BUNGO STRAY DOGS SHORT STORIES

in the eye of the storm

Brief summary: author projecting on Akutagawa or Akutagawa poetry
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Death wasn't something a little boy should be so well acquainted with. Such a boy only exists in the comics he would find in the trash. On the televisions displayed at the front of the stores, no death wasn't something a little boy barely the age of 12 should know so much about.
The stench.
The horror.
The memory so grime it was fresh and throbbing in every waking moment.

A shadow that would follow, a shadow that would not speak or ask questions. A shadow that would only tear out people's throats and turn a blind eye from their desperate pleas for life.

Life. Life and death, ying and yang. Two very different things that were always partnered together. Why would something so bright and so full of hope allow the people on its earth to devour that love? Was it pity? Had the light given up and made room for the darkness under the covers? Or were they the same thing, masks only worn to disguise itself?

Because what it a storm without a rainbow and what is a cloud without the sky?

'That must be it.' The little voice in his head whispered to him.
'I am half of a whole.' He rose to his feet and wanted to rejoice in his new found epiphany. But the blisters on the souls of his feet and the burns on his legs were enough to diminish that strength, that will.

The neon lights in the city flurried in his mind, it could almost bring him to his knees. The euphoria of a city that wished for his disappearance but no, he wanted to scream and shout and declare "Here I am! Whether you like it or not." And watch as the world caved in with sheer mercy, but the voices in his mind were beginning to fade into dust and rise as smoke. The world was falling away at his feet and he took refuge in the hole like the rabbit from the upside down world.

Many years later the boy had grown into a man, a man carved out of poverty and rumours. He roamed the city and fled when eyes wandered too far. He protected his sister and stole to supply her with good hygiene and a sense of identity.

And then a man in black came, a man with no purpose in life, but seemingly had not departed from the sinister world as he so often talked about. The man promised the safety of a roof and a well paying job. He promised so much and yet never fulfilled those empty words, bargaining was something Akutagawa learnt that day along with many other things.
Never trust a man in black and never trust the words that sounded so sweet that they could make you sick. Never. Never. Never.

But here was he, a liar, a faker, a survivor and one of the Port Mafia's most dangerously rising members they had seen for years. Constantly on edge and his rough curves turning into fine sharp edges he did not realise that he was drowning in the very thing that gave him a purpose. The urge to live despite all that tried to deny you of that satisfactory.

But now, a lifetimes worth of rage had surfaced and had flowed through veins until all he could see was the very beginnings of life and death itself and he was thrown back into the younger body of himself. The one caked with crimson and torn clothes.

A life filled with crystal chandeliers and champagne glasses, elegant dresses and sly eyes that were asking for too much. Adorned in suits that made him look too presentable, they would make him shiver if not for the anxiety quelling up. To be greeted by so many, wine and dined until you were sitting in a hotel room with your head spinning from all the luxuries these people always had. Had they not realised how much he had sacrificed to climb up the ladder from poverty?

did they still not see the last dreads of dirt stick to his shoes as he so desperately tried to wipe them off on the rings that the ladder provided?

No, they would never know even if he so desperately wanted them too. Because they were so blinded by who was fucking who and oh the scandal.

To think of your colleagues like that took guts, but came so naturally to the man with the black and white cropped hair. It didn't take much for the mask to unveil the true human dressed in the most finest of fashions. He had devoted his life to proving his worth to the people who looked down on him and now he was one of them. Oh how evil of him to think so.