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Learning to Land	By : Suteishichic Category: Prince of Tennis/Tennis no Ohjisama > General Views: 11419 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Prince of Tennis (Tennis no Ohjisama), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 34
- 35
- 36
Learning to Land. Chapter Thirty Five ~Oshitari~

Warnings: Yaoi, Love, Angst, Fluff, and Lots of Sex. Some kink. You've been warned ;)

Disclaimer: Nope not mine. Still in my dreams. ;)

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"Fine! Be that way! Stupid Yuushi!" Gakuto screamed at his new roommate Oshitari Yuushi their first night in their new shared room. Yuushi was very tired, painfully aroused, and feeling markedly emotional. It was late and it had been a fairly long day. The new Freshman and the sad romantic tale they had discovered of him losing his best friend and love was still affecting the tensai. Yuushi wondered if it could possibly be affecting Gakuto as well but then dismissed the thought as impossible. Gakuto to Yuushi's dismay didn't have a romantic bone in his very gorgeous, very beloved body.

Yuushi was amused and once more astounded by the way the moving system at Hyoutei worked. Like a colony of ants or drone worker bees at their queen's command, the mindless masses marched. Each tennis club player who was not a regular or a sub-regular worked through one room at a time until everyone was relocated. They took apart everything as they went and each guy carried away as much as he could, dropping off items to the new room's owner and picking up the things of the guy they were moving out. Everything was precise and ordered, though you did still stay in your new room to oversee that none of your things were accidentally stolen, tampered with, or delivered to the room of the guy you were replacing. It was a highly polished and well co-ordinated effort that happened many times over the course of a year as people were dropped or favored. Yuushi thought if they could just rent the team out, they could make a fortune moving people across the city, and all they needed was one strong queen bee leading. They had that in Atobe Keigo. Not only was Atobe strong and attractive, but he reveled in the power the adoring masses all plugged into the hive-mind lavished upon him. Atobe fed off the idolization of all his drones buzzing around him constantly. It was a perfect symbiotic relationship. The masses needed someone like Atobe to worship and Atobe needed the masses to worship him.

Both Yuushi and Gakuto were brought into the fold of Atobe's favorite sub-regulars very early in their Freshman year so while they each had been moved, neither one of them had been among the drones doing the actual moving. The first time Yuushi was moved he was placed in a single bedroom within a suite shared with Taki and Sato. It had happened right when Sato confessed his love of Taki in front of everyone. In front of Gakuto who looked at that moment as if someone had stabbed him in the back right through his heart. The usually piquant and saucy jester unexpectedly looked like he was going to be violently ill.Gakuto seemed so dumbstruck and utterly devastated that Yuushi's heart went out to him.To the extent that when Atobe inquired sarcastically, "Anyone else have any love confessions to get off their chests or can we resume practice now?" and everyone laughed, Yuushi astonished even himself when he raised his hand. "Yes?" Atobe asked and seemed highly amused. Yuushi knew by now however, Atobe was not amused. He was not amused at all. In fact the Vice-Captain was extremely exacerbated and a short step away from punishing anyone who dared say anything that did not entertain and amuse him immediately.

The tensai had adjusted his glasses, surveyed the scene, and said the only thing that came to his quick mind. He needed to divert the attention away from Sato and Taki before Gakuto fell to pieces. Yuushi took a deep breath and said slowly so everyone could hear, "Atobe, I'd like to make my intentions clear. I am interested in a romantic relationship with you." Atobe had smiled and responded very pleased and seemingly intrigued at that point. Yuushi ignored the catcalls and jokes that everyone made towards him and considered that distraction a bonus as well. For even Gakuto seemed to recover enough to whisper to Yuushi something along his usual lines of what an idiot Yuushi was, and that was all that mattered. Gakuto even though his heart was crushed was able to finish out practice that day.

Yuushi did like Atobe and respected him both as a tennis player and as a Vice-Captain, but he had no romantic feelings for him other than perhaps he thought at most, Atobe might be fun for sex. Atobe was physically attractive and confident enough that he seemed as if he would make a nice sex friend and nothing more. In fact, Yuushi at that time believed he had no romantic feelings for anyone. The tensai had even wondered if he had it in him to feel romantic love towards anyone or if falling in love, romantic love, was only for the weak of mind. It was possible that Yuushi was too intelligent to fall for the myth of love.

Romantic love when you looked at it objectively seemed as much an impossibility and a myth to placate the masses as the existence of god or a free and peaceful utopian society, and yet while Yuushi could logically deny its existence, love fascinated him. He could not help but wonder if it was perhaps not an abstract concept after all. The tensai even postulated that perhaps the masses were actually not intelligent enough to actually experience love. Certainly most people did not get love right. If you looked at most romantic relationships they were a mess of mismatched people lying to each other and yet desperate to stay together even if they both were unhappy. Yuushi's parents professed to be in love, yet he knew his father had several affairs and mistresses over the years. Yuushi's childhood tutor until he died had said he was in love with the tensai. He had from a young age introduced Yuushi to many sexual pleasures, and yet Yuushi knew that he did not ever feel anything for the man but a sense of shame and embarrassment.The tensai also considered and could not dismiss the possibility that perhaps he was too damaged to feel romantic love. It was certainly feasible.

Yuushi had been declared a prodigy just before he turned three years old. His parents had decided they wanted their gifted son to remain in regular school so that his social development continued normally. It was important to them that Yuushi have as normal a childhood as possible. So he attended a regular school but they provided a highly recommended tutor to filthier brilliant child's vast eager mind with the knowledge their son adored and craved. Yuushi had an eidetic memory, the ability to process new information at an astonishing rate, and a very special ability to apply that new information in new and interesting ways. His parents were very proud and his tutor was an accomplished expert in a variety of subjects. After meeting young Yuushi, the man put aside all his other students to begin the formidable challenge of teaching him.

Yuushi has always found it interesting that although he has a photographic memory, he cannot precisely recall certain details yet others are crystal clear. If he reads any passage or text he will always remember it. If he views a photograph he will be able to always give exact details of everything within it. He can tell in exact detail every step and hit of every tennis game he has ever played in. Yet he cannot recall when it was that his tutor first started kissing him and touching him inappropriately. He is sure though that it started sometime just after his tutor moved in, around when he was three years old. He cannot remember the first time, only the feelings of wanting it to stop and then he doesn't remember details, only that it never did. It confounds the tensai that as a result too often when something emotional happens to him, he cannot clearly remember it as he can facts or figures from a book or a photograph. It still sometimes feels as if the entire thing happened to someone else and the tensai watched it all occur to that little boy from far away.

Although he attended regular school, Yuushi was rather isolated as a child. He was always aware of the reasons for his being separate and different from the other students. He was in the accelerated classes so there were fewer students around him.The tensai was more intelligent than everyone else and did more independent studies on his own than follow a class plan. The other students would study for the tests and he would never have to. They would prepare for an exam and he would be distracted working ahead on a project that was on a university level. There were further differences. His family was very wealthy. His sister was significantly older than he, his father was a very busy doctor, and his mother was busy with various charities and social requirements. He had many friends and got along with everyone but he was not part of the main popular cliques. He really didn't have a circle of friends so much as everyone he met or knew was his acquaintance.

Save one. Yuushi's tutor was his closest friend and almost sole companion. Only with his tutor could Yuushi fully exercise his mind with conversation on a stimulating and intellectual level he was comfortable at. With all the other students, and for nearly everyone else,the tensai constantly had to dumb himself down so that it perpetually felt as if he was making small talk. It was taxing to keep up inane conversations about what you were doing for your school science project. The other children were making batteries out of potatoes to light a small bulb and Yuushi was theorizing a new element on the periodic table. It was mind numbingly dull to try to keep things on an even keel with those around him in school.

It was easier to be around someone who intellectually was on his level. His tutor was only 25 when they met. He was also known for being brilliant and was from a similar family background. Because of this he seemed to understand Yuushi and his feelings of separation. His tutor had also grown up feeling apart from everyone else, and even more so for his tutor had attended university at the age of fifteen. Interestingly because his tutor had little experience with other people his own age, Yuushi found he was often more socially mature than his tutor who had few relationships in his life. There was a time when Yuushi thought the reason his tutor pursued him sexually and emotionally was because he was lonely and Yuushi seemed available.

Eventually, even that changed. Yuushi attended his tutor's wedding when he was seven years old to a woman he was set up with by his parents. It was a good match on paper but young Yuushi was appalled and confused by the lie it really was. His tutor swore vows in front of everyone he knew and the night before promised Yuushi how nothing between them would change. If anything, it was Yuushi's fondest hope at that time that things would change, that their relationship would now be only a friendship,and that his tutor's vows and marriage would be the new reality. His hopes were in vain because nothing changed. If anything, his tutor seemed proud that now he could hide behind being married and their secret relationship and the things they did together could go on unabated.

The only time Yuushi did not see his tutor was when he had tennis. His tutor did not like sports and in fact had protested to Yuushi's parents that a child with Yuushi's intelligence should not risk any injury by playing a stupid sport. Yuushi's parents had insisted however that Yuushi be well rounded so he remained in tennis. They believed it was important that Yuushi be a young boy first and a young genius second. They felt he needed to run and play as much as learn and study.

Yuushi found that liked the game. It was challenging. Even more so when he discovered that sometimes, even if a player wasn't as intelligent as he was, their instincts,physical strength,and skill level were sometimes high enough that for Yuushi to beat them was an intriguing challenge. Yuushi soon liked tennis better than any other game, even chess with his tutor, because sometimes in tennis, even though he was more practiced and more intelligent than his opponent, Yuushi lost. The first time it happened Yuushi was astonished and then as he put the pieces together, he discovered he was even more enthralled. The more Yuushi's tutor protested him playing tennis the more Yuushi was drawn to the game. Now he understood he had wanted an escape but tennis was always more than just an addicting escape for him. It became his passion.

The more he fell in love with tennis, the less Yuushi wanted to see his tutor. He wanted to be like other kids and did not want this deplorable, pathetic, lying adult holding him back or dragging him down anymore. He had no idea how to begin to tell his parents but Yuushi wanted out. For years. Finally, Yuushi in a childish temper tantrum at around nine or ten years old told his tutor that if he really loved him he would stop lying and leave his young wife and child. By that point, Yuushi had been around other students enough to know that what his tutor and he did was not normal. They never had sex but had come very close and Yuushi was surprised to discover he was the most sexually experienced boy in his school. Surprised and ashamed because he had all this experience he did not want and no way to begin to share it or tell it to anyone around him. It made him feel further alone. Yuushi knew no one could ever know and he resented his tutor even more than ever. His parents had stressed how much like everyone else, like a normal boy, they wanted Yuushi to be and his tutor had done much to make that impossible. Yuushi wanted it to stop and could not logically understand how someone who said he loved him could do those things to a child.

Yuushi knew he did not love the man. He didn't love him and he didn't trust him no matter what he did or said. Yuushi wanted out. He first tried to be too busy to see him but his tutor thought up of new ways for them to meet. He even started threatening to pick Yuushi up at school or even tell his parents he was having problems when he wasn't. Yuushi wanted things to end and he felt as if no matter how he tried to fix things so he saw him less, the adult would do whatever it took, including going behind Yuushi's back and lying to see him more. So finally Yuushi came up with a plan. He thought if he gave the guy an ultimatum to leave his family,his tutor would stop. The tensai mused that finally his tutor might even realize what they were doing was very wrong. That what he was doing was very wrong. Instead, without even seeming to hesitate, the man left his family for Yuushi. This both enraged and disgusted the child genius who finally, desperately, went to his parents and told them everything. His stunned parents of course immediately fired his tutor but it went worse than Yuushi ever imagined it would. His parents were extremely upset even at him for not telling them sooner and the ex-tutor went a little crazy to the extent that he actually made Yuushi and his family feel afraid of him.

It was the first time Yuushi saw someone respond once they knew. His parents responded so very poorly that Yuushi began to understand how very wrong what his tutor had done to him was. He began to understand how very wrong what he had done was. Yuushi's parents out of guilt or anger now looked at Yuushi completely differently. As if Yuushi was dirty and something they had to hide from everyone they knew. They went from being proud to so devastated that Yuushi was shocked. He not only lost the friendship he had with his tutor but he saw he lost the respect, pride, and love of his parents. Yuushi found he was more alone than ever. He regretted ever telling. He regretted ever meeting his tutor and any of his fond childhood memories turned into shameful ones. He was angry and felt abandoned and even more alone. Comforting himself with cold logic, Yuushi decided regrets would do him no good. He decided to never have them again.

His parents said they were concerned for his safety, and sent him away for the entire next year to school in Europe. He only returned after constantly begging his parents, when his ex-tutor seemed to give up and moved away. His family agreed to drop the charges against the man if he left them completely alone and for a time he seemed to comply. Yuushi realized they should have known the he was lying. He started bothering and watching Yuushi at his new school right after Yuushi returned home and settled in.Yuushi's new school was an accelerated one that only the elite and the invited were allowed to attend. Yuushi's parents now knew he was never going to be like other normal boys so they decided to stop treating him like one. Still, Yuushi was home. He had known many of the other students since kindergarten, his tutor was for the most part out of his life, at the very least he was out of his bedroom at night, and so Yuushi was happier there. His school informed his parents about his former tutor the day he appeared and begged Yuushi to speak to him in the middle of the hallway with everyone watching. Yuushi was mortified and told the man to leave him alone.In an angry tearful yell he told his tutor he wished he had never met him. He told him he had ruined his life.

Yuushi never saw the man again. He hoped his former tutor had finally understood but lived daily looking over his shoulder and expecting something to happen knowing it was a matter of time before it did again. Time passed and nothing happened. Yuushi hoped the man had finally moved on.Yuushi hoped if nothing else then man really cared enough to let him go. He didn't. Yuushi later learned his hopes were again childish and unrealistic. The man had actually left behind a long note not unlike the one the Freshman's best friend and lover had and his former tutor then left the world in much the same way. His tutor in the letter blamed Yuushi for everything of course.

Yuushi only discovered this about a year later and the suicide surprised him as much as Yuushi's own lack of emotional response did. The man had been Yuushi's closest companion and lover for nearly his entire life and yet he felt nothing. Yuushi was not even angry the sick guy blamed him for everything.Yuushi felt detached and again as if he had watched it all happen to someone else. He felt sorry for his former tutor's family and himself, but Yuushi was in a large way mostly relieved it was over with no chance for the guy to bother him ever again. He could stop waiting for the next physical or emotional assault. He could stop looking over his shoulder. He could stop worrying. Yuushi felt for the first time in a long time safe.

He continued to love tennis, he continued to love school, and he continued to love learning but he seriously wondered if due to his intelligence or what he went through if he lacked the capability to love. Yuushi had found affection and companionship in the girls and boys who attended his new school but always they liked him far more than he liked any of them. Feeling sad and isolated, he wondered if he was cold or lacking in some way and supposed to be alone. He also wondered if his tutor had irreparably damaged him. If now perhaps Yuushi was so different and broken that he was now deficient.

Yuushi had traveled a long way to go to Hyoutei and he had not wanted to go. His father was a Hyoutei alumni and had insisted that this new change would be good for his son. So, despite all his many logical and vehement protests, when Yuushi finished his last semester in the accelerated student school, he was promptly sent away to being his Junior High and High School years at Hyoutei. He was away from his family, all his friends, and everything he knew. He tried to listen to his parents and make the best of this. He tried to treat this as an opportunity like they told him to but all he wanted was to go back home and have everything be the way it once was.

Logically, he knew he was trying to cling to his childhood and that growing up was inevitable. He even knew that what he wanted was a reality that he never even had, but logic the first day he arrived was little comfort.Yuushi again was different. He dressed different, he spoke with an accent, and everyone there seemed to already know each other. It was even worse than when he went to Europe to school because there he was an interesting new thing; at Hyoutei he was just another oddity in a school that worshiped similarity and the hive mind. Yuushi arrived a day later than the other students there early for club sand discovered everyone had already paired up and cliqued off. He alone was at his first tennis practice and had no one to warm up with. Mukahi Gakuto walked up to him with an angelic smile on his face and Yuushi remembers thinking maybe things would turn out all right.

Then Gakuto's smile turned into his now familiar smirk and he savagely lashed out at Yuushi with his vicious tongue. It had been all Yuushi could do to stand there and not cry like a little baby in front of everyone or hit him. Yuushi was not prone to violence but he had very much wanted to knock the smirk off the guy's face. Instead the tensai stood silent and shocked while inside he seethed and felt shattered. Everyone had laughed. Yuushi was in so much shock that even he smiled thinking that maybe if he did, the verbally abusive tirade would stop.It didn't. In fact, it seemed to encourage the bastard to continue. In desperation, Yuushi ended up hiding in logic and he went over prime numbers in his head while he waited for the lashing litany of his many flaws to cease.

It was true that until that day, Yuushi had never given his hair a second thought. He hadn't really cared how it looked. No one else seemed to mind. He had been popular in his old school even though he was mostly a loner. In fact he had been popular in all his previous schools and even had a very pretty girlfriend the last semester who never said anything except how handsome she thought he was. It was also true that until then Yuushi never thought about his clothes. He wore whatever his mother bought him or his school uniform. No one had ever said anything about his clothes before. Or his shoes. Or his braces. In fact, he had not even thought about his braces as anything other than a personal nuisance. A necessary evil. He didn't think about them at all other than he was scheduled to get them taken off after three years of painful agony wearing them the next trip he made home. He had seen other kids being made fun of in the past, sure, but he had never been made fun of before. Not like that. It hurt his feelings and his pride. Yuushi felt completely dejected and utterly alone.

He went through with his first practice and tried to lose himself in the new things he had to learn. If he dwelt on how hurt he was, he knew he would only end up crying in front of all the other guys and he knew that would be worse. He already knew his parents would not allow him to come home. They made it quite clear that they expected Yuushi to finish Junior High and High School at Hyoutei. Yuushi thought to himself that he knew coming to Hyoutei was a huge mistake. He walked back alone after practice to the relative safety of his dorm room. He was assigned a single and was told it was a privilege by another student earlier in the day as he moved his belongings in. Then another student had asked him which club he was there early for and Yuushi said tennis. The guy had looked at him surprised and said, "Oh, and you have a single? Damn, you must be really good. You're so lucky!" Then he had walked away leaving Yuushi there alone and confused about what he meant. It didn't feel lucky now. It felt like he was alone because no one wanted to be around him. As he tried again to not cry in front of anyone, someone roughly shoved him from behind.

"Hey." It was that evil Gakuto kid who had been so cruel. He looked at Yuushi annoyed and said, "You're not gonna cry or anything are you?" He looked disgusted like crying was the worst thing in the world someone could ever do.

"No." Yuushi said and tried to imitate his tone so that Gakuto knew Yuushi would never do something as stupid as cry.

Gakuto nodded once as if that was a good answer. He put his hand on Yuushi's arm, and stopped them walking. He dramatically looked left and right as if to make sure no one saw him talking to Yuushi, "Look, you're new here too, right? Well next time, don't make yourself such a huge target. You're asking for trouble. I went easy on you too...though that cell phone thing still cracks me up. That was a good one! I may have to use that one again!" Gakuto laughed and Yuushi laughed a little with him, still not completely understanding, but not wanting him to leave. "So, we're cool." Gakuto nodded again. Then the guy ran off so fast Yuushi felt a breeze blow by him in the guy's wake. He yelled back over his shoulder, "See you at dinner!"

Yuushi as he walked through the dorm paid particular attention to what everyone else wore. He knew it was not the best use of his intelligence or his memory but regardless, it suddenly mattered to him so he paid careful attention to everything. Color, size, fit, labels, names,things worn with their uniforms, shoes, shirts, accessories, he noted them and remembered it all. He went by the dining hall early and saw what the students hanging out were wearing. He had a little over two hours before it was time for the evening meal. He took the credit card his parents had given him in case he needed anything and headed to the nearby stores that catered to the elite Hyoutei kids.

His quick mind copied everything he saw anyone surrounded by other people wearing and he spent quite a lot of his parent's money. His family was well off but it was a large enough sum that he would have to inform his mother of it later. He returned to his room and sorted through his new belongings. Then Yuushi showered, tried to fix his hair so it didn't stick up like so much of a "bird's nest" as Gakuto earlier said, and carefully, conservatively re-dressed. His goal was to make it seem as if these were things he had owned forever so he took time to remove the signs of new shoes and take any store creases out. Then if he could have gotten pliers and removed his braces himself he would have. He seriously considered it and instead called around until he found a local orthodontist who could remove them the beginning of the next week. He took the appointment. Somewhat satisfied and curious to know if this experiment would work, he double checked how he looked and went down to dinner. He figured he had spent more time in the last few hours concerned about how he looked than he had his entire life combined.

He stood in line getting his food and he ordered what everyone else seemed to get although he would have preferred to try one of the other options available. Yuushi walked with his food and approached an empty seat next to Gakuto before the rest of the guy's friends had taken it. "Is this seat taken?" Yuushi asked and tried to keep his voice clipped and speak more rapidly than he was used to so his "stupid accent" was not as apparent. Gakuto shrugged and Yuushi took that to mean he could sit there. He sat down and asked Gakuto how the food was as Gakuto had also chosen the most popular selection. Gakuto responded by a carefully selected combination of curse words to describe the terrible taste and several people laughed. Yuushi included.

Just like that Yuushi was fascinated by him. He tried to get Gakuto to like him, or at least tolerate him but no matter what he did, the guy would push him away. Verbally and sometimes physically push him away, but whenever Yuushi thought he should give up this quest for Gakuto to be his friend, the guy would again surprise him by doing or saying something nice. Yuushi would have a tough practice and people would walk past snickering at him. Later when he thought he was alone, Gakuto would appear out of nowhere and say, "Good game," or, "Nice move," before continuing on his way.

Yuushi continued to try to be Gakuto's friend but he would then go back to pushing the tensai away. Hyoutei was extremely competitive Yuushi had discovered. As a tensai, he automatically did better in his classes than his fellow students, and was held up by his teachers as an example of a "good student". While he teachers thought this was a good thing, a motivating thing perhaps, it was in fact a nightmare for Yuushi to tolerate. The tensai honestly wondered if some of his teachers did it out of spite or jealousy caused by his perfect grades in their dull and uninteresting classes. Yuushi even started missing a question or two just to try to get them to stop but it didn't seem to help. Their praises sounded sarcastic and bitter. He wondered if they resented that he would move on and that next year there would be more students with empty heads for them to fill before they also left the teachers behind to go over the same things, in the same small rooms, year after year, day after day. The other students often resented the teachers praise of him and Yuushi tried to emulate Gakuto's humor to keep them appeased. It backfired horribly. Yuushi tried to make slight witticisms and puns as he often did to the delight of his fellow students at his accelerated school, however at Hyoutei all his humor attempts fell flat.

His only consolation was Gakuto delighted in making fun of his humor which seemed to endear Yuushi to everyone as Gakuto's favorite whipping boy. Something about the obnoxious and sharp tongued imp making fun of the quiet deadpan tensai struck everyone as the most comical spectacle they had ever seen. As long as Yuushi played perfectly his part of the obtuse straight man to Gakuto's acerbic shtick, everyone around them laughed, and even Gakuto seemed happy. This pleased Yuushi as well, although it often did confuse him as to why it brought him such joy to make Gakuto laugh.

Yuushi was fascinated by the idiosyncrasies and complexities that made up the world Mukahi Gakuto seemed to exist in. Yuushi had taken his research of the straight man role and turned it into researching Gakuto. That was when he discovered the horrible beating and savage rape Gakuto had suffered and almost not survived. Yuushi didn't have any personal details, he didn't know how Gakuto felt, how terrified he must have been, how much he must have cried, how much pain he suffered. All Yuushi had were just cold medical facts of his list of injuries after it happened. A fractured skull, a cerebral contusion, dislocated jaw, a ruptured eardrum, a broken nose, broken ribs, broken fingers, broken bones in both wrists and ankles, torn skin on his penis, a ruptured scrotum, anal and rectal tears, extensive bruising, lacerations, hematomas, and abrasions are just terrible sounding words. They don't describe the agony a child sustaining all those injuries would feel and Yuushi found himself spending hours online and in the library researching this trying to put together the emotions and details in his tensai mind.

Yuushi failed. He read countless stories of rape survivors and no matter how he tried, could not picture Gakuto in the role of the victim. He simply could not see those things happening to him. Yuushi found himself watching Gakuto closely and searching for some sign that this had occurred to him. At first, Yuushi thought he was mistaken. That this must have happened to someone else perhaps with the same name. Gakuto seemed so normal and so popular. He didn't seem traumatized at all. At least, not until you really looked.

Yuushi slowly realized instead that everything Gakuto did was to distance himself from any association of that happening to him. The information Gakuto bought and sold was to in some way try to control his own past from being discovered. His constant offense in attacking everyone around him first was really a vigilant defense keeping those that would attack him or discover what happened at bay. Gakuto had completely gotten over his traumatic experience from all outward appearances but if you knew what happened and then you closely watched him, you began to see cracks in his polished enamel surface and dents in his armor. Everyone incredibly bought into his persona of the loud, brash, funny guy who had no problems. If a situation came up that was difficult or uncomfortable for him to handle, Gakuto admirably squared his small shoulders, put on a smile, and attacked it or the person head on. He wasn't a happy or sunny guy, more like a sarcastic bastard who would tear into whoever was unlucky enough to be near him when he was in his usual foul mood. Yet, people wanted to be near him. People wanted to be liked by Gakuto, even though he didn't seem to really like anyone, still people wanted to be his friend.

Yuushi certainly wanted to be his friend too.He found the whole Gakuto mystique to be simply fascinating. Truly fascinating because defying logic, people nearly worshiped Gakuto. Girls and guys admired and respected him and his biting remarks as if it was a good thing to be told that you were ugly, and stupid, and many other cruel things. In some way, when Gakuto took the time to mock you, it meant you were in. Everyone usually laughed. Even the person being attacked also laughed as loud and hard as everyone else. When he had first arrived at Hyoutei, Yuushi's heart always broke a little bit for the guy or girl who was being made fun of. After all it had really hurt Yuushi when the first day he arrived, Gakuto marched up to him and viciously tore into him. But then afterwards, he saw Gakuto often was surprisingly nice when he thought no one else was looking. Yuushi like to think of him as a walking, talking oxymoron.

Yuushi didn't dare say that aloud to Gakuto who would not have enjoyed the pun. Not at all.

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Learning to Land