There are monsters who wear their ugliness on their skin
And then, there are the ones who wear a smile.
Kazuki Tanaka was always meant to be perfect.
The golden son. The student teachers adored. The friend everyone wanted. The boy with effortless charm, who could make anyone laugh, who could turn any situation in his favor with just a few words.
But behind that perfect mask, beneath the well-practiced smiles and the carefully chosen words, lurked something far more sinister.
Something dark.
Something that had been there long before Yuuki.
And it had all started with her.
Her name was Rina.
Kazuki had met her in his second year of high school. She wasn't the prettiest girl in the room, nor the most popular. But she had something else—something Kazuki had never seen in anyone before.
She wasn't impressed by him.
She didn't giggle at his jokes the way the other girls did. She didn't cling to him in the hallways, didn't bat her eyelashes when he looked at her.
Rina treated him like he was ordinary.
And for Kazuki, that was unacceptable.
So, he made her fall in love with him.
It was easy, at first. Kazuki was patient, deliberate. He learned her favorite books, the songs she listened to when she thought no one was watching. He asked about her dreams, memorized the way her eyes lit up when she talked about them.
And when he finally kissed her, in the quiet corner of the school library, she had looked at him like he was her entire world.
Kazuki smiled.
Because now, he was.
Love, Kazuki had learned, was just another kind of power.
And power had to be controlled.
At first, it was small things. A comment about the way she dressed soft, like a suggestion. You'd look better in something else, don't you think? A casual remark about the friends she spent time with. They don't really understand you the way I do.
Rina never noticed the way her world got smaller.
She thought she was changing on her own.
And Kazuki let her believe it.
Then came the rules. The unspoken ones, the ones she only realized existed when she broke them.
If she didn't text back fast enough, he would go quiet for days. A punishment wrapped in silence.
If she laughed too loudly at another boy's joke, his smile would tighten. A warning hidden beneath politeness.
If she ever tried to pull away just a little, just to breathe Kazuki would remind her how much he loved her. How no one else would ever understand her like he did.
And when she cried, when she told him she felt like she was losing herself, he would stroke her hair and whisper, That's just what love feels like.
Rina stayed.
Because Kazuki was perfect.
Because when things were good, they were blindingly good.
And when things were bad, he made sure she believed it was her fault.
But monsters always go too far.
The night Kazuki raised his voice at her for the first time, something inside Rina cracked.
The night he grabbed her wrist, just a little too tight, something inside her broke.
She left the next morning.
Kazuki let her go.
Because he knew, deep down, that no matter where she went, no matter how many years passed, she would never be free of him.
She would always wonder if she had imagined it all. If she had been the problem. If she had thrown away the best thing that had ever happened to her.
And Kazuki?
Kazuki would find someone else.
Because there were always more girls.
Always more hearts to break.
And eventually, there would be Yuuki.