2025-11-08: Art for Art's Sake
- Cutscene: Art for Art's Sake
- Cast: Akari Hoshi
- Where: Hoshi Home, Rengedai Ward
- OOC Date: 2025-11-08
- IC Date: Tuesday, August 7, 2012
- Summary: Akari's father gives Akari an ultimatum.
Akari had been in her room, leafing through one of her manga on her bed, when there was a polite knocking at her door. One, two, three...
"Akari, we need to talk."
Akari hated that line from her father, because it always meant that she was about to be told she did something wrong; he never phrased it quite that way at any other time. And, unfortunately, she had an idea of what it was; her exam grades hadn't been very good. She'd passed, but...
"I'll be out in a moment, Father," she responded.
"Now, Akari."
That meant it was really bad. Akari felt her body tense as she slipped off her bed, heading to the door.
"Come with me."
The destination was only the living room. The Hoshi home was both larger and more Western than a lot of the other homes in the area, and Rengedai Ward wasn't exactly poor. Her family had always had money and weren't opposed to using it to make people comfortable, and it was what her mother was used to. Her mother, Ren Hoshi (nee Pereira), who'd grown up in Brazil, preferred the Western aesthetic. Her real name was Renata, but it was easy enough for her to just write Ren in hiragana and let people use the short form - it made her seem more assimilated.
A lot of people, Akari knew, assumed that her mother was a trophy wife; a beautiful dekasegi foreigner her father had met on a series of extended business trips in his twenties and had a whirlwind romance with, who had come to Japan a couple months later to continue the relationship. She was tall compared to most women (though Akari was threatening to match or exceed her, given how much she'd grown over the last year), even darker than Akari was, with long straight hair. Gorgeous in an exotic way, even into her thirties now - to the fourteen-year-old Akari, anyone in their mid-thirties was old and anyone over forty was ancient.
The gossip from the ruder people at her father's work was that Renata wasn't very bright and that he'd only married her for her looks, or possibly because she was pregnant with Akari already; Akari was born only a few months after the marriage, so that part may even have been partially true. But if it was anything but bias against a foreigner, it was simply from her learning the language, as she had not mastered Japanese until she'd moved to Japan. Akari was very aware that her mother was smarter than she was, just quiet a lot of the time, even with her. She was often busy; she didn't precisely have a job as such but she did volunteer work in her community, teaching other newcomers how to fit in socially and tutoring them in Japanese, especially if their first language was Portuguese or English.
Then there was her father: Makito Hoshi, who did complicated international contract law (Akari was vague as to what it was beyond 'business'). He frequently missed dinner with the others because he was working late, or travelling. He might be her father, but she didn't talk to him as much or do as much with him as some children did with their parents, she knew; when she saw him, he was usually tired, or still busy.
He looked... boring, she supposed. Plain, anyway; physically, he didn't stand out, aside from being on the tall side too. She got that from both sides. People said he didn't have much imagination, but that it was a plus in contract law, where you want things to be just as they're written and no other way. And he was dedicated and and reliable. If he wasn't imaginative, perhaps, he was devoted to his wife. They really loved each other; around each other, they were more open than any other time. Of course he'd have his house done up in Western style for her.
Finally, there was Akari, who was everything they weren't: loud, creative, artistic, imaginative, not particularly interested in every little detail of the rules and expectations but more likely to find her own way. And independent, given both of them were always doing something, usually without her, and she had to handle herself a lot of the time. She didn't understand her parents a lot of the time, and they didn't understand her. How the two of them had produced her, none of them really got.
Her mother wasn't there, which meant one of two things: one, she was busy and her father didn't think this conversation was serious enough to wait for her to have her here, or two, she was 'busy' because she thought Makito might raise his voice, something Renata hated, and so she'd deliberately left.
"Sit," her father said, and did on the chair he liked. Akari lowered herself down a moment later on the couch.
"I know I didn't do well on the exams, but," Akari blurted out, hastily. "But! I was trying, I really was."
"Akari," Makito sighed. "You're smart, when you try to be. If you were really trying, you'd do better than this; I know you can do it if you apply yourself. It's just that you haven't been lately. You need to study to get into Seven Sisters High School - "
"But!" Akari tried to interrupt, but he kept talking.
" - now that you're in the second half of middle school. Next year you'll have to take the entrance examination for Seven Sisters, because just because you went to their middle school doesn't guarantee you entrance if you aren't up to par - "
"But I!" It happened again.
" - so we know you get into a good high school. It's important. You need to start thinking about your future."
"But I don't want to go to Seven Sisters!" Akari finally got out, loud enough that her father couldn't just ignore it. "I want to go to Gekkoukan!"
Makito looked at her with the same expression he'd have used if she said 'I want to drop out of school and run away from home'. "Now, Akari, you can't just do that. Gekkoukan is a fine enough school, I suppose, but elites go to Seven Sisters. You need to be thinking about your future," he stressed.
"I am thinking about my future!" Akari looked as if she was going to burst up from her seat, but she didn't, quite. "I want to go to Gekkoukan High and study art and fashion and costuming!"
Now Makito looked more disgusted than anything else. "Akari. When you were younger you wanted to be an astronaut and walk on the Moon. Then you wanted to be an Olympic athlete, a firefighter, and an 'adventuring archaeologist' after you saw those movies. Be realistic. We had this discussion months ago."
"I was SIX when I said I wanted to be an astronaut! You can't keep using that as an example forever!" Akari let out a breath because if she stayed amped up she was going to be scolded for that, too. "But I really do want to do art."
Makito says nothing for a few moments. Then: "I suppose we were going to have to talk about this, too. Akari, you don't take your schooling seriously enough. One of your teachers told us that she heard you bragging to other students about sneaking into Kasugayama after hours."
"That tattletale," Akari muttered under her breath. She had, but it was because she was telling them she'd seen a demon. (They hadn't believed her.)
Makito raised one eyebrow, but didn't ask her to repeat it louder. "And then there was last Friday. You stayed out so late, we were worried! And then when you finally get back, you were so tired you just went to bed. What were you even doing that night?"
Akari somehow doubted the actual answer ('I was in a magical circus saving one of my new friends' other friends from their evil double, and a lot of other people were there, so you don't need to worry even if the Homonculus tried to kill me. There was also a peacock') would be appreciated, so she mumbled, "Out. With a friend, at the arcade. We just forgot it was late."
"That's not the only time you've stayed out too late," Makito said. "It's like you don't actually care about your future. You're fourteen now, but it hasn't gotten better this year, it's gotten worse! So it's time to put the games and toys away for a while, and concentrate on work. To stop daydreaming like you always do. You're smart, I know you are. You're my child, and your mother's. But you won't focus. You just... dream. And if you don't, you're going to fail."
He pushed up his glasses, absently. "We've already signed you up for a tutor over the summer," which Akari very carefully kept her expression neutral about. She could manage a tutor. She'd been looking forward to having some time off, but if this was the worst punishment she got, she could take it. But he continued. "And while I'm not going to put you under a curfew, you have to check in more often. No more vanishing all day and half the evening. When you're not studying, I want you to empty out the spare room - "
Akari felt a surge of panic. "What?"
There was a spare room. The house was almost too big for three; Akari guessed they'd planned for a brother or a sister, but she was an only child. In addition to some odds and ends her parents stored in it, Akari kept her craft tools in it; sewing, foam work, the other few things they'd allowed her to buy, or bought for her when she was keeping up her grades better. Even some of her sketchbooks, though some of those were in her bedroom.
So if he wanted it emptied...
"I told you, you need to put your toys aside." Makito seems frustrated with repeating himself, or Akari's wilful attempt to ignore what he was saying. "When you were younger, your imagination was all well and good, and you're skilled with your hands, when you make things. But you're growing up. You can't just 'make things' forever. You need to be realistic. You'll never amount to anything if that's all you pay attention to - "
"But it's my art!" Akari did stand up this time, which got Makito to stand up too. "It's a whole portfolio! If I'm going to study it, I need one of those. I can't just...!"
"You can and you will. Keep a few of the things you've made, if you like, as mementos of childhood, but most of it has to go. Akari, I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. If you won't structure your time yourself, and you haven't, then this is the only way. You won't be going to Gekkoukan. There's no future in art; no career worth having. You saw what came of Madarame - what his art stood for! Fine art is a scam, and I won't let my daughter scam or be scammed - but your costumes aren't even that. They're a hobby! Not a career."
Akari felt her eyes getting moist. "But I really do want to study it. Father, I'm serious about this! I could learn to make things for television, or movies... but there are things I don't know, and I need to go to school for. Like Gekkoukan. And if you throw away everything... Please! I can't just - get rid of it!" What would she DO? She'd go mad if she didn't have something to do with her hands when she was thinking. Sometimes she couldn't focus on anything until she got an idea out of her head and made it real. "I promise I won't spend too much time on it - "
"You had your chance." Makito shakes his head. "If you'd done better on your exams - but you didn't. You must look forward. You're too smart to waste your life as a seamstress, and what if you change your mind next year again? Maybe, when you're older, and you know its proper place - but not now. And - Akari...? Akari! Listen to me!"
Akari was no longer there, because she'd darted out of the room.
She could do a lot of things. She was able to talk back to her father, to argue with him, to occasionally be something other than the dutiful child.
But she would not let him see her cry over having her art taken away from her.
What was she going to do now...?