"My dad.. he's so cool. He pretends he's a normal dad like everyone else, but at night.. he becomes another person entirely! Like a superhero! He doesn't think I see it, but I saw him.. helping people which were being ignored by others.. when I grow up, I want to be a hero like him someday. Don't you think that's cool too?"
Kazui was stareing at two gold fish inside a fish bowl ontop of a desk. He was tipping what appeared to be some fish feed inside it, and watched with glee and interest as the two fishes at it up, but at the same time, he was a little disappointed.
He's had these fish for about two months, but no matter how much he fed them both, the one of them was growing larger than the other. Was one of them being greedy while he wasn't looking? Was he just not giving them enough food? He didn't know, and was slowly starting to give up.
For a brief moment, his eyes turned dark and empty.
A loud and bright voice suddenly caught his attention from behind him,
"OI!? Are you still playing with those fish?? Stressing them out can kil... Hurt them ya know??"
"Kon? I was just feeding them."
Although he had gone straight back to normal, he could tell something was wrong with the kid today. With a slightly worried voice he asked,
"Are you okay? Do you need anything?"
"I wanna go outside."
Then abruptly, he shouted,
"No! You always disappear somewhere, and when we get back, your a huge mess! Everytime you come back looking like that, it reflects badly on me ya know??"
Kazui's face began to turn smug as he got off his chair and walked over to the nearby bed.
"What do you think would happen if Mom and Dad were to see these?"
He shoved his hands into the mattress and pulled out what looked to be a dirty magazine. The front cover had a picture of a seducing woman in nothing but lingere blowing a kiss. The second he saw it, Kon's face turned pink from embrassement.
"Gah! Okay! Fine, I'll take you!"
**
After a couple minutes, the two had already reached a close by small park. Kazui proposed the two played a game of hide and seek, where Kon would be the seeker. He tried to disagree, but Kazui quickly reminded him of the magazine. With some hesistance he agreed, but not without warning him,
"You better not run off too far!! Right??"
He just silently nodded with a false gleam on his face, so Kon nervously turned around and covered his eyes.
"20.. 19.. 18.."
The moment he started to count, Kazui immediatly sprinted off into the distance. Although he ran for a good minute or two, he came across a large wall of bushes which sperated the park from a random forest in the middle of the town.
He quickly doved into it, snapping and breaking severeal twigs while messing up his hair and clothes as he brushed againt them. He even cut his cheek a little, as a slight amount of blood trickled out of it.
Once he reached the end however, he ended up stumbling into a field of green grass.
The sky above looked the same, but something about it was different. It was empty, as it should be, but there were no planes soaring through them, no sounds of birds flapping their wings, and not even any clouds passing through.
It was almost dead, as if he had been transported to another world.
The wall of bushes which he just swam through, seemed to travel around this small realm in a small circle, no bigger than even a house. And at the centre of that circle, was a tall hill with a tree in the middle.
It was strange really, from the otherside of the bushes you wouldn't have been able to even see this place, and yet, the figure of a man appeared to be sitting near that tree on a large rock.
He had a kind look on his face, with light brown hair that seemed rather ordinary and a rather plain face. His clothes consited of a white lab coat a light blue shirt under it, and black pants. From his chest extended a long chain which connected to the tree.
He rasied up one of his hands and began to wave at the young boy.
"Hey! You came back again?"
"Mr Tachibana!"
The young boy quickly ran towards the ghost to which he tried to hug. But he completely forgot he was an apparition, and ended up phasing through him instead.
"Ah.. did you forgot I'm dead?"
Kazui slowly got up and dusted himself, before sitting on the floor next to him.
"So.. where should we start today?"
A couple of months ago while Kazui was playing his usual games of hide and seek with Kon. He happened to try hide in this bush, where he discovered an albiet small, but other world connected to the real one.
In this world, there was only one somber person living in it, and he was a spirit no less.
His name was Tachibana. A scientist from the world of the living who had also discovered this place by chance. Before he could tell anyone about it, he was stabbed in the back by someone he never got to see. Once he woke up, his dead body was gone and he was a spirit with his chain of fate tied to this place.
On the surface that seemed horrible, but atleast he could never turn into a hollow.
Kazui was his only source of news from the outside, and so the little boy would peridoically come here and speak to him whenever he could. In this way, he felt like a hero as much as his father.
"You know, my dad can help you? He sends spirits like you to the afterlife all the time."
This wasn't the first time Kazui had asked this question, and everytime Tachibana would give the same response.
"No.. I'm much happier here. This place, it's empty but peaceful. It's as much of an afterlife as I could ever want or need."
He was a little disgruntled from hearing that, but Tachibana just rubbed him on the head.
"You on the other hand, you seem a little less.. bright than before. Did something happen outside?"
He then told Tachibana about the situation with his fish, but rather than giving him any advice, he started to tell a strange story.
"Once upon a time, there was a kingdom ruled with order, and a kingdom that ruled with chaos. A servant from that kingdom of order had commited a grave sin, and ended up running away to the kingdom of chaos."
This had absolutly nothing to do with his fishes.
"The servant did not like how the people in the kingdom of chaos lived, so one day he went to it's king, and together they recreated the kingdom into one resembling order. But how? How did some random servant that was ousted by his own people, manage to convince the king of another country to transform it into his image?"
Tachibana's tone suddenly turned dark, and his eyes seemingly went empty. He looked at Kazui with a certain malice that made even the boy slightly scared of the once kind man.
"It was with power. The kingdom of Order was much much more powerful than the kingdom of chaos. So powerful infact, that just a mere servant could wipe out the kingdom in seconds. The king of chaos, had no choice but to litsen to the wishes of the servant of order if he didn't want everything taken from him.
Kazui... don't you want that kind of power?"
**
Kon was busy running down a quite street, screaming out Kazui's name. They had started this game early in the morning, but now the sun was almost setting. He wasn't particularly worried about anyone random people seeing him, as finding Kazui was much more urgent.
"Where the hell are you!??"
Right when he said that, he had come across the street where Kazui had disappeared into the wall of bushes.
Kazui was standing there of course, although his back was turned to Kon.
"Where were you?? It's been 7 hours?? I'm gonna get into so much trouble because of you! I swear it! This is the last time I'm taking you outside like thi—"
He abruptly shut up once he got a closer look at the boy. This morning, Kazui was wearning a bright blue zip up jumper with oridnary looking pants and left the house with oridanry looking shoes.
But now he was wearing what seemed to be a black kimono over those clothes, and his shoes had been replaced with light tie on sandals.
Even his Spiritual pressure had transformed into something else.
"Where.. where did you get that Shihakusho?"