Complicated Simplicity
By Mizu
His father had been a surgeon at first the Osaka University and then the Hyoutei University Hospitals, and until he was thirteen years old, that was what Oshitari Yuushi was going to be as well � and he would have been good at it, with his eye for precise detail, his unusual ability to predict and plot his course, and, of course, his talent in the sciences. Oshitari would have brilliant doctor, just like his father had been, and just as his older sister Hoshiko had become.
It was strange how plans and goals shifted, really.
They moved from Osaka to Tokyo when Oshitari was ten years old, his father had accepted a position at Hyoutei University and his children had been immediately enrolled in the associated schools � Hoshiko in the middle school and Yuushi in the elementary, and in the beginning, once you started to scratch the surface, it hadn't that different from the public school they'd attended in Osaka. With a few notable exceptions, the sons and daughters of the wealthy didn't differ all that much from the sons and daughters of the middle class. They spoke with different accents, of course, and their neatly pressed uniforms were in different colors, but as a whole, they were they same. Oshitari Yuushi viewed most of them with politely amused disinterest.
The leader of his class at Hyoutei's elementary division had always been different, however, and intriguing for it. Atobe Keigo was the only son of a financial wizard and a German pianist, and he reflected both of his parents in his sharp and calculating gaze and his clever fingers. He ruled at Hyoutei, and he was almost universally adored.
But his relationship with Oshitari Yuushi had never resembled his relationship with any of his other classmates; Yuushi had intrigued him almost as much as Keigo had intrigued Yuushi, because Atobe Keigo was never irrefutably in control when he was with Oshitari. They drew together immediately, like moths flying towards a common flame, and were strangely inseparable for years after. In a way, it was really Keigo who made Yuushi become someone else.
For their joint birthday in their thirteenth year, Keigo took Oshitari to the National Museum of Modern Art to see a special exhibition of architectural sketches and furniture designs originally from the Bauhaus School in Germany, and Oshitari fell in love twice that day.
The first time hadn't been a surprise, because Oshitari Yuushi had fallen in love with a different part of Atobe Keigo almost everyday, beginning with the first day they had met in elementary school. There was nothing surprising about falling in love with the sound of Keigo's voice speaking in rapid, perfect German to the curator.
Falling for the crisp, clear, deceptively simple lines of Mies van der Rohe's designs had been what had startled, and it had been that sudden fall that had veered Oshitari off his intended path. He wouldn't follow his father as he had always expected to do; he wouldn't be a doctor.
Oshitari Yuushi would be an architect.