Are You The One?
Written by: CherryDrug
Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn doesn't belong to us. If it did, we would have shipped anybody with everybody, and the series wouldn't be as dead as it was now. Thank freaking sprite for fan fiction having not died yet.
Rating: T-rated, 'cause we're still a bunch of pussies who can't put on their big girl panties and publish a smutty chapter
Genre: *slaps every genre here*
Characters: Everybody. Duh
Summary: It has been said long ago that actions speak louder than words ever could; however, when you live in a world where the first thing your soulmate says to you is etched upon your skin—well, suffice to say, actions don't even hold a candle to how important words can be.
Pairing(s) (for this chapter): N/A
Warnings: Alternate Universe where people bear soul-identifying marks; yaoi AKA boy x boy in the future; yuri AKA girl x girl; All27; drabble series
CHAPTER 14
Kyoko isn't the good little girl that we all know. She just acts like one.
Kyoko loves life—really, she does—and she cherishes it, because that's what her parents had taught her. But she knows, deep down inside of her, that there's a part of her that her parents never really knew about, and, in turn, they never really corrected. Kyoko knows that it's this particular part of her that makes her feel things that she knows would make her beloved mother gasp, makes her imagine things that would make her dearest father look at her as if she wasn't their little girl anymore.
It's that part of her that Kyoko hates the most; but it's not her fault that that part of her comes out, especially when she's dolled up into a pretty dress and forced to attend one of her grandfather's yearly family reunions.
Kyoko doesn't like the way her aunts and uncles and her older cousins would look at her and her entire family as if they don't belong there.
She doesn't like the way her aunts would smile and ask her beloved mother how her children are doing, and if they're good little kids, and how sorry they feel for them for having too many soulmarks and how hard it must be for both them and her beloved mother and dearest father.
(At night, when she's all alone in bed, with the light from the moon shinning through her window, and with her pink curtains billowing from the cool breeze from outside, Kyoko imagines their dresses suddenly expanding until their entire bodies are covered from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet, and they're very slowly suffocating as they struggle to plead with ragged breaths for her to stop.)
She doesn't like the way her uncles would pat her dearest father on the back, and express their pity and sympathies for him for having unfortunate children as replacement for what should be pleasant greetings.
(Kyoko imagines their neckties transforming into snakes so that they'd curl around their bared and exposed necks and constrict tightly, that their eyes would suddenly bleed out until all that's left are black caverns that lead to the gruesome excuses that they call their brains.)
She doesn't like the way her older cousins would treat her older brother with cruelty hidden behind sweet and fake smiles if either their parents or their grandparents are looking.
(For them, for the older cousins who'd once been kind and nice to both her and her older brother a while before Kyoko had found her first, Kyoko imagines their skin peeling off of them, their truly hideous selves revealed for the whole world to see, for their lies to be exposed, before their entire beings are swallowed by the fiery depths of hell, their screams sounding like music to her very ears.)
For her grandparents, for her younger cousins, for her parents, and for her older brother, Kyoko doesn't imagine giving them the pain that they deserve. Kyoko imagines their dreams coming true, for them to achieve the perfect and ultimate form of happiness.
(Kyoko imagines all of them, sitting in a field filled to the brim with all sorts of exotic and common flowers, and making flower crowns for each other. She doesn't know what the ultimate form of happiness is, but Kyoko things that that is what happiness should be. Where peace is eternal.
She's nothing but a little girl, after all.)
Kyoko doesn't care what her horrible relatives do to her—because it's so easy to ignore the scathing words they intend for her. The only problem is that it isn't so easy to ignore the pained looks on her parents' and older brother's faces. Kyoko can smile sweetly at her horrible relatives, and give them that tilted head look that looks as if she doesn't understand the hurt that they mean to inflict upon her. Her parents and older brother have their own little ways in trying to hide the pain that she knows they feel in being pitied or treated as outcasts—but it doesn't stop her mother from hugging her and her older brother tightly to her chest, it doesn't stop her father from ruffling their hair and apologizing for his some of his family's inhospitality, and it mostly doesn't stop Onii-chan from asking her what's wrong with having so many soulmarks.
Kyoko understands, of course. Even if she's six years old and just a little girl in society's eyes. Kyoko's learned how to play by the rules, which is why she looks like the little angel in the eyes of adults and perfect by her peers' standards, because this is what she wants them to see her as. As kind and cheery Kyoko who'd never hurt a fly—much less manipulate each and every person around her until they're curled around her little finger, so if they see anything un-Kyoko-like on her, and if they tell on her to other people, nobody would believe them.
(Despite what her family thinks of her, Kyoko is just as competitive as they are. And in this game—this twisted game that society's built up, with rules and all—Kyoko's determined to win it, because she doesn't like losing as the next person does.)
So Kyoko learns to dance about the rules of society. And society doesn't like liars—but nobody will know she's lying if she doesn't breathe a single word of the marks on her body. And so, Kyoko learns how to hide her words, in the most discreet ways possible.
She's fortunate that most of her soulmarks are easy to hide. The ones around her waist, upper right arm, right thigh, on her inner left thigh and left shoulder blade can easily be hidden with most of the clothes she wears. It's the one encircling one of her wrists—troublesome "Oya, oya. What a pleasant surprise. Another diamond in the making, and right underneath the Decimo's nose of all places." in all its indigo-colored glory—that's a little bit problematic to hide, but with two of her brother's wrist bands clinging tightly to the skin of her left wrist, the problem is easily solved.
Kyoko isn't the good little girl that everybody thinks she is. She's more than good, worse than good maybe, but she's only a little girl who wants to keep her loved ones safe and sound, and inflict pain upon those who mean any harm to her loved ones.
(Sometimes, when she's all alone in bed, with the light from the moon shinning through her window, and with her pink curtains billowing from the cool breeze from outside, and with her eyes closed shut and her consciousness just about to drift off into pleasant dreams, a tiny flame flickers upon the middle of her forehead, the very epitome of her will to protect her loved ones and hurt those who've wronged them, before it dies out a minute later.)
Word Count: 1414
