Inui Sadaharu
1. He was ridiculously antisocial.
The kind of antisocial that had gotten his parents called into day care and during every single grade of elementary school. He refused to talk to anyone aside from teachers, and even then he only used stilted formal language and the fewest words possible. He'd been sent to the guidance counselor a number of times, but he'd never gone anything more than reply with monosyllabic "yes"s and "no"s and because his grades were unfalteringly high, the teachers eventually learned to cope with him. The one and only time he'd ever spoken more than a sentence to the woman with her spotless office and her clicking pen was when Renji had left with no warning, leaving Inui with all of the emotional baggage an only friendship carried.
2. Tinkering was his release.
Social pressures tended to add up throughout life, whether in nursery school or the real world, and being allowed to mess around with the world around him and attempt to create something new – it was refreshing. He'd first done it by creating a more functional toy truck out of spare parts lying around his room, but by the time he'd gotten to junior high school it was a serious addiction. Anything from crazy juices to model planes made out of scrap parts to homebuilt computers, Inui loved to mess around with them and see if he could get the puzzle just right so that whatever he was creating would work, a spring to life full of bizarre lights, odd languages, and more than a few unseen colors.
3. He was legally blind.
With vision of 20/400 in his left eye and 20/300 in his right, Inui was blind as a proverbial bat – blinder, perhaps, because he didn't have sonar to help him navigate his way when he misplaced his glasses early in the morning. Without the lenses, he was wandering around in a fuzzy world of blurred, smooshed colors running together like a bunch of dripping watercolors. It was an all together irritating fact, but by the time he'd aged his glasses and concealed eyes had become so trademarked to him that the thought of getting contacts or laser corrective surgery were out. In the end, he'd stuck with the exact same lenses throughout his entire life, the only thing changing the prescription, and while he had done it on occasion the number of times he wore contacts his entire life could be counted on one hand.
4. He was afraid of commitment.
Perhaps it was because of how antisocial he was, or perhaps he was antisocial because he was afraid of commitment. Either way he hated joining things and hated making promises. He disliked people relying on him, even though he never failed to carry through: he hated the pressure. Initially joining the tennis team in elementary school had made him a nervous wreck, even with Renji by his side, and joining the junior high school one had left his knees shaking and his palms sweaty for weeks. His friendships – few and far between, for the most part – suffered from this aspect of his character, and even in adulthood he had less than ten real friends. All other relationships reflected this part of him as well, and though it had always been a secret dream of his, he'd never married. He'd been too afraid to propose. Thrice.
5. His parents had been relieved when he'd met Yanagi Renji.
They loved their son dearly, of course, and were more than willing to allow him to make his own choices. They'd realized from a young age that he wasn't quite like everyone else – even as a baby, Inui had been particularly observant, always trying to look and touch and explore in places and concepts different than normal children. Despite this they wanted him to be happy, and while they weren't going to pressure him into socializing even they knew the undeniable benefits of having a companion. When Yanagi had come along and the two had actually gotten along it had been the miracle they'd been waiting for, and they wholeheartedly embraced the other youth despite his own quirks.
6. Yanagi was his first and only friend until junior high.
They'd met fairly young, placed in the same class during their third year of school, and they'd been inseparable. Inui had never met anyone who seemed to get him like Renji did, if only because Renji was actually capable of intelligent thought instead of asking him repeatedly whether or not he would like to go outside and play football or whether unicorns enjoyed eating carrots). But because he did meet the other youth he no longer had to worry about adapting to a lower level of intelligence in order to play nicely with his peers as every authorial figure seemed to want him to. The pair had been entirely content in their world together, never following or leading but always side-by-side, and when Yanagi had left at the beginning of their fifth year of grammar school Inui had been left so lost and torn he hadn't even bothered to try and socialize with anyone else.
It wasn't until junior high school when he joined the tennis team, something he did entirely for the hopes of someday seeing Renji again, that he made another friend. Or, rather, five.
7. He had planned his entire future out from the age of seven.
He was going to play tennis with Renji through high school, of course, that was a given that both of them had decided on when they first joined the team. He was going to attend either the University of Tokyo or the University of Cambridge and either obtain his Juris Doctorate (if he went with the former) or his Degree in either organic or pharmaceutical chemistry. During this time he would work on a number of inventions, which he would market off to companies for large sums in order to pay tuition fees and the costs of other inventions and experiments. Somewhere along the way he would meet a nice woman and settle down with a dog but no kids, and by the time he was old enough to retire he would have a sum saved large enough to last him four times over. He would spend the remained of his life in peace and tinker whenever he felt the urge to.
8. All of the plans had been thrown out the window by his third year of high school.
The tennis thing had never happened, though he did end up playing through high school with an entirely different set of people. He ended up going to Caltech on a full scholarship and majoring in bioengineering, his childish tinkering left behind for more serious work. He spent the majority of his life in a sterile lab behind closed doors and away from the rest of the world, monitoring bacteria cultures and how they affected the genomes of all living creatures, ranging from beetles to humans. Though he'd never officially been put on the report he had been a main contributor in advancing gene theory for the purpose of curing cancer. And though he'd met a number of women during his lifetime most of them boiled down to one night stands or two week flings; only a handful of meaningful women existed in his entire life – and he had been entirely too afraid to do anything about it.
9. He'd drunk himself to death.
He was barely forty, but the pressures of life had been adding up since his younger years and he felt double that. His lab work had been finished, his funding lost, his experiments set in a corner. Any breakthrough he made was stolen, another name tagged onto it and given credit where credit was not due. Relationships were a bust, whether romantic, friendship, familial, or peer-to-peer. He had nothing truly left for himself, nowhere to run and no one to run to, and one day his nightly ritual took hold more strongly, a possession that lost himself in the mix. The next morning he did not wake.
10. He lived – and died – with no regrets.
There were things he hated about the world and things he hated about himself. There were things he hated he did and there were always scenarios – what if?s – that flitted through his mind. But the rational side of him said that nothing could be changed, and that what had been done had been done: there was no use dwelling on the past, especially if it inhibited the short amount of time that life lasted. So, despite what he had done or said, Inui never truly regretted a day in his life, a moment he shared, a breath from his mouth, a word from his lips. No matter the consequences.
