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microcosmia · 13 days ago

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New Suo theory that is maybe unhinged buuuuut here we go! It's long, btw, I pared it down so much and it is still so long. Sorry.

This builds a lot off of Suo's own unhinged dream, the "emancipation of slaves," his choice in attire, the supposition that the "other language" Suo speaks is Chinese, and his ambiguous master's ambiguous martial arts style that a lot of people have said looks mostly like Tai Chi.

So I present: Suo's Tragic Backstory, Escape from Indentured Servitude and the Eventual Emancipation of Slaves

TW: unsafe work environments, death, explosions, violence against minors, indentured servitude, trauma, anger management, disassociation, worker exploitation

Hayato and his family are low-middle class living in China. One day when Hayato is maybe 5 or 6, his father dies in an accident. His mother, Yan, raised traditionally and under only the mandatory minimum of education, finds herself in a role she is entirely unprepared for. She goes looking for work but her lack of experience, connections, or marketable skills makes finding a job near impossible.

Her desperation makes her exploitable. She winds up in a sweatshop with Hayato. They're there for two years, living and working in terrible conditions with other women and children coming and going. Hayato learns to watch, observe, anticipate. Yan is his rock, steady and constant, unshakeable in her conviction that one day they'll leave.

They're in the shop for two years before they bring in a new girl, Fenghua, who is not desperate enough to have found her own way to the shop. She talks back, fights back, takes breaks, makes problems. Everyone can tell change is in the air, and it's simmering.

Fenghua convinces Yan to start using her observations and understandings to make a plan to escape. They try to convince the other women, but most of them have been there longer than Yan, and they are all the more dispirited for it.

Before they can implement the escape plan, Hayato makes a mistake. He's taken to the middle of the floor to be made an example out of, beaten, and Yan steps forward to try and negotiate. Yan is hit several times, wood clubs and staves, while the guards laugh.

Then the fire breaks out. The sawdust kept for cleaning up spills has reached it's flash point, the tension not being the only simmering thing. The record midsummer heat and humidity have taken their toll.

There's an explosion. Chaos. Hayato was thrown off his feet by the explosion and is kept there as people literally run over him to the exit. He's clipped in the head, a blinding pain.

Yan gathers him up, along with Fenghua, and pushes them toward a shattered out window. Once they're out, Yan hesitates. There are others still in the building, women and children who have gotten caught by debris. She goes back.

A second explosion. The building collapses. Yan does not emerge from the wreckage.

Fenghua takes off, dragging Hayato with her. In the chaos, she managed to get into the locked office on the second floor; she called the authorities and her master. She knows where they are, and her master is going to meet them in a specific park on the other side of the city. They'll go to a doctor. They'll take care of Hayato. They'll figure it out.

Fenghua's master is right where he said he'd be. He catches Fenghua up in a hug and pulls a shell shocked Hayato into it, too.

Hayato doesn't remember much of the rest. He goes to the doctor. Gets an eye patch. Is told he may be blind in one eye. He meets Ruilin's, Fenghua's master's, other disciples. Most of them are disadvantaged youths, orphans. Ruilin is as much a guardian as a teacher.

Hayato struggles to adjust to life outside of the sweatshop, which still isn't necessarily a normal life. He struggles with eating, hoarding food snapping when people waste anything. He cannot shop for clothes, too triggered by the smells and feels of the fabrics. He needs to know where the clothes came from, if they're from shops like the ones that killed his mother. Ruilin takes to buying sustainably sourced clothes, then bolts of fabric to make Hayato's clothes in house. He shows Hayato where things came from, lets him read the literature and then explains it when Hayato can't parse it. He's terribly behind in his studies.

When Hayato's outbursts get unsustainable and show instability beyond his initial trauma, Ruilin starts training him. Hayato learns to clean up the rubble of his heart through meditation, reflection, and intentional movement. He learns how to fight - then learns about when it's necessary. He learns how to move in a body that feels alien to him, his right eye only seeing artifacts of his injury at the peripherals.

He learns that he's angry as a default state. That his resentment is corrosive, his hatred a vapor waiting for a spark. He learns to fight against it, then through it, then with it. He never masters letting it go.

A year and a half later, and Ruilin has been found on the wrong side of the law too many times - he has no government appointed status to be taking in orphans, no accreditations to be teaching them his mish-mash martial arts. Ruilin tells them all that they're leaving China. He starts speaking solely in Japanese, tells them all to pick new Japanese names. Tells them he'll get paperwork sorted for them as soon as their names are picked out.

Hayato picks his name then. He keeps his last name, Suo, with Ruilin's allowance - it is common enough that it won't raise too many eyes in Japan. He allows his parents' chosen name, Feiyang, to fall off his shoulders. He cannot be his mother's A'Yang anymore, but he can still keep her close in other ways.

Hayato leaves China with his master, journeying to Japan. There, he helps train the other kids they pick up, catches up on his studies, goes to middle school, and finds a particular interest in chemistry while trying to better understand the explosion that rocked his childhood. He fights when necessary, and goes too far when he's reminded of all the small problems the infantile children around him have that makes them think the world is ending. He still struggles to eat - falling back on specific nutrient dense foods that he can prepare with fresh ingredients at home. He promises to go home, to China, eventually, and dismantle all the sweatshops he can, in every way he can, and free all the women trapped there like his mother.

He makes his own clothes, and the sourcing of his fabrics is a expense that he will forever be grateful to his master for funding and allowing (Suo still knows better than to ask where the funds are coming from).

With his only-recently caught up grades and his dispassion for improving them beyond the subjects that interest him, Suo winds up at Furin for high school. His reputation precedes him, evidently. His eye was lost in an accidently, evidently. His name is Suo Hayato, so they say. At this point, what does any of that matter?

It is, he will later reflect - Kiryuu's funding, Kakiuchi's eye for style, Sakura's stalwart support, and Nirei's beautiful, brilliant brain alongside him - the best thing that ever could have happened to him.

FOOTNOTES:

Names:

Yan 燕 meaning "swallow" as in the bird; chosen because of the play of "swallow" and then "falcon" in the name Hayato -> prey bird to a bird of prey; Suo wants to keep her close but also realize that he will never again end up caged like her

Feiyang 飞扬 meaning "flying" or "soaring"; a name for lofy ambitions and freedom; chosen to dovetail (heh) into Suo's dream as well as juxstapose his position in captivity, making himself small

Hayato 隼はや飛と meaning "flying/soaring hawk/falcon"; what's really hilarious and I didn't realize until these foot notes is that the Chinese character for "fei 飞" and the second character in Hayato's name "hi" for "fly" are actually related!!! At least as far as I can tell with my very limited understanding of characters/kanji.

Fenghua 凤华 meaning "magnificent phoenix"; it's a *very* auspicious name with a long history. "Feng 凤" is the character for phoenix and is most often associated with empresses in ancient China. It's a name meant to call on the ideas of grace, virtue, and rebirth. For the literature, she's the "rebirth" of Yan's buried desire to get free. Also in the literature, Fenghua named herself so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. She was just an orphan who want a cool and important sounding name. At 18 she's very embarrassed.

Ruilin 瑞林 meaning "auspicious forest"; I wanted something with the tree/plant theme from Furin but not, like, a specific plant. It's generally considered a male name, but I'm still on the fence on whether I was Suo's master to be male-presenting, female-presenting, or totally androgynous so. I went with something that

Spontaneous Combustion i.e. sawdust:

Very possible; sawdust has a high surface area and is often left in piles to ferment, decompose, and allow heat to build up from microorganism activity. It does happen. I grew up next door to a farm - they kept all their sawdust in a separate stone building because the farmer saw it happen when he was young on his dad's farm. This terrified me for years, btw.

Explosions!

I'm working off the assumtion that there was Formeldahyde in the sweatshop. It's a known chemical in the finishing process of textiles/fabrics to improve shrinkage and improve wrinkle resistance. It's highly flammable, even as a liquid. The vapors can form an explosive compound when exposed to ambient air - so, chemical go boom when evaporated. That's the theory. I am not a chem major. Lemme have my pseudo science (tho if you wanna explain it better please do!)

Sweatshops, indentured labor, fast fashion:

I am not well informed about this beyond, like, the Shein stuff that everyone chronically online seems to know. I did a little research, but not a ton. I understand it's a touchy subject and if I ever write this will do my best to treat it delicately. The situation I'm envisioning for this idea comes mostly from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911.

TLDR:

Suo's mom was a sweatshop indentured servant and Hayato lived with her through two years of her work. They escape the sweatshop when the poor hygiene of the workplace leads to an explosion. Suo's mom doesn't make it out of the building before it collapses. Suo goes with one of the other girls to meet her martial arts master and ends up staying with him and learning from him. When their master ends up on the wrong side of Chinese law, they escape to Japan, changing their names and their stories along the way. Such is the origin of the person known as "Suo Hayato" who was once "Suo Feiyang".

#wind breaker #wbk #suo hayato #wbk anime #wbk manga #suou hayato #suo backstory speculations #This got so long I am so sorry #Sort of #Listen there is like an entire word document full of clipped details because it was getting to be Too Much #I basically started writing this as if it were an outline and I was like #Wait hold on this is just supposed to be an OVERVIEW #But well #I was always really bad at writing abstracts I supposed #Was often asked if I'd contemplated a degree in English rather than Molecular and Cellular Biology and at the time #The answer was no #But now as a drop out the answer is yes and maybe I should have done it #Anyway please interact if you like the theory! I know it's a little hmmm darker? More grim? Than a lot of the other ones floating around #But this got stuck in my head and I needed to get it out #Like I've said it once and I've said it again Suo is either going to be One of THE most tragic characters in the story #OR #He's gonna be one of the most maladjusted chunnis we have ever met with THE most normal family #Kiryuu is in with using his father's money to fund Suo's vengeance #He's also always happy to talk with Suo-chan about fashion! Suo-chan knows so much!#Somehow Kakiuchi gets pulled into the trio too - he's more into cosmetics but sustainable cosmetics are also super important #And they suddenly all have a lot of opinions in common

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