File 026: Shikai
Shikai didn't talk much as a kid.
In fact, he didn't actually speak his first word until he was ten years old.
So they taught us both sign language, in hopes that he would actually use it, and so I could understand him.
Even after he did start talking, he did so very rarely and preffered signing to communicate anything of lenght. Which, even then was mostly used as a response to any questions posed to him.
And he would never use his voice if I was around.
Being without parents, it's only natural that in being the oldest, I would try to fill in the gap and be a father to him.
As it turns out though, I was pretty shitty at it, even after I grew up enough to have more control over what directions our lives could take.
Insights like that though, are typically ones that only come after the fact. After the damage has been done. I'm sorry, I can't go into more detail about it right now.
Then one day, this energetic little red-headed kid shows up out of nowhere and somehow smacks into Shikai. And proceeded to talk his ear off.
I still don't know what was so different about that kid, but watching them from down the hallway where I escape notice, it came as a shock to see Shikai conversing back with him. He probably said more in that one conversation than he had in his entire life combined thus far.
Whatever it was that prevented him from talking to me and nearly everyone else seemed to just vanish around that kid.
But in any case, that's when it became obvious to me that whatever it was Shikai needed was something I couldn't give him.
Jinsei: Do you still hate me?
Shikai: ... I've never hated you.
Jinsei: That's very good to know.
- 1.24.2005 -
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