"Who am I?"
That was a question that had plagued Kiyotaka for years now since the very day he escaped from the firm grasp of that man. The man who held the title called "Father".
The answer to such a seemingly innocent question had been the sole objective of the boy who had been shunned away from the society since the moment he was born. A boy who had only understood order and discipline. A boy who had only known rooms tiled with blinding white and hearts painted with crimson, everywhere his cinnamon brown eyes could take a glimpse of. Never the inherent chaos that encompassed life in all its spheres.
Was he the selfish monster who would destroy everyone obstructing his path to victory? The cruel and ruthless person who would cross any and all limits just to see the ones who threaten him burn to hell?
Or was he the boring gloomy teenager he portrayed himself to be, whose personality couldn't even win over a toddler? An indifferent loner who mysteriously cared about nothing and everything at the same time?
Was he both?
Or was he neither of those things?
Honestly he did not know the answer. Because there was no answer.
All that had remained of his white room self when he exited that god awful place were two things. First was a tactical mind unlike any other, one that could read the array of possibilities so far into the future, possibilities that would never be acknowledged by mere mortals and the second was knowledge. The kind of knowledge that would span over several libraries and more, too heavy for a single human being to hold.
He had no desires.
No likes.
No dislikes.
No preferences.
No comforts.
No aversions.
He had never had the space nor the time to explore the intricacies of what it meant to be human. No time to be human. Not when the only way to protect himself was to turn to his cold-blooded white room persona to get things done. The safety blanket of a boy who had been stranded in inhumane cold for way too long.
The defense mechanism was the only human thing about him. Only the spark of selfishness to protect himself was bestowed upon him by that man. Everything else was stripped away.
He was just a blank white canvas built out of the hopes and innocence of the ones he had triumphed over in his path to freedom.
He waited.
Waited for when he would finally be free of the pitch black shackles that were entwined deeply with his flesh and blood.
Waited for all the earthly colours he had never had the chance to witness in the isolated white-and-black world he had been accustomed to.
Waited for the fated artist who would inflict upon him the chaos and colours of life. For someone to invoke in him even a single slanted brush stroke worth of emotions.
Some emotion that wasn't an imprint of the boundless cage his father constructed for him, which was still cocooning him from a distance, creating an illusion that it wasn't there in the first place.
But its existence was unmistakable.
His predatory instincts didn't let him forget.
It was always lurking around in the backdrop. Whether he wanted it to or not made no real difference.
He did everything he could think of, to shatter it. Tear it apart. To stamp on it till all that remained was the debris of his past.
To brand himself and his so-called father as a failure forever in the history books.
He employed numerous methods in order to accomplish that.
Meeting new people in a setting that didn't require him to be the best at everything for the first time in his life.
Trying out new things. Helping others to reach their full potential opposed to devastating them for life like he would have been forced to in that place.
Trying to mimic the youthful impulses of other teenage boys in hopes that it would arouse something out of him.
Yet.
Nothing.
He remained as barren of humanity as the day he began this whole ordeal.
His canvas was just as fresh as it was on the day he entered the school.
Nothing could shake his freakishly regular heartbeat. No sight could make his cold-hearted race in fear, anxiety or even pleasure.
Nothing could interrupt the consistent flow of his breathing. No words could force him to take a sharp breath, fracturing his stone-cold composure.
Nothing could uproot the teachings of that facility that were ingrained deep into him. Nothing could move him to commit human-like irrational acts.
There he remained. The perfect human engineered by the man who should have been his family. The masterpiece of a sculpture polished by several sculptors over a period of centuries.
A truly wonderful sight to behold.
Then it happened.
Certain sapphire blue eyes stared back at him with a darkness he was all too familiar with. The same darkness he been trying to evade, in search of new shades. The same darkness he had never expected to encounter once again. Atleast not in the childish orbs of an ordinary human in his elite highschool.
Yet there it was swirling temptingly as if taunting him, in the blue pools of a blonde classmate, whom he towered over as he held her hostage in his arms. She had just been a tool he was hoping to gain. Or she was supposed to be.
Things went astray.
What he gained was so much more than what he had hoped to gain.
His mind clouded, evoking something instinctual in him. Something primordial, transcending the tiny amounts of human time he had experienced. It felt indescribably natural just like the thud of his heartbeat or the expansion of his chest as warm air overwhelmed his lungs.
The strings in between his fingers grew slack as he was suddenly pulled up towards the sky, by strings that he had no idea were attached to him in the first place.
The tables turned as he floated in mid-air at the hands of his mysterious puppeteer.
He questioned the source of the darkness gleaming in her hostile orbs even though he had made no earlier plans to. And he always followed plans. To the T.
When she narrated the tales of the bullying that had been following her since elementary school, an abnormal spark of interest kept him listening.
Her secrets poured out one after the other. The atmosphere surrounding them was tantalizing, inducing a strange sense of belonging. There were no barriers between them.
She was about to reveal the final secret of hers but fortunately decided against it at the last moment as she regained some much needed alertness.
A fatal mistake.
Her subconscious glance towards her waist did not escape him.
Without a second thought, as though it was completely natural, he pulled her white shirt out, revealing something cursed.
When he laid his crimson brown eyes on the deep and nasty scar running along the curve of her waist, black poured onto him like an endless waterfall, flooding him momentarily.
The canvass which had stayed white all along was now painted with the loveless black he had wanted to leave behind.
But surprisingly the colour was not the work of that man. It was this blonde girl who glared at him with a passion as she begrudgingly agreed to depend on him.
He felt....... conflicted.
He wanted to free her from the binds of her twisted past. The invisible stain on the skin, something both of them stared.
Yet at the same time, for some inexplicable reason, he wanted her to cling to him. Cling to him tight.
She was a parasite no doubt. Then he would be her host. Her only host. That much he wanted to ensure as he studied her from afar, keeping his distance in the beginning.
He was unsure how to do any of this. How to get closer to another human. How to take control of the slightest skip of his heartbeat when faced with those blue irises.
Mentally he was mostly in control. Yet his body showed some really strange signs. Signs only he could observe. For others it might appear as if he was completely unaffected but he could feel the tiny hitch in his regular breathing when he glanced at her silhouette. He could feel the unfamiliar tremble of excitement deep within his stomach when she smiled at him.
Time didn't stand still for him to get a good handle on these feelings.
Days passed by quickly and these weird bodily behaviours were acknowledged to be the norm.
Then it came. Something he knew was coming all along.
The threat of that man looming over him leaving him utterly restless. His white room self unequivocally took control. The newly emerging side of him was switched off instantly, at the scent of danger.
Childhood tendencies do run deep.
When Ryueen was at the edge of unraveling his identity as X, he meant to proceed as planned. To abandon Kei and safeguard his identity as the mastermind.
But to his utter surprise, he couldn't.
Kiyotaka has always prioritised his own safety over the human cost of his actions. Every single time when push came to shove.
Yet he couldn't bring himself to abandon the girl who made him feel defective with a single glance. The girl who had been abandoned way too many times.
When it struck him that he cannot go on with sacrificing Kei, he quickly laid out a brand-new plan, making corrections to the simulated scenario. Safeguarding his identity was no longer a priority.
Events occured all within the realm of the possibilities he had accounted for, except for one.
He had expected Kei to give in into the trauma-inducing bullying and reveal his identity as the mastermind. That way he could later guilt trip her into sticking close to him later when he would finally arrive to rescue her.
But Kei had not given out his name.
Like a stubborn warrior she yelled at him for coming to the rooftop, parading the secret identity she had tried so desperately to save.
Like she was alright with destroying herself if it meant she could protect him. The same him who had manipulated her into depending on him from the very start.
Protect me?
It was the first time someone had valued him more than themselves.
With just that one act of kindness, she sealed her fate.
***********
On the eve of his graduation, Kiyotaka was presented with two intolerable choices.
To break his heart or to break his heart.
Kiyotaka did what he had to do.
And he knew that now there would be nothing left for him in Kei's heart but blinding hatred.
Her immeasurable love for him must have evaporated that day with their ill-fated relationship.
But he bided his time and waited for the last traces of that man's influence to fade away from his surroundings.
It finally did fade.
She had decided that they were over.
But he could convince her otherwise.
********
Author Notes:
Phew. This was hard to write.
Well this is the version of Kiyotaka I am imagining when I will be writing the story.
I have to admit like most readers I was a hella lot confused about Kiyotaka's personality. He seemed kind of kind one moment and so ruthless the another. I couldn't make sense of it.
That was until I saw this incredible analysis of his personality by a youtuber called Saadisfy. It opened up an whole new world for me and I understood Kiyotaka a lot more.
I have been deeply inspired by it :)
Also next chapter might be about Kiyotaka too..
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed :)