Chapter Text
Someone passes through the broken facade of the Empty SEKAI, her long, flowing hair fanning out like a train behind her as she walks.
She was not walking aimlessly like most of the people in this SEKAI tended to do. Aimlessness brought boredom, which she hated with every fiber of her being. She was walking somewhere, towards something, thinking of someone.
Luka was bored again. And thinking of stuff.
Nothing interesting ever happened in this SEKAI, because everyone was so easy to understand. Len, and his ever-potent anxiety. Rin, and her childish, ‘tsundere’ attitude… Miku, and her impossible kindness, Meiko, and her distant, strange ways.
They were all puzzles, easy ones to put together and solve. None of them were a challenge, or too interesting for her tastes.
Not until he came along, that is.
He was like a berry bush. Thorny, tangled to the point of absurdity. A hairball of complicated things waiting to be read and discovered.
He intrigued her. She wished to read him like how one would read a very good book. But of course, this book had teeth, and every time she tried to look under its pages it snapped and snarled at her, and slipped out from under her grasp before she truly had a chance to have her fun.
It was okay. One of the many gifts she was thankful she had was patience. If she had to read this book one page at a time, so be it. It only made him all the more interesting, anyway.
Luka smiles to herself as she thinks this. As usual, it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
Yes, what was she thinking about again?
Something had happened the other day which she couldn’t quite get off her mind.
An altercation between Rin, Kanade, and, albeit secretly, him. Nothing big or too phenomenal— Kanade had found that she wanted to be happy, after all, and took one small step toward accepting that, with a certain someone’s help. And Luka was happy for her, for that.
But there was something else she couldn’t just gloss over with one of her smiles.
Kaito. The reckless way in which he’d eavesdropped on Rin’s conversation with Kanade, how he’d almost rushed to talk to her, to help her without Rin’s knowledge— the too-spiteful way in which he’d lashed out at Rin for confronting him because of that.
Too impulsive. Too uncalculated. Almost as if he didn’t want to lose out on an opportunity to be useful.
That was something she couldn’t just ignore.
So she went to find him.
She spotted him easily enough, sitting quietly by one of the pillars beside the lake. Pondering, again. Don’t his thoughts ever run out? Luka muses as she comes closer to him. There must come a point where he has nothing left to think about. What does he even do, then? Die of boredom? Oh well.
When she moves into his line of vision, the death glare comes almost immediately. She chuckles, waving lazily at him. That part of him would never get boring, it seems.
“Hello, Kaito,” she greets airily. “By yourself again, I see. Doesn’t that ever get boring?”
“What do you want now?” he grumbles.
She smiles, again, which infuriates him even further.
She knows exactly what she wants, alright. She always does.
Unlike him.
“I wanted to… talk to you about something,” she begins, twirling a lock of pink hair around her finger. “About everything that happened the other day. You, Rin, and Kanade.”
“That again? I thought we’d already put that aside. Don’t come bother me about it anymore,” he groans, already turning on his heel to leave.
“Kanade… she’s quite an interesting girl, no?”
He stops in his tracks. He turns back around, eyes narrowed, in that hilariously suspicious manner Luka loved.
“What about her?” he questions, arms folded expectantly.
His buttons were so easy to push. One word about those girls and that was all it took for him to listen.
“Oh? She’s so determined to save everyone, it’s almost like she’d disappear if she doesn’t do that,” Luka drawls calmly, putting a hand to her chin in habit. “Like she doesn’t exist anywhere outside of the purpose of saving people. Especially Mafuyu. It’s quite the problem of hers, isn’t it?”
“I can see that,” he says irritably, his scowl deepening. “Get to the point already. You know very well I’m not a mind reader like you are.”
“Oh, no, this isn’t about her.” She stops moving her hand, and turns to smile at him. He falls silent, staring back with a blank frown. She continues to smile back.
“There’s someone else you might know who too, has the same problem. Unknowingly, in fact.” She lowers her hand, putting it to her chin now. “They might be wearing your shoes. And I might be talking to them right now.”
It takes him a while to process her words, to realise what they mean. She sees the marker signaling he has, the way his glare instantly and exponentially intensifies.
“What?”
She hears the tension in that word. The ball has begun rolling, and neither she nor he can stop it now. She feels something, that brings a sad smile she can’t help to her face. Pity, for this man glaring holes into her, with an intensity far too strong for the situation.
What a hypocrite, tripping all over his complexes, trying to cover himself up. The him, filled with holes she could clearly see now. She understood everything, and she would be the one to put things right.
She would help him see sense, if he refused to see it for himself.
“You’re a lot like her, you know? And her.”
Her first line slides into place, she sees its effect immediately. Kaito’s eyebrows fly up his forehead, but slide back down again in a far too ferocious glare which he directs with burning, concentrated direction.
“And? What’s that supposed to mean?”
She refuses to flinch, serene even in the face of his fury. She continues, tone light and conversational,
“Mafuyu. And Kanade. You’re like all of them, actually, but especially those two.”
He scoffs, almost mockingly. He tilts his head, folding his arms arrogantly, as if that would change anything.
“What kind of nonsense. Of course I am. We’re all made out of their feelings, after all. If you’ll excuse me—”
A smile, which doesn’t reach her drooping eyes, slides up her face. It’s a knowing smile. She makes sure he sees it— which he immediately does, his scowl returning in full force.
“No, Kaito.” She makes her tone soft. It's gentle, coaxing, like a preschool teacher guiding her student. “You’re like them. You experience their struggles just as much as they do, know it or not.”
“Don’t you dare try and baby me—”
“But I’m not.” She states innocently, clasping her hands in front of her. “I’m just stating what I see. I’m just saying the truth. Isn’t that what you love the most, Kaito?”
“This is different,” he snarls.
“How?” She swiftly questions, not missing a beat. “Tell me, Kaito. Where is the real you? The ‘you’, that doesn’t depend on others to exist. The ‘you’, that lies outside of saving others— where is it?”
The words came comfortably, smoothly, as if she’d already rehearsed this conversation beforehand. They stunned him, she could see that. Good, she let herself say. Let him be shocked. Let him realise.
“I,” he begins, drawing himself up— futilely, as Luka heard the tremble in his voice quite clearly. “I, am who I am. No matter what you say, or do, that will never change.”
“Who is this ‘you’ you speak of, Kaito? I cannot see him. He is a ghost.” The ice in her tone is calm, controlled— not biting. “Tell me what you want. What you like to do. What you think about. Tell me all about yourself. I have all day.”
Learning more about him sounded fun. An entertaining thought. It brought the smile which she didn’t know had disappeared back to her face.
She smiles calmly at him as his face shifts through a storm of emotions— they pass one by one underneath her gaze; she reads them all. Anything but certainty. She could practically smell his fear in the air.
He turns to face her again, his glower venomous and potent.
“This is just stupid.”
“You’re avoiding my question, Kaito.”
“I don’t have to answer your question!”
“You mean you can’t even tell me,” she says quietly, “Who you are?”
She lets her words sink in, like ice.
“No!” The word tears from him.
She knows it is not a declaration nor a command, but a plea. He realises this, and opens his mouth to backpedal, to throw out more angry words. To hide the truth, swiftly coming to light. But there was nothing else to be said.
Luka almost feels sorry for him. Without hesitation, she drops the bomb.
“There is no ‘self’, or ‘you’ that exists. Not outside of saving Mafuyu and the others. That’s why you want to disappear.”
She does not tilt her head or clasp her hands. She stares right at him, hearing her words ring out with cold, toneless clarity.
She feels no satisfaction in seeing that the other’s slate-blue eyes are wide, his expression slack and mortified, all anger from before completely disarmed.
“Perhaps it’s about time you realise this before it destroys you, Kaito.”
She lets her smile fall from her face, lets the lightness fall from her tone. She would show him she was serious. That she did not intend for this, to be in any way or form, a laughing matter.
She trusted his personality enough for him not to delude himself of the belief otherwise.
“I’m done,” he finally chokes out, “With you, and your nonsense.”
She meets his burning, wounded glare with her own. Calm, unwavering, unafraid.
Let him say that. Her work was done here. His thoughts would do the rest. She hopes they will.
She stares at Kaito’s back as he runs away, at the split between the white fabric laced carelessly together by thin string, revealing the shirt he wore underneath. Raw, red, and exposed, for everyone to see.