Chapter 1: Face

There's a voice that I always hear inside my head.

Whenever I close my eyes, it starts to speak. Like a sound that cuts across all silence.

Like a button that gets pressed, it just whispers things.

Stuff. Anything under the sun.

"Ohayou, Tsukki!"

There he goes again. He loves calling me with that nickname. With a voice full of energy.

He is an entity.

How he looks like. The contour of his face. His built.

I just have no idea what he looks like.

But he exists.

He exists.

And I am sure, had he had a form, he would always be smiling.

Always.

Cause that's the way I have always pictured him.

"You're crazy," is what my older brother would tell when he catches me talking to myself.

"Shut up," I'd reply as I stare at the blank walls of my room.

"Heh…" He's speak back with that playful tone of his. "You really should learn how to live by yourself from now on."

"Shut up," I say again, closing my eyes this time.

I'd wait for the voice to cut it.

Just to make this older brother of mine shut up.

I hate him. I really really do.

I hated him with all my heart.

"I'll definitely be there," were the last words him I heard from him on that day. It was supposed to be the final match.

"But I did fulfill my promise."

"No you didn't."

"I was there."

"No you were not."

"Kei—"

"Shut up."

"Kei please…"

"You're not even real."

"And the voice inside your head is real?"

"Yes. More real than you."

Silence comes again.

An intermission of tick tocks. Rustling of leaves from the trees outside. An occasional honking of cars that pass by the lanes.

"Kei, you're just making that voice up. You're just fooling yourself. That voice is not—"

"Me? Fooling myself?" I found myself smiling, having the urge to laugh. But I just couldn't do it.

Even laughing in itself has become tiresome.

"Then what about you, Niisan?"

I could see him bowing his head. Probably with pained eyes. Guilt. Regret.

None of those matter anyway anymore.

"The voice inside my head. It's here. But not you."

"You're not here anymore," I finally say as I sit up on my bed, looking at the spot of the room where he'd always stand up whenever he wanted to have some real talk with him.

No reply ensues.

Silence comes again.

And then—

"Tsukki…"

There's a glint of sadness in his voice this time.

"Took you long enough…" I'd say, ignoring the sudden change of tone as I imagine myself flashing a glare at this entity.

But oddly enough.

I was sure.

That he had a face.

He would still be smiling.

Greetings! It's been a while, and I really apologize for the two stories that I've kept hanging. +_+. To be honest, I have no idea how it'll go for this story. I do know where I want it to lead to but not just confident enough whether I could finish this cause work has started and so on. I'd probably say that I'll just see how it'll go. *bows*

And yep, this will be a KurooTsukkiYama story. ^^