The Rumors Begin

The school hallways have a sound when something is going around. Not louder, more like a different frequency, the kind you feel in your chest before you hear it properly. I noticed it on that Tuesday morning about six weeks ago, before I had even reached my locker.

They never used my name outright at all. They were smarter than that. What I caught were bits of what they said. That Kagemaru kid. His dad. His mom. What happened to him. The way they said it, low and uncertain, like it was something everyone already knew and yet did not want to say out loud. I kept my eyes down and kept moving, like I always did. That was one of the things that I knew how to do properly by then.

The worst part was that none of the whispered rumor was entirely wrong. That is the thing about rumors that people don't tell you. The most durable ones have some truth behind it. These certainly did. My father was a alcoholic. My mother did die when I was young. I was there for all of it. But the version I was hearing in those hallways was thinner than the real thing, flatter, arranged into something that sounded like a story with a clear goal in mind. It gave me the vibe that they wanted everyone to know that; He is broken, he is dangerous and you should stay away.

I did not know what to do with being someone else's examplary story.

Shouhei arrived in the second month. Transfer student. He walked into the classroom with the particular kind of ease that comes from having already decided you are the most interesting thing in any room. Sharp eyes. A smile that was slightly too mindful of itself. I recognized the type. I had survived the type before, at my old school and the one before that, and I knew within about two days that he had his eyes on me.

He found his opening during class. It was a slow afternoon, the teacher talking about something I had mostly stopped listening to, half the room mentally elsewhere. I was tracing the scratches on the corner of my desk when I heard my name.

I didn't look up.

"Is it true your dad beats you?"

The room went quiet in that specific way where you can feel everyone deciding whether to look or not. My heart was going hard enough that I could feel it in my throat. I kept my eyes on the desk.

I didn't answer him.

"Say something, loser."

He said it louder the second time, because the first time had not gotten the reaction he needed. A few people laughed. Not many, but enough.

Then Aki said, from somewhere two rows over:

"That's enough."

Not loud. Not dramatic. Just completely flat, the way you talk when you are shutting someone down. Shouhei smirked and let it go, which told me he had gotten what he actually wanted, which was not an answer from me but information. He now knew what happened when he pushed. I went still. Someone else stepped in. He filed that away.

I didn't thank Aki. I couldn't find a way to do it that didn't feel like it would make the whole thing bigger than it needed to be. She did not seem to need me to.

He caught me after class in the hallway.

"You think you're better than everyone, don't you."

Not a question. I kept walking.

"Nobody likes someone who acts like they're above it all."

I thought about a lot of things in that moment. I thought about turning around. I thought about what I would say if I did. I kept walking.

Cafeteria, usual corner, usual distance from everyone else. From across the room I could see Shouhei at his table leaning in toward a group, saying something I could not hear, a few faces turning in my direction. I looked at my tray. I finished eating and left without looking back up.

Later that afternoon I walked past two seniors by the lockers who were not talking about me but were talking about me.

"It's only a matter of time before he snaps. You can tell."

"Yeah, the quiet ones."

I walked past them and did not slow down. My hands were fine until I got outside, and then they were not.

That night I tried to write in my notebook and kept stopping after a line or two. I could not find the right words for any of it. Eventually I gave up and lay down and let the memories come the way they do when you are tired enough that you stop being able to hold them off...

I was twelve. I do not remember what I did that set him off that particular night, or if I did anything. His footsteps in the hallway had a sound when he had been drinking. I had learned the sound the way you learn any important distinction. That night I knew before he opened the door.

He hit me several times. He said the thing about my mother, that I was just like her, that I was worthless. Then he left and I lay on the kitchen floor and looked at the crack in the ceiling tile and waited for the feeling to pass. It always passed eventually. That was the thing I held onto.

Later I went to my room and punched the wall until my knuckle split open and said out loud several times that I was not him. I do not know if I believed it. I said it anyway. The blood dripped on the floor and I pressed my hand to my shirt and sat with my back against the wall until my breathing evened out.

Back in my room in my aunt's house I wrote: I am not him and I never will be. I wrote it and then sat looking at it for a while.

The days after that were the usual pattern, just with Shouhei added to it. He kept testing the edges. Some kids blocked me in the hallway one afternoon, calling me things, laughing at the scars on my forearms where my sleeves had ridden up. I stayed quiet. I refused to react. I was good at that by then. Shouhei was there at the back with that expression he had, measuring.

"You really like being the school punching bag, don't you?"

Aki appeared from somewhere.

"Leave him alone."

They backed off. Small victory. The kind that does not actually solve anything but atleast gets you through the afternoon.

That night I lay in bed with my knuckles still aching and thought about what Aki had said the week before, outside the classroom, the first time. You're doing better than you think. I did not know if I believed that either. But it was there. I kept coming back to it the way you keep checking your phone for new messages.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I was still in one piece.

Or maybe I was just good at looking like it.

Either way I got up the next morning and went back.

The rumors didn't stop. They followed me into class. I caught my name in fragments from the hallway outside the door once. His father. What he did. Whether he is going to crack.

I felt trapped in a version of myself I had not written. But I kept my head down and did my work and waited for people to find something more interesting.

They did not, yet. But I was not giving up either.

One afternoon I found Aki in the library, studying at a table near the window. She looked up when I came in and made space on the table beside her without saying anything. I hesitated for a second and then sat down.

"Hey."

"Hey."

We studied. She had a highlighter she kept clicking open and closed. I read the same paragraph three times without retaining it. After a while she looked up and said, without a lot of preamble:

"You're doing better than you look."

I was not sure if that was a compliment. I nodded anyway.

She went back to her notes. I went back to not retaining the paragraph. But something about being in that room, at that table, with someone who was not waiting for me to do something alarming, made the afternoon feel slightly less uncomfortable.

That was all. It was enough.

Weeks passed. Shouhei kept finding me. Every shove, every comment was a reminder that I was not going to outrun what I came from just by showing up somewhere new. But I kept walking away. I stayed quiet. I did not give in, not visibly.

Daiki sat next to me on the bench outside one lunch period and ate his food and said almost nothing. I was not sure if that was intentional or if he had just run out of people to bother, but I did not ask. He left when the bell rang without explaining himself. I sat there for another minute thinking about it.

Small things. Aki's quiet blocking of Shouhei. Daiki's unexplained presence. The library. None of them were dramatic. But I noticed them all, filed them away the way you file things you do not yet know what to do with.

The gym encounter happened on a Thursday. I was leaving late, and Shouhei was waiting by the side entrance in that deliberate way, leaning against the wall, already knowing where I was going to be.

"You really thought you could start fresh here?"

I looked at the ground. My bag strap was digging into my shoulder.

"I'm not going to let you ruin this,"

I said. My voice came out quieter than I wanted.

He laughed. Told me to prove it.

I took a breath that was slower than I felt and walked away. My hands were shaking inside my pockets the whole way home. I did not hit anything when I got back, which felt like big progress. I sat on the floor of my room instead and pressed my back against the bed and just stayed there for a while.

The scars were deep. I knew that. But I was still here.

I was not my father. I was not like the rumors made me out to be.

I was still fighting.