[AQ] Pen Pals [Masahiko/Ji-Soo]

[Harada.M]

Pen Pals!



+ Description: The student council has set up an exchange of anonymous letters with another student on your thoughts about dreams and passion, intended to get students to cheer each other on and help each other out! Write one yourself, or recruit some friends to write along with you.





+ Write about dreams and passion: +1 Guardians, +1 Faberge, -1 Roost



+ Write about finding your own path: +2 Roost, -1 Guardians



+ Write that it’s pointless to dream: -1 Guardians, -1 Roost, -2 Faberge



+ Requirements: None



+ Submitted by Hatta

---

Great, another request from the student council to write a letter. The first one never reached anyone but might as well try again. This letter was going to be different and it might as well aim for what he wanted to stand for. He thought of all the friends never had and all the dreams we wanted to achieve with said friends but they never came true. Maybe, he just never needed anybody. He sat outside on the ledge near the courtyard; a peaceful way to focus on his negative thoughts. He never realized how much it was a toll on him to be staying in such a rotten state. He looked down at his sheet of paper and sighed, "What am I going to write. It's just..." 

His pencil lifted in his hand and it landed on the paper. 

"To Whoever You Are,


This letter is meant to encourage and tell you how you should follow your dreams and blah blah blah. Yet, lemme tell you something about dreams. You can dream so much and never realize how much it is a waste of time."

His deemed true feelings were going to come on this paper. He needed his mind to reach someone else's.

"When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming the most beautiful and most charming man on the planet. However, as you can see in these words,  I am not. I'm just a fake. I am nothing but someone who is boasting around about how good I am where I am clearly nothing. I could be writing about everything. I could write about staying focused on what you believe or pursuing what you want. However, I am not who you think I am. I talk to myself in the mirror of how much of a loner I am. I keep myself company with a selfies and sleeping, dreaming of nothing. This isn't a cry for help. This communication is about dreaming and how pointless it is. If you plan on replying, tell me something. Will you change my mind? Will you tell me your views on dreaming. I am dying to find out.

From,
Harada M."


What in the literal hell did he just write. He couldn't even bear to look at such a failure of a writing. He really thought dreaming was for the strong willed and the lionhearted not the weak and the one who's tried so many times just to get laughed at in their face. He wanted to reach someone and see if dreams were worth it again.

[Ji-Soo]

Great, another request to write to a penpal! If he was being completely honest with himself, the mute second year would admit that this letter program was the highlight of his time here at Seiyo. He had always really enjoyed writing to anonymous students, one of which even became his best friend, so why not continue it?

Ji-Soo sat down, letter in hand and began to read. It, wasn’t what he had expected. The first sentence on the paper didn’t serve to build on that initial excitement, but rather, ebbed away at it slightly; his emotions only went downhill as he continued. There seemed to be an inherent sadness in what this person had to say and Ji-Soo couldn’t help but sympathize.

However, the last line made him drop the letter as if he had been burned. Harada. The name that brought frustration and anger and horrible twitter exchanges back to the forefront. There was no way it could be him, right? A person wouldn’t sign their actual name on an anonymous letter… right? A voice told him that his instincts were correct and after cross-referencing with the twitter account, he was relatively sure. Ji-Soo had the strongest urge to throw the letter away and ignore Harada like he’d done previously. But. These letters were meant to help students, to give them a voice somewhere that they couldn’t speak. So, no matter how begrudgingly or how much his vindictive feeling bled through, he would write.

---

Dear Harada M.

I guess in the beginning of a letter, you normally exchange pleasantries, but you don’t seem like a person who would appreciate it. So I’ll just jump right into it.

You are right. Yet, you are wrong.

My aim isn’t to change your mind, but instead to tell you about my own. When you become the shell of the person you were, and stuck with nothing but the company of your own voice inside your head, it feels like there is no point in dreaming. Every person can feel like this a one point. Yes, that is a reality.
Yet you say you are a fake, so do you want something real? You say you wanted to be the most beautiful man, why not? You want to be charming, WHY NOT? Dreaming is the simple act of wanting something you have yet to have. It’s not that it’s pointless to dream, you’re lying to yourself if you think so, but there is something that stops people from dreaming; fear.

So let me ask you my own simple question.
What are you afraid of?

Sincerely,
Nightmare

[Harada.M]

Nightmare...
Nightmare...

Someone was messing with his feelings in this letter. He had checked his mailbox before going to the dorm and sighed in deep despair. "What are you afraid of?" It asked. Nightmare continued to stream across his pupils, reading such a letter. This was too painful to even read. All these things were really trying to change his mind but why? He was a fake. All he did was hurt people. So what if he spilled his real name. His name was already going around as someone who like to create drama and be an asshole so why hide it. Maybe whoever was reading his first letter didn't know him. It was like the letter he had in his hands was literally speaking to him. It was a small gentle voice but it was harsh and strong.

---

To Nightmare,


I have dreamed since I was small to be great; to be the strongest of my family. However, I look at myself now. My father didn't appreciate me. He loved to presume me as weak and as nothing but a useless piece of the Earth. He prayed that I was a female so he could be known as the man with beautiful daughters. I was unsightly as a male to him. I was nothing to him. 


That is where my reign of terror started. I grew to hide my self-esteem with bringing others down. I loved being this creation that my father wanted. Then I grew to forget my father. I grew to forget my past and continued to care only about my damn self. Who else cared? No one else did except for my sister who threw me in this school.


And I sit here, writing this damned letter to answer your blessed question of what I am afraid of. Well, here is what I am afraid of. I am afraid of---myself. I am afraid that before I know it, I am going to end up digging my own grave in my closet because I hurt too much to love myself. I hate of what I am becoming but I love it too. I fall more in love with myself when I destroy others. Yet, I hate myself even more when I realize I'm doing this for myself. Don't I sound terrible? Don't I sound like the worse menace to this shitty society? I am not doing this letter for pity but I am doing this letter because out of all the times I have tried to but my evil guard and try to be nice, I am destroyed by others. I am mortally broken my the hearts who say they love me and am left alone. Do you know what it is like to wake up, growing up, constantly told you are nothing but a waste of seed? Have you been told that you were loved just to be told moments later that you are actually a piece of trash. 

Look at my name. You know who I am. Dreaming is nothing but a piece of my trash. Is it a piece of yours, Nightmare?


Thanks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Harada M.

[Ji-Soo]

Ji-Soo received a reply much quicker than he thought he would. For some reason, there had been a nagging feeling in the back of his head that Harada wouldn’t answer. But then again, if this was the Harada he knew, then the teen would never back down from a challenge or a fight. Again, the second year had taken the letter he received back to his dorm room to read. The content, for a lack of a better word, was surprising. The things written within were what seemed to be of an extremely personal nature. Should someone really be telling this to a stranger that signed their letter ‘Nightmare’, the complete opposite of a dream? Ji-Soo always found writing to be restrictive at time but accepted it as the best he can do. It seems Harada was the complete opposite; how interesting.

Dear Harada M.

How strange.

Don’t you like to fight? Your first letter would be described as confrontational, a provocative letter really. So where does all that spirit hide in its spare time. Does it just hide in the wings and pop up at sporadic intervals? Your father might have eyes, but – to borrow a phrase from someone – they must be shitty eyes. And brain too really if that’s how he wanted people to see him. Yet you refuse to strike out from what your father wanted and to prove him wrong. I know that when you are under the sneering glances of people, that you will undeniably feel the need to conform, but I’ve seen that fighting spirit, so put it to some god damn use.

I didn’t expect to get an answer to my question, but you’re afraid of yourself huh? Well then, it seems like I chose an appropriate name, people are their own worst nightmares afterall. So for the time being, I’ll play as yours until you can wake up from it.

You know, there’s this expression of “fake it until you make it”, and honestly I don’t think that’s what the expression should really be. It tells people to lie to themselves about what could and couldn’t be and acknowledge that they are hiding under a shell and then to throw that shell away when it’s no longer of use. I think the expression that you need is “fake it until you become it.” Even in faking something, you put in aspects of yourself in, you technically train and condition yourself to create that ‘fake’. There’s no reason it can’t work the other way; that you can borrow from the fake. So maybe what you’ve been doing, being a ‘fake’ was the answer to all of this. Pretend that you weren’t a waste of seed, that you don’t want to hurt others and tell yourself that you are loved. Those are your dreams aren’t they? So you better start working on it.

Sincerely,
Nightmare

Frustrated. That’s how Ji-Soo felt after the whole thing. Both he and Harada, were in the sense similar with where they’d come from, yet completely different in where they ended up. He had to wonder if someone had told him all of this when he was little, would that have made his life easier. Would he not suffered quietly like he did?

[Harada.M]

Masahiko got to his dorm room in one piece, sighing from all the heavy bookwork and detention cleanup he had to pursue. He happily went through his mail and got a few letters from his sisters and then one from the school. His smile went from up to down. Was he finally getting suspended? On the back of the envelope, it stated it was from student council. Oh, it must be a reply for the Pen Pal program. Geez, not again. 

As he read through the reply, all he could do was gaze over what the hell was going on? Was this really a student telling him all this advice? What ever year he or she was, how could he know so much? Yeah, it was weird just to vent his past on a stranger but it was relief. It was like the counseling and the consoling he never gotten when he was a kid. What of all things could he write to such a detailed thing as that? "Fake it to make it"? What does one right when someone actually takes their time to write to you.

So Nightmare,


You really are trying to understand more than trying to see me for what I truly am and to be honest, I like it. My fighting? I am not truly the fighter you think I am . I don't throw punches and I don't kick people down. I fight for myself because I was internally trained to fight as such. Do you truly think that I tried not to fight my father. As many times I tried to face my father and tell him that he states nothing but bullshit, it never phased him. He had a higher ego than me. He never let anyone bring him down.


So maybe, Nightmare, I need some tough ass skin to show get by. Hell, how should I know? There's a kid here, who is the sweetest person to everyone and I one day just tried to make him mad and he doesn't deserve it. I am practically the demon that walks these halls. If I don't like you, I'll play you like a fiddle. If I like you, you'll know. I don't say nice things to people I like. The kid, his name is Ji-Soo. He's a mute student who carries a notebook or something around to voice his opinion and by the grace of whatever is holy, he is the most respected kid on the grounds of this school. He carries a damn notepad for blessed sake and is well liked. Recently, I've toned down my fighting towards him and to be honest, I like fighting him because maybe it feels good to break down happiness. It feels so damn good to see others are actually lower than you because in all actuality, you thought that you were lower than them. But no, Nightmare, this guy. He is a special something and I applauded him on being so strong. I've met my maker with him. Meeting him made me realize that I am Satan's spawn and I complete love it and loathe it.


Faking that I am on top of the world is my high. It makes me feel at ease and that nothing with come and eat me up from the inside anytime soon. Why? I honestly don't know. Seems like you got all the answers. Since you wanna play as my nightmare then play this game with me. If you want to be my nightmare to wake me up into a dream, what should I do to get rid of you? My dream is leaving this planet and having everyone forget me. Do you see me walk through the halls, you figment of my imagination, with a friend or two? Or do you see me, alone with a sketchpad and my dignity. I'm a prideful son of a bitch and I take my fighting to an internal level. I fight myself to wake up in the morning. I fight myself to actually talk to these mortal objects called classmates and teachers in the hallways. At least I have one part of my dream achieved. No one knows me. No one remembers the watchful eyes that seek weaknesses. I am the leech that wants to unfold every secret of you and use it for my own personal gain. 


So here's my game, Nightmare. Would you let me unfold you like a blooming flower just to snap the petals from your stem? Or would you like to try me? It's fun in my opinion. Be my nightmare if you let me be yours.


Yours Truly,
-no signature-


This letter was long but...it had to be written.

[Ji-Soo]

Ji-Soo didn't like this situation. He seriously did not. It seemed like the other boy had kept a close eye on him and obviously tried to provoke him at every turn. There was so much he wanted to say in response to the letter, a lot of frustration and anger, yet he held himself back. He always bit his tongue when he wanted to do otherwise. Instead, he wanted to get back to maybe helping the other boy with his dreams and passions. At least that way, he won't feel like the whole exchange had been for nothing. The letter was essentially blank by the time he finished.

Dear Harada M.,

I won't play your games.

Sincerely,
Nightmare.

[Harada.M]

In his room late night, Masahiko stared at his letter. "I won't play your games." he muttered to himself. All he could do was laugh. He laughed harshly at the letter. He sat up on his bed and continued to laugh at what was on letter. Bastard Nightmare couldn't handle him. It, whoever, the bastard was, simply wrote a sentence. Was it scared? Was the nightmare who claimed to be so mighty actually reject him? Gosh, everyone in this world was just so backwards. Looking at the letter, he slowly got up from his bed and turned on his light. He walked to his wall and grabbed a piece of tape from his dresser. He placed the laughing stock on his wall and stared at his desk. "You won't play? I'll make you play my game, Nightmare."

Dear Little Bitch,


How in the hell can I call you a Nightmare if you yourself cannot face fears on your own? I mean come on, I vented to you and I told you my life story and I am begging to know yours. I want to see how we can connect and this is how you repay me? With a "I won't play your games" Some help you are. I really am asking you for your assitance and you tell me such a thing like that? I literally laughed at what you have sent me. You're my nightmare, right? My fear, my dangerous imagination that is supposed to show me what my heart truly lies when it comes to the negatives in my life and all I get is this. How am I supposed to feel? How am I supposed to accept this?


I can't.

Slowly, he laid his pencil down. Tears streamed down his face. He thought that someone was finally going to understand him. He thought that with whoever this insolent fool was, they would fold and tell them what bothers them. Bind a heart string or two, develop a friendship and all he got was...this. Masahiko no longer laughed. He no longer chuckled at what was written to him. He saw few of his teardrops landed on his paper. He angrily looked at his letter.

Excuse my words, Nightmare. I didn't mean to come off so rash. What am I trying to say is: I wished you could see through my eyes if you want to be so much in my head. I let you all the way in as much as  I could perceive. See, I have little trust and tolerance for people and even thought I cannot see you and tangibly feel your presence, I was so close to realizing that I could have finally made a connection with you and I get back is something as weak and a fail as that.


I guess in person or on paper, I am no one to bond with. Maybe Nightmare, my name isn't Masahiko.

Sincerely,

Loneliness.



Masahiko looked at the letter and prepared it to be sent in the morning. He looked at the letter "Nightmare" had wrote him. He took a pen and wrote "fuck you" on the letter. He crawled in bed and buried himself in his blankets, crying himself to sleep.

[Ji-Soo]

The dried teardrop stains were what tipped him off when he first opened the letter Maybe he had been a little harsh. Coming from "Ji-Soo", this probably wouldn't have phased Harada probably. In all honestly, it might have even made the whole situation more entertaining because "Ji-Soo" was always known to bite back. Yet, at this point in time, he was not "Ji-Soo", he was "Nightmare", an anonymous penpal that was meant to write in order to assist others in speaking about and sharing their dreams. So he had stepped out of his scope and let his own personal past interactions with the third year cloud his thinking. How childish, he scolded himself.

Dear Harada. M,

I'm sorry. You probably will never understand why I say this and hopefully never will, but know that I am.
Yet, you know what, the moment you wrote your letter to me is the moment you made a connection. Writing is a funny thing like that. You have so much you can hide behind, yet when it’s the only way to communicate, you don’t really want to hide do you. Paper is much more solid than words spoken; you can’t take them back once that pen hits the paper and it’s there for the world to see.

You do have a bit of an issue though. To borrow some words from a friend, “you have a three feet wall of crap between you and your emotions”. Honestly, that’s exactly what the first half of your letter was; that wall. You can’t keep playing games Harada, or that’s all you’re going to have eventually is you and your games. Don’t you want to make true solid connections with people? -- Don’t lie. Now that I see your words, I can tell if you’re lying -- Because you’re going to have to give me that trust and tolerance and I’ll give some back to you. That’s how this whole friendship thing works.

So how we start again.

Hi, I’m living Nightmare, I live out of fear that people that extorted me all those years ago will come back to finish the job. My dream is to be a diplomat when I grow up and to be able to speak to anyone, no matter the language. Finally, I would like to hear more about who you are Harada. M.

Sincerely,
Nightmare.

That was all Ji-Soo had short of ever revealing himself, which was still something he never planned to do. But maybe, just maybe, Harada would start being more honest with himself.