I EXIST. I EXIST. I AM HERE. THE WORLD IS NOT IMAGINARY. NEITHER AM I.
I AM NOT GENTLE. I AM NOT KIND.」
Splendor was born from the dullest of places. Takuya was born in Moriya, Japan. From his quaint town you can see Mt. Fuji, giving you the vaguest sense of location, hinting at the impossible to feel proximity to Tokyo. All Moriya held was chinese lettuce farms and chemical plants. It was filled with identical looking houses, in small neighborhoods, with equally small shops that stood almost a decade behind most modern civilization. Most people in Moriya either worked at the farms, the plant, or stayed in the town and worked elsewhere. This meant most of the people in Moriya were quite poor.
The Terada family was no exception. Takuya has a few chance memories of his parents being at home during his youngest years, before he started school, before neighbors could be asked to look in on a young child left to fend on his own. The memories are pleasant enough, especially the ones involving his mother. Before her nursing job took her outside of town and from his side, she was a warm presence in his life. Warm enough to make up from the cool indifference his father had shown him from as far back as he could recall.
Starting first grade meant a shift in a life that had hardly been formed. Both his parents resumed work full time, in the city, leaving young Takuya in a house too large by himself. He started playing sports at school, anything that meant staying in the company of others for a little while longer. Loneliness wasn't allowed to blanket over the rest of his childhood in the same way. Just a few months before starting the second grade, his quite pregnant mother explained to him that their nebulous family would be brought back together again with the appearance of a little child.
Momoka immediately became as precious as their mother had said she would be to them. But she was not a miracle born to pull their family together, just like Takuya hadn't been. His father was still largely absent and his mother returned to work as soon as she could. This left a young Takuya with an even younger Momoka to take care of, with the sparse help of neighbors. He grew up swiftly and surely, became a quiet boy who did all that was asked of him as well as a young boy could.
Some part of Takuya thought that if he did well enough, things would change. His mother would be home more often, his father would become kinder. But the older he got, the harder he tried to provide a normal life for both himself and his sister, the worse things became. The nights his parents spent at home turned from quiet and tired to ugly. An ugly that felt like the walls would collapse under the weight of it, the sheer volume of it. It's not that his father yelled or made his mother scream, but the wickedness of his tongue and the rage in his eyes was enough to make a house feel haunted. Takuya did all he could so that Momoka never had to know how his mother cried, how badly they were both hurt by the monsters his father carried and spilled out.
Middle school came and went, and with it any hope Takuya had for the kind of happy and warm family he had seen on TV throughout his childhood. He comforted himself in knowing he had his mother, his sister. It did not matter than his father went to only one of his baseball games, just in time to catch the end of it. It did not matter that it had made young Takuya cry, embarrassing and inconcealable, and yet entirely ignored by his father who walked him home in silence after. No home runs would change who his father was, no decent grades or neat household would. Bad people would only grow to be horrible.
What his youngest teenage years brought was another sister, their last attempt at a family. Erisa was born seven years apart from Momoka and and fourteen from Takuya, and she was cherished. It was with Erisa that Takuya noticed they both received warmth and support where he did not. He was the eldest, the second man of the house, the assistant parent, but rarely the child. The most attention he received was weekly letters from his mother when shifts took her so far from them that she would not come spend a few nights at home. There she would inscribe her love, her care and appreciation for him, coded in formalities and remorse.
By the time he was halfway through highschool, his mother had found a steadier job near enough to Moriya that she could stay at home through mornings, late evenings and nights. Suddenly both his young sisters had a true parent and Takuya had complete freedom. And all that time was now spent anywhere but at home. He started taking more hours at the convenience store job he had been forced to take as soon as he could. His father had cut any supply of money his way as soon as he could, telling him men earned their way in life. And Takuya did just that. He paid for all his expenses, paid for everything from his lunch at school to his cram school to his phone bill.
Cram school did very little to help him discover what it was he wanted from life. All his days had been spent following what everyone told him to do, trying to be good and do good. It wasn't enough for Takuya. Moriya wasn't enough for Takuya. Cram school was left forgotten and school days were spent doodling in the margins of his school books, lost in daydreams and foolish teenage trivialities. All until he learnt some of his friends had entered him in some silly magazine contest trying to find the most handsome boys in Japanese highschools. That was all it took for his life to change. Takuya went from qualifying, to a contestant, to a finalist, to eventually winning the whole competition.
Neither of his parents approved, but at seventeen his parents opinions mattered very little. Takuya took all his father had to say over the phone and made it into ambition to prove him wrong. He paid his own ticket to Tokyo and started modelling there after school and on weekends. In a short time he had been hired by Cinq Deux Un, one of the most prestigeous modelling agencies in Japan. They gave him just enough time to finish his education before they helped him move to the city. Finally, he was free of Moriya and reassured in knowing he was leaving his sisters behind to a childhood much happier than his had been.
His absence would do them no harm, the same as he was sure this new life of his would do him nothing but good. What eighteen year Takuya did not see was how over his head he was. Everything seemed wonderful as he started booking more shoots and even started getting hired out to take on small roles in stage plays, a small gate way into being an actor. He was invited to all the big parties, filled with people who wanted him and for once it wasn't just demure girls he had little to no interest in. There were men, grown men, strong and sure and all over him. Takuya only had eyes for one though, Nagase Tomoya, a man he saw at every company event. Tomoya would always look at him over the brim of his drink, the kind of gaze that set your skin on fire.
That's how their began story. The relationship was passionate, true to the fire he had seen alight despite the dim club lights they had first come together under. Tomoya was ten years older than him and as infatuated as Takuya was for him. He was also obsessive and jealous, something that didn't come to light into couple of months in their young relationship. Takuya was a secret meant to be kept from the world, a treasure hidden well in a box that no one was allowed to see. The parties Takuya had come to enjoy so much ended in fights and angry sex, shouts punctuated by strings of texts beckoning him back to his side. There was also love, tender care, lavish displays of affection, attention paid to the smallest of details. But one did not balance out the other.
Takuya didn't learn this until it was much too late. Months into their love affair, the jealousy escalated to terrible heights. Their usual fighting escalated, until the hotel walls seemed to crumble under their ugly. This time, they did. Tomoya's monsters got the best of him. If he couldn't have Takuya to himself, no one could. Their screaming died down and sex gave way to slumber, but it was only Takuya who slept. Tomoya grabbed one of the hotel pillows and held it over Takuya, only considering the implication of his actions for a moment before pressing down with all his strength. That was the very last time he held Takuya as he thrashed underneath him.
That wasn't how their story ended. Takuya opened his eyes the same way he had closed them - to an asphyxiating darkness. Every bone and muscle hurt the same way, each breath hot above him and aching at his lungs. But this time he pushed the pillow off his face with ease and looked out into the dim night, the bare hotel room that held one other still living soul. Tomoya was sitting on the arm chair across the room, looking out into the illuminated street as he drank a glass of whisky that caught the light, just barely. Takuya could smell the alcohol from where he sat on the bed, could smell the clean sweat on the man's neck, he could see him so clearly despite the dead of the night they were caught in.
More than anything, Takuya could smell the blood he had drawn during their, it's metallic taste of it in the air had his nails and teeth on edge, eyes red and raged for him. All of this in a second, in the time it took to inhale the first real breath of his new life. Takuya stood up somehow, despite the ache of his body, the strain of his lungs. He had a strength in him he had never felt before, an anger he had carried with him cleanly for years and now finally saw the light of air. As he walked over, quiet and undetected, Takuya knew everything Tomoya thought, could feel as he felt. That's when he knew that the man felt no remorse, no grief over his loss, just the calm of having won and the acceptance of the fate now before him.
Takuya made sure his last moments on earth weren't peaceful. Takuya made sure Tomoya knew horror as nails knew where to sink to draw enough blood to incapacitate but not kill. Takuya made sure Tomoya was alive to feel his teeth sink into flesh, to feel himself torn to shreds. Takuya made sure Tomoya stayed conscious long enough to see the moment his soul was taken from his body, eaten whole and denied a proper afterlife. Just as he had been.
What woke him up wasn't the morning, it wasn't the hotel clerk reminding him to check out, not even the hotel maid who screamed loud enough to rouse the whole floor when she found him, red soaked and smiling on the bed. It was police that woke him, careful and scared as his pupils opened to reveal more endless red. They were going to take him in for murder, which was laughable enough to have him in desperate hysterics. It hadn't been murder, it had been a kind justice he had served out. It had been revenge. He stood up to tell them as much, nail and fangs back on display because no man was going to put him under, not again. That's when they saw the sandy curl of his tail behind him and realized that Takuya was right - none of this was as it seemed.
He was still brought in for questioning. Men in uniform and suits taking turns and eventually coming in pairs until one of them got him to talk. They promised him that he would not be in trouble if he simply told them what had happened, if the means had justified the end. At least, that was how Takuya understood it. And that's how it was. His freedom was granted with strict rules of training this beast within him, of following guidelines and no more deaths, no matter how justified they seemed to him. Takuya didn't walk out of the exchange a free man, or a new man, but with the knowledge he had turned into a demon that feasted on the monsters this world held.
Takuya sought power like neccessity. As soon as he learnt to feed safely enough, he was out on the streets practicing the full range of his abilities on any awful fool he deemed acceptable. One tail grew into two all too quickly. He learnt to pace himself after, warned of the disasters of his lore, of the damning end he'd face ultimately. Fate had written him a contract and signed it for him, but Takuya no longer was the little boy who followed people's orders, he no longer believed doing and being good was worth much. What he knew was this: his life as it was would be his own and he would make what he wanted out of it.
He did just that. Takuya stopped believing he had to start small and work his way up and applied to university with rough sketches of grand concepts for stage shows he had seen and heard of and found underwhelming. By April he was in Osaka, away from Tokyo and all it held. He financed his stage design degree through willing men's pockets, and got through classes with the energy he took from them just as easily. Normal wasn't possible in Takuya's life, but Takuya found himself rid of any desire for normalcy. Instead he made something great of himself. Making friends was as easy as smiling at the world despite what it had made of him. Because it had given him the opportunity to truly get out of Moriya, of the shell that he had formed around himself just to get by as well as he could, it had given him a life to seize and make something of. More importantly, it had given him with power to carve out opportunities with his bare hands where otherwise he would've been shut down and left out.
Takuya went on to graduate with good grades and a brilliant reputation if you asked all those that had not crossed or wronged him. He returned to Tokyo with the one close friend he had managed to make during his time in Osaka and the idea for yet another fresh start. Glow Inc was a shared dreamed between him and Wonho, a creative studio that specialized in 3D projections and lighting - a merging of art and everyday experiences. It was a dream Takuya made sure to accomplish with a few well spent nights in good, influential company. It was that easy to get investors, which lead to small projects, which lead to success. Even he stopped using his powers to forge his way, the path didn't falter, propped up by his skills and results they brought.
From then on his life became work and parties. It suited him perfectly, growing an empire and getting to sleep like a queen after the work of it all. He made few commitments that didn't come with a contract and a paycheck, keeping men around until he knew he could take no more and it was on to the next one. But it was never enough for Takuya who always felt chased by the already distant memory of a childhood that had held so little. Glow expanded to Osaka, where they had started out; Wonho started an office in LA after some American companies started showing interest. There was no way they could stop there, so Wonho convinced him they should mirror the success they had in Japan in his native country of Korea. Takuya found himself agreeing after a year spent visiting Seoul at random, attending parties and getting to know the people and the city. It could work, and if it didn't, it would still have been fun.
Kitsune
Takuya taught himself how to play both the guitar and the piano, both of them private skills few are lucky enough to have heard.
