The Injury Boy
Written by RamaLlama
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and all related characters are the property of Square Enix and Disney.
Chapter One: Introductions
The desk next to his is always empty. It has never been scratched or covered with gum. It is always cold, and the only things that have ever touched it were books and papers.
Sometimes, he wondered if there truly was a classmate of his that was intended to sit there. It would be easy for him to make the assumption that there wasn't, if he hadn't been coming over, books and papers in hand, to the absentee's home almost everyday.
"I just noticed that yesterday was your birthday. Why didn't you tell anyone? We could've at least acknowledged it. Birthdays come only once a year."
The student stared at the guidance counselor. The couch in here was exceptionally uncomfortable today. He said, "I didn't feel like it."
She sighed, gripping her forehead. All the stress was making her look older than she was. "You promised that you would at least try to be more social this year. Staying quiet like this is not helping."
The student kept thinking about all the schoolwork he was missing by being here, and all the time it would take to make it up. Did his teacher really have to send him down here every damn day? "Can I go back to class now?" he asked. "It's not that your office is dreadful to look at, but I've been in here enough times to get bored of it."
"You've been coming here for five years. Aren't you tired of this?"
He took that as a yes. He knew she wouldn't stop him from leaving, because she couldn't. He stood up off the chair and walked over to the door, and the guidance counselor just crossed her legs and tried to think of another tactic that might get to him. When he opened the door, she called out, "You're the one going over to that sick boy's house, aren't you?"
The student paused and rested his head on the doorframe. "My teacher insisted that I bring work over to him, so he doesn't fall behind." The words came out in a mumble. "Don't mistake it as an attempt at reaching out."
"Why does it have to be you?"
"His desk is next to mine."
The desks in his classroom were arranged alphabetically by last name. This meant that there was no one in their class whose last name fell alphabetically between Fisher and Loreone, which was a big load of bull.
Head still against the doorframe, the student, Zexion Loreone, looked up and stared at the guidance counselor again. He knew she was pretty. The trouble was that he didn't think of her, or anything else for that matter, as pretty. "Zexion?" she said, "Zexion?" He groaned a bit to show that he acknowledged that she was speaking. "What's wrong, Zexion?"
'For a second there, everything turned… gray.'
He didn't want to complain to her about nothing being "pretty".
"Nothing's wrong."
"What's the boy's name?"
"He's… the injury boy." The guidance counselor raised her eyebrow, but seemed to accept this answer.
He knew the kid's name, of course. It was the name the teacher called for attendance that never had an answer. But if this kid was going to put him through all the trouble he's put him through so far, he didn't deserve to be called by his real name.
Zexion hadn't even met the injury boy, and he hated him already.
He asked, "Can I go now?" Without waiting for an answer, he twisted the doorknob, opened the door, and left. As he walked down the hallway, he passed by the school's trophy case. His name was engraved on one of the golden-colored plaques, and large, triumphant smirk plastered itself on his face.
Ah, there it was—the only thing that gave him happiness.
Being better than everyone else.
He walked up the stairs with this, and only this, in mind, but the steps still felt as empty and bare as the ones in his house.
LINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINE
The injury boy's house is completely concealed by the leaves of a large tree that had grown in front of it, so that it is nearly impossible to find. It was for this reason that the Fisher family decided to build a path that led to the house, one that cut through all the leaves. Still, the path is narrow and not much easier to see, and trying to find the house annoys Zexion to no end. It wasn't like this task didn't take up enough of his time. He would still have to walk a long way back to his own house.
Every time Zexion walks down this path, he thinks that he might've wandered into a different town. The sunlight filters through the leaves and shines on the ground in broken pieces. The path seems to twist and meander, although he knows that it's a straight path. His guidance counselor mentioned something about his "sense of wonder." He gets irritated, though, when he thinks it might be that.
Every time he thinks of that, he hates doing this more and more.
When he arrives at the door, books and papers in hand, he knocks the door, because the doorbell never works, and while he hands whatever is in his hands for that day to the mother, he peers inside the house. The injury boy is always under a blanket, completely concealed, much like his house.
Zexion thinks they could've been more specific about whatever was wrong with him. One injury couldn't be enough to keep a kid out of school for the entire school year.
The injury boy's mother, sensing a bit of irritation coming from this delivery boy, always hands him a cookie he presumes she baked herself. She's pleasant, he thinks.
The rest of the school year continued much in the same way. School was school, and this routine he had with the injury boy and the injury boy's mother was all that was described. This was how Zexion finished the seventh grade. When he thinks about it, he knows that the injury boy was really the only classmate he had anything to do with all year.
He supposes that should mean something to him. He almost wishes he hated being a delivery boy a little less.
And while he refuses to believe in any "sense of wonder", he allows himself to think that the cookies tasted good.
LINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINE
If he was really quiet, he could hear the music from here.
He wanted to stop himself when he felt himself grabbing his house keys and heading out the door. He didn't go to school dances. He just didn't. He never found the time to. When he began walking down the street, he kept telling himself that there were so many other, better things he could be doing.
But for all intents and purposes, Zexion was bored.
It was the end of the year dance. There was barely any work to be done. He could reread all his books only so many times. And the noise was bothering him. He could go over there, just to see what the big deal was.
And maybe he was just sick of being clueless about these things.
Besides, he had bought a ticket, logic be damned. It was on his list. Everything he needed to or wanted to do was on his list. It was all very organized, he thought. If he had spent money on it, it needed to be done.
He looked through the clothes in his closet.
'What should I wear?'
Immediately after the thought was formed in his head, it was pushed out, replaced by a mixture of disgust and horror. What should he wear? This dance was already getting to him, and he wasn't even sure about attending.
Thinking that almost made him an actual… teenager.
Shuddering, he picked out the first comfortable things he saw and put them on. He understood that fashion was important in some respects, but he usually didn't care.
'What should I say?'
He fixed his hair so that it didn't cover his face, decided he didn't like it, pushed it back, stepped outside, thought of the empty stairs, thought of the guidance counselor, wondered if this counted as an attempt to reach out, and knew he could cross ending the year with something slightly spontaneous off his list.
He knew he didn't belong there. It was obvious as soon as he peered into the gymnasium. He didn't belong there. For once, he was the one at a disadvantage.
He though of the gold-colored plaque in the school's trophy case, and breathed deeply.
The dance was, as expected, a total wreck, at least in any intelligent person's opinion. The music was loud enough from his house. He was pretty sure the walls were cracking by now. What was the appeal of having to shout to others to hold a conversation? It wasn't something he had to worry about terribly, since a single person couldn't cut through the dancing crowd with a bulldozer.
However, appearing as if he belonged somewhere, no matter where he went, would be a useful skill to acquire. And it was on his list.
"Ticket, please?"
It was the voice of the ticket counter girl. She wasn't terribly annoying. He turned to face her, and her eyes bugged out in surprise. "Loreone?" she asked. "I thought you didn't go to these things."
"I thought so, as well."
"Want to start off eighth grade fresh?"
"I don't know."
"That's a first."
She took his ticket, and he went on his way. "You're just upset that you turned thirteen yesterday," she muttered. "Now you're a teenager, just like the rest of us."
Zexion heard her and shook his head. No. That was wrong. He was better than that.
There was a snack table with chips, popcorn, grease, salt, fat, and cans of soda. He walked to it, opened a can, took a sip, and waited for something to happen. Something had to happen. From what he'd heard his classmates say about this dance, plenty happened. A few people whispered about how Loreone was at a social event.
Suddenly, an extremely loud voice yelled in his ear, "Excuse me!"
Zexion snapped his head in surprised annoyance towards the direction of the sugar-high boy standing next to him. He didn't recognize the kid at all. This didn't strike him as strange, since he heard that students tried to sneak their friends from other schools into their dances all the time, even though that wasn't allowed.
The loud boy continued, "Can you hold my soda for me!" Zexion noticed that this was one of the shouting people that added to the noise of the dance. Zexion also noticed he was clutching a half-crushed soda can while bouncing while standing. An energetic song he had never heard of was playing, and he knew the boy wanted to get to the floor and dance to it with the many, equally-as-crazy friends that he probably had.
"Okay," Zexion answered softly. He didn't want to yell. If the boy couldn't hear him, that was too damn bad.
The boy attempted to hand him his soda, and the movement proved too much for his head to handle, and he fell over, dizzy. God, were these cans spiked? Zexion would've just stepped over him if the boy hadn't landed on him. "Get off!" he groaned, pushing him as hard as he could manage and breaking free. He stood up, wiping himself off. Against Zexion's better judgment, he helped the boy up.
"I'm sorry," the boy said, "Sometimes I get really excited at these types of things. I think dancing is the last thing I should be doing right now." The boy paused for a moment, and Zexion almost went back to waiting for something to happen. "Want to just... talk?"
Zexion made a motion with his head that may have been a nod.
The boy smiled brightly and held out his hand. "I'm Demyx Fisher! What's your name?"
He didn't look very "injured".
A surge of hatred welled up within Zexion without warning. He gritted his teeth and said, as calmly as he could, "Demyx Fisher? You're the injury boy?"
Prior to this, Demyx was focusing on what Zexion was saying, rather than his voice, but now, with Zexion staring at him with such rage, his voice suddenly seemed really interesting. "Wait— that voice. You're the delivery boy?"
Admittedly, Zexion did not expect the next words that came out of Demyx's mouth.
"You look even better than I thought you did!"
"…What?"
Demyx laughed playfully. "All this time, I only knew what you sounded like! I always thought you sounded smart, so I expected you to look like a nerd! I'm not saying that's a bad thing, 'cause nerds are kinda like dorks, and my mom always says I'm a dork, so I mean it as a compliment! But you look completely different!"
"…You think I'm smart?"
"Well… yeah! Ooh, I wanna to get to know you better!"
All of the hatred that Zexion felt only a few minutes ago had temporarily subsided, replaced by utter confusion. He had never imagined meeting the infamous injury boy quite like this.
"I'm very intelligent," Zexion said. Demyx said that he wanted to know more about him. "Teachers love me. I've won numerous awards in several academic programs, despite my young age. "
"Wow!" Demyx exclaimed. He sounded genuinely impressed, which made him more bearable to Zexion. "Do your parents hang all your awards and stuff all over the house?"
"No. I give them to the school. My parents don't live with me. I don't have a guardian."
"You live by yourself? Isn't that… illegal?"
"Yes…" There was a bit of hesitation before, and during the answer. "My… grandmother came here to take care of me, but one day, I came home from school, and she… died."
Zexion had the memory clear in his head. At first, he propped the body up on the couch in front of the TV, and pinned the eyes open, so that in the event his parents ever came back, it would look like nothing had changed. Eventually, his conscience told him how twisted and messed up that all was.
"I didn't tell my parents," he continued, "because if anyone found out they were breaking the law, they might take me away from them and give me to some other family."
He heard Demyx's voice catch and saw his eyes roll to the left.
"What's wrong?"
Demyx cleared his throat. He wasn't nearly as excited as he was before, and Zexion thought that might've been a good thing. "Nothing's wrong. I… I just can't believe that you would want that."
Zexion smirked and brushed the hair out of his eyes. "You don't know me yet."
And that was how Zexion Loreone came to know Demyx Fisher, the injury boy.
(...END OF CHAPTER...)