Issues
by the diggler
Warnings: PG14. some swearing, anger, frustration, hate... i was in a bad mood. No yaoi. wanted to, but it just seemed like too much.
Disclaimer: Slam Dunk and related characters are the property of Inoue Takehiko et al.
~
He hated them all.
What gave them the right?
What gave them the right to treat him that way?
What gave them the right to make him feel like a freak?
They were all vultures.
And he hated them all.
He hated that every time he walked down a street, everyone would stare at him openly, appraising him like a piece of meat for sale.
And he hated that they did it without any discretion whatsoever, as if he were exactly that, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
And in this city, it was. Here, everyone was out for a piece of the action, everyone was a critic, everyone was a vulture.
Here, it was normal to be eyed down and sized up, to be judged in a glance, in a single moment decided if you were worth the time of day, or not.
And whereas many were discarded within seconds for their "normality," or less than such, those piercing eyes would always linger over him much longer than the rest.
And for what?
Something so little, yet it seemed to be the most important thing in the world...
Looks.
Or more specifically, good looks.
And through some strange twist of fate, or genetics, whatever, he had been blessed with them.
No.
Cursed with them.
What was the big fucking deal anyway?
So he was a little paler than everyone else... So he had really nice hair... So his eyes were different...
It was simply the result of having a Japanese mother and an American father.
And when you got right down to it, the only reason he stood out was simply because he was... different.
And simply because of current human perception, his "differences" were something to be praised. Drooled over. Worshipped.
Especially here, where anything and everything American was golden.
America.
How he loved America.
There, everyone was different. Everyone was from some different country or culture or whatever. And that made him normal.
That was, until he was in the company of his father's "All-American" family. And then once again, he was a freak.
"You're really not American, are you Kaede?"
Of course not. He had lived in Japan his whole life. Of course he had adopted a Japanese lifestyle and all else.
But then the vacation would end and he would return home, to the stares and the glares and...
He couldn't win with his mother's relatives either. Naturally, he had his father's American influence in his upbringing as well, and that didn't make him purely Japanese like them either.
But it was much worse with them.
He had blue eyes, foreigner's beauty. And while they bragged about him to their friends, keeping pictures of him in their wallets to show off, they kept their distance from him when he was actually around, like they were scared of him. The "foreign devil".
He didn't belong in either family. He was a freak of nature.
And that would have been alright had his own mother not treated him the same way...
Always dressing him up in the best clothes, taking pictures of him every chance she got, showing him off at parties, dragging him to modeling agencies...
But back then he was too young to understand what was happening to him and he reveled in the attention, eventually developing a very sharp sense of style...
One night, when he was younger, he had come home from a basketball celebration party or something, he couldn't quite remember exactly why he was dressed up, but by the time he got home his father was drunk as usual and had said, "Why are you dressed like that? You look like a boy-whore..."
As he got older, he purposely let his sense of style slide. Dressing down to avoid attracting attention to himself. Hiding himself.
Somewhere along the way, any sense of personality he had shut down as well.
And instead of chatting or hanging out with friends like most kids his age, he now preferred to put his head down in between his arms, closing his eyes, a clear message for everyone to just back off.
It was surprising how many chose to ignore that message.
Maniacal fan girls that just kept coming at him no matter how many times he slapped them down. Like they actually enjoyed being ignored, rejected, treated like they were nothing more than dust.
Like that somehow made him all the more desirable.
Pathetic.
But then again, not all of them were. Some of them had enough brains to know that looks just weren't enough to cut it, not enough to get past his coldness and his lack of personality. And they all would've put him in the discard pile if it wasn't for the fact that besides his good looks, he also had one great talent...
He was amazing at basketball. One of the best.
And he knew it. But not in a conceited way. He simply knew what he was capable of on the court. Silly compliments from cheering fans were nothing to him. He knew when he was playing well or not.
And he knew how he lost himself on the court... Everything in his life fading away as he played. Solely concentrated on the game. His one love. Basketball.
Nothing could touch that.
Not even...
Damn.
There it was again.
Had a good look?
Vulture.
God he hated that.
Every time it happened it made his skin crawl. Made him feel like he wanted to take off this body that he was wearing and set it on fire...
But as he passed his reflection in the shop window, instead of punching the glass in as he would've liked to, he gave himself a discreet once over to make sure everything was in order.
Because no matter how much he tried to deny it to himself, somehow he still wanted to look... at least decent.
Maybe, in the end, he really was vain.
Maybe that's what all the attention had done to him...
Fuck human perception.
Why couldn't they just let him be?
He hated them all.
But most of all...
He hated himself.
~ owari
A/N: ammended summary comes from a point la tensai brought up in her review; that it doesn't take something extreme like molestation or rape to mess with someone's personality. thanks tensai, for making sense out of this.
May 3 '02