6. One Shot (Ren Hakuryuu): People wore masks for different reason, but Hakuryuu is sick and tired of it. He wishes no one would wore a mask, would not need to wear one.
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They all wore masks. No exceptions. He also wore one now and hoped he did a good job therewith. Some people wore their mask wrong and were seen through. Others wore them so well that it was hard to tell whether they were pretending or just themselves. How many had lost their real self to a mask? Would he lose himself one day as well? Or had he already lost?
There was nothing bad about wearing a mask, especially as a ruler. Showing emotions during an important negotiation could snap one's neck. Every sane person would use the feelings of the ruler to their advantage. Furthermore, wearing a mask could help one to get through hard times – it was a way to cope. However it was easy to lose oneself to the fake personality. Hakuryuu himself was not sure anymore, what of his personality was himself and what were his brothers. After their deaths he started to copy them, not only their behaviors and personality, but also their looks. It was a way for him to cope with his lose and maintain his sanity. Unfortunately, this was not a good idea, when thinking about the fact that he still had been a small child back then and had to develop his own personality. Now that he was an adult it was hard to tell what part of him was really him and how much of the time he had played pretend was left in him. On the other hand, one could say that he was himself, because the mask was a part of him as well. Did it matter in the end? Wasn't it more important to be able to see through the masks of others? Who cared about oneself, everything was fine as long as others could not see through one. Hakuryuu liked himself the way he was. And he liked his sister – or had liked. He wasn't sure anymore.
As child he had been naïve and thought that everyone was honest and that bad people were simply bad, while good people were good by default. Little had he known that some of the bay guys were just pretending, so they could protect their dear ones and themselves. Little had he known that some of the good guys were just pretending, so they got what they wanted – and what they wanted was power. The world wasn't that easy, couldn't be divided into white and black. The world was gray – not colorful, this was just a cover, a mask – and humans had to identify the different shades of grey to see, who was a good and who was a bad person for them. Yet this also rose the question, what exactly was "good" and what was "bad".
For him Gyokuen, or better said Arba, was bad. She had killed her own family, her friends and wanted to murder all of humanity, just to bring back a god and did not even feel bad about it in the slightest. After he had discovered that she was behind the murder of his family, he had thought that she also had worn a mask all this years, pretending to be a caring mother and wife. Today he was sure she did not pretended at all. She really was a loving and caring wife and mother, at the same time she also was a despicable and heartless insane murderer. It had taken him a long time to even think that a person could be both – good and bad at the same time. Arba had loved her children and husband – Hakuryuu was sure that it was not possible to hold up such a perfect act for so long without anyone noticing –, but as soon as they turned against her – did not follow her insane world destruction plan –, she discarded all her feelings and got rid of them. Hakuryuu did not like to admit it, but he somehow could understand this. He himself often felt strongly for the people around him, but as soon as they betrayed or failed him, his strong positive feelings towards them turned into the opposite. It was nothing he could change – he either loved or hated, there was no in-between. The same seemed to apply for Arba. Of course, this were all his thoughts and he had no way of proofing them right or wrong, yet it was a conclusion he had come to and was fine with. In a strange way it made him feel at ease. Maybe because now his mind would no longer wonder, how a mother could turn into such a monster and he could fool himself into believing that he had been loved once by his mother. Love was something he still sought – he needed so much of it, but got none at all. Although he had made his peace with his past, he often thought about the real Ren Gyokuen. Who had she been? And how had she lost herself to Arba? Had Gyokuen also worn a mask? A mask named Arba and lost? He wished he could ask someone about her.
After the fire incident, he was finally able to tell, if someone wore a mask or not. The only person he was unsure about was his sister Hakuei. Maybe because he did not want her to wear a mask, since this could mean she wasn't honest to him. She had been all he had left back then. And because of him closing his eyes towards her, he now was insecure about their relationship. He couldn't understand her and what she was thinking, at the same time he was sure she also did not know what he was thinking and she probably couldn't understand him as well. She hadn't known the truth about her family's death and who was responsible for it. He had told her, yet he did not know whether she believed him or even cared about it. When he had told her, she did not seem to really care much about it and was more worried about the empires unification goal – in which she believed so much that she even accepted the murder of her family and yet failed to see how flawed and harmful it was. Nowadays there was no war anymore, they had achieved peace, but the Kou Empire was not ruling the whole world like it had been Kouen's intention. However Hakuryuu cared more about the peace part than the ruling part and he hoped Hakuei agreed with him – a few years ago he had not even doubt it, but now he did not dare to make such an assumption. More than once he had been betrayed by people he had believed in.
Sadly things could not get better for him. The people around him all wore masks. He knew them. They were those nobles that pampered him, when his father and brothers were still alive, and looked down on him, when they died. Now they acted as if they had been on his side all the time. It was disgusting, but he could not change it. Some of them hold an important position and therefore were necessary for the stability of the Empire. He hadn't made those rules, he could only try and change them step by step, but for now he had to play along. Well, it wasn't like he could see through everyone, who wore a mask and sometimes he even failed to see the mask, but he was not as naïve as many years ago. For example, he knew that king Sinbad wore a mask, just like every other king, but he had failed to realize how dangerous and complex this mask had been. The most difficult aspect of Sinbad was probably that he did not always wore his mask, sometimes he took it off and was honest. His pretended self and his real self were close to each other, yet were so different. For Sindria and its allies this was perfect, for their enemies it was annoying and difficult to deal with. Back then Hakuryuu had been too young to handle someone like that, now he was more experienced and at least stood a chance against someone like Sinbad, although he still had to learn a lot. However he got better and better in reading and understanding others. All he had to learn was how to use this skill and for this he had to work on himself and his own public mask. Of course he wished for a world where no one had to wear one, where no one wore a mask, but this was an extremely childish dream. Something like this would never come true – but one could dream.
Judar was probably the only person Hakuryuu had met, who never wore a mask, which changed his personality – assuming that Arba had pretended to be a caring wife and mother, if she hadn't pretended Judar was the second person. The mask Judar wore, existed to hide his own feelings. Such a mask was the hardest to identify, because it was hard for someone else to look into someone's head and know what the other one felt. There were people that could perfectly hide their feeling or trick others into believing they felt a certain way, without really feeling like that – some even were so good at lying about their feelings that they believed their own lies. And there were people that really did not care about anything. So it was hard to tell, whether someone was just hiding their feelings or not – a common problem with masks and those who wore them perfectly.
However Judar never lied about liking Hakuryuu or that he cared about him. Judar just wasn't good at showing it. His friend was a little bit like a child in this regard and Hakuryuu hoped this would never change. It was annoying enough to deal with all this false people at work, so he wanted at least one person to be at his side, who was honest with him and who he could be honest with. He wanted to be himself and when he was not on duty he would do so, and no one could stop him from doing so.
The sad truth was that the very second someone was born, one had to play along in this masquerade, even when one did not want to. Those who refused to play along would die soon. How many had died because they had to hide their true self? How many have been killed for being themselves? How many have committed crimes to hide who they really were? How many have fallen victims to this masquerade and how many more would be sacrificed for it? He was determined not to fall! So many people had suffered because of his Empire – because of his father, his brothers, his mother, his uncle and his cousin and he himself had cause his people stuffer as well – therefore he had to make up for all these crimes. Since he was nothing more than a mere human, he could not bring back the dead or turn back time, however he could built an empire in which everyone was save and was allowed to be themselves. For this he had to do a lot of work and he probably would not achieve his dream during his own lifetime, but one had to start somewhere. Step by step he would try to get rid of those masks – to fully get rid of them, the people of the empire had to work with him. Of course, he was aware that humans tented to behave different depending on the person and their feelings towards this person. This was not was he was trying to eliminate. What he was after was the purposely faking.
Hakuryuu couldn't wait until he had not to deal with all those false nobles around him anymore and did not have to play pretend all the time. There was a lot to do and Hakuryuu was willing to do it all, because he was so sick and tired of this masquerade and the consequences that came with it – there were consequences if one played along and consequences when one did not play along. Hakuryuu refused to live a life dictated and controlled by others, and so he did want his people to be free as well.