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Star Pox (10) : Genetically modified fruits aren’t exactly new but every now and then something seems to be going on with them. This year, it’s star fruit. The entire batch from Destiny City’s largest supplier has a strange side effect; a few minutes after eating one, star-shaped ‘freckles’ will begin to cover the skin. While this has been colloquially dubbed’ star pox’, it appears to be a harmless allergic reaction. The freckles fade after a few hours and pose no actual health risks; they’ve become quite popular across social media. This might be your only chance to experience the strange trend! …Unless sales are good enough to bring them back.
There was always some strangeness surrounding Destiny City's annual Star Festival. Strange construction going on downtown, strange merchants selling strange wares (though this year they seemed to have gone missing), strange bugs all over the trees in the main downtown park. This year Yukio could add a new TikTok trend to the mix of Star Fest strangeness: eat a star fruit, get star-shaped spots on your skin.
He hadn't tried eating one yet, but the results were all over the local social media sites. And it was not because he didn't like star fruit – quite the opposite, he loved the star-shaped produce. No, it was because the spots reminded him of high school. Yukio had been one of those poor unfortunate teenagers with a ferocious case of acne, mostly on his face. He'd gotten teased and tormented and ostracized due to his face resembling a pepperoni pizza, and it had stuck with him. Nevermind that his face was zit-free now, thanks to the end of puberty and a healthy course of anti-acne medicine (which he hated) – he really didn't want anything reminding him of that awful time in his life. And he was afraid, looking at the pictures online, that it'd trigger those memories again. (He was getting the shakes just looking at star-pox'd people online.)
But he had a DJ show coming up tonight at a venue near the town square where all the festivities were going on, and he wanted to make sure his performance would be memorable. Needs must and all that.
So Yukio sat alone on the couch in his living room (Holland was working this evening), a slice of star fruit in his hand, gathering the courage to eat it. A small shudder ran through him as he thought of what it would do to his face. In truth, he self-rationalized, the star-shaped spots looked less like acne and more like oddly-shaped freckles. And he adored the freckles on his boyfriend's face. And they seemed harmless, and by all reports they eventually went away after a few hours with no residual scarring or marks or anything like that…
He sighed. What harm could there be in eating just one slice of star fruit?
Shoving the slice of fruit into his mouth, he munched down on it, waiting for some weird sensation to come over him. It didn't. The star fruit tasted just like a sweet, juicy specimen of ordinary star fruit – even better, if he was being honest. It was like the most succulent fruit he'd ever eaten, so delicious it was tempting to cut another slice and eat it. He hesitated before doing that, though, in case eating more than one piece of star fruit made the spots last longer or something.
Yukio got up and washed his hands in the kitchen sink. The posts online didn't specify how long it took for the star-shaped freckles to show up, but he was nothing if not a patient man. He sat back down on the couch, fingering the opal-colored star charm he'd gotten yesterday that still resided in the pocket of his jeans. Taking it out, he looked at it, admiring the colorful iridescence of it as he waited and fought down his nerves. What if the spots didn't go away on him? What if he was some kind of mutant freak that got sick from them? Or scarred? Or or what if they made him break out in acne again?
He pushed down those thoughts and stood, striding down the hall to the bathroom and flicking on the light with a bit more force than was necessary. And he looked in the mirror.
And there they were. Star-shaped spots on his face. They showed up remarkably well against his skin, too. "Well," he muttered to himself, "what's done is done." It was about time to get ready for the show anyway. Hopefully there would be some good pictures of him resulting from this.
(wc: 663)
