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Round 1 - akota, "Too Much Chocolate", Fic (●)
Pseudonym: akota
Title: Too Much Chocolate
Characters: Shindou Mitsuko, Shindou Hikaru
Rating: PG
Mitsuko had loved chocolate when she was a little girl, be it chocolate cakes or chocolate ice cream, and in her future she had seen only the vague impression of chocolate kitchens in chocolate houses in a chocolate world, with everything sweet and creamy and iced.
And Hikaru, from the first moment she held him in her arms, was a wild, vivacious boy filled to the brim with sunshine. He loved chocolate, too, so much that Mitsuko had to lock the pantry doors to keep him from raiding their stores of sweets before dinner or during the night when he was supposed to be sleeping. Sometimes, though, when Hikaru had had a particularly bad day at school and had come home quiet, with teary eyes and pouty lips, Mitsuko would break the rules and the two would share a secret chocolate snack together, and Mitsuko would hold her tiny child in her arms and stoke his sunshine back to life. Hikaru was never so upset that he would refuse chocolate.
--
As a young woman, Mitsuko had loved baking, and from beneath her fingers elegant desserts had risen, each formed with chocolate bases, chocolate batter, and chocolate icing. There had been a tournament once, she remembered, when she’d been in high school. A tournament in which the entrants were armed with whisks and flour, and the coveted prize was employment in a company famed for its gourmet desserts—a company in which she would be able to design, improvise, and bake chocolate confections all day for her entire life.
Mitsuko had entered the tournament, and she’d gotten last place, having lost to older, more experienced, better-prepared young men and women. She could have continued baking, she knew; she could have tried to set up a tiny, privately-owned bakery once she’d graduated high school, or gone on to college to study baking or business. She could have continued baking, but she didn’t. When she tried to taste chocolate now, its flavour had gone bitter against her tongue.
--
Mitsuko didn’t know how to react to Hikaru’s interest in go—it seemed so out of character for him, so different from the things that Hikaru had always seemed to like before. At first, she thought it was a trick, some new “skill” to impress his friends at school. Then, she thought it must be a phase, and that he’d grow out of it and have tossed himself headfirst into something else entirely by next week, or next month.
…Or maybe the month after that?
…The year after that?
And then she knew that it wasn’t a phase; it was something stronger, something deeper, something that would hurt.
And she knew that she was right when she opened their unlocked pantry to find that all of the chocolate confections were still sitting on their shelves, intact and untouched.
--
Mitsuko confronted Hikaru when he returned from school one day, cornered him and nudged him into the kitchen to sit at the table, where a slice of chocolate cake was already waiting. He took the intended seat gingerly and stared at her as though expecting an attack. A little piece of her heart shattered.
She settled herself beside him and asked gently, “How are you feeling?”
He frowned at her. “I’m fine.”
“You seem, well… you seem a little unhappy, Hikaru.”
“I’m fine.”
“I just couldn’t help but notice that you haven’t been talking as much, or spending as much time with your friends.”
“I’m tired.”
Mitsuko hesitated. She knew that she was stepping on eggshells, but she had to ask, had to know. “Does it have anything to do with go?”
There was no explosion as there might have been a year ago, a month ago. There was only a tightening, a locking of doors that had already long been closed to her.
“No.”
“Because if you made a mistake,” she went on desperately, “if you lost a game, even if you came in last place in a tournament, you should know that there’s always another time, always another chance. One loss doesn’t have to be the end; it can be just another learning experience! Next time, you’ll do better, you’ll see. You just need to try again, give yourself another chance to succeed.”
“I don’t play go. I won’t play go.”
“You know Hikaru, I myself—”
“No. You don’t know anything about this. You don’t know anything about go, about me. You don’t understand, no one understands, so I wish everyone would just leave me alone about this. I will not play go.”
He stood up to leave, chocolate cake untouched, and she stood also, shaking hands clenched together.
You don’t understand. The same litany repeated by every frustrated teenager, an angry phrase that was hurled in all directions in the smug assurance that it was absolutely true, a phrase ignorant of the knowledge that sympathy often housed a tiny seed of empathy. She didn’t know anything about go, but she knew enough to understand that chocolate no longer held that same smooth sweetness that had once been so tantalizing for Hikaru; for mother and son both, only the harsh bitterness remained.
I had a dream once, too, she wanted to whisper to him. A dream filled with sugar and cocoa and cream, not stones, but still a dream. But his ears were closed; he couldn’t hear her. She reached out to hold him, but he tugged out of her grasp and ran up the stairs to his room, not meeting her eyes. I lost a dream once, too.
Go to opponent's entry: Round 1 - cumulonimbus, "Solitaire", Fic (○)
Go to vote: Kawahagi Middle School vs. Five-Colored Cloud - Third Board Match
Title: Too Much Chocolate
Characters: Shindou Mitsuko, Shindou Hikaru
Rating: PG
Mitsuko had loved chocolate when she was a little girl, be it chocolate cakes or chocolate ice cream, and in her future she had seen only the vague impression of chocolate kitchens in chocolate houses in a chocolate world, with everything sweet and creamy and iced.
And Hikaru, from the first moment she held him in her arms, was a wild, vivacious boy filled to the brim with sunshine. He loved chocolate, too, so much that Mitsuko had to lock the pantry doors to keep him from raiding their stores of sweets before dinner or during the night when he was supposed to be sleeping. Sometimes, though, when Hikaru had had a particularly bad day at school and had come home quiet, with teary eyes and pouty lips, Mitsuko would break the rules and the two would share a secret chocolate snack together, and Mitsuko would hold her tiny child in her arms and stoke his sunshine back to life. Hikaru was never so upset that he would refuse chocolate.
--
As a young woman, Mitsuko had loved baking, and from beneath her fingers elegant desserts had risen, each formed with chocolate bases, chocolate batter, and chocolate icing. There had been a tournament once, she remembered, when she’d been in high school. A tournament in which the entrants were armed with whisks and flour, and the coveted prize was employment in a company famed for its gourmet desserts—a company in which she would be able to design, improvise, and bake chocolate confections all day for her entire life.
Mitsuko had entered the tournament, and she’d gotten last place, having lost to older, more experienced, better-prepared young men and women. She could have continued baking, she knew; she could have tried to set up a tiny, privately-owned bakery once she’d graduated high school, or gone on to college to study baking or business. She could have continued baking, but she didn’t. When she tried to taste chocolate now, its flavour had gone bitter against her tongue.
--
Mitsuko didn’t know how to react to Hikaru’s interest in go—it seemed so out of character for him, so different from the things that Hikaru had always seemed to like before. At first, she thought it was a trick, some new “skill” to impress his friends at school. Then, she thought it must be a phase, and that he’d grow out of it and have tossed himself headfirst into something else entirely by next week, or next month.
…Or maybe the month after that?
…The year after that?
And then she knew that it wasn’t a phase; it was something stronger, something deeper, something that would hurt.
And she knew that she was right when she opened their unlocked pantry to find that all of the chocolate confections were still sitting on their shelves, intact and untouched.
--
Mitsuko confronted Hikaru when he returned from school one day, cornered him and nudged him into the kitchen to sit at the table, where a slice of chocolate cake was already waiting. He took the intended seat gingerly and stared at her as though expecting an attack. A little piece of her heart shattered.
She settled herself beside him and asked gently, “How are you feeling?”
He frowned at her. “I’m fine.”
“You seem, well… you seem a little unhappy, Hikaru.”
“I’m fine.”
“I just couldn’t help but notice that you haven’t been talking as much, or spending as much time with your friends.”
“I’m tired.”
Mitsuko hesitated. She knew that she was stepping on eggshells, but she had to ask, had to know. “Does it have anything to do with go?”
There was no explosion as there might have been a year ago, a month ago. There was only a tightening, a locking of doors that had already long been closed to her.
“No.”
“Because if you made a mistake,” she went on desperately, “if you lost a game, even if you came in last place in a tournament, you should know that there’s always another time, always another chance. One loss doesn’t have to be the end; it can be just another learning experience! Next time, you’ll do better, you’ll see. You just need to try again, give yourself another chance to succeed.”
“I don’t play go. I won’t play go.”
“You know Hikaru, I myself—”
“No. You don’t know anything about this. You don’t know anything about go, about me. You don’t understand, no one understands, so I wish everyone would just leave me alone about this. I will not play go.”
He stood up to leave, chocolate cake untouched, and she stood also, shaking hands clenched together.
You don’t understand. The same litany repeated by every frustrated teenager, an angry phrase that was hurled in all directions in the smug assurance that it was absolutely true, a phrase ignorant of the knowledge that sympathy often housed a tiny seed of empathy. She didn’t know anything about go, but she knew enough to understand that chocolate no longer held that same smooth sweetness that had once been so tantalizing for Hikaru; for mother and son both, only the harsh bitterness remained.
I had a dream once, too, she wanted to whisper to him. A dream filled with sugar and cocoa and cream, not stones, but still a dream. But his ears were closed; he couldn’t hear her. She reached out to hold him, but he tugged out of her grasp and ran up the stairs to his room, not meeting her eyes. I lost a dream once, too.
Go to opponent's entry: Round 1 - cumulonimbus, "Solitaire", Fic (○)
Go to vote: Kawahagi Middle School vs. Five-Colored Cloud - Third Board Match
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(Anonymous) 2012-07-22 09:51 pm (UTC)(link)SOB. Mothers and sons, forever kicking me in the feels. Thank you so so much for sharing this with us.
-Uchida.
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(Anonymous) 2012-07-27 09:49 pm (UTC)(link)- kakari