Christmas came and went. Winter thawed to a chilly spring, and Shuya was absorbed in learning the Stairway to Heaven guitar solo.
His fingers had never endured such agony; the tips peeled and blistered, and then the blisters popped and bled, and the whole of his left hand ached from hour after hour spent grasping the neck of his guitar, trying (and failing) to manipulate a tune out of the strings - and yet he continued to play.
He closed his eyes, and tried to breathe away his frustration.
There seemed to be no end to his frustration. Frustration at his already-calloused fingers, for not being calloused enough; frustration at the pain, which made it impossible to play unless his fingers were bandaged to twice their thickness; frustration at the damn bandages, for making him clumsy, missing the right strings and sometimes even missing the fretboard altogether; and on top of that, frustration at his own damn stubbornness. Yoshitoki had told him to give up on Stairway when he'd first started to physically suffer, a week previously; he'd told Shuya just a couple of days before as he helped him change his dressings, that his agony was his own damn fault and he'd better quit complaining or quit playing.
Shuya, quit playing? Inconceivable.
And so, he'd taken to staying behind after school, where he could play and complain, with no one around to tell him to stop.
He took one last, deep breath, and braced his fingers for further pain as he started over, from the beginning.
He hadn't been playing for ten seconds before he stopped again, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut as hard as he could, but a strangled groan escaped from his lips all the same.
For longer than he would be happy to admit, Shuya sat hunched over his guitar, clutching the fingers of his left hand and whimpering quietly. Remembering his own experience with musical-voyeurism, he glanced quickly around the room, but he was grateful to find that he was alone.
He stared down at his bloodied guitar, nibbling his lip, and put it to one side with a sigh. He buried his head in his hands - hissing in pain at the pressure on his fingers - and considered an issue (well, not an issue, exactly - more a dilemma in personal identity) that had been plaguing his mind for some time.
He'd even considered approaching Sho about it, but after witnessing a particularly disturbing exchange between Sho and Shinji, he decided that something as deeply personal and - well - undiscovered as what he was coming to realise, was not something that he particularly wished to discuss with Sho Tsukioka. The prospect was about as attractive as Toshinori Oda in the shower. (An eighth grade changing room incident that Shuya was in no hurry to repeat.)
As he was already on the subject, he really thought about the little frogman. He'd spoken to him just hours before, in music class; Oda had just performed for the class Mozart's Concerto no. 5 in A, and Shuya politely congratulated him. Toshinori's face had adopted the look of one who had been complimented by a rat, and unsure of how to respond, he'd sniffed and said, with a smug smile, 'Yes.'
Definitely unattractive, Shuya confirmed with guilty relief. But then another image threw itself to the forefront of his mind: Shogo Kawada's naked torso. Hundreds of Shogo Kawada's naked torsos. And his ass. God, he was staring at Shogo Kawada's ass. Did that make him a creep? Along with Sho and Kazushi Niida?
Shuya clenched his fists and shook his head so roughly that his vision became metallic and blurred.
'I am not a creep,' he announced. The at least I fucking hope not went unsaid.
Ms Ryoko had grounded into him from a very young age the importance of acceptance, but it wasn't acceptance that he was having trouble with; it was his own thoughtlessness. He was fourteen years old, and it upset him more than anything else that he could have undergone the majority of puberty without having realised-
He laughed shortly, and without humour. He'd been getting erections since he was ten, and most of the time he'd just assumed that they'd come about because of the developing attractiveness and - he swallowed, trying to be delicate - forms of the girls in his class. That was what Shinji said. (He knew a lot about the S word, and its derivatives.)
Now that he thought about it - really thought about it - how many times had he been - ahem - truly "turned on" by a girl?
He chewed on the inside of his mouth and tried to stop himself becoming even more upset.
Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember ever finding a girl attractive beyond her personality.
Now that he thought about it, he liked Kazumi Shintani for her music.
He liked Noriko for her quiet passion.
He liked Yukie for her confidence.
He kneaded his eyes with his knuckles, and brought Kazumi into his mind. He pictured her hair, her curves, her hands, her eyes, her smile, her skin. He imagined her naked and looked expectantly at his crotch.
Nothing.
He sighed and lay back on the table, staring glumly up at the grubby ceiling, and just for a moment, he contemplated coming out to his friends.
It probably wouldn't be so awful. Shinji would make inappropriate comments - but, then, that was what he did. He couldn't imagine any of them reacting badly.
But then - who knew? He lived in a judgmental, unforgiving country. It was unfortunate.
He quieted his thoughts, and yet they invariably turned to one person in particular.
There had been a homeroom reseating after Christmas, and from his new desk Shuya had the most perfect view of the back of Kazuo Kiriyama's head. The reseating coincided with a dramatic increase in the frequency with which Shuya was given detention, simply because he was irrevocably drawn to the pale skin of Kazuo's neck - only showed when he had his head bowed, and Shuya would watch impatiently, waiting for him to look down at his work, for a momentary flash of pale skin that he longed to reach out and just touch.
Shuya snorted.
'How could I have only just found out?' he muttered, shamefaced. 'It's so damn obvious.'
How long he lay there, he didn't know. All he knew was that the room was beginning to darken by the time he sat up again and pulled his guitar back onto his lap.
He absentmindedly wiped spots of dried blood off the strings and began to strum. Random, basic chords; child's play, he thought. His fingers ached, but not enough to stop him from playing.
For a long time he didn't pay attention to the tune, electing instead to zone out to hopeful, tentative thoughts of an accepting, happy future for himself.
Seemingly of their own accord, his fingers began to play a familiar sequence of chords. A ghost of a smile flitted across his lips as, just for a moment, he was reminded of why he was in love with music.
Music was what he turned to when he was anything other than okay. People come and go, and pretend to love and proceed to leave - but music doesn't. This was what he reminded himself on that dull Spring afternoon, in an empty classroom after school, when he realised - even if a small part of him was still in denial - that he, Shuya Nanahara, preferred the company of men.
He sighed at his own phrasing. He really was a prude, sometimes.
''Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood...'
Shuya grasped his guitar, his rock and his centre of gravity, and he sang, and his fingers hurt and his head was a mess, but for the time being, he reminded himself that he was doing just fine.
'"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm"...'
He sang through the verses softly, with barely any of the passion he gave at his music class performances, and he eventually closed his eyes and lowered his voice until it was little more than a whisper. He strummed and ached, and strummed and ached, and told himself over and over that he was still doing just fine.
Abruptly he straightened up and opened his eyes, flooded with a determination to crack this fucking Stairway solo, even if it killed him.
He started off well. Within half a minute he was reduced to a whining mess, clutching his throbbing fingers and wishing death upon the bastard who invented guitar solos.
Through the semi-open door, Kazuo Kiriyama watched with something alarmingly close to amusement and wondered if Nanahara was a closet masochist as well as a wannabe rock god. He quickly forgot all about it.
In the weeks that followed, and as Shuya stubbornly continued to rip his fingers to shreds in his desperate attempt to learn the bitch of a solo that was Stairway to Heaven, Kazuo found himself the unfortunate subject of childish gossip.
He was with his gang at lunch break, and Ryuhei stood to one side, performing a dramatic reenactment of his date the previous evening.
'...and then she nibbled my fucking cock-'
'Get to the bit where you gave up your V-plates,' interrupted Hiroshi.
Ryuhei's face took on a particularly ugly expression. 'Like you can talk,' he spat. 'The only time you came anywhere near some pussy was when you walked in on Utsumie and her lot getting changed for gym.'
'You fucking-!'
'I don't see what all the fuss is about, myself,' Sho sighed, filing his nails with meticulous care. 'There's something so very vulgar about the female genitalia.'
A momentary silence ensued, as was the usual reaction to any hint of queer.
A vein in Mitsuru Numai's forehead pulsated dangerously. 'Watch your tongue,' he growled as threateningly as he could. 'You insult the pussy, you insult me.'
Sho raised an eyebrow. 'I didn't know you identified as a pussy, Mitsuru darling. I'll be more considerate in future.'
'Fuck off,' he spat, shooting Ryuhei a furious glare at his snigger and thinking quickly of how to redeem himself from his blunder. 'I'm not a pussy. I get enough of it, though,' he smirked, with a lecherous wink to the Boss. The Boss didn't even blink.
'Well, you know what they say,' interjected Hiroshi with the air of one about to make an important announcement, 'you are what you eat.'
'And that would make Mitsuru the biggest pussy of them all,' smirked Ryuhei. 'Tell us again about the time you got pussywhipped into - what was it?'
'Two consecutive hours of cunnilingus, was it not?' finished Sho, tittering gleefully. Hiroshi and Ryuhei cackled in Mitsuru's reddening face.
Kazuo was bored. He didn't understand the cause of offence - or amusement, depending on whether the subject was Mitsuru or not.
That wasn't to say he didn't understand the semantics. He knew that "V-plates" was a crude reference to one's virginity. He knew that "pussy" was the preferred lexicon for the vagina among teenage boys. He even knew what cunnilingus was.
He was puzzled by the implications.
'Would one of you care to tell me why Mitsuru is in the wrong?'
He spoke quietly, but it was enough to silence the idiotic guffaws of Sho and Hiroshi and Ryuhei. They turned to him with equal parts alarm and pity.
Mitsuru suddenly came across all awkward. 'Whadya mean, Boss?'
Kazuo sighed. 'What I said. You administered oral gratification to someone of the opposite sex, and it undermines your masculinity. I don't understand.'
There was a pregnant silence, in which they tried to think of a way to provide an explanation to the Boss in words that he could understand.
'Well, Boss,' started Hiroshi, 'there's nothing hot about doing it.'
'Not for us, anyway,' added Ryuhei. He frowned. 'I dunno. I guess it's because we fuck because it feels good, and going down on a girl is a waste of time because there's nothing in it for us.'
'And what about her?' prompted Kazuo.
'Huh?'
'Is there nothing in it for her?'
'But that...' Ryuhei scratched his head. 'It doesn't matter if she gets nothing out of it. That's why what Mitsuru did was so dumb.'
'I see.' Kazuo's disdain for his followers increased tenfold. 'Do women not matter at all, then?'
'It's not that,' said Ryuhei hastily in a misguided attempt to amend his misogyny. 'Women are great, but only for one thing.' He paused, and nodded, apparently satisfied with himself.
Kazuo wanted to get away from them all, with their overactive libidos and anti-women tendencies. It was disgusting, the way they thought, but he didn't care enough about the women gullible enough to get into bed with them to warrant calling them up on it.
Instead he turned to Sho. 'You're not even interested in women. Why is Mitsuru repugnant for what he did?'
'Well - it's just - ugh!' Sho shuddered delicately. 'What lies between a woman's legs is disgusting. Slimy and bloody and - oh, and just so wet.' He winced for dramatic effect. 'You know how it is, Kazuo-kun.'
Kazuo-kun released an inner sigh. 'No, I don't,' he said, without expression. 'I have no reason to.'
Mitsuru's entire body physically jolted, sending him at least an inch into the air as he stared at Kazuo, wide-eyed utterly aghast.
'Boss is a virgin?' he blurted. 'I mean,' he backtracked hastily, 'that's fine, that's cool, great-'
Sho elbowed him in the ribs. 'You're overreacting, darling.' He turned to Kazuo. 'Have you really never done the dirty, my love?'
Kazuo looked into the puzzled, curious faces of his loyal followers, and decided that honesty would be less effort than coming up with a lie he didn't care about. 'I have not,' he said.
Hiroshi scratched his head. 'Why?' he frowned.
'It is unnecessary,' Kazuo shrugged. 'I have no need for it.'
'But that's...' Mitsuru really seemed to be struggling with conceptualising the possibility that Boss was inexperienced in any field. He'd assumed that he had women over to his mansion all the time, and it was inconceivable to him that anyone would want to resist the temptation.
But then, sometimes he wondered if Boss was ever tempted by anything at all.
'Please, Mitsuru,' said Kazuo, with a touch of impatience, 'is my virginity that precious to you?'
'No, no, not at all,' he said quickly. 'I'm just surprised.'
Kazuo sighed again. It seemed to him that sex was more trouble than it was worth. He doubted that experience would cause him to have a change of opinion, and for that reason, there was no need for him to try.
He explained this to the four of them as simply as he could, but they still seemed no closer to considering any view other than "But it feels good on my dick!"
Eventually he gave up. It wasn't worth his time. He assumed, when he told them to drop it, that they would disregard and forget the conversation as quickly as he had, but when, in the days that followed, word got around that the formidable, exalted Kazuo Kiriyama was still a virgin, he supposed that he should not have expected so much of them. They were, after all, singleminded dimwits.
People thought that he hadn't noticed the stares and mutters that surrounded him, but they were wrong; he noticed. He failed to care, but that had never been a problem for him before.
Unwilling to approach one of his gang for help in explaining the connotations of an intact virginity, he did his research on the internet, and he was able to conclude that it was abnormal for a male of his age to have not yet had sex. He understood his friends' incredulity a little better upon reading a particularly informative, if scathing, article that stated with no room for interpretation that, for a man to be a virgin at fifteen, he was either mentally retarded or hideously ugly. Kazuo was neither, and so perhaps their surprise was understandable, if still ridiculous.
He made the mistake, again, of assuming that the matter of his virginity would be of so little significance to his classmates that they would disregard it quickly. He had wildly overestimated them, as he realised fully a few days later when he was propositioned by Hirono Shimizu.
She called after him as he walked away from school at the end of a tedious Friday.
'Kiriyama!'
He stopped walking, as she hurried to catch up with him.
'Hirono.' He nodded curtly.
She rolled her eyes. 'Don't pretend to tolerate me or anything, Iceman.'
Kazuo opened his mouth to give a weary reply, but she spoke again before he could:
'I heard about your predicament.'
He had an idea of where this was headed. 'Of what predicament do you speak?'
'Don't play dumb, Kiriyama. You know what I'm talking about.'
He sighed. 'I assume you're referring to the matter of my being a virgin,' he said stiffly.
She winked. 'Bingo.'
They walked together in silence, mutually agreeing with no communication that the conversation that was to follow was a conversation best had alone.
Once they were no longer surrounded by the bustle of Friday-afternoon hyperactivity, he stopped walking, and she followed his lead. They watched one another steadily, and he waited patiently for her to speak.
'I am offering you a solution,' she announced. She spread her arms open. 'Me.'
'I do not understand,' he said flatly.
She dropped her arms. 'What did I tell you about playing dumb?'
'Pretend, for a minute, that I am not playing.'
'I'm trying to be delicate.'
'Then be indelicate.'
'I propose that we fuck,' she said bluntly. She paused. 'You know, F-U-C-K? Intercourse? Coitus?'
'You are being facetious.'
'People are talking,' she continued, disregarding his comment. 'They're talking about how - uh - unexpected it is, that you're yet to give it up.'
'Get to the point, Hirono.'
She looked him straight in the eye, and Kazuo was briefly impressed by her gall. He was unused to being spoken to with anything other than respect and a certain degree of fear, and while he wasn't bothered about Hirono herself, he found that he appreciated her refreshing boldness.
'My point, Kiriyama, is that your virginity is putting your reputation at stake. You can be as hard as you want - pardon the expression - but you're already losing respect.'
He didn't care. He didn't care about his reputation, and he didn't care about his apparently-diminished respect. It seemed ridiculous to him, that reputation and respect were considered to be defining aspects of a person, and yet were determined by other people. Other people were unnecessary, and therefore, reputation and respect were nothing more than perks that came with being impenetrable.
Hirono did not need to know this. Kazuo furrowed his brow and tried to look concerned.
'Do you think?' he asked.
'I do,' she said solemnly.
He pretended to think about it. 'To be clear - you are, ah, offering yourself to me?'
She smirked. 'Think of it as a charitable donation.'
Kazuo paused as it occurred to him that, while he was initially inclined to reject her offer on the basis of his indifference towards the worthless opinions of others, sex was still, to him, uncharted territory. From the moment he was born, Kazuo had been accumulating an encyclopedic knowledge of as much as he could - for no other reason than because he could - and his recent research had led him to realise that sex, while unnecessary, was something that held a great deal of weight amongst the masses. It would be beneficial, perhaps, if he were to acquire even a rudimentary knowledge of the great, superfluous mystery that was sex.
He graciously accepted Hirono's charitable donation, and she took him to her room and rid him of his uniform and underclothes.
She was impressed. 'Well, hello,' she remarked in the direction of his crotch.
'Yes, hello,' he replied impassively. 'Take your clothes off, Shimizu.'
It struck him, when he first pushed into her, how warm it all was. Despite their nakedness, the sheer heat radiating from her skin as well as his own was as unexpected as the encompassing warmth that seeped through his entire body, culminating at the point of their contact, and surprising him with the intensity with which basic biology and human reactions to arousing stimuli could affect one as cold as himself. He bit his tongue to stop a groan from escaping and stopped, instead closing his eyes as he rested his forehead against hers and forced his arousal to calm, if only to save from "jizzing too soon" - an eloquent phrase he'd come across during his research - and even then, only because he was unwilling to abandon his newfound warmth before he had the opportunity to build on his rapidly expanding knowledge of sex.
Without opening his eyes, thereby forcing himself to be perceptive to other cues she gave, he lifted a hand from where it helped to support his weight on her slim body and rested it on her ribs, trailing a finger softly across the soft skin. He felt her tense, heard her breathing quicken.
He traced little circles on her body, and noted that her breath caught when he touched the protruding bone of her hip, and that a small gasp burst from between her lips when he palmed the soft flesh of her stomach, and that a not-so small gasp pierced the warm, heavy air between them when he gently nudged at the base of her triangle of dark hair with a feathery touch. His finger came away wet, and he touched her and paid attention to the feel of her hands scrabbling for purchase on his back, and he built up a mental diagram of the female body, and in his mind, made objective notes.
'You're a fast learner,' she panted.
'Stop talking,' he said.
He could get used to this, he realised as she shook underneath him, incomprehensible syllables pouring from her mouth that urged him to carry on with whatever he was doing. Out of curiosity, he stopped; faster than he expected, her hand grasped his throat and he opened his eyes to find her snarling dangerously.
'Don't fucking stop or I swear, I will blind you,' she hissed, her eyes already slipping in and out of focus as he obliged her, surprising her beyond comprehension when he, the virgin, brought her to orgasm. The big O was an unfortunately rare phenomenon for Hirono, and as he pulled out of her and put his clothes back on, a wide smirk crossed her pretty face.
It had been her original intention to do it just once with him; in light of recent events, she changed her mind.
Ok so here's some optional further reading about feminist!Kazuo:
I have a theory that, owing to his being utterly apathetic to everyone - and I mean, everyone - he is oblivious to any social connotations, including those associated with sex, and sexual insults. So when Sho and Hiroshi and Ryuhei are ragging on Mitsuru for giving head to a girl, Kazuo's all like 'hold the fuck up' because, while he cares for no one but himself, the rest of the world is on a level playing ground; man, woman, black, white, gay, straight, whatever - none of them are superior, because he is superior, and so they are all inferior. In other words, the rest of the world is equal, and he is above them all. Therefore, for Mitsuru to be mocked for something as 'girly' as mutual pleasure, Sho and Hiroshi and Ryuhei are elevating themselves to be 'above' him, in terms of societal significance, and even just man-points. Kazuo doesn't like that, because only he is allowed to be better.
So he's not exactly a feminist - hell, how can he be, when he's no kind of humanist - but he has no time for extraneous inequality when the only inequality there should be is the matter of Kazuo Kiriyama *greater than* Everyone.
Stairway to Heaven; copyright Led Zeppelin, 1971
Shelter from the Storm; copyright Bob Dylan, 1975
