Work Text:
“To protect Yoshiki.”
Indou Hikaru’s emotions are muted inside ‘Hikaru,’ more like a memory of a movie he’s watched. ‘Hikaru’s’ feelings are a white-hot need swirling inside him, like an instinct he developed somewhere alongside learning to like popsicles and movies, and wanting to befriend an unfriendly cat. He barely understands human emotions, but he knows this: Yoshiki’s soul is a light so bright it’s blinding, and he needs it like a human body needs food to be able to move. He may not understand hunger, but he understands craving, and he’s hopelessly drawn to Yoshiki’s soul all on his own.
Half of ‘Hikaru’ is with Yoshiki, half of whatever a monster has in place of a heart and soul, a shard, less sharp than the knife Yoshiki slid into him.
‘Hikaru’ would never change that.
He would never want to hurt Yoshiki.
He slips out while the house is asleep, down the stairs and into the starless summer night. He takes the road he’s walked on countless times before, but sets off in the wrong direction by habit. If Yoshiki knew, he would plead with him, and ‘Hikaru’ would give in. He can’t.
‘Hikaru’ doesn’t know whether Yoshiki actually believes what the shady sunglasses guy told them in that restaurant, but Yoshiki wants to protect Kubitachi and maybe, maybe ‘Hikaru’ can grant that wish.
It’s always dark on the mountain. Food is the first thing he misses, noise is the second, light is the third. The momentary numbness of eating ice cream too fast, the ever-present summer cicadas, the sun slowly disappearing on the horizon. Chalk on a blackboard, worn-out sneakers he’s never seen as new, a cheap phone overheating in clammy hands. The smell of bread at a bakery he’s never visited.
Yoshiki.
The impurities are still drawn to ‘Hikaru’s presence. He’s had a few close calls—Yoshiki would be mad—and taking them inside himself stings, but he no longer gets nosebleeds. He doesn’t dwell on where in his body they disappear to, he doesn’t feel any different. Shapeless swirls of darkness or ones that take the shape of humans are all the same.
‘Hikaru’s memories before he became Hikaru are fuzzy, but he remembers fear and desperation, blood-soaked cloth and decay.
(Are those the memories of a god born out of a calamity or an impurity molding into a monster, slowly gaining a “will” and an “ego?”)
Maybe half of ‘Hikaru’ will be enough. If a wish and coincidence was enough for a monster to be born, does a monster have enough power to grant its own?
Sometimes the monster drifts off; a distraction from the loneliness that gnaws its soul. The monster dreams of the clunk-clunk of a train, of sun-warmed sand under its bare feet, of seaside summer rain. A boy, a soft smile—happy, for once. Loosely entwined fingers. Going far, far away. Together. The boy’s dazzling soul blurring around the edges as the two of them blend together.
As the darkness closes around him, the monster dreams.