Fuji Syusuke

1. He wore contacts

And yes, they were colored. He never admitted this to anyone, and even years later he kept up the pretense of perfectionist blue eyes. But the truth was he was nearly blind without them, and couldn't make out words from a foot away if they weren't in. The blue was ridiculously artificial as well (his family was Japanese, after all, there wasn't a blue-eyed gene in their family!) but his ability to pierce your soul with his gaze was not, and the contacts only added to the effect.

2. He was an insomniac

Not the "oh, I can't fall asleep until midnight" kind of "insomnia" that everyone around him complained about; no, Fuji Syusuke was an honest-to-God insomniac, the kind who spent days awake because he couldn't get sleep to come. It was painful and annoying, but eventually he found that tennis took the edge off and that, if nothing else, he could go out to the dark street courts down the block and work on his newest move at two in the morning.

3. His passion in life was photography.

He was good at everything, of course – he was a genius, after all. But he had a certain knack for photography that was unlike his knack for anything else, even the sport he spent so much time on. The way he captured the light just so on a bunch of dewy grass blades or the way the sun silhouetted the busy Tokyo skyline – Fuji had a gift beyond all of his others for making it all come alive, no matter how truly dead it was. In comparison, the dead remained absolutely dead in his photos unless the message was meant otherwise: a vivid reminder of the reality of this aspect of life. And though he hated having to give this meaning, there was truth behind it, and he captured it with such vivid intensity that it never seemed wrong.

4. He had an intense big brother complex.

Which made sense, of course, when you had a younger brother who seemed to like to defy the odds. Born barely old enough to survive, Yuuta had struggled from day one and it had always been Syusuke's job to take care of him, to watch over him, and to make sure he was safe and sound no matter the risks. He'd rescued Yuuta a number of times as children, because Yuuta had a knack for getting into the worst kinds of trouble, and while they had still been young his brother had appreciated it. But then they'd both grown up, even if not by a lot, and suddenly Syusuke was cast in the shadows as Yuuta tried, once again, to shine on his own. It only intensified his protective, almost maternal instincts towards the younger boy, and when Yuuta decided to be rash and switch to a school half-way across Tokyo – well, to say Fuji had fought back tooth and nail would be an understatement.

5. He'd become friends with Eiji so some of the attention would be diverted from him.

Which, as bad as it sounded, was true. People always seemed to pick him out in a crowd, even if he didn't necessarily stand out, and pairing up with Eiji had just been easy. The boy was loud and slightly obnoxious and very, very good at making friends. He was also very, very good at attracting attention, and while Fuji didn't appreciate excess attention he soon found out that it was almost always entirely directed at the redhead. This soon became more of a blessing than a curse, and there were whole hours at a time where Fuji could fade into the background and live a life of normalcy while Eiji went springing about and chattering on.

6. He was horrendous in the kitchen.

Despite common misconceptions, he truly couldn't cook to save his life. The few times he'd attempted (if the atrocities produced could even be labeled 'attempts') he'd fallen completely and utterly flat, and the one and only time Eiji had let him help prepare dinner while he was over Fuji had ended up setting fire to a dishrag as well as their vegetables. The only way he'd passed the cooking portion of home economics was a number of very helpful girls who seemed to be so head-over-heels for him they would do his portion of the work and vouch for him as well. (He was, however, an excellent seamstress, if one could call a male that.)

7. He liked wasabi because he had trouble tasting so much else.

Fuji didn't know why, but for some reason his taste buds seemed less responsive than everyone else's. He took almost no pleasure in sweet or tangy foods, got none of the enjoyment that citrus brought – but wasabi he understood. It was there: it had a presence, just like the decisive crisp of an apple (though, admittedly, he had no real clue what they tasted like), and wasabi was felt and identified right away no matter where it was or what it was in.

8. It had taken every bit of mental willpower to pretend to enjoy Inui's Juices.

Truth be told, he couldn't stand the wretched things, despite the fact that they were one of the few substances he was able to taste. He could, however, stand seeing innocent souls perish (figuratively, of course) in shock as they watched him enjoy them. It'd taken a vast amount of mental preparation, plus a lot of secret training during late hours of the night when he had nothing better do to (he managed to get a large supply from Inui with relative ease, seeing as the other student thought he actually enjoyed the concoctions), but he'd done it. Slowly but surely Fuji had managed to learn that if you tipped your head just a few degrees to the left you wouldn't taste it – at least, if you were Fuji and were defective to begin with – and that if you kept your eyes closed the worst was over before you knew it.

9. He was an excellent gardener of all plants, but chose cacti because he empathized with them.

They were bizarre little plants, after all, and most people tended to completely ignore them. Harsh on the outside, they seemed to give off an aura of "leave me alone" when all they really wanted was some love and attention, not unlike Fuji himself at times. When he'd taken up caring for them years and years ago he'd done it to relieve boredom, or so he told himself, but as time went on he became more immersed in them. He even went as far as talking to them daily, and though the rest of the world would have called him crazy if they knew, Fuji was more perceptive than that: he knew exactly the kind of understanding these odd desert plants had and they knew exactly why he cared for them, and that was all that mattered.

10. The smile wasn't a coping mechanism.

No matter how many people thought it was. In reality he wasn't nearly as suspicious or interesting as everyone seemed to make him out to be. There had been no abuse or trauma in his childhood; he had had a few troubles here and there in the friends department because of different mindsets, but he'd never been all together lonely; and yes, he was a genius and did suffer from the insanity of being stuck in an idiotic world, but he wasn't unhappy.

No, the smile was there because he enjoyed listening to people theorize about it. It gave him something to do in those excess hours that always seemed to plague him, and by the time he'd graduated University he had a list of unique ideas people had come up with about his smile longer than his thesis.