Disclaimer: I do not own Sora, Kairi, or any other Kingdom Hearts characters involved in this story. Other persons/places mentioned in this story are fictional and are not
intended to name any realistic person/place.
Warning: This chapter and/or future chapters may include: Suicide, Self-Inflicted Harm, Alcohol Abuse, Minor Child Abuse, and Minor Profanity
Chapter 5: Rumor Has It
It's Monday morning, another school day had emerged. Kairi slowly gets out of bed dreading to face all the sorry faces and strange stares the day has in store for her. She walks to her closet and picks out whatever she can find which happens to be grey t-shirt and an old pair of jeans with holes at the knees. She goes over to her bed and dressed. Then she goes into the bathroom and looks into the mirror. "Man, I look like crap.", she thinks to herself.
She had rings underneath her eyes from not getting enough sleep and a pale tint to her face. Her hair was also a mess. It had knots and no particular direction to it, it just sat there going every which and where. Her beautiful strawberry-blonde hair looked disasterous.
She grabbed the hair brush and brushed out the knots to make it look decent. She pulled it up in a pony-tail leaving her bangs hang at the side. She exits the bathroom and enters the kitchen to find some breakfast. She finds beer bottles scattered all over the table that her father had left from the previous night.
Kairi really hates her father. She knows its wrong but she can't help it, really. He's never home but always at the bar. Whe he is home, he always criticizes her and yells at her for what she does wrong, even if she trys her best to make him proud. She's even went out of her way to make him a birthday cake once, only to be yelled at for the mess she made in the kitchen. It used to really upset her when she was younger. At twelve years old, she got used to it. She realized that, with so much time he spent out drinking, she doesn't really know him, only his bad side. He started to become only a shadow in her life, walking in and out of her house yet remaining unnoticed, a mear stranger. And you know what they always say, "NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS."
Kairi picks up the empty beer bottles and throws them in the trash. Then she finds herslef some milk and a box of Lucky Charms. She grabs a bowl from the coverd, prepares herself some cereal, and begins to eat.
The clock strikes 7:30 a.m., she has to go. She scoops up what is left of her Lucky Charms and runs to find her backback. She exits the house and begins to head to school like always. As she walks, she notices kids from school are staring. They know.
She finally reaches the shool building and enters the gymnasium, where the students await the for the morning bell to ring. She sits down on the bleachers alone, as she is too scared to hear what the kids at school have to say. Whether its sorries or akward silences, she wasn't in the mood to deal with that at the moment. She knows what they did when Jason Rye's father died. They went around saying how sorry they were, only making him feel worse by bringing it up. The bell rings and its off to class. "Joy.", she thinks to herself, only being sarcastic.
As she enters her 7th grade class, she looks down at the ground, trying to avoid any eye contact what-so-ever. She takes a seat in her desk in the back of the classroom and sits quitely.
"Pssst!". A voice nearby is heard. "I heard her mom jumped off a bridge last weekend and died!"
"Yeah... I heard Kairi pushed her!", says another voice.
"No way!", says the first voice.
"It's true, Riku saw the whole thing!"
Riku had long hated Kairi for quite some time. He held a grudge bigger than any human being could hold. His hatred grew and grew for years as he had to get her back for what she had done to him. You see, when they were eight years old, Riku had a tremendously large crush on her. He lived nearby, only a couple streets away. He'd come over to her house everyday anxious to simply see her. They developed a friendship, the two, but he wanted more. He wanted to call her his own, and be envyed by his friends for being chosen over all to be her boyfriend. Kairi, however, only saw him as just a friend. She told him the truth, feeling terrible for breaking his heart. He ran home to his house and cryed in his bedroom for days. At school, he wouldn't even look at her. She tryed to make things right but he simply wouldn't even talk to her. He planned, since that day, that he would get back at her for ever turning him down, and so it was.
The whole day, kids couldn't help but talk about what they heard happened to Kairi's mom. The rumor spread far and wide throughout the school building. Anyone who was anyone knew that Kairi Conner was a murder. Wherever she went she heard voices talking about it. Hushed whispers and angry stares surrounded her. There was nowhere she went where they weren't talking about her, about the lie. Kairi went to find Namine, hoping she would talk to her and get them to stop.
"Namine, kids are saying I killed my momma, why are they saying that, its a lie you know.", Kairi said as tears stream down her face.
"Kairi, Riku said he saw you.", Namine says in sorrow.
"But, I didn't do it!"
"I'm sorry Kairi, I'm not allowed to talk to you. Everyone thinks you did it. They'll hate me if they see me with you, I'm sorry."
Namine walks away, leaving Kairi alone and in tears.