I hide these tears from you,
Glittering drops of diamonds spilled on silk sheets.
Instead, letting insincere smiles shine through,
Coloured glass gleaming in the light.

I hide these screams from you,
Unsounded pleas woven into satin covered pillows.
Practiced laughter rings from this tainted mouth,
A bloodied knife with a jeweled hilt twisted in my gut.

I hide these feelings from you,
Redemption drowning in a bottle of sin.
Reminders that I am based on a lie,
Lying in a cold, emotionless room.

All that I have received from you means nothing but,
Love crushed by deceit.

Gather round.

Gather round, everyone, for I have a tale to tell. Tonight is a special night, because it is the night where the red moon dwells.

…

Oh.

So it's just you then, child?

Well, that's all right too.

Do you have time to spare?

I'm feeling restless tonight, but I don't feel like doing much.

Basically, I'm bored. Exquisitely bored.

So bored, that I'm going to tell you a short tale to kill my time.

Are you up for one?

…

Splendid.

Let's begin then, shall we?

.

Once upon a time.

There was a boy.

His name was Kano. Kano Shuuya.

Like most children of his age, he enjoyed activities such as tag, skateboarding, and most of all, a good story before he was tucked into bed to sleep for the night. He was bright, sociable, spontaneous, and his peers loved him. He could pick anyone he wanted to play with at all without having the fear of being rejected. There was nothing to worry about as long as he was by your side, he knew how to turn sobs into laughs, and frowns into smiles. In the eyes of many, his life was considered to be completely and thoroughly perfect.

However, there was one thing that separated him from the rest.

It was a little secret he had kept to himself.

A secret he knew that if he let out, the entire world could come crashing down on him.

Hence, a secret he could never tell.

You see, Kano had a mysterious ability. He was especially gifted in lying. And when I say lying, I do not mean averting your eyes and shuffling your feet uneasily as you tell one. His tricks were not so obvious like that. No.

Kano could lie flawlessly.

His lies were carried out with simple conviction, tossed about with the flippant manner he cultivated to match his persona. It was so smooth, full of cracks and holes so it wouldn't seem too perfect. Forget about children, the grown-ups could not even begin to guess what he had hidden behind his façade of innocence. The thought that he might have been lying hadn't crossed their minds in the shortest of moments. Even the most skeptical of adults swallowed his tall tales, unsuspecting of any remarks that he had hidden between his lines. That was how good he was.

No twitching of fingers, no stuttering.

Nothing.

Most people would have found such an ability frightening, like a demon that was present within the depths of what they believed to be their untainted hearts. They would have tried to get rid of it, throw it away, or at the very least, bury and stow it away. But Kano was different.

He embraced the demon.

He relied on it so heavily, that his entire sense of self revolved around it. He fabricated many personalities of himself, a compassionate one to the troubled, a comical one to the quiet, a benevolent one to the needy. He created so many, so many of them that his true person, his genuine own was lost in a sea of mirages. Now, if you were to ask him, which of his many masks was the true 'him', he'd probably be unable to answer that question.

After all, he was every single one of them, right?

He was a lie down to his very core.

…

Oh! I'm so sorry! Please don't cry!

Everything I've just said was a lie, all right?

…

Now now, don't get mad, okay? I wasn't trying to insult your intelligence or anything like that!

…

What?

My eyes are red, you say? I wonder, whatever do you mean by that? I'm not an albino, I wasn't born with red eyes.

But then again, tonight's moon is a full bloom scarlet, you see. Perhaps the light is reflecting off my pupils.

Cat eyes, huh? That's strangely accurate.

Now where was I? Oh, right.

Kano here was a liar who relied on his lies as much as he did on breathing. So much that he had lost track of his true self. So why did such a tragic thing happen to poor little Kano?

Well, one would have to trace back to when he was still six years old.

The time when he was orphaned.

Kano had come from a relatively happy family. His father went to work and earned a decent salary, his mother stayed at home to do the chores. During the night, after listening to a fairy tale, he would curl up with his parents and sleep. His days were exciting and fun. All in all, he had been living his life in contend.

But unbeknownst to anybody, Kano was keeping a secret.

It was a huge secret, but nobody knew what it really was.

Some say that he had stolen from a stall, some say that he had murdered somebody, some even said that he made some pact with the devil. Ludicrous rumours, senseless theories.

But there was one thing that was for certain. If the secret was let out, it would lead to horrifying consequences. It was a sentiment that even a young six year old child could understand.

So Kano kept it hidden away.

Until the day came. The day that changed the course of his entire life drastically. To Kano's horror, his father eventually found out about his dirty little secret. The thing which he had tried so hard to stow away had been exposed.

The result wasn't instant, but that didn't make it any worse. His father's mental state of health declined rapidly in the span of three months. He relied on alcohol to numb his senses and take away his pain. He became delirious, talking to himself and muttering incessant nothings to a God he didn't believe in. It went on and on, and his father had started to strongly resemble the zombies he had read in ghost stories.

Kano shouldn't have been surprised when he entered his parents' bedroom one night finally to find his mother's throat slit and his father dangling in the air, suspended by a rope hung on the ceiling. The only thing he could think of then was that his lie had killed his family.

Or rather, his exposed lie had killed his family.

So a few weeks after, when he came face to face with a monster who promised to grant him any power he'd like to have, his answer was simple.

He wanted to lie flawlessly.

He wanted to fabricate his own truths and feed it to the masses.

He wanted everyone to believe his deceit.

So that such a thing may never happen again.

Well, apparently, when Kano entered the orphanage, he realized that he wasn't alone. He had met two other friends who had an encounter with the monster as well. And surprisingly, both of them had intriguing powers just like he had. Kido and Seto. Those were their names.

Kido was a bubbly and shy girl. She was loved dearly by her parents, who shielded her from the night she detested so much. But when they died one day, she realized that there wasn't anyone to protect her when the sun wasn't up anymore. And as that thought cemented in her head, she wanted nothing more than to die. To follow her deceased parents through ending her own life. So she told the monster, that her wish was to "disappear".

On the other hand, Seto was a really nice guy, but he could get really scary when he's angered. I suppose it's because of how his family had broken apart. Similar to Kano, Seto's family was destroyed through an accumulation of lies. The only difference was that his parents were the ones who constantly betrayed each other. His heart hardened and he hated lies with a deadly passion ever since then. When the monster approached him with a hopeful prospect, he wished to be able to "see through every single lie".

The monster had granted both their wishes.

And the result was catastrophic.

Kido turned into a shadow that nobody ever noticed, as gone as the sun was during the night. And Seto found out about too many ugly truths that he had never wanted to see. Their own wishes had backfired on them and landed them in a predicament that could be deemed as unsalvageable. And the worst part was that they had nobody to blame but themselves. The monster simply granted their wishes, so she was washed away of all the guilt.

There was a catch to having such a power, apparently. When a person first obtained it, they would have to learn to control it efficiently to make it useful. There would also be a time when the ability would weaken tremendously. For Kano's case, his cycle depended on the moon.

Just like the moon, Kano always kept a part of himself hidden.

So when the orb was at its fullest, reddest peak, Kano would lose his ability for just that one night. It was a rare, insufferable, but precious time in which all of his fabricated masks would get torn clean off from his face.

It was a signal.

A signal that nobody could ever know about.

On nights like these, Kano would sneak off from the apartment he shared with his friends, so that they would never see his raw, honest self.

…

Is this another lie, you ask?

That's a good question. But either way, my answer could be a lie, too, don't you think?

So I'll skip that inquiry, I wouldn't want to confuse you.

Well, back to where I was, then.

You see, the thing that brought Kano and his two friends together was that none of them could survive on their own. Kido needed somebody to find her whenever she vanished, Seto needed somebody to tell him that the world wasn't as cruel as he thought it out to be. And Kano, well.

Kano simply wanted somebody to be there for him.

He wanted them to read the lines in between his skillfully woven words.

And to discover the sadness that he had buried under layers and layers of forced laughter and smiles.

Which was pretty hypocritical, actually. He shouldn't even be thinking like that since he was the one who willingly tricked them in the first place. How dirty, how disgraceful, how underhanded he was for wanting something that he practically didn't deserve.

But if he were to be honest with himself, Kano knew why.

He was afraid.

Kido and Seto had been accustomed to the joker he always played himself out to be. In their hearts, Kano knew they loved him for who he was. But in actuality, who they thought he was wasn't who he really was, after all.

If he revealed his true personality, would they be shocked?

If he opened up his heart, would they despise him?

Kano knew, deep down, that they probably would. Kido would hate him just as she hated the night because she loathed obscurity. Seto... did he really have to elaborate?

For these reasons, Kano kept himself hidden.

So that he would not ruin his second family like he did to his first, he faked a smile and acted like the carefree jokesmith the world thought him out to be.

Even if it would sink him even further into despair.

Even though it dragged him further beneath scream.

Even though it was slowly destroying him from inside out.

And even now, just like always, he was drowning in his uncanny self.

.

I'll end it here for now, I guess.

I probably spoke too much, huh?

Humor me a little, will you? I don't get a chance to do this very often.

Why, you say. Pfft, well that's because a full red moon doesn't reveal itself very often, don't you think?

What do you mean by that? The red moon is a signal, I told you that haven't I?

For one like me, it's a special symbol. Others might idolize the rare blue moon. Cheering and celebrating its presence just because it makes an appearance.

Ah, but the red moon is rarer still. Unlike the blue moon, this sacred scarlet in my eyes is more than just a presence, more than just a symbol. It's a calling.

When it decides to illuminate the night, like right now, this power of mine becomes nullified.

So I'm finally able to have one night of honesty.

That's why, I'll tell you something nobody will ever know.

The reason for this tale.

It's quite simple, really.

I just wanted somebody to listen to me.

The real me.

So that's that. Why are you looking so grim? It's rather depressing, you know.

Ah, but that's my fault, isn't it?

Okay, I'll make it up to you.

Ask me any question, and I'll give you the truth. Only this time, okay?

Because, until the red moon decides to surface again, I'll continue lying and deceiving, playing the role of a clown and pierrot.

Now, shoot.

What? Are you really sure about that? Are you going to ask me the obvious?

It's a once in a lifetime opportunity, you know?

I'll give you one last chance.

…

Okay then.

The name's Kano. Kano Shuuya.

.

.

.

.

.

And now, as we part ways,

Heed my words.

Never trust a liar telling the truth.

-Author's note-

Written on a whim almost immediately after I heard Yobanashi Deceive. I really, really couldn't resist!

The poem at the start was done by SaxyBubbles, so was the beta-ing. If not for her, this story would have been riddled with grammar errors. =w=