Chapter 3: Something Good
"Shu? May I come in?" His mother knocked on the door and opened it.
Shuyin rolled onto his side with his back to her.
"I'm … so sorry I couldn't make it to your game. I was waiting for Jecht to come home, so I could talk him into catching the end of it with me, but ..." Dannae touched her bruised cheek. Of course, things had not gone as planned. Sitting down behind him, she rubbed a hand over his shoulder. "How did your game go?"
He whirled on her, half-sitting up, fists clenching his bedspread. "Why do you let him treat you like that?"
"He's ... not himself when he starts drinking, but he always apologizes when he realizes he's made a mistake. He really does love us, Shu. He's just … very stressed. I tried telling him to get help, but ... " Not wanting to discuss the ugly details of the fight, Dannae noticed the small golden cup clutched in her son's hand. "He went to practice on the beach. Things will be better tomorrow." Reaching over his stomach, she drew the trophy into her own hands so she could read the inscription.
"Tidus?" She gave a small laugh. "Why didn't they put your real name on it?"
"Because he calls me that," Shuyin grumped.
His mother sighed. "Well, at least, you turned a bad experience into something good." Drawing her son into her arms, she brushed the damp, spry hair from his temple to give his forehead a kiss. "I'm very proud of you. And I know your father will be, too. But … stay out of his way until after he's had a good sleep. Show this to him tomorrow, and maybe it will convince him to attend more of your games." Standing, she placed the small trophy on top of his dresser. Then, with a sad smile, she left his room, quietly pulling the door shut behind her.
The boy kicked off his shoes and stared at them, exhausted physically and emotionally. How was he ever going to face Koji again? He was probably already telling his whole family what he had seen. Grabbing his duffle bag, Shuyin pulled out his wet uniform, took it to the bathroom, and draped it over the side of the tub to dry.
Jecht didn't come home from practice that day.
For better or worse, Jecht would never come home again.
))((
"But it's been nearly ..."
"It's been nearly a day already."
"Perhaps you could go look for us."
"People are searching for him now."
"Thank you."
Back turned to the people he didn't know, Shuyin tried to ignore the voices on the deck of the houseboat as they spoke with his mother. Jecht had mysteriously disappeared after going to the beach, but blitzball players didn't drown ... not unless they'd been drinking or encountered fiends.
The request for the search party had leaked to the public, and now concerned fans clustered on the pier. Fed up with the parade of sympathy Shuyin felt his father didn't deserve, the boy started to go back inside but was intercepted by his mother, who crouched before him with worry. "Who cares whether he comes back or not?" he grumped.
Dannae's expression reflected her surprise that he would say something like that about his own father. "But he might die."
"Fine, let him!"
"Do you ... Do you hate him so?"
He nodded.
Though he had expressed his anger and fear time and time again where Jecht was concerned, she had not taken the child's feelings seriously, so she had not realized his feelings ran so deep. "But if he dies, you'll never be able to tell him how much you hate him."
Shuyin ran past her to the front door and pulled it open. Then, he ran back to his room and climbed onto his bed, where he pounded a fist into his pillow before throwing it across the room. Their home was peaceful without Jecht's overbearing presence. But when he found his mother by the com sphere that morning, eyes red and swollen from crying all night, he felt guilty for having enjoyed that peace. It just wasn't fair! He could never escape his father, even when he wasn't there.
))((
Several days later, Koji walked up the pier to meet Shuyin and walk to school together as usual, but this was a very unusual morning. It had been aired on the digital com cast that Zanarkand's blitzball hero was missing. "Any word on your dad yet?"
"Nope." Shuyin stopped drawing in the sand, stood, and skipped a stone across the water.
"Are you sure you feel like going to school?"
"I don't have a choice. Mom wants me out of the house. She says it's not good for me to be around her when she cries too much." Shuyin lifted his chin and squinted one eye into the sun as it shone in the bright blue sky over Zanarkand's tallest buildings. "I've been thinking, though. There's nothing I can do about it, you know? I couldn't make him nicer. I couldn't make her leave. I couldn't do anything. So, from now on, I'm only going to think about what I can do. It's a good thing he's gone, right? She's safe, and he can't make fun of me anymore." A smile found its way to Shuyin's lips. "I can have fun now." His blue eyes almost sparkled with new life, despite his humiliation and sadness.
Shuyin didn't smile much when the topic of his dad came up. In fact, Shuyin didn't smile much at all, unless he was into mischief.
Koji considered this, then nodded in agreement. Maybe Jecht's absence was a good thing, after all.
))((
Life went on without Jecht, but it was never quite the same. Dannae needed two jobs to support herself and her young son because her salary wasn't even close to what a professional blitzball player made. As her worries increased, her smiles decreased. But her son seemed more energetic, confident, and happier. The burden of coping with Jecht's drunken behavior and patronization lifted, and for the first time in his life, Shuyin was free to be himself, rather than his father's son … except when it came to his games. Where blitzball was concerned, Zanarkand would always see him as Jecht Jr.
By age eleven, determination to improve his game led to daily practices on the playground at school, in the pool for his school team, and on the beach at home when he should have been doing his homework. During one of those playground practices, Shuyin stood with his foot on the ball and crouched low facing a wall. A semi-circle of boys stood behind him, waiting to see the risky move he bragged about doing. When he was ready, he lifted the ball with the toe of his shoe and volleyed it high with his knee. Giving it a heads-up, he sent it even higher, then sprang after it.
His foot touched the ball, but contact wasn't strong enough to kick it. Arching his back, he completed the flip's rotation and landed on his toes, but fell forward onto his knees. The hit to an already skinned left kneecap made him wince with pain and discouragement, but he ignored the scrape to fetch the ball and returned with it to hoots and laughter from the other boys. "It's harder to do on land than in the pool," he excused his miss. "I can do it in the pool."
"Suuuuure you can. Hey, can you do the Jecht Shot Mach III yet?" one of the boys asked.
"What's the Mach II look like?" another asked, rubbing his hands as if about to receive some insanely important secret.
"The first one is probably the easiest. That's probably why he always did the third one. It's the best," a third boy gave his opinion.
Shuyin frowned. "There is no one or two. He just called it 'three' to hook the crowd."
"Yeah, right." One of the boys waved off the ridiculous notion. "Shots one and two are probably so old that everyone's just forgotten about them."
"Who cares about the Jecht shot. I was trying to do a sphere shot. That's hard, too, you know? Not many people can do that one either."
"I've never seen you do a sphere shot in the pool," Koji told Shuyin, raising the stakes on his claim in front of the other boys.
"Can you do a sphere shot?" one of the boys asked Koji.
"Almost. I just can't get high enough to do a flip. But watch this!" The boy bumped the ball out of Shuyin's hand and flipped backward onto his hands, kicking it clear across the playground. He came out of the handstand the same way that he kicked up into it.
The boys in the circle cheered and congratulated him for the powerful, inverted kick.
Gritting his teeth at his best friend showing him up, Shuyin ran after the ball, which rolled into a circle of girls. "Hey, Kaila! Throw the ball back, will ya?" He could hear whispers and giggles in the circle as he jogged near.
Kaila picked up the ball but held onto it rather than tossing it back. "You didn't say please."
"What? Just throw it back already."
"Maybe I don't want to."
"Because you throw like a girl?" he taunted.
Kaila drew the ball back and pitched it at him as hard as she could.
Shuyin snickered at getting the response he wanted while ducking the missile headed for his face, but then ran ahead of it, keeping the ball's position in mind and flipped into a back-handspring. This time his foot made solid contact and sent the ball spinning back toward the boys. It was low and hit the ground, but he was so excited to complete the shot that he didn't care about the quality of the kick or the fact that he landed on his backside in the process. He was satisfied to hear the hoots of admiration from his friends, but he was surprised that the girls were cheering too.
"I did it!" Jumping up from the ground, he wrapped his arms around Kaila and bounced her around in a circle. "Woohoo! I did it! I've been working on that shot my whole life, and I finally did it!"
When he released her, Kaila's slack-jawed shock turned into laughter. Though his height matched hers now, she patted him on the head the way she used to when they were younger. "That was amazing, Shu. I didn't know you could do that."
He swatted her hand away but laughed too. "Stop petting me. Do I look like a dog or something?"
"Well, maybe one of those little mop-dogs with hair that flops over its eyes." She pushed down the front of his bangs.
Her girlfriends giggled. "Hey, you're right. He does kinda look like one of those little poochie-dogs," one of the other girls agreed.
"Can't you picture him with a little bow in his hair?" Another girl pulled his bangs straight up into a twisted, little point.
"No way!" Pushing her hand away, he finger-combed and squashed his bangs back into place.
"Shuyin the Shih Tzu!" a third girl teased.
Giggling again, all of them started patting his head.
Folding his arms over his head, he backed away. "Get off me! I'm not a dog!"
"Seriously, though, that was a really good backflip, Shuyin," the girl that tweaked his bangs offered to make up for her teasing.
"Do you do gymnastics?" another asked.
"No. I just watched my dad do it at his games and practiced on my own."
"You're probably going to play better than your dad someday."
"You blitz for the school team, right?" a girl with bouncy red curls asked.
"Uh, yeah." He scratched the back of his head, wondering where this was going.
"You should try that shot at the next game," Kaila suggested. "Well, except for the part where you fall on your butt."
"No, because if I mess up, everyone will laugh at me, just like you're doing now."
"We're not laughing because you messed up," a girl with long strawberry-blond hair told him. "We're laughing because it was cute."
Shuyin blinked in dismay. Cute? Since when was falling on his butt cute? That's not what the boys would have called it. Then again, he wasn't used to getting this kind of attention from his friends.
"Well, it looks really cool even if you don't score," another girl with short black hair added. "But if you do score, everyone else will be so envious."
He blushed. "Well, maybe if I get a little better at - atch!" A blitz ball slammed into the back of his head. "Ow!" With a wince, he rubbed his head, sucked air through his teeth, and turned around to see who had beaned him.
While the girls laughed again, the boys closed the distance between the two groups on the playground. "What are you doing over here talking to them?" Koji, leader of the pack, complained. "You're wasting our lunch break."
Shuyin grinned. "Did you see my sphere shot?"
"Yeah. Not bad. But it wasn't a real sphere shot. Your hands were on the ground for the flip."
"I still kicked it."
"It's not a real sphere shot unless you do the whole circle and kick it in the air."
Shuyin picked up the ball and moved outside of the girls' gathering. Giving the ball a toss, he flipped backward to try the shot again. He missed the ball this time but jumped high enough and rotated fast enough to do the dangerous flip without using his hands. His second landing was similar to his first but harder. A sharp pain in his ankle warned that it had taken as much as it could handle for one day, and he fell on his rump again. The ball landed dead on the ground behind him, and since he didn't kick it this time, the boys were unimpressed. They responded with taunts and jokes.
The girls, however, were both impressed and concerned. "Are you okay?" one asked.
"That looked like it hurt." Another tried to help him stand.
It did hurt. It hurt really bad, but Shuyin refused to cry or admit his ankle was throbbing. "Bet I can learn it before you can," he dared Koji.
"You're on." Koji accepted the challenge, though his confidence and humor didn't match Shuyin's.
"So let's see it, then."
Koji picked up the ball and juggled it lightly. He seemed hesitant, but before he could toss it into the air, one of the teachers that had been patrolling the playground snatched the ball.
"Oh, no you don't. We're not having any broken skulls out here. Save it for the pool, or I'm sending all of you to detention." The teacher walked away with the ball, leaving all of them with long faces.
Koji seemed relieved at first, but then he scowled and stomped away, annoyed that Shuyin's trick had resulted in the ball being taken away from what remained of their lunch break.
About a year later, Shuyin won that bet. The year after that, he perfected the shot enough to score with it during practices, so his coach allowed him to use it in games. The first time the shot won a point for the team, the crowd went wild. Their coach beamed with pride. And the other team watched, stunned as they realized their mini-league skills were up against a professional trick shot.
Not only had Koji lost the bet, but he knew there would be no catching up to Jecht's son now.
))((
As Shuyin's blitzball skills improved, his reputation as a player continued to grow. But increasing interest in the sport decreased his interest in academics. And while he struggled to level up in school, his mother struggled to pay their bills.
On her days off, Dannae was often so tired and gloomy all she wanted to do was nap. She no longer had time to attend her son's games, and she no longer had the energy to take him on outings like when his father was around. So, she reluctantly allowed him to go out alone or with Koji. Though disappointed at first, Shuyin developed an early taste for independence. His favorite outings involved sun, surf, and fishing. Beach trips also gave him a chance to try other water sports for a change.
After one such outing, as the sun hovered low on the sea's horizon, and orange streaks filtered through the blue sky, Shuyin returned home, as usual, with his surfboard under one arm and a blitzball and fishing gear tucked under the other. But this time, a couple of girls he and Koji met on the beach tagged along.
"Wow, you live on a boat? That's so cool." Fresia fluffed the pink stripes in her blond-dyed hair and tightened the sarong about her hips before crossing the small ramp from the pier to the houseboat deck. "Why didn't you just take the boat to the beach, so you wouldn't have to walk home?"
"Um, because I'm fourteen?" Shuyin set the surfboard and fishing poles against the wall. "Can't drive yet."
"You mean you have to drive it?"
"Duh." Behind him, Koji carried a large, insulated cooler. His brown hair was rather longish now, curling in slight, thin wisps at the ends and near his eyes. Taller than Shuyin now, he was beginning to show more muscle definition than his childhood friend. "How else is a big boat like this supposed to move around?"
"Well, it has sails, for one thing," Fresia retorted with a pout. "I've never been on a houseboat before. How was I to know it had an engine?"
"The propellers under the ramp are a good clue," Shuyin returned with a smirk.
"Like I would have looked for something like that if I've never been on a boat before." She smacked his back for making fun of her.
"At-tch!" He winced at the unexpected sting. "Crap! I forgot to put on sunscreen. How bad is my burn?" Reaching over his shoulder, he gently touched the heat radiating off of his skin.
"You're a nice shade of pink." A second girl with short black hair pressed a finger into his shoulder blade and watched the white imprint turn pink again. "That's really going to hurt tonight. You should have borrowed some lotion from one of us."
"I don't usually burn. I guess I stayed out a little longer than normal this time."
"Where do you want me to put this?" Koji balanced a cooler against his chest and started to open the front door.
"Wait, wait, wait! My mom's probably home from work. Let me have one of them." Shuyin reached into the cooler and pulled out a large fish that almost wriggled loose in protest. Finger to his lips, he opened the door and peered inside. He could hear water running, so he moved stealthily through the living room, following the sound around the bar and into the kitchen.
Dannae was rinsing a pitcher at the sink. Creeping close, Shuyin waited until after she dried the pitcher and turned around.
"Tidaaa!" He thrust the large fish in front of her.
His mother jumped with a shout and dropped the pitcher.
Shuyin laughed at having successfully startled her. "I caught something for dinner!" Grinning, he displayed the fish again to show it off. "Grilled fish steak sound good?"
His mother laughed at her own fright but raised a hand between herself and his catch. "That's wonderful, Shu, but did you have to shove that smelly thing in my face?" She bent to pick up the pitcher.
He chuckled and placed the fish back in the cooler that Koji brought to his side. "We caught three, and that's the small one."
"Three? They'll spoil before we can eat that many."
"Not if we invite friends over to help."
Dannae knew by his expression and tone that meant his friends were already here. "Oh?" She glanced at Koji and looked past him, probably expecting to see Kaila and her girlfriends.
Instead, two unfamiliar teenage girls in small bikinis stood in the doorway.
"Oh." Dannae blinked at her son and then blinked at the girls again. "Oh my."
