Ch.4: January 8
He thought it was just all a big hassle, after all - why did he have to go and sign himself up for THIS anyway? But then, of course, he'd remember the prison cell hanging over his head like some threatening cloud ready to split, and he'd decide that it was worth it. The Round Square called meetings to judge his innocence and his will for recovery (of course, he himself knew just how far gone he was) and also decide whether or not they should just doom him to regular justice or not. Generally, there were posters and schedules put up everywhere just so that anyone who wanted to come and say something about him could come and say it - this meant everyone and anyone, even his classmates, whom he was sure wouldn't pass up an opportunity to laugh at him in front of other people - but mercifully, no one except for thirty some-odd Round Square council members and some other people came.
As the people filed in, Kaga could almost imagine what they would say, whether in his defense or his prosecution. Some of them looked like they had dung up their noses or were smelling something particularly bad, the way that they held their heads high with that exaggerated pompous air. Others eyed him curiously, and he felt considerably warmer towards those people, as if they actually cared. Chances were they did - that would make it easier to manipulate them, though. Some of the others, though, were downright incriminating, watching him like a hawk as if he'd sprout gatling guns and gun everyone down in a fit of terrorist action, staring at him as if he wasn't all that he seemed to be. What, he wasn't living up to the stereotype criminal standards now? He'd just say what they wanted to hear, fake a tear or two, and pretend that he wanted to apologize, repent for what he'd done. They were just laughing, all of them, the fools, but he'd show all of them when he ran away that he could do anything.
He watched Shindou come in, hanging his coat on one of the pegs, and then nodding respectfully to the RoundKeeper and then to him. After that, Kaga's parents came in, and he clenched his fists - there was his father, dressed in a three-piece suit that was completely out of place with the casual clothing that the rest of the people were wearing, and then his mother who looked like a plastic, perfect Barbie doll without a single hair sticking out. This was just another cocktail party to them. They hadn't even greeted each other yet as they sat one to a side of. When the RoundKeeper called order, he found himself comparing his mother's shaking, clammy hand to his father's iron-shod grip. He let go extremely quickly, resisting the urge to clean his hands on the sides of his pants in disgust - it wouldn't have been polite, and the council members were no doubt looking for some spark of decency or manners in him, so he just sat down and plopped his hands in his lap.
They'd almost gotten started, gotten through the introductions when the door opened yet again. Shindou was in the middle of describing what had been purloined from the store he'd robbed when he trailed off, choked, and then shut his mouth completely. He was not smiling. Kaga had to turn around to see why - the Kimihiro family was there with their lawyer, examining the circle and its members. They got seats quietly, but it seemed eternity until they sat down because no one spoke in that entire time.
He looked at Kimihiro neutrally, noticing that the Kimihiro's lawyer was scrutinizing him like he was going to throw a magic spell or something and blast everyone to oblivion. Of course, that wasn't likely, but he found himself looking away all the same, as if the lawyer had forced him to look away. The boy, he decided, looked underfed and malnourished, like he'd had too many days in a dark prison cell. He seemed to gleam like the dead, shuttered eyes that didn't even seem to blink. A few times, he caught Kimihiro looking back at him, and he tried to smile even though his face wouldn't obey anything but a half-frown. Temporarily startled by his reaction to Kimihiro's weakness - where in the world had the reaction "smile" come into his mind about THAT particular tattletale? - he frowned again, this time to himself. He hadn't smiled, of course, for the longest time, even before he'd ground Kimihiro's face into the pavement. But when the boy spoke, that was when he realized that the change was hardly physical - just what had he said to Kimihiro as those last parting words before the police had dragged him off?
"My name is Kimihiro Tsutui", he said timidly. "I'm here 'cause I got beat up." He gave a completely dead look at everyone in the circle, then his pale face drooped again and the shoulders slumped unwelcomingly into the chair. For the first time in a very long time, Kaga felt something like a twist in his gut, something very much like guilt. He hadn't wanted to hurt anyone, but Kimihiro had just gotten in the way - all of this wouldn't have happened if Kimihiro had just kept his mouth shut. Always, it was always someone else's fault - why would it be his fault? He was the one that everyone hated and everyone feared, and he knew that that was the only way to control people.
And suddenly, that sporadic anger burst out at him again, filling his face and his thoughts with hate like fire through his veins, like whiskey with too much alcohol, and he had to concentrate on a point in the ground to force that pounding heartbeat to go down in his ears. No, he couldn't loose his cool now, not in front of all these people, some of the council members were just waiting for him to explode to prove that he was 'mentally unstable' and 'potentially dangerous' and all of those stupid, stereotypical things that they said every time they had a meeting. They were stupid, they were fools to think that they were smart and that they could control him - he was in charge of HIMSELF, and no one else could do anything about it. He hated the meetings - sitting across from the slimeball tattletale he'd beat up, around his parents who didn't care, a stick-up-his-arse lawyer who looked like he'd been dipped in plastic, and around Shindou, who just served as pretty, smiling furniture. Suddenly the comments seemed so cutting to him, as if all of them were knives and murderers coming out at him. When did they become so potent? When did they control his thoughts? He wanted to tune them out, but he found that he only wanted to hear more of their remarks, hear more of what they wanted to say about him, humiliating him.
But that anger DID explode when his dad got up and said, "We've always done our best for out little boy. We've done so much for him that -"
"Bullshit!", Kaga countered, standing up so fast that his chair clattered over. The sound reverberated off the walls like some sick parody of a laugh, and he continued. "That's a lie and you know it! You drink till you're dead on the couch, and any other time I don't even know where you are! A so-called 'devoted parent' you are when you whip me until my largest sweatshirt can't hide all the bruises!"
He watched that face - how he hated that stupid face - turn red with something like fear or embarrassment. Roughly his dad seized his arm by one large hand, but then let go when he became aware of all those watching eyes. "I don't beat you, you know that." He could see his dad's Adam's apple bobbing up and down nervously. "Those were just careless swats, when you deserved them." The RoundKeeper stood to stop the argument, but Kaga ignored her.
"You're usually to drunk to even know your own name!" And then, quieter but more venomously he added, "I bet you don't even know when my birthday is!"
He didn't smile, though, when his father gaped like a landed fish and tried to answer but found no ready answer coming to mouth. There was no triumph in this, of course - he wasn't the one who was going to judge the information and send him to jail, so he couldn't be sure of what other people's reactions would be to the information. He chanced a look around when the discussion had begun again, and saw that some faces had figured out beforehand that this was probably the case, while others were completely and utterly surprised at the news. Either way, though it would help him, give a reason to his anger.
There wasn't much said in his defense until Kimihiro's mother said suddenly, "I feel that Tsutui is sick." Every head turned to look at her. "He's so sick that he can't open his eyes from all the nightmares he has a night. A thousand, a million years of jail won't bring his vivacity back - but at the same time, no parent should ever have to worry about their child getting beat up in the streets just because of something he said. But. . .", she glanced at her son, "he should be given a chance, too, to recover - it doesn't bode well for someone to spend their life bitterly in jail when he could be recovering from his own anger." She looked at Kaga, and there was a sort of trust there, as if she believed all the lies that he'd said about wanting to get over his anger.
Wasn't this what he wanted? He wanted it to be so that he could escape from the law and everything else forever. Even the prosecutors were speaking up for him! But lying about this wasn't quite like lying about anything else - the person believed his lies, and that made all the difference. He squirmed in his chair, aware of all the eyes on him suddenly, and he nodded back to Kimihiro's mother as if to thank her for her words. He watched further as she leaned over, stroked Tsutui's head, and whispered something comforting in his ear. The face seemed to straighten itself from a frown, and the boy's shoulders seemed to stop shivering. But the eyes were still cold, too far gone for anyone to reach. Kaga slouched lower in his seat as Kimihiro prepared to speak.
"I think", the boy said quietly, clearly still lacking confidence, "that someone should smash Kaga's head into a sidewalk so that he knows how if feels too." And he went back into sulking.
The Round Square was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, the comments started back up, and the comment was all but forgotten. The meeting ended with a prayer, a promise of sorts to provide harmony to everyone they met, and then the circle dispersed. Kaga blatantly refused to hold hands with either of his parents, he didn't want to feel their sweaty palms, nervous of their reputations that hung in balance, that might get ruined if the Round Square said no. A dressed-up puppet to the one side, a conniving liar on the other - worthless, both of them. If the RoundKeeper noticed there was a break in the circle, she didn't comment. He couldn't let them get away this time with pretending that they loved him, not this time or any other time from then on, not if he could help it.
Shindou came up afterwards, smiling still as if nothing had ever happened. "So, you still aren't buying responsibility to change your attitude?", he asked nonchalantly.
"That's exactly what this is about", said his dad all-importantly from the side before Kaga could say anything in return to Shindou. But before he could snap a remark back at his dad, Shindou had already plowed in with a well-placed statement:
"Right. So, if this is about responsibility, when IS your son's birthday?", he asked, still smiling, the gesture still oddly out of place. For a moment, Kaga wondered how a person could smile and still have those eyes look positively murderous at the same time - certainly, that was what the twenty-two year old researcher was doing now, a perfect balance of hate and sarcasm in his face. Kaga's dad mumbled something in return, something along the lines of "August" and that "birthdays aren't celebrated in our house", and then left. Shindou and Kaga stood there, in the middle of the emptying hall, and the delinquent fumed.
"He was lying!", he protested to Shindou. "My birthday's in January!"
But Shindou had turned to him, and if he had thought that the researcher's eyes were icy before, it was nothing compared to them now. The smile, more than ever, seemed cut out from a magazine and pasted over Shindou's face instead of it being a natural gesture. "But certainly, Kaga", he said lightly still, "he wasn't the only one lying, don't you think?"
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ Author's note:
*coughs* Well, I don't know whether you liked THAT particular chapter, but things are starting to warm up, doncha think? Some of the stuff (I'm painfully admitting) I still get from the book, like this chapter. I didn't copy it word for word, though, and I mixed a lot of the words up and added a lot of my own similes to the entire thing. Shindou's final words are nice, though. I had to go online to check out Kaga's actual birthday - it IS Jan. 8, right?
Andrea Weiling
He thought it was just all a big hassle, after all - why did he have to go and sign himself up for THIS anyway? But then, of course, he'd remember the prison cell hanging over his head like some threatening cloud ready to split, and he'd decide that it was worth it. The Round Square called meetings to judge his innocence and his will for recovery (of course, he himself knew just how far gone he was) and also decide whether or not they should just doom him to regular justice or not. Generally, there were posters and schedules put up everywhere just so that anyone who wanted to come and say something about him could come and say it - this meant everyone and anyone, even his classmates, whom he was sure wouldn't pass up an opportunity to laugh at him in front of other people - but mercifully, no one except for thirty some-odd Round Square council members and some other people came.
As the people filed in, Kaga could almost imagine what they would say, whether in his defense or his prosecution. Some of them looked like they had dung up their noses or were smelling something particularly bad, the way that they held their heads high with that exaggerated pompous air. Others eyed him curiously, and he felt considerably warmer towards those people, as if they actually cared. Chances were they did - that would make it easier to manipulate them, though. Some of the others, though, were downright incriminating, watching him like a hawk as if he'd sprout gatling guns and gun everyone down in a fit of terrorist action, staring at him as if he wasn't all that he seemed to be. What, he wasn't living up to the stereotype criminal standards now? He'd just say what they wanted to hear, fake a tear or two, and pretend that he wanted to apologize, repent for what he'd done. They were just laughing, all of them, the fools, but he'd show all of them when he ran away that he could do anything.
He watched Shindou come in, hanging his coat on one of the pegs, and then nodding respectfully to the RoundKeeper and then to him. After that, Kaga's parents came in, and he clenched his fists - there was his father, dressed in a three-piece suit that was completely out of place with the casual clothing that the rest of the people were wearing, and then his mother who looked like a plastic, perfect Barbie doll without a single hair sticking out. This was just another cocktail party to them. They hadn't even greeted each other yet as they sat one to a side of. When the RoundKeeper called order, he found himself comparing his mother's shaking, clammy hand to his father's iron-shod grip. He let go extremely quickly, resisting the urge to clean his hands on the sides of his pants in disgust - it wouldn't have been polite, and the council members were no doubt looking for some spark of decency or manners in him, so he just sat down and plopped his hands in his lap.
They'd almost gotten started, gotten through the introductions when the door opened yet again. Shindou was in the middle of describing what had been purloined from the store he'd robbed when he trailed off, choked, and then shut his mouth completely. He was not smiling. Kaga had to turn around to see why - the Kimihiro family was there with their lawyer, examining the circle and its members. They got seats quietly, but it seemed eternity until they sat down because no one spoke in that entire time.
He looked at Kimihiro neutrally, noticing that the Kimihiro's lawyer was scrutinizing him like he was going to throw a magic spell or something and blast everyone to oblivion. Of course, that wasn't likely, but he found himself looking away all the same, as if the lawyer had forced him to look away. The boy, he decided, looked underfed and malnourished, like he'd had too many days in a dark prison cell. He seemed to gleam like the dead, shuttered eyes that didn't even seem to blink. A few times, he caught Kimihiro looking back at him, and he tried to smile even though his face wouldn't obey anything but a half-frown. Temporarily startled by his reaction to Kimihiro's weakness - where in the world had the reaction "smile" come into his mind about THAT particular tattletale? - he frowned again, this time to himself. He hadn't smiled, of course, for the longest time, even before he'd ground Kimihiro's face into the pavement. But when the boy spoke, that was when he realized that the change was hardly physical - just what had he said to Kimihiro as those last parting words before the police had dragged him off?
"My name is Kimihiro Tsutui", he said timidly. "I'm here 'cause I got beat up." He gave a completely dead look at everyone in the circle, then his pale face drooped again and the shoulders slumped unwelcomingly into the chair. For the first time in a very long time, Kaga felt something like a twist in his gut, something very much like guilt. He hadn't wanted to hurt anyone, but Kimihiro had just gotten in the way - all of this wouldn't have happened if Kimihiro had just kept his mouth shut. Always, it was always someone else's fault - why would it be his fault? He was the one that everyone hated and everyone feared, and he knew that that was the only way to control people.
And suddenly, that sporadic anger burst out at him again, filling his face and his thoughts with hate like fire through his veins, like whiskey with too much alcohol, and he had to concentrate on a point in the ground to force that pounding heartbeat to go down in his ears. No, he couldn't loose his cool now, not in front of all these people, some of the council members were just waiting for him to explode to prove that he was 'mentally unstable' and 'potentially dangerous' and all of those stupid, stereotypical things that they said every time they had a meeting. They were stupid, they were fools to think that they were smart and that they could control him - he was in charge of HIMSELF, and no one else could do anything about it. He hated the meetings - sitting across from the slimeball tattletale he'd beat up, around his parents who didn't care, a stick-up-his-arse lawyer who looked like he'd been dipped in plastic, and around Shindou, who just served as pretty, smiling furniture. Suddenly the comments seemed so cutting to him, as if all of them were knives and murderers coming out at him. When did they become so potent? When did they control his thoughts? He wanted to tune them out, but he found that he only wanted to hear more of their remarks, hear more of what they wanted to say about him, humiliating him.
But that anger DID explode when his dad got up and said, "We've always done our best for out little boy. We've done so much for him that -"
"Bullshit!", Kaga countered, standing up so fast that his chair clattered over. The sound reverberated off the walls like some sick parody of a laugh, and he continued. "That's a lie and you know it! You drink till you're dead on the couch, and any other time I don't even know where you are! A so-called 'devoted parent' you are when you whip me until my largest sweatshirt can't hide all the bruises!"
He watched that face - how he hated that stupid face - turn red with something like fear or embarrassment. Roughly his dad seized his arm by one large hand, but then let go when he became aware of all those watching eyes. "I don't beat you, you know that." He could see his dad's Adam's apple bobbing up and down nervously. "Those were just careless swats, when you deserved them." The RoundKeeper stood to stop the argument, but Kaga ignored her.
"You're usually to drunk to even know your own name!" And then, quieter but more venomously he added, "I bet you don't even know when my birthday is!"
He didn't smile, though, when his father gaped like a landed fish and tried to answer but found no ready answer coming to mouth. There was no triumph in this, of course - he wasn't the one who was going to judge the information and send him to jail, so he couldn't be sure of what other people's reactions would be to the information. He chanced a look around when the discussion had begun again, and saw that some faces had figured out beforehand that this was probably the case, while others were completely and utterly surprised at the news. Either way, though it would help him, give a reason to his anger.
There wasn't much said in his defense until Kimihiro's mother said suddenly, "I feel that Tsutui is sick." Every head turned to look at her. "He's so sick that he can't open his eyes from all the nightmares he has a night. A thousand, a million years of jail won't bring his vivacity back - but at the same time, no parent should ever have to worry about their child getting beat up in the streets just because of something he said. But. . .", she glanced at her son, "he should be given a chance, too, to recover - it doesn't bode well for someone to spend their life bitterly in jail when he could be recovering from his own anger." She looked at Kaga, and there was a sort of trust there, as if she believed all the lies that he'd said about wanting to get over his anger.
Wasn't this what he wanted? He wanted it to be so that he could escape from the law and everything else forever. Even the prosecutors were speaking up for him! But lying about this wasn't quite like lying about anything else - the person believed his lies, and that made all the difference. He squirmed in his chair, aware of all the eyes on him suddenly, and he nodded back to Kimihiro's mother as if to thank her for her words. He watched further as she leaned over, stroked Tsutui's head, and whispered something comforting in his ear. The face seemed to straighten itself from a frown, and the boy's shoulders seemed to stop shivering. But the eyes were still cold, too far gone for anyone to reach. Kaga slouched lower in his seat as Kimihiro prepared to speak.
"I think", the boy said quietly, clearly still lacking confidence, "that someone should smash Kaga's head into a sidewalk so that he knows how if feels too." And he went back into sulking.
The Round Square was quiet for a moment. Then, slowly, the comments started back up, and the comment was all but forgotten. The meeting ended with a prayer, a promise of sorts to provide harmony to everyone they met, and then the circle dispersed. Kaga blatantly refused to hold hands with either of his parents, he didn't want to feel their sweaty palms, nervous of their reputations that hung in balance, that might get ruined if the Round Square said no. A dressed-up puppet to the one side, a conniving liar on the other - worthless, both of them. If the RoundKeeper noticed there was a break in the circle, she didn't comment. He couldn't let them get away this time with pretending that they loved him, not this time or any other time from then on, not if he could help it.
Shindou came up afterwards, smiling still as if nothing had ever happened. "So, you still aren't buying responsibility to change your attitude?", he asked nonchalantly.
"That's exactly what this is about", said his dad all-importantly from the side before Kaga could say anything in return to Shindou. But before he could snap a remark back at his dad, Shindou had already plowed in with a well-placed statement:
"Right. So, if this is about responsibility, when IS your son's birthday?", he asked, still smiling, the gesture still oddly out of place. For a moment, Kaga wondered how a person could smile and still have those eyes look positively murderous at the same time - certainly, that was what the twenty-two year old researcher was doing now, a perfect balance of hate and sarcasm in his face. Kaga's dad mumbled something in return, something along the lines of "August" and that "birthdays aren't celebrated in our house", and then left. Shindou and Kaga stood there, in the middle of the emptying hall, and the delinquent fumed.
"He was lying!", he protested to Shindou. "My birthday's in January!"
But Shindou had turned to him, and if he had thought that the researcher's eyes were icy before, it was nothing compared to them now. The smile, more than ever, seemed cut out from a magazine and pasted over Shindou's face instead of it being a natural gesture. "But certainly, Kaga", he said lightly still, "he wasn't the only one lying, don't you think?"
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ Author's note:
*coughs* Well, I don't know whether you liked THAT particular chapter, but things are starting to warm up, doncha think? Some of the stuff (I'm painfully admitting) I still get from the book, like this chapter. I didn't copy it word for word, though, and I mixed a lot of the words up and added a lot of my own similes to the entire thing. Shindou's final words are nice, though. I had to go online to check out Kaga's actual birthday - it IS Jan. 8, right?
Andrea Weiling