A/N: Written for the 31_days challenge, May 21 2013: last chance to lose control.
Prisoner
One would think he was walking to his cell, the way his face seemed frozen in stone. Maybe, for some people, school was a prison: it was made to sound like a vibrant place for learning, but the grey uniforms, the competitive nature, the results posted up on the walls and the rigorous schedules…there was no freedom in that.
Not that there was any freedom at home, without Osamu around. Because without Osamu, he had to be the perfect son. The genius that brought glory. The friendly social image that became the idol. The pride and joy as he spent his free time studying or making the next breakthrough in some record or competition.
Even in the safety of his own room he had no freedom. The digivice he had stolen from his brother burnt a hole through the desk, kindled kindly the email whose sender he had still been unable to find. That, and the darkness that had lain beyond when he had thrown the doors impulsively open.
The shadow of a world that was his and his alone, malleable under his fingertips. Able to become anything he wanted. And he had already seen a vision of that, under the water as he saw his own fingers and face melt into his brother's –
He was both enthralled and furious (and shocked though that quickly drowned, unable to float), but he could do nothing save shatter that face and create his own perfect world, under his image. Not his brother's.
And so it was time to put a mask on his face. Another mask. Not Ken-turned-Osamu, the perfect genius son. No, this mask was a different one, beneath that, apart from that.
Free from that.
He stepped across the threshold, thinking about how to go about that new identity. Nothing showed on his face, least of all how another part of the old Ken had just been locked in what was known as the dark prison of the mind.