What It Means To Be King

Chapter 58: Cowardice Is Not Something That Changes us

Anubis dropped down onto his bed the moment the door to his room was closed. Bag thrown to the floor, he made quick work to get his shoes off, not bothering to figure out where they landed before he was fully engulfed in his sheets, a heavy sigh muffled by the pillow squishing his face. It had been two days. Two singular days of school and it all just came back to him why he never bothered before. He had tried as a child, he really did when he followed Bada to meet up with his tutors, he read the books Bada read, wrote what Bada wrote, but the headache kept and kept and kept coming the moment his eyes go through even a single line of sentence. He could feel the incoming migraine stowing just a few minutes before hitting him hard, he had been trying and trying and trying but it just—

Pang!

The table lamp fell to the floor before he knew what he was doing. The dull thud that accompanied it rang across the room, before labored breathing followed next, its sound filling the empty space and echoing from the hard surfaces all around him. Anubis stared at the broken thing on his floor, fingers clenching tight in an futile attempt to stop himself from shaking. 

He had tried so hard, so fucking hard but he just couldn't—

Did anyone else notice? There hadn't been any classes that required them to submit their works, the teachers couldn't have noticed. What about Gion? He, he would notice first, he always noticed first about every single thing about him, but...but no, Gion didn't exactly, never exacly knew him like that, they weren't even close, he'd have half the mind that Gion barely knew anything about him, barely cared at all. Otherwise, the one person that knew best would either be Leo or Shao Long, but... but... 

Did either of them know? 

Did Livio? Did Shintarou? 

They couldn't have possibly, they shouldn't have. They didn't even look at him all that much, and it wasn't like they were looking exactly for his flaws, particularly when it was concerning his studies. They, they both knew, hell they must have known from Gion and from all the times he'd attacked them before that he was smart, surely they wouldn't have suspected him to— Anubis got up from his bed, darting to his dressing table. He looked at the mirror, into the amber eyes staring back at him. They were dark, shadowed by the ruffles of his own locks, his silver hair so ruffled that it looked like he hadn't brushed it in weeks. He looked mad, he looked, he looked..

Anubis snapped his eyes away from the mirror, pacing back to his bed and towards the door. His hand reached out, stopping one second when it was inches away from the doorknob before he pulled away, biting his thumb when he remembered that Shao Long wasn't here, and neither was Gion. 

Leo was here, but Leo was Leo, and Leo wasn't someone who feel things, wasn't one who cared about fears, about disgust, about hatred, because there was only so much he could feel. No, he wasn't going to blame him for it, but no, he couldn't exactly go to him, could he? He couldn't exactly dump him all this, this jumbled up thoughts that seemed to leak from every part of his body when he trembled, when he paced, when his bit his thumb, when his eyes couldn't stay open for one minutes without blinking once or twenty times altogether. 

He was....He was scared. 

He was a coward.