Stretch marks glinted silver at him from the skinny but tortured visage in front of him. Sighing, the young man lowered his shirt hem and smoothed down the fabric with an almost skeletal hand, at least, in comparison to his former solid self. It was summer, and with that came his annual slimming down.
Sadness settled over his already serious mood as he continued to stare critically with his sharp blue eyes at the student chef he was, as he had been ever since his childhood at Trattoria Aldini, although now he had shed his annual hundred or so pounds. His single lines for eyes had been replaced by sharp, open blue, but with that increased range of vision came a critical self-consciousness. He had been standing in front of his dresser mirror for the past half hour, frowning at his physique. Even though he couldn't physically see his marred self through the sheet white chef jacket, which hung off his now slender frame, his mind still slithered with the image of sagging skin and scars that littered his body as a result of his often sudden yearly transformation.
A creak broke the somber silence that had stretched on in the bedroom, which felt so much larger due to his shrunken size, until just then.
"Isami?" A voice sounded his name into the room.
Startled, Isami gave a visible jump before realizing who it was, glimpsing a neat thatch of blonde hair and a crisp, white chef's coat in the mirror behind his own similar but so much larger uniform, sunken and baggy due to the disproportionate size of the uniform compared to his current form. Soon he would have to replace it for a smaller size, if only for the next several months.
Slipping on a shallow smile and turning around, he smoothly asked with his usual sweet but mild intonation, "Yes, Takumi?" The spiky-haired Isami steeled himself to not show surprise, although that seemed more of a challenge with his now oft open eyes.
His brother Takumi stepped into the room with a huff. Isami shifted his piercing gaze towards his obviously seething brother and stayed silent, waiting for him to speak. Takumi swiftly launched into a heated tirade regarding Souma, his supposed rival, and how he was determined to win a Shokugeki against him.
His elder brother, although he had the same open, summer sky blue eyes as his own, at least, when his own face wasn't bloated from his usual winter state, lacked his own awareness for delicate situations and thus often failed to see the truth of the matter, unlike Isami. He knew that Souma rarely even paid them any mind other than as classmates or distant friends, but he said nothing, allowing his brother to vent. Isami suddenly realized his hands had been trembling, belying his secret frustration. Shrugging and smiling at his still ranting brother, he shifted his stance and crossed his arms as casually as he could to stabilize his shaky hands. His brother, none the wiser, still saw nothing wrong and blindly continued to spout his enthusiastic declarations.
Watching his brother, so oblivious yet so steady in his goals, in his enthusiasm, in his physique, sparked a shot of envy through the darker-haired twin, who kept a stupid grin plastered on his otherwise sallow face to hide his smoldering internal thoughts.
Why couldn't he stay skinny or stay fat, to stay one shape? How he longed to be one form, to be a constant, to be the same… like his brother. No, he would never blindly challenge another to a Shokugeki, at least not with the hot-blooded naivety of his brother, but he knew this was a blessing and a curse. The truth was that he was stifled underneath his carefree persona, frequently ending up on the sidelines, and he surreptitiously feared the shame of loss. He was sick of it, but at the same time, he knew it would not change, at least, not at the rate he was going.
Yes, he was the same in his techniques of maintaining his façade, but not in the fearless manner of the integrity of his brother, not in his body, and never in his tumultuous heart. He was subject to the volatility of the seasons. He knew the soul-wrenching feelings of inadequacy and of inferiority would pass once his build solidified again, filling in the pouchy skin and overshadowing his abdominal stretch marks with his currently absent love handles. His eyes would lose much of his peripheral view with the annual swelling of his face, and he could be willfully ignorant once more of how people paid even less attention to him than his fair brother, who, despite his efforts and despite his declarations of rivalry, had been repeatedly rejected by the equally imperceptive Souma-kun.
Still, in this moment, if there was one "s" he wasn't, it was satisfied with himself.
A/N: Inspired by my idea of a story that uses many "s" words to describe a character.