The Perfect Boy

Intruder

The swimming pool incident wasn't the last time Osaka came to me like a knight in shining armor rescuing a boy in distress. There were plenty more after that.

The professional who came to our school and tested us for our IQ told me I had an IQ of a genius. We had a long discussion on that topic. But it wasn't the only thing we discussed. He said both sides of my brain function beautifully, meaning that the side that control feelings and the senses function as well as the logic side. 

I guessed that was the reason I had tons of songs written and stored away safely in my computer. I loved playing music and I loved singing. I was an autodidact in playing musical instruments. No one ever taught me. I never took music lessons in school as an elective and never had a private lesson. But I loved playing them. I just learned them myself and look at the internet for tips. I played the guitar and the ukulele as well as I did with the drum and the piano. I could do a little bit of violin too. I spent many nights away playing those instruments and creating my songs. They were always sad ballads or song types with melancholy character .  Songs that portrayed the real me.  That was before Osaka had his way with me.

Just like with swimming, singing had a way of releasing my pent-up emotions. It wasn't only sadness with its cohorts – despair, anguish, agony, shame and grief – that I had to deal with. There were all sorts of emotion colliding with each other within me – anger, angst, worry, helplessness, disgust and fear. I felt like playing musical instruments, writing verses of songs and singing them out were an outlet to let all the emotions surface. They were like wildfires within and when I played and sang, it was like dousing them with water. One of the reasons I was able to not shed a tear for so long, was because of this ability to manage my emotions.

But I played and sang in no one's company. Always alone. Not even when Andrew was around. The basement of my home was a sanctuary for the musical me. It was there that I let the tunes, the words, the emotions out.  I yelled as loud as I could and no one would hear.  It was soundproof place after all. It wasn't my doing, it was my dad. Aside from being the successful businessman that he was, he was also a musical prodigy.  The fruit did not fall too far from the tree.  He played many more instruments than I did. He never did teach me how to play any of them though. So, the basement and everything in it, including the instruments, was at my disposal. As I said, my dad almost never at home as his business empire expanded overseas.

Aside from the door being almost always locked by me, I always placed a "No Disturb" sign whenever I was in the basement, so no one could enter. Andrew was well-aware of this boundary I was placing, because one time, without permission, he barged in, and I beat the hell out of him.

Osaka was not Andrew. He had no manners. He was like the person who burst into your life, well my life, uninvited. He remained the same kind of a person and I was more than willing to entertain him in my presence.

"That was lovely"

I must have forgotten to lock and put the no disturb sign on the door.  Either that or he was one hell of an intruder.