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Teenage angst (and delusions)! Mommy issues! My Warmakers OTP!!1!
Limits
Sae was not always the top student in her class.
As a young girl, she was always bright, and enjoyed learning. But it wasn't until she started taking standardized exams, and seeing the student scores ranked for the whole school to see, that she realized how much she could compete - and win.
Suddenly learning wasn't just about herself anymore. Now she could become the best at it, better than all her other classmates. So she did.
She felt the same way about sports. Just like any other class, physical education was a place of competition where she fought for the best grade by running faster, winning more games, being more flexible than any of her classmates.
Her father was generous in his compliments, cheering her on like a larger, slightly (but only just) less effusive version of Reika. But Sae felt particularly proud when her mother - calm, efficient, not prone to emotional outbursts - graced her with a smile and praised her efforts. Yanagisawa Mizuki is a reserved woman, but gives off the sense that what she hides away - strength, determination, wisdom - is limitless. So her daughter, full of awe for this woman but herself plagued with all the shortcomings of a little girl, quietly strived to be as impressive.
They worried. Her father worried that she was pushing herself too hard. Reika worried that she wasn't having enough fun. Sae herself worried that she'd fall short. Mizuki was the only one who didn't worry, whose silent support exuded belief in Sae. And expectations.
Sae was relieved when she eventually hit the top of her class, because there was no one else to beat - no test score to match, no faster time to outrun. No higher standard that meant she had to try harder, again. Of course, there were still people who were smarter and stronger than her - her teachers, for instance. But no one expected a student to surpass their teacher. Sae didn't feel pressure to try against them, to compete with those standards just to see if she could make it.
Sae took comfort in the certainty of impossibilities.
*****
Sae was never a popular girl.
She played with other kids, but usually when she joined in a game it was because she tagged alongside Reika. She felt too awkward to approach people on her own, to go up to strangers and ask, Hey, can I play too? the way Reika did, with a friendly, winsome confidence that elicited an automatic Yes.
In junior high, once she threw herself into academic and physical competition, interaction with her classmates was even more strained. Some kids were envious of her success and purposefully ostracized her. Most were just unsure of how to talk to someone who was so obsessively dedicated to studying and practicing that she didn't have time for fun. Sae saw this; she could read it in their discomfort around her. But couldn't figure out how to bridge the gulf.
So she did the easiest thing: she decided that this was impossible, too. Just like outsmarting a teacher who was naturally more intelligent than a student, she embraced the fact that friendship between people like her and people like them was impossible. It would be silly to try, when she already knew the result.
So she didn't need to make the effort - to see if she could - to fall short, and feel the embarassment of failure.
*****
The other Guardians don't really talk to Sae.
It's probably because they think that she doesn't want to talk to them. That she wants to focus on the mission, rather than gossip or go clubbing, or that she prefers to talk to Reika only. That she's so quiet that she might not even respond if they spoke to her.
And it's all true, really; she doesn't know what she would say to them if they started up small talk with her. Kyoko's interest in clothes or Nariko's personal spirituality or even Rex's weird religious pranks ... She doesn't know where to even start talking about those things. She finds them inane or distracting or annoying.
Or she finds them interesting, but she has no idea how to relate to them - how to say, Hey, can I play too?
Reika somehow knows what to say - or at least she seems to, because somehow she manages to talk to all of her teammates, despite their many differences. And they all like her - which is good, because they should, Sae thinks. Because Reika is good at being people's friends, and they ought to be her friends in return.
But Sae ... Sae isn't a leader, or a diplomat, or a shoulder to cry on. She's a fighter, someone who hits hard and leaves the talking to other people. And even though she's on the same team with the others, it doesn't mean that being friends with them is easy. Or that it's possible.
Maybe they're people like them, and she's still someone like her.
*****
Gunnar likes people without being nice to them.
He isn't polite and his personality is sharp and spiky, stabbing into people who annoy him, especially Rex. But it's still obvious that he cares for all of them. It's just that he isn't well-spoken like the others, so being with him doesn't make Sae's tongue stick to the roof of her mouth from hearing sweet words that she understands but doesn't know how to return.
Perhaps this is what draws Sae to him most, rather than the other good things about him, like his strength or his dedication to using it to protect others: his rough edges. Unpolished, undemanding, and not something you have to compete with at all.
But to think about this, she would have to think about the fact that she is drawn to him at all, and she usually ignores that fact very hard.
Impossible, is what she thinks when it comes up. And she doesn't even really know what "it" is, because to know about "it" she would have to think about "it," and she doesn't want to do that at all.
So she just thinks, impossible, and leaves it at that.
Limits
Sae was not always the top student in her class.
As a young girl, she was always bright, and enjoyed learning. But it wasn't until she started taking standardized exams, and seeing the student scores ranked for the whole school to see, that she realized how much she could compete - and win.
Suddenly learning wasn't just about herself anymore. Now she could become the best at it, better than all her other classmates. So she did.
She felt the same way about sports. Just like any other class, physical education was a place of competition where she fought for the best grade by running faster, winning more games, being more flexible than any of her classmates.
Her father was generous in his compliments, cheering her on like a larger, slightly (but only just) less effusive version of Reika. But Sae felt particularly proud when her mother - calm, efficient, not prone to emotional outbursts - graced her with a smile and praised her efforts. Yanagisawa Mizuki is a reserved woman, but gives off the sense that what she hides away - strength, determination, wisdom - is limitless. So her daughter, full of awe for this woman but herself plagued with all the shortcomings of a little girl, quietly strived to be as impressive.
They worried. Her father worried that she was pushing herself too hard. Reika worried that she wasn't having enough fun. Sae herself worried that she'd fall short. Mizuki was the only one who didn't worry, whose silent support exuded belief in Sae. And expectations.
Sae was relieved when she eventually hit the top of her class, because there was no one else to beat - no test score to match, no faster time to outrun. No higher standard that meant she had to try harder, again. Of course, there were still people who were smarter and stronger than her - her teachers, for instance. But no one expected a student to surpass their teacher. Sae didn't feel pressure to try against them, to compete with those standards just to see if she could make it.
Sae took comfort in the certainty of impossibilities.
*****
Sae was never a popular girl.
She played with other kids, but usually when she joined in a game it was because she tagged alongside Reika. She felt too awkward to approach people on her own, to go up to strangers and ask, Hey, can I play too? the way Reika did, with a friendly, winsome confidence that elicited an automatic Yes.
In junior high, once she threw herself into academic and physical competition, interaction with her classmates was even more strained. Some kids were envious of her success and purposefully ostracized her. Most were just unsure of how to talk to someone who was so obsessively dedicated to studying and practicing that she didn't have time for fun. Sae saw this; she could read it in their discomfort around her. But couldn't figure out how to bridge the gulf.
So she did the easiest thing: she decided that this was impossible, too. Just like outsmarting a teacher who was naturally more intelligent than a student, she embraced the fact that friendship between people like her and people like them was impossible. It would be silly to try, when she already knew the result.
So she didn't need to make the effort - to see if she could - to fall short, and feel the embarassment of failure.
*****
The other Guardians don't really talk to Sae.
It's probably because they think that she doesn't want to talk to them. That she wants to focus on the mission, rather than gossip or go clubbing, or that she prefers to talk to Reika only. That she's so quiet that she might not even respond if they spoke to her.
And it's all true, really; she doesn't know what she would say to them if they started up small talk with her. Kyoko's interest in clothes or Nariko's personal spirituality or even Rex's weird religious pranks ... She doesn't know where to even start talking about those things. She finds them inane or distracting or annoying.
Or she finds them interesting, but she has no idea how to relate to them - how to say, Hey, can I play too?
Reika somehow knows what to say - or at least she seems to, because somehow she manages to talk to all of her teammates, despite their many differences. And they all like her - which is good, because they should, Sae thinks. Because Reika is good at being people's friends, and they ought to be her friends in return.
But Sae ... Sae isn't a leader, or a diplomat, or a shoulder to cry on. She's a fighter, someone who hits hard and leaves the talking to other people. And even though she's on the same team with the others, it doesn't mean that being friends with them is easy. Or that it's possible.
Maybe they're people like them, and she's still someone like her.
*****
Gunnar likes people without being nice to them.
He isn't polite and his personality is sharp and spiky, stabbing into people who annoy him, especially Rex. But it's still obvious that he cares for all of them. It's just that he isn't well-spoken like the others, so being with him doesn't make Sae's tongue stick to the roof of her mouth from hearing sweet words that she understands but doesn't know how to return.
Perhaps this is what draws Sae to him most, rather than the other good things about him, like his strength or his dedication to using it to protect others: his rough edges. Unpolished, undemanding, and not something you have to compete with at all.
But to think about this, she would have to think about the fact that she is drawn to him at all, and she usually ignores that fact very hard.
Impossible, is what she thinks when it comes up. And she doesn't even really know what "it" is, because to know about "it" she would have to think about "it," and she doesn't want to do that at all.
So she just thinks, impossible, and leaves it at that.