Everchanging

Loyalty

!!TW!! Cult, religious trauma, child abuse, child neglect, injuries, suicidal thoughts/ideations, starvation, SA/CSA flashbacks, drugging, light self-harm, vague alcoholism

More often than not, Obanai spent his passing days in near complete darkness. Every few days someone would open the door just enough to slip a bowl of food and some water through. The food was disgusting and Obanai could barely choke it down but he was more than thankful for the gift of a few milliseconds of light that slipped through the quickly opened door. No matter how much the boy would bang and cry and beg, no one would open the door for him.

He could hear them through the door, talking as if he wasn't locked away, about mundane topics such as the rising gas prices or how the leader was doing amazingly as of lately. Currently, the boy was sitting at the top of the stairs, his back pressed to the closed door so he could hear his mother's voice. She was talking about repair men coming to fix the sink or something, Obanai didn't really care much.

His body was in a constant state of shivering, his limbs much skinnier than they were just a few weeks ago. The basement smelled of rot and mildew, making his brain throb at all times. His lungs felt thick with the tarnished air. His arms squeezed a little tighter around his father's bulky camera. It was cracked and broken but the boy had been able to unearth it from the sticky and wet pile of clothes that sat in the corner. It was too dark to make out what had soaked those clothes, but they left his hands dirty as he cradled his father's prize possession.

His body still ached from when he had been thrown down into this prison, his breath whistling through cracked ribs and his ankle crooked as he put pressure on it. He hissed pathetically, more or less slipping and tumbling down the steps. He cried out, curling up and trembling. But still he held his father's camera.

"Ma...ma..." He whimpered, not bothering to get up from his crumpled state. So the child curled into a tighter ball, biting his lip to soften his broken sobs. He was exhausted. He just wanted to sleep. But everytime he shut his eyes he saw the women's faces and felt their dainty hands shoving him into this dark abyss. No matter how desperately he craved rest, feminine faces sneered and snapped at him. The child closed his eyes and his bones throbbed, feeling soft hands become sharp talons.

He hated this. All of this. He hated Shin Sekai. He hated Lady Aoki. He hated his mom. He hated the women here. He hated this stupid dark basement. He hated the locked door that blocked his path to the outside world. He hated his father for leaving him here alone. He hated himself, who was too weak and stupid to get out of this. He hated that just because he was born a boy, his own mother wouldn't love him.

He hated that just because he was a boy he was locked away from the world. Because his sex meant that he would doom the Shin Sekai. Because he was a man, the women in the Shin Sekai were threatened. Because he wasn't a girl like everyone else, his own mother shoved him down into this muted prison to rot away and die.

And Obanai was starting to wish that that would come sooner rather than later. He wished and prayed to Lady Aoki that his death would be quick and sweet. That he wouldn't have to lie there and wait for his body to slowly fade out.

He wondered if his father was dead. Did his father share the same fate as Obanai? Did he also have to sit there and wait for his own demise? Did he also wish it to hurry up and take him already? Or did the man really just abandon him and leave Obanai to die here?

The boy realized that in darkness, came wisdom. With all the time he had to sit there and rot away, he also had the time to think over everything he had previously ignored. Like how his father had disappeared. Or how his mother probably never had loved either him or his father. Or that the Shin Sekai would probably never survive, it would die out like Obanai would.