4. No Island (Shin Seijuurou)


Being a girl went a long way into making your strength and speed unappreciated. Split the wrong way in mitosis, and you were no longer talented. You were just rough, just weird. No shrugs indicating "Boys will be boys"; just endless sighs of "Why can't you behave, Sayaka?", frustrated teachers and failed piano lessons. The girls in your class stop playing with you; the boys either laugh or run at the sight of you. You learn to play Spillikins on your own.

You stop talking as you dress your cracked dolls. One grows quiet very fast when there is not much sense in saying things anymore.

You never told Sakuraba, but you had envied him the way he now thirsts to be you. How comfy he was being greeted, being noticed; the natural grace with which he could befriend even an antisocial oddball. It was he who gave you the courage to ask for the registration form. Without his height to lead the upperclassmen's eyes away, without his ease to calm you, you would never have played American football.

Shouji Gunpei's severe austerity also left you thankful. Had he showered you with praises and attention like your seniors did later, you would've been completely overwhelmed. Instead, he chose to accept what had once been abnormal as useful, and push you like he saw something greater in you. In the uproar and media storm that would follow, his matter-of-fact anticipation, complemented by Takami-senpai's and Wakana's balmy, mild kindness, was what comforted, boosted and stabilized you. Even, eventually, your teammates' enthusiasm and antics. The white and blue that belonged to you, that tied you there in the middle of that maelstrom; gave you a reason to face male enemies larger than yourself, again and again, until you grew certain that they would crumple beneath your strength, like the thousands of times you'd rehearsed before.

The journalists, whom you've grown accustomed to, always pay great emphasis to your humility. If only you had in your command the right words. You would've told them of how you still remembered, every other time you donned the uniform, all that you'd gained by climbing on their shoulders and open hands–of how you would become filled with a solemn gratitude.


(Owari)

A/N:

- Sayaka (佐弥雅) = assisting to be more elegant.

- Title comes from the saying, "no man is an island", which means humans don't thrive when isolated from others.

- Artwork of Sayaka's appearance, as requested: sethadmirer . deviantart dot com /art /Shin-Seijuro-genderbent-The-Knight-Queen-439004393