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Ohayo
When I was very young, living in a suburb which had trains passing through it every day, I grew up with a boy named Tetsuo Takahata. We were the same age, and for nearly a decade we shared the same classes.
Tetsuo, at first glance, did not have much going for him. For one, he didn't have a special name. It was common for there to be multiple boys named Tetsuo in any given classroom, sort of like how in American classrooms there would be a surplus of Tylers. There was also his appearance, which was not anything special, even after he had survived his bout with puberty. He had square shoulders and twig-like legs, but he had a round face.
He was not the most handsome boy, nor did he have quirks that would've otherwise made him a memorable classmate.
Still, I'd befriended him by the time we entered elementary school.
From the time we were five years old to the beginning of high school, we would venture out every morning across a small wooden bridge that took us from our neighborhood to the school. We would say "good morning" to each other, and to a few of our classmates as well, including my sister, who was a year older than me. When stuck together, we would talk about Godzilla and Ultraman, and early on we even discovered that we both liked watching baseball whenever we got the chance to hog the TV at home.
We talked about things boys talked about. Everything, in fact, except for girls we liked; or, depending on our age, how much we didn't like girls. We never admitted that phase of our adolescence with each other. I assumed, in my childish state of mind, that Tetsuo didn't want to be bothered about who he might have crushes on, and he might've thought the same way about me.
As such, that part of our lives remained a mystery, something shared and yet mutually exclusive.
Long before that, I had no interest in getting a girlfriend. I thought, in an innocent way, that I would rather have Tetsuo be my girlfriend than any of the girls in our class. But of course Tetsuo was a boy! Not that I considered it too deeply at that age.
At the same time, why did I like him so much?
I can't tell you too much about Tetsuo, except that I enjoyed being with him. It's usually a futile battle, anyhow, to explain to a third party why someone would strike anyone else as special without devolving into cliche. I could tell you that he had a fun-loving personality, but that would convey absolutely no meaning when compared to seeing said personality in action. I could tell you that him saying "good morning" to me on our way to school sent a small but substantial wave of comfort to my stomach, but I don't believe there is any meaning in saying this either.
I myself tried to express to him how I felt, even though I could not have fully understood my own feelings at the age of ten. Despite this, I decided to write him a letter, something I could pass to him between classes, or perhaps on the way home from school, right before we would go our separate ways. I knew, regardless, that I didn't want to be present when he read it.
So for one agonizing night I sat hunched over my desk, writing and re-writing what I wanted to tell him. Yet as I came closer to realizing my vision, the less confident I became in what I wanted to say. Still, I finished it and put the slip of paper in my backpack, but doubt still haunted me.
I considered, on the day I was to hand my letter to Tetsuo, whether it was worth confessing such things to him, to put our friendship in jeopardy. I didn't think about it in those words, but I thought about it all the same. I didn't want to lose what I already possessed.
Standing on that small wooden bridge from my childhood, I took my letter out of my backpack and started ripping it into little pieces. I took these pieces and threw them over the edge, into the water, where I wouldn't have to think about them anymore.
Satisfied, if also weary, I went home and pushed Tetsuo out of my mind.
From then on, he would be just another boy to me.
Tetsuo, at first glance, did not have much going for him. For one, he didn't have a special name. It was common for there to be multiple boys named Tetsuo in any given classroom, sort of like how in American classrooms there would be a surplus of Tylers. There was also his appearance, which was not anything special, even after he had survived his bout with puberty. He had square shoulders and twig-like legs, but he had a round face.
He was not the most handsome boy, nor did he have quirks that would've otherwise made him a memorable classmate.
Still, I'd befriended him by the time we entered elementary school.
From the time we were five years old to the beginning of high school, we would venture out every morning across a small wooden bridge that took us from our neighborhood to the school. We would say "good morning" to each other, and to a few of our classmates as well, including my sister, who was a year older than me. When stuck together, we would talk about Godzilla and Ultraman, and early on we even discovered that we both liked watching baseball whenever we got the chance to hog the TV at home.
We talked about things boys talked about. Everything, in fact, except for girls we liked; or, depending on our age, how much we didn't like girls. We never admitted that phase of our adolescence with each other. I assumed, in my childish state of mind, that Tetsuo didn't want to be bothered about who he might have crushes on, and he might've thought the same way about me.
As such, that part of our lives remained a mystery, something shared and yet mutually exclusive.
Long before that, I had no interest in getting a girlfriend. I thought, in an innocent way, that I would rather have Tetsuo be my girlfriend than any of the girls in our class. But of course Tetsuo was a boy! Not that I considered it too deeply at that age.
At the same time, why did I like him so much?
I can't tell you too much about Tetsuo, except that I enjoyed being with him. It's usually a futile battle, anyhow, to explain to a third party why someone would strike anyone else as special without devolving into cliche. I could tell you that he had a fun-loving personality, but that would convey absolutely no meaning when compared to seeing said personality in action. I could tell you that him saying "good morning" to me on our way to school sent a small but substantial wave of comfort to my stomach, but I don't believe there is any meaning in saying this either.
I myself tried to express to him how I felt, even though I could not have fully understood my own feelings at the age of ten. Despite this, I decided to write him a letter, something I could pass to him between classes, or perhaps on the way home from school, right before we would go our separate ways. I knew, regardless, that I didn't want to be present when he read it.
So for one agonizing night I sat hunched over my desk, writing and re-writing what I wanted to tell him. Yet as I came closer to realizing my vision, the less confident I became in what I wanted to say. Still, I finished it and put the slip of paper in my backpack, but doubt still haunted me.
I considered, on the day I was to hand my letter to Tetsuo, whether it was worth confessing such things to him, to put our friendship in jeopardy. I didn't think about it in those words, but I thought about it all the same. I didn't want to lose what I already possessed.
Standing on that small wooden bridge from my childhood, I took my letter out of my backpack and started ripping it into little pieces. I took these pieces and threw them over the edge, into the water, where I wouldn't have to think about them anymore.
Satisfied, if also weary, I went home and pushed Tetsuo out of my mind.
From then on, he would be just another boy to me.
I'm not quite sure:
What this story's about, author. A man looks back on a time in his childhood when he had a crush on the guy next door until one day when he apparently decided that he didn't? It's just not coming through to me at all.
I'd also like there to be some reason the guy's looking back this way and some lesson that he's drawing for his present life based on this episode from his past. The whole middle section seems contradictory, too, the way he says he doesn't know how or why he felt this way but then telling us that he wrote out a letter to explain it all to his friend. I'd like to have some idea of what was in that letter even if our narrator in the present dismisses everything that he remembers writing. I'm not seeing any link to the prompt either...unless the narrator is declaring that the feelings he had for this other kid were nonsense? I just don't know what I'm supposed to be seeing here...
Mike
What this story's about, author. A man looks back on a time in his childhood when he had a crush on the guy next door until one day when he apparently decided that he didn't? It's just not coming through to me at all.
I'd also like there to be some reason the guy's looking back this way and some lesson that he's drawing for his present life based on this episode from his past. The whole middle section seems contradictory, too, the way he says he doesn't know how or why he felt this way but then telling us that he wrote out a letter to explain it all to his friend. I'd like to have some idea of what was in that letter even if our narrator in the present dismisses everything that he remembers writing. I'm not seeing any link to the prompt either...unless the narrator is declaring that the feelings he had for this other kid were nonsense? I just don't know what I'm supposed to be seeing here...
Mike
I thought this was a really nice first two-thirds of a story. There's some nice descriptive touches ("even after he had survived his bout with puberty" really tells us a lot, doesn't it?), and I get a good sense of the narrator's attitude from the way he dismisses cliche even as he indulges in the cliche that "words can't describe what I'm feeling."
But then... well, BB beat me to it again: I'm not sure what this story's about, either. Or rather, I'm not sure what you want me to take away from that last line. Because obviously Tetsuo isn't "just another boy" to the narrator after that; that's not how feelings work, even if your excellent work in the first part of the story sets up that the narrator might try to convince himself of that. But if we're supposed to understand that the narrator is lying to themself at the end... then to what purpose? To what narrative purpose, I mean. You set this up in a clear puppy-love way, so it's too low-stakes to feel tragic. It also doesn't feel like a rejection of self, because it's not really presented as a fear of coming out so much as a more generic fear of wrecking a friendship. I'm lacking a message, and not in a deliberate sort of "this story doesn't have any meaning on purpose" way, but in a "I stopped at the turning point of the fic, but before we actually got to see the turn" way.
I think there are two ways to address this. First, you could develop how to give the narrator's decision is a rejection of self/rejection of childhood's aggression in favor of adulthood's hesitance/whatever you want it to be, and focus on adding that to the earlier part of the story so that the ending means something. Second, you could build out the back end; show us what this decision means to the narrator, and what becomes of him and/or Tetsuo. Let that last line be the conflict that sets up the climax, rather than being the climax itself. Either way, you've got a great setup--now it's just a matter of helping me and BB understand what you're trying to tell us!
But then... well, BB beat me to it again: I'm not sure what this story's about, either. Or rather, I'm not sure what you want me to take away from that last line. Because obviously Tetsuo isn't "just another boy" to the narrator after that; that's not how feelings work, even if your excellent work in the first part of the story sets up that the narrator might try to convince himself of that. But if we're supposed to understand that the narrator is lying to themself at the end... then to what purpose? To what narrative purpose, I mean. You set this up in a clear puppy-love way, so it's too low-stakes to feel tragic. It also doesn't feel like a rejection of self, because it's not really presented as a fear of coming out so much as a more generic fear of wrecking a friendship. I'm lacking a message, and not in a deliberate sort of "this story doesn't have any meaning on purpose" way, but in a "I stopped at the turning point of the fic, but before we actually got to see the turn" way.
I think there are two ways to address this. First, you could develop how to give the narrator's decision is a rejection of self/rejection of childhood's aggression in favor of adulthood's hesitance/whatever you want it to be, and focus on adding that to the earlier part of the story so that the ending means something. Second, you could build out the back end; show us what this decision means to the narrator, and what becomes of him and/or Tetsuo. Let that last line be the conflict that sets up the climax, rather than being the climax itself. Either way, you've got a great setup--now it's just a matter of helping me and BB understand what you're trying to tell us!