A Litany of Synchronous Events [Dazai Osamu]

prologue;

prologue; 

a deceitful reoccurrence of lost tragedy

Ever since you can remember opening your eyes in a strange, obscure place, you've wanted to permanently close them. Ripples of your own tears wet your face as you struggled to catch your breath; you immediately look at your hands for reassurance that yes, you are indeed human, that this was all actually happening—yet, the aching emptiness inside your chest partook in letting you know you had unfortunately survived whatever had attempted to end you. Perhaps, this was something most people would consider fortunate, but you were different.

A less callous version of yourself would have been accustomed to treating such an event as a representation of growing luck, a sign that you had to rebuild your life and begin anew. However, you wondered of no such thing; your brain was hollow and so were the skies right then. What was the meaning of beginning anew, in the first place? The longer you stared at your hands, the heavier this feeling grew. You shifted your gaze to your left and found the water body that had pushed you to the land, not wanting anymore of you to float over its surface. Above the horizon, you saw the sun, beginning its own life for the day, and that was when you realised you were crying. Your own sobs masked the sounds of your heart palpitating life throughout your body, and you cried not knowing why you were doing so. All you knew was just one simple thing.

You had lived, when you didn't want to. Why you didn't want to, why you had survived, why you had been washed ashore on this foreign looking land, you did not know. In fact, you knew nothing.

You were hollow.

After what seemed like a few minutes of wasteful tear shedding, you slowly rose from where you sat and thought of the next best thing. You remembered your name, you remembered that bit about yourself without any problem, yet everything else was a blur; it was as if an essence of yourself had stayed behind in that river that had washed you over to the land, keeping that part of you. Whether it was to save you or put you to ruin, you did not know. You did not know a lot of things. You checked yourself and noticed that you were wearing simple, yet drenched, clothes—a pair of pants with heavy pockets, perhaps they were not your own, you did not know; a dress shirt and a jacket, both drenched, not in the least helping you stay warm just then. The sun looked so gloriously pale and tangerine that you couldn't tell if it was twilight or dawn, yet another mystery that could only unfold when it wanted to.

You checked your left pocket and found nothing but sand, however, your right hand revealed a small bill—1000 yen—with a message written on it. You didn't know who wrote it, you didn't know who it was written for, perhaps it was for the person whose clothes you were wearing. Perhaps, it was for you. You didn't know.

Find Dazai.

The simplicity of the words almost shocked you; did the person know you would wake up not even remembering who you were, except your own name? Or, did the person's plan fail to succeed because you were washed ashore mysteriously and lost all your memory in the process? Was this Dazai person the one who could tell you who you were? The aching nothingness in your chest almost had you trembling as you realised that it was the dawn; the skies were getting brighter, people were slowly beginning to leave their homes and start the day.

You stared at the message for a second longer, before trying to figure out what good the instruction would do.

Instead, you crumbled the 1000 yen note, shoved it into your wet pockets, and continued walking toward a place you didn't know. Because after all, you didn't need a memory to know how to beg for alms.

༛༛ ༛ ༛༺༻༛ ༛ ༛༛

That memory of yours was tucked in religiously, almost, and was a part of your life that you willingly chose to forget. Strange reasons apart, you never parted ways with that 1000-yen note, you managed to hide it in one of the cupboards at your new home. Yes, home; you had managed to make a living in the span of three-years, finally moving out of a family that had lovingly taken you in out of the goodness of their hearts; you were no longer living as a paying guest, you were a regular person, with a regular job—you took pride in the way you slowly climbed the ladder by yourself.

You refer to the day of your beginning as 'that day'; and on that day, you met Father Phillip, whose blond hair and blue eyes did enough to intimidate you with it strictness miles away. You met Father right outside a church, he looked to be watering plants, minding whatever was his own business and didn't look like he had time for a vagabond to show up looking for answers. Instead of asking him anything else, you bent over to him, knelt in front of him, pinched your ears in a premature apology and the words painstakingly fell from your lips, "Can you please, please help me?"

The rumours you heard about Father Phillip were outrageous. The name he carried behind his back would have given you all the more reasons to avoid him, but it was Father who had helped you. He let you work in the church, which helped you earn some money in the side; he helped you look for a house, took you to the doctor who had given you no answers but just asked you to hope that time would heal all things; it was Father who had ensured you were grounded, when a deep set desire to kill yourself had been born. You did not know if it was just you who was the recipient of Father's kindness, considering there were so many people who kept asking you if he had mistreated you in any way. When no negative answer slipped past your tongue, they either assumed you were different or just plain oblivious. You didn't know where you fit, either. 

Yet, with painful obviousness, your attempts to kill yourself had come to a halt for the time being. You didn't know why you tried to struggle and hold on, or whether it was Father's kindness that you didn't want to waste by ending it all in one clean sweep. You didn't know if it was just the painful reminder that the memories you had lost were the sole reason for you to want to end everything, or if the memories you had lost were inevitably the reason for you to keep living. Without an answer, you thought it was a bit sad to die. On difficult nights, your hands shook and the sight of the ground three floors above from where you stood was such a bright sight; the incoming cars and the sound of orchestrated traffic blinded you to a lull—a lull that kept whispering soothing words in your ear, telling you to let go, loosen up, stand on the ledge and just fall, and it'd all be over.

One night, you stood there, thinking how easy it would be to do just that. Yet, when you stood, mind thoughtless and clear, suddenly a raging memory hit you out of nowhere—it was not so raging when you had experienced it for the first time, yet, here it was; slapping you across the face, telling you that you still had something left to do.

Find Dazai, the 1000-yen note screamed into your mind. You were not going to make that effort, but with the way you were breathing heavily, thinking of an old, aching man in the place of this 'Dazai' person, you were given the one thing that prevented you from taking the plunge.

You were given hope. A short, hardly breathing, minuscule bit of hope.