"Rags behind fur coats, hollow plastic gold coins."
They may be able to fool the eyes of the public, but they'll never understand the pain the inflict on others. They must die, and a brutal one is their fate.
- a bungou stray dogs / soukoku fanficti...
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It's another one of those nights in the Nakahara household. Chuuya has seen these since he was just puny little boy, but even after the seasoning of seventeen years' worth of time, he could never get used to this.
Sure, he takes the same old routine every time, smoothing out his clothes and making sure he looks decent enough as the son of a owner of a huge company, adopted or not. He would head down the corridor, the usual click-clack of the heels under his shoes muffled by the thick, crimson carpet all the way to the staircase leading down directly to the ballroom. It's a wide set of steps, the same cream coloured marble as the rest of the mansion, and deliberately in perfect view from below. A few chandeliers hang from the ceiling, gold and ornate and complicated, twisting here and there with occasional diamond pears, like the tears of a goddess. The ballroom itself is sprawling, a few round tables lined up neatly by the side, meant for socialising. A small orchestra takes up the space of a platform a little further in front, playing all sorts of dance tunes, from the waltz to the sarabande. And of course, the mass of people that twirl around in accordance to the music.
Chuuya much preferred the ballroom to be empty. He could slide down the armrests of the stairs, landing with a soft thud on the glossy floor, and run around as much as he wanted. At least, that's what he used to do when he was first brought here by Kouyou. He was a nobody in those slums, taking shelter under rickety tin sheets acting as a roof, barely scraping by from the already eaten food from the bins, and the murky waters of the stream that ran through the area. The community was rather nice to him; after all, he had lost both of his parents to a disease that struck nearly a third of the population down. The slums were already having people dying on a daily basis, and it was a miracle how Chuuya alone survived.
It didn't occur to him once that he was unlucky. He didn't have any memories prior to that, and the mental imagine of his parents were rather blurry. In fact, he'd consider himself lucky. He was the one boy who got wrapped in this Cinderella situation, after Kouyou, the younger sister of his foster father found him staggering through the streets. How he had ended up in the city, he had no idea. But the female had taken a strange liking to him, and the little red-haired boy in dirty rags soon became the young heir of a fortune.
His life story, up till this point at least, is a mess. Even Chuuya gets confused at times. Again, it wasn't a big matter. He was here and well and alive, and so he accept it without much thought.
"Young master Nakahara. You're required to go downstairs now." The old butler, Hirotsu, murmured, bowing stiffly. Hirotsu had been working for the family since Chuuya arrived, but he's not exactly on affectionate terms with him. Reserved, stoic, and cold, Hirotsu was the image of an ideal butler, with some kind of ruthless efficiency in the way he went about to do things. It sends a chill down his spine when he realised that he's never seen the old man smile at him before.
Chuuya fits the fedora over his red curls, and the routine is repeated all over again. Just like every time they do this. No more, no less. Nothing out of ordinary.
