Injustice.

Unfairness.

Cruelty.

It was all laid out bare for the young boy to gaze his eyes upon. And gaze he did. His eyes did not gloss over a single instance. He did not allow himself to tear his eyes from what he saw for even a single moment.

Even from where he watched, a pedestal that separated him from the brutality, the boy did not shy away from it, nor did he reject that it was happening. Bearing witness upon the suffering and injustice below him, he allowed himself to be the witness too it.

Because if he didn't, then who would?

All around him, adults were averting their gaze, staring at the ground, at walls, avoiding the situation going on below them. If they refused to witness this moment, that everything that this instance signified would lose all purpose.

However, if even just one person was able to take it in, even if they didn't fully understand it, that would be enough.

And so, the young boy continued to watch, silent.

The boy was not watching this scene for entertainment. Nor was he forced to witness it.

He was studying it.

An expressionless face.

As he watched the man below him get beat half to death.

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What did that man do? That was what the young boy intended to figure out as he made his way down to the open area in which he was lying. The only sign that he was even alive was the slow rise and fall of his chest.

The young boy with blue hair crouched down next to the man, staring down at him.

"Mister?"

"Aughh."

The man rolled over, letting out a pained groan. When he saw the shadow of the boy in front of him, he flinched, expecting another beating.

After a few seconds of nothing, the man slowly opened his eyes. The boy was staring directly at him, with a blank expression on his face. "What did you do?"

"Huh?" The man was simply shocked. The last thing he expected was for this kid to start questioning him while he was writhing in pain on the ground.

The kid shifted a bit, his attention momentarily caught by a rat which scurried its way from the corner of one apartment building to the next. Just like this man, it was pathetic. At the bottom. A Scavenger.

"Well. those guys, they were beating you. Violently too. Like you had done something to them. Like you had hurt them in some grievous manner, and they were getting even. And everyone else was just watching. As if this was some common occurrence around this place. So, my question is, what did you do?"

The young boy laid out his inquiry nice and clear for the man to see. Still, the man on the floor, covered in grievous wounds, could not understand what was going on. No, that wasn't the right expression, he understood what the kid was saying, but he couldn't believe what this kid was asking. Was it not obvious?

Finally, after considering it for a moment, the man began to laugh. He wasn't allowed to laugh for long, as he wrapped his hands around his stomach in pain after a few seconds, but he laughed.

"Kid, where did you come from. W-what's a little kid like you doing out here?"

"My house is currently occupied. My dad's handling very private business, and he says I'm to young to witness it."

"A-and you watched them do this to me, without calling the police?"

The boy nodded. "The police don't care. I saw countless amounts of them walk by, laughing and jeering.

The man let out a pained sigh, before rolling over to look the kid in the eyes.

"You're a smart kid. So, I'll tell you this. Some things don't need a reason to happen. They just do. Those guys, they did this to me because they figured out, I could use mana. No more, no less."

The boy tilted his head to the side, his eyes showing a brief moment of confusion before returning to their emotionless gaze.

"But that doesn't make any sense. Theres no logic to it. It's just cruelty."

"Welcome to the real-world kid."

And then he fell unconscious.

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When the boy returned home, his father was leaned against the wall, a coffee in hand. He was reading a newspaper which was detailing the latest kills in a series of serial murders.

They had named this murderer, Cupid. That was because all of his victims were women, and at every scene of murder, there was a note, detailing what the killer loved about this victim.

At the sound of the door opening, his father looked straight at the young boy.

"Good afternoon."

"Good afternoon." He replied, looking back down at his newspaper.

Masayoshi stood in front of his father, looking at the newspaper for a brief moment, as he tried to figure out what he was going to say.

"We talked about this, didn't we?" the father said.

The boy looked up.

"About wearing your emotions on your sleeve like that. I can see clear as day everything going on in your head. You wanted to ask me about something related to injustice, didn't you?"

Just as always, his father was able to perfectly read what the young boy was thinking, even though he thought he was putting up a good poker face.

"Yes. I saw a man get beat half to death on the street. Just for being a magician."

The boy's father did not speak, his face revealing no emotions.

"And I was wondering, why was that allowed to happen. Wasn't it blatantly unjust?"

His father did not answer.

"And was that why mom was killed?"

After a bit more silence, the boy's father stood, walking over to him.

"We've went over this again and again. But I'll repeat it for you."

He picked up a knife that was oddly placed on the table.

"This entire world is built upon injustice and lies. That much is a simple truth of live. Injustice does not always have justifiable reason. The first thing I taught you was to understand the world was a cruel place. Do you remember the first place we went together?"

"The scene of a murder." The boy replied emotionlessly, even though he could vividly remember that time, when the sight of dead bodies made him puke, and his entire body felt ready to explode. He could remember vividly that horrible day. The way her body was butchered, what the killer did to her, the heart carved into her chest.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The smell of blood and smoke. The flashing lights. His own blurring vision, caused by the tears that fell down his eyes.

The sobs that racked his body, and the vomit that burned his insides.

It was the crime scene of his mother's murder.

"You were five. I did that in order to hammer home my lesson. Once you've seen something as brutal as the scene of a grotesque murder, remain collected in other moments becomes trivial. This world is an unforgiving and brutal place, were naivety and innocence lead to death." His father took the knife and began to carve unto his own arm. A heart.

The boy did not flinch. He did not back away. He just stared his father in the eye.

"Everything I've done was to prepare you for the injustice of the world. So you can be ready to face it. So, what happened to your mother won't happen to you. Keep your wits. Remained detached. Remain unreadable. I taught you all of this out of love."

The boy's father then sat down. "And the most important lesson of all?" He leaned in, no emotions visible on his face. "Never believe what others tell you."

This conditioning. This training ever since he was child, being introduced to every kind of violence to build a layer of emotional detachment. To protect him from the injustice of the world. To not let what happened to his mom happened to him to turn him into someone who could read others and not be controlled or lied to by other people.

That was what his father said.

All of it contributed to the boy's obsession with justice. His namesake.

Masayoshi. That was the boy's name.

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Masayoshi was a smart kid. All of his teachers were fascinated by not only the boy's intelligence, but his drive for learning.

He was always asking questions, always testing new ideas. In any normal case, that would make a teacher happy.

To see a student so fascinated with the world and everything around them. Was that not what teachers hoped to foster?

However, in the case of Masayoshi, this drive was cause for concern.

The boy was completely isolated from his classmates. He had done this willingly. He did not bother to speak to them, and only ever worked with them when he was instructed to.

The boy had a keen fascination-no-obsession, with the idea of right and wrong.

At every given opportunity, he would ask his teachers, and even his peers questions like:

"What is true justice?"

And,

"Does harboring the suspicion that someone you know does something bad, and not acting upon it, the same as being complicit in the crime?"

"Huh?" The man with the glasses stared down at the boy, who had spoken suddenly when he should have been silently reading.

Masayoshi looked back up at him, his honey brown colored eyes boring straight through the man.

The teacher fiddled with his glasses for a moment, laughing nervously as he broke eye contact with the kid. "What sparked a question like that? Shouldn't you be reading?"

Masayoshi remained silent for a few moments. "Do you have any books on true crime?"

A bit more awkward silence.

"I figured not." He answered his own question.

Along with those odd questions, Masayoshi was always off doing something. When his teachers would confront him, he always told them the same thing.

"I was just running a test."

No matter what he was caught doing, he would give the same answer.

Whether he was contemplating how deep underground he could go before he began to run into pipe systems.

Whether this time he had been seen testing the effects of a sharpened stick on a tree.

Whether he had been seen collecting cicadas to see how many of them it would take to mask a sound completely.

He would just give that answer and refuse to elaborate any further.

To others, it undoubtedly looked like a young boy up to pretty eccentric and reckless activities. As young boy's do.

However, to Masayoshi, the things he did could not be summed up as just the reckless activities of a young boy.

Because he had begun to see the clues.

Justice was only a short while coming.

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The day it happened was unremarkable. A boring, Sunday afternoon. The only real significant thing that had happened today was the discovery of a few more of 'CUPIDS' victims was being broadcasted on the news.

The anchor, a lady wearing a red dress, and she had blonde hair. She was standing in front of a screen which was displaying a photo of the victim taken before they were killed, as she talked about their names and the way in which they were murdered.

Masayoshi's father sat back in his seat, looking at the screen with interest.

It was a facade. Albeit a good one.

Masayoshi walked through the living room, heading towards the kitchen. All the while, the anchor spoke in the background.

"-just another victim of this serial killer still on the loose. This time, it was 27-year-old Miranda Diaz. A staple figure of her community in her town of Yoshino for being extremely kind, welcoming, and helpful."

The anchor continued to speak about Miranda Diaz, all of her good deeds to the community.

Masayoshi didn't even need to pay attention to know what they were.

Because he lived in the same town as Miranda Diaz. He had known her personally.

She was the one who took him to the fair and tried to make him laugh.

All because she hated the usual look he had in his eyes.

She had been murdered. The same way as all of the others as well.

Stabbed. Laid out on the ground, with a note reading what the killer loved about her.

As Masayoshi reached for the knife that lay on the counter, he took notice of how his hands were shaking.

His entire body was shaking. Gritting his teeth together, he told himself that it was the cold.

However, the heater was on.

He let out a shake breathe as he picked up the knife. Holding it in his hands, he tested its weight. He could feel the wear on the knife, the fact that it had been used.

Masayoshi's father did not cook very much. And when he did, the knife wasn't used much, if at all.

Taking a moment for deep breaths, Masayoshi tried to calm himself.

Slowly but surely, the shaking faded a bit, but it was still there. His shaky, quick breaths began to slow down, but they were far from comfortable.

And his eyes.

He could see them in the reflection. They seemed calm, but they were unmistakably horrified. Scared.

He was scared. Of what he would find when he turned that corner.

Clutching the knife tighter, he returned to the living room.

Only to be greeted by a horrific sight.

In front of him, his father was still in the living room, sitting on the couch, watching the news intently.

On the TV screen, they had moved on to the next victim. Cassandra Ito. The anchor began to speak. About how her body was the only one that wasn't recovered. However, the scene at the crime suggested she had died before being taken. He tuned her out.

Because Cassandra Ito's lifeless body, their next-door neighbor, was propped up on the couch next to his father.

His father, continued to stare at the TV intently.

Masayoshi stood, frozen. His eyes widened just a bit; however, he kept his expression controlled.

Just like his father taught him.

Finally, Megumi Shibai turned his gaze to his son. His eyes traced their way to the knife in his hands.

"I always knew you'd figure it out."

Masayoshi wanted to scream. To bang his head against a wall, to lash out on his father.

To scream and call him a no-good liar. And evil murderer. However, to his own horror, he continued to keep his own emotions under control.

"Why?" On the inside however, he was going to break.

He could only get that one inquiry out. His entire soul was broken. The man who did all of this, who trained him to become someone who could face the injustices of the world, turned out to be the one behind it.

Masayoshi's hands began to shake more and more violently. The knife clattered to the floor.

He was losing his cool.

"Remember what I told you. Your mom was killed. A great injustice. All because she was a magician. Because she could use mana. She tried to help others, and her reward was death. I didn't want that for my son." He stood, ignoring how Cassandra's body hit the couch.

He walked over to a draw and began to rummage through it. "However, I couldn't just walk up to you and begin a spiel about the injustice of the world to you. You were a five-year-old kid. You would never believe me. You had to see it. To be shown it."

As his father spoke, Masayoshi's mind began to wander. "S-so, all of the clues."

His father pulled out a gun from the draw. Slowly, he began to load it.

"I became Cupid. I killed those women, who all made the same mistake as your mother. To reinforce the idea that being unprepared, and naive to the injustices of the world, is how you get killed. I left those clues. Trained you in magic. Trained you in detachment and gave you and interest in the idea of justice. All so you could survive in this world."

His father began to walk towards him, and Masayoshi began to walk backwards, unable to believe what was going on. He couldn't remain detached.

He began to hyperventilate.

"I taught you that detachment so you wouldn't fall to my own mistake. I couldn't live without your mother. I just can't. So, I made sure that you, my son, would be able to live alone. Because I love you. I made sure you would be prepared."

Masayoshi began to pace backwards faster and faster, as his breath began to hitch. His chest felt heavy, and his mind felt like someone had set off an emp inside of it.

"But it was all lies! A web of lies you created! Every moment was deception! Lie stacked upon lie! You created it all to manipulate me. All so you could feel good about yourself, before you took the easy way out!"

Masayoshi's back hit a wall, and with it, all of his energy to fight back was sapped. He slid against the wall, trying to crawl backwards but there was a wall blocking his retreat.

His father approached, crouching down so they were eye level.

"Of course. Why do you think the lesson I stressed the most to you, was, "Never believe what other tell you?"

He stared his son in the eyes, with a smile on his face. Masayoshi looked back at him, with a devastated expression.

First, his father used his own blood to trace a heart on Masayoshi's forehead. His father then raised the gun to his own head. Masayoshi watched in horror.

"Me and your mother weren't prepared. We couldn't handle injustice, nor could we find the right answer to what justice was and where it lay. We were flawed. But you, my son, you will be the one to figure it out. My lies, my love. They will carry you to that answer. They will carry you to triumph over what me and your mom couldn't. Masayoshi. I love you."

And then he pulled the trigger.

Masayoshi's face was splattered with blood.

Outside, police sirens blared.

CUPID had been brought to justice.

But if justice was just as cruel as injustice,

Then was they're even a difference? Was 'true justice', a delusion?