Seikatsu, Shibo, Ai (Life, Death, Love) - Kennie’s Side Story

I’ve watched him from a far for quite sometime now… I’m not really sure of what attracted me to him in the first place, but still, he intrigued me to no end. I would often see him walk home alone on his own, showing that brooding demeanor that what others might label as an ‘emo’. His shoulders would hunch against the invisible wind as if he carried the weight of the world on his back. A sort of picturesque sight of hidden sorrow or deep loneliness… I wouldn’t know. I just assumed his emotion from what I have observed.

Sometimes I could see him fooling around with a couple of his friends, or more recently, I would now often see him in the company of that perfection of a boy by the name of Eros — who for some unknown reason had also sparked my interest… I knew they were best friends by the look of things, but with a trained eye you could actually see that they were deeply in love with each other… and I saw that he had been looking much happier with him lately… at first I didn’t know how that made me feel. I know I shouldn’t mingle or pry into their lives… I mean, who was I to them? He didn’t know who I was, let alone he didn’t even talk to me.

I was the quiet kid at the back of the class with my nose buried in a book and my face hidden behind my dark rimmed glasses. I was the kid who always carried a sketch book around and doodled during classes, yet still keeping track of what the teacher was blabbering on about… All in all, I kept a very low profile.

Though, contrary on my efforts at being invisible, I would still find myself be surrounded by annoying, gaggling girls who would try desperately to get me into a conversation or annoyingly ask me to draw something for them… what they saw in me, I would never know. Though one girl was actually brave enough to tell me that the reason why she liked me was that I had a certain “mystery”… Personally, I don’t think I’m that mysterious, and more importantly… I don’t think I liked any of the girls that were approaching me. I guess I’m just not too playful with the opposite sex…

…which led me to rethink about my sexuality.

It all started one day when I was the last to go home from school. I stayed a little while behind in the art room because I haven’t finished my artwork which aggravated me to no end. I spent most of my time in that room, being in the art club and all, and sometimes I felt that this was my sanctuary. It was quiet when no one else was around and it gave me the space to think alone. I stared blankly at my easel, thinking up of a concept on what to draw or to paint while twiddling a paintbrush in between my fingers. Sighing on my stool, I leaned back and stretched my arms to uncramp them. I stood up to open a window to let the breeze in (since it was already getting too stuffy inside), and took look outside to find the inspiration that I was looking for.

The art room window was on the fourth floor, which gave me a pretty good view of the whole school grounds. It was already an hour after three so there were only a few people left. The whole place was already practically disserted. The atmosphere was dull and lifeless, coupled by the grayness of the pavement.  The trees gave nothing to lighten up the mood, even the warmth of the approaching sunset casted shadows of a gloomy ambiance. I sighed heavily and let my arms lean against the window sill. There wasn’t a thing out there that would be enough to inspire me. Maybe I should just give up and leave the work for another day, I thought.

With a forced smile of defeat, I adjusted my glasses and reached up to close the window… but before I could pull the glass down, the corner of my eye caught a something in the distance. I saw a person walking slowly towards the gate entrance of the school. It was a boy, with slightly dark brown hair, his bag was slung over his shoulder and an i-pod earphone was on his left ear… I paused to observe him a little while longer and watched as he exited the school premises. He looked side ways and then turned his head around to look behind him. I blushed then suddenly ducked low behind the wall for him to not to see me. He must’ve sensed that I was watching him.

Wait… why was I hiding? And why the hell was I blushing?! I slapped myself internally at the stupidity of my actions and pulled myself together, willing away the heat that came rushing to my cheeks. I knew I have seen him before, I just don’t remember where…It took me a while to sort out my memory as I put a thumb to my lip, before it suddenly hit me. Ahh yes, I popped my fist to my palm. I remember now, he was one of my classmates. He was seated few seats further in front of me in maths class… why haven’t I noticed him before? I shook my head. And if I remembered correctly, his name was… Sam. Yeah, that’s right… I’m pretty sure it was Sam.

When I stood up to look down again, I saw that he was already gone. A sudden pang of disappointment coursed through me at that moment as I gripped the edge of the windowsill… and I don’t exactly know why. But it doesn’t matter now, because I kept his pretty face in my mind’s eye.

And with new determination, I took my sketchpad to my lap, sat by the window and started sketching the new inspiration that I had found…

It wasn’t long before the next day I saw him again at maths. He had been late for about ten minutes already and entered the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I found my eyes trailing over to him, taking a few quick glances at his face and doodling his features in my notebook. I was mesmerized by how his face flowed perfectly in my hand. I liked how his nose was smooth and rather long, how his deep seated eyes gave more emotion when you look at them closely, how his thin but perfect lips were always so rosy and ending that with the perfect cleft of his chin. He was.. how could I put this plainly…? beautiful was the right word, I think. My brain was wandering off that I can’t even keep a half-ear to what the teacher was saying… (but I was pretty sure that it had something to do with quadratic equations.)

When the bell had finally rung, I hastily stuffed my math notebook into my bag and hurried off to the door to catch up with him. It took a lot of guts to actually walk up to him, my chest heaved and my fists clenched, steeling myself up for the encounter…  But even before I could go near him I was suddenly stopped at mid walk because somebody had “accidentally” tripped him over. I was going to shout at the one who did it, ’til it turns out it was one of his friends, Eros. They were laughing now, and I was relieved that no actual harm was done. I watched silently as the both of them caught up with another friend before going off to another class.

I sighed deeply and kicked invisible dust on the smooth floor of the now empty hall with my shoes. I hung my head in disappointment, pushing my glasses up on the bridge of my nose with a finger and shook my head. Man… did I blow that chance up. With another sigh, I heaved my bag up to my shoulder and went off to the other direction to attended my next class…

That afternoon, I went up to the fourth floor and entered the art room quietly, putting my bag on an empty stool chair by the door and walked across the room to stand in front of my still blank and immaculate easel. Putting a thumb to my chin, I was debating with myself on weather I should just go with my original plan of just submitting a boring old still-life, or doing another Naruto fan art painting… or maybe… gently I picked up a piece of charcoal and started to roughly sketch on the yellowish white fabric, letting my hand stroke on the surface the face that has been haunting my thoughts ever since yesterday.  

When I was done with the rough sketch, I put a clean white cloth over my work so that no one else could see what I had drawn. It wasn’t finished yet and the picture could still use a little more tweaking, but I decided that I should just start the actual painting and coloring for another day. I smiled, and for the first time in weeks I was actually satisfied with my work.

Day after day, I always went back up to the art room to continue my unfinished work, armed with my doodles of the boy that was filling up my mind lately for… reference purposes. I noticed that I had already used up almost eight of my sketchpads already. They were filled with sketches and doodles of his face, and sometimes I would draw him with that other boy Eros in very… provocative positions. _{A funny thing is, sometimes I would also get a hard on every time I would sketch something like that.}

I don’t know what was wrong with me… a guy like me shouldn’t be drawing those kinds of things, right? Would this be what they would call obsession? No… I haven’t been obsessed this much since I received the 12 volumes of Death Note manga that my aunt, who came from Japan last month, gave me. No… I don’t see other girls the way that I see Eros and Sam. Come to think of it, I swore I had looked at my other male classmates with less than appropriate thoughts… I smirked to myself, shaking my head and suddenly realized…

“I really AM gay…” I whispered to myself.

How redundant, I thought as I adjusted my glasses while chuckling to myself, not only was I an artist… I was also a gay one. Oh how cruel and ironic things are to be in this world.

But that doesn’t matter that much now. I wasn’t upset about it at all—far from it actually… it was something that I didn’t know about myself and I had unearthed it all on my own. That alone made me proud. And with this new found realization, I was determined to let myself be known to my current obsessions… sooner or later.

My senses were tingling the next day when I came to school early in the morning. We were having double periods of gym class that day and it was going to be only us boys. I tried my hardest not to look at my other classmates as they changed into their sports attire in the boys’ locker room, keeping my head low and concentrated on changing to my clothes. I got dressed as fast as I could and rushed out of the changing room, ignoring the random chitter-chatter of the other guys.

As I entered the sports hall, I sat my self on a bench a little way away from the others and secluded myself. Sam entered the hall five minutes later along with the other boys. I observed him across the hall for a little while and noticed that he was ogling at Eros, who just happened to be sitting on the bench that I was sitting on. To distract myself I averted my eyes to look at my watch and noticed that the teacher was late… for the n^th time!… Minutes later he came rushing into the hall looking winded and blabbering on about with his excuses, which were totally unimportant if you ask me.

After saying his excuses, the instructor told us that we were doing paired exercises for today. I was rather disappointed because I wanted to try myself on the parallel bars for a change, but I guess it can’t be helped. He had us paired off to do some balances and stretches. I ended up with some random kid whose name I could not remember; I was much to preoccupied at that moment as you can see. And sure enough the odds were with Eros and Sam because they ended up being paired up together. I ignored my partner and the instructor, who was trying show us on what to do. The poor man broke his back in the process and had us do our thing on our own while he sent himself to the clinic.

My eyes were still glued at the other pair as I did some of the stretches, widening my legs to do a semi-split, while my partner did some egg rolls beside me. I watched Eros and Sam in the distance doing something rather… provocative in my opinion. They were doing what the instructor had showed us. Eros was lying flat on his back with his limbs up in the air supporting the weight of Sam, who was on top of him. I had to admit, it was getting me turned on and I felt myself heat up.

I gulped and let myself into a sitting position as I continued to stare at them, pretending to do some minor stretches with my arms.  I watched as Eros’ arms started to quiver, his face flushed red. I saw his arms finally give way, making Sam land on top of him—body to body, lip to lip. I blushed furiously and tried to look away, but I just couldn’t. The sight before me turned me on that I felt myself have a semi and hurriedly closed my legs up so that nobody could see. Sam actually had the guts to close his eyes and slip his tongue into the other’s mouth… Just when I thought that it would never end, Eros still had the mind to push him away, which made me blink. And I found that I wasn’t the only one who had seen the spectacle, for all heads were turned in the direction of the pair.  

“SAM! YOU GAY BASTARD!” I heard someone shout, making everyone in the whole hall burst into laughter.

All of them were suddenly taunting him and calling him names. I scowled and clenched my fist in anger and did not join in on their teasing spree. I saw tears well up in his beautiful eyes before he dashed out of the hall, crying his little heart out. It broke my soul to see him cry like that. I suddenly had the instinctive to follow him and comfort him, but I saw that Eros was already hot on his trail, so I opted not to… I knew he was in good hands with Eros… after all, they were lovers.

After that little “incident” in P.E. class, some serious nasty shit happened the next succeeding days… The story of Sam and his lip-locking with Eros spread like wild fire, which of course would lead into disasters… Sam had entered school as usual, but he was hiding behind Eros as if embarrassed to come out. The next thing I heard was that he was surrounded by a circle of people who were taunting and teasing him, degrading his spirit as if he were trash. He broke down right then and there, but he didn’t go down without putting up a fight. He knocked a few kids out and ended up bloodied, bruised and unconscious himself. It was one against ten… what are the odds of winning?

I arrived at the scene a tad bit too late to do anything else. I pryed off the ones who were still on him and called for help while Eros came dashing to his aid a second after that. I heard a soft ‘thank you’ from Eros as he held his boyfriend in his arms. I nodded to him and didn’t say a word. Sam was immediately sent off to the hospital when the medics arrived. I watched in horror from among the crowd of onlookers when they took him away on a stretcher, clutching onto my sketchpad as if my life depended on it. I overheard a medic saying to Eros that he was in going to be alright and felt myself to be relieved.     
       
But no… the nasty shit didn’t end there. I was still terribly worried about Sam, who was still in a coma at the hospital and I wanted desperately for the school day to end so that I could go and visit him… with Eros, if that were to be a coincidence… but that plan was whisked out of my mind because I heard some of the kids gossiping that Eros was pushed down a whole flight of stairs by a boy and was also sent to the infirmary… As if things couldn’t get any worse…

I’d imagine the trauma that Sam had to go through when he wakes up, finding that his love was also taken to the hospital. Still, there was nothing life-threatening that happened to the both of them so they were both still alive after that whole ordeal, thankyouverymuch. So I spent my days in their absence in the art room, finishing the painting that I had started a few days ago and dedicated my hard work to my two muses…

One school day later, I was putting the finishing touches to my painting one morning when some kid came bouncing up at the art room door, cheering that there was a fight going on down stairs and disappears with his friends who were excited to watch the fight. Now if my spidy senses were telling me correctly, I had a feeling that Sam was back. So I covered the easel with the clean white cloth again and hastily grabbed for my school bag… I wasn’t going to let him hurt himself again… no, not on my watch.

And sure enough, when I found where all the commotion was, I saw him in the fighting circle, taking a powerful punch from the other kid, who hit him in straight in the jaw. He fell back against the crowd, dodging another blow before ending the match with a round house kick. His opponent was sent to the ground, nose bleeding and mouth gushing with blood. I was able to catch him by the arm when he fell by the momentum of his kick and I could tell that the fight was over, seeing the look of satisfaction on his face. Without a word, I helped him up to his feet, wiped the blood from his soft lips and escorted him out of the school premises.

I didn’t know what made me walk with him all the way to his house, but I guess had an urge to watch over him, to prevent him from doing anymore…casualties. It took a while for me to realize that this was the closest that I had ever got to being with him… and I… was a little nervous.

“So… what do you call yourself?” he suddenly asked after the several uneventful quiet minutes of walking up the hill towards his house.

I’d imagine that this was going to happen sooner or later… but I didn’t know what to say to him yet, so I went with my actions and… pecked him on the cheek. “Heh, you can call me Kennie.” I said in a friendly manner and smiled while I introduced myself.

“Why are you walking with me exactly?” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“Well…” I blushed and looked away. I was so nervous that I couldn’t even look at him in the eye…

Because I want to protect you and take care of you and make sure that no harm comes to you and I want to make you feel that you’ll never be alone in this world and I think that you’re one of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever laid eyes on and… I think I’ve fallen deeply in love with you… Those were all the things that I wanted to say to him at that precise moment, but all that I managed was, “I’ve been interested in you for quite a while now…and well…” I rubbed the back of my neck in nervousness.

I think that he sensed where I was going with this and suddenly cut me off. “Look Kennie, you’re a sweet guy… but I’m going out with Eros.” he said plainly.

“Well, you could go out with me too, couldn’t you?” I blurted out. I wasn’t expecting myself to say something like that, but I guess the damage was already done. I saw him go rigid and blush deeply at the prospect of the idea.

“Well…ugh… I’d have to tell Eros first…”  At first he looked very unsure but he suddenly smiled and leaned towards me, pressing his lips to my slightly parted ones. He caught me off guard and I blushed furiously, feeling a different kind electricity, spark at that small contact. He pulled away slightly and continued, “And that’s not a ‘no’. You’re very handsome.” He said.

I blinked stupidly. “I am?”

“Well, yeah…” he nodded, “You’re so hot…”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I giggled like a gushing school girl and openly kissed him back, pulling him closer to me. “I feel the same way.” I whispered seductively in a playful tone.

So yeah… I think I had finally told him my true feelings and I’m happy that those feelings were returned. After hours and days of obsessing and observing, it was finally paid off… but the story is still far from over folks. I still have to have a little chat with Eros first before anything happens between the three of us, and I haven’t even finished my artwork yet… but someday, mark my word, I’ll show them my masterpiece… someday.

I could tell this is going to be sweet.

~Fin~

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To be continued in part 12.1 onwards