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chapter eleven the bluebird escapes ▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
"No, Hajime, love is not necessary for happiness." You would say that as ardently as you could, repeat it as often as opportunity allowed, and chant it like a mantra in your head, not because you believed it was true, but because you desperately wanted to convince yourself that it was. You wanted, no, scratch that, you needed that to be true, because there was just no way you could keep on distinguishing between what was real love, and then by extension necessary for happiness, and what was fake love, the thing that caused misery. No matter how smart you were, there were some things even you couldn't do.
Distinguishing was one of those things, and that made life really difficult for someone like you, as there had always been something about you that people wanted to dominate, to control, and to own even. At times, their desire to do so took the form of a mother pretending to be loving, a friend claiming to need you, and more often than not, their intense need for you expressed itself in a way that made it seem to others, not to you, like love, affection or admiration.
How were you supposed to know what was real and what was not? How were you supposed to attain love?
What nonsense, you scolded yourself. What were you even saying?
You were so clever that at times, you didn't understand a single word of what you were thinking, and the confusion that had seeped deep into your bones threatened to envelop you once again. In your case, confusion lead to depression, which was dangerous for a mind always in motion.
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After Hajime and Tooru left you alone in Junior High, you were forced to find new means of survival. You began to care for your looks, and just like Iwaizumi had predicted, you soon became pretty. Girls that wanted to be pretty, in one way or another, became pretty. He stood by that.
You still wore your old, faded dresses, and your hair was as untidy as ever, and for all intents and purposes, there was nothing to differentiate you from the usual Y/n. But there was a change. It was your body that started changing first, later than most girls you knew, but you had gotten your period later than was usual, too.
You seemed taller, not much admittedly, but you had grown, and your body finally looked like it belonged to your head. You were, slowly, becoming shapely. While some of the girls in your class were the talk of schools due to their voluptuous bodies (or rather, what thirteen to fifteen year olds considered voluptuous), most importantly, their growing busts, the same couldn't be said about you. You had small breasts, but they were graceful, fitting your body and your still rigid hips.
