GHOST SMILE;;

Warning: character death, angsty and dark themes.

Disclaimer: I only use Takao's characters to lay prey them to my own sadistic intentions. Holy crap. XD

There is a boy, but there is death, and in that boy, there is a long line of crack running down from his head to his toe. -- kai angst ficlet, character death .

[kai angst ficlet, character death]

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When his best friend dies, nobody notices his heart slowly waning away. His life support unit splinters, and it is useless for him to thrive on when there is no supply of oxygen. There is no convincing him that there are other reasons to survive, because it does not work – everything is futile; every attempt to tug those corners of his lips into a smile fail epically. He is now like a soldier, not like he already isn't in the past – but this version creeps the people around him, worries them incessantly. He turns into something furthur away from the ghostly image of his past. Icy, carved in diamond hard stone, Kai stood before the mirror in aloof impersonality. Now, he stands, still icy, even icier, with a pepertual smile that is forcefully carved to remain there for all to see.

He is no longer aloof. He is friendly. Too friendly for comfort. And his smile scares. It is what creeps everyone out, and makes a chill run down their spines. He turns three hundred and sixty degrees, and his smile is unfaltering. Sometimes, it is as if strings have been attached to pull his lips at a certain angle, to point up at calculative degrees. That false joy, that facade of happiness is plastered on – and it all seems very realistic, supposedly convincing.

It is meant to be a perfect masquerade.

But beneath, something is breaking.

Or has already broken, and died. Some parts of him fail to exist. All that remains is that smile on his face --- synonym of the holes in his heart, the desperate struggle to fill them up with something bright, vibrant, and colorful. But just like that smile, the more he tries, the more it hurts. Paradoxical, but true. And he doesn't know why. In the mornings, he faces the mirror and practices the smile—over and over and over again, until he masters how to make it stay, how not to make it droop into a glummy frown. If it happens, he know the people around him will ask, will see through him like transparency, read him like an open book.

He does everything (keep smiling, keep smiling, keep smiling) to conceal that growing vacuum in his heart.

He feels exactly like a ventriloquist. His very own – he knows which strings to pull to smile like he's just had the best joy ride in the world, which strings to pull so he'll laugh out loud like he doesn't give a damn in this entire world. He knows how to make his eyes look like they're having fun – there's a way to make them glint and shine with bliss. He learns the art, perfects the craft of howling with laughter. There is a manner of which one must bend over the back. Chuckle first. Let your throat open up and the giggles flow (uncharacteristically), and the more unnatural it seems, the more easily one will laugh.

He manages it day by day, convinces all around him that his death does nothing to him. Instead, he proves –desperately – that there is certainty; there is the possibility he is able to validate his existence by himself. He certainly doesn't need anybody else; much less a dead friend. Someone who isn't coming back, ever. (He'll ignore the countless times he's spent shut in his bedroom convincing himself otherwise ; that maybe there is the miniscule of hope that he'll return, just maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe....)

He is so certain he is living well, and recovering --- no, one has no need for recovery when one doesn't fall in the first place – that he notices how quickly he is surrounded by friends. He's so much more open now, so much more friendly, so much less aloof. Sometimes, they tell him they like to new him.

It's as if he's a completely different character.

(He doesn't notices how much he actually worries them, scares them----- some of them. His old friends, his number one fans. The ones who knows of the holes that has been planted and seeded so deep into his heart, they will cleave for a long time and won't go away.)

"You scare us, Kai." They find the chance to tell him.

He smiles so hard, his teeth flashes and glints in the sun. Reflects geometrical patterns into the distance.

He has ditched his scarf into the garbage.

No use sticking to something given by a dead friend.

(----makes him cry. Hates it.)

"But I'm happy. I'm living well." He responds, clearly not quite getting it. He does it again – his craft is perfect. Degrees to smiling joyfully, back hunched so he's laughing naturally, eyes blinking so he knows how to make them shine like he really, really means it.

It's not affecting him.

Don't they see?

He's so, so cheerful, so happy,

So unlike him.

"Kai----" It is Ray eventually who puts a hand to his ex-Captain's shoulder, eyes filled with brimming worry. "Please."

Please.

And he breaks, this time.

There is a pain seething so strongly in his heart, it tears and rips him apart. He fights it, so hard, so bad – where is the craft he's learnt over the months? What happened to the mastery of skills used to be intact? There is no way he can smile now, no way he can laugh – when all this time, he's been like an open book pretending to be indecipherable. The harder he clamors to forget, to pretend, to trap himself in a sanctuary of disillusions, the less cryptic he is, and he realizes he isn't exactly oblivious to it.

He refuses to answer, looks in the mirror.

He knows he can do this.

He is the perfect ventriloquist.

So he tugs, and pulls, and makes it such that his smile is wider than ever, and more inporportionate and disoriented than ever – until he's sure, he's so damn convinced it's a smiling, cheerful boy staring back at him with bright crimson eyes, vibrant face and genuine smile-----

The mirror shatters. One of them punches it, and it fragments into shards.

One piece touches his flesh, bristles, and cuts a line of blood down.

Without the mirror, Kai does not know where to turn to. Nowhere to go to convince himself this is the new him, nowhere to look to affirm he's getting along fine --- that the smile will be there to sustain him, to confirm his living. The mirror...He looks around desperately at the small pieces of glass on the ground and scurries to pick them up to look into them. He needs mirror, needs pieces of them like crazy – needs them to tell him he's a cheerful, happy, boy without holes in his heart, without losses, without knowing of pain,

His fingers and hands bleed.

Nobody how hard he pieces the mirror shards together, they fall apart, unable to be glued together again.

Nothing convinces him of the masquerade now. Not of the facade, not of the pretense, not of the perfect ventriloquist he's made himself out to be.

Without a reflection; a shadow ---

What lies beneath,

Is a broken heart waning away.

Has waned away for a long, long time.

And has failed to flourish.

Has yet to repair and mend.

And the thing that worries all of them, is that it is the owner of that heart, that rejects and denies recovery and stitching of a broken soul.

All that remains now, he realizes as he bends to pick up the broken glasses one by one,

(Somewhere, a clock ticks away, and nears midnight. It contemplates illogically if it is counting down to the phoenix's death. Or whether it is inappropriate for such impending death cannot be counted when it already has occured.)

----is that everything has been a lie.

He is a lie.

Beneath that cheerful, happy boy,

There is nothing.

There is a boy, but there is death, and in that boy, there is a long line of crack running down from his head to his toe, in every minute detail. There is a heart, and he is breathing, but he is slowly dying, and he is doing nothing to stitch everything back together.

Like they say, just because someone's breathing doesn't mean he's alive------

The masquerade is over,

Something shatters—

A heart lies, splintered, split, and broken.

--------

On Tyson's seventeenth birthday, he wishes for Kai.

Most of all, he wishes Tala back.

But now, it's all too late. And he knows and they all know they're a step too late.

Owari.