Fandom: Gravitation
Title: Toumei na fuku (Transparent clothing.)
Rating: PG
Description: Who is the person we now know as Sakuma Ryuichi? Insights of his high school life.

Disclaimer: Gravitation isn't mine.

Toumei na fuku. (Transparent clothing.)
By miyamoto yui

Part 1 - jibun. (myself.)

Do I really belong here?

I go to this private school where all the uniforms are the same. All the seats are the same black color and they have the same square shape. Even all the hair styles seem the same, except for the occasional girl with different things put into her hair.

I can't stand it. I can't take any more of this popular stupidity like idols that can't sing or protesting that kills people when they're saying moral things. That's why I transform back into myself as soon as school is done. Once I'm finished and out of the campus, I run as far as I can.

I change my clothes and I can breathe again.

I hate the conformity.
I feel like a gay guy that lives two different lives. Here, I'm just "passing". I don't want to be here, but I have to get through because I'm told to. This is just the pattern of life that everyone's comfortable with, I guess.

School is all right and I do well in it, but there's something more I need to know. If this is supposed to simulate "real life" outside, then what am I supposed to do? This isn't life to me. And it isn't because I'm bored.

I don't feel like "myself" here. I've not found that person that's trying to pierce himself through the mirror. Every morning, when I look in the mirror, I see my past, my present, and my future.

But who is it that I'm looking at?

I can stay here for always in this "system". I can do well, go to a good university, and get a good job.
But who is to say what is "good"? That's what they teach me as I sit here in my desk.

But I want to throw it all up. I always have.

In some way, I rebel with my own methods. I play by "their rules", but I live and act on "mine". I have to know what exists and then I have to defy it. It's the only way I know how to breathe. It's the only way I want to live.

Someday, I'll leave here. And when I come back, I'll look different, but my heart will be the same. It will only get stronger and firmer as the years grow on in number. More vulnerable too. It's a risk I must take though.

How will I ever learn to fly if I don't know how to fall?

"Sakuma-kun, is there something so interesting that you cannot grace us with your attention?" my English sensei, Yoshimura-sensei, says to me with a tinge of sarcasm that doesn't go unnoticed by my ears or the rest of my classmates. They laugh and snicker at my supposed folly.

I turn my head gracefully from the window and put my hand down on my desk. I fold my two hands one over the other.
He says I should recite the sentences in front of me while my book isn't even open. He hasn't told me the page either.
I smile and I answer in perfect English, "Where are you going? What will you do? That is a question that only I can answer."

I hit it on the target and insulted him. Little by little, I will win the battles that are thrown out to me. But I know the war is ultimately inside of myself. I just don't know how or what to deal with it yet, so I have to equip myself.

He clears his throat and glances at me with slight scorn. Then, he moves onto the next victim.

I smile widely and want to stick out my tongue at him, but I'm too good for that. Instead, I silently lean my chin on my palm again and stare outside of the window.
And I know what that translates to too, Yoshimura-sensei.

I can't wait for the bell to ring. Except, it's not like I'm free once it does. I just move from one building to another. School to home. Home to school.

The cycle never stops and I am tired of it all.

I promised myself, though. I'll become somebody.

I'll become the person I want to be, and not the way I'm prescribed to be. And certainly not the way anyone wants to mold me.

Yes, someday, I will be free,

whomever that person is

residing deep inside of me.

Tsuzuku… / To be continued…

Tuesday, October 5, 2004