Name:
Kurosawa Shinobu
Age:
16
Birthday:
September 9th
Year level:
10
Sexuality:
Biromantic Asexual
Club:
Literature Club
Disabilities:
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disease
Job/occupation:
None
Appearance:
Personality:
If anyone Shinobu knew before she came to Yamaku could see her now, they would pass her off as someone completely different. She likes to say that if things seem to be going well for her, then soon everything will come tumbling down and leave her worse off than before, and that is more than just her motto. She is flat-out suspicious of any seemingly good situation, and will often push away those who try to help her or even just befriend her. Despite her condition, she does have goals. She has always wanted to be a published author, and before her diagnosis, she would sometimes partake in small contests and just write fr the fun of it. Now, however, she feels as though there is a clock ticking, counting down to a deadline she can't negotiate. As a result, she has taken up the unhealthy habit of staying up late at night to write. She is a history buff-especially when it comes to European history-though she will rarely talk about it now. Don't bring up Stephen Hawking around her, especially if it's in relation to her disability, or else you'll face retribution. Her muscles might be slowly fading away, and her punches aren't what they used to be, but she can definitely deliver a painful slap.
Backstory:
Shinobu lived in Tokyo before her diagnosis, and is more used to the hustle and bustle of that gigantic city than the far less busy Miyagi Prefecture. Her family was nothing special. She had a younger brother, a mother and a father, all of them as middle-class as you can get. Neither of her parents did much different, though her mother started to work again after she had gotten old enough to take care of herself. She was always somewhat of a bookworm, and at an early age began to write, a hobby she keeps to this day despite her disease. Her life was perfectly normal then, she was nothing more than another girl. That's how it always is with that disease. You never find out about it until after you can't imagine any other life, and then it steals everything away from you.
It all began with a cramp in her right leg that just refused to go away. The first few times she complained about it, her family didn't think anything of it. After all, there were countless other, more common explanations for such a thing. As time went on, she started to stumble more often, tripping over nothing at all. Once again, everyone put it down to some kind of quirk of her's. She wasn't the one with the disease of everyone's worst nightmare, no, she was just the cute, clumsy one who always tripped and always dropped things.
She started to notice her muscles twitching, it wasn't anything obvious, just a few barely visible movements under her skin. It was distracting for her, as whenever she was writing, she would see her muscles wriggle just under her skin. Along with the twitches came difficulty holding pens and pencils, which was the last straw for her. It made it almost impossible to focus on writing and schoolwork, and her grades were feeling the impact as well. So it was finally brought up with her doctor.
It was then that she found out that everything she had been experiencing was likely the result of a motor neuron disorder. It didn't sound like a big deal at the time. She assumed she would just have to take a few pills and everything would go back to normal. The doctor put her through a series of tests, which she accepted in stride along her daily life. It was a relief more than anything. Soon, she thought, she could just get a treatment for whatever it was she had. Then the results came back
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. ALS. Lou Gherig's disease. That thing that the smart science guy has. She didn't know much about it, after all, she much preferred writing to science. That fact gave her but a few precious moment of ignorance in the end, before she got her expiration date. It hit her hard. She had never thought she would hear the words "life expectancy" spoken to her face, and even after the doctor said them, she expected something relatively cushy. Something shorter than normal, but enough for her to have a full enough life. That's what she had expected.
She hadn't expected two years.
With that single conversation, her life as she had known it was completely over. According to the doctor, she would be completely bedridden for most of her remaining life. Unable to care for herself. Unable to do anything but lay there and wait for her death. Of course, he reminder her of all the miracles. Stephen Hawking has it, and he is still alive and one of the most important men on Earth. That's what he said, trying to cheer her up. But that's all it was-a miracle. That kind of thing doesn't happen twice, especially not for a no-name Japanese girl in high school.
"New treatments are always being invented. I've heard of some new experiments they're doing, I'm sure there will be a way to cure you someday."
It was bullshit and they all knew it. There would be a way to cure her someday, but not inside those two more years that she had to keep breathing. She couldn't bring herself to go to school after that, and her parents couldn't bring themselves to make her. The thought of their daughter dying in two years was too much, and they simply could not bear to force her to do anything. Every day she expected to suddenly stop being able to move something. Her fingers, toes, legs, arms... lips... eyes. All of them were things she would die without being able to use. It never happened. Her legs got weaker, but it only took a cane for her to keep walking. Everyone told her it meant she would probably live longer. Now, if she was lucky, she might have a whole five years to live.
Five years.
Five. Years.
What a fucking consolation that was. That was even more time spent inside, waiting for the end to finally come. Eventually, her parents stopped even trying to get her to go. It wasn't that they had given up, it was that they knew that she would just walk in front of a car if she went outside. She lived like that for... some amount of time. It all became a blur, she stopped remembering what day of the week it was. Then what week it was in the month. Then what month it was. Near the end of it all, her mother told her the news. There was a school that she wanted her to consider enrolling in.
She gave her the whole run-down of the place. 24-hour nursing staff, fully wheelchair accessible, right next to a major hospital, catered mainly to disabled students. A place perfect for someone like her, she had said. Someone like her. Someone who was different from all the normal people, someone who didn't have any reason to live anymore-much less go to school.
Words were said-more like screamed. What reason was there in it? Why would she want to keep learning now? It would all be a waste of the world's time, just like she was nothing more than a waste of its oxygen. In the end, though. It wasn't her decision to make. Her parents enrolled her... no, sent her there. No. They didn't do either of those things, they dumped their little genetic failure onto someone else.
As it turned out, the resentment that came along with that was exactly what she needed to avoid dying a couple years early. She knew... thought that they both just saw her as a disgrace to the family. A person who would be forever worthless, and while she repeated such words in her head over and over again, the hatred bubbled up and made her channel her thoughts through her shaky hands into a pen which she constantly dropped, all the way onto a piece of paper. She would show them, show them that the daughter they said they loved wasn't a malfunctioning machine to be thrown away.
Even though that's what she thought of herself as.
Hatred does strange things to people, and sometimes, it can even save their life.
Notes:
Is, of course, listed as having suicidal tendencies in her file.
.