Hand-Written by formerly omgpink, now fauvist
A story is prettier when written in gel pen. So is a date, or a signature. The handwriting is shimmering and round and the words become jewels. So it all began, engraved in sweet purple gel pen with love.
"My first crush," you gushed in enormous bubble letters on a sheet of paper in a shabby green, spiral-bound notebook.
"Mochida-senpai," you whispered over the sparkling name. Fireworks of shojo feathers sprinkled down about your head and glowed with moonshine.
That upperclassman was so confident. He beat his chest like an ape! Of course he would catch your eye. You thought of him as the toughest kid in school. He made you weak and nervous, and you were too embarrassed to tell him how you felt. But that pea-green notebook you kept under your mattress and slept on every night heard all your confessions, and took all the brunt and punches of your pathetic love.
When you caught glimpses of Mochida leaning on his locker, you wrote about it in your notebook. Oh, his posture, his slim figure! Whenever your eyes met while classes were changing, a little tally mark was added to the list of 'he looked at me' on the page dedicated to the title 'Why we're destined to be together.' You thought of giving him the cookies you made in home economics while you decorated them sloppily with chocolate sprinkles. Everything you made seemed to remind you of Mochida. He was always on your mind. You were smitten, and a fool in love. You wondered if you would marry him one day. All these thoughts were beaten into that notebook that kept you sane. No one could know you liked Mochida-senpai because, well, why would he ever give you a second glance? Why would he grab your hand and say he'd fight for you before a kendo match? No boy could live up to your imagination. Thus, secretly, you built him up in your mind into a tower you could never climb.
But then came that day you saw him holding Kyoko's hand, demanding chocolate from her. He called her his if he won! You had to make something–anything–happen between the two of you.
So that was why you couldn't wait until high school to transform from a clean-nailed child to a gloss-lipped teenager. And that was how you were given your first detention. In biology. Feet hammocked in the basket of the desk in front of you. Your hand was planted on the spiral-bound green notebook and your eyes narrowed in concentration as you applied electric pink paint to your nails. You thought you had hidden well behind the fat Tomo-san. With but three neon fingernails, the paint was confiscated by the teacher and replaced with a slip of the same color.
Desk A-1
Your name was written in neat kanji on a seat assignment. The seat assignment was clipped onto a clipboard, which hung from the disciplinary committee's door on a piece of twine. You sat in desk A-1 inanimate–the first and only pawn on a limited edition collectible chess table. A chess table few wished to challenge. You watched the clipboard swing on its twine from when the door was opened by Kusakabe, the Vice Disciplinary Committee Chairmen. You hid your embarrassing fingers in a weak fist.
You were supposed to be doing homework. You had an essay to start. However, words were difficult to force at the moment. You were nervous and disappointed in yourself about this first detention. Your childish purity and innocence were tainted. Yankees got detention, not girls like you. What were you going to tell your parents?
But by ten minutes of the hour in, detention had lost its edge. Maybe detentions all boiled down to a slap on the wrist? You still didn't feel like writing that essay. By now, the pencil had stopped swinging on the clipboard from where it hung on the door. You settled into your lefty desk like a cat, watching the only thing that moved now: Kusakabe.
Kusakabe was an upperclassman, like Mochida. How well did they know each other? They sure didn't look like friends. Call it a hunch, but Mochida would never put that much effort into his hair.
"Kusakabe-senpai, I.. I… I love you," you choked out, drawing from deep within your heart words tagged for Mochida.
"Huh?" the senior blurted, looking up with an unprepared hesitation.
"I like Kusakabe-senpai the most." you smiled, getting into it. "You're so kind! I like to spend time with you!" But your smile was nervous enough, didn't flicker enough like a flame in the rain. Yes, you were teasing, venting, damn, you wanted to finish what you started on your hands. Meanwhile, Kusakabe was looking at you like he was trying to read your mind.
Blushing, he cleared his throat and said, "Don't speak during detention." His pen returned to his work.
"But Kusakabe-senpai, I have been holding my tongue for the past ten minutes and I really can't take keeping it to myself anymore. I really like you! You're really handsome," you earnestly leaned over your desk, "and—"
"Do not speak during detention," Kusakabe interrupted. He smiled confidently and softly, and continued, "I have enough on my plate as it is. Besides, even if I he wanted to," he assumed a serious tone as if making fun of people who talk like this, "Disciplinary committee members aren't allowed to return such feelings."
"But, senpai," you protested.
"Settle down. Settle down."
"Let's go out together! There's no one to stop us."
Kusakabe queer look, like he was trying to distinguish a dolphin's dorsal fin from a shark's.
"C'mon, let's get out of here," you whispered.
Kusakabe tapped his pen. "I'm not interested. It would be better for you if you stopped talking, too," he said at last, locking down on his work. His big hair hid his face.
"I—I—I'm sorry—I was joking… umm, just don't think I'm serious," you said, "if it's like that." Kusakabe wasn't someone you could talk to anymore. He refused to talk, tightened into a stern flatness, and the remaining forty-five minutes were horrifyingly awkward.
Confessions were a queer experience, especially when they were with someone you had no feelings for. But you had wanted to try it and practice the words you read and heard and in Casablanca and Titanic. Of course, the embarrassment settled like pancake batter in the frying pan when you got the vibe that Kusakabe had taken you seriously.
Still, you had gotten something dreadful out of your system, perhaps a weevil of regret in your young and wholesome heart. Adults say these are the times to follow your heart and to make memories, but look at you. You were too afraid to speak to the boy who stood do confidently in his Kendo suit. You were losing hope in Mochida. He was a year older, so you weren't in any of the same classes. You had only spoken with him once, during a volleyball match in gym class that his class participated in because a teacher was absent. You hadn't managed to catch his eye in the hallway and this failure continued for another two weeks. One-side glances fleeted like foxes in Namimori's halls. The roller-coaster of over-analysis snatched you up—what he brought for lunch in the cafeteria, or when he asked you if Kyoko was "out sick or something." Or even, when he started making a big deal, as you walked by, that some kid was a total jerk—a complete Nazi—as if he were trying to get your attention?
In fifth period, you hunched over your notebook like a goblin counting gold and scribbling your katakana in lime green. And just as you had sworn in your notebook, dedicating a page to his name to bless your heart with courage, he was ripped away from your grasp. He hadn't come to school.
"To where?" You inquired from Kyoko.
"Oh, a Kendo Competition. Yamamoto was talking about it, so he could tell you more. I don't know much about those tournaments," she said before turning back to Tsuna. You buried yourself into a bitter turnip for the rest of algebra class, head planted firmly in your hands. And that was how you scored your second detention. The teacher had called on you to answer a question, your dazed look not one of a student paying attention. You did not hear the question, and asked, "less than three?" meekly.
So there was your name again, perfect and alone on the detention attendance on the Disciplinary Committee's door. You trudged in, slid your backpack off, and plopped into that same desk in the front row on the right-hand side. An ugly, distracted, and knitted brow plagued your face like two struggling bears.
But once again, after ten minutes with your head on the desk, you felt stronger and calmer. A touch more solitary and stronger for it. The red string you saw on your finger that connected you to Mochida slackened… faded, disappearing like a strand of broken spider silk. You lifted your head up from sulking to bug Kusakabe once again, but your eyes met a different prefect. The head one with his immaculate uniform and stern Japanese eyes. You weren't certain about his name because you weren't as well-informed about the Disciplinary Committee as the troublesome students, but luckily, it was written on his armband.
"Hibari-senpai," you began with that flicker of your curving mouth, "You're very handsome. You must have a girlfriend!" you said. You picked up your gel pen as if you might actually getting some homework done. Hibari's snapped his eyes at you. He looked at you stern and pissed, and then, went back to scratching his mechanical pencil on his own homework. You weren't sure what he was writing, but you were ignorant that it involved Hibari's sketchy body clean-up service.
"Hibari-senpai, you have such pretty eyes." You smiled and giggled into your fist. "Do you get a lot of chocolates on Valentine's Day?" A hint of bitterness and jealousy momentarily leaked out, but you shoveled sand quickly over the bottom of that sandbox. "Everyone must like you to have been voted in as Head of the Disciplinary Committee! You can get any girl, I bet." You didn't care anymore what was thought of you, and everything on your mind tended to leak out of your mouth if not into your diary. "Hibari-senpai, have you ever been in a relationship?" You put your head down on your desk and looked at him like a tired old dog. Hibari finished a sheet and put it in a pile.
His 'none of your business' glare slid over you like a rag smearing oil as he told you to not speak.
"But Hibari-senpai," you said, matter-of-factly, cheek pressed into your arm, "I like you the most." The freedom of those words! Sure, they weren't meant for the prefect, but for that beloved, manly kendo player that was the husband of all your fantasies, but nonetheless. There was something in the action, in the fake words, and the fake feeling rotating with real ones in your Ferris wheel heart.
"I mean, you are really skinny, and you don't have a lot of muscle, and neither are you really tan and stuff," you ranted, "Like Yamamoto-kun, who all the girls like, but I think you're my ideal type! Every time I see you, my heart, like, breaks into a million tiny pieces."
"Stop pestering me and do your homework."
"How can I do my homework when the one I love is near?"
"What is wrong with you?"
"Hibari, oh, Hibari," and you continued to repeat the melodramatic lines from Shakespeare's balcony scene. Romeo was your entire persona—a real lover-girl always with a crush. "My homework is to memorize and practice my lines for Drama Club's Shakespeare play," you smiled winningly. "Did you hear about it?"
"Well, you got your lines wrong."
"Well, it's not that easy."
"What? Are you admitting you're stupid?"
"No, I'm not stupid."
"Then stop talking."
You lifted your head from your desk, that sour brow returning. Hibari returned to his work, finishing lines and starting new ones like an efficient typewriter but without the clacking.
"Hibari-senpai, I'm sorry I irritated you. I do like you the most."
"Do you want to die?"
"Hibari-senpai, if I get another detention, I will get to be near you again!"
—And you were shoved into the sunshine of the courtyard. Your backpack was chucked hard at your back and you stumbled even further forward. You were free! Not twenty minutes in! You grabbed your bag, and then walked to the corner store to buy a weekend stock of shojo manga. Mochida was on your mind, his muscular profile leaning against his locker like the hero in Love Me Up! The glossy covers shined under painted nails at the check-out.
Maybe you would drop your crush for Mochida this weekend, or maybe your yearning for him would become more powerful with you separation.
But back inside the Disciplinary Committee's room, Hibari touched the back of his flushed neck and continued scribbling in peace.
"Hmph."
