The Chaos Factor

1st April 2009
Series: The Chaos Factor
Summary: Doumeki Shizuka is a kyuudo instructor at Tokyo University. He has led and expected to lead a quiet and uneventful life. Then the school crèche reopens with a new head carer and Shizuka bids his 'quiet and uneventful life' a fond goodbye.
Warnings: Prologue background; no dialogue.

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Doumeki Shizuka has led a quiet and uneventful life.

Actual learning at school had been punctuated by kyuudo club and competitions, the monotony interrupted by confessions and assorted offerings of lunch boxes. The girls took his replies terribly. The few boys did seem surprised he wasn't insulted by what they'd just told him, and managed to smile or nod to him in the halls afterward despite the rejection; guys always seemed a lot more resilient.

Each year in mid February he ended up with more chocolate than he knew what to do with.

He never accepted them himself but they just showed up in his shoe locker or on his desk –what was he supposed to do, leave them there? Each pretty parcel or box came accompanied by lovely little cards filled with carefully-inscribed selfish words conveying either all the things he didn't need to know or unrealistically inconsiderate expectations –all of which he didn't particularly feel inclined to return. After a time, no one really expected him to reciprocate since he never did.

Later in the day, the yearly bagful of the chocolate would appear in the kitchen at home.

This was partially because there was no where else for it to go but mostly because he found it vastly amusing to listen to his grandmother and mother squabble over who would get which boxes for what tea party they were having with their respective friends. His grandmother, particularly, seemed to have a whole slew of little old biddy tea parties every third week of February, for the entire week. If the sweets lasted until the end of the month, then they considered it a good hoard.

Her delighted cackles made him smile.

At high school graduation, he'd had to hide a little to not be swamped with uniform buttons and neck-ribbons. Not that hiding had worked. He'd gone home to cackling from his mother and his grandmother at the pocketfuls of buttons from the boys and neck-ribbons from the girls; all given in the traditional manner to the one they 'liked' and would bring fond memories of into their college life.

Apparently, he'd become the universal One That Got Away.

He'd had to put those away in a shoe box under his bed. He couldn't just throw them out, even if he didn't understand the thoughts behind them one bit. His grandfather had once told him that object given sincerely, with belief infused in them, held power. And he was no idiot.

These things could be important later.

College had been rather better, with so many more students and therefore bigger crowds. Yet somehow, despite not really talking to anyone save for the folks he got paired up with study groups or group projects and the rest of the kyuudo team, he drew attention. It might have had something to do with his continued kyuudo success but even if it was, he wouldn't have given up the beloved sport just to be rid of the multitude of watching eyes.

He didn't have a regular desk save for first period class… and that got covered over with parcels every mid-February as well. As did his locker. It always made him sigh. At least the chocolates were a little better quality since some of his admirers actually held jobs. He did miss a few of those home-made ones, though, especially since some of his high school classmates had been good at cooking.

Thing about college, however, the quality of admiration and efforts of enticement had changed drastically, too. Instead of stuttering hesitating confessions, he got flirting and hair tosses or mischievously glinting eyes. Instead of being stared at from a distance, he got blatant gazes sliding deliberately up and down over his body. Instead of blushes and accidental touches, he got confident caresses and deliberate closeness.

He supposed age made them a little more daring.

Shizuka did not expect graduation would be the end of it. If anything, he decided everything up to that point had been preparation for the real world. Because in a professional environment, everyone watches everyone else and this is why gossip exists. It is inevitable; a kind of fate, he might say.

He's a kyuudo instructor now.

After winning the nationals every year he competed while in college and claiming gold in the ASEAN Games, Tokyo University offered him a position to lead their kyuudo program. It was common and regretful knowledge in sporting circles he would not compete again after leaving school because he had only competed at the extreme prodding and bull-headed insistence of his college coach.

The gi and hakama are daily wear, which is nice because he has never been much for modern western clothes. Journalists come to talk to him about his students, his students all beg for more training sessions, and the rest of the faculty try to get him to share a meal or…well, something.

And every one of the staff pretend nothing is out of the ordinary when every mid-February his staff desk is covered in pretty parcels and boxes. The expressions of sentiment are much more creative but not more interesting; it's all the same sentiments re-worded prettily but no less selfishly. His shoe locker gets filled with the more common variety he'd been receiving all through college, the sorts more appropriate to a student's budget. Naturally, he still ends up with more chocolate than he knows what to do with.

He suspects his grandmother's cronies are happier the yearly third-week-of-February teas are accompanied by even higher quality sweets since he started working.

All in all, life is sedate and quiet… until the crèche opens and the school hires one Watanuki Kimihiro to head it.

Shizuka had heard all the usual platitudes: quiet, polite, well-mannered and good looking.

Quiet? All he'd done was accidentally step on a small toy one child had dropped, and the kid had made more noise with his cries than even Watanuki-san could while telling him off.

Polite? The spastic young man had called him an idiot and a Teflon-face, had insulted Shizuka's calm expression and told him to leave the little children alone because he frightened them

Well-mannered? The entire rant had been accompanied by waving hands, tearing of hair and hopping up and down with ire.

Well.

Even the "good looking" hadn't done Watanuki-san any justice. The young man was… well… breathtaking. Pale ivory skin, flashing blue eyes, flushed cheeks, expressive features, honest body and telling behaviour. Those poisonous words are as light, weightless with insincerity, and the furious expression had not at all disguised his horror at the accident's effect on the young child or the wealth of compassion he displayed. Watanuki had smiled at the little boy eventually, promised to fix the toy and return it.

And watching Watanuki's reaction to the child's hopefull joy, Doumeki Shizuka suddenly found he had made a decision. With all the calm he usually displays, gives a sigh and thinks he might as well kiss leading a quiet and uneventful life a fond goodbye.

Watanuki Kimihiro is much more interesting anyway.

TBC?