Title: Vault
Summary: The streets of Kanagawa are ruled by a gang of boys, Vault. With Mitsui being the core that binds it intact, and Kogure its brain, the members come to know what brotherhood is, at the same time sowing violence to ultimately earn a page in history. AU. On-going.
Disclaimer: I do not own Slam Dunk and its characters; genius Takehiko Inoue does. The plot is tightly based on Joyce Carol Oates's novel, Foxfire.
Note: I suppose Yaoi is inappropriate for this kind of story so pairings are a far cry from here. This is unedited, feel free to point out mistakes for future editions. Maybe I'll edit it later, maybe not. Kogure's POV. This is multi-chaptered and I'm a procrastinator so if ever I got the mood to finish this, it would perhaps be a thousand years from now.
Full summary: This is a story of young boys who, in their separate struggles to make something more of their dull lives, opt for a turn that will test the tenacity of the bond that holds them intact. In the height of designing their grand aspirations, they find a tense friction against another group of boys, a rather elite fraternity. The leader of Vault, Mitsui, then devices a plan which spells mortal danger, requires great courage, spells evil, and, ironically, aims for a glory only they can understand. But, above all, this is the story of Hisashi Mitsui, Vault's burning core, the prime mover of this blood brotherhood that ignites it to function.
…
Prologue: The King of Men
Whoever said that narrating a story should commence from where it sprang? Just what exactly, if I may be allowed to inquire, is the significance or purpose of chronology? There's order, of course, and also there's the credibility of accounts, but what the hell. Here goes how it ended, how we ended, how all things we held sacred met that dreadful inevitability normal people like to call 'the end'.
…
He never once forfeited his singleness. Not once did he subordinate himself under common ideas or practices. As such was his nature, in our last minute within each other's presence he cleaved to his own person only, without aid from higher forces and never surrendering to the inhospitable nature of the finality of what awaited both of us.
"You coming with me?" He asked, and the inviolable calmness he had always exercised under critical situations remained invincible, indelible, undiminished within him, as always.
Fear undermined me. Surely, he was standing where he was, just as much as all else was dissolving and being stripped down to be reduced to that one bare truth: he had to leave, that much I knew, but I reckon I never knew what forever meant until that very moment. My lips parted asunder and reunited in a repetition of diminishing motion, until all these irregular and weak movements amounted to total immobility.
"I'm gonna take ten steps backward, okay? If by then you still have yet to stir a muscle, I'll be scramming." He announced. It might have been an ultimatum, something that could only be expressed in subtle remarks. As a whole, it was too final, too irrevocably fixed I dared not speak. Left with no other option to take, he took his pace, every clatter the soles of his shoes produced causing my fist to tighten with the weight of an anvil. At last, the final step was tendered. Searching me with only his eyes, he came to understand. And I didn't move a blink.
"Well?"
"I—I won't forget you, Hisashi."
He cast me a look which had in it a restrained, contemptuous ridicule. It was disappointment, no more, no less. Even as he started to move away, to be gone forever, I felt like I was the one who was doing the necessary abandoning. When there was nothing more to say, or perhaps there was too much to say that words and all the varieties of body language were not enough, he gave me a salute, pointed his index finger at me, balled his fist and pounded it against his chest three times. Slowly, like a mechanical figurine atop a music box, he turned around. Or perhaps time, for once, drew forth its reserved generosity so that it'd fare along slower for me to witness his departure in its most picturesque fashion. The last I saw of this person was his back. Like a flame, he flickered up for the last time and went out, went out forever. That marked the end of Vault, a death from which I needed—no, need—to recover.
Ten years.
Hisashi Mitsui is my one great truth. In my life, I have encountered and involved myself with things which can be accounted for as incredible, wonderful, even dangerous. You could say these things have been worth living for, even dying for. All the same, living is not the same as having a life, and having a life ought not to be mistaken for feeling alive altogether. Hisashi Mitsui taught me what life is, and what he gave me is something I can never find anywhere else, even if I set out to search the whole expanse of the world and back. On that respect, his existence has not merely been irrational, but also contrary to all the human realities I know of. For that, he has to disappear. Like an unexplainable phenomenon, his influences necessitated a short-lived term. Disappear he did, so that he is now a seared mark in my faculties, so that after all these years I shall never ever have half the heart to leave Kanagawa, where he once thrived. For in Kanagawa the soul of Hisashi Mitsui lingers on. It burns on and on, and shall never, ever, depart.
…
Chapter 1: The Beginning of All Things Great
And now I shall tell you about the birth of Vault.
To start with, there's something remarkably predatory about his stature. Perhaps it has to do with the lack of civility in his movements and the unity of the fine, lean and sharp features of his face which renders him fearsomely handsome. This boy is toughness incarnate, a burning, walking concoction of shrewdness and passion, full of force and imbued with untrammeled principles. He is, more than anything, righteous in his respects. As things are, being a boy of the same age and standing as his, I simply can't help musing over him in bridled awe. Hisashi Mitsui is eighteen years of age, is worth as many praises as that of the ancient civilizations, and is deserving of countless notabilities both in physical and mental aspects. It is close to insanely bizarre that we get along pretty well. With the attention he gathers, as though attention itself is a part of his belongings, I'm infinitely much inclined to sink in the background whenever we walk side by side. I'm next to nothing in comparison; me, whose whole merit is consisted in the fact that I'm mediocre shit and that I look decent.
And Hisashi is the best friend I ever had and ever will have.
…
Here we are now, confined in a lousy four-walled classroom with some other twenty-five or so living souls, trying to absorb what convolution of nonsense this professor up front is thrusting forth in our heads. My brain will soon send in its resignation, or will otherwise cease to function. Thankfully, I'm not the only one, for here is Mitsui, scribbling some sort of a note, probably just random stuff, on a scrap of paper. He crumples it and hurls it past three seats; right up at me.
'rooftop, now' it reads. There's no hint of urgency in it; just plain boredom. Without waiting for my consent or reaction, he stands up, stuffs his fists in his pockets and darts to the door. There's no suggestion of haste or stealth in his movements either, but there's only that customary impulse. This is how he shows reverence to whatever principles classroom ethics is enshrined in. For my part, I eagerly abandon myself to whatever pleasure his fashionable disregard to authority may offer; I follow suit.
"Just where do you two think you're going?" The professor asks.
"Washroom." Mitsui answers.
"Together?"
"Not necessarily. There are two hall passes available and I don't smell any rule-breaking something in relieving our bladders, do you, Kiminobu?"
"I—I don't think I do." I say. Mitsui nods and whisks past the door. To my credit, I shoot an apologetic glance at the indignant educator before ridding the class of my awkward presence.
In the hallway,
"That was too easy, Hisashi." I told him as I try, and fail, to muffle my dorky excitement and transparent admiration over his godlessness.
"What is?" He asks. You never can accuse him of fishing for compliments, maybe because they're prone to come to him as though gravity pulls them towards him, to be collected, and then ignored.
"Just now. You really wouldn't give a damn if they kicked you out, would you?"
"Should I?"
"No."
We sat ourselves flat somewhere on the vast concrete landscape of the rooftop. While there, I try to keep abreast with his calm immobility which is further highlighted in contrast with my idiotic impulse to look at him every so fucking often. I'm quite sure he's been noticing it, but it's not like it doesn't happen every day that one isn't inclined to be the victim of his unimpeachably bizarre customs, which are as inviting as they are forbidding. He is that charming.
"Hey, Kiminobu, don't you feel harrowed by this sphere we move into? This narrow morality on which people cling to, this deceptive veil they label as truths? This pretense, this…world?"
It sure sounds a damn lot like a suicidal contemplation, if nothing else. The way his mind functions and the things on which he attaches significance are always hardly within the vicinity of my full comprehension. Today, apparently, bears great semblance to this general standard. I ask,
"What the hell are you saying?"
"I'd like to be with people who are willing to walk in the same circle, make the same gambles, I'm thinking…"
"What?"
"Well, there's this kid. I want him."
When he speaks, there's always this dim, almost imperceptible spark of underlying intent, so deliberate and immense despite its un-straightforwardness. I look at him, not really trying to pierce through that thick sheet of subtlety, but only waiting for his remark to be expounded.
"Let me get this straight, you want a kid?"
"Want to build something with me?" He pursues, ignoring my query.
"Like a what, exactly?"
"Something."
"Well, tell me."
"Is it always gonna be the two of us, Kiminobu?"
"You tell me."
I figure he means to expand our circle, and it's the kind of desire which keeps people awake at night—a desire which he's showing for the most part by speaking like a dodgy bastard.
"I don't know."
Silence ensues for a good deal of time.
Of course he knows. He just doesn't feel like explaining. There are millions of things slithering their way into the fathomless intricacy that is his mind and articulating them requires buckets of spit, which I'm quite sure he doesn't have in possession.
"Okay, I get it. You wanna make friends. Maybe form a gang? And what can we gain from it?" I ask.
He keeps his temper in due proportion. While, I'm not sounding as though I'm all brimming with the enthusiasm he perhaps is expecting, I'm always ready to lend him ears. And then he speaks, in a manner that may have contained a thousand meanings or a hollow implication only; I can't really tell.
"Things. Good things. All things great."
I can't distinguish which part of his answer sent me this shivery sort of excitement that now makes me realize how childish I am. Perhaps it's my strict belief in the things he's capable of that's giving me this feeling of a hopeful kind. Yeah, that's most likely it. After all, impossible is nothing, for Hisashi Mitsui, that is.
It's settled. He's gonna make it happen. For now, Mitsui has his eyes set on a 'very interesting' person. A weighty compliment, if you ask me. If truth be told, the praises he's rallied for the 'kid' does not at all accord with his habitual propensity of sizing things up in a critical point of view. In any case, I do remember the kid's name; a sophomore, Ryota Miyagi.
TBC