The Wild Geese || DAZAI OSAMU/CHUUYA NAKAHARA

[十五] MONSTER, CONSCIOUS.

You pace up and down the hallway where your room is located, a cigarette clenched between your lips and your arms crossed. Your head is dipped down as to stare at the floor and your shoes, the document in your sock crinkling with every step.

You finally muster up the courage to enter the room again.

It welcomes you with black, open arms. It is a room where despite the sunlight shines in, remains completely in the dark as though untouchable by light. Cast away by light. You take a seat on one of the couches by the coffee table, reach under your sock and pull out the death certificate. You unwrap it and study it once more.

'Yep, that's my old man,' You think to yourself, tossing it onto the table. You throw an arm over the back of the couch and stare up at the ceiling, the rotating fan above slowly whispering with breezes. You close your eyes and breathe in the dust of this room, all the corruption it has accumulated in your absence.

In a sense, the Port Mafia HQ was a Gothic Victorian mansion for you; it was closed up like a house, and there is nothing here for you, nothing in this place. The HQ is one of the most horrifying aspects of Yokohama, not just because the labyrinth of its nature in your psychotic brain constantly changed forms, not because it seems to have a mind on its own, but because one can never figure exactly what it is that is haunting you and the HQ. Maybe it's Mori. Maybe it's you.

The mansion may fill with churning acid like an empty stomach, and it may grow bitter from your absence. The paraphernalia certainly have—they were covered in a thin frost-like layer of dust.

After all, they do say that home is the first grave.

You look down and find the small mary-jane shoes of your former child self. She is diaphanous, transparent, ghostly, and you can see straight through her as though her opacity level was set to 25. There is a ghost in your room; but, you've learned that the room is you, and the ghost is also you.

"What'dya want, kid," You ask through clenched teeth, taking the cigarette out of your mouth. She stares back at you before walking towards the stairs that led to another room within your room. You reluctantly stand up from the softness of the couch and follow her, your footsteps languid and slow, followed by the wisp of smoke emanating from your mouth. You feel sorry for your childish self, because who can see her, understand her, better than you can? What you called history she called home, and what a sordid history she was in.

She vanishes before another door. You recognize this room. You hesitantly place your hand on the doorknob, steely and cold in your hand, before twisting it.

The door groans open, as though warning you beforehand of the horror it was holding. You quietly slip through a narrow slit of the opening, before closing the door behind you with a click.

The room is a child's playroom. It is filled with children paraphernalia: stuffed animals and dolls, a grandiose dollhouse; a rocking horse; a small table with equally small chairs, untouched wax crayons and scribbled papers strewn across the surface. A twinge of painful nostalgia that hits you like a truck on the highway.

You peer into the dollhouse, getting onto your knees. You can see the little animals of Santomle family figures frozen in time, resting on chairs and on the balcony, their heads capped with dust. You take one out and brush it off; it remains fuzzy under your fingerpads.

You put it back in.

You ash your cigarette on the skin of your wrist. It leaves behind a red spot, but you think nothing of it. The bitter taste of ash remains on your tongue as you run it over your front teeth, sucking on it in displeasure. You move a teeny chair to the side with your foot before looking down on the table: a collection of drawings.