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CAMARADERIE
. . . was a word that became foreign to Purson Soi the moment Purton left their lives.
He had been a mere toddler then, unable to even to understand the world at large beyond the confines of his family’s estate, when his brother had made the still-incomprehensible decision to vanish for good.
In his leaving, Purton left Soi two things. The first was the ‘privilege’ of being the heir to the Purson clan, and the second was a lesson.
‘Soi—you are now one with the world.’
Sometimes, Soi would often find himself wondering about what Purton meant to do by helping him learn their family’s technique. Did he want him to follow in his footsteps? Or was it as meaningless as the bond they used to have?
He did not—and will never—know what exactly went through Purton’s mind in the days leading up to his disappearance, but at the moment he first started attending Lethe, a primary boarding school filled to the brim with similarly-aged and minded demons, his back heavy with the rules and limitations imposed upon him by his father. . .
A part of him realized that there was a non-zero chance that he might reach the same conclusions that his brother did in due time.
Soi stood still with his head bowed as his father paced back and forth before him. His mother, meanwhile, stood by with a neutral and emotionless look. In his father’s hands was his beloved toy trumpet, crumpled and deformed.
“I don’t understand,” He softly began his lecture, eyes on the ground. “why you insist with all this folly. We’ve told you time and time again about what you, the heir, should do, but you’ve done nothing but break them.”
His father stopped.
Soi remained silent.
Exhaling, his father looked off to the side. “There was no reason for you to hold a show for the kids outside, especially with something so purposefully loud.” He lifted the crumpled trumpet for him to see. “We thought that it’d help you wean off, Soi. To behave. I’ve had to make the same sacrifice that I request of you now, so I understand how hard the task can get. But I pulled through, didn’t I?”
More silence.
He turned his head away from his son and waved at hand at his wife, who simply nodded in return. Still blank-faced, she turned heel and slowly walked out of the room, leaving father and son alone for one final word.
“Think of what you’ve done for a while in here, Soi.” He muttered. “If this encounter is of any indication, you do indeed still have the ability to hold your tongue. Improve on that.”
With that, he, too, left.
. . .
Soi took his father’s advice to heart, disappearing from the world both by sight and by hearing. His playmates, all of whom lived just beyond his family’s estate, slowly but surely forgot of his stunt. Then, of him.
On the outside, he seemed to be well. His father had even allowed him to roam far beyond the walls of their home, though he was still obviously restricted from interacting with his former friends.
On the inside, however, he was suffering. He was simply enduring the pain he felt for as long as he could.
His mother, on the other hand, knew.
After all, no one else could’ve been responsible for the box that suddenly appeared atop the headboard of his bed that contained a sleek, blackened leather case—one fit to hold a brass trumpet.
LIMITS
. . . were already in place the moment he was enrolled to attend Lethe.
There were two things to note about Lethe. First was its curriculum, which focused on the construction and enhancement of the survival skills of its students, alongside their knowledge of the more untamed, still-wild parts of the Netherworld. Second, of course, was the fact that it was totally isolated.
As foreshadowed by the qualities and foci of its curriculum, it was situated far, far away from demonic civilization, surrounded by forests in three of the cardinal directions with the rest flanked by sea. There were also no other demons to be found for miles around, save for a potential student’s classmates and the school’s own faculty.
There was no debate to be had as to what his father saw in Lethe.
Work was easy. His father’s connections allowed the rules to be bent to accommodate his circumstances—he was able to enter and listen to class as he willed, but he was only obligated to do everything else out of the sight of others or as homework. That, on its own, should have a made a kid happy, but Soi could not place his grades any lower on his list of priorities.
What he wanted was to talk and to belong. There was his trusty trumpet, of course, which he used to quietly vent out every now and then in the furthest corners of the walled-in beach, but the itch was strong. Too strong.
In his search of something that could scratch that itch, Soi often found himself sitting near the other kids as they messed around in the playground or hung out in the park, listening in and engrossing himself in their conversations and pretending that he was a part of whatever they were doing or talking about. Through this, he managed to learn a lot about the demons around him that the others were ignorant of. He learned all about their likes, dislikes, their secrets and much more.
It made him feel very ecstatic, to be a secret keeper like he was, but also profoundly unhappy.
After all, he was still never able to break his father’s limits.
No matter how much he knew about his classmates—no matter how many of their secrets he held and kept, none of them would ever know his.
Purson Soi sat by his lonesome at a bench in the far-eastern quarter of Lethe, which contained a small chunk of the forest that had been boxed in by the school’s walls. It was currently their lunchbreak, which, for him, meant a quiet afternoon spent with the company of an unhealthy assortment of food.
It was peaceful.
It was tranquil.
“Hey. Invisikid.”
The demon almost sputtered at the spot. Wide like dinnerplates, his eyes immediately went towards the round-faced demoness that stood before him, slack-jawed, as the orange juice dripped down his chin.
She had the brightest, lime-colored hair that he had ever seen, tied up into two pigtails that flowed down to her shoulders. An emblem resembling a petunia had been sewn on the hem of her uniform—the sigil of the other section of the same grade.
‘Is she seeing me right now?’ He thought as he averted his gaze away from the girl. ‘No. No. I’m sure that she’s just crazy – or bluffing! Maybe she’s just loony, or something. I’m sure that’s all.”
“I know you’re there.” She called out, pointing right over at him. “Your base tricks cannot, uhm, trick me, so don’t try to pull anything!”
“. . .”
He looked away, supposing that a solution could be found if he just ignored the problem. Which was her. She’s the problem.
“You were the boy playing the trumpet in the beach, right?” The demoness continued, looking off to the side. “You should try to be a bit more discreet, invisikid. Everyone’s talking about you, you know. You’re the Siren!”
She was still met with silence.
“Hellooooooo~” She drawled out, waving a hand in front of his face. “I. CAN. SEE. YOU. You’re not doing a very good job of hiding riiiiiiight now!”
More silence.
“Do you, uhm, want a replacement for your juicebox?” She tapped the left pocket on her skirt as she stared up with her tongue stuck out. The boy’s eyes widened a bit as a small orange juicebox materialized on her hands. “Here.”
. . . however, he still refused to interact with her at all.
“. . . dummy.”
Moments after she had dropped her ‘insult’, the demoness turned around and began to walk away.
Thinking that the ordeal was over, the boy patted his chest as he let out a sigh of relief. It was a bit uncanny that she could see him while invisible, but it was all perfectly believable that she tried to bluff her way into him actually revealing to himself. After all, it was rather—
“HUAAAAAAA!”
Soi reeled back as he heard a unprecedentedly vicious warcry. He quickly began to scan his surroundings again, looking for the girl or for anyone else, but he was far, far too late.
“I CAUGHT AN INVISIBLE BOY!” The demoness declared as she hopped up from behind him with a running start.
“WHAT—“
He suddenly felt the weight of another person above his shoulders as a pair of legs entered his now-blurry view. He, surprisingly enough, did not fall over despite the force that the girl had cannonballed him with.
“What the hell is your problem?!” The boy whisper-yelled as he looked up at the girl that now straddled him by the shoulders, a cross expression none less intense than a cry for bloody murder etched across his face. “Get off me!”
Her eyes widened. Triumphant, the girl pumped a fist up with a little ‘yiss’.
“You finally appeared and talked to me!” She replied, decidedly NOT getting off as she was told to. “I knew that’d get your attention! Hiiiii, Invisikid.”
“Of. Course. This. Would. Get. My. Attention.” He restrainedly said through gritted teeth. “One question—WHY? And stop calling me ‘Invisikid’!”
“Why not?!” Came her answer as she tapped the top of his head with her knuckles. “You’re always there, being invisible to everyone else and all and you’re always ALONE. I didn’t even see you talk. Once! So I made it my mission to hear your voice!”
“Mission?”
“Yep,” She grinned, confident. “I’ve been trying for a while now. Nothing worked, except for this – my awesome DIRECT APPROACH!”
The boy groaned as she ramped up the head-tapping. He then made a pathetic attempt to shake her off, which did nothing but encourage her antics even further. “Again—How. Can. YOU EVEN SEE ME.” He grunted out, struggling.
“Smell!”
“Sme—“ Soi shook his head. “SMELL? SERIOUSLY?”
“Yep!” She answered, matter-of-factly, as she gave him a noogie. “You smell!”
“That doesn’t explain how you knew where to look!”
“The bench smelled the smelliest, so you were there! Easy peasy!”
“Liar!”
“Nope!”
“Liaaaaar!”
“YOU CAN’T UNSMELL YOURSELF, INVISIKID.”
“STOP CALLING ME INVISIKID!”
his ART
. . . evolved from a mere means of comfort to become one of his greatest skills.
Soi had already shown promise by the time that he had first begun to experiment with the brass trumpet that his mother had given her, but even he was surprised by the rate that he was improving. With each instance, the music he produced turned more and more heads. Soon enough, he had formed, completely by accident, a legend.
His teachers knew that he was the one behind the music, but his classmates did not. It was unknown who first coined the term within the school, though that detail matters little. What mattered was that their ignorance of his existence led to the creation of the legend of the ‘Siren’—a master of the trumpet who often played beside the sea.
The title, at first, seemed a little too grandiose for his taste, but the attention—no matter how indirect—made him feel a certain warmth that he could never quite truly put.
Their chance meeting quickly tumbled down to a whole new world of messy. Try as he might, he was not getting rid of the lime-haired demon that he would come to know as the one Clara Valac. No matter where he went, the playful maniac always managed to find him.
She kept on claiming that it was his smell that always led her to him. He still refuses to believe even a sliver of it.
Whatever her methods were, it is, once again, very effective. She’d even managed to find him in his hidden spot in the beach, and since then, she never quite let him be alone—even on the days where he had the mind to play. The scene quickly became predictable to Soi; he would be sitting on a mound of sand, fiddling with his trumpet, while Clara would lay down with her back arched atop a comically large beachball.
Soi didn’t find any shame in admitting that he liked Clara’s presence. He’d voice his protestations to her at every turn, of course, while also constantly making futile efforts to evade her, but it was not inaccurate to claim that it was all just a front.
He had an excuse for it, too—after all, he wasn’t the one who was actively breaking his father’s rules.
Speaking of which, he first had his reservations about his father catching wind of him and his connection to the Valac girl, but Clara had somehow always managed to stay quiet and restrained around him at his request. He couldn’t help but at times be impressed, even if the questions bubbling up within her mind that became stronger with each passing day could quite glaringly be noticed.
The question of when she would finally break was left in the air.
. . .
“Why are you always invisible, Soi-soi?”
Purson Soi looked up from where he sat, a blank look on his face. Beneath the skin, however, panic had already set in. Why was she asking this now? Why is she curious? What should he say? Should he lie out of his teeth or should he—
He gulped.
“What made you ask that?” Soi replied as he turned his attention back to his trumpet. Clara rolled to her side.
“I mean, there’s got to be a reason.” She said as she picked at her teeth, her eyes cast down on the sand. “People don’t just. . . reject the idea of playmates, you know. I like playing with the other kids. The other kids like playing with me. You don’t, though. So why do you not like to play with me? I don’t think you enjoy it when we do tag or hide and seek, even if I do.”
He furrowed his brows together. “That’s not your original question. Wasn’t it about—“
“Just answer iiiiit!” Clara whined, hitting the poor beachball beneath her with her fists.
“No.” Soi snappily replied.
“YEAH!”
“NO.”
“YEAH!”
Their back-and-forth continued on for quite a while, though Soi eventually relented. Once she set her mind on something, there was no going back. With a sigh, he began;
“It’s not like that I don’t want to play with others, you see. I mean, if I could, I’d wager that I’d play a lot with you. I would even say that I like playing with you, even if I pretend to be angry every time you drag me around to play ball or tag or whatever silly thing you thought up at the time.” Soi scratched the space between his eyes. “. . .Like, between you and I, you know how to have fun. Fun fun. I’d even go as far to say that I’m a bit jealous that you get the other kids crowding around you. I would love the attention. But the problem is that I can’t have that attention. And it's because. . . of the, well, you know, the fact that there. . .”
“WOAH.”
Soi snappily turned his head towards Clara. Her mouth was on the floor while her eyes flowed with an unknowable amount of amusement as she stared riiiight at his soul.
“What?” He squinted. “I’m not done explaining things yet.”
“Exactly! I just—I just realized!” She exclaimed as she tilted her head. “You can talk a lot if you want to, huh, Soi-soi?”
“S-Shut up.” Soi stammered as he turned his back to her, arms crossed. “That’s a one-time thing. Let me finish—“
“. . . yeah, right.”
“What?”
“Nothing!” She replied, letting out a sound that strangely reminded him of a large fish
“That doesn’t sound like nothing!”
“IT DOES!”
The maniacal laugh that followed thereafter did not reassure him at all, though, thankfully enough, that day would go on to continue as normal after that. Clara, in her infinite wisdom, had forgotten her original question the moment she had a break in her laughter—a lapse of mind that Soi found himself grateful of—and simply asked for him to play her a song.
That was a request he was more than willing to fulfill.
RESILIENCE
. . . came with time.
Purson Soi still felt trapped with every day that passed in Lethe, even with the companionship given by what he, in the future, would call a most unlikely friend. Still, Clara, as overbearing as she could become at times, helped him cope with a lot of the hardships that he faced with his lot in their accursed little school—which made the experience a hundred times more bearable than it would be without her presence.
There were times where he was afraid that his father would find out and he or she would have had to go away—all it would have taken would be for one of them to make a fatal slip. Soi was too careful to be the one to make that mistake now, but he always worried over Clara.
In hindsight, with how careful she made herself in her efforts to keep their connection alive, there was really no need to worry at all.
As the days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months and months to years, he slowly but surely became more and more accustomed to his lot.
It still hurt, of course.
That painful sensation would never quite go away.
“Here’s one for you, Kibei! And another for yoooou—“
Soi pensively watched from afar as Clara continued to hand out bottle after bottle of cold juice to their classmates in the playground. The scene in itself looked quite innocent, with Clara smiling oh-so-widely like an idiot as she printed good after good in a fashion that reminded him that she should probably be taught about inflation, but there was something about it that put him off and gave him the inescapable feeling that something was, is, or is about to go wrong.
He found himself embroiled in frustration the moment he realize that lunchbreak had already ended with no hitch and the malaise still remained.
By the time dismissal rolled around, he was nothing less than furious on the inside—just enough for his annoyance to be palpable simply from the creases present on his usually smooth forehead.
Something as glaring as that could not get past Clara who, at their usual spot in the beach, made all sorts of efforts to cheer him up.
“You know, if you’re gonna keep staring at the sand like that, maybe you’ll be able to heat it up with your mind and it’ll turn to glass!” She waved her hands in front of his face as she giggled at her own joke. “Ooh, you’ll scare all glassmakers in the netherworld! Their profits will be zeeeeeroooo!”
He offered no reply. She made a face.
“Hey. Soi-soi.”
He looked away.
“Did a demonbird eat your homework, Soi-soi?”
. . .
“SOI-SOI.”
Fed up, Clara bounced up from the beachball. Huffing, she immediately reached in to grab Soi in the ears to shake his head back and forth like maracas as she let out a very impatient groan.
“I—“ He blinked rapidly as he processed what was happening. “—HEY. HEY. STOP THAT—“
He retaliated by grabbing her by her cheeks and pressing in until she let go.
“What in the world is your problem?” Soi asked as he rubbed his ears dearly. “I spaced out, Clara. Jeez. I think you were just a ways away from tearing something off!”
“I thought you died sitting!” She replied, pained, as she lightly slapped her reddened cheeks. “Ow!”
“Well, sorry about that.” Soi rubbed his forehead. “. . . I was just, like, really, really caught up on thinking about something. I’ve been caught up on it all day, actually.”
“WHAT IS IT.” Clara got all up on his face. “WHATWHATWHATWHATHAT—“
“I’M GETTING TO IT.” He said, grumbling, as she swatted her away. “It’s about you, actually. You were giving out juice to the other guys in our grade, right? I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and. . .”
She squinted.
“. . . are you okay, with, well, all that?”
Soi looked over at Clara as he offered her that question. His face immediately became overwritten with confusion as her expression warped to one of absolute amusement, as if his question was the dumbest thing that she had heard in a long, long while.
“Of course!”
He perked up.
“It’s not like there’s anything bad about giving out juice.” She replied, her eyes turned to crescents with the force of her grin. “Mama always said something about it being ‘bad for the economy’, but I don’t know that! I’m, like, THIRTEEN! Pbfft!”
“. . . that’s. . .” Soi sighed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh.” Clara pouted. “Then what is it, Soi-soi?”
“I, well. . .”
He scratched the back of his head. The bravado he had gathered up earlier had faded by now, and while the words he wanted to say and the message he wanted to convey were very much clear on his mind—he had a reason to believe that she was merely being taken advantage of by their classmates, and he wanted to tell her just that—he now found difficulty in letting it out.
Was it in his place to break that thought to her?
Would it even do her any good?
“Soi-soi. . .?”
His eyes slowly drifted back towards her face.
She looked so happy. She always did.
“Never—“ He coughed. “—nevermind. Want to play a song for you?”
Clara gasped. “YEAH!”
And he didn’t want to take that away from her, no matter how misguided it all seemed.
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .It was their final day in Lethe.
The previously terrifying visage of the woods beyond the walls now reminded the students of a theme park what with the lights and the signs that gave the dark, unforgiving greens a certain warmth that melted away the fears that they in their past years had aroused. Triumphant music wafted through the air on the meanwhile as a hired band played away on a makeshift stage.
The atmosphere was simply wonderful.
Even Soi had to admit that.
The years that he had spent within the walls and the wilderness beyond it truly made him consider it as a second home. The faculty themselves could have very well been his caretakers, even if they, under the instructions of his father, restrained themselves within his presence.
No matter where one stood, there was no escape from the pang of pain that awaited one this close to leaving home.
With the ceremony for their graduation already done, there was nothing to do for Soi than to walk around and enjoy the party that came after as much as he could. Which, well, wasn’t much. Beyond the atmosphere, the music and the less-than-royal-but-still-top-class food, his limits still remained, with the finer delights of the event stiffly out of his reach.
Well, he could be having fun with Clara for now, but. . .
“Hey. Soi-soi.”
Speaking of the demon.
Purson soi turned around, his hands in his pockets, as he tried to avert his gaze away from Clara. She was wearing a dress that betrayed her usual ensemble, and it did not need to be said that Soi was as much of a boy as the others in his class. Smiling, she grabbed his hand and slowly led him away from the thick of the venue—away from prying ears and eyes.
“Why’d you come for me?” He asked in a whisper, swatting away a wayward branch. “Aren’t you busy with the others?”
“They can handle themselves~” Clara hummed. “However, I know you can’t, so you’re a bit of a priority!”
Soi deflated somewhat. “That’s not very encouraging.”
She simply stuck her tongue out at him as she gave him one final tug towards a secluded part of the forest, revealing a haphazardly arranged dance floor lit by lamps. Soi simply stared at the setup, beset with a sudden wave of confusion.
“Welcome to the greatest dance floor this side of the wall!” Clara exclaimed as she jumped into the middle of a creasy, checkered mat. “By which I mean the ONLY dance floor this side of the wall! Behooooold!”
“. . . what—“ He blinked. “what is this for, exactly?”
“Dancing.” She snappily replied, grabbing him by both of his wrists. “It’s a dance floor. Of course it’d be for dancing. Keep up, Soi-soi. Jeez.”
“You’re really going all out with the Purson abuse, huh?” He murmured dryly, a hint of color on his cheeks. “I. . . don’t know how to dance, beyond the ballroom ones, anyway, by the way.”
“That’s no problem!” She declared, throwing a hand up. “I don’t know how to dance at all, either!”
He paused.
Smile.
‘Of course not.’
The two danced to the best of their abilities after that. That may imply just a little bit that they did good—but one might just have to trust in the notion that they most definitely did not fare any better than a chicken might in its attempt to achieve a hawk’s level of flight.
That hardly mattered, though. He may have stepped on her dress more than once, and she might have stabbed his feet with her heels an inordinate amount of times, but they had the most fun they've had in quite a while. That is what, in essence, truly mattered.
At the end of the night, as everyone said their goodbyes for one final time, Soi and Clara made a silent promise to meet again in the future, somewhere, somehow. The former swore it on his honor—the latter swore it on her pinky.
The ride home felt rather strange. Whenever he was to return home to his family’s estate, a strangling feeling often sprung up on his chest. Tonight, however, he felt nothing of the sort at all. In fact, he could almost feel a twinge of what could only really be excitement.
It was only later that he would realize that the reason behind that was more simple than he expected. Clara Valac, the lime-haired menace who, in his years in Lethe, had provided him many a headache and twice as much in laughter, had imparted within him a little gift; whether by intention or otherwise, despite the weight of his lot and the desires in his heart that may as well be never fulfilled. . .
She had led him down to a path of ACCEPTANCE.