Ginyami, unlike Sara, had long since thrived on unfairly taking advantage of others because that was what he believed it took to get ahead in their world. The real world could often seem like a pleasant place, but in Ginyami's eyes, it was full of deception, cunning, trickery, coercion, corruption, bribery, threats, extortion, exploitation, fraud, and many other forms of roundabout, sneaky wrongdoing. He had spent much of his life studying those ways of the real world, as they were the ways that had allowed his parents to get ahead and their parents before them. It was on this way of life they had built their small family fortune from their chain of plant shops selling natural herbs, ingredients, cures, and medicines.
However, regardless of how good he had gotten at using such techniques and methods to get ahead, he had come to hate them. Despite how much he hated using them, though, he couldn't deny that they produced results in the kind of world he lived in. The good and kind were considered weak and naive and consequently taken advantage of, their goodness crushed beneath the ruthlessness of the real world. Kind people turned jaded; the optimistic turned cynical. Ginyami had seen the lights of their souls go out one by one as they each gave in to their inner darknesses when overwhelmed with surrounding shadows. If you couldn't beat them, join them. It just made sense. There was no room for more moral, respectable lifestyles unless one was also prepared to never rise above the ranks and instead be forever mired in poverty and debt.
Ever since he had come to that conclusion, Yami had found himself separating his inner voice more and more from the smiling mask he presented to the world on a regular basis, becoming more and more two-faced. Or, perhaps, he had always been two-faced; it was just becoming more clear to him exactly what he was the more he learned about and interacted with other kinds of people in order to define himself by the comparison he made of himself against them. For despite behaving as though he meant to woo and befriend and court the entire world, Yami slowly began to realize he hated them all, but he hated himself the most. This world was to blame for being designed to allow the sneaky, selfish, and conniving to thrive better than the honest, upright, and hard-working, yes. But it was people like himself who were forever shaping and molding it to become and remain that way.
Yet despite all of that, there were still those innocent enough to believe that humanity was innately good and foolish enough to try to live by that belief. For all Ginyami seemed to look down upon innocent, kind, trusting, hard-working, pure, good-hearted people along with the rest of his family, supposedly believing them to be weak, naive, ignorant, and foolish, that wasn't the truth. In all honesty, Ginyami actually held such people in the highest regard for sticking to their beliefs and morals despite the world being so tough on them for it. Secretly, he wished he, too, had the morals and resolve to be such a person, though he knew he did not. Not after all he had already done.
Despite his perceived pride, Yami actually despised himself in the depths of his heart for being exactly the kind of person who contributed to the world that made it harder for those he admired to live in. He knew he wasn't a good person; he as far more likely to be considered a common crook, a con man, or even a villain. But because he was a villain, he also knew he could stoop to lows the sort of person he admired would never be able to allow themselves to go and, from there, protect them in ways they would have never been able to protect themselves from awful people like himself that they would have otherwise never stood a chance against. Because sometimes, one could only fight fire with fire and it took evil to know how to combat evil in turn. Therefore, he thought, if he was going to be considered 'evil' anyway, he might as well be evil toward a meaningful purpose.
Ginyami believed himself to be very good at getting what he wanted. And if what he wanted was his best friend and lover to be protected from the rest of the cruel, real world, he was willing to do whatever it took to do so, no matter what kind of monster it made him into. He already was one as far as he was concerned; might as well go the whole nine yards and be the absolute worst he could be. At least that way, he would never have to fear that his beloved Sara would fall prey to anyone worse than himself when he was the ultimate monster. Sara feared himself to be a monster, too, so who could better love such despicable abomination such as himself than another monstrosity?
But Ginyami knew the truth. Sara was exactly the type of rare, pure person who was genuinely good at heart. It was for him that even the selfish Ginyami would have been willing to sacrifice everything, including his own desires and dreams, for the sake of protecting Sara's light; his goodness and happiness. People like Sara were constantly suffering due to those cruel truths of their unjust world, so it seemed only fair that endure a little of that hardship himself and pay his own price. That was why he constantly lived behind a smiling mask of a facade; why he could almost never be himself unless it was with Sara. As Sara had to live with a face that kept others from recognizing his true nature as well, however, it only seemed fair that Ginyami also suffer the same fate. After all, who else did they need to see and accept them for who they were than each other?
flowykid
