note: this is literally just aesthetic tbh, and it's linked to the theory of his father being nekosawa
white line scars (almost invisible)
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.
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It's like a dream: he forgets to open his eyes when he wakes up.
Because stopping is the problem—he never knows when to stop, and half of the time he doesn't even know that he has. Punching the shit out of the heavy bag—out of anything in general—grants him the feeling of absolute numbness. He becomes nonexistent to the world, and is therefore absent to the consequences of his actions.
Kaito curses when he sees blood on the surface of the bag, golden eyes drawing shamefully to his knuckles. The bandages need to be replaced with new ones, the split skin of his knuckles having opened up again.
(These are the hands of a monster, he realizes. And not the ones with fangs and claws—just the ones who prefer to purchase groceries at the corner store. The ones society not only rejects, but forgets to reject, and merely the shadow of something much greater than him.)
The skin burns under the worn bandages—a feeling akin to the way his chest stings with adrenaline under the impact his fists have with heavy bags, the walls, the nose of the occasional ignorant fuck that's threatened his one and only friend, and sometimes even himself to a certain extent—to an extent he actually cares for. There are men bleeding in the back alleys because he couldn't fucking control himself, and Kaito prefers to consider himself a rather patient person. (And Kei would most likely have to agree with that.)
Massaging the kinks from his neck, he distances himself from the bag and grabs a water bottle from a table somewhere to dispense the water over his head. The coolness washes over the heat of the basement, the grit and stuffiness drowning out to clear a path of relief through Kaito's lungs. He hates it down here because his father's shadow still haunts the edges of the oversized room, the distant odor of organ transfers still piling in the corners with each memory Kaito fails to forget. He's still the kid with too many daddy issues to count, and the smell of this place will forever stain his lungs.
He's a monster down here: shirt stripped to reveal scars, sweat clinging to the short brunette roots, and he wipes his brow with no idea that it leaves a streak of red along his forehead. He's the monster with blood on his knuckles, in his lungs; with fists that are much to familiar with the crunch of bone; with the absence of a ghost to these dark city streets, and he'll disappear as such. That's how he's always managed.
(He'll get Kei to replace his bandages.)