Cirque de Sentimentalité - YANDERE!DAZAI

THE STRANGE MAN AND NO DIVINATION

You turn back.

No, time turns back.

When you stare into the fire, you can see explosions bursting into great balls of grey and flames. You can hear the ear-splitting cries of the cannons, the tanks, the screams of the martyred. And when the daylight comes to an end and the artillery and the dead, you would be holding your stuffed animal in one hand and your other hand rubbing your eyes from the dust kicked up from the explosions, having crawled out the rubble with your parents nowhere to be seen.

All of this unfolds in your eyes, which glasses over and replays those memories as though you were watching a film being projected into the front of the inside of your skull.

"Whatcha thinking of, (last name)?" Joker puts an arm around your shoulders and pulls you closer to him. His warmth is oddly cold, as if it was artificial warmth, as if this was all a veneer and you were simply sinking into a half-transparent human being with little to no genuine warmth. Like a ghost. But even ghosts are filled with love–but they can only haunt.

Was Joker capable of love?

"Nothing," Your eyes are still focused on the fire. Naja and Bete have gone to bed, and now it is you and Joker simply staring at the flickering fire. "Nothing at all."

"I can tell you're lying."

"How can you?"

"Your voice gets all twitchy. Like a cicada," He places a hand on your knee good-naturedly. "Now tell Santa Claus why you're lying to me."

"You're no Santa."

"Pretend I am one."

"Well, Mr. Santa Claus," You begin, picking at the skin beside your nails. "I want a present this year."

"Ho ho ho," Joker says, in a faux deep voice. "What kind of present, little lady?"

"I want my parents back."

He sighs, retracting his arm away from you and removing his hand off your knee. You shuffle away from him, slightly satisfied that your answer had taken him off of you. Joker takes out another cigarette, but not before he flicks another tarot card out of his gold-trimmed sleeve. Nine of Swords. Anxiety and despair.

He flicks it into the bonfire. The delicate plastic of the card curls and emits a terrible smell, of plastic burning, before it ceases to exist. Where he materialises these cards was a mystery to you; but then again, so were you. Everyone in this circus, this damned circus, was a mystery, enshrouded in magic and everything ephemeral. Joker doesn't say anything apart from pushing his hair back, letting a few strands of dark hair fall over his forehead. He lights his cigarette with the fire once more before extinguishing the fire with a swoop of his arm. Darkness falls upon you like a winter duvet, resting on your shoulders and turning the world into grayscale.

"Sometimes I want to fly away," You say, in response to his silence. "Fly away from all this. Fly away from the circumstance I'm in."

Joker narrows his eyes, in concern, in worry. "Are you not happy in the circus?"

"I wish I could say I'm happy. But I'm not." You finally murmur. You then stand up and brush the imaginary dust off of your lap, ignoring the faint twinge of longing in Joker's gaze as you turn your back to him. All your life you have been doing this: turning your back on people after the war, after your rescue. You have systematically refused everyone who has tried to enter your life. You have been unable to find peace in the solace of others, having witnessed the very nadir of human depravity in the war. You cannot trust yourself with others, because you have been conditioned to believe that their worst is their normal self. Everytime you try to talk to anyone outside of Joker, Bete, Mizu, and Naja, you get this incredibly empty feeling inside. Every single object in the room begins to look as if it has no substance to it. Everything appears hollow. Do they know? How artificial they are? How fake they look?