Warnings: light spoilers
Pairings: none.
Note: Written for the ficondemand livejournal community June challenge, for funfiction.
On Kyou's sixteenth birthday, Kazuma-sensei gave him a digital camera.
At first, Kyou wondered why Kazuma-sensei had chosen to give him something so unrelated to martial arts, or any of the other things he knew Kyou was interested in. Why a camera? It was nice, there was no doubt about that – high quality, top of the line, expensive. But why give it to him? Why not to someone who would appreciate it more?
Despite his confusion over the gift, Kyou used it. It wouldn't do to seem ungrateful to Kazuma-sensei, who'd done so much for him, and even if he was mostly indifferent to the camera itself he truly was grateful for everything else his mentor had done for him.
Once he was sure that Kazuma-sensei was no longer looking for it, though, Kyou stopped using the camera so often. He carried it around with him for a while after that, but gradually began leaving it at home more and more.
When he moved into Shigure's house, the camera came with him, packed in among his other belongings. He came across it while he was finishing off the last of his unpacking the morning before his first day at the new school, and stared at it for a while, black plastic and metal against the flesh of his palm. When Tohru called up the stairs, saying in her worried way that Kyou was going to be late, he stuffed it in his bag without thinking about it.
Kyou promptly forgot about the camera until he found it again three days later.
The camera had fallen to the bottom of his bag, buried under his schoolbooks. It didn't seem to be damaged, but when he looked at the camera's memory Kyou saw that something had been pressing on the button, and filled up the memory with photo after photo of the inside of his bag. Sighing, he deleted them all, then placed the camera back up on the shelf and forgot about it again.
The next time he picked up the camera was two weeks later. He'd lost yet another fight with Yuki, but Tohru had made him promise not to run off, and so he hid in his room instead. Pacing wildly, his eyes fell on the camera, and before he knew it he had it in his hands. Not even completely sure what he was doing, Kyou pointed the camera towards him and took a picture.
Turning it over, he stared at the image of his face. Even as blurred and unfocussed as it was, the pain and anger in his expression was palpable – but as he stared at himself, he felt the anger draining away. It's all right, something in him seemed to say. You were angry, and now that anger is caught. It's on the camera, not in you. And so long as you've got this picture, that's where it will stay.
Still staring, Kyou hit the delete button.
End