itome's pov
Every night, my boyfriend Shikatani reads me a bedtime story.
I wish I could be a main character. In the books i read, the main character has all the guys falling for her, she gets into the college of her choice, she solves some mega-superthing mystery. I don't want to be this kind of main character. I want to be the type who sneaks out past curfew to smoke with their friends and fly through night skies in those kid picture books. I want to be like that.
When I was little and had tried to sneak out of the house once, Shikatani told me things like "They're looking out for us" because "its their job". "It's not safe here. Nothing is safe here. It's their job. They gotta do this for us."
My house wasn't really a house. It was just big white plaster and rooms that seemed to melt into each other and weird things lying around like goggles and computers and microscopes that can see the tiniest things, even the tiny cells hidden away in your bodies. I guess this means that although you can't see them, they are here. Sometimes when the other grown-ups that I suppose are "they" in Shikatani language come over to check on me, they say things like "If I can't see it, it's not there." This is a shock to me because mostly they use grown-up "scientific" words that mean nothing really like "mechanism" and "programmed". When i tell them about the microscope, they tell me, "Hell, kid. You're one superthing of a child." which i think is very rude and impertinent(yet another grown-up word I heard one of the grown-ups mention to Shikatani, which i think it meant that Shikatani had done something bad, because there was no indication it was a figure of speech or directed to anyone else and impertinent meant rude—i searched it up in one of the large computers in the lab room) of them, because Shikatani says it was their job to look after us after all.
Anyway, why I want to sneak out of the house is because the grown-ups—again, "they"—don't let me leave the house at all. And why I don't use the word curfew (yet another big word I learnt in my book) is because a curfew means a certain time where you can go out, and before the curfew you can still step foot out of the house, but they don't allow me to step out—the outer world is Out Of Bounds and No Exceptions. I don't think they're scared of it—they just want to keep me, that's all.
When I lie in bed sometimes I can hear the sound of keyboards clicking against the pressure of fingers and the grownups talking in loud whispers, which is a whisper that isn't really a whisper because normally they are soft. They use words like "subject" and "motorised" and a bunch of other big words i don't know about. When I hear this I start to feel suspicious and I try to sneak out of bed because i know which tiles creak and the big white room with green lights in tanks with water and tall plants and the large computers and microscopes. Once, one of the grown-ups caught me before I could step out of the room. They're not as nice as Shikatani and now when they see me they watch over me and yell at me things like "absolutely not".
Tonight, I try sneaking out again. I step on the tiles in the order so they won't creak. right, left, left, left, right, right, middle. I open the door and see the grown-ups and Shikatani discussing something and looking at me on the computer. I notice buttons that can customise my face and control my movements.
Then I realise— "they" and Shikatani are working as scientists and i am their subject.
(A/N i'm tempted to work on this as a series. the mighty record has been broken! 650+ words!! yay!! haha i have no self control...hope you enjoyed anyway <3 -hu tao)
YOU ARE READING
itoshika month (shikatani x itome)
Fanfictionhello all my lovely readers! december has always struck me as a cozy comfy time of the year, so i wanted to write about a ship that suits that time of the year. so...this will be a book full of fluff. thank you for dropping by! -hu tao
