boketto || t. kamado

sixty-six

When I was a kid, I used to get teased about how my eyes looked. 

They were unnatural and striking. People said they seemed to glow in the dark and pierce the shadows like an oni's. Not the demons that exist but the ones from myths and legends. The ones that supposedly prowled the mountains and disguised their forms. 

We only went to town consistently when Nao was still around and before Joji was born. But even when I held my older brother's hand, and we went to get fresh vegetables, the other kids would poke fun at how I looked. My brother had "normal" eyes like our shared father's. A light green, like the underside of a leaf. He had gentle eyes just like Dad's, and the same ones that Mother fell in love with. But besides his eyes, he was the spitting image of Mother. His eye shape, nose, mouth, hair texture, and color were identical. Gentle and beautiful, but with a more masculine tone than a feminine one. Thin brows and a strong but narrow jaw. 

The last time I saw him was before I had all these scars. I bet I'm hardly recognizable at this point, aside from the eyes he despised me for. 

My eyes hold a natural tone. They weren't anything extraordinary or special. But it was the shine they had that others claimed made them unnatural. It was as if they had a multicolor film over the top of them, shielding me from the rest of the world. Built-in glasses that showed me a different side of the world that no one else could see. The beautiful colors I had learned were auras—a person's soul. 

I had inherited the same eyes as Mother, but the rest of me took after our father - so says Mom. My hair was the same color as his, just like the shape of my eyes. Mom said that he was a beautiful and graceful man. I wouldn't know since he disappeared after I was born. Mother said he was dead. 

Perhaps his death was why Nao began to hate the rest of us so much like a parasite that grew in his heart. He went from being the older brother who led me down paths and told off bullies to a boy who couldn't even look me in the eyes. He even bought glasses to shield the fact that I had been the one to inherit Mother's sight and not him. Resentment and shame followed him like old friends, marking his every step. 

I was the only one to see Nao leave. It was in the middle of the night, and he had been exceptionally quiet. That was odd to me since we were still full siblings, and he complained to me whenever he wanted. His being quiet was strange, especially towards me. He disliked us all, but I thought he disliked me the least. 

Apparently, I was wrong. Even when he looked back, down by the road in front of our house, and even when he met eyes with me, I knew the thought of staying wasn't in his mind at all. I stood in the front doorway of our house in the middle of the night, and we stared at each other. I had seen his aura shifting through the house, and it had woken me up. 

Neither of us said anything. I didn't try to stop him, and he didn't tell me to buzz off. Nao turned and then walked off down the road. I watched him leave before going back inside and finding myself unable to sleep. 

Because I realized that if I knew he was leaving, so did Mother. She didn't try and stop him.

My entire body ached every time I woke up, and Aoi even had to spoon-feed me since it hurt to raise my arms. Apparently, a surgeon and Ms. Kocho Shinobu had to operate for several hours to keep me alive and repair my torso to the best of their abilities. I didn't know the details of it - but there were some gnarly bandages and wounds on my stomach from where the brother demon had impaled me.