[Karekano][FanFic] But I Stood In The Background Chapter 1

Kareshi Kanojo No Jijou - But I Stood In The Background

A KareKano Fanfiction

By Cheshire Grin

Disclaimer: [ insert appropriate "I don't own Kare Kano" comment here]

A speech for defence:  This Fic is all about Izawa Maho. Yes... Maho. I
happen to like Maho. I feel she is perhaps one of the most interesting
characters in the series and so often left out, both in the episodes and
also in the few Fanfics I have read about Karekano. I often feel that in
an arena filled with Kazuma x Tsubasa, Arima x Miyazawa and Tonami x
Sakura pairings, Maho gets nary a mention or if she does, it's only as a
vague supporting character.

 So if you like Maho, keep reading and even if you don't like her, keep
reading anyways. Most importantly, let me know what you think.

* * *

Chapter 1 - At the Devil's Invitation

Life is often a strange and uncomfortable experience for me. Don't get
me wrong, I'm not about to go jump off the nearest tall building because
of it. I'm not like that but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy my life.
It seems so unfair sometimes. Well, scratch that.... It seems unfair all
the time.

I was always a bright girl. My early school records were exemplary. I
did well in practically all of my subjects, didn't cause any trouble and
harboured no ill feeling toward anybody. I got on well with my teachers
and parents and did what I was told.

Looking back on it now, it's hard to realise how much I've changed and
even harder to pinpoint the places and reasons for these changes. I
think that a big part of it all is that I am naturally a very shy and
quiet person. I always find it difficult to confront people, and even
now, when I know how, it's still not any easier.  I feel an almost
unbearable urge to back down in the face of pressure, convinced that I
could, just could possibly be wrong, however unlikely it may sometimes
seem.

Despite this, I found early school relatively easy. I simply did what I
was told and seeing that I did well, I became focused on staying that
way and becoming better. And I did. I was the best.

The problem with that was that I got used to it. I was spoiled by it. I
took it for granted that despite the fact that life was often lonely and
uncomfortable,  I was good at it. I had the cushion of my ability to
keep me from becoming lost. It kept me afloat in an uneasy classroom
world of pressure and intimidation.

I've never found people easy to deal with. They always get too close to
me. They often in their ignorance intrude in places where I keep fragile
thoughts and feelings, to easily and unwittingly broken by a  blunt,
unthinking criticism or a disapproving sneer. These things are usually
very difficult to replace and even if they aren't, it always hurts in
the worst possible way. So I always kept my distance from people, raised
an invisible but very real barrier around my heart that let people as
close to it as I could deal with and no further. Even the people that I
would eventually come to think of as friends were blocked by this wall,
because by that time I had forgetten how to lower it.

It's sad how early we learn to block each other out. I learnt to do so
very early in life, sometime in the first few years of school. I still
remember how it happened.

There was a boy I was friends with. His name was Yuri. During lunchtime
we used to eat together. One particular day we were sharing an ice-cream
he had bought. I remember thinking how kind he was and mentally
comparing him to a hero in my favourite cartoon.

At that moment a group of girls ran past us giggling. When they saw us
they stopped and pointed. As one they sang a nasty little rhyme that was
quite popular back then.

"Yuri and Maho sitting in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G. First comes love,
then comes marriage, Then comes a baby in a baby-carriage!"

They all laughed and collapsed in hysterics while Yuri and I sat there,
red-faced and miserable with shame until they finally ran off. That was
when a change seemed to come over Yuri. The grimace on his reddened,
shamed countenance slowly became anger and he suddenly shoved me back
and stood up, making the half-melted ice cream drop into my lap and
thoroughly coat the front of my dress.

"Stupid Girl!" He shouted at me, tears streaking his cheeks. "Go away! I
HATE you!"

Seconds later he ran off. I remeber crying miserably for the rest of
lunchtime, thinking of what my mother would say when she saw my dress. I
was so upset that I was late for class and scolded by the teacher.

We never ate lunch together again. In fact, we never even spoke again.
He avoided me like the plague.

Of all the people in the world, children can be the cruelest. They can
also be the most vulnerable.

After that incident, I started spending more time alone. I had never had
that many friends, I was too shy, and I was terrified that if I tried to
be friendly with anyone else, they would hurt me like Yuri and the sing-
song girls did.  I concentrated on my work and kept to the background of
any social groups, trying deperately to keep myself from attracting any
unfavourable attention.

It worked for a while. I achieved a kind remoteness, like an
unattainable superiority. I found myself detached from my classmates.
That was when a strange thing happened. My indifference to them seemed
to work in my favour. The sly comments I had been ignoring for years
started to taper off. They started to ask me questions about their
schoolwork. The stares changed from distrust to awe. I had surpassed
them all, I was better than them all and now it seemed that they
realized this and they needed me.

I finally found myself treated with respect. My classmates came to me
for help, heads bowed as if ashamed of their own stupidity. They started
to do things for me. I was suspicious of this at first until I realized
they wanted my help in return. Before long I found that by helping them,
I could get all sorts of things in return.

I never let down my wall of indifference however. My newfound popularity
was still too full of the unknown for me to do that. On top of this I
found that if I was too nice, then my classmates asked for too much. So
I kept up cold demeanor. I knew they didn't really like me. They only
needed my help. There was a big difference.

I think the biggest mistake of my life was that I forgot that somewhere
along the line.

I soon found how lonely it could be at the top. I had been feeling this
all my life, but only now with so many people trying to get on my good
side did the loneliness reach an unbearable level. Before this, there
had always been little I could do about it and I never really realized
how lonely I was. It had been a universal constant, something that had
always been there, but now I began to realize I could change it. There
was only one little problem. I was terrified.

My intelligence and the other student's need for it had provided me with
a cushion from the bullying of the children but they had never really
accepted me into their circles. I found myself pushed into the
background of social life. I had wanted to keep others at a distance and
now they wanted the same. I made them uncomfortable. I was terrifying to
them, I think. Too clever for them ever to feel comfortable, and by now
I knew that I could not drop my shield because didn't know how to
survive without it. There were no other places for me. If I was no
longer the clever one, then what was I? Who was I? I had no friends to
go to.  No one needed me if I couldn't help them with their schoolwork.

So I found myself in limbo. I was far too terrified to drop my defenses,
but miserable and lonely because of them.

A weird space seemed to open inside me. It started to suck me in. It was
like I was being compressed into myself, shriveling away and becoming
smaller and smaller until one day I would just disappear completely. I
couldn't stop it. It only seemed to be banished be the proximity of
other people.

The last year of elementary school was hell. I felt myself disappearing
bit by bit. The loneliness was all-consuming. I would come home from
school and cry into my pillow. I was angry at something but I wasn't
sure what. I felt like a bomb, full of anger and pain but none of it
going anywhere or directed at anything, just seemingly going round and
round inside me, growing bigger and bigger until I felt my head would
explode. Sometimes it got so bad that I hit my head against my bedroom
wall until the pain was replaced by another more understandable kind of
pain. A pain I could deal with, one that could be explained, one that
didn't hurt as much.

In many ways, starting junior high school was a blessing. Depite all the
demons in the back of my mind, I had kept up with my work, shown
aptitude and despite all the odds, retained the model student persona I
had created. It earned me a path that few of my fellow elementary school
students could follow. I was accepted into a far more prestigious high
school than most of the others could hope for.

A new start. Escape. Salvation.

Or so I thought at the time.

That was the period of my life when things really kicked into overdrive.
The onset of adolesence added a strange surreality to life at my new
school. The sudden change from child to something not quite adult
brought a new level of acceptance and even respect. A new uniform, new
responsibilities, the beginings of a new body. The chance for a new
beginning.

Everyone was so proud of me! My mother, my father, my brothers and
sisters. "You're in high school now. You're all grown up now, honey. I'm
so pround of you!" said my parents. 'That's right,' I thought. 'I've
grown up now. I'm older now, so I've got to be stonger.'

Sometime during my first year of junior high that thought became an
obsession.

My first few weeks were simply overwhelming. I can't really remember a
great deal of what happened then, only that it seemed the world had
turned upside down. It was so strange. Everyone was so different after a
long summer holiday. Even I was different. I had grown taller, stronger,

and more womanly almost overnight.

Yet, it wasn't  just my body that had grown but my views and interests
too. Certain things became far more important than they had ever seemed
before. Like having friends.

The summer seemed to have changed almost everybody else too. I wasn't
going to school with children now. They were teenagers. They suddenly
weren't interested in toys and nursery rhymes anymore. They were
interested in music, movies and gossip. They were interested in fashion
idols, their friends and clothes. And boys.

I was never exactly sure whether I became interested in exactly the same
things at my insistance or theirs.

But I was interested.

Finding my place was a lot harder this time. I was relearning what I
knew about life and I had never had the chance to build up my small
reserve of confidence that I suspected they had had. I felt even more
lost than ever for a time.  I watched my classmates constantly. They way
they acted together. They ways they laughed and teased and giggled like
fools. The way they enjoyed being together.

I wanted to be with them. I wanted to laugh and giggle with them. Gods,
I wanted to be them. But I stood in the background because I didn't know
how, simply watching and wanting and feeling angrier at myself each day.

Before too long it all came to a catalyst as everything seems to do when
you are a teenager. It's as if our bodies are a strange mix of
unfamiliar chemicals just waiting for an accidental element to be thrown
in and cause an explosive reaction.

It was during lunch break. I was sitting on a bench in the courtyard,
not too far from a group of girls whom I admired. They were strong and
confident and outspoken, in short they were everything that I was not
and wanted to be. I had heard the teachers mutter to each other that
these girls were troublemakers. "Delinquents" they had called them. I
didn't care. I thought they were great. I wanted to be just like them.

 I was absently watching them while I ate my lunch. I noticed one of the
boys in our class walk casually up to them. I think he was one of the
more popular guys but I couldn't be sure. My memory of this moment has
always seemed somewhat less than real.

They talked for a while and then the girls suddenly laughed. The boy
turned bright red and shouted at them.  That made them laugh even
harder. Angrily the boy stalked away in my direction. I must have been
gaping at him because he turned to me and growled "What are you looking
at? You're even dumber than they are!" With a sneer he pushed me back
off the bench. "That ought to teach you stupid girls some manners!" he
laughed and turned away.

For a moment I just lay there, with my back on the ground and my legs
still dangling over the bench, my underwear on view to half the world. I
almost cried. I think if I had cried then everything that came later on
in my life may have been different. But I didn't cry. I was too angry to
cry.

I scrambled to my feet, nearly tripping over my bento that was now
strewn all over the ground beside me.  I don't recall being aware of the
cuts that the wooden bench had left on the insides of my knees or the
girls I had been watching suddenly standing up. I was angrier than I had
ever been before or have since. I didn't know what to do. So I ran after
him and swung a wild fist at the back of his neck.

I connected with a dull thud and an explosion of pain in my knuckles.
The boy wheeled around in shock. I couldn't punch him again because my
hand had gone numb and almost useless, so I did something else that I
had never done before nor since. I kicked him squarely between the legs.

I remember him collapsing with a shriek that died gradually to a low
groan. I remember screaming something at him hysterically but I don't
remember what it was. I remember the group of girls I had admired
earlier approach me.

"Wow, that was really something!" said one.

"Yeah but he totally deserved it. What an asshole!" continued another.

I nodded dumbly, impressed. I had never heard another girl say that
word.

"You're name's Maho, right?" queried the first girl. I nodded again.

"Way to go, Maho-san"

I remember feeling suddenly very tired and replying "I think I'll go
home now." I remember walking out the school gate toward my home.

I don't remember anything else about that day.


I noticed the girls standing outside the gate as I walked into school
the next day. I was worrying about what was going to happen to me. I
just knew that I would have to be punished for kicking the boy. I had
never been punished before in school. "Maybe I'll be expelled?" I
thought.

As I walked near the gate, the girls called me over.

"Hey Maho!"

"Um... y-yeah" I stammered, still quaking with fear inside at the
thought of being expelled.

"Whats wrong? You look kinda down."

"Well I uh.. I was just w-wondering how the schools going to p-punish me
about uhh..... well about yesterday." I squeaked.

"Oh.. don't worry about that, silly! We talked to the principal
yesterday afternoon and explained it all to him. He was pretty angry at
first but after we explained what that baka Hiro did first, He said that
'extenuating circumstances might be made.' " She quoted in a bad
imitation of the Headmaster.

Her friends chuckled.

"Really" I blurted out.

"Really! Don't worry about it Maho-chan. Besides, it was sooo cool the
way you hit him. The whole school's talking about it"

"Yeah, you are so cool Maho!" Said a second girl.

"Does your hand hurt much?" asked a third.

"Hey", Interupted the first girl, "Why don't you have lunch with us
today?"

"Yeah, yeah, come on Maho" they chorused, pushing me ahead of them
toward school as the bell rang.

"Ok, Ok... I'm coming" I said as walked to class. They followed me all
the way. I felt wonderful. I felt strong.

I think that was the moment when I began the mistake that got me where I
am now. Because at that moment I felt better than I ever had before... I
felt strong, powerful and in control... and I didn't want to let it go.

End Chapter One.

I know most of you guys are mostly into ranma fics, I can't really think
of that many karekano fics that I've seen on raac, but if anyone does
read it, I'd really appreciate some feedback.

Thanx,

Cheshire Grin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]