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Dinner tastes stale in his mouth. It should be good, given that it was made by his mother’s private chef who knows his and his mother’s tastes inside and out. It tastes like nothing, though, even as Okigoro continues to eat it. The meat is like rubber. The vegetables are like soot. Okigoro still forces it down, though, because if he doesn’t, then his mother will simply reprimand him for not eating in the first place.
It’s a no-win scenario. Whatever Okigoro does, it will never be enough for her. If Zeus had been born a woman, surely his mother would have been in his stead.
“Don’t forget,” His mother says from across the table, gently dabbing at her mouth with her napkin. “Your grandfather is holding an important auction next week. You are expected to be there, and to be on your best behaviour, Okigoro.”
Okigoro tries to not bite down on the fork in his mouth. The potato sits on his tongue, before he swallows it whole. It’s a shame it wasn’t big enough to cause any complications.
“Yes, mother.”
“I’ll be leaving for Athens the day after tomorrow. Do be mindful and don’t bother inviting that… ruggish boy you call a friend over. He’s no use to you, anyways.” She stands from the table, her words going in one ear and out the other. Okigoro’s grip on his fork is turning his knuckles white. “Keep the house tidy. Call in the maids, if you must. Your homework should be finished by the time I return—and if you miss even one assignment, I will know.”
Okigoro’s appetite is gone now. He forces himself to take another bite of the steak, not bothering—or daring, perhaps—to look up at his mother as her heels begin clicking against the floor.
“Yes, mother.”
“Oh, and, Okigoro?”
He makes himself look up now, chin tilted up just enough for her to see his acknowledgement of her.
She’s not even looking at him. Her eyes are fixed on the screen of her phone.
“Stay away from the cars. I don’t need you ruining them.”
She walks away without another word, dark hair billowing behind her like a flag in a violent wind. Okigoro stares after her. Even though she can no longer hear him, he still says, “Yes, mother.”
“You know, you can’t just keep buying your way to victory.” Jitsuhito drawls, his eyes closed and his arms tucked under his head.
Kafka purses its lips, its gaze lowering to its friend. They look far too relaxed for what’s just occurred—though the what had simply been Kafka paying out a gang of foolish delinquents from a school in the next town over to go to Kooriumi High and cause some problems.
It’s nothing Kafka hasn’t done before. They’re juniors now, freshly turned seventeen years old together. Kafka has the whole school in the palm of its hand, whether Jitsuhito wants to admit that or not. He shifts his gaze away and peers down at his phone, tapping it as several unread messages display themselves across the screen.
“My mother is angry we’re spending time together,” Kafka says instead, the simmering anger inside of him starting to overflow.
Jitsuhito only laughs from where they’re laying. “Your mom’s wished I was dead since we met. Think she’d actually throw a party if one of those Shinigami fucks actually got to me?”
Kafka furrows its eyebrows and frowns now, turning fully to face them. Jitsuhito’s eyes are open now, staring up at it with some sort of odd conviction. He’s always been much too good at reading under his skin, at finding ways to get it to say what it actually means instead of the bullshit lies that it spills for everyone else. Kafka sighs heavily, turning away from them.
“You know I’d never let that happen,” he says, fingers gripping at his uniform pants. They’ll wrinkle. Kafka will have the maids iron them out later.
“Ah, that’s right.” Jitsuhito slowly pushes up into a sitting position, bringing a hand up to run it through orange locks. “You’d just send other peoples’ best friends out onto the fray to take all the damage instead.”
His jaw tenses as its teeth grind together. Anger bubbles in its chest, knuckles turning white. “Jitsuhito. It is—complicated.”
My mother actually asks about this. She’s proud of my victories.
When Kafka looks up, catching Jitsuhito’s gaze, it can see the question behind tired (yet kind—so, so kind) eyes. Is she really?
Kafka hates Jitsuhito.
There’s a man staring at him.
In the giant painting above the fireplace in the main foyer of the house, there is a man staring down at Okigoro.
He doesn’t recognize him. Perhaps he should, considering the man is his father, but Okigoro remembers next to nothing. Memories of the man have lessened to practically hallucinations of what the man’s voice probably had been.
He was gone from Okigoro’s life by the time he had turned five. His mother never seemed to care—unbothered in a way that Okigoro is all too used to. Okigoro wonders whether she even noticed his leaving or not, despite the fact that they had been married.
Okigoro’s not sure how he should feel about the man. Grateful, for bringing him into the world? Sadness, for the man will never be in his life? Anger, for he abandoned Okigoro to live in this giant house with an absentee mother who treats him as if he doesn’t exist to begin with?
Hatred. Because this man left Okigoro behind to suffer the consequences of a grown man’s regrets. Because Okigoro is forced to stay here for the rest of his life, if he wants to feel any semblance of love from even one single person. Because Okigoro knows that he was left on purpose, because despite being a child of this man, he had never been cared for to begin with.
Okigoro wonders how much trouble he’d get in for running a pair of scissors across the painting.
He should ask Jitsuhito tomorrow at school.
Kafka’s hand shakes, lit cigarette being squeezed between his fingers. It’s rare for him to do something like this—Tetsuro and Chuuya smoke enough for all of them, it thinks, lips pressed into a thin line.
But he’d rather ruin his lungs than ruin its liver by drinking himself empty.
Today’s been a bad day.
He takes a long drag of the cigarette, ashes falling the shorter it becomes. Kafa holds the smoke in, even as it starts to burn its lungs, even as it feels like it's choking, even as his vision starts to water and blur at the edges. Kafka coughs it out when he can’t stand it anymore, thumb nail digging into the palm of its hand, his head falling forward as he does.
Smoke lingers up from the cigarette. Kafka watches it flow upwards, unable to bring any thoughts to the forefront of his mind. All he can think about is his mother—and the fight that they had earlier this morning.
“You’re a useless man, just like your father.” His mother hisses, snatching away Kafka’s book. He nearly grabs it right back, hand twitching at its side, but it stops itself, sneering in her direction. “Just what are all these insane withdrawals from your accounts? Do you think we’re made of money to fund your—your frivolous, asinine little club?”
Kafka squares his jaw, fists clenching at his sides. “What does it matter if I use up all the money? I’m not allowed to make insane purchases, but you’re allowed to spend hundreds of thousands of yen on the stupidest pieces of art and the escorts you use while you travel?”
His mother gapes at him, taken aback by its words. “What do you… how—how do you—”
“You think I’m stupid, mother?” Kafka rises to his feet, towering several inches over her. “You think I’m not privy to what you get up to whenever you leave this house? You might have your eyes and ears here, but I have eyes and ears with you, too.”
“How dare you!” She grips at the book, her face contorting with anger. “You stalk your own mother?”
Kafka laughs, unable to help himself, a strangled type of noise. “Oh, as if leaving your five year old child home alone for months on end while you work overseas is any fucking better.”
“You were not alone—”
“Household staffs don’t count, mother! Do you think they cared about me? They loathed me! They loathed you!” Kafka jabs a finger right in her chest, a part of him relishing in the way she seems to cower under him. “You—you, who only treats me like I’m some sort of trophy to be thrown upon a shelf and left there to collect dust. Because money and victory wins you everything in life, doesn’t it, mother?” He spits the word out with as much venom as he can muster, red in its vision.
There is silence, only their strained breathings able to be heard.
And then his mother slaps him.
Kafka barely registers it at first, until the pain is stinging in his right cheek and tears are involuntarily welling up in its eyes. It goes to touch its cheek, but his mother slaps him again. And again. Until she’s merely pounding her fist into Kafka’s shoulder and back as he turns his front away from her, gritting his teeth to not make a sound.
She cries as she does it. Kafka thinks he should feel bad about it, but he feels nothing. She cries and she sobs and she hits until she can’t. Kafka’s entire upper body aches after she finishes. She leaves without a single word. Kafka immediately thinks it needs a smoke.
“You’re smoking?”
Kafka would recognize that voice anywhere, at this point. It shouldn’t be surprised to hear them, though, considering the fact that it somehow managed to end up at the dreaded Yatagarasu’s stomping grounds. (Jitsuhito dragged it here. They refused to let him stay at Yamadaikosui right now.)
He glances over at Jyuri, taking in the obviously displeased look on her face. Kafka looks back at the cigarette. It’s definitely not helping, but it’s better than drowning in alcohol. Jitsuhito would kill him, either way. He brings it back up to his lips, staring at nothing. The smoke burns again. Maybe it should let it stay inside this time.
The smoke is forced out of him, though, as Jyuri reaches out, grabs the cigarette and drops it straight to the ground.
Kafka whirls around to face her, sneering as smoke escapes the side of its mouth. “What the fuck—”
Jyuri stomps on the cigarette with one of her heels. Kafka nearly winces, a sudden sting springing to its right cheek—the pain hasn’t fully subsided yet, but Kafka thought the smoking could have helped it. Maybe.
“Seiji and Hajime don’t really like people smoking around their school,” Jyuri says, as if that’s a perfectly good explanation for having stomped on Kafka’s cigarette. “You should feel lucky that I’m the one who found you.”
Kafka laughs, a forced out thing that sounds wrong even to its own ears. It turns away from her then, staring back down off the edge of the roof. The ground is a long way down.
“What are you doing up here, anyways?” Jyuri asks, a sort of impatience in her voice. She’s also probably annoyed that Kafka isn’t looking at her anymore, thinking that it must just think itself too high and mighty to do such a thing.
But it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Jyuri brings out things in Kafka that he can’t quite explain—can’t seem to let himself figure it out further beyond Jitsuhito’s teasing words and the other comments the members of Ouroboros make towards him. It’s scary, being around Jyuri. She doesn’t scare it (though she probably should), but the things that Kafka feels because of her—around her—are what’s scary.
It’s easier to pretend that it feels nothing, the mask that Kafka’s been wearing since it decided to no longer be Okigoro.
(The most terrifying thing, though, is that Kafka feels like Okigoro when it’s around Jyuri. That, maybe, just maybe, the mask of nothingness can be set aside and he can just—be.)
“Jitsuhito didn’t want me at the academy,” Kafka says instead of the thousands of other thoughts in its brain. “So they dragged me here.”
“You just do anything that guy tells you to do, huh?” Jyuri laughs, a pretty sound that makes Kafka’s fingers twitch at its sides. “People might start thinking the all mighty Kafka isn’t actually the leader of Ouroboros, after all.”
Kafka blinks, gaze slowly lifting to the sky. “You’re right.” Jyuri’s head snaps in his direction, eyes wide in surprise. “It should have been him,” Kafka murmurs, slowly shaking his head. “No. That’s not right. Jitsuhito shouldn’t have been dragged into any of this to begin with. They only ever followed me to keep me from destroying myself.”
“Hmm.” Jyuri lets out a hum, her attention focusing on the world below the roof. “Doesn’t look like that worked very well, anyways.”
A startled, quiet laugh leaves Kafka without his consent. It squeezes its eyes shut, head dropping forward again. “Yes,” he mumbles, shaking his head again. “Unfortunately, all their hard work has gone to waste.”
It feels like smoke is in its lungs again. Swirling and filling the space even as he breathes. Is this what a panic attack feels like? Maybe. Kafka can’t remember if it's ever felt like this before, lungs constricting so tight on themselves that breathing is starting to hurt more and more the longer he does it—
But his thoughts are interrupted, eyes snapping open as Jyuri’s hands twist themselves into the front of his school jacket. There’s a part of him that wants to yell about that—the wrinkles, the possible tears, the possible discolouration—but the other part of him, the one that wins out, is just glad that Jyuri is touching him in any capacity that’s not fighting. (Yet, at least. She might be trying to now.)
Jyuri yanks it down to eye level, making Kafka bend down to her height. (It should feel shameful, probably, to allow someone to bring it so far down in the first place. Instead, Kafka’s traitorous heart nearly skips a beat.) She sneers at him, but there’s something in her eyes that makes Kafka think she’s not as angry as she’s trying to appear.
“Keep yourself in check, fucking idiot,” Jyuri says, but the insult lacks any real bite. “You can’t destroy yourself before I destroy you first.”
Kafka probably should have responded. It’s hard to, though, when a very pretty girl is quite literally grasping at your jacket and making you look into her eyes. He can’t really think of anything but how pretty Jyuri’s eyes are at this angle of light, and that the mole below her mouth is a lot cuter up close—
Jyuri makes some kind of noise, startled and confused maybe, making Kafka blink. Her ears have turned pink, the same colour starting to spread across her cheeks and face. Jyuri clicks her tongue before she pushes Kafka back and turns away, stomping away from it and towards the door that leads back to the school.
It only takes Kafka about ten minutes of staying in a daze on the roof to realize that it might have said some of those thoughts from before out loud.