Interlude #1: Jealousy

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"There was a legend told a long time ago… that when the Angel of Death walks the earth once again, a child will ascend up into sky to rule. God will be in his heaven, and all will be right with the world."

Before the second breaking of the world, there were the Tsuyoi kyoudai, the older brother Kazega and his sibling, Kuroko. The elder became the inheritor of his family’s daisho, the katana and wakazashii of his fathers before him, the blades which were passed on along with the honor and values of his blood. Kazega was not a proud man, but he was a happy one, and though this gift brought upon him the burden of carrying on the pride of his ancestors, he accepted it humbly and without ceremony. All he wished was to carry on his life the way he always had. Power meant nothing in his eyes.

Kuroko was only half his brother’s age when Kazega accepted the swords at sixteen years of life. Yet, the young boy held a devestating power within him, a power he became aware of long before his parents and townspeople did, a power he was constantly at odds with to surpress. It was something he could not explain, a seed of subsistence and rebirth, of demise and pestilence, something that he soon learned could change life itself if he did so wish. But he dared not show it to the world, for he feared their reaction. He feared their anger and strife, their prejudice and hatred. Their rejection. Their animosity. Like his brother, he sought only solace, but he could not even find that. So he tried to hide it from the world, and it only festered within him like a cancer.

It was never that Kuroko hated Kazega. He loved him very much, he confided in him. The teenager whom he looked up to was the only one who knew about his power because the younger boy found that he could trust this man who looked over him so protectively. However, he despised him at the same time. Despised him for receiving the honor of his family’s weapons, for always being able to have a smile upon his face, for being able to achieve that which he would never touch. There was nothing the younger could do about it. He was only the smaller sibling, the one who would receive none of the bestowed treasures or respect that his parents, aunts, and uncles lavished upon Kazega. He was jealous of the attention to someone who didn’t want or need it. Frustrated because he wanted that affection so badly to quell the pain within his little body. Angry because of the unfairness, the rules, the structure that clearly guided away that which he sought to achieve. And so Kuroko tried to coldly push his brother away with indifference, but Kazega’s love always proved too strong…