Chapter Text
The day starts as most do for Shuji Tsushima, with an unbearable emptiness forming in a pit in his stomach. Laying in bed he stares at the ceiling until the fancy decorative borders lining the edges between the walls and the ceiling begin to blur and he can’t make out the curvy designs anymore. He is meant to be out of bed and attending breakfast with his parents and siblings. It is never a welcome environment for him, quite the opposite actually, because as the Tsushima family is a big name in pharmaceuticals they come from old money and the current head of the company, his father, expects everything in his family to be exactly how he wants it.
Shuji is a natural outlier.
His father expects all of his children to have respectable abilities such as his own, touch activated and able to tell the exact price and contents of anything that comes in contact with his exposed hand, or one like his wife’s, washing away any doubts someone may have with a smile which allows her to manipulate the others opinion. He, unlike his siblings, has the freakish ability to nullify another's ability. It infuriates his parents when his mother isn’t able to flash a smile and manipulate him or how his father doesn’t see how it could ever be useful if he wishes to be successful. It also limits their punishments for stepping out of line because unlike before they can’t simply hire someone to use their ability on one of the children, at least not for Shuji. So, they have resorted to the family's older method of punishment, testing drugs and pharmaceutical products on Shuji.
He would get punished whenever he spoke out of turn or tried to tell anyone to call him Shuji instead of Shino and to refer to him as a boy rather than a girl. He once stole a suit from one of his brothers to wear instead of the dresses layed out for him and oh did that make father mad. He had locked him into the cellar under the kitchen after a session in his favorite room in the house, the one where he would beat them or hire people to beat them, and let him starve for the next two days while having to smell all the food being made above him. He suffered re-hearing the words his father had said echoing in his head.
‘You worthless freak! First you have a demonic ability and now you want to be a boy!? You are a disgrace to this family! and you can’t even try to act right anymore and put up a smile for our guests, only wearing that same dead expression. Broken doll.’
After persisting in stealing clothes and telling any new guest or worker in the house to call him Shuji or that he was a boy despite his shoulder length hair and feminine features his father made him take several medications everyday to make him dependent on them. Whenever he acted out his father would make him spend the next week and a half without them, forcing him to deal with the many major withdrawal symptoms it caused.
Eventually he learned to use the pain that came from forcing a razor across the skin on his stomach that would be covered by blouses or dresses to cover up the agony that made him want to pass out and throw up with every movement whenever he was forced off of medicine. Then he kept cutting even when he wasn’t without the medicines. He would cut after any particularly hard beatings or even just to mask the emptiness because he’d rather feel pain than nothing at all.
Today, not only has he snuck past the maids and stolen one of his brothers suits from the laundry room but he had also stolen a pair of scissors last night and is about to go to breakfast, his hair shorter than it has ever been. The chaos it with no doubt cause will be a nice change he thinks tying the laces on a stolen pair of oxford shoes and he would feel bad for the punishment his siblings would get on the occasion that their father decided that his behavior is their failure as older siblings had they not been pitted against each other at such a young age.
The walk down the long halls from his quarters to the dining room is echoed with faint gasps from the maids and butlers that happened to see his new haircut. It almost brings a rare smile to his face, almost. He passes the last corridor before coming upon the tall wooden doors that lead to the dining table. They are open for people to make sure no one runs out of coffee or orange juice while eating their meal and the first person that sees him is his sister, Hina.
She has always been his biggest silent supporter. Though they never get the chance to talk alone they always send small glances promising mischief across rooms to each other. Out of all their siblings they have the best relationship as both of them are right next to each other in age, born so close together that they are irish twins making their parents simply group them together and make them do everything together. That and the fact that neither of them were raised to hate the other, a rare occurrence for any generation of Tsushima.
Hina nods at him from her spot on the table before turning back to her breakfast. The next to spot him is his mother who lets out a loud gasp before pointing at him bringing all eyes with it.
“What happened to your hair!?” her voice was laced with the kind of horror that made him want to laugh.
“I cut it,” which he stated rather matter of factly making Hina snort while taking a sip of her orange juice.
His father slammed his hands down on either side of his plate and stood up at the head of the table.
“You insubordinate child,” he said, conveying his vein popping anger in every word. “You are born into this world with anything you could ever want, so why do you challenge the only rules you have to follow!?”
He began walking toward him from his seat at the other end of the room.
“I have forgotten your constant thievery and defiance,” a clear lie. “But this young lady is crossing a line.”
Now standing right infront of him his father raised his arm and let the sound of his hand striking his face echo throughout the room. Several servers gasp at the action though he’s sure they are aware of what happens behind closed doors. Seeing is believing he supposed.
His father grabs his arm and drags his limp body through hallway after hallway until reaching the single worst room in the house. The door has a darker red colored stain on the wood and the door knob is one of the few in the house that only has two keys that will open, both belonging solely to his father.
He is thrown inside onto the cold hard floor before his father locks the door behind him. Anything that happened afterwards is a blur but he is happier for it, he’d rather be oblivious than have to relive any of what had happened in that room. His father said it was so he would ‘remember his gender’. It disgusted him and made him feel icky in his own body, not something anyone should ever feel. Not even him.
When he was later deposited into his room he tried for the razors but the feeling of anything touching his body was repulsive, he didn’t want to look at himself. He tried various methods to try and relieve some of the discomfort but nothing helped so, he was left to sit in this icky feeling which made him want to peel back the layers of skin on his body. The only thing that seemed to help was the heavy weight of his blanket over top of him and the soft cotton bandages he had wrapped around his scars along his stomach. He had stolen them from a medicine cabinet so any bleeding couldn’t be seen through a shirt.
After missing lunch and dinner the sweet obliviousness of sleep didn’t come fast enough because by the time he had awoken at seven thirty he had only gotten two far between hours of shut eye. He would probably be taken off of the medicines starting today.
Breathing out a sigh he stood up out of bed to prepare for the day. He wouldn’t show up for breakfast and instead make his first appearance out of his room when the time came for his first lesson with Hina, languages. They're Learning Mandarin after a short review on their English. When he gets to the usual room where they learn languages, he notices his father standing next to their tutor.
That’s odd. Usually he is already buried in work by now, but it likely has to do with his stunt from yesterday.
“Shino, follow me.”
The name stings but he still follows after him.
They reach the same room as yesterday and waiting inside for him is an older man. He is then left there for the rest of the day.
-0-0-0-
Once he is back in his room and the sun sets he sneaks through the house like he would when stealing suits or food but this time he heads out toward the garden. The garden is on the back end of the property and has a river running through it. The river isn’t a shallow stream that welcomes swimmers but it is instead raging white waters that can be heard during all hours of the day. The river flows from the back end of the house up to the front near the front gates.
He reaches the river and promptly lays his shoes on the grassy bank near a walkway. Sitting beside the river is calming and brings a sort of quiet to his head that is ironic due to the overwhelming loudness that is the river.
After giving a once over of the property behind him he slides into the water and lets the lapping waves bury him underneath, drowning him.