky and acting like such a bitch. He couldn't hate him for what he wanted to be. He couldn't hate him for pretending he knew everything and distracting him during his moment of repose under that old oak tree.

The pair sat in the silence of rustling leaves and late sky larks before, at long last, a minivan pulled up and suddenly took Roxas away, leaving the swing set peculiarly cold. He heard a woman's voice call out to the boy, breaking their fleeting stream of sub-reality, and for a second wondered if it would be either polite or strange to introduce himself, so he didn't do a thing but sit and follow those tiny footsteps with heavy eyes.

Converse shoes. Black. Size eight. Five-and-a-half feet tall. Blonde and blue eyed. 11.

Roxas.

Axel couldn't say that the kid looked happy, nor could he say that he looked sad to be leaving—he was rather awkward when he ran off with a languorous "See ya"—but what he did know was that Roxas still hated him for a very lousy and vague reason.

He wouldn't discover the real reason until they'd meet again the following year—on what appeared to be a halcyon day filled with a clear sky and blossoming flowers...the things that would never compare to Roxas...Roxas...

Roxas.

Expect more to be updated within the coming days. I have the whole week off and a great majority of this story already finished, so please be on the look out for it!

Axel's song for this fic, by the way, is Creep by Scala who did a cover of Radiohead's original song. My teacher loved Radiohead...and oddly enough this song seemed fitting.

whatever makes you happy,
kokoro77