For His Happiness

Chapter 2: No Man is an Island

Kiku Honda was the second child of his family. He was born and raised in Japan by his mother along with his half-brother. Typically, people usually infer that the younger always ended up as "the parents' pet", but in Kiku's case, it is the opposite, or worse.

His mother was a successful administrative assistant of a company who married twice: Her first marriage was to a Chinese chef of a high-class restaurant, and they were blessed with a son whom they proudly named Yao (which means "brightly shining"). But their married life only lasted for three years when her husband died in a car crash while she and her son were fortunate enough to survive. She finally managed to cope with her husband's loss, by which it meant an opportunity for a bachelor to fill up the vacant position of her deceased spouse. It was that time when she went to a bar with a close acquaintance of hers; they were drunk and as the alcohol took effect on their consciences, they did something... pleasurable but heinous. Then a week later, she got pregnant with a second child. After the news of her pregnancy reached to the father of the unborn child, the two of them decided to get marry, making this her second marriage. Nine months later, in a warm winter (as what I was told), a baby boy was born with the ideal features of a "Yamato Nadeshiko" and he was named after the royal flower: Kiku (which suppose to mean Chrysanthemum), but then, there was a cruel irony. When Kiku was two months old, his birth father left the family for another woman and was never seen again. His mother, once again, endured another loss within the family, and somehow, she used, Kiku, her own son, as a scapegoat, blaming and claiming that he was "so much like his father in any shape or form, especially those damn emotionless eyes. He's no different from him, a two-faced son of a b*tch who doesn't give a f*ck about anything but himself, that f*cking bastard!"

In the meantime, Kiku and his older half-brother Yao were both home-schooled due to it was a "tradition", or to be more precise: a belief, from their mother's side that children performed better academics at home than in school (I don't know how it works but I'm sure they have good reasons). The two boys usually succeeded evenly, however, owing to the favor of their mother, Yao had more liberty than his younger brother, therefore, he could roam anywhere in the Japanese streets, expanding his knowledge of the outside world. Kiku, on the other hand, was chained into confinement. Either due to his mother's qualm towards him or just a maternal instinct to protect a child, she restricted his dealings with society, as a result, Kiku found himself getting used to his isolation that he grew to love it, using it as his sweet time to watch popular animes, read and even make mangas, and play video games. His mother and Yao never bothered helping him learn more about society and the world beyond, so instead, he just depended on the Internet for the needed information. Yet still, there were times that he was unpredictable in so many ways, as his own dull dark brown eyes hold so much mystery, reflecting like a glass window to his soul. In spite of the charges and negligence thrown by his mother, and the ignorance Yao gave him, Kiku, if you leave him in his own world, was in perfect peace within solitude. No chaos, no pain, no death, or sorrow that belongs to the world, just him, it was his utopia.

But then, everything changed when their mother received a promotion. She received a notice that she was promoted to work in the West, specifically in the United States. And so, she was obliged to leave Japan for America with her sons. Yao thought it was the best thing that ever happened, for Kiku... it was a bit different. Exposing to the bigger world meant the shattering of his adored isolation, but what choice does he have? He agreed to go, of course, except he was still in serious doubt, how could he learn to interact with society, which was a complete stranger to him?

As he bid farewell to his solitude while on the way to New York, Kiku met the blue ocean, and he fell in love with it, he realized that he may be too late to catch up with the ever-moving wide world, but he was certain enough that he would love it... and he did...