A/N: Sorry for the late update! I blame a mix of writer's block and personal drama more than Halloween preparations (I wish it had been for Halloween).
Chapter 10: Conformity
Bakura flung himself angrily into a swing at the local park nestled between the Mouto's and Ryou's apartment, startling a group of young children and their parents. He ignored the glares in favor of clenching his hands into fists around the chains. Pain flared up his arm as the muscles flexed. As he sat, rocking the swing back and forth whilst digging his feet in the muddy ground beneath him, he felt the plastic of the card protector poke against his thigh even through the thick denim of his jeans.
He let out a breath as the heat rushed away from his cheeks, and the anger dissolved into mortification. He tightened his grip on the swing's chains bringing forth pain that quelled the ache in his head and the burning behind his eyelids. He swallowed a lump in his throat, throwing his head back to stare at the murky June sky. A strange emotion rippled in his belly, coiling in his gut.
A small voice interrupted the pooling hopelessness, "You need help?" Bakura blinked. He noticed a young child, five or six, peering into his own eyes. He flipped upright, twisting the chains to face the child directly. He leered at the child, the little boy with messy hair and innocent eyes. The familiarity of the child tore at him like a knife to the abdomen, and he spoke between clenched teeth.
"What?" A cross between a grunt and moan tore from his lips as his mind reeled with shock.
The child cocked his head to a side. Bakura stared into wide eyes similar to his own at the massacre of Kul Elna. He deepened the intensity of his glare, a front against his own swirling maelstrom of thoughts. "Are you okay, mister?"
"I'm fine. Go away," Bakura spat, acid coating his verbiage. He untwisted the chains in the swing, turning away from the child, but not before witnessing the same misery present in his own eyes whenever he glanced in a mirror.
…
School the next day would have been unbearable without the help of two new cuts from the razor blade hidden behind the Change of Heart card. The knowledge of Ryou intentionally making himself sick pressed heavily on his mind, even dampening the relaxing effect of watching blood drip down his arm. Bakura spend most of the psychology lecture ignoring the teacher drone on about depression. He scratched at the littering of cuts underneath his sleeve as he contemplated how to broach Ryou's behavior.
He half wanted to just let it fester in denial-induced ignorance and pretend he never truly understood the severity of what Ryou was doing. The term eating disorder was completely foreign to him; there had never been this sort of thing when he was mortal the first time around. Not eating and throwing up what one did eat was so ridiculous and so against nature. To survive as a thief and tomb robber, eating was just a basic function of life.
A cut reopened as Bakura scratched harshly to quell the anger at Ryou's disturbances; warm liquid coated his finger. He rubbed away the potentially incriminating evidence. The anger, raw and gnashing, swelling in his gut, influenced him to do something, to take action as much as he preferred to wallow in the truth. He forced back a grimace, schooling his expression into a mask of indifference as if to match a lack of concern regarding Ryou that he forced himself to believe.
During the break between classes, Bakura left the room, walking past the Pharaoh's pointed glares, past Kaiba's refusal to acknowledge any of the spirits or Yugi and his friends, past Ryou's haunted gaze, eyes puffy and bloodshot, speckled with broken blood vessels and deep bags, past the unfriendly gaze of everyone else.
Head held high against the festering anger/sorrow/loneliness boiling and buzzing in his brain, he marched into the toilets at the end of the hall. The swirling chaos in his mind, the impending uncertainly of apologizing to Kaiba everyone had been pressuring him to do, Ryou's awful secret vomiting, the constant…everything, was silenced, tunneled into one precise cut with his blade. Bakura blinked the emotions away as he dotted the slowly drying blood on his arm.
…
"You need to apologize to Kaiba," Yugi said in a calm voice. Bakura, high on the endorphin rush from his most recent self inflicted injury, nodded, too relaxed to really care. Deep in his chest, his heart sped faster in anger, but he chose not to notice the feeling as his increased heart rate worked to match the throbbing his arm, underneath his uniform shirt and jacket. Yugi leaned forward, pressing his palms against Bakura's desk, speaking in the barest whisper, "We really need the money he provides. Please, Bakura."
"Fine," Bakura spat in the form of a long suffering sigh. "If it pleases you so much." Even as he spoke the seemingly indifferent words, his conscious niggled at him, reminding him that his very existence as Bakura Mouto in the dawn of the twenty-first century was dependant on the billionaire's cash supply.
Swallowing the bile in his throat and pressing firmly against his arm to ignite a sharp pain, he formally addressed Seto Kaiba whilst walking the length of the room to stand by his desk, face to face. Pulling together the best of his experiences with imitating Ryou, he attempted an apology.
"I would like to apologize for my behavior yesterday. It was unwarranted, and I do appreciate your efforts." Bakura murmured in a low voice, acid licking the sides of his throats and hands clenching into fists underneath his sleeves. Unlike the times as a carbon copy Ryou, Bakura could not play this like a game or a challenge. This moment was real, for Ryou's sake, though he himself would never consciously admit that.
So when Kaiba replied with a disdainful sneer, and scathing words, "You mean you appreciate my money," Bakura fought the urges to either punch the rich bastard in his face or whip out a blade and cut himself up in public. A moment passed; Bakura stared at Kaiba's face without actually seeing it, refusing to look away, refusing to show a sign of weakness.
Finally Kaiba stood, grabbed his school items and said, "Look, I don't really care. I'm only doing this for Mokuba's sake, so it's him you need to placate. Not me."
With that, Kaiba walked away. Bakura let out a breath. As Yugi smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, Bakura turned and whirled around, this time racing to the toilets, the Change of Heart already in hand. As he kicked opened the door with his foot, Bakura dumped a blade into his palm. He had just closed the bathroom stall door, when he dug the razor edge into his arm, on top of the most recent cut.
And his world exploded in pain.
…
Bakura's stomach twisted into knots and acid crawled up his throat. Their homeroom teacher's announcement settled firmly against his chest, forcing air from his lungs. He knew this was coming, but, now, as the teacher enunciated his speech with, "Starting tomorrow, I expect you all to wear the summer uniform," he, somehow, forgot or hid behind an iron clad fortress of denial.
Bakura bit back a groan. His teeth sink into the tender flesh of his inner cheek. In March, when he first received the duo uniforms, the winter version with thicker fabrics, a long sleeve polo shirt and blue jacket, and the summer uniform, thinner pants and a short sleeved polo, he hadn't worried about the sleeve length. But, now, his arm ached under the cuts and scratches on his right arm.
He absolutely could not wear the summer uniform. The period switched with the entrance of the first period teacher. As the class stood to greet the teacher, Bakura tried his damndest to ignore the unfurling panic in his gut.
Tomorrow came and went. Bakura donned his long sleeved polo shirt and jacket, refusing to answer Ryou's questioning looks at the breakfast table, which wasn't unusual or anything of the like, as Bakura's disposition at meal times tended to be sour. The homeroom teacher never lifted an eyebrow at Bakura's reluctance to wear the summer uniform, until much later in June, near the last week.
The first weeks of June dribbled past in monotonous repetition; any semblance of a relationship between Bakura and Ryou poured away like the constant rains. Meal times, aside from breakfast, fast became informal, as Bakura usually whipped up something of the instant variety, while Ryou, between his starving and eating, something surely, for all the puking he was doing, chose to not eat—at least not in Bakura's presence.
It had been going on for months without his knowledge or awareness, Bakura realized in hindsight. Ryou had a set routine and after Bakura caught him forcing himself to vomit almost a month ago, Ryou decided to fling his eating disorder into the light, letting Bakura see beneath the façade. Every little ritual and routine turned jaded and macabre with sinister plotting on Ryou's behalf. Anything to fuel this strange modern illness, so it seemed to Bakura.
Surely Yugi's friends knew about what Ryou was doing at this point. It was all so fucking obvious. Before Bakura rose, Ryou would make their lunches, eating as he cooked, then puked. He used to shower in the mornings to drown out the sounds and wash away the odor. Everything, absolutely everything tinged with the reek of acrid stomach bile, suffocating Bakura. Ryou would forget his lunch; Ryou would eat dinner, at some point when Bakura deigned to shut himself away, bathe and vomit. Hell, he even included side meals to compliment the meals he wasn't digesting!
The rain pounded against the apartment windows, as Bakura spent his afternoon behind the locked door in his room cutting. Ryou puttered in the kitchen, making small noises as he prepared one of those extra meals. Bakura scowled. His mouth suddenly felt dry as sand paper as he attempted to swallow away the lump in his throat.
The stinging on his arm drew his attention to the skin littered with new cuts. After a good portion of an hour cutting against the sounds of Ryou preparing food to be thrown back up, then the actual heaves, gasps, and splash back of the puking, his arm plain hurt.
Everything hurt. From the harsh treatment of blade swiping at skin to the foreign thing stopping up his throat, to the wretched sounds Ryou made as he forced the laws of nature into reverse, to the stinging under his eyelids, to his teeth puncturing his lower lip, and, finally, to the switching of the razor blade from his right hand to his left.
Bakura held the flimsy paper thin metal in his codominant hand, fingers scrambled to find the proper position to hold the blade to best serve cutting. He awkwardly fumbled with his sleeve, rolling up the fabric on his left arm for the first time for this purpose. Settled, he sliced into the unmarked flesh.
A thrill coursed through him, much like the first time he had ever cut, as three perfect beads of blood squeezed through the thin line on his arm, the only mark to taint the perfect peach of unscarred flesh.
Bakura let his head fall back to rest against the bed which he leaned against. He stared up at the paint on the ceiling as his arm throbbed.
…
Bakura walked down a rarely traveled hallway to the teachers' office one afternoon in late June. After nearly a month of silence about his refusal to wear the summer uniform, complete with short sleeves, his homeroom teacher finally called him out. When extra cleaning duties hadn't coerced him into conforming, the teacher requested his presence.
Bakura forced his shoulders to remain still, swallowing down the urge to shrug noncommittally at the teacher's demand. He certainly did not care about the extra cleaning duties; he had already committed to a humid summer in long sleeves, even purchasing shirts made with thinner fabrics on one of the rare shopping endeavors with Ryou.
As he knocked on the office door, his lips quirked at the memory of shopping with Ryou. Those excursions often ended with the two boys separating ways to place items in the basket: instant ramen and the occasional article of clothing for Bakura, and an assortment of basic ingredients to stock the kitchen and a couple hastily explained away sweets for Ryou. Chocolates, mochi, whatever it was, it always had a thinly veiled destination, a ruse for ending up in the toilet with stomach acid.
The door slid open, prying Bakura from the endless depression thoughts, and one of the lower grade level teachers guided him to his homeroom teacher's work space (the office was filled with rows upon rows of desks). Bakura took the offered chair at the other edge of the desk, near a stack of papers.
He let his arms flop to his sides, a maneuver to take any attention away from his covered arms. "Yes?" he asked, neither admitting nor confessing anything,
Mr. Kobayashi, the recent graduate from a prestigious university—information Bakura knew from the teacher's own mouth—and the homeroom teacher for his class, glanced at Bakura over his glasses. The glasses Bakura knew were fake from his autopilot note taking; he'd spent numerous classes watching the teacher read over his glasses or pick out students in the back row without ever glancing through the lenses.
As Kobayashi narrowed his gaze, looking down at Bakura, Bakura realized the purpose of those faux glasses: an intimidation act. An act which didn't really faze Bakura. His indifference to most authority kept his nerves at bay, even as he prepared for the inevitable lecture on his apparel.
"Mr. Mouto, I noticed you have not switched to the summer uniform." He spoke formally, in a pompous tone surely picked up from university.
Bakura shrugged, against his volition, and slouched further into his seat. "'M cold." He picked at his pants, at his winter uniform pants. A sickening thought crossed his mind. Would the teacher make him wear the short sleeves? No, he reasoned. He couldn't very well be forced.
"Well, yes, I suppose that would be an issue." Again with the snottily tone. He gestured to his peers with a wave of his hand to the other teachers. "However, even us teachers are wearing more relaxed clothing to accommodate the summer temperatures."
Bakura bristled. His teacher basically called him out on is bluff. No way could he be cold in this weather. With the lack of air conditioning and class rooms crammed with bodies, the school was downright hellish. Underneath his layers, sweat trickled down his back, just sitting in the vicinity of other people.
He stayed silent, letting the teacher continue to lecture in monologue. "Before you enter the school gates, and when you leave after school hours, you—that is your body—represents this school. Everyone here is required to follow the dress code." He smiled arrogantly down at Bakura. "Consider this before you return tomorrow."
He stood, and Bakura followed suit, taking advantage of the overt dismissal. His heart felt lighter in his chest as he slid the door shut behind him. Other than a vague reprimand on conformity, the teacher hadn't bothered to set disciplinary measures.
After all, it was already the end of June. With summer break spanning the month of August, he only had a month to get through, before Domino switched back to winter uniforms in September.
A voice brought his heart sinking back to reality as he entered the main part of the building. Ryou waved at him from the shoe racks. He had already changed into his tennis shoes. "Hey Bakura, come here."
Bakura grunted in surprise that Ryou spoke to him. Usually the brat remained silent, unless they were discussing food or Ryou's behavior around food, of course. He grabbed his own shoes and slipped them on as Ryou continued to speak at him.
"Kaiba invited us to Mokuba's birthday party in a couple weeks. Here." Bakura glared down at the proffered invitation.
"Isn't the kid's birthday next weekend?" He asked as he noticed the party date set for the nineteenth. Simply from sitting near Ryou's friends, he had absorbed that much information. "Whatever," Bakura said as he crumpled up the invitation and threw it against the racks. "I'm not going anyway."
Footsteps echoed against the wooden floor, and Kaiba's voice, a bit quieter than normal from his distance across the room, but clear nonetheless, called, "I have a business meeting next week—"
"On a Sunday?" Ryou interrupted.
"Unfortunately," Kaiba said in a clipped manner. He smirked at Bakura as he addressed him. "You will be attending, because he is the only reason I fund you." Bakura choked, unable to breathe. He whirled around, and stalked out of the school, leaving Kaiba and Ryou behind.
A/N:
From June 1st to September 1st (give or take a couple weeks depending on the location in Japan), Japanese students switch to a cooler, summer version of their uniforms. They are usually made with thinner fabric and short sleeves. I don't exactly know what would happen to a student who continued to wear long sleeves to school.
I know it happens; it must happen. People do self injure in Japan, at the very least, and other students surely would prefer long sleeves for whatever reason. I think, at most, the student would be lectured on fitting for the group's sake or the school's sake, but I don't know if they would be continually harassed.
The example that comes to mind is Ayumu in the manga "Life" by Keiko Suenobu. Yes it's a manga, so it's not real life, but there are real life Ayumus who wear long sleeves and self harm. I just don't know how Japanese schools react to it. If anyone has more information, feel free to share.
Next chapter is very angry, just so you know. ^_^
