This was actually the last essay I had to write for the school year. It was an argumentative essay, so you should probably be able to tell what topic I picked! My OCs, Soshi and Hime, are featured in this. I hope you enjoy it!
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The young and the old hated each other for centuries.
It had been a bridled hate, one that neither openly spoke upon (unless they lacked some sort of intelligence). There was a disconnect between them. The elderly had their own way of doing things, and the youth were full of new, naive ideas that were shunned by their predecessors. It became decreed that everyone should be separated in every way possible to attain their own separate forms of peace. Each family, each sect, and each race was organized into different categories, the most prominent being age. There were laws that protected each person’s “way of life”, but only in their cul-de-sacs and small cities; each town had a different standard of living, and one colony could not govern over the other.
It was a pleasant sort of separation. The young were able to fend for themselves and make their own mistakes without the condescending voices of the old, creating their own government and ways that suited their fleeting wants and needs. The elderly kept their unchanged ways of life, and each sect married among themselves. Eventually these sects became even more segregated, mostly by age, as groups of younger people split into “tens”; twenty to twenty nine year olds stayed in one part of town, migrating when they aged, thirty to thirty nine, and so on. Children were abandoned by their parents at the age of fifteen (the youngest group was fifteen to nineteen), mostly because of how troublesome children became when they hit their mid teens. In this way, society reached a tight sort of happiness that could easily be broken, even if by a simple piece of string...
There was a man by the name of Soshi Amori who lived in the Twenty section of this society, beside the barrier that separated Twenties and Thirties. He was Japanese American, so his neighbors were Japanese American, and he was by far one of the youngest in the Twenties section, his age being the solid 20 going on twenty-one. He was a very old twenty in maturity; he wondered if there was anything past moving from section to section, and what the purpose of being divided by age was when one was going to grow old anyway.
Soshi’s hair was past the normal “long” (mostly because his family, before he had been sent away, was known for it) and he often tied it up in a ponytail with his favorite hair-tie to keep it out of his way. On this particular day he was outside of his house, sitting in the grass as a block party (which was simply called a party because of how lame block party sounded) went on in his neighborhood. He wasn’t interested in it at all. Soshi didn’t especially like social interaction, though that didn’t stop him from making friends. He was simply more of a deep thinker, or a bookworm, than most of the people around him, and he was liked for it. In fact, because of his aloofness, he was quite popular, especially among women.
He was tying his hair up with his favorite hair tie when the wind blew in a very awkward direction, causing the string to slip through his fingers and escape him. He paused for a moment, waiting for what happened to sink in, and then he jumped up, running after it, though he tripped over himself when he did.
In a sort of panic, he followed and awkwardly tried to catch the string as it floated violently through the air, making him frown and even let out a cry of dismay. That one had been from his mother, and even though he knew he would never see her again, it was something he treasured. He finally stopped chasing after his item when it ceased moving through the air, as the wind let up and set his ribbon in some bushes. He swore a bit. The ribbon was not only caught in the bushes, but it was also snagged near the underside of it. Soshi threw his hands into the air and then shook his fist at the sky. What, did someone up there hate him?
He crouched down and reached for the hair tie, only to find that he was too far away, so he crawled beneath it, narrowly escaping the branches that cut at his hands, and grabbed it, though not before he felt something else in the bushes.
Soshi blinked a couple of times, feeling around for whatever it was, only to let out a sort of yelp. “Human flesh?!” He yelled, his mind immediately migrating to zombie movies and rotting flesh.
“Of course it’s human flesh,” another voice said, “it was my hand. What are you, five?”
Soshi swallowed a couple of times. The voice had been female (a very attractive sounding female) and it suddenly occurred to him that the bush was the line that separated the Twenties and Thirties. He took a couple of steps back. “How old are you? Who are you?”
He stood up, looking over the top of the bushes, only to see, on the other side there was a woman with long black hair that stopped mid-back, her hazel eyes studying him with a bit of curiosity. Her skin was darker than his by a few shades, and she was most likely African American or Puerto Rican. Her full lips parted, “Why does my age come first, Twenty?”
Soshi felt cemented in place. “....you’re beautiful.” He blurted out, only to realize how childish it sounded. He covered his mouth in embarrassment, closing his eyes as he found his composure. “...sorry.”
The woman seemed slightly amused. “No, no I enjoy getting compliments like that. Don’t apologize for something you mean. You’re pretty handsome yourself.”
Soshi felt a smile pull at the corner of his mouth. “Are you flirting with me?”
“I might be.”
“Why? I’m younger than you are.” He said, but he was honestly curious. “Aren’t there laws against it?”
“Yes, there are. Aren’t they preposterous?” She asked, crossing her arms. “I’m nearly a Forty, you know.”
Soshi’s eyebrows rose. “Really? You don’t look like one.”
“You’re flirting with me, aren’t you?” She asked, rolling her eyes, but she smiled a little, mostly because she was echoing his words from before.
Soshi’s eyes twinkled with interest. “I might be.”
“YO! Soshi!” Soshi glanced back to see his friend, Shogo, a Japanese American with dyed blonde hair, who waved at him. “They have oranges!”
Soshi rolled his eyes. His favorite fruit couldn’t drag him away from this woman, but he knew that if he didn’t move, Shogo would find him talking to her, so he looked back at her. “What are you called?”
“Danielle.” She answered automatically. “And you?”
“Soshi.”
“Like sushi?”
He tried not to laugh and ended up grinning instead. “I hope to see you later.”
“Same here.”
“I SAID ORANGES!”
Soshi covered his face. “Oh my god....I’M COMING, SHOGO.”
