history | WIP

[feathershedding]

HISTORY

When Ayako was born to Hiroshi and Junko Ito, she was born into a maternal void – Junko suffered a severe, post-partum depression, including moments of psychosis and had no energy left to cultivate a relationship to her daughter. Hiroshi raised Ayako more or less by himself for the first year and a half, leaving Junko free to travel and work as much as she was capable of. Junko, seemingly wanting out of the house one way or another, chose to leave the country for weeks at a time, fearing that she might end up harming her child in a fit of depression-induced paranoia. It is unlikely that Junko was truly so ill as that; but she was too afraid of failure, an even greater failure to her mind than the one she’d already endured by giving birth to a child she couldn’t want. When she finally re-joined her family, Ayako had learned to walk and talk and knew her mostly as the stranger, her father often talked about and showed her many pictures of.

Throughout Ayako’s childhood, Ayako slowly learned that pleasing her mother was next to impossible. It wasn’t that Junko seemed unhappy or disappointed with her; no, rather, she never showed any true reaction whatsoever to anything, be it a positive achievement or a lapse in behaviour or judgment on Ayako’s part. If things were good, she would nod and ask for Ayako to do better; if things were bad, she would ask her to cease. All very mechanical, logical and unemotional. Ayako, on her part, was a very quiet and studious child. She always did her best, sometimes to the point of over-exertion. When Junko decided to enrol Ayako in a small, local ballet school, Hiroshi stepped back and out of the picture to hand her the reigns, hoping that the two of them might learn to know each other better. In reality, he paved the road for Ayako’s self-destruction. Junko’s lack of expectations combined with her willingness to do anything to make her daughter succeed made the girl less and less interested in anything but her mother’s approval. A mark of success that never came.

Ayako had an aunt on her mother’s side called Mika. Mika died from leukaemia when Ayako was about 7 years old, but until then Mika had been a source of inspiration for the young girl, if also a very distant family member. Mika was a very beautiful, decently-talented musical actress who’d made a slightly above-average career in the world of Japanese theatre. When Ayako started dancing, Mika gave her a tiny, silver pendant formed like a ballerina’s shoe. Ayako still owns this piece of jewellery, though she can’t wear it anymore. While Ayako didn’t particularly want to be exactly like Mika, she and her Junko remained ideal models of women to her and she’s never quite stopped admiring the aunt she never really got to know. When Mika died, Ayako realised only partially what her absence meant in her life – and she didn’t truly feel it, too busy attempting to please her mother who took a long time to recover from her younger sister’s early death. Ayako took up singing while her mother mourned, proving to have a very good, if somewhat low-pitch voice for her age.

When Ayako reached the age of 15, her ballet instructor of more than a decade told her to stop dancing and focus on a different skill. Maybe singing, she said, or acting! Or maybe a field of study, like a university degree! Though her teacher wanted to encourage her – and though Ayako had decent grades in school – all Ayako heard was someone she respected, telling her that she had to throw away all her life’s ambitions because she wasn’t any good. She refused to listen and enrolled at a different ballet school, out of town and somewhat larger with better connections. At this point, her mother had the idea to either let her try out for Takarazuka Music School – or to have her continue her studies and earn a university degree. Ayako didn’t at all want the latter and went to see a Takarazuka show to get a feel of what her mother wanted for her. She fell in love with the concept instantly and for the first time in her life, what her mother wanted for her was entirely in sync with her own aspirations.

The entrance exam, however, was brutal. While Ayako could pass in both acting and singing, her dancing – despite years of effort – was not good enough. It simply wasn’t a talent of hers, never had been. She failed the exam and of course, this was the one time Junko managed to care. She felt immensely disappointed, both in herself (for forcing her daughter into something she couldn’t do) and in Ayako (for making it seem like she had the required amount of potential and talent).

Ayako, on her part, changed to a smaller, privately-owned dance studio, this time focusing on traditional ballet. Completely intent on passing the entrance exam next year, Ayako put all her efforts into dancing, her high school grades suffering as a result. She stopped taking voice lessons all together against her teacher’s recommendation, doing everything possible to perfect her ballet. During this time, for two lessons a-week, she was tutored by Suzuki Emi, an ex-ballerina out of the Tokyo Ballet who’d retired very early despite a promising career. Emi – or Michan – was incredibly relaxed and tolerant of mistakes, correcting patiently every time and trying to boost Ayako’s lacking confidence with praise whenever she had the chance. Ayako came to not only respect the older woman but to trust her; and it didn’t take long before she found out the reason behind Emi’s sudden retirement from ballet. Emi was doing drugs – and had been doing so for more than a year. She’d fallen out of grace with the ballet management and chosen to retire rather than to be fired officially; they’d agreed to do it this way only because she was such a promising star. Emi herself had long since stopped caring about her failures; instead, she was simply relieved to be free from the pressure of constant, unmerciful drive of ambition. Ayako began confiding in Emi, though she kept her own, personal demons close to her heart and out of the conversation. Emi listened and gave back as much as she felt the younger girl could tolerate, though she had a feeling that Ayako needed the same kind of release that she did. To flee from the real world and to stop worrying about dancing to perfection.

The next year, Ayako took the entrance exam again. And failed. Again. When she came home that night, she tore her room apart in silence, ripping everything from the walls and cutting up her pillows and clothes with scissors. Her parents didn’t notice; not until next day when she left for ballet practice (skipping school – again) and Hiroshi opened the door to her room. This time, Hiroshi finally put his foot down with regards to Ayako and Junko’s dance ambitions; he refused to pay for another examination attempt, wanting Ayako to focus on her studies and to move on from this dream Junko had been planting in her mind. Ayako, though, had taken the dream as her own – and her father’s reluctance to pay made her furious. Not because she was overly spoiled, necessarily, but because next year was the last attempt she could have made; being 17 already. Unable to save up enough money to try out again, she dropped out of high school and moved to Tokyo in a fit of anger, lodging in Emi’s apartment and sleeping on her couch. She never forgave Hiroshi for what she saw as a complete let-down and betrayal. Hiroshi, on his part, wanted to protect his daughter from further disappointment. He bore her anger with silent acceptance, knowing full well that he’d ruined all her chances of ever making Junko proud of her. Junko wasn’t overly disappointed. She knew her daughter would fail and would rather see her attempt to get a university degree. When Ayako chose to drop out of high school instead, Junko was angry but somewhat bored with her daughter’s attempt at rebellious behaviour. After a few months, she sent Ayako enough money to get her own apartment and that was that. If the girl wanted to be away, then maybe that was for the best.

Meanwhile, Ayako lived with Emi and signed up with a small dance studio owned by Emi’s friends from downtown Tokyo. It wasn’t a very glamorous style of living but along with two jobs on the side (a cashier job and a cleaning job), it paid the bills. Emi started showing Ayako the wilder sides of the Tokyo nightlife, the two of them frequenting bars and arcades that Ayako would have never known of otherwise. Though Ayako was very much underage, one of the owners of the dance studio (Takashi-san) got her a fake ID with relative ease. Ayako herself looked older than 17 and no one ever questioned her age or withheld drinks when she wanted any. Though Ayako tried to keep a somewhat clean living style to begin with, Emi’s approach to parties and to life in general slowly, gradually influenced her enough to take away many of her inhibitions. After just a year, she drank and smoked like an old-time user, though she stayed away from drugs. Emi, on other hand, did drugs more and more frequently, often leaving Ayako to get her home from town or to leave her lying in a drooling daze somewhere with her clothes half-way gone. Emi was thoroughly promiscuous, something that Ayako never understood. Despite their crazy nights out, Ayako never had a boyfriend or attempted to get one. Not even a one-night stand. It just didn’t mean anything to her and Emi consistently supported her in doing what she wanted to do – nothing more. Ayako, on her part, never stopped caring about Emi, even when the other woman was neck-deep in drugs and sex. She’d found acceptance with Michan and at this point in her life, little else truly mattered.

Things came to a head when Ayako turned 22. On the night of her birthday, Emi took her out to a private club downtown, owned by Takashi-san. This night, for the first and only time, Ayako tried drugs, in this case a very light mixture of cocaine. It left her incredibly uncomfortable and drowsy and most of the night, she simply hung around like a zombie, trying to order drinks and failing to remember what things were called or how to read a menu card. This would have been sad enough but not a disaster in and off itself; however, when the clock struck midnight, Emi got drawn into a bar fight against a group of girls from another district, things turning violent so quickly that no one could stop it. Ayako, head somewhat gone on drugs and alcohol, threw herself into the fight when it seemed like Emi was going to lose; beating the leader of the group savagely with a half-empty bottle of vodka, leaving her partly unconscious on the dance floor. Emi and Ayako walked themselves home afterwards, Takashi-san handling the clean-up with his usual efficiency. Ayako was a sad sight with her nose dripping blood from sniffing and scratches down her face and back from the brawl. One particular wound – a second-degree burn of unidentifiable origin – never truly disappeared and is still visible on the small of her back. Emi felt horrible about the entire thing but had no way to approach the subject; Ayako had closed herself to her from one moment to the next, trust obliterated as she’d realised, finally, what Emi (from her point of view) was turning her into. It was a path she wanted no further part in – and the next day, she made arrangements with her parents to pay for tuition in yet a different dance school, cutting contact with both Emi and Takashi-san and quitting her contract at the dance studio. In the years following, she stayed in contact with Emi only through Emi’s efforts, making no active attempts herself to re-establish their relation.

Ayako trained for another two and a half years before signing up with BELLS, hearing about the company from one of her old acquaintances. When she succeeded in getting the contract, Hiroshi invited her out for dinner to celebrate. Ayako declined – rudely. However, he never gave up on her, having always thought of her as his biggest, personal treasure.

It was doing this period that Hiroshi started trying to nurse Ayako’s one, actual talent and interest: cooking. Though she’d always had an easy time, understanding a recipe and executing instructions to perfection, he’d never realised that she actually LIKED cooking, too. Ironically, he found out through Junko who’d observed the girl in the kitchen many times and found her skills admirable, if uninteresting. Hoping to one day make his daughter see that dancing wasn’t the way for her, he regularly sent her cooking books and rare ingredients in an attempt to fuel her passion for food and steer her off her ill-chosen career path.

Ayako does love cooking. It’s actually the one thing she loves, though it’s always been a hobby rather than anything more serious. She doesn’t love dancing at all. But she’s been fooling herself into thinking that it’s the only thing she should ever do for so long that fiction has started to read like truth to her. In BELLS, she often ends up with the less dancing-fuelled roles, Ueno-sensei realising early on that her talent lies more with telling the story than with technique. She hates it but has come to accept that she might never be good enough; and that surely, she’ll have to fight every second of her life to get even somewhat close to the stars. She’s grown immensely bitter over the years, however, and while she’ll often present a somewhat positive, uncaring attitude to the world at large (cultivated entirely during her years with Emi), she is beneath it all incredibly angry and disappointed in herself, to the point where she doesn’t truly want to enjoy what she’s doing because she’s afraid it’ll poison her efforts. Junko, meanwhile, disapproves of her chosen career. She’s never truly understood exactly what kind of life Ayako’s lead between her second, failed entrance exam and BELLS. But she’s objectively aware that Ayako isn’t a talented dancer and doesn’t miss an opportunity to tell her that she’s wasting her life.

Ayako, however, has convinced herself that one day, that disapproval will turn into something else. Something much less painful. If only she tries hard enough and works hard enough, she is convinced that her mother will love her and that’s what drives her day after day, unwanted role after role.

~