[OLD] So I'm a Snake, So What? (Kumodesu x OC)

CC1 - Crystalline Crybaby

As ashamed as I am to admit it, I've always been a cowardly person. There's no point in sugarcoating it.

Since I was a kid, and all the way up to high school, I avoided confrontation like the plague. The simple possibility of violence had me feeling like I was gonna keel over and die on the spot.

I guess it's because of that, that, almost immediately after entering high school, I was quick to be picked up as a target for a group of upperclassmen.

I'd carry their bags. I'd do their homework. Even after classes were done, I'd "hang out" with them.

"Looking on the bright side, it might have done me some good after a while! I wasn't built in any sense of the word. You'd probably find more defined musculature in a dead worm. Plus, all that extra homework definitely would've boosted my grades by, like, a ton, right?"

Or at least, that was how I thought about it. I was a pack mule more than anything. And, honestly, I couldn't blame them for any of it. I'm a doormat at heart.

No matter how much I tried to talk myself up in my head after getting hyped up by too many video games and manga, I was quickly reminded, multiple times, that... I'm not in a video game or manga!!!

There is no "hidden potential" or "power of friendship". Mostly in part to the fact I had no friends, but I digress.

The second I came face-to-face with them, all that bravado I had worked up in my head vanished like the wind, replaced by that all too familiar feeling of suffocating fear. This is the real world, there's no way in hell someone like me could win a fight against... anyone!

Knowing that, I was about ready to tuck my tail between my legs and bear it. After all, it was just nine more months before I could transfer and forget about all of this, right?

However, as luck would have it, I was lucky enough to run into someone who did have the kind of strength I could only dream of: Kyouya Sasajima.

At risk of sounding rude, he wasn't anything special. Just your average, run-of-the-mill high school student. Brown hair, brown eyes, a head shorter than me, and even though he had no idea who I was, he was quick to stand up for me.

And I don't just mean he tried to tell off that group of older guys as a "favor for a classmate". No, instead, he got into a straight up fight with them!

Did he win? No. He was up against three older, taller, more muscular punks. The odds were nothing but stacked against him. But, to me, the fact that he stood up to them nonetheless was even more admirable to me.

I wanted to be like that. Strong and courageous. So, like the leech I am, I kinda just... stuck around him. And somehow, over that time span of me hanging around like a bad smell around him, we wound up becoming... friends.

Heck, over time, I even wound up being cool with two more of our classmates; Shunsuke Yamada and Kanata Ooshima.

I had friends! Plural! I had real, actual, physically present friends!!! In all my sixteen years of life, that was something I had never managed to do!

That alone was a vote of confidence for me. After all, maybe, just maybe, if I was able to make friends, I could learn how to stand up for myself, too, right? Maybe start by not bursting into tears when I was called on to answer a question in class...

However, things couldn't possibly be going this good for this long, right? It was a sneaking suspicion I had in the back of my mind, and in the end, I was right.

Randomly, in the middle of homeroom, as Ms. Oka was in the middle of speaking, I felt myself being blasted by a raging surge of pain.

And me being me, the only thing I could think to do was start bawling my eyes out. Although, I guess in this kind of scenario, it's not that unreasonable, right?

However, the second I started crying, I noticed that, despite the high-pitched, annoying ring to it, the wailing voice wasn't my own. And, more than that, it was a lot more... infantile than usual.

The confusion alone was enough to give me pause for a couple seconds.

I looked around myself through clouded eyes. I was clearly in a house, but nothing looked familiar.

Then, I tried to move, but I couldn't do anything but wiggle around. That led to me raising my arms to the air to get a look at them. And what did I find?

Little chubby baby arms, in place of lanky, scrawny teenager arms.

Then the tears came right back in full effect...

But before I could wear out my newfound baby lungs with my wailing, I heard something. It was... a song? Someone was singing.

An almost angelic voice was singing a melody from somewhere, and as I felt a pair of arms wrap around me, and connecting the dots a little, I realized that, the one singing was my mother.

This unfamiliar, beautiful woman with bright pink hair and emerald green eyes, was looking over me with so much love and tenderness in her expression. And the song she sung ─ even if I couldn't understand a single word of it, it was still the most calming thing I had ever heard...

-------------------------------------------------------------

Fun fact, the song I had in mind was Something w/o Sunrise by Myth & Roid. Listen to it. This is not a request :D