Chapter Text
Pain. Searing. Burning. Running through his veins, spreading through his body, devouring him whole. He can’t breathe. Can’t speak. The pain is consuming him. It’s all he can focus on. Pain. Searing. Burning.
He screams.
He collapses to the floor immediately after, cradling the right side of his face in his hands. Blood slips through the gaps in his fingers, painting the wood floor a bright crimson. It hurts. His entire body is trembling. Half of his vision is painted in a mix of black and red. He can’t tell if his eye is open or closed. It hurts. Blood continues seeping onto the floor as tears start to mix with it. He’s breathing now, in short, ragged breaths. It doesn’t feel like breathing. Every nerve in his body is focused in on the pain. The pain. It hurts so much.
“Let this be a lesson to you, boy.”
A sharp voice cuts through Sun Fei’s thoughts.
He looks up. He comes face to face with a figure towering over him, scorning him, looking at him with a mix of scorn and disgust.
“You will not tarnish the Red Chanpuru name any further. This is your family. This is where you belong.”
“Father--” Sun Fei chokes out before his head is forced to the ground, stepped on by the very person in question. He’s forced to let go of his right eye and his hands fall to either side of his head, palms down. He ends up in an uncomfortable bow, the ache from his eye still coursing through every muscle in his body. He lets out a cry of pain which is met with even more pressure on his head.
“Apologize.”
“I’m sorry--”
The way Sun Fei yells it out almost feels involuntary. His voice is rough as he responds, the pain from his eye still occupying his entire mind. He tries again to get his breathing under control. The smell of iron and pine fills his nose. He gags.
He doesn’t remember how long he stays in that position, eye bleeding onto the floor while he begs for forgiveness from his father. He doesn’t even remember being sent to the hospital, or the poor excuse his family makes up for his injured eye. He only remembers one thing, and it is a truth that will never change.
He belongs to Red Chanpuru. And he always will.
--
He “starts over” at a new school.
It’s sudden. He transfers over in the middle of the school year. The school in question is 2 hours away from home. It’s a small town. No one recognizes him.
This must be his parents’ intent, he assumes. No one knows him. No one knows what happened to his eye. There’s no pitying looks, no assumptions, nothing.
He’s being given a clean slate despite his past transgressions against the Red Chanpuru. He feels honored.
From now on he intends to act with dignity. Control his emotions. Play the part befitting of a Red Chanpuru officer. He will not let the second chance he’s been given go to waste.
During introductions the teacher gets his name wrong. “Suo Hayato,” she says. It’s the Japanese reading of his name. Sun Fei doesn’t bother correcting her. He simply takes his seat among the rest of his peers. Elegantly. Without a step out of place.
The teacher starts the lesson and Sun Fei begins to zone out. But only after a few minutes, he feels someone tap him on the shoulder.
He turns around to see a boy with black hair in a bowl cut. Plain face. Forgettable. He says his name but it immediately slips Sun Fei’s mind.
After brief pleasantries, the boy immediately asks “What happened to your eye?”
Subconsciously Sun Fei’s hand twitches, almost moving to touch the white eye patch covering his eye. As soon as he realizes what he’s doing, he stops.
He gives the boy a smile, turns around, and ignores him for the rest of the day.
--
This new school, Sun Fei comes to realize, must be another form of training for Red Chanpuru.
It’s a delinquent school. There are rugged kids in almost every class trying to prove that they’re the top dog, that they’re the one to be the most feared. Not to mention there’s plenty of bullying about, and teachers that won’t do anything about it. Sun Fei learns this firsthand after he attempts to tell his homeroom teacher about his classmates’ growing antics against him but gets waved off.
It started with provocations. Jabs at his demeanor, mocking his way of speech, making jokes about his injured eye. He ignored all of it, not the type to so easily give in to idiotic banter. He has been taught better than that. He is better than that. As an upcoming officer of Red Chanpuru he has to represent his gang accordingly. There’s no time to waste on children.
But then it escalates. Thumbtacks left in his shoes, writing carved into his desk, his belongings going missing. All child’s play being taken too far.
It ceases the moment the “bullies” lay a hand on him.
It was something minor, in hindsight. Likely not something his father would have accepted retaliation for. He takes care to never mention the incident to his parents. He’s slightly embarrassed for his actions.
He ends up cornered after school one day, lured to the boys’ bathroom in the western wing of the main building, a place that teachers would never interrupt them. He’s surrounded by six boys, all with devious grins on their faces, and their leader steps up first.
“Not so tough now, are ya? Gonna cry to the teacher again?”
It’s clear. The boy thinks himself stronger than he really is.
He pushes Sun Fei, and this is the embarrassing part. It’s just a push. Just a measly push. But Sun Fei punches him so hard he can hear the boy’s nose make a sickening crack sound underneath his knuckle.
He beats them all black and blue, leaving them in a crumpled pile of limbs and groans of pain, the majority of them barely holding onto consciousness. They’ll all be covered in bruises and sore for weeks to come. Good. They’ve been irritating him for long enough and his patience finally has run out.
He washes the blood off his hands in the bathroom sink and finds himself getting lost in thought. His actions were rash, unfiltered, and impulsive. Of course those boys deserved to get a lesson taught to them, but should it have been Sun Fei? Does a push count as acting first? Were his actions justified?
This is exactly why he refrains from telling his parents. He’s still immature. Still learning how to control his emotions and follow the way of his gang properly. Red Chanpuru never strikes first. In his father’s eyes, he may have done exactly that.
Sun Fei reaches a hand to touch his right eye and shivers. He definitely has much more to learn.
After that, no one bothers him anymore, but he does start to hear rumors floating around about him. “Inhuman strength,” they say. “Able to take out an entire class on his own” -- a mass overstatement. “Lost his eye in a 10 vs. 1 but still came out on top.” Interesting. He’ll neither confirm nor deny it.
--
School becomes boring.
The rumors only amuse him for so long before they become just another form of background noise. Everything turns into a mundane routine. Take the train, walk to school, sit through lessons, drink tea during lunch, more lessons, go home. On occasion something out of place would happen, such as a girl confessing her love to him, but such situations were always dealt with swiftly, eloquently, and without further incident. He would not cause trouble for his family. At least, not anymore.
But even so, those moments of outlier do nothing to change his view. Things still feel gray. Of course, he does enjoy things outside of school, such as his training with his master and trying new teacakes that his brothers bring home for him, but things overall feel void. Empty of meaning. Ironic, considering his life has already been given a meaning -- becoming a Red Chanpuru officer.
The feeling haunts him. Through every class lecture, through every tense dinner with family, through every meditation session with his master. He feels like he’s missing something. Like he’s grasping at empty air in search of something more. It’s foreign. Weird. An emotion he doesn’t entertain much due to having so many other things to focus on.
But then he meets that boy.
A boy with short, brown hair and brown eyes. Freckles are scattered across his skin and disappear underneath the collar of his school uniform. He has thick eyebrows and a skittish look on his face, as if always mentally prepared to bolt from the current situation.
They meet by accident. Sun Fei is simply walking through the halls during lunch period when the brunette runs straight into him, falling completely to the ground while Sun Fei is knocked slightly off balance. Intending to help the boy up, he reaches out a hand in assistance, and that’s when he takes in the other’s appearance.
And he looks…plain. There’s nothing special that stands out about him, really. But still, Sun Fei finds himself staring, taking in those soft cheeks and the way pink lips part to speak.
“I-I’m sorry!”
What a nice voice.
The stranger completely ignores Sun Fei’s outstretched hand and gets himself up before continuing to run away. It piques his interest, in a way that nothing else ever has. He’s curious about his new acquaintance. He’s curious about why he’s so curious. There’s a part of him that wants to chase after that boy and learn everything he can about him, just to satiate this new feeling. It’s…strange. It seems to replace that emptiness that has been building inside him for so long. Now, there’s a new feeling. Something he can’t put a name to.
How dangerous.
He’ll have to avoid that boy as much as possible.
--
They’re not in the same class. It’s something Sun Fei was aware of the moment they met. He has at least a vague idea of who his classmates are at this point, and that kid is definitely not among them. That means that avoiding each other will be simple, surely?
Apparently not. Apparently, his mind has a new sensor installed specifically for this brunette. Whenever he’s nearby, Sun Fei’s eyes involuntarily snap over to him and he ends up staring. He’s discreet about it, of course, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s staring. At someone he doesn’t know.
He watches as the boy passes his classroom during third period. Going to the teachers’ office, maybe?
He sneaks a peek again as another day he passes the boy eating lunch in the courtyard. Sun Fei forces himself to eat somewhere else.
Another time he forces his legs to keep moving as he passes by the nurse’s office. That brunette was inside, talking to the nurse about something.
And that feeling in his chest? It starts to grow. Each time he sees the boy, his emotions feel more and more outside of his baseline. Less controlled. Less proper.
He hates it.
He would switch schools if he could, but even suggesting such a thing is identical to spitting in his parents’ face, and he’s already learned once what happens when he’s disrespectful.
He’ll never make that mistake again.
But still, things are only getting worse. The brunette is invading his thoughts now. During an exam Sun Fei begins to space out, and his mind drifts to that fateful meeting in the hallway again. He thinks about soft brown eyes, even softer hair, freckles scattered like stardust, plush lips…
No, he really needs to forget about this boy as soon as possible.
And he sets on doing exactly that. He forces himself to look away whenever he sees the other. He takes detours around the school to avoid them running into each other. He does whatever he can to adhere to the phrase “out of sight, out of mind”, and it nearly works. He meditates more, redirects his mind to other things, keeps himself busy each day, and it seems like he’s settling back into that familiar feeling of nothingness.
Until one day during lunch.
Sun Fei decides to eat his lunch in the courtyard for a change. A nice change of scenery to go along with the new batch of cinnamon apple tea he’d gotten. The weather outside was beautiful and -
“P-please let me go…”
The sound of a meek voice interrupts his thoughts, and he’s hit with how vaguely familiar it sounds. He looks for the source, following the noise of sobbing and whimpers, and before long ends up in a small clearing next to the courtyard.
It’s a typical scene for this school. A group of boys surrounding someone, undoubtedly partaking in some sort of bullying of their target. Sun Fei ends up stepping a little bit closer, hoping to grab the attention of the bullies as well as the victim…But then he notices something.
Brown hair and eyes, freckles, soft cheeks, stationed on the ground, covered in bruises and blood.
And Sun Fei sees red.
His actions go past simple impulse -- it’s instinct. He beats the rest of the boys unconscious, and even drags back one that was trying to escape. His mind completely blanks out at he punches and kicks repeatedly. Blood douses his uniform. He keeps punching even as he sees the boy underneath him lose consciousness, the whites of his eyes showing. Sun Fei’s knuckle is covered in blood.
“Stop! S-Suo-san, please! Stop!”
A hand grabs onto his bicep and he freezes.
Sun Fei turns his head and comes face to face again with the same boy from that day. He looks a mess. His bottom lip is split, there’s a bright red hand print forming on his left cheek, and his hair is sticking up in strange directions. But somehow, he’s still ethereal.
That strange feeling comes back in Sun Fei’s chest. He drops the low life that he was beating to a pulp.
“You know my name?”
“Ah--” The boy lets him go. Sun Fei misses the contact. “Mhh, Suo-san is a bit of a popular topic at school, so...”
Ah, right, the rumors. He stopped listening to them, but they’re still floating around.
“I suppose I don’t have to introduce myself, then,” Sun Fei gives a smile as he straightens up and wipes the blood from his knuckles onto his shirt. Gross. He’ll have to clean his uniform before anyone else sees.
“I don’t believe I’ve gotten your name yet.”
“N…Nirei Akihiko. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nire-kun, then. It’s nice to finally put a name to your face.”
“Huh?”
“We met once before, remember?”
Nirei seems to think on it for a moment before recognition crosses over his face, and he bows deeply.
“I’m sorry again for that! I should have been paying more attention to where I was going…”
“It’s alright, really,” Sun Fei waves it off and Nirei straightens up again and begins fiddling with his hands. A moment of silence overcomes them as the latter seems intent to say something, but is still gathering the courage to do so. Sun Fei lets him, simply taking the time to indulge in the fact that he finally has a name. Nirei Akihiko. What a nice name.
…Fuzzy.
His chest feels fuzzy.
“U-um, Suo-san, if you don’t mind me asking, um…”
A blush settles on Nirei’s face, which only makes Sun Fei’s heart flutter.
“Yes?”
“Could you tell me your height, weight, and blood type?!”
…What?
Nirei steps a bit closer, stars in his eyes as he’s now holding a small book and a pen in his hands. Sun Fei reflexively takes half a step back, the close proximity making his heart do strange things. But Nirei is still looking at him with those bright eyes and a light blush and staring like Sun Fei is the entire world.
And it’s so…so…
Cute…
Wait, cute?
Oh no.
He’s screwed, isn’t he?