The Dark Side of "Prodigy"
by Cyberchao X

CCX: You might have noticed that this fic had been up before, was taken down, and is now returning. I'll explain at the end of the fic.

Warning: This fic delves further into personal territory than I ever expected to delve. It all started when, a few nights before writing it, I had a Katawa Shoujo-based dream that had me kicking around a self-insert fantasy for awhile (and while I lack anything that could truly be considered a disability, I've certainly got plenty that's wrong with my body, most notably that no matter how much I eat or how little I exercise, I not only fail to get fat but instead continue to look borderline anorexic). Not something I'd ever consider writing as a fanfic—self-inserts in fanfiction are despicable. But (since Emi was the girl in my dream, and thus the one "I" had ended up with) it eventually came to a time to address the darker side of the similarities I perceive between myself and Rin. Obviously I'm loathe to divulge all of the details…but then again, I doubt my classmates really got all the details so I think this should work.

Hisao and Emi had spent the previous night together and were headed out to their usual morning runs. "I just had a thought," Hisao said, when I'd asked him if something was wrong.

"Yes?"

"How's Rin doing?"

"She seems fine. Why do you ask?"

"I overheard her in a discussion with the art teacher. He called her a "prodigy". Just…just wanted to make absolutely sure that Rin isn't overworking herself. She's my friend too, after all."

I sighed. "Rin does that. She's kind of obsessive when she gets in one of her artistic moods."

"Yeah, well…I saw something, back in my old school, that disturbed me quite a bit, and I'm afraid I could see it again with someone even closer to me, and closer still to you. This was about five years ago—my first year of junior high. One of my classmates was just this little boy, at least two years younger than the rest of us. Had a tendency to space out, much like Rin does, but he was so naturally brilliant that it didn't matter; he was at or near the top of the class in spite of being two years too young. I didn't know him that well, but as a fellow scientist, we sort of got acquainted. Once we moved to bigger projects, though—essay papers and such—it started to overwhelm him. One day when we're all given time to work on our individual projects, he's asking the teacher for help, and then suddenly he's got these pipe cleaners wrapped around his neck in a really pathetic attempt at strangulation."

"'Really pathetic' meaning…"

"Oh, it failed, of course; I think he freaked himself out, because he was all too quick to undo his damage as soon as it started being painful. But it, and more importantly the words he cried out: 'I just want to be normal!', was enough to alert the adults in his life that starting junior high two years in advance was a bad idea. I think he ended up getting private tutoring once they made sure that he wasn't actually a suicide risk. But there's one thing that reminds me of Rin's situation, even more than their general demeanors being oddly similar. Any time anyone asked him about being two years ahead of children his own age, they almost inevitably said, 'Wow, you must be some kind of genius, huh?' And his response was always, 'Well, I don't know about that…I'm definitely very smart, but I don't think I'm a genius.' The first time I heard it, it seemed like humility. But the more I heard him give that line, the more it felt like he really resented that label, and would've been happier with children his own age, likely the top student by far, than having to deal with the expectations of someone older than himself. It was like 'genius' was a dirty word to him."

"And you're worried that 'prodigy' could be Rin's 'genius'?" I asked. Hisao nodded. "You busy after school? Something like this takes precedence over getting in our morning run, if we run harder in the afternoon.

"Fine by me."

CCX: The full details for how the pipe cleaners worked into it would require visual aids, but yes, minus the "being sent off for private tutoring" part (as I was quickly reintegrated into my own school, still two years ahead), that seemed like a reasonably good idea of how my breakdown back in seventh grade would've looked in the eyes of one of my classmates. I like this idea better than having a self-insert tell the unabridged story, as it allows me to share the basic premise without having to go into all of the details of that day, since I often try to forget it since I don't think I was seriously planning to do anything to myself. But it was a warning sign.

On the flipside, Hisao doesn't get to wear the pipecleaner bracelet when confronting Rin the way Self-Insert-kun would've.

"Rin? Rin, are you feeling alright?" I asked.

"'m Fine!"

'You are not," Hisao said harshly.

"What do you care? Go have fun with your girlfriend!

"You're my friend, too! And even if you weren't, you're my girlfriend's best friend. If you're not happy, she won't be happy. And if she's not happy…We're all not happy."

"I'm fine. I need to feel. Emi's fussing doesn't make me feel."

"Happiness is a feeling!" I interject.

"So it is, but it's not one that I'm good at."

Started this when drunk as well as it being late. Thought better of it in morning.

On second thought…might be able to make this work.

The Dark Side of "Prodigy"
by Cyberchao X

You're probably wondering why I'm here. It's not exactly simple, because depending on how you look at it, there's nothing wrong with me…or everything wrong with me.

The "official" reason why I'm here is something a lot of people would kill for, but it's not so great in reality. First, let me say a bit about myself. I'm an American, and like many Americans, I eat large quantities of junk food and exercise very little, or at least I did. You've probably got an image in your head now, something about the rising threat of childhood obesity? Yeah, well, while I did repulse people at summer camp when they saw me without my shirt on, it wasn't the rolls of fat that repulsed them—it was the visible ribcage. I'm 5'10" and maybe 110 lbs.—sorry, I should probably convert that to metric. 176 cm and 50 kg, if I'm converting correctly. No matter how much I eat, I can't seem to gain any weight. It's probably pretty unhealthy. Also results in a lot of chronic joint pain, which is usually a minor nuisance when it's the extremities, and even the knees aren't usually a huge deal. Pretty annoying when it's my neck, though. Trying to straighten that out can be painful. I should probably try to start exercising more; maybe muscle will stick where fat couldn't.

But that's not why I'm here.

Hold on, it gets worse.

I also have ADHD. That's not something that they send you to Yamaku for, but it's relevant to my situation in a couple of ways. For starters, one of the side effects of the medication I take for it is a reduced appetite. Last thing I need, right? Except I never really noticed that side effect. Then I got older, and the amount of time that I'd be awake increased, and inevitably there'd be some time when I was awake and unmedicated. And suddenly it became obvious that my medication was suppressing my appetite—and my body had compensated by increasing it to an absolutely ludicrous level. Now I pretty much need the medication as an appetite suppressant. Because when I don't have my medication, I start getting really ravenous. Even when I'm full. It's quite confusing, your body sending out conflicting signals, that it is both extremely hungry and extremely full. The first few times it happened, I did the natural thing and listened to the "hungry" signal. Then I vomited. Now I know that when I get those conflicting signals, I have to ignore my natural instincts and refuse to feed my hunger.

But that's not why I'm here.

ADHD is classified as a learning disability, and it is, but for some reason we often tend to be very smart. And was I ever. A "genius", they called me. I never called myself that. Most people just thought I was being humble, but every time someone called me a genius and I said, "Well, I'm definitely very smart, but I wouldn't say I'm a genius," I honestly believed the words coming out of my mouth. The teachers wanted to move me far, far ahead, but my parents at least had the sense to limit them—if nothing else, the social aspects of speeding me through school could be disastrous. But gradually, I was moved two grades ahead. It was shortly after the integration had been completed—a 5th grader in 7th grade by our American standards; it would make me a first-year junior high student here—that I broke down. And thanks to the ADHD, I did an impulsive thing.

It hurt, a little. Not too much, though; as soon as the pain started, I backed off, because it was an impulsive action.

I don't even consider what I did that day to be a suicide attempt. But my mom does.

After that, I was pulled out of school. Allowed to move at a gradual pace, eventually sliding back to the same point where the other kids my age were. But I'd lost the ability to interact with others properly, so in order to help me integrate back into society…here I am.

I guess that's the reason I came here. But I'm not sure if that's still the reason why I'm here.

The reason why I'm here now is because of her.

In many ways, we are the same. We both think strange thoughts, and neither of us are very good at expressing ourselves vocally. We're both unflinchingly blunt and tactless at times—I find her honesty refreshing, and I think she feels the same way about me, though I'm never completely sure what she's thinking. And we both tend to space out in class, observing everything and nothing.

In other ways, we're very different. She's a dreamer, who expresses herself via art. I'm a thinker, who expresses himself via the written word. But it's another disturbing similarity that keeps me from letting her go.

I've heard the art teacher refer to her as a "prodigy". It's another one of those dirty words like "genius", words that are meant to be utmost praise but really just mean that we're expected to act like adults far before our time. Do they even realize how much pressure that is to put on a kid? Of course they don't. That's why I always blanched at being called a genius. Not just because I didn't believe I was one. Because I didn't want to be one.

And when I look in her eyes, I see that same pain that I felt back then. I don't want her to go through that.

I didn't have anyone who understood what I was going through. But I understand what she's going through. I can be there for her.

That's why I'm here.

CCX: Here's the dark side of this story.

This narrator is by far the most blatant self-insert I've ever written.

Paragraph 10 is a complete lie, of course, done to help facilitate getting this fictionalized version of myself into Yamaku and, you know, not two years younger than all of his classmates. In reality, I was actually back in school the next day, and did graduate high school at age 16, two years younger than all of my classmates.

Paragraph 9? Stone cold truth.

I actually conceived this fic a few days before writing it, originally a lot more detailed. Ended up writing down something less detailed than the original idea, then woke up the next morning and decided that when looking at it again when I was sober, even that was too much in the way of getting personal.

But I couldn't let it go. So I reworked it again, with even fewer details. Because Rin's story really moved me, and I wanted to make sure that the message was received. I love Rin, because I am Rin. Kind of. Except really I'm Cyberchao X. (I have noticed however that I've been thinking more like Rin ever since I played her route, though.)

Here's an even darker side. This fic was originally published in June of 2012. In March of 2013, that hesitation that I'd alluded to turned to doubt. Should I really be getting this personal? Here? But a couple of days ago, something changed that.

As the rare few of you who actually read Birth of a Legend might have realized, I'm also a regular on GameFAQs' Board 8. Three months ago, shortly after I deleted this fic the first time, a longtime member of the community committed suicide. He had written a topic saying he was leaving the board about a week before he killed himself, and I didn't even realize that he was dead until probably some time in April, because I hadn't really gotten that close to my fellow B8ers.

That wasn't what got the board mobilizing about being honest with each other. This was. Two days ago, at a time that the board was seemingly riding high-E3 in full bloom, a new contest having just been announced for the first time in over a year (and over two years if you don't count the hated Rivalry Rumble)-a user with the username Emporer_Kazbar made a topic declaring that he was "done". I didn't actually read the topic, only finding out about its contents after the fact. ...People who forgot about time zone differences thought that it was a hoax, that he had seen the newspaper article and pretended to be the person in it because the topic had been made at around 6 PM and the article said the man had jumped at around 4. It was no hoax. He had posted his suicide note to the internet, likely from a smart phone, and then jumped off the roof of a public library to his death. GameFAQs policy had the suicide note taken down, but at the time of this posting, there are still other topics in which he had posted that have yet to purge. In posts made just a day before he killed himself, he was talking in a way that suggested every expectation that he'd be around for the foreseeable future. None of us ever thought that he might be suicidal. Once we digested what had happened, suddenly a number of us were talking about our own depression, even if it hadn't been clinically diagnosed as such. We all wanted to be open with each other so that we wouldn't have to go through this again. And I realized, even as I told them many of the same things I've told all of you in this story, that I've always just been hiding. I "relish" the anonymity that the Internet can provide because it allows me to operate without fear of being judged, and the fact that it was starting to become more and more likely that this account could be connected to me, I got scared and took down this fic, and I had never really opened up to them, either. My longtime readers probably know more of me just from my A/Ns than Board 8 does. So I decided that I have to be totally honest, and that meant re-posting this fic.

I mentioned the username of the more recent B8 suicide because I'm dedicating this fanfiction to his memory. This is Cyberchao X, signing off.