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It started with an off-handed statement.
The comment was so brief and seemingly inconsequential that it could hardly even be called a throwaway remark. Even the speaker himself spoke with a dismissive delivery and walked off with little more than an annoyed look.
But for some inexplicable reason, the comment had latched into Kusuke’s genius mind like a fishhook, bloody and unremitting in its irritation. Kusuke hated that he couldn’t figure out why it was bothering him.
After all, there was nothing worse than ignorance to someone who had long since placed himself above such nescience. Simply put, Kusuke was rarely ever unenlightened and couldn’t bear the repugnant scurry of oblivion over his brain.
Therefore, he was determined to eliminate the cause of such a loathsome irritant.
In this case...
Teruhashi Makoto.
The perverted sis-con that played at being a luminary. He was detestable, lusting disgustingly after a girl just as delusional and worthless as he was. Although, despite his inclinations, Kusuke could at least appreciate that his gaze didn’t trail after someone impossibly far above his reach—as his witless sister’s covetous eyes did with Kusuo.
Kusuke was the only person in the world capable of taking even a half-step near the pinkette’s level. That monkey couldn’t even dream of comparing!
And although those apes all resided in a world of vacancy, there could perhaps be a follicle’s difference between the pleonectic b*tch and the swinish degenerate. With all her clinging, the girl had managed to get herself caught in Kusuo’s gravitational force, orbiting around him from a large enough distance that it could be somewhat tolerated most of the time. Meanwhile, her slobbering brother couldn’t even approach the light that was Kusuo without collapsing into madness over the pebble-like thing insistent on hovering nearby.
Yet Kusuo had called him similar to Kusuke.
It was possibly the worst insult Kusuo had ever used on him, though there had been previous comparisons to other passing monkeys that were similarly offensive.
In response, Kusuke had resorted to the usual: incessantly digging up every facet of their past and monitoring their daily life closely until the day came to bring their pathetic existence crashing into humiliation and obscurity.
For the past three hours, Kusuke’s spyware had been following around the male monkey. With a critical eye, the blonde had sped through the footage quickly and was letting the live feed play on as he tinkered on some low-level trinket that one government or another had requested of him. They only ever wanted useless and weak things, but Kusuke saw no need to demonstrate just how limited their minds were to not comprehend the true possibilities he could bring to fruition.
Any time he spent on them was wasted anyways. This work was only necessary to keep up pretences, to give Kusuke a cover and ease the way for him to order high-grade supplies for weapons and surveillance—with only a small portion of those inventions going to the organisations that backed him. They wanted him to make deadly creations for them, and he did, but the rest of his time and her resources were used to make very specialised armaments intended for his personal use.
He spent more energy insulting the male monkey—no, he was more akin to a paltry and impotent insect! —than on the trivial project. As Kusuke wove wires between his fingers, the pest drifted into a girlish and meticulously pretty room that even one with the actor’s pea-brain would be able to tell at first glance wasn’t his. Kusuke supposed that was the point, however, given the pervert’s rather inappropriate reaction of simultaneously groping his sibling’s sheets and his own body.
“Truly, no one in this tainted world could begin to compare to my angelic Kokomi!”
Kusuke snorted to himself at the intoxicated rambling. The degenerate compared every other man on earth to flies buzzing about something deeply rotten—not knowing how correct he was about his sister being little more than carrion or dung—and every woman to monkeys. The blonde genius despised the fact that his own descriptions were being wielded by such an inferior creature.
The monkey pest was still caught up in the belief that that b*tch was too good for Kusuo. Please, if anyone was unworthy, it was his sticky and stupid sister. The thought that she could measure up to Kusuke was beyond laughable, so there was no matching her against Kusuo.
“I’m the only one good enough to stand by your side, darling!”
Kusuke’s finger slipped at that, a miniscule movement that wasn’t even enough to be recognised as faltering in a normal person. But Kusuke was better than that, and so he stared down at his appendage as though it no longer belonged to him.
There was no reason for him to be bothered by the male monkeys writhing and mania. But it was odd to hear those words, so terribly close to Kusuke’s own thoughts about Kusuo.
This was clearly what Kusuo had been referring to when he’d called Kusuke and the brainless scumbag even remotely comparable. And, admittedly, there may have been some degree of parallelism between the ape who wished to possess his sister and the supergenius with what might be described as a somewhat peculiar complex surrounding his brother.
But Kusuo was the only one capable of making Kusuke feel anything. His adorable freak of a brother was entertaining like nothing else, like no one else could be. The male monkey’s sister could be replaced in an instant and it wouldn’t matter overly much so long as her appearance was identical enough to confuse the man’s lust—but not Kusuo .
(He would know. He’d tried building robots with several different preprogrammed personalities, and no matter how accurate they were, Kusuke only ended up dissatisfied.)
Besides! Kusuke was also the only person who could compete with Kusuo, could make him tap into the potential that had been purposefully buried. His younger brother may not have wanted to participate, but Kusuke was enough to force him to. They were special to each other.
It was different from the Teruhashi siblings.
Kusuo was the only person who could oppose Kusuke and Kusuke was the only person who could challenge Kusuo. Kusuke stood above humanity, while Kusuo was a god –!
“Kokomi must be a goddess!”
For a split second, Kusuke stopped breathing.
There was no particular reason for it, no conditions or prior warning signs that would indicate why Kusuke’s cricopharyngeus muscle was hyper-contracting, or to explain the way that his heart’s rhythm was thrown off-beat by a sudden tightening of the lower myocardium.
It didn’t make sense.
Kusuke had never been so completely and utterly at a loss, never been unable to conjure up at least nineteen hypotheses for any given situation. Yet his own body’s reaction was what finally stunned him into silence.
He set down the cameras he was working on. They were easy to make compared to the thousands of surveillance devices designed to infiltrate and monitor Kusuo’s space. Since Kusuke’s presence set the psychic on high alert, it was better to use spyware, even if Kusuo was aware that he was constantly being watched anyways. Kusuo was always on guard, but less so when Kusuke only used indirect observation techniques.
Perhaps he liked being able to ignore the fact that he was being monitored like a lab rat, like a worshipped deity. Kusuo was overly fond of pretending to be a normal human, after all.
God.
Come to think of it, how many different camera designs alone had Kusuke sent after his brother in recent years? Looking back, the number was higher than Kusuke expected.
His heart jerked again. His throat convulsed. His gut felt like it was twisting, but Kusuke knew logically that his physical body was not the issue. This was rooted in a psychological flaw.
Emotions had always been blurry to Kusuke–distant and out-of-focus. That was why it was so odd that he was experiencing such intense symptoms. Yet, however staticky they were, Kusuke couldn’t deny the disgust and panic swirling about and disturbing his equilibrium. He just couldn’t pin down the cause .
God.
With an unfamiliar restless energy thrumming through his bones, Kusuke stood up and raked his eyes across his laboratory, searching for something to do that might relieve the itchy, uncomfortable feeling. There were compartments containing Kusuo robots, shelves piled high with the remnants of his previous schemes against Kusuo, worktables covered in nearly finished devices for future plots against Kusuo…
The blonde frowned, feeling his body seize and twitch as a paroxysm hit. The sensation was being exacerbated at the same pace as his innate hatred for being stumped . Defeated.
He’d lost in some way, but Kusuo wasn’t here and so the only person he could’ve failed against was himself , which didn’t add up in the least.
In the background, the male monkey was still wailing about his sister. How much he loved her, how perfect she was, how they would always be together.
God.
Kusuke felt like he was on the verge of a revelation, and for once, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to approach or flee the breakthrough knowledge. With an unstable conviction, he pressed the button on the wall panel that would lock down his lab until he input the proper codes and the walls slid near silently into their new positions, blocking off any external light or exits.
For the next week, metal and artificial light became Kusuke’s world. His diet consisted of pills and vitamins and all manner of supplements that would sustain him for as long as he needed them to. Kusuke was trapped in a self-imposed isolation originally intended for when he was struck by a spell of inspiration; but this time, even when he attempted to work, sketching and programming and plotting, nothing was accomplished.
By the end of the first day, he’d pieced together the truth that had scared him so deeply. It took the second and third days to claw out of the pit of internal conflict and denial that threatened to bury him in the wake of glimpsing that reality. The fourth and fifth days were spent compiling lists of every terrible act of his past that he’d need to face.
It had taken an excruciatingly long time to complete those catalogues, not simply because of Kusuke’s impressive memory, but because there was so much to remember. And, in part, because Kusuke didn’t want to remember, his body and mind revolting against him with every passing moment until he had to stop and wait for the overwhelming nausea, the sickness, to die down.
The entire experience was utterly miserable, on top of being humiliating , but for once Kusuke couldn’t do anything but dwell in the pits of his emotions, suffering like a wastrel and rendered incapable of reacting as he tended to when his inferiorities were touched upon.
He just remained there, alternating between thinking and gasping for air, between skull-shaking convulsions and a permeating hollowness only characterised by a desire to reject , reject the unnamable affliction that had infected his brain.
Yet it was only at the end of the eighth day that he stumbled to his feet and disabled the lockdown. And, even as the doors reappeared and sunlight filtered in through windows just small enough that no one would be able to see inside clearly, Kusuke still didn’t leave the room. He sat like an empty husk in his chair, feeling raw and aching as though the waves of shame, guilt, and helpless terror had scoured his soul itself.
Kusuo was right .
Kusuke…he was exactly what Kusuo had accused him of being.
And he hated it . Kusuke never imagined he’d ever be subjected to self-loathing of all things, but Kusuo had always managed to turn around every trap Kusuke set up for him, so was it any surprise that he’d dredged up such impossible emotions with a few words that hadn’t been intended to hold any alternate meaning?
And damn , if that didn’t do things to the world-renowned genius’ pride. His brother had somehow discovered yet another blind spot in Kusuke’s perfection, and it turned out that this particular blight had been spreading like thick, indelible ink for years, all without the man noticing
Kusuke couldn’t help but wonder when his relationship with Kusuo had become so twisted.
It hadn’t been like this when Kusuo was just born, but they’d never had the time to cultivate a remotely positive relationship so it must’ve started shortly after.
Kusuke wasn’t unaware of how one-sided his games were. Rather than a mutual competition, it was Kusuke’s choice and Kusuke’s choice alone to chase after Kusuo in the hopes of killing his own inferiority complex. Kusuo only disliked his older brother because of the extreme reactions and rejection directed his way by the blonde. There wasn’t a single memory they shared in which Kusuke wasn’t antagonistic. Everything between them was tainted by something that had long since mutated beyond a simple brotherly rivalry.
Kusuo had been an infant when he’d discovered just how dark humanity could be. He’d been lost and confused by the world around him, by the unstoppable deluge of thoughts constantly flooding into his brain, and more than anything else, he’d been terrified by the awful things spilling from others’ minds.
Then, Kusuke had showed him a deeper depravity. Not what people considered doing, not what they thought , but what they did.
He had used his so-called rival’s telepathy to his advantage, twisted it into something meant to torment the younger boy, while at the same time justifying his competitiveness with the belief that that same ability was what made Kusuo a necessary target. Kusuke had seen the consequences of such mind-melting strength and decided that even possessing such power was enough to be both awe-inspiring and contemptible.
He had seen and he had chosen to ignore the terrible reality of Kusuo’s psychic abilities, the tragic implications of functional godhood on adolescence. Worse, he had done so despite recognising exactly how to use those powers against the child in his memories.
Not once had he thought to comfort his overwhelmed and struggling baby brother.
What he had done was design Kusuo’s limiters to be harmful and risky and long enough to stab right through his skull into the deceptive softness of his brain, knowing that Kusuo didn’t have the dexterity to build anything more suitable with his own two hands because of his out of control strength. He had deliberately left Kusuo’s limiters to grow weak enough to be considered unstable.
He had waited for years as Kusuo’s anxiety was amplified by the out-of-date limiters until the day Kusuo was strong enough that he couldn’t fight Kusuke properly without hurting him, which the fool was so hesitant to do even after everything. He had kept him strong enough to be exciting to battle while diminishing the threat of a Kusuo who was in control—who wasn’t forced to be over-careful with his retaliation.
He had tied Kusuo down with his own strength so that he was helpless in all the ways that mattered. He had pushed Kusuo to the edge, setting free just enough strength that it was a never-ending, hellish struggle to restrain himself—to fake his normal life while never possessing an ounce of peace.
In the one and only situation where Kusuo had depended on him, Kusuke had done all that he could to hurt the boy. He had been the one, with these hands that created miracles out of apathy and created hardship out of obsession, to shove the sharp needles through his brother’s head, uncertain of the long term impacts and uncaring if his mind or body would be permanently disabled because of it. Perhaps even anticipating such an outcome.
When Kusuke was younger, he’d taught himself to pile up a thousand fantasies—of covering the pinkette in cockroaches and centipedes, of locking him up in the dark with them, of burying him, dead or alive—only to force them into Kusuo’s mind with a rough touch or a bout of immense concentration.
Murder and victory eventually turned into torture and gloating that was borderline sexual in how it sought to prolong Kusuo’s torment, but by then, Kusuke had cut off his thoughts from Kusuo not so that he could serve as a safe haven, but so that he could become Kusuo’s worst nightmare, a constant source of malevolent unknown . Even the moments when he took off his headband after some of his defeats, knowing that Kusuo would be disgusted by his genuine thoughts, demonstrated some level of awareness. Letting his brother into his mind was a punishment that built off of the anxiety Kusuke had cultivated within him.
Yet Kusuke hadn’t recognised the rising tensions, the shifting of his own cruelty to something more malicious than he’d thought himself capable of.
He didn’t rummage through Kusuo’s laundry, like Makoto did to his sister, but he planted spy cameras and collected every hair or nail he could for experimentation. He knew each nook and cranny of that room like the back of his hand. Wasn’t that invasion of privacy just as much of a violation?
Makoto had gone behind that b*tch’s back to dig through her stuff and roll in her sheets, knowing that she’d be angry and perhaps subconsciously being aware of just how wrong it was. But Kusuke lived in Kusuo’s shadow—because how could he reside anywhere else but behind him, poised to strike with a patient and desperate blade?
With them , it wasn’t betrayal. There was no trust to lose in the first place, not when the reason Kusuo turned his back was instead because it didn’t matter anymore to him. He was so tired of the stress that he’d given in, to some extent, and refused to dedicate himself to fighting his brother. He’d refused to live the way Kusuke did.
It’s not as though Kusuo needed to turn around to win anyways.
Unlike Makoto, Kusuke knew what he was doing would harm the other person. He longed for it. It wasn’t a matter of hiding his creepiness out of some strange consideration for the other person's feelings, but a matter of being so consistently and openly hateful that the other person couldn’t spare enough effort to sustain such sinking emotions in the first place—not when he never let up on his games.
Not when Kusuke held the same darkness that Makoto did, untempered by genuine care or love and instead sharpened by his callous, inhuman genius.
Tiring.
It must’ve been tiring.
Kusuke had always known that, and hoped that if Kusuo were tired enough , he might finally prevail. The older brother would never win in a fair competition, after all. Never. Because the world itself wasn’t fair to begin with.
But now he realised he was tired too
Chemicals, explosives, and firearms had no place in games . They were used to kill . Even the smallest of things Kusuke used against Kusuo, even the things that almost looked like there were good intentions behind them, were used to punish Kusuo, twisting anything the younger boy would have dared to treasure into something to avoid unless he wanted it destroyed .
Kusuke had grown possessive and vulgar towards his brother , longed to humiliate and crush him…
It was a sadomasochistic fixation, but it wasn’t sexual .
It wasn’t .
But someday, someday soon even, it could have been .
That possibility terrified Kusuke more than anything else.
Could he have become as depraved as that drooling pervert lustfully drowning himself in his sister’s scent? How easy would it have been had he not caught himself now?
Between Kusuo who experienced the horrors of the world not only through words and actions but through thought and intention, and Kusuke who had always wanted nothing more than to bring pain and suffering to Kusuo, it would be a swift slip. The moment that any form of concupiscent perversion infested his mind, wasn’t it the same as wronging Kusuo— violating him—a thousand times over?
Kusuke hurt him but he wouldn’t—
He wouldn’t—
He wouldn’t. And Kusuke would make sure to kill anyone that would , anyone who reminded him of the monster he had almost become—the monster worse than he already was.
The only reason the things Kusuke had done didn’t qualify as murder, or an obscene number of attempts at such a crime, was because the would-be victim was Kusuo. Kusuo couldn’t be a victim—he was too strong for that.
But Kusuke knew that the young psychic was also weak and vulnerable, and instead of seeing the situation clearly, he had instead taken that information and weaponised it. Kusuke had power. And even if Kusuo rarely showed it, even if his skin had no scars and his indifferent expression refused to waver, Kusuke knew that his power had been used to drag down someone he should've held close.
Kusuo was a god, and gods couldn’t be victims, so really, nothing done to Kusuo could be called something like assault or abuse or torture. Not really .
But then why was Kusuke so dead set on killing him if it was impossible? It was because his reasoning, for once in his life, was flawed .
He was wrong.
Ironically, Kusuke was the one person to see that there was no such thing as ‘too strong to be a victim.’ Must have been Kusuo’s astronomical bad luck.
Kusuke’s worldview had half-collapsed already, so there was no point in continuing to fight for the sake of his own depravity. In the place of crazed defensiveness, Kusuke had considered what would happen if he succeeded, if he won, if he killed Kusuo—
Kusuke’s breath was ripped from his chest with the same force behind it as there would have been if he’d been physically gutted.
Killing Kusuo.
What if Kusuo died ? For real? Forever?
What if the lifelong game ended and Kusuke was left alone to play against an empty seat? He’d be bored, he was certain. But what more than that? What was that indescribable pressure building and building and building inside him at the mere prospect of his chosen enemy’s death ?
Kusuke wouldn’t sacrifice Kusou for all of mankind.
But until now, he had thought that it was merely because he didn't care for mankind and wanted to crush Kusuo with his own prowess. Shamefully, he’d compared it to a child refusing to give up their toy.
He collaborated with scientists all over the world in order to erase the troublesome powers that plagued the young psychic.
He reasoned that it was because the absence of his abilities would make Kusuo much easier to defeat, while still holding the satisfaction of beating his brother, whose brain could challenge and excite Kusuke even without his powers
He showered Kusuo in carefully chosen—or personally crafted—gifts.
But they were all ruses. If they weren’t bribes to prove his own skill in manipulation—what he could still give to Kusuo—they were bombs in disguise, elaborate traps, or painful poisons that he knew wouldn’t impede Kusuo enough that he’d be defeated. Kusuke had done just enough to know he’d caused suffering and difficulty; he was long past claiming that everything he did was part of a competition.
No, he was trying to make Kusuo’s life hell .
Even when he was fending off the unwanted attention Kusuo had garnered, being cruel to people that the teenager refused to admit he was attached to and spitting poison in order to drive them away, it wasn’t out of respect for Kusuo’s neglected boundaries.
He did it because it isolated his brother. Left him alone. Left him in pain.
Kusuo should only focus on Kusuke when they were together, and when they weren’t , he should be constantly paranoid over him. The older brother wished that their dynamic could be equal, so he needed to either drag Kusuo down to his level or force him to orbit around Kusuke just as the blonde’s life revolved around him.
Kusuo needed something to protect—be it his facade of normalcy or his friends—so that Kusuke could use it against him. That was why the inventor allowed those things to continue existing, why he sometimes protected them despite his distaste. They were leverage .
Kusuke felt his abdominal muscles contract around his stomach, pushing up the acidic contents to burn his esophagus and inspire a sour taste in the back of his mouth.
What was wrong with him? Why could nothing be straightforward?
Because Kusuke was a genius. And Kusuo was a god.
Geniuses always yearned to either kill god or become him.
Kusuke knew firsthand that he couldn't be Kusuo, who had surpassed the limits of humans—loathe Kusuke was to admit he belonged to the same race as the dullards constantly surrounding him.
So he had to destroy him.
But why ?
Kusuke didn’t know the answer to that question.
He didn’t even know why he had never once allowed himself to ponder that query after so many years of striving for an end to the burning feud consuming his soul. He hated not knowing things.
Kusuke clenched his fist and swallowed. His mouth was dry, as though it were holding a mouthful of dry, tasteless ashes, incapable of any other experience after so many days locked away without proper food or interaction—even though all Kusuke ever did with company was mock and brag to Kusuo and viciously degrade anyone else.
The world was suddenly bland, as it had always been before Kusuo’s birth, but this time, it wasn’t tedium that blocked his path.
No, it was devastation .
Things could never be simple between them.
Not because Kusuke was a genius, since in some ways, it was evident he was still a fool. And not because Kusuo was a god, since he clearly wasn't .
No.
It was because Kusuke was pitiful.
A pitiful, despicable older brother whose chest was filled with nothing but hatred and inferiority. An older brother who Kusuo loved despite that terrible black heart, even though it was buried underneath a lifetime of resentment and hurt.
An older brother who, just like with Teruhashi Makoto and his younger sister, was the worst sort of monster in Kusuo’s life.
Kusuke had done nothing but try to break him .
And now, as the greatest inventor in the world, wasn’t it right that he dedicate himself to fixing something? He couldn’t repair Kusuo, nor their relationship, since they were delicate and too human for such emotionless treatment; but perhaps Kusuke could find a way forward that would allow them to heal.
With the specks of sunlight entering his cluttered workspace, the blonde set about researching, searching for ways that normal people handled similar situations. Those would be most effective, since Kusuo had a woefully human heart. It was a perfect contrast to Kusuke’s lack of anything resembling empathy. The fact that the latter was calculating how to cure the poison that contaminated their relationship was a testament to that.
But fixing was his speciality, after all! One of many.
To start with, threatening to out Kusuo’s powers would be like ripping out the boy’s heart, wet and pulsating, only to dump it in the open for the world to see and judge. It was forcing an already reclusive person to be targeted in an even more personal manner. Kusuo thought himself evil, a monster, and even without his fear that those beliefs would be affirmed by the rest of the world, he wasn’t ready . He may never be ready, so Kusuke’s threats needed to turn into armour.
Next…
Well, next was everything else .
Exposing Kusuo was something that Kusuke hadn’t gone through with. But the blonde genius actually had committed a…great many of sins against his younger brother, to say the least.
Abuse, the monkeys called it.
According to the available articles, reconciliation was unlikely, difficult, and uncertain–Kusuke’s least favourite sort of results.
Some part of him wanted to run a study, but doing any more of his passion projects that lesser beings referred to as ‘unethical’ didn’t sit well with him at the moment.
Regardless, he was in a situation in which finding the solution wasn’t a matter of puzzle-solving or technical skills. It was a matter of human whims, of emotion, or of something even more ambiguous.
Kusuo could choose to face him, or not. Kusuo could decide to rekindle a relationship with him, or not. Kusuo could forgive him—
Or not .
Kusuke tapped his fingers against his thigh in contemplation. This particular dilemma…perhaps it didn’t actually matter all that much.
After all, even if Kusuo weren’t entirely predictable in this scenario, it didn’t change what Kusuke needed to do.
Kusuke had always been awfully selfish. He had never once concerned himself with what others wanted or expected of him, so why start now? Whether Kusuo accepted or not, Kusuke would do everything short of forcing the rift between them to be mended. It wasn’t because he expected Kusuo’s forgiveness, or even his acceptance, but because Kusuke wanted to do this.
To kill with kindness.
Maybe Kusuke was just that twisted—to think that, even now, he couldn’t stop trying to kill his brother.
But at least now he was going to end him—the paranoid and dull boy who couldn’t even expect his opinion to be heard and respected in his own house—in a way that might bring back his baby brother's smile. In a way that might stop Kusuke from crossing a line he didn’t want to cross.
And, knowing that his baby brother was too soft-hearted to turn away sincerity, Kusuke easily accepted that he was exactly the type of selfish bastard who could take advantage of that fact and worm his way into Kusuo’s life.
To protect him.
To save him.
To love him, the way that a brother should.