CAROUSEL miya atsumu

prelude.

 

          THE CITY OF KOBE IS BALANCED ON A DELICATE AXIS always threatening to fall toward one way and not the other. Demographically, it's one of the most diverse areas in all of Japan. There's the rich, the richer than rich, and the untouchably rich that live in their gaudy sky rises and estates with their little dogs and bathrooms worth ten of the house next door. For every one of those houses and those families there's a hundred other people crammed where they can fit and pay the rent. Zigzags of messy property lines created by too many people in too little space made up what was popularly known as The Slums.

They're really not that bad if you can stomach the stench of humanity in such a close proximity all the time, if you can withstand the knowledge that you have no privacy outside of a half step around you.

          Between the rich and the not rich, there are hundreds of cultural projects and community donations with the intentions to close the gap, and forty years prior, Inarizaki High was founded on the belief that all students, no matter their background, deserved a furthering education. And it worked. It worked for the first thirty years, which was quite the record, Inarizaki was internationally recognized as one of the first schools of its kind in that age.

Famously, they rejected international candidates of entry who's applications didn't align with their social media updates and made attempts of bribery from celebrities and bulldozer parents completely public. The board honestly didn't give a shit, they already had all the money in the world, they just wanted to gift future generations with morals and the ability to be humble.

          However, in it's most recent decade, more than half of the board and the president have all passed the baton to the next generation due to severely declining health. They were all retired doctors, lawyers, philanthropists that bore the idea of Inarizaki over red wine and daring dreams, they were tired of working with snobbish clientele that could barely do mental math and write a half-page letter even with the presence of their numerous certificates from renowned institutes of education, sue them.

The next generation of Inarizaki High's leaders were not so broad in their ideals. Admittance rates throughout Kobe were spinning off-axis at an alarmingly fast rate. People that didn't deserve to get in bribed their way into the critically acclaimed school, and oh so quickly the crown jewel of socioeconomic equality became a trashy knock-off. The good teachers only taught the students who's parents paid for it and the rest of the students that the school admitted just to barely pass the standards of the previous thirty years.

          Tatsuzo Kamekichi is not one of those students. She was admitted to Inarizaki High on the recommendation that she wrote for herself and sweet talked her roller derby manager into signing in the hospital when she broke her arm in four different places. Everyone felt a little guilty when that happened and Kame got away with only having to pay for a fifth of the hospital bill. Which was still a fucking lot, but it was okay.

Her twin brother, Torakichi, got into the school heavily on sports scholarship. He's a good volleyball player, there was no denying it. And then there was the fact that they were legally registered as twins courtesy of their adoptive mother even though they never shared a strand of DNA. By all definitions Tatsuzo Yorataro had two random babies from two completely different families and raised them as her own. She was as sweet as she was infertile, which only made the twins' upbringing all the more symbolic. Yorataro idolized them, she would give them all the stars in their universe if that was what they wished, but they were okay with the shitty three bedroom apartment in a building where the boiler was always broken and the landlord was always sneaking peeks up skirts and down shirts.

          Across town there was another set of twins that lived their lives quite differently from the Tatsuzos that remained close to the ground and centrifugal to each other. The Miya Twins have fame, they're a set of the most famous siblings in Japan's volleyball history. They have money, their mother is one of the chief financial officers for the Kobe Metropolitan Hospital, their father owns half of the commercial fishing industry, their cash flow is immortal. They could probably even have enough gold to build larger-than-life statues than themselves if they really wanted.

Osamu is the silver tongued prince that takes what he wants with shy smiles and glances. He's so annoyingly shy that his older brother wants to shake him on a constant basis. Osamu's better at a lot of things, as difficult as it is to admit. He's better at studying and speaking and table tennis and art. In the wake of this occurrence Atsumu's become the broody older sibling. He's the pretty boy between the two, he got his tongue pierced on a dare, but soon realized that he craved the attention people paid him with them.

If anything, Osamu and Atsumu have burnt out. They're always tired of each other's bullshit and it shows. It shows on Osamu's face when Atsumu when his brother walks into things with a swagger and not a care in the world even if he completely screwed someone else over. It shows in Atsumu's clenched fist when the validation he craves goes to the younger twin every single damn time.

          And then because of this stupid scandal, everything just got a hell of a lot more tiring.

          Oh! And Atsumu might be falling in love. And that fucking sucks.