Kai Mitsuki's Questionnaire

Kai, along with his boyfriend Julius, lives on the top floor of a luxury high-rise condominium in the Orchard area of Singapore. It would be fair to say they live in the heart of the city in the sense that it is smack dab in the middle of the area people know as "Orchard", but it's not along Orchard Road, the real crowded city area, rather the outskirts of it. Singapore is fucking small, anyways. Orchard Road is just the length of a North American university campus. It doesn't matter. They live in a fancy shmancy condo in the fucking city.

It's a much more welcoming place than either of the two are used to. It's not the imposing walls of the Mitsuki family home in Tokyo, nor is it the suffocating dorms that housed the couple during junior college, and it's thankfully not the slums of Batangas. It's a very homey unit with three bedrooms, a study, a cute kitchen with an island and all, a relatively big living room, they've even got a bathtub! The bedroom nearest to the spacious entrance is the guest bedroom with all the standard white things that a guest would need, aside from the random framed portrait of Troye Sivan over the bed. Julius' bedroom is rather aesthetic with its LED lights lining the walls and the mirrors, the ivy and rose decorations, the sleek furniture, the smell of cherries... it's aesthetic, it's comfortable, and Kai spends most nights sleeping there anyway.

Well, Kai's bedroom has constellation wallpapers and blackout curtains and is decorated with various anime, music, and book posters, as well as torn notebook pages filled with Kai's writing. The walls are lined with tall bookcases that are filled to the brim with books and notebooks that are safely protected from Kai's lighters and matches by glass doors. There's a fireproof table in a corner by the window, and on it burns a lot of vanilla-scented candles, and under it is a big trash can. Well, more like an ashes can. If he needs to light something on fire, he'll do it over that. His room is a storage for his clothes and his books, more than anything. He doesn't quite like being surrounded by himself.

Before this, Kai and Julius lived in a dorm in their junior college. Well, it wasn't really a junior college, more like an alternative school for those who either did so hilariously dogshit in secondary school (Julius) or missed education for whatever reason (Kai), and the Singaporean government decided to give them a fighting chance to keep them out of trouble. No fucking clue why it was the Singaporean government of all things, perhaps they finally woke up and realized they could do more creative things about the terrible mental health among students. It was there that the two met.

Aaaand before this, Kai lived in Japan. Moved a lot around Japan. He used to live in his family mansion, but after his crimes were exposed, the last thing his parents ever did for him was buy him out of any of his consequences and then kick him out to figure out whatever the fuck to do with his life.

That's a fan-fucking-tastic question. Kai used to be the heir to his exorbitantly wealthy family's conglomerate and was appropriately raised under the assumption that he would have it all. Money used to appear out of thin air to him while he lived with his family and his life was still perfect. When he started getting more reckless and trigger-happy and began committing petty crimes, he started secretly transferring loads of money into an offshore account not under his name, knowing how quickly this money would be made back by the company anyway. When he was then kicked out, he still had all this money, and it's enough to last him maybe ten lifetimes. Rich people are fucking insane, dude.

He still has a job, anyway, not because he particularly needs the money but because he just needs something to do with his life. He works as a ghostwriter. Of course he fucking does. He's a genius and a master at crafting words. If people don't know him for his arson, they know him for his crazy intellect and status, and they're also still pretty scared of him, so they let him have the job. He's fucking banger at it. Why wouldn't he be? He's a genius. He could probably rewrite everything in existence and it'd be so much better on technicality alone. He won't, because that's surprisingly against his principles, but it's a funny thought.

One of these days he's going to go to university, for, who the fuck knows, maybe Law. That'd be really fucking funny, the criminal who's doing law in Singapore now. He's too rich and too smart for anyone to do anything about it. He did too well in school to not be admitted to any law program at local universities. This country is a meritocracy.

Wait. What was the question? Oh, what he spends money on?

Hell if he knows. He buys a shit ton of books because reading and writing are the only legal activities he definitively enjoys. He spends a lot of money on whatever Julius wants because he's his precious boyfriend who he would do anything for. He pays their rent. He pays for Julius' university. He buys them food. Couple shit. I don't fucking know. 

"The world is yours to create."

Those are the first words Kai remembers being spoken to him. Those were the words everybody around him kept repeating. He was the heir to this conglomerate, he had all the world at his fingertips, all the wealth and resources needed to change the world. It was like he was raised to be a god. The new god among men who would bring upon a never-before-seen golden age of humanity. Kai Mitsuki would be a god -- no, he was already a god in the making, actually -- and he would have full rein over the world. Even when he got too cocky and got himself kicked out of this prestigious status, he never forgot his duty -- to do with the world what he desired to.

Kai thinks the world as it is is a load of bullshit. Too much unnecessary pain, too much unnecessary suffering, seriously, who thought of those concepts? Why are people being controlled by institutions? Humanity is stupid. All this is fucking stupid. Completely hypocritical for the guy who was raised extremely rich and is only able to roam around because of how fucking rich he is, but hey, circumstances are circumstances! He knows morally this shouldn't be the case. He should be in jail. Better yet, someone should've just killed him, actually. He doesn't know why he's not dead yet. He should be. The fact that he isn't dead yet is proof there is something deeply wrong with the world. 

And so he wants to destroy it. Burn it all away. Noah's Ark style, Julius puts it, but like, with flames. He wants the world to fucking crumble because everything about it is so stupid and wrong and he could make it all so much better. He wants to remake the universe, get rid of all these stupid institutions, the concept of wealth, the concept of pain and suffering, and punishment and wrong-doing. People like him shouldn't exist. He doesn't want to exist. But he does. And he knows what it's like to lead such an existence and he knows this is a terrible plague on the earth. He must eradicate it, and himself, at the end of everything. That's the one punishment he will accept. A divine one. Fit for a failed god.

He's trying his best to act like he's all benevolent and changed right now, but deep down, he's not above murder. He'd kill if he needed to. If he perceived he needed to. He wants to destroy the fucking universe, for fuck's sake, of course he's content with killing people. He'd be willing to kill himself too, honestly. Or be killed. He'd love to not die, because if he died then Julius would be alone and he really doesn't want to leave Julius alone, and also because it would fucking suck to not succeed at his grand ambition to become God, but hey. They crucified Jesus.

To be killed and shunned is also to be fully God. That's how you know you've got them.

The first time he had ever set something big on fire.

He'd been flirting with flames for a while. He loved watching them dance around on candles, then as they charred paper, then as they melted small objects. He loved the way they consumed things with no mercy. The way they imposed themselves until there was nothing left for them to do. This, he thought, was divinity. To be equal parts destructive and imposing and beautiful.

Then, one day as the sun set, he was walking around a junkyard. As one does for the shits and giggles. Initially, he thought all of it was ugly and deserved to stay there, and that the junk, if they had souls, should be honored to fall within his line of sight. But then he thought that, for them to look so ugly, they must have been used well. Then he felt fucking stupid for thinking about objects like they were subjects to worship him. For fuck's sake, they were objects, they were junk. They were inanimate and did not answer to him. He may have a god complex and be completely delusional about his holiness, but he's not fucking stupid.

This, he then thought, was a look into the world. A bunch of abandoned junk for some wealthy prick to walk around scoffing at. A bunch of stupid, stupid humans for a god to manipulate as they wanted. How pathetic.

Ah, the sun has set, the sky is dark now. I miss the orange hues of the sunset.

Then he set the section of the junkyard in front of him on fire.

He was met with hues of vermillion so much more beautiful than any sunset he'd ever seen, and would ever see. The world would be so much more beautiful if it burned like this, he decided. It would be so much easier to change the world if I reduced it to ashes first.

And so would begin his arsonist arc. 

*These are his closest friends from the elusive "Floor #2" of their dorm building in their junior college. They all met there, and they're all the same age.

Katherine Tiffany Monroe (she/her):

Kai's voice of reason. Perhaps the only benevolent reason he'll listen to. She currently lives in a studio apartment somewhere else in Singapore and works at an independent boutique. She's the kind-hearted and selfless, headstrong and assertive, stylish and creative mom-friend fashionista of the group. She's the reason Kai's nowhere near as bad of a person as he could have been -- she's the one who proved to him that there are things in the world that maybe, just maybe, didn't deserve to burn. That recklessly burning things without a clear goal was not going to get him shit. Despite her benevolence, she finds his ambitions absolutely fucking hilarious and encourages him to follow them if he so pleases, because shit, the world is worse than it is good. But she's the one who instilled in him the concept of caution and maybe control before he's overtaken by his impulsivity. What point is having a good brain if you don't have full control over it? He loves her for that.

Cadence Molina i Santos (he/she):

Don't tell him this, but he's Kai's happy pill. His partner-in-crime of sorts. Someone who'd love for the world to burn just as much as he does, but who, understandably, reserves that thought for dreams rather than ambitions. He currently lives in an apartment in Singapore with his boyfriend Harry de Angelis, and he's trying to make a name for himself in the indie rock scene. She's blunt and a little mean, sensitive, and a crybaby, but she's insanely cool and intelligent all at the same time. She and Kai hang out the most often, visiting studios and seeing live shows and sponsoring the struggling arts scene in this Godforsaken country, as well as generally talking shit about anything and everything. She's about as cynical about life as Kai is, perhaps even more, but they joke that she's not delusional enough to do whatever the hell Kai aspires to do. Maybe people should stop enabling him, but it's also, like, really funny.

Julius Vitale Crescente (he/him):

Kai's boyfriend. The love of his life. Kai's raison d'être. The one who completes him more than anything, the one reason he's held back on burning the world down, the reason he hasn't burned himself down, honestly. He lives with Kai and is currently studying Psychology at the National University of Singapore. They started with a kind of insane trade arrangement, then turned into best friends, then had an intensely codependent whatevership, before realizing that, shit, they were very in love. Julius is all things Kai isn't. He's a little more controlled, a lot less trigger-happy, and a lot more willing to see the good things in the world. Julius' presence heals like no other, and he is Kai's anchor to reality, a glimpse into peace. Kai doesn't know that the fuck he ever did to warrant Julius' love, but he's grateful for it nonetheless, and it's Julius that makes Kai still want to try to be a better person. That he hasn't hit the point of no return yet.