Riku-focused oneshot. This takes place before Kingdom Hearts, when Sora and Kairi and Riku were all nine or ten. None-specific, it's sort of how I picture Riku.
What are the bee's knees?
Bees, as far as I know, don't actually have any knees, which meant that the phrase made no sense. But maybe that was the point of it, to not make sense, or describe something that didn't make sense. Or that made sense in the same way that it didn't.
Kairi says I think too much. I say there's no such thing.
She threatens that one day my head will just fall off, too heavy with all my heavy thoughts. So, I write them down, and then forget them. When I tell Kairi this, she stares at me wide-eyed and asks me if one day I'll forget her. I told her maybe. She told me to never write her down. I promised her, and she made me pinky-swear.
I doodled in the sand and thought about things. I thought about the universe and the world, I wondered who was real, my reflection or me? I decided that our universe was just a pile of dust on someone's dresser, and one day they'd dust it off. I wondered about the point of life, and I wondered about the point of starfish. I decided that neither had a point.
I wrote it all down. But I didn't write Kairi down. She thanked me everyday for things I didn't remember doing, like cleaning out her fish tank, and patting her on the shoulder. I fought with a stick, and eventually a wooden sword. I read the dictionary—twice, because no one told me I wasn't supposed to. Then I read seven encyclopedias, and a Winnie The Pooh book Sora lent me.
I wrote it all down, except for Kairi.
I was a part-time lover, as Sora put it. I told him he was a full-time friend. Sora asked me what I did the rest of the time. I told him everything. Kairi said that wasn't possible. I told her impossible was as make-believe as unicorns. She asked me if I would write that down. I told her yes. She asked if I ever wrote Sora down. I whispered that, yes, I had. She asked me why. I said because. Sora called us into the never-ending ocean. Kairi cried. I laughed and dragged her in.
I wrote about every thought that ran through my mind, how the dinosaurs died, how the universe was born, the answer to 2 2 and the reason why scabs formed. One day Kairi asked me if she could read it. I told her no, not yet. She asked when. I said whenever. She scowled. I smiled. Sora danced through the sand like a bumblebee. I ran like the wind, till I was the wind. Kairi stood still, and slowly pulled a Papu fruit down from the tree. Slowly, she ripped it apart and buried the pieces in the sand.
I asked her why. She told me I'd figure it out. I did, I think, and wrote it down. I forgot it by the next day. Kairi never asked me if I had thought about it. Instead she hugged Sora and swam with the fishes and I sat alone with my thoughts. Which were more than enough company.
I ate Chinese take-out with a fork and pizza with chopsticks. When I told Kairi this, she asked 'why?' and when I told Sora he said 'how?' which says a lot about them, I wanted to write it down, but that would be breaking my promise to Kairi, so I wrote how many oranges I was supposed to buy from the supermarket.
Once, when I was Sitting Still, an action some people might call meditating, but that's not what I did, I did the opposite of releasing all my thoughts, I floated into them, I came across the thought that we were a threesome, Sora, Kairi and I, but we were so much more than lovers, we were lovers and best friends. I never wrote it down, and I never mentioned it to Sora or Kairi because I didn't think they would understand, and I didn't want them to. It was my thought, and mine alone, and I didn't want it to be tarnished by others.
I wrote Sora a letter, a long letter maybe fifteen pages long, and when I went over to Sora's I hid it in the best place possible, so that only if Sora moved somewhere and had to pack up all his stuff, or when we moved on to college and Sora packed up at least two thirds of his things, he would find it.
For a long while I debated writing Kairi a letter, it seemed too close to writing her down. But I did eventually, thirteen pages, her favorite number, and hid it under the floorboard in her bedroom that peeled up, under a pile of old newspapers and comic books and cans of peaches. I knew she wouldn't find it until she went looking for it after Sora found his. That was how I wanted it to be.
Sora had always been first, Kairi had always come second. Their names, their faces and voices were second nature to me. I loved being with them, and loved being without them. I could sit and stare at the sky until the sun set and then walk onto the beach and they'd be waiting, face up in the sand waiting for me, and waiting for the stars.
It was something that happened, it just was. Like sunrises and burnt bacon. This was one thing that I wrote down, and never, ever forgot.