When I was in elementary school, a kid transferred into our class who was a bit unusual. His family seemed somewhat poor, and it looked like he didn't have a father. I had seen his mother two or three times, and she seemed like a nice person. He didn't seem all that unhappy; he was just a normally cheerful guy. But what made him strange was that no matter how hot it was in the middle of summer, he would never take off his long sleeves. It wasn't like he was just sensitive to the cold, either. Right before summer vacation, he’d come to school wearing a long-sleeved shirt and shorts. Also, he never once participated in swimming class.
Around the time we finally started to realize, "Maybe he has some kind of complex about his body?", the bad kids in the class started teasing him about it a lot. They all made fun of him, trying to rip off his long-sleeved shirt. One day, he got insanely angry and started thrashing around, and his finger poked me right in the eye. Tears came streaming down my face, and seeing that egged the other guys on into a fit of rage. A group of us seriously went at him and stripped his clothes off.
And then, there was something weird on his right arm... "Thank you for being born (heart mark) My dearest baby [Name]-kun (heart) Mommy is so happy (heart) Grow up to be a good boy (heart) Love, [Name]'s Mommy (heart)" It was a slightly distorted tattoo. Was it handmade by his mother?
Not long after that, he transferred to another school again. I haven't seen him even once since then, and I wonder where he is now. He'd be twenty-five years old now, the same age as me...
...Come to think of it, his body odor—or rather, the "house smell" that came off his clothes—was quite unpleasant, but it left an impression on me because it was a smell I had never smelled anywhere else.
I only remember the text of the tattoo vaguely, and besides, it was pretty distorted (because of his growth?), so my memory is a bit loose. I do remember that it was all in hiragana and heart marks, though. I can't remember if the heart marks were red or black... While she was giving him this tattoo, didn't she even consider the obvious fact that this child would grow up to be an adult? But I suppose the state of mind of parents who give their children overly cute names is probably the same. Well, maybe you can't use a psycho's actions as a standard, can you?
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