PIED PIPER | dazai osamu

1: diseased; betrayed into non-existence.

One could argue your room was a studio. It made sense that it was mistaken as one. A musician in their room, composing and testing out what sounds best in the deafening silence of isolation; you would be tightening the strings, loosening, strumming, playing, before being reminded to put them back into the suitcases with utmost care. (Did they ever consider your own frailty, though?) The studio was perfumed with a strong stench: Lily of the Valley, decorated with smooth mahogany furniture that always manages to smash into your hip every time you move around. Maybe it was because you had always been a stranger to the luxuries presented—that every time you came back from the fantastical world of the outdoors, the euphoria of the fresh air moved how you perceived the furniture in your head.

The studio, or the room, smells of flesh, like the distinct tang of a girl whose flesh has not been touched and her heart unexplored. She is a virgin to all things life has to give her. The room smells of purity. Light and barely existing; the innocence of female flesh not yet reduced to male masturbatory pleasure. Sometimes it is permeated with smoke when Mori or even the occasional Hitoshi comes by to listen to what you have made. If he stubbed the end of their cigarette into the ashtray three times, he liked it; if once, it needed more work.

Money has trickled into this room for years. You do not know where the money comes from, and whether or not it came from the fruit of your ability, you do not want to know. The windows are always sealed tight with some sort of adhesive. The crimson velvet of curtains is always draped over the tinted glass, but you can never find the courage to lift up and see what is beyond the comfort of this room. And besides, it was heavy. It felt like you were lugging the corpse of a dead man whenever you tried to move it. The suave leather chair, custom made to fit your body shape, proudly boasted its swirly golden décor where the edges ended with the open maw of a lion's face. You would practise playing the cello, double bass and harp there. Before the leather chair was a table, often swamped with yellowing paper of random music notes and lines that were drawn with no particular thought. And in front of the desk was a fireplace, flanked by two paintings of European women who stared blankly at you. (You always thought that the lack of your own race represented in these aesthetics was meant to isolate you.) Their expressions were pinched as though their tightly pulled back hair was causing them to pull a grimace. Their posture was stiff, shoulders tense as though they were soldiers or guards, and their skin grey-pale despite the fire being lit next to them.

Between them, over the mantle, was a large, gold-framed Venetian mirror. When the fire was extinguished and it was time for bed, you would stare at the reflection, the shadows casting such horrific darknesses over your face that you would flinch in terror. You somehow just couldn't make what you saw in it that corresponded to the physical anatomy of your face: there was your nose, your eyes, your lips, your cheeks, your ears—but you could simply not associate the image belonging to yourself. Your own reflection, image, was a stranger, as though they had passed through your body in a nightmare and ended up living their life in your physical being.

Elise, the blond girl, is barred from entering. You think it is because she might throw a fit and mess up the instruments that had been procured for you. You don't like her really, but that thought of having likes and dislikes seem inherently wrong, like the act of choosing what you wanted went against their orders in living the life they have blessed you with.

You could see Mori's hard lust in Western aesthetics, but the soft-edged sentimentality in buying things that he might have thought you'd liked. (You never used the crayons. They were too artificial to your tastes.) The bed is a canopy bed, with satin pink silk pooling at the edges and the mattress so soft that it feels like you are sleeping on quicksand. You are strictly given skin-tight nightdresses to bar you from the privilege of feeling bare skin. The temptations of flesh must be prevented, for the hunger that comes with it will triumph over all common sense. This is why men rape; this is why women get raped. Mori said. But why should the girl be kept from even hugging or recognizing her own skin for the sake of man who cannot comprehend civility? You have never touched your own skin, and the only exception was when the short-violet-haired woman came by every day to wash you. She washed away the powder from the strings of an instrument, the lingering scent of food, of tea, of the dust from luxuries that you do not touch.