What Kyo meant when he told Tohru he was “disillusioned” and why it was the worst thing he could have said.
“Disillusioned” means to be disappointed in something or someone that one discovers to be less good than one believed. Tohru hides a lot of shame that she doesn’t share with anyone. She doesn’t want her selfish feelings to be a burden to other people. More than that, Tohru feels that acting on her selfish desires is something she doesn’t deserve forgiveness for doing. Why she feels that way is up for debate, but it’s part of her character. At the end of volume 1, when Yuki and Kyo get Tohru from her family’s house, and discover Tohru actually wanted to stay with the Sohmas, Kyo notices the irony. “I thought you were all about saying what you feel."
Kyo tells her that it’s ok for her to be selfish. And this is something she remembers in volume 6 when she stops Kyo from leaving.
Kyo is someone who Tohru was able to confide in, one reason being that he picked up on her insecurities and would prompt her to talk.
Kyo never thought less of her when she would talk about her anxieties. Kyo recognizes her selfishness as being human. Many people told Tohru that it was ok for her to just be herself. Kyo let her know that it was ok for her to be all of the different aspects that made her who she is. Her sadness, selfishness, shame in failure, idiotic expression, anxieties about the future, and talking about her mom. Those were all things Kyo picked up on and encouraged her to talk about. Kyo knew Tohru more intimately than anyone. As I said before, everything that Tohru recognized about herself as being "bad”, Kyo recognized and acknowledged as being human.
Tohru’s feelings concerning her father, in her opinion, made her a terrible person. It highlighted her selfishness, fear and shame. In the Tokyopop translation Tohru says she showed Kyo how “dirty” she is. Another way to put this would be to say that she showed Kyo the ugliest parts of herself. When she told Kyo how she felt about her father, he assured her that Kyoko knew. The way Tohru acted may have been selfish, but she still supported her mother. Tohru didn’t do anything wrong.
And when Tohru apologized for “talking like she was depressed” Kyo told her that she could talk that way as much as she wanted. What made her think less of herself wouldn’t make him think any less of her. It wouldn’t “disillusion” him.
Tohru takes Kyo’s words as reassurance.
She was vulnerable and he accepted her. And it’s one of the things that prompts her to accept and act on her feelings for him.
Kyo accepting her helped Tohru to accept herself. She wanted to be the most important person in her mother’s life. She painted an image of her father as a bad man in her head to justify her trying to get all of her mother’s attention. Now Kyoko is dead and Tohru understands how it feels to want to be close to someone who’s passed on. She knows it must have been unfair of her to want to overpower her mother’s bond with Katsuya. And after prioritizing her mother for so long, it feels like she would be betraying her to move on herself.
It’s how she’s lived for so long. But she’s changed and she finally comes to accept that.
And then, when Kyo confirms that Tohru has feelings for him, he hits her with this:
Because of Kyo’s own connection to Kyoko, his guilt could only give Tohru a reason to doubt her feelings for him. Or so he thought.
Tohru was finally able to accept the change in herself. But suddenly, the person who always encouraged her to speak her mind, who always accepted and acknowledged her feelings, who always reassured her that she wasn’t a bad person, who always accepted her for how she really is, is trying to deny the change in herself that she’s accepted. Tohru overcame an incredible amount of guilt to get to this point, and Kyo’s insecurities can only push him to try to ease his own guilt. And apparently, the only way he thinks he can get that is by trying to convince Tohru that he’s unforgivable. When that doesn’t work, he rejects her.
Throughout the series, Kyo was the one who always reassured Tohru that her selfishness didn’t make her a bad person. No matter her complaints or confessions, he never thought any worse of her. And now, he tells her that he does. It’s one thing to not have your feelings reciprocated. It’s another to know that the person you love thinks worse of you for those feelings. Echoing and altering a phrase that he had once used to reassure her to reject her, it’s a pretty calculated response for a slip of the tongue.
You managed to reject her in the worst possible way.
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