Everything was quiet. There wasn't a sound. No creaks of doors opening and closing, no muffled chatter from the critics, and no quiet footsteps. There was just silence. You could taste it in the air and it almost stung. Though, it wasn't the only thing that was hanging in the atmosphere. There was a thick fog of envy, or jealousy. It showed on his face as his lips formed into a scowl. His fists tightened at his sides and he let his sapphire blue eyes slowly shut. This was not normal for someone like him. He had so many things that he had wanted in the past, and now, he was jealous of someone else because of who they were? Or was it because of what they had? He wasn't sure. It seemed fuzzy to him, even though he was the one who wore the sin in plain sight.
Carefully, he stood to his full height. His wild silver hair was tossed around without care. His deep blue eyes opened. He had locked himself inside one of the rooms that Milly had offered him to stay in during his years as a student at Ashford Academy. The entire room was pitch black except for the moonlight pouring in through the windows that covered most of the side wall. He shifted his gaze from the floor toward the glass and started slowly making his way over. His hand lifted and he let his fingertips go over the glossy surface in thought.
The only reason he had locked himself up was because he wanted the jealousy to soon diminish into nothing. He had told himself that maybe if he were to give himself solitude from the real world, he would be able to push everything else aside and focus on survival. If he didn't focus on survival, he supposed that what was next would be what he would do if made it out alive. The only problem was that it slowly lead him toward the brink of insanity – where he would finally lose his mind after being locked up in a dark room for too many days.
This marked day number three. The first two days were a breeze. Nothing eventful had gone on during school hours, so he supposed that nobody noticed he was gone. That was what bothered him. He could've been dead for all they cared, and they still wouldn't have noticed that he was gone. It was almost as if he were merely a doll that they had played with in their childhood years, and they had tossed him aside because they had grown out of playing with him. He felt as if he were some sort of tool. A joke. A pawn.
The scowl on his lips had not faded. He was thinking about that one dreaded person. He had hair as black as night with purple eyes as deep as the colors in an abstract sunset. Jealousy was always thick in the air whenever the two students were near each other. The silver-haired boy always bit his tongue to refrain from saying anything he would regret, while the dark-haired boy was always the first one to feel the sudden tension in the air. Neither of them liked each other very much, but they put up a façade to show their other friends in the Student Council.
The mere thought of him caused the boy to lock up. His hand stopped tracing every inch of the window. He lowered his head, which caused his wild silver hair to overthrow his vision. He took his hand back from the glass carefully before forming a fist, smashing it down onto the surface. The glass shattered and the shards fell down to his feet, just as it fell down toward the sidewalk at the very first floor of the building. The soft plinking of the glass and the sight of his own blood made the student's scowl turn into a deep frown.
He felt frustrated, more so than usual. Every tactic in his head that he thought he would be able to use against Lelouch failed. He found some sort of flaw in every strategy he made. There was no way to win against him. And that's what made him so jealous. Lelouch was the master of strategy. Every single game he played, every move he made was perfect; something you wouldn't expect from just a mere schoolboy. The Black King was his chess piece of choice. There was no outmaneuvering the Black King. There was just no possible way.
Rai fell to his knees, ignoring the shards that cut through his black and gold uniform to find its way into his skin. The splintering pain meant nothing. It was the frustration and the envy that surged through his veins that meant something. It hurt him more than anything else had in his life. If both him and Lelouch were liars, did this mean that neither of them would win? Or did this mean that the opponent won by default because all of his tactics failed against him? He lowered his head and gripped at his hair, shutting his sapphire eyes tightly.
He was caught up in the grasp of jealousy, but Checkmate had already been declared. He had lost this battle.