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kaito meets the sad trap of gravity and the metallic, sticky taste of his own blood in his mouth for the first time on a spring morning of his seventh birthday.
he falls out of a tree. he climbed it in his backyard as a part of an experiment to see if he could get his new toy rocket ship to fly. that’s not what it was designed to do, it was just a toy, and not a more intricate model that he would be able to put together and fly himself once he was older.
(some things aren’t meant to fly, but that is not a lesson kaito would learn in his life.)
kaito has no way to know that the toy that crumbled to a thousand pieces next to his own bruised body would be the last birthday present his mom ever would get for him.
it’s almost like an omen (it would scare kaito very badly if you phrased it like that to him, so don’t) that his mom and dad would both be crushed in an accident of their own just a few weeks from now, the vehicular kind, that they will have no fault in because the driver that will kill them will be drunk and will leave them in their car to die without calling for help.
the fall knocks out one of his top teeth. it lays somewhere in the rubble, painted in the same blood that was rapidly filling his mouth like he was underwater. he sputters on reflex, and the grass beneath him changes color.
what does a hero look like?
kaito pushes himself up onto his own feet, ignoring the sharp pain in his mouth and the dull ache in his muscles and bones.
in three years, kaito will get sick and will need to get his tonsils out. he’ll wake up crying in his hospital bed, groggy from fever and anesthesia, and his grandma will wipe the sweat from his forehead and the stale blood from his teeth. there was never any shame in being sick, was there? it wasn’t his fault, his tonsils were making him sick and they needed to be taken out. pain hurts. sickness happens. it’s okay to cry when you’re hurting. it’s okay to accept help because it’ll just make you stronger in the end. kaito won’t remember this.
in six years, he’ll tell an older kid to stop picking on one of their classmates, and the boy will clock kaito in the mouth. he’ll need to go to the bathroom to clean his injury up. his lip will be busted, and his blood will dot the floor, and stain the sink, and his neck and his chin as well but he’ll look in the mirror and smile because he doesn’t see shame or weakness in his reflection yet. it will be a real smile. he will stick up for someone who needed it. he won’t grow up to be the kind of man to ever let someone’s suffering go ignored. kaito will look in the mirror this time and see a hero, blood and all.
and in nine years, the blood in kaito’s mouth will be organ spit. he won’t let shuichi or maki tell him he’s going to be okay, that they’d keep him safe until they all got out of the killing game together. he doesn’t need to be kept safe, he would say. that will be his job to do for others, sickness be damned. and he won’t associate the blood in his mouth with heroism anymore. he won't be bleeding this time because he protected anyone, or kept someone safe. he will be bleeding because he will be sick, weak and helpless, and kaito will find no victory to be found in his own pain, not when it's him, it is isn't supposed to be him
but today, it's kaito's seventh birthday. he grabs his damaged toy and gets ready to climb. he’s ready to try again.