I feel like Shou Suzuki as a character is super weirdly vivid in my brain, for example:
shou to me is like seeing a poster on your 3rd grade best friend’s wall and it’s got this red plastic robot soldier on it and there’s a name of a show you were never allowed to watch because home doesn’t have television and you want to know about it and the robots story so badly but if you ask you know it’ll be like telling a secret, that it would plant a seed in your best friends head that something might be wrong with you. and there’s nothing wrong with you, because there can’t be.
He’s like drinking red punch-flavored juice that comes in a plastic barrel that never quite opens right so your hands get sticky and it’s the first time you’ve ever had something this sweet before that you want to recoil but everyone else is smiling and not recoiling and something between your gut and ribcage tells you there’s something about you that is slightly unaligned so that you will never truly be parallel to your friends, and when they look in your eyes they’re actually looking at the bridge of your nose and they’re telling you that you should know something, but you weren’t sure how you were ever supposed to know that or who was supposed to teach you it.
He’s like doing something one way but being told that no, that’s wrong, it’s the wrong way, and you have to sit in the time-our corner in 5th grade recess and wonder who it’s wrong to and never getting an answer because you should’ve known already. Later your dad comes to pick you up from the office early like always because you keep doing everything wrong and he looks down at you and you know it’s not wrong to him. You were simply flexing your will, he’ll say. And you’ll think to yourself I was just flexing my will. But it lingers on your mind that this is wrong to someone. But who is it wrong to? You’ll think it might just have to be yourself.
Shou Suzuki to me is like the feeling you get when your dad comes home early from work and you can’t stop smiling and the world feels like honey and a sunday and you want to tell him about the game you learned about from one of his associates that watches you but he talks first because he taught you to wait, and he asks you to show him that trick again and you’ll show him the trick where you knock three cans over at once and he’s looking at you and telling you that you’re finally getting somewhere and you don’t even know what that means but you throw your head back and cheer and run around and your heart starts racing because it’s your dad and even if his eyes are trained on your hands he’s looking at you, and you think you can hold the whole world in your hands for him if he’ll just stay outside here, in this sun-kissed patch of dying grass, looking at you.
Shou Suzuki is also the dry-air Monday morning you’re in the back seat of the car while your dad’s in the passenger and it’s so dark outside and you can see your breath and you ask him where you’re going and he says it’s a place full of people like you, and you think home feels like wherever your dad goes.
He is also the new war against two halves that make up you— the half that sits in the timeout corner and knows the something that you’re doing is the wrong thing, and the half in the grass field— and they’re trying to kill eachother because they know they are both going to die.
Suzuki the heir to the Rightful Throne of Toichiro Suzuki is absolutely not like being a son in a grass field. The heir is a close-range fighter who leaves his left flank open. In a war, the heir fights himself in which they both know each others weakness, and neither of them want to die. The heir is like being a scared boy, and being the wrong kind of soft. He is like looking at the grass field boy with the scrape on his knee and tousled hair standing before his father and staring for long enough for their faces to become obscured. The heir-boy with soft flesh and gentle hands is like losing your first and only war to the boy who knows something is wrong. And the hero-boy smiles with his excalibur in your flank and goes this is my duty, rest now, let me hold your hurt for you.
Being the second half is like being a hero-boy in the corner who knows something is wrong and calling yourself Justice. Being Justice is like thinking your father is a lunatic, but the grass field boy tells you he is your father. Being Justice thinking your father is the dragon at the end of the story that must be slain, and that you must be the knight. The boy in the field thinks the dragon is his father, and there’s a ending to this story that doesn’t end in blood. Being Justice is thinking history is written by the victors, The boy in the field thinks there is no victors.
Suzuki is, to me, being the boy in the field but not standing in a field at all, but your father is still before you and looking at your hands, and it doesn’t feel right at all. And you’re looking at his eyes and not the bridge of his nose and Justice wants to fight but you just want your father so you both race to get to him first, but there is no race because there is no finish line and both halves will have to lose. You want to seize something for yourself so you scramble at his hand and try to rip out something of the monster in front of you that feels like a father, but the monster wraps a hand around your neck and you realize that hurting you like this is the most fatherly thing he has ever done for you.
And let’s say there is no Suzuki anymore. You are just a boy in a field, Being this field boy is like seeing a monster and still calling it father regardless of how much it rips at you. Being the boy called Justice means absolutely nothing is fair to you, because this is the part of the dragon story where the dragon feels remorseful and shows up to the school years ago and says It’s not right, you shouldn’t have done that, and I should have been there, and I should have taught you to be nicer to the playground boys, and Let’s go home. But he never does. Because he is simply a dragon that must be slain. And the field boy thinks he is a father that must be slain. Fate says neither of you belong in this part of the story.
Suzuki, to me, is like leaving both halves in the previous page as you leave the tower. But they are not fully dead as they live in you. The you that is saved by a brother of your friend is simply a witness of the fire. He is not a son, he is not a heir, he is neither a boy in time-out or a boy being surveyed by his father. He is not a boy who is loved by his father. He does not look back at the smoke. He does not hesitate. Maybe another part of him does, but it isn’t him. It’s easier to be separate from it all, it’s easier to blame someone else. Hope makes you a son, death makes you lonely. So Suzuki is neither. Its easier to be nothing at all. The remains of both halves feel like this is like giving up.
Shou is also like being sick of being nothing.
Shou Suzuki is having only one part that survives a war you were not fighting, and this part is a whole that demands hope. Demanding hope is like setting an ultimatum. It is flexing your will. It is like looking at your dead-alive-dragon-father and seeing both the dead dragon and the alive father and demanding love from both of them. It’s standing in the rubble and saying I am going to find something to love in this. No matter how long it takes. This is my will. Shou Suzuki is the intersection of every part that has ever existed staying. The two halves never died, they simply lost so much they became something else. They are a bit older, the remnants of the field boy says he thinks there might have been something wrong, that there is even parts of his father that have failed him. Justice thinks there are parts of the failure that can love him.
Shou Suzuki is like finding a ending to the story that includes you. He is like not losing hope, he is like flexing your will in a way that your father never could. He is both demanding what is right for you and demanding love from people you deserve it from. He is a child that wants his father and therefore will foolishly chase after him no matter how it hurts, it’s tragically hopeful. Shou’s story, to me, is about a boy who is a son teaching a father how to want to love normal. It’s settling, it’s finding a compromise with yourself, it’s tragic and harsh but it’s a story that loves itself, and a story that wants good for itself. It’s a story that will get what it wants. Something like that. That’s Shou to me.
Girlll... You got some serious issues. So many spelling mistakes, you could atleast tried to avoid them. You can atleast try. I kinda like your fics, sometimes i cannot even finish reading them...
Pardon me? I'm doing everything in my power to learn english. How creators, who aren't native english speakers should learn? For me this is the best way. If you want help, correct me anytime, i would be really glad.
I don't care what do you think. I am enjoying the process.
