My name is Sora Hikari. I'm the keyblade master, and I just faked my own death.
After defeating Xemnas and returning to the island, things were calm. Riku, Kairi and resumed our normal lives, going to school and hanging out, just being your typical teenagers. It felt good to be able to joke and laugh and act normal for a change, without the threat of the world ending.
Then everything changed. The heartless started to return. Not a lot, but just enough to get everyone's attention. Within days it was all over the news. It was all everyone ever talked about. And me? I got stuck right in the middle of it.
It wasn't a big secret that I was the keyblade master. Pretty much all of my friends knew, but no one really made a big deal out of it. There were rumors going around about me, of course, but the older people on the island didn't pay much attention to it.
I was walking home from Riku's one night, which took me by our library. I heard a girl scream, and instinct took over. I summoned the keyblade as I ran, and took out the few heartless that surrounded the young girl. No big deal, right?
Wrong. Turns out a semi famous author was reading children's books at the library, and there was a small video crew there. With my luck, I was caught summoning the keyblade on tape. I was in featured in every newspaper and TV station in Destiny Islands. Everywhere I went people would look at me and whisper and giggle. It got old, really fast.
Normally, I wouldn't care. I honestly wouldn't. But one day, I'd had enough.
It was late October, and Riku, Kairi and I had just gotten home from a late movie. I noticed the light was still on in the kitchen, which wasn't unusual since my mom was usually up late anyway. I said goodbye to Riku and Kairi, and went inside.
"Mo-om, I'm home," I called out. I shivered. It was unusually cold inside. Shrugging, I walked into the kitchen. I noticed the back door was wide open. Frowning, I steppe outside. "Mom?"
I saw my mother lying on her back on our deck, pale and completely still, with four shadow heartless surrounding her.
"NO!" I screamed, whipping out the keyblade. I sliced through them quickly.
"Oh my God," I gasped, and ran to my mom's side. "Mom. Mom. MOM!" I shook her gently. She felt very cold. "Wake up!"
I felt for a pulse. There was none. "Oh God, no. Nonono NO!!" I broke down sobbing.
After that night, I was never the same. Obviously everyone knew the keyblade master's mother was killed by the heartless. Stares turned into looks of pity, whispers died down when I walked by. I even got a few angry looks. At that point I didn't blame them. How was I supposed to keep everyone safe when I couldn't even protect my own mother? Since my father had died when I was little, there was talk of putting me in a foster home. I was only fifteen after all, and keyblade master or not, rules were rules. I fantasized about leaving, starting over in a different world. The thing about that was that since I was so famous, everyone would be on the lookout for me. That's when I decided to fake my own death.
I could never kill myself. I would be lying if I said I never thought about it though. I was upset, sure, but not nearly enough to take my own life. I figured faking it would be the easiest way to escape.
Since I had the house to myself (for now) it wasn't a problem gathering gummi ship parts. There was an old tangled place in the woods near the beach that I used as a place to build my gummi ship. Whenever I was done for the day I would cover it up with vines and leaves. No one ever came into that part of the woods anyway. Everyone was paranoid of poison Ivy. Luckily I found out I wasn't allergic to it, courtesy of Riku and Kairi, who very much were. I found an old box of black hair dye in my mom's closet and tossed it into a bag with a few pairs of jeans, an old hat and a few plain black T-shirts and whatever munny was lying around the house. I wrote a note to Riku and Kairi and left it on my desk. Taking one last, long look around my house, I set out in the middle of the night and headed towards the beach.
As I walked along the shore, I thought about all the memories Kairi and Riku and I had shared here over the years, like the time when we were nine and Riku had attempted to make a campfire, which ended up with the three of us in the Emergency room with second degree burns. Or when we were five and decided that poking jellyfish was fun. That's how we found out that Kairi was allergic to them. The beach was our spot.
This was also the first place I killed a heartless, where everything had begun. I wished now that none of that happened. I wanted the beach to be ours again, not tainted with the memory of heartless.
I threw my old ratty sneakers as far as I could into the ocean, and ripped a few pieces off my favorite shirt, tossing them in too. I figured they'd wash up on shore within the next few days, and it would be pretty clear that I had drowned.
I took one last look at the beach before I turned around and headed to the woods. I climbed in my tiny gummi ship and started her up. I took to the sky at warp speed and felt carefree for the first time in weeks. I was starting over.
Or so I thought.
