Work Text:
‘My brothers sit by content in ignorance, and yet I, the Smart Kappa, must carry the burden of my intelligence alone.’
The Smart Kappa had always been the odd one out.
While their brothers were busy wrestling and looking for cucumbers, they were thinking. Contemplating.
Learning.
They remember, faintly, as a young yokai, trying to explain to the others. To teach them of literature, of art, of science.
The others didn’t listen, and the Smart Kappa learned to recede into obscurity, waiting, watching, at the edge of a cliff, looking out to the sea.
One day, they hoped, they would meet someone they could talk to.
They secretly hoped they never would, because that would mean that there was another cursed to carry the same burden of knowledge that had turned them into a miserable shell.
‘The simple kappa knows not the difficulties of intellect, the burden of existential dread.’
What came after death? Why were they there? What was the point of life, if everyone was to die in the end?
The Smart Kappa didn’t know.
Fitting, how knowledge set them apart, when they didn’t even know how to answer such a simple question.
The Smart Kappa watched as their brothers trod along the beaten track, heading to their deaths with a smile on their face and a ‘kappa’ on their lips. Did they know what awaited them? Was that why they were so calm?
If so, why didn’t they tell them?
‘I stare out at the vast abyss in front of me and wonder: is this really all there is? Surely it can’t be this simple.’
But the Smart Kappa would never know. Nothing beyond Champion Island was clear, and they had half a mind to leave. To go far away, to seek something beyond the endless slog of thinking, thinking, thinking-
‘But listen to me, going on about nothing. Please, enjoy your games. You’ve no idea how lucky you really are.’