kh_drabble | (no subject)

Challenge: [85] Alive
Title: To Begin
Wordcount: 271
Notes: Whoo, I meandered all over the place with this, but it was fun ^^
No spoilers if you're familiar with the basic plot of Kingdom Hearts, and it's G-er than G :D

Riku woke up one day and he saw that he was dying.

He decided to ask those people-- his parents, his teachers, the adults-- what he should do to begin living.

Study, work, read, they told him. Then you'll start to live.

So he became the best student, the strongest worker, the most well-read child on the islands. But it didn't matter because none of it was real-- it turned out that school only trained him for work, that work only trained him for more work, and that books were only paper in the end.

He went back to the adults and asked them why he was still dying. They looked at each other, then at him. What do you mean? You read and you work, and that's what we call life.

Then Riku had his revelation-- they're content because they're already dead! They can walk and talk, but their souls and their minds-- their hearts are dead!

Once he could see that they were dead, he could see the killer as well. It was the island itself-- the claustrophobic, limited, insignificant, boring world where dreams were born only to die.

He wanted to leave. He had to leave, before the island killed his heart and his soul, before it sent him to-- not to oblivion, but to something worse-- to obscurity.

There was only one chance, and Riku took it without hesitating. Who cared if it was by the powers of light or of dark, of good or of evil, that he had finally been spirited away?

Whatever it was, he knew that it would bring him to life.