The Wild Geese || DAZAI OSAMU/CHUUYA NAKAHARA

[十] A BODY, LIMINAL.

Chuuya thinks you're strange.

That is the only word he could think of to describe you.

But perhaps if he had more time, he thought you were very strange. You had this quality to you that made it seem like you weren't there at all, like those imaginary black shapes you see in the dark after watching too many horror movies. He felt like you made everywhere liminal, as if you were a key to constantly keep moving in life, as if you were some sort of secret that made it feel like things had to keep moving or else, he'd be wrapped up in the eerie nostalgia of his belongings.

And perhaps that was why Mori seemingly liked you—no, Chuuya knew he adored you, because every time he'd come to work, he'd be met with a very large portrait of you, younger but still recognizable, and a younger Mori. You looked like a pearl. Small, beautiful, shining; remnants of Mori building on you, encasing you, making you undetachable to your former father even when you grew out of your childish baby face and stubby limbs. Mori looked at you in ripe silence, as if proud and distinguished of his creation: an odd, seemingly remorseless killing machine with bouts of regret and drinking. He never questioned it, but the way you seemed to cope with Mori's tendencies to...well, children, was incredibly poignant. You would break away from the conversation, completely render yourself untouchable, before re-joining without even acknowledging what the fuck happened. As if you were closing yourself up, stitching yourself so that even if he were to rip your clothes away, all there would be left was a sexless, smooth mounds of flesh like the naked torso of a barbie doll. Nothing can get to you; not even the Gods, the types of Gods that demanded annihilation, or total sex. You were a two-dimensional creation and there was seemingly no other side to you. That sort of extreme radical protection, that sort of flinch of a predicted abrasion, transcendence of a wound already inflicted, seeing hell in places that didn't exist.

But something about you was attractive to him, and like a moth to a flame, he's curious. He can't help it. It's the effect you have on people: Your harsh edges, the way you cut words shorter, the way you composed yourself, the way you spoke as though it was your last day on Earth. You spoke in the language of violence, in the echoing reloads of a gun. A dreadful dawn would rise up in your eyes and he would see himself as the Sun. Shining light onto you. Granted, he knew you needed no saviour—you were your own downfall and nothing could save you, but he felt as though you were pulling him into your abyss, hand in hand, like Euripedes and Orpheus, never to escape the underworld.

But he thought you were strange alright.