'Revamping CLIAB? YARN, you so crazy.'

"Yes, yes I am. I am also chronically depressed and feeling low, what's your point 'voice in my head'?"

'Nothing~! Carry on!'

Anyway may revisit this idea, may not.

Who knows?

-Y.A.R.N.

That brief moment of consciousness that exists between asleep and awake...

Ah... It is bliss, utter and uninterrupted bliss.

For that one instant where your eyes drift open from sleep to waking...

You are truly free.

Your brain hasn't caught up and began to punch you in the face with it's time to get up and do stuff and sleep hasn't fully relinquished the hold it had grasped your mind in. The dreamlike quality of fading sleep takes hold of the world and nothing is subject to reality. You interpret the world with the clarity and innocence of a child and you didn't have any doubts about just how perfect the world was. Everything is just so beautiful and clear that if you could somehow hold onto this one moment, almost as though you would see heaven as God intended.

Then you really began to wake up and that all gets shot to hell as rationality kicks in, along with the myriad of sensations that cut through the bliss and life breaks down the halls of the heaven around you.

I woke up.

And sighed at the broken fantasy as it slipped from my grasp.

I sat up and blinked blearily at the foot of my bed.

My last summer vacation of high school was over.

Ah, Roxas...

Was this how you felt when you saw Sora in that pod?

Probably a bit more depressed, but then again, I am chronically depressed so I can say with some certainty that I understand. I flung the covers off my body and grimaced at the fact that it was still hot in my room and that meant I had been sweating and my clothes reflected that. God, living in the room farthest from everyone was just so annoying at times, but it was more than worth it for the isolation. I cocked my head to hear if my sister was in the next room, if she was, music would be thumping a beat through the walls. Or if it was the weekend - which I knew it wasn't - the slight thump and creak of her bed that amplified the noise her whimpering curses as her boyfriend nailed her.

Those were uncomfortable weekend nights when my parents weren't home and she invited her boyfriend over.

No surprise there really, every since she got into the bad crowd at public school and started weed, I began to see her less and less. Most of my older siblings - all of them being older sisters - had moved out and thus left me with the sister closest to my age.

Nope. She wasn't home.

That was a relief, I had no desire to interact with her ever again to be honest.

It wasn't so bad at first. I was ignorant and righteous enough; I had believed that my parents' strict opinion on drugs would run deep enough in her to stop her from making bad choices. But that time I was hanging out at her boyfriend's place (mainly because she invited me and I really didn't have anything better to do) and saw her smoking shattered my certainty in her being the smart, caring, older sister who I played with and loved; my ability to process was sent crashing down on my thoughts like a train ploughing into a glassware building. I held onto hope that maybe she was just testing it out and would be disgusted and my naive thoughts would be justified.

But alas, the world kicked me down and pissed all over my hopes.

It wasn't until she offered me weed with the preface of 'Look Jaune, we both know you aren't the happiest person. Weed can fix that.' that I truly realized my sister was dead and this entity with her face should be treated like nothing more than a tenant in the house that I happen to have a room next to. I would have never offered a younger sibling a drug, no matter how good my intentions. After all the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Shaking off the morbid musings, I peeled the sweat soaked t-shirt and sweatpants from my body and dropped it in the laundry hamper with a grimace of disgust. I grabbed my bathrobe - which was really one of the robes my sister nicked from that one time we went to a hotel and they had been stupid enough to give us a few for everyone - and walked to my small shower. The warm water helped soothe my body and chased away the lingering sleep from my eyes. After wrapping the bath robe around my body and scrubbing myself hard with a dry towel, I brushed and the minty taste of toothpaste seemed to strike the corners of my eyes with a bit of drowsiness; I yawned widely before I spat the minty foam out of my mouth and took a swig of mouthwash to swish in my mouth.

I stared at the face in the mirror, wondering exactly when my ocean eyes began to resemble the coldest depths where life and light refused to be and the only thing that awaited that location was the promise of a cold and lonely death.

I suppose it started all the way back as a kid.

There really was no way to sugarcoat it.

I was a hell-spawn.

As a entitled brat born into the lap of parents who had ground out a nice life through sheer determination and intelligence, I was a little shit. I was stupid and selfish and if I could travel back in time, I would slit my child versions throat to spare him and everyone else around him the pain of his existence because let me tell you...

It wasn't much better for me or anyone else in the tale.

As I grew out of my 'hell-spawn-brat-bully' phase and began to realize I was a terrible brat. I withdrew so that I could re-evaluate who I was and what I wanted to be and how I should be. But my parents' changed career paths and then they threw me into a public school at the same time. And that was about the time my sister and I both began our falls out of grace. I never dabbled in the shit my sister did, but that didn't mean I didn't partake of certain type of poison that was bad. Being withdrawn and shy was seen as bully material and soon I was getting mad and hurt. I hated everyone, from the girls who had developed earlier than normal and let themselves get groped to the assholes who pushed me as I simply paced alone during the after-school recess. My morals began to waver and swearing - something which had been practically ingrained in me to never do - began to appear in my casual conversation.

I stopped socializing - if what I used to do by barely talking at all counted as that - and took comfort in reading, escaping the cruelty that was the world by reading and immersing myself in worlds where I could at least be undisturbed. I laughed at myself before, wishing that I had been able to stay in private schools where at least I didn't have to talk to anyone for them to be nice to me and still felt like I had somewhere where no one could bother me. I killed my emotional responses to the point that I forgot how to feel them. In a rather sweeping generalization, I labeled practically everyone with the exceptions of my mom and dad as too much trouble to interact with. Soon that crucible of my life passed I tried hard and was accepted into the the private high-school of Signal.

Things were better in someways, worse in others.

In the private high-school, school community was a big deal to all the teachers and general staff(much to my amused derision). It was emphasized to such a degree that when I refused to get up out of my seat to make 'partners' in class for projects and dealt with whoever was left over, my teacher called my counselor who called my parents who yelled at me for not participating. I told them that it wasn't any of their business and practically ignored them for a while soldiering on for my own lonely life.

Unfortunately, that didn't help the fact that my parents were amazing people and were friendly enough, they wanted to mold me into being a 2.0 version of themselves.

Don't get me wrong, though, I don't want anyone to misunderstand. For all that my parents didn't understand me and all that I simply couldn't begin to comprehend about them, I loved them very fiercely. Mom was one of those people who are born once in a couple of centuries and was rather beautiful for a women who had birthed several children. Our natures were quite similar although I seemed to be much more reserved and introverted than she had even been. My dad was a bit more difficult for me to get along with as we were so fundamentally different in nature. When he was presented with an issue, he would barrel his way through; I would stand my ground and not press forward, but certainly not be pushed back. He was motivated and driven to the point that come hell or high water, he would never stop trying, whereas I would simply see where my choices would take me in the river of life. I didn't doubt that he loved his kids, but his methods in trying to help me were never well-received.

So, in order to help fool my teachers and keep them from meddling in my life, I acted friendly and personable when we had to choose partners and kept a pleasant smile during all of my counselor's talks. It wasn't too hard to formulate a feasible stratagem that would allow for a guise. First, sit with a group every now and then, smile politely and never actively contribute to important discussion. Stay away for a while, then rinse and repeat. That way I maintained a 'presence' so to speak, but managed to fly relatively undetected in high school. It was enough to fool my counselor and my parents, but unfortunately Senior Year decided to throw a raffle with the students to see who would get the honor of leading around freshmen for a month as part of integrating them into highschool flow.

This was something that you couldn't opt out of, even if you didn't want to and pleaded your case. I however, felt no need. In the hundreds of student names that were possibilities, it was a one-in-a-thousand chance that I would be picked.

Why be worried about those odds?

If you haven't guessed what happened, let me tell you so we can avoid any awkward confusion.

I got picked.

God damn it all.