Chapter Text
Nathaniel had been a quiet baby.
His father wanted him isolated, left alone in his crib for hours at a time. He was not supposed to learn what comfort felt like. Not supposed to expect affection. Not supposed to need anyone.
Sometimes, when nobody was watching, Mary would lift him from the crib and hold him against her chest. Nathaniel never made a sound. He would simply stare at her with wide blue eyes while she smiled back at him.
Before he was even two years old, bath time could make him cry.
Mary would hear him from another room. Stifled sobs. Then silence. Then whimpers again. Then silence once more.
She would lay out a fresh pair of pajamas on his bed and wait. When he was finally allowed back into his room, she would take his small hand until he fell asleep.
When he was four, he was left outside in nothing but a shirt and underwear while icy Winter wind swept across the yard. Mary waited until Nathan was gone before bringing him inside. She made him a cup of warm tea, and tucked him into bed.
When he was five, she stood in the room and watched as Nathan pressed a hot iron against her son's delicate skin.
She did not speak.
After a few seconds, she simply turned around and walked outside to the laundry hanging in the garden, she busied herself with folding them.
Nathaniel's cries carried through the open window.
Every year she seemed a little more defeated, a little more distant, until even looking directly at her son became difficult.
Nathaniel could not bring himself to hate her for it. She was afraid. Afraid of his father, afraid of the house, afraid of what happened behind locked doors. Whenever she looked at him, there was something painful in her expression. Revulsion, perhaps. Or grief. He looked too much like his father.
She had never wanted this life. She had never wanted to marry the Butcher. She had never wanted a child with him.
And she had never wanted Nathaniel.
Sometimes she tried to protect him.
On certain evenings, she would lure his father upstairs, distracting him for an hour, maybe two. On others, she would argue with him when he ordered Nathaniel into the basement.
It never changed anything.
Sooner or later, she would sink into her armchair and pick up her crochet work, her hands moving automatically while the rest of the household carried on as though there were no little boy in the basement at all.
She had no power here.
Perhaps accepting it was the only way she could survive.
Nathaniel was not supposed to have a will of his own. Every act of cruelty served the same purpose: obedience. The adults around him wanted to shape him into something useful, something profitable, something they could sell.
The Moriyamas were often discussed behind closed doors. Nathaniel learned early that adults spoke more freely when they believed a child was not listening. He overheard arguments, negotiations, whispered conversations in hallways and offices.
His father had made mistakes.
Too many suppliers dead. Too many allies gone. Too many enemies created.
The Moriyamas were angry.
To save himself and his circle, his father needed something valuable to offer them.
Nathaniel.
The realization settled over him long before anyone bothered to explain it.
His father would have given him away for free if pride had allowed it. But the Moriyamas valued transactions, contracts. Business. Everything had a prince.
Even children.
Five hundred thousand dollars.
Nathaniel heard the number one evening from the staircase.
His mother said nothing.
His father accepted.
The private tutors who once visited the house became fewer and fewer. Some simply stopped coming. Nathaniel never asked where they had gone. People disappeared often enough that he had learned not to wonder.
Only Exy remained.
Exy became his education, his routine, his escape.
The training was brutal. Demanding. Merciless.
Yet it gave him something the rest of his life did not.
Peace
On the court he did not think about the basement or the locked rooms where he spent days at a time. Not about the isolation. Notabout the cruel things he was otherwise forced to learn.
Not about the hunger that gnawed at him through endless hours in the dark. Not about the countless moments when the voices in his head were his only companions. He counted his steps. Measured his breathing. Focused on the swing of the racquet and the flight of the ball.
For a little while, the screams that haunted his mind disappeared.
And despite everything, there was still a part of him that believed life contained beautiful things.
He saw it in the birds feeding their chicks at dawn.
In hares racing through wet grass.
In the owls calling to one another across the darkness.
Sometimes he imagined becoming one of them.
Sometimes he imagined being reborn as a sparrow, small and fragile, tucked safely beneath a mother's wings.
A creature that was maybe wanted.
A creature that was fed.
“You worthless little piece of shit.”
His father's voice always seemed louder when Nathaniel was already on the ground.
“I can't wait until I never have to look at your ugly face again.”
It was a strange thing to say to a boy who looked so much like him.
Nathaniel had his father's face.
Perhaps that was the problem.
He had his father's face, but he lacked everything that mattered. He was weak. Somewhere inside him, warmth and hope still remained. No cruelty had managed to beat it out of him.
The first blow struck across his back.
The second caught his shoulder.
The third landed somewhere near his jaw.
After a while, Nathaniel stopped keeping track.
Pain blurred together. Individual moments dissolved into a single, endless sensation.
His milk tooth had not even been loose that morning.
Now he could taste blood where it rattled against his tongue.
He hoped it would come out completely before bedtime.
Maybe he could still put it beneath his pillow.
Lola had once told him a story about a witch who came at night and tore the teeth from children’s mouths.
Nathaniel preferred that version.
Witches sounded kinder than most of the adults he knew.
Perhaps she would grant wishes.
Perhaps she would grant him one.
Maybe he could fly away with her.
His father finally stopped.
Nathaniel remained where he was.
Experience had taught him that moving too soon often made things worse.d
The room smelled of sweat and blood.
His father's shadow stretched across the floorboards.
Nathaniel focused on that instead of the ache spreading through his whole body.
The shadow looked almost normal.
Like the shadow of any ordinary man, not of a Monster.
Sometimes whole pieces of his life vanished.
One moment he would be standing in a room.
The next he would come back to himself somewhere else entirely.
In a bed.
In a hallway.
On an Exy court.
Inside a locked chest barely large enough to hold him.
It was always dark.
Always cold.
His body always hurt, no matter where he was when he returned to awareness.
As if pain followed him instead of place.
As if it belonged to him more than his own skin.
The air was always stale when he came back inside himself.
His throat burned with thirst he could not place in time.
Time itself stopped making sense.
Hours stretched until they meant nothing at all.
Only Exy remained constant.
On the court, the world narrowed into something simple.
There were rules there.
Clear ones.
Predictable ones.
If he ran faster, he reached the ball.
If he focused harder, he could survive the next moment.
For a little while, the missing pieces of time did not matter.
For a little while, he was not trying to remember where he had been.
Only where he was going.
Sometimes anger grew inside him until it was almost unbearable.
A hot, desperate fury that made him want to scream and kick at the wooden walls until they splintered apart.
His father hated those moments.
The anger was beaten out of him whenever it surfaced.
But it always came back.
Because something inside him refused to accept that this was all there was.
A stubborn, reckless part of Nathaniel that still pushed against the edges of his world, even when there was nowhere left to go.
So he learned to survive inside the contradiction.
To obey while something in him silently fought back.
He fantasized about not much.
A warm blanket during winter.
Simple - impossible things.
Often he stood silently in the corner while adults enjoyed lavish dinners.
Crystal glasses clinked.
Laughter filled the room.
Three-course meals appeared one after another.
Nathaniel watched from his place against the wall and concentrated on staying upright.
His legs trembled.
His stomach ached.
Most of the time he experienced those evenings as though he were watching a film.
He floated somewhere above himself.
The boy standing in the corner felt distant.
Unreal.
Like someone else's problem.
Every day he wrote the date inside one of the few books he possessed.
It had become a habit.
Proof that time was moving forward.
Proof that he existed.
Yet when he looked back through the pages, entire stretches of days were missing.
Sometimes weeks.
Blank spaces where memories should have been.
He wondered whether other people experienced life that way.
Did his parents ever lose days?
Did they ever wake up unsure of what they had done yesterday?
Or was that another thing that only happened to him?
His mother drank wine every evening.
Sometimes one bottle.
Sometimes more.
Most nights she ignored him entirely.
But occasionally, long after midnight, she would appear beside his bed.
The smell of alcohol always arrived before she did.
She would sit carefully on the mattress and stroke his hair, twisting his red curls around her finger.
Those were the rare moments that made his life feel worth living, because even scraps of kindness felt precious when there was so little of it.
Sometimes she cried.
Sometimes she whispered apologies too quietly for him to understand.
And sometimes she simply looked at him.
As though she could suddenly see the child beneath the bruises.
" You have to understand that all of this has to happen so that you don’t break later. You are not just a Wesninski, but also a Hatford. You have fire in your veins. We are like phoenixes, rising from the ashes. Just a few more years to endure. With the patience and resilience you have to learn here, my little boy," she would murmur.
Nathaniel will carry these words with him forever.
Phoenix. The thought appealed to him. First, everything has to burn so that a magnificent being can emerge.
He liked the idea of a creature rising from hell, something beautiful forged out of ruin and fire.
***********
Kevin POV
Kevin noticed the red-haired boy in the hallway with Tetsuji and several men before they were formally introduced.
They had been told earlier that day that a boy would arrive- someone who had been presented as a candidate for the Perfect Court.
He arrived like an asset being delivered, surrounded by an escort of gangsters.
He looked younger than Kevin had expected.
Smaller, too.
And this boy has so many scars on his face. He has never seen anything like it before, let alone on a child.
He is Thin beneath clothes that fit a little too loosely.<
Kevin had learned not to ask questions about bruises and scars.
The boy's eyes were the strangest thing about him. Not just because of the color alone, they were an impossibly deep, ice-clear blue that seemed to hold light rather than reflect it, so pale it bordered on translucence, yet so piercing it stayed behind like something carved into memory, impossible to forget should he never see them again.
Because of the way they moved.
Always watching.
Always calculating.
Like a frightened animal trying to identify every possible escape route.
And yet, somehow, he still smiled.
The expression never looked entirely real.
"Kevin."
The boy offered his hand.
Kevin stared at it for a second before shaking it.
"Nathaniel."
His voice sounded perfectly normal and polite, as though he wasn't standing in the middle of the Nest, as though this place wasn't terrifying. Most teenagers who arrived here showed far more awe and at least a little fear. The atmosphere , the darkness alone was enough to unsettle them. To outsiders, the Nest looked almost perfect. But beneath that perfection lingered something cold and predatory that most people sensed immediately.
This child seemed untouched by it, despite being much younger than all of them.
Riko arrived a moment later.
Nathanielstraightened.
Kevin noticed the change.
Riko looked Nathaniel up and down.
Judging.
"So this is him."
Nathaniel's smile widened slightly.
"Guess so."
The answer sounded confident.
Riko's expression darkened immediately.
Kevin almost sighed.
Nathaniel had been in the Nest for less than five minutes and was already irritating him.
That had to be some kind of record.
They watched his father sign a lot of paper with Ichirou with a brief pause before each new signature while across from him one of the Moriyama men reviewed the documents carefully and then added his own mark without hesitation. When it was done, the papers were set down between them, followed by a businesslike handshake that lasted only a moment.
Nathaniel studied it the same way he studied everything else as a chair shifted and the sound of the deal settling into place filled the room.
Kevin watched in silence, understanding enough Japanese to catch fragments of numbers and references to value and payment, and it struck him as wrong that not once did anyone speak to Nathaniel and not once did he speak, as if he were not part of the exchange but part of what was being exchanged, something measured and assigned a worth rather than treated as a person.
“Now. Show us what you can do,” Riko said, not exactly sounding expectant. That's what they came here for after all.
At the stadium, Kevin handed Nathaniel a temporary uniform since his own had not arrived yet. Then warm-ups began almost immediately.
More Ravens joined them, most of them older, since they had not grown up here but had enrolled voluntarily, paying a high price for the chance to train with the best.
After half an hour of play, everyone was already sweating heavily.
Nathaniel was exceptional. He had scored a point within the first five minutes, and the goalkeeper, Richard, was genuinely skilled. He knew exactly how to test newcomers, as did everyone else on the team. Trials like this followed a clear structure here.
But Nathaniel excelled at every task.
He was not just talented.
He was shaped.
Kevin did not know how long he had been playing Exy, but he knew Riko would hate him for it. Riko was silently fuming; Kevin could already see it in the tightness of his posture, the way his attention never quite left Nathaniel.
Nathaniel, however, remained unaffected. Either he did not notice it, or he simply did not care. Or as if his survival depended on it.
There was no hesitation in him, no awareness of tension or consequence, only execution. He had no problem sending the ball past Riko again and again, as if the rivalry in front of him did not register as anything worth acknowledging.
Kevin had fun during the game and felt genuinely excited about training with a player like Nathaniel in the future. He felt like the missing puzzle piece for the Perfect Court.
After downing an entire bottle of water in one go, Kevin let out a breath and shook his head.
“That guy is fucking fast.”
“Shut up,” was all Riko had to say.
Kevin raised an eyebrow but wisely left it at that.
He had known Riko his entire life. He knew that Riko had never liked sharing anything. Not attention. Not praise. And certainly not his position as the best striker in Exy.
Even Kevin had learned to hold himself back sometimes.
Riko needed validation from others in a way that went deeper than simple pride. He had never received it from his family, and so he chased it everywhere else.
Kevin still remembered one of the last things his mother had told him.
"A person who is truly proud of himself does not need to measure his worth against everyone around him."
Riko had never learned that lesson.
Watching him glare across the court at Nathaniel, Kevin doubted he ever would.
Riko then spoke in furious Japanese to Tetsuji, his voice tight with barely contained anger.
Kevin patted Nathaniel on the shoulder. He flinched at the contact, but before Kevin could properly register it, Nathaniel had already slipped out of the touch.
On the stands, his father, Tetsuji and even Ichirou and their bodyguards were waiting. They gestured for them to come over.
Nathaniel moved immediately.
Riko and himself followed a fraction of a second later.
With Nathaniel already getting more attention than Riko could tolerate, being ignored by his brother on top of it was not helping.
They were led to an office, not above ground, there were no windows here either.
The men began a conversation.
As if it was not already enough that Nathaniel was serious competition for Riko on the court, Ichirou even smiled at him. Riko would be out of his mind with rage once they were finished here. Ichirou did not even spare his brother a glance. Then he was gone.
Nathaniel’s father took the lead and told everyone in the room to follow him.
Several Moriyama men in tailored suits followed them all in unison.
They did not speak as they walked.
Only footsteps filled the corridor.
Nathaniel kept his pace steady.
His father walked ahead without looking back once.
As if there was no need to check whether they were following.
Kevin did not understand what he was being led into.
Not at first.
The room was too quiet for what it was meant to contain.
Nathaniel stood slightly ahead of him, already still.
Riko was on the other side, hands folded behind his back, his expression unreadable.
The adults filled the space in a loose half-circle.
Nathaniel's father stood calm and composed at the center.
The man on the floor was already there.
Bound to the chair.
He was still alive.
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Nathaniel's father began.
He doesn't needed to raise his voice.
His gaze moved slowly across the room, not to the adults, but to Nathaniel.
“This is what happens to people who don't know their place.”
He knew that his son, despite all the effort to beat his stubbornness out of him, could sometimes be untamable.
The man on the chair made a sound.
It was not quite a word anymore.
Nathaniel did not move.
Not even when the sound changed into something worse.
Kevin forced himself to look away.
The father continued speaking - delivering the lecture, as if he were not currently cutting the man’s hands off.
“As long as you are useful, you are safe.”
A pause.
“But usefulness can be lost.” This again was directed at Nathaniel.
Kevin turned his head slightly.
Nathaniel was watching.
Completely still, as though every word was being carved into him.
Kevin did not see everything clearly after that. Only the outlines of blood and vomit mingling on their shoes.
He could not form a clear thought. He was still fighting the urge to throw up, his stomach twisting violently, he barely dared to breathe.
Riko looked pale as well. They both had just seen a horror neither of them had been prepared for.
They were used to injuries like bloody noses from training, scraped knees, the roughness that came with Exy. Things that healed. Things that made sense in their world.
Kevin swallowed hard, forcing his gaze to stay forward, but his body kept reacting as if it was trying to reject what it had just witnessed.
Riko was turning away.
Nathaniel did not move at all.
This new boy was terrifying.
He was not just exceptionally good at Exy. He was also detached. That was dangerous.
When his father forced him to watch the punishment, there was no visible change in his expression.
Nothing Kevin could recognize as appropriate.
As though this level of violence had already been filed away in his mind long ago.
Kevin had to look away from the start. The sounds already too much.
Nathaniel did not.
Night practice was cancelled by Tetsuji. That happened rarely. Perhaps he assumed that Nathan Wesninski's message and the demonstration that had accompanied it - needed time to sink in. For once in his life, Kevin was glad about it.
He did not know when Nathaniel had been assigned a room, or whether anyone had shown him around and explained the things he needed to know. The Nest was not exactly the kind of place that welcomed newcomers.
By the time Kevin returned to his own room, the red-haired boy had vanished somewhere into the maze of corridors.
Over the following weeks, Kevin was watching Nathaniel a lot.
Sometimes he seemed younger than his age. Sometimes older.
Curious about everything.
Awkward around the other Ravens.
Eager to talk about Exy.
Then, without warning, he became someone else.
Cold andunreadable.
Like a light being switched off behind his eyes.
Kevin never knew which version of Nathaniel he would encounter.
He wasn't sure Nathaniel knew either.
The torment began fairly quickly.
As Kevin had predicted, Riko seemed to develop an instinctive hatred for Nathaniel. On the court, he body-checked him more often than necessary and with far more force than anyone could justify. Nathaniel left practice with bruises, aching limbs, and a limp.
It did not stop there.
Some nights, after hours of training, Nathaniel was allowed nothing more than a protein bar.
Kevin knew there was little point in saying anything. Still, one evening he gathered the courage.
“Riko,” he said carefully, “do you really think weakening him by keeping him hungry is productive? A player that good could bring us even more victories. But only if he stays in top form.”
The look Riko gave him was almost demonic.
“Oh, Kevin,” Riko said softly. “Have you already forgotten the message?”
Kevin immediately knew which message he meant.
Riko's smile did not reach his eyes.
“What happens to people who don't know their place?”
After that, Kevin kept his mouth shut for a while.
Strangely enough, Nathaniel did not seem to suffer from any of it.
Every morning he arrived at training looking well-rested and perfectly fine, as though the bruises, the lack of food, and Riko's constant hostility had never happened.
If he was not allowed breakfast, he simply sat beside them without complaint. Sometimes he talked about school assignments, about homework from his homeschooling. He was not allowed to attend Castle Evermore Private School with the other children. Instead, he had his own tutors in the Nest. For only a few hours each week, he was given access to a laptop for his studies.
He was not allowed outside.
The last time he had seen the sun was the day he was brought here. He received a completely different treatment from everyone here.
Other times he fell completely silent, staring at a single spot on the table for so long that Kevin wondered whether he was even seeing it.
Kevin occasionally tried to slip him a piece of fruit under the table. An apple slice. Half a banana. Anything.
Nathaniel would only look confused straight through him, as though the gesture itself made no sense to him.
Nathaniel was not easy to understand, and Kevin could not make sense of much of what he saw. Sometimes Riko would kick Nathaniel’s shin during training, sharp and deliberate, as if it were part of the drill rather than punishment, and afterward Nathaniel would sometimes look at him with quiet anger, brief and Container. A rare Moment.
Nathaniel was ambivalent, sometimes withdrawn, other times seeking contact.
Kevin now knew that he had been sold to them. Riko liked to throw that fact around whenever it suited him. As a result, many either avoided Nathaniel as if it were something contagious, while others treated him like an object, likely in an attempt to earn Riko’s approval.
It was obvious that Riko hated him.
He had already proven his place as number three for the Perfect Court more than once, but he would find no place in their team outside of the game.
Kevin wanted to take him under his care, at least in small ways, but every time he tried to be kind to Nathaniel during the day, Riko made sure to remind him that he was nothing else and would never be anything else - as an object meant only for their use.