Cirque de Sentimentalité - YANDERE!DAZAI

TYING AN IMAGINARY RIBBON

It's late evening when you emerge from your circus tent. There's a fire crackling, its orange hues rich and intoxicating and voluptuous spilling across the floor. There's Mizu and Joker who are talking in low whispers, but they snap into silence and smile when they see you.

"Come here, (last name)," Mizu pats the seat beside her, to which Joker sharply nudges her away.

"No, sit here besides me," Joker insists. You take a sip of the now lukewarm coffee before saying,

"I can just sit between you two."

"That's true," Mizu says. You do just that, slotting yourself between Joker and Mizu. The three of you stare at the fire flickering before you break the tranquil silence. Both their bodies emit heat, and you feel suffocated, and so you clear your throat and say,

"Tell me about your experience in the war, Joker."

That makes him blink. Green eyes turn amber in the fire. "What?"

"Tell me about the war."

"I'm not sure you want to hear about it."

"No, I do," You say. "I do want to hear about it."

He smiles, almost playfully. "That's not fair, though is it? You want to hear about my experience in the war but won't tell me about yours?"

"I'll try to tell you about mine if you tell me yours."

He hums as though thinking about your offer. "Tempting, but alas, I find it a difficult night right now to talk about my past."

"That's fine," You say. "I wasn't going to tell you about my experience anyways."

He gasps, pseudo-offended. "So you were planning on tricking poor ol' me?"

"Yes."

He tilts his head back and laughs heartily. "Never change, (last name)."

"I don't think I can," You look down at your hands before shoving one of them into your pocket, popping the lemon drop into your mouth. Though when you swallow a glob of spit, your neck hurts as though someone had pierced it with a bullet. "I don't think I'm capable of that."

"You still taking candy from that Dazai fella?" Joker asks with a hint of balefulness, and you nod wordlessly. "Next time he's going to show up in a white van with FREE CANDY spray painted over the side."

"Not funny," You blankly toss your coffee can into the fire. "Don't joke about things like that."

"I think it's pretty funny," Mizu comments from your other side with a slight giggle.

"I don't."

"Oh, cheer up, (last name)," She nudges your shoulder with hers. "It's never a bad thing to share some jokes. Now tell me a funny story."

You pull a face as if the lemon drop was sour enough to do so. "I don't have any funny stories."

"Any story, then," She says.

"Well, like what? Cinderella? Bluebeard's bride?"

"Tell me about something that happened to you when you were little," She then adds, "Pre-war."

So you tell her about the time your father used to ask you mathematical questions when you would be tucked into your mother's and his shared bed, because you were afraid of the dark. It was snowing that particular day, you say, and your mother was asleep, and you were counting numbers on your fingers when your father asked what 15 divided by 3 was.

"I didn't know the answer. Maths was never my strongest forte," You say. "Then my dad just laughed and said to go to sleep. But I couldn't sleep without knowing the answer. So I counted with my fingers, imagining 15 sheeps and a shepherd dividing them into 3. By the time I got the answer, my dad was already asleep. But I couldn't sleep so I played with my fingers as if I was tying an imaginary ribbon."