An attempt to translate an old story of mine, following some requests made to me by several friends in the DCMK fandom. I've tried to correct google's flawed translation to the best of my habilities, but since English isn't my native language, well,don't expect too much.
Oh, and this story was written, fourteen years ago, so be gentle with the young writer, please, he's still alive somewhere. Re-reading this old tale of mine, I've still found a peculiar bittersweet charm to this story, despite its flaws and akwarness, I hope some readers coul enjoy it through this flawed and awkard translation.
The characters of the detective manga Conan belongs to Gosho Aoyama.
I am human and I need to be loved
" Well ? Have you discovered a maternal instinct for this little girl? "
"I just wanted to talk to her ... It's true, I never really talked to her ... And when our eyes meet, she avoids me ... Maybe she doesn't like me?"
Chapter 1
Letting her head rest in the palm of her hand, she let her gaze wander through the classroom window over the greyness of the city ... A greyness that stretched endlessly and merged with that of the rainy sky .
The professor looked with a sigh at the best student he had ever had, it had been weeks since he had given up trying to interest her in his lessons ...
Since that disastrous day ... The one where, exasperated by the fact that she didn't even try to hide the boredom she felt in her classroom, he summoned her to the blackboard.
He thought of humiliating her so that she would be cured of her haughty attitude toward him... It was the wrong move ...
When he had asked her to solve a geometry problem that was far too complex for the most gifted high school girl, she had shrugged and solved it in less than two minutes complaining that it was a waste of her time .
Despite all his efforts, he had been unable to detect any error on the examination sheets she returned to him, even though she had filled them out before he had finished distributing them to the rest of the class. …
She aroused as much pleasure as frustration in him, she was the only one of his students who would have been intelligent enough to follow his lessons and not pretend to do so, like his other comrades, and at the same time nobody was demonstrating more indifference to his teaching than her.
Another day, he tried to break her cold facade by accusing her of dyeing her hair, violating the rules of the school.
The girl had denied the accusation without blinking. When he started to get into a rant on young Japanese girls who made their parents feel ashamed by denying their origins to the point of hidding the natural color of their hairs, she shrugged, replying that her mother was English and that she had bequeathed her auburn hair before she died…
A few days later, he had caught her erasing the new graffiti that her comrades have left on her table.
He had had time to read at least one before she passed her handkerchief soaked in detergent over it.
"Go home, you dirty little gaijin!"
Feeling responsible, he apologized and offered to help her, even promising to reprimand all her comrades in public for their attitude.
She had replied with an indifferent air that she had passed the age of being shaken by such childishness and that the vandals would tire of themselves when they saw that their provocations reaped only her contempt.
Turning his back on the one who aroused as much regret as pride in him, he brought his attention back to the equations he wrote on the classroom blackboard.
His best enemy, on the other hand, gazed at the reflection reflected in the window with an intrigued air.
Was it really her, this pathetic introverted high school student whose expression was as dark and devoid of joy as her school uniform?
This uniform whose color as black as the feathers of a raven was barely enhanced by the scarlet scarf she had to wear with it…
She didn't believe in coincidences, it must have been the only reason they decided to enroll her in this particular school…
The school year had only started two months ago and she was already starting to regret having managed to convince her tutors to take her sister's proposal seriously…
Akemi had told her that she should start attending a normal high school, to meet young girls her age who could become her friends ... She had managed to convince Gin that the experience would be positive since it would allow her to learn to go unnoticed in the midst of the ignorant crowd in which the members of the organization had to hide ...
The result of the experiment?
Hours of deadly boredom where runts as dull as their three-piece suits tried to instill in her what she had learned several years before meeting them ...
What were they hoping for? Capturing the interest of someone who had obtained her doctorate in chemistry at MIT at the age of fifteen with courses at the high school level?
Outside of class, it was even worse…
Having remained all her life in total ignorance of the way in which human relations were established, she had waited patiently for the others to take the first step and come to speak to her ... She had waited in vain ...
And a month after entering high school, it was already too late.
Her classmates had interpreted her shyness as contempt and had started to avoid her on their way, and when they had had the opportunity to realize that, without making the slightest effort in class, she had become the best student of their high school, jealousy had mixed with fear, and her mixed origins had done the rest.
It was the custom in her new country of adoption : the nail that sticks out, for good or bad, gets hammered down ...
She had had plenty of time to learn it…
But far from arousing sorrow or anger, all that the bullying and the side looks from her classmates had triggered, was a boredom that had nothing to envy to the one she felt in class.
Among the oddities with which she was afflicted, one which earned her the most mocking remarks was the fact that, at the age of seventeen, she was still taken to high school, in addition to being unable to return home after school on her own.
What could she have explained to them?
That the organization had imposed this chaperoning on her to ensure that her enrollment in high school was not an attempt on her part to prepare for her escape?
Most of the time, it was on Vodka that the chore was imposed. Insofar as playing babysitters for pseudo high school girl was as unbearable for him as it was for her, he looked as annoyed as the one he was in charge of when she waited for him each time she left school…
Twice, Gin had relieved his subordinate of the dirty work.
During those two days, his presence had aroused a mixture of fear and fascination among her colleague's classmates, and the jealousy that constantly shone in their looks had grown in intensity when they watched her walk side by side with the assassin…
It was probably the only two times in her life when she had enjoyed having Gin with her.
Another day, she came face to face with her sister who had come looking for her to spend an afternoon with her ... The cold and contemptuous girl had once again become for a day the naive and joyful teenager whom she should have been. Not worrying at all for the reactions that her gesture would not fail to provoke, she rushed into Akemi's arms as soon as she saw her and sobbed softly while hugging her.
This unexpected encounter had left an aftertaste as sweet as bitter behind it…
Her sister was quick to ask her if she had made new friends, and for the first time in her life, she was forced to lie to her only family ...
Oh sure, she had spent many years hiding the truth about the organization and what they were doing to her, but so far she had never had to lie to Akemi about it ...
The next day, new rumors started to buzz around her. Now her classmates were convinced they had finally understood why she was showing such indifference to the boys in the school.
She did not even try to explain to them that the love she felt for the young woman who had waited for her had nothing to do with the stupid idea that they had about it ...
What was the point of telling them that it was her sister with whom they accused her of being in love?
It suited her better than anything, so she would no longer have to empty her locker regularly of the desperate love letters of fools too shy to make her declaration face to face, and which all ended up in the wastebasket .
The more time passed, the less she regretted her classmates' contempt for her ... The little she could grasp from their conversations had made her clearly understand that she had nothing in common with them, and that she was pretty fine with this situation…
There was only one of their interests that her comrades shared with her without them realizing it ...
She had always lived in a world where the inhabitants tried to remain invisible and hidden in the dark, a world where she had been taught that she had to do everything possible to leave the least lasting impression possible in those who crossed her path ...
Now she was discovering a world whose inhabitants, on the contrary, tried not to appear unnoticed, a world where she learned that she had to do her best to remain as long as possible in the memory of those whose paths she crossed ...
Arranging to attract attention, pushing others to want to go beyond appearances and discover what they were hiding… It went against everything she had been taught… Getting others to experience suspicion about you, in the moral code that had been instilled in her, it was practically a deadly sin ...
The curiosity for this universe which she did not understand led her to steal from one of her comrades one of the magazines she read…
Leafing through the glossy pages, she found herself faced with a carnival of bright colors and extravagant shapes…
What a contrast compared to the standardized and uniformly black universe of the crime syndicate… A contrast which had first of all caused real nausea in her…
Then the nausea had subsided to be replaced by a real fascination with something that attracted her as much as it disgusted her…
No longer being an anonymous cog in a machine that shredded people as easily as the wheel of a millstone crushed the grains of wheat…
Become a unique individual, who could not be confused with someone else ... Being the center of attention but in a different way from the one in which she had become the focus of her comrades.
Yes, the idea was not without appeal ... It was even exciting ...
As a good scientist, she gathered substantial documentation on her new subject of study and undertook to memorize it with the zeal and efficiency that characterized her.
Under the bewildered gaze of her comrades, she no longer spent her free time reading scientific works, the back cover of which would have been enough to give them a headache ... Now she was going through leafing through fashion magazines.