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The water beats down against my back when I finally just decide to grab my dick. Fyodor is probably cold, but that’s hardly my business. Jacking off will take a minute and leave him colder, but that’s still none of my business, again. The fantasy I use is always the same: I take a bunch of sleeping pills, and I stand up on the chair. I’m already drowsy as I climb up. My hand starts making a soft, disgusting, wet slapping sound that alerts Fyodor to the horrible things I’m doing. He hums curiously and presses his head to my nape, smiling against my neck. My eyes are closed to keep water and shampoo out, and because I can’t look at my dick while I jack off, or I go soft and feel terrible for the rest of the day. It’s why I only feel it when his body flushes against mine, and his hand gently clasps over mine, slick and wet, and way too cold. He changes my rhythm and grips a little bit tighter, slowly gliding a thumb over the head of my dick with each upstroke. In my head, I’ve put on my noose and have begun waiting for myself to go unconscious. The anticipation is what keeps me hard. I think about what people will say when they find me. I think about Fyodor. His poor, crying face that he has to hide in the bathroom, as he does far too often. It disgusts me a little, and I have to think about Chuuya instead. He’s easy to imagine for this, where he feels sad deep down, but it only comes out through his drinking. I hope Chuuya finds my body, and he has to be the one to tell everybody. I haven’t answered my phone for a few days or shown up at any of my old haunts, so he bangs on the door of my apartment. He doesn’t hear anything in response. He doesn’t worry, because this happens all the time. He picks the lock (less skillfully and slower than I would have, mind you) and opens the door to my shipping container. It is cold, and I hang in the middle. Chuuya cuts down my pale corpse, and he stands still in disbelief that it really, finally happened. No, wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Savour it. My heart pounds, and in my mind-palace, each beat presses against the soft bamboo rope I chose to have comfort me in my last moments. Fyodor kisses my neck. His hand tightens. My eyes go fuzzy and dark, and I stumble forward. I gasp out a little to keep the fantasy. Fyodor chuckles. A tiny peck behind my ear. The sleeping pills don’t prevent me from feeling absolutely all of it: the rope tightening, choking on my own spit, Fyodor’s hot breath against my neck and his dick, warm and half-hard against my backside. I feel everything. This time, I tied the noose wrong on purpose, so I’d get to feel every sensation of myself slowly dying. When I do it for real, it’ll be a quick break of the neck, fundamentally no different from a mousetrap. My eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of my head. Colours dance behind them. My hands buzz and grow cold, my head thuds and thuds with every heartbeat that just can’t reach past the rope. Life leaves my body. I come against the shower tiles. My little death is complete, my little suicide, even, had Fyodor not intervened. I open my eyes and watch as the evidence of my crime slowly washes down the drain like diluted glue for papier-mache. Sometimes I feel like a grade-school papier-mache sculpture. If you punched me, the thin crust would easily give way, and you’d only be met with an empty hole. Now you’ve done it. The sculpture is ruined. What will we do with it now?
You could probably fuck the hole.
Fyodor kisses my neck and smells my hair. It’s a reward for him to do which he always claims after sex. He likes smelling things a lot. Me, most of all. He likes it when I run out of my cheap bars of cow soap and have to smell like him in-between the days we go to the grocer. He likes it when I have one of those weeks where I only leave bed to piss and therefore only smell like hair grease and sex.
“You smell like a human,” He always says.
Right now, I smell like his shampoo. I watch the pale yellow tiles. I wonder what person goes to work every day to only have their hard work covered in cum. Maybe the tiles are made by machine. Either way, there’s a person out there whose work is being disrespected by my semen, and I’m sorry to them. If I had it my way, nobody would fuck, ever. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.
“Can we skip church?” I ask, turning around to kiss him.
It’s soft and sensual, in my opinion, at least. I throw my arms over his shoulders and really lean into it. My eyes are screwed shut to keep water and shampoo out. Water beats down on the top of our heads like rain in a happier and more romantic story. He grins into the kiss, my lips touching slippery enamel far too much, and he chuckles. I break away to inhale, I go right back in, and he reciprocates. I’d do anything not to have to go to church today. Not after this, at least. Neither of us is fit for that place. I’m not talking about homosexual sex acts, either. I just don’t think either of us is the kind of people who would ever put in the practical effort for redemption if we’re willing to do the things we do in this shower and bed. I couldn’t care less about being a fag. I care that I’m one for somebody like Fedya, and I wish I wasn’t. I could be one for Chuuya. I was content being one for Chuuya. I wasn’t exactly happy, and neither was he, but we both assumed that somebody who could simultaneously understand and put up with our bullshit would someday come by. I think I’ll always be that person for Chuuya. But Fedya is now that person for me. Fedya considers me that person for him. How nauseous it makes me to think about. He bites my lip. I whimper into the kiss.
“Osamu, if we skipped church every time you wanted to, we’d never go.”
Yeah, god forbid. I wish Fedya knew I was thinking about Chuuya while I kissed him. I think about Chuuya when we fuck, sometimes. Chuuya wasn’t more gentle than Fedya, that’s not what I yearn for. But with Chuuya, it’s not like he had to pretend to be gentle on the rare occasions that he was. Fedya is his polar opposite. He’s always ridiculously gentle because he can sense something is wrong with me, and when he isn’t gentle, it’s like he’s only sticking something inside of me to see if I crack further. It’s always creepy to let somebody come inside of you when you can tell they’re barely restraining the urge to completely consume you. He won’t do it, not like he cares, or anything. But rather because you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. What’s worse is I just let it happen, and I’m gonna keep letting it happen. He makes me turn off my brain, and that makes me feel good. He makes me come, and that makes me feel good. He cooks me food, and that makes me feel good. He holds me while I sleep, and that makes me feel good. All humans were ever supposed to do was fuck and eat and sleep. Fyodor just had to come along and make things complicated by forcing us to leave our caves and have relationships with one another, the ones where you pretend not to want anything in return. God, it’s such bullshit.
“Yeah, I never wanna go.”
He moves my hand to his dick, and turns his head to bare his neck to me. I press a chaste kiss to it, my lips and hands scurrying down his chest, and waist, and hips, until I’m on my knees for him. I may as well build a house there. If you lived here, you’d be home by now. His hand slides into my wet, still slightly-sudsy hair and pushes me forward, as if I had any other plans down here. I take him into my mouth, trying to breathe through my nose, but I accidentally snort up water and burn my sinuses. Fyodor’s hands don’t move as I try to cough the water up. So, that’s how this transaction is going to be, I think to myself. I grip his thighs and start moving: I bob back and forth on his dick in time with his thrusts and hand movements. My participation really isn’t necessary here, save for the obvious need for a mouth. Still, I make a small show of gagging on it to spur him on further. His breathing quickens a little, and I look up at him dumbly, in the way he likes best: of course, I see a terrible person before me. He’s panting and grinning and caressing my hollowed cheeks with his free hand. I have enough memories of people who think sweet touches are compensation enough for robbery. They’re all the same. It’s all the same. It’s the same every time. I’m crying right now and he thinks it’s because his dick is too big for my mouth. I want him to think it’s because his dick is too big for my mouth. I don’t want him to care. I hate the sloppy sounds this makes. The pattering of the shower can’t cover up the wet smacking of my mouth. I make myself sick. I hate all of this so much.
Before I realise, he shudders into my mouth. I spit him out into the drain. The shower ends. He towels me off like a lover. 恋人 instead of 愛人.* The good kind of lover. I want to be a good kind of lover. We bundle up for church and leave, shoulder to shoulder, mittened hands holding one another. If I live in this moment as someone who is not Osamu Dazai, I am very happy. As of right now, I am not supposed to be Osamu Dazai, but it keeps happening by accident.
***
Today is Monday, which is trash day. I wish we lived in a place that didn’t require clear trash bags because it means all the neighbours can see the condom wrappers he haphazardly throws into the kitchen bin. The condoms go in the bathroom bin, since he’s still so particular (and not neurotic, a title he vehemently opposes!) when it comes to sorting the trash, even if all of it ends up getting burned anyway. I shouldn’t really let the condom thing take up so much of my mental energy because it’s not like the neighbours see me or anything, but I feel like every interaction I have in this apartment is a war against my dignity. I don’t even have proper shoes for them to see me wear during an outing where I do things worthy of judgment. I have cheap sandals we bought at the hundred-yen store that I use to take out the clear trash bags, and I have Fedya’s extra church shoes, a size too big on me, that I also wear to church. It’s only one size, but they make me feel like a clown, flopping down the aisle and then sitting there with my eyes squeezed shut so I don’t have to look at the judgmental eyes of everyone else who can get up to take communion without going to hell. Keeping my eyes closed to pray is such a clever trick. It puts me in a Schrödinger’s cat situation where I’m simultaneously judged and respected by all the elderly people going to 7 a.m. mass with us. Fedya thinks I should get confirmed. I think he should shut up about it so much. Most of our church is missionaries and/or other foreigners, anyway. There’s a handful of successfully converted Japanese people, but the services are still half in English. The priest is funnier in English. For breakfast after church, we have blini with sour cream and cut-up strawberries. I like strawberries a lot. Yesterday, Fedya was lecturing me about how it’s six hundred yen for twelve strawberries, and how it would be much better for everybody if perhaps I didn’t want strawberries every week, and I felt guilty for a second before I reached for the little cake fork (that is now my strawberry fork) and mumbled that I’d think about it before skewering a few more little chunks to put on my blini. From the outside, it looks like I have him in the palm of my hand, making him buy me expensive fruits, DVDs, and the like. But I’m the one inside the house with him. The strawberry debacle after church was when I realised it would be a bad day. You can kinda already tell by 8 or 9 am if your day will be terrible, so I asked if we could go to the park.
“No.”
“Why not? We don’t do anything anymore.”
“It’s cold out. The cold is bad for you, especially considering you refuse to drink any of the kiretoremon* I buy you.”
“Yeah, because it tastes like I’m literally just eating a lemon. Why can’t we just go out? It’s boring as all hell in here. I’ll kill myself if I have to watch another trashy reality show. Can we go to the grocery store, at least?”
“We already went to the grocery store this week, and do not joke about that.”
“‘Cause I’ll actually do it? Because I will do it.”
“No, it is because you are not funny, generally speaking,” He says, punctuating the untrue insult by spooning some oatmeal into his mouth.
“I’m plenty funny.”
“You’re not. Please drop this, Osamu. We are not going.”
“No, no, I’m a grown man. I’m going to the park for a bit. I need fresh air. It’s way too stuffy in here. Would it kill you to open a window?” I say, standing up.
“Try paying the heating bill and see how well opening windows works out for you.”
“I’m go-i-i-ing!” I shout, walking to our bedroom and rifling through the dresser. Fyodor follows after me and frowns when I take an oversized V-neck sweater he gave me as a gift fairly recently. I really try not to think about the implication. I’m hoisting it over my head when he starts berating me again:
“Osamu, this is such a silly thing to start an argument about. Come back to breakfast, please.”
“No, I’m going out. Feel free to come with, by the way.”
“We already went out today. We spent the entire morning out. We got up so early, too. How unreasonable you are being right now.”
“No, you woke me up at 5 a.m. so you’d have time for head in the shower before Mass. It’s a twenty-minute walk at most. We spent the morning at Mass. Not walking. I want to walk. I am a grown adult who doesn’t need your permission to walk around outside.”
“I am not telling you to seek my permission, I am telling you that you are a wanted criminal and you cannot go outside alone for something as silly and purposeless as a walk.”
“Hey, if I get arrested, then you won’t have to deal with me anymore. I’m going.”
I push past him into the genkan and slip on my church shoes. Really, this makes the most sense for him to be pissed about, considering even he doesn’t wear his church shoes for going on walks, but he hardly even notices as he holds back pissy little stomps through the hallway.
“Osamu, I do not like you behaving in such a childish way. Can you please stop this silly tantrum and just stay inside?”
“No.”
“Whatever you find out there, it will not be the thing you are looking for, and you will come home defeated with nothing to show for the trouble you have caused.”
“How exciting.”
I slam the door behind me. He does not follow. At least I don’t think. I run down the little outdoor stairwell, out onto the street, enjoying the cool, crisp air. It smells like wetness and freedom. My shoes squelch on the rain-wet asphalt and flop against my slightly-too-small feet. They nearly slip from my heels as I skip down the road. My sweater isn’t enough to keep warm. That’s okay, I’ve been cold before. I’ll be cold again, but I won’t be this free again for a while. I prance down the road, dodging cars and cyclists, and I smile. I smile and smile down the street until I get to the crosswalk next to Lawson. I smile at the little man in the light, walking tall and confidently with his porkpie hat, silhouetted with twinkling green. I smile as I accidentally cross the street too fast—in-between the light turning green and the man turning red—and I smile as I am hit by a black, clearly imported, custom-made Porsche Panamera. I am flung several metres, and my head slams into the ground with a resounding ‘crack.’ The air is pushed out of me so swiftly, I mistook it for my soul leaving my body. I was only aware of my lack of unconsciousness—my presence of life—as I came to realise that I was lying on the ground, ribs aching, head in splitting pain, smiling as two men ran out of the car. A million colours sparkle in my eyes. None of them are the colour of the grey sky. One kneels next to me on the soggy asphalt and cradles my head. A canopy of black hair reminds me of last night. It reminds me of when I was thirteen. I smile. He smiles back. No, never mind. He doesn’t smile. He grins. He grins and grins.
I wake up at home.
A million zillion glow-in-the-dark stars twinkle above me, in haughty defiance of the concrete ceiling. This room is like a diorama or exhibit, perfectly preserved from the day Oda died. I hate that I ever moved back. That I gave him any fodder. I hate that this was a place to move back to. I know he’s next to me, smiling. There are plenty of things in this world that exist even when you can’t see them: money, God, disease, love. Mori is one of them. He may exist just to smile. I exist to sleep. I roll over on my side when a cold hand stops me.
“Good-morning starshine! The earth says hello!”
He is clad in a simple button-up and worn-out slacks. He’s missing the lab coat. If you saw him anywhere, you wouldn’t even recognise who he truly was, not for a second. Maybe a chill would run down your spine, like when you walk through a ghost. But there’s no way you’d know what he is. Who he is.
“Get away from me.”
“Daz-”
“I’ll scream. You know I will.”
“Who would hear you? Who would care? When did that ever work?”
When did that ever work, I wonder? I’ve screamed in so many places it would make your head spin. Rarely, if ever, did it stop Mori from making good managerial choices. And it never stopped his friends. It never stopped his friends. Even if I hate him, I secretly pray that he didn’t know. If he did, I don’t know what I could consider him. Could the only thing worse than a monster be a man with a guilty conscience? Do you think a man with a guilty conscience is scared of monsters, too? Is he scared of himself?
“Where’s Elise?”
“Outside. Would you like to see her?”
“No.”
“Billy Pilgrim is in my office. But you cannot see him.”
“He’s my dog, by the way,” I hiss.
“He’s our dog. He’s the family dog,” Mori grins, nay, he smiles—a genuine smile—and leans over the bed to hug me. He squeezes my arms together and nuzzles my cheek, stubble scratching the soft skin, and I almost puke. I hate stubble. I hated stubble before Fyodor. I even hated it before Mori, who currently still smells like that one expensive cologne with the weird jet-black square bottle that he won’t let up using. It’s so overwhelming, but I can still smell at least three anxiety cigarettes and one celebratory bottle of wine on him. He does this dumb gay thing when he gets stressed, where he paces in circles over and over with his arms crossed and a cig in his mouth. One time, he spent fifteen minutes doing that after I fucked up a mission. He spent fifteen minutes deciding if he should beat the shit out of me. I bet he wants to beat the shit out of me now, but it would weigh on his conscience too much. He was so worried for his poor boy. Probably shouldn’t have hit him with his car. But I digress.
“I’m leaving. Thank you for the bed and for hitting me with your car. Drive faster next time. Make it count,” I wince as I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed.
“Chuuya is downstairs. I told him he has a surprise. He thinks you’re dead. I think it will make him happy to know otherwise.”
I crawl back into bed. I am defeated. He was always good at this kind of thing. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Chuuya is only a member of the Port Mafia to be used as leverage against me for times when I don’t want to be seen by anybody.
“So, who are you staying with? They must be good at what they do, considering this is the first time I’ve seen you since you left that pub.”
He says it with such anger. Such visceral frustration. Maybe I should be more grateful to Fedya for that small luxury of civilian life.
“My new lover.”
“Ah.” He pauses to think. “Is she nice?”
“He’s fine.”
“Does he know about your…status? So to speak,” Mori says, flitting his hands about to caress the invisible manifestation of countless human lives that should weigh on my back every day, but doesn’t.
“He knows. And he doesn’t care because he loves me and misses me and is surely worried sick about me right now.”
“You know, Chuuya makes me check the morgues once a week.”
The implied “I thought you were dead, too.” doesn’t escape me. He obliged Chuuya. I don't know any other time he’s actually done that. Surely he thought he’d find my pale, or bloated, or charred, or crushed, or mutilated corpse underneath a white sheet. He runs a hand through his hair. It’s got little grey bits that I don’t recall him having, what, a year ago? Some pride burns in my chest at the idea that it’s my fault.
“Regardless, this lover of yours is clearly keeping you healthier. I’m glad you’re out of those insalubrious conditions. You were disgusting, Dazai.”
Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag. He’s done being happy, so it’s time for a classic Mori lecture. I can leave. I could always leave. But I don’t wanna go through the effort of having to make a new place called home. I always take the easy way out. This is the easy way. I could never see Fedya again. I could go back to Mori’s arms. Dad. If I called him that, he’d be so happy his heart would explode. Then I could escape and sail to the North Pole. Or somewhere far away from here. I need to escape the arms of men. All of them. Burly arms, skinny ones, cashmere coats, and sweaty skin. I need all arms away from me forever. I could be alone in the North Pole and get eaten by a polar bear.
“I like living with him.”
“Did I ever tell you about my time in Germany?”
“No. I didn’t know you’d even been to Germany.”
“Ah… I see. Well, it was after the war, I’d gone for a semester to finalise some things with my PhD, and I met a girl there.”
“Uh-huh”
“Oh, Dazai, you can’t possibly understand what it was like. She was a few years younger than me and was a ballerina at this large company in Berlin, I think it has a new name now, and I found her on the street one night, completely piss-drunk. Oh, I remember it so well, the poor thing. She’d been kicked out of her house by her ex-boyfriend and had nobody to turn to. Both of her parents were killed in the war.”
“That’s barely original.”
“I suppose it isn’t. Sometimes I wonder if I had something to do with it. Her parents, that is. But in a way, we all did. Everyone had to play their part.” He taps his chin. “Anyway, where was I? She was a ballerina, and she was beautiful, and she had two dead parents, and a terrible ex-boyfriend. Yes, yes. So, I did the gentlemanly thing and let her stay at my house, and as people do, we eventually fell in love. It was wonderful for a very long time. For a whole semester, I’d come home to her, she’d care for me while I studied, we’d go to the Wiese an der Insel der Jugend and look at the ducks and people, and we loved each other very much. She made me want to live in Germany forever.”
“But, obviously, you live here, and she’s just a story you forget to tell people now.”
“Yes, now hush, I’m getting there. As the semester began to end, she had to have realised I’d have to go home. I had my family, and my practice, everything I knew was in Japan. It only happened to be that everything I loved was in Germany. How unfortunate that was. I woke up in the middle of the night to her sitting upright in bed, knees clutched to her chest, silently sobbing while looking straight ahead, focused on nothing at all. She said to me:
‘You’re going to leave me, aren’t you, Rintarou?’
I said, well, at least I remember saying:
‘Well, I have to, don’t I?’
‘So you didn’t anticipate me sharing my life with you? Did you not fully share yourself with me?’
‘No, I suppose I didn’t.’
‘Have you considered how exactly I would fit into your future? Or were you just going to worry about it later?’
‘Well, my dear, it’s not that easy. It’s not as if I can just stay here, can I?’
‘Did you ever think about it, though? Did you once consider the consequences your love has on other people?’
‘...No, I suppose I didn’t.’”
He looks off into the dark of the room for a while. His eyes are glassy.
“It turns out that she’d missed a menstrual cycle or two and became worried. She took a pregnancy test a few hours before our conversation, and it came out positive. She took another in the morning, after our talk, and it was negative. Just an overreaction. Still, I digress, her feelings were real, even if the baby wasn’t. We didn’t talk much after that. She simply cried a lot and told me she would move in with a friend at the conservatory when I left Germany. I told her she could write me letters, and she should visit me in Yokohama.”
“Did you ever write her back?”
“No,” He sighs. “But to this day, I continue to pay for the apartment I had at the time, so I still get her letters. She sends them every couple of months. A few weeks ago, she told me she’s getting married to a man whom she doesn’t love. I’m invited to the ceremony. I think that she really hopes I’ll show. It doesn’t matter if I go or not. She’ll be disappointed either way.”
“How cruel a man you are, Mori.”
“Please, Dazai. You know yourself that people in our line of work can’t take on that liability; loving others.”
“So the kindest thing was to set her free, huh?”
He smiles.
“She’s hardly free now, is she?”
I think about Chuuya. I stop myself. I think about Fedya, who is at home. How many homes do I have to return to? How many places am I able to be found in? How many times will I be found? How many well-meaning devils will hit me with their cars and hands and dicks and hearts until I’m strewn about everywhere?
“You know what makes me happy?”
I don’t respond.
“You will never be able to escape the fact that you loved me. For the rest of your life, it’s going to follow you. There’s really never going to be a part of your life untouched by the fact that you loved me. It doesn’t matter how long it happened for, or if you claim not to anymore—though, I don’t believe you when you say that—the fact of the matter is, ever since the moment you carved that Papa-shaped hole in your heart, when I am not around, it will seep out everywhere you go, and you will mistake everything you see for me—you will mistake everything something to fill it, mistake everything for Papa. I know you feel my absence every day, and what’s so terrible for you is that such absence truly does hurt.”
“Everything hurts.”
“I know. And aren’t you so brave for living, despite it all?”
“I feel like the German girl. You just keep making people love you, and you do nothing about it. I can’t imagine being that kind of person. That's selfish.”
“When you love somebody, when you accept someone into your heart, for a moment, you understand how they see the world. You become them, in a way. Do you think you haven’t been changed by your love for me?”
“I’m just better than you are. I’m not nearly as rotten a person.”
“Do you truly believe your darling lover isn't at home, worried sick about you? You don’t act as you know. You don’t act as you should.”
“I don’t care about things like that. You were here for months, worried sick about me. I hardly cared. It hurt to think about, so I chose not to. It’s not as if I never cared at all. Not like you.”
“Ah, but your hurt was an expression of love itself. By both of us hurting, I felt your love, and you felt mine. And I’m satisfied with that. You can’t help but feel your love differently, just as I do. You can’t help but express it wrong, just as I do. You can’t help but leave a bloody wound in people, just as I do, because—and this is what tickles me—you’ve loved me so much you see the world the same as me.”
I stay quiet.
“Maybe you had a chance before all this. But we’ll never know. It’s not even worth thinking about.”
“I can change.”
“You can change, but you won’t. You hate doing difficult things. You only hate this conversation because it’s difficult.”
“I hate this conversation because I’m having it with you.”
“Would you rather have it with this man?”
“I’d rather kill myself.”
“Please don’t joke about that. Not when I finally have you back here with me.”
“I’m gonna be gone again the second you leave.”
“I know.”
He stands up from his chair and climbs into the bed next to me, behind me, where I’ve turned away from him. Maybe he’s had a bad dream. He holds me. He has such a weak body for a powerful man. He’s bird-boned and gangly. He is nothing at all. He’s only alive because I let him. I’m only alive because I’m incompetent. Mori’s arms encircle my chest, and he holds me. He holds me like one of those big carnival teddy bears that nobody ever actually wins. If I turn my head, there will be countless luminescent green stars on the too-tall ceilings that Mori himself put up for me, just because I asked. I held the ladder for him. Does he know how many nights I drowned in this room?* He would care if he loved me. I wish he didn’t love me. Love makes you such a burden. Love is something that makes burdens even worse. A hiccupping sob erupts behind me.
“I missed you so much, Osamu. I missed you more than anything in the world. Worse than Elis*, worse than being a normal man. How dare you leave me? How dare you!” He grips me tighter, so when his tears fill the room, I am not swept away to safety. We will be weighed down at the bottom together, and we will die.
“I think I missed you, too.”
“I know you did. You always miss everybody. It’s a bad habit of yours.”
“When you wake up, you will never see me again.”
“I know.”
His face presses into my back, and I can feel the wetness of his screwed-shut eyes against my shirt, soaking into my skin. A high-pitched wail leaves his body like an exhale, like a ghost. You can hardly tell that he is still somehow happy despite all this. I can tell. I stare at the light behind the door. There is a girl behind the door, named after an ex-girlfriend he didn’t love as much as he was supposed to. His guilt was their baby. Plenty of people who don’t love each other have babies. Plenty of people don’t love their babies. It’s unfortunate, but it happens. I was Mori’s baby. I will always be his baby in his eyes. It is very unfortunate that he happened upon the burden of loving me. If he loved nothing at all, he would be a different, more efficient man. He would be nothing remotely close to the Mori Ougai we’ve grown to know and love. Everything would be easier to swallow if he loved nothing at all, if he was incapable of being so easily swayed by something so paltry. Dogs love no matter what. Billy Pilgrim has no idea what Mori’s done, and he loves him. Billy Pilgrim has no idea what I’ve done, and he loves me. I have no idea what Mori’s done, and I love him. I have no idea what Fedya’s done. I love him.
“I’m gonna miss you when I leave, though,” My voice snaps, crackles, and pops. “You’re right. I’m gonna miss you so much it’s gonna kill me. But I have to go. And I wish it wasn’t your fault. I wish you could’ve been better and stronger even more than you do. And I wish you were good. Why couldn’t you have just been good?”
“I don’t know,” Mori whispers this next part very quietly because he is afraid Mori Ougai would hear: “I’m sorry.”
“You could’ve done so much more than you did. I wish you didn’t have to be sorry.”
“I know,” He sniffles. It is at this moment that I realise that I have never ever seen him cry before. I’ve only heard it. I’m only hearing it now. If I turn around, I will be met with a miracle of the natural world. I will see proof I cannot ignore. I can learn from Mori. I can stop ignoring it. I can open the box and climb the hill and see the ocean. But I don’t want any of those things. I just want my Dad. And he’s here right now.
I fall asleep.
I awake to Mori clutching me. I have no idea what time it is. I peel his arms off me and crawl out of bed. It’s dark, but I can see his face. He’s smiling. He looks innocent. I’ll choose to remember him that way.
I take the emergency exit stairs down twenty floors. Chuuya isn’t in the lobby. I’m sorry for disappointing him. It’s dark out. There’s like six hundred yen in my pocket. It’s barely enough for the last train home. The entire time I’m on the train, I’m staring at the window, trying to cement Mori’s happy face in my memory. I see its sad version reflected to me in the window glass. I focus so hard I nearly miss my stop. I get home. The door is unlocked.
“So, you’re done with your little tantrum?”
He’s sitting in his armchair, and hasn’t even looked up from his book to greet me. He wasn’t worried sick. He wasn’t worried anything.
“Yeah.”
“Did you learn your lesson?”
“Yeah.”
“Come here.” He softly pats his knee. He beckons. I climb into his lap and press my forehead against his. I wrap my arms around his shoulders. We pantomime together.
“I missed you while I was gone.”
“I missed you, too. What did you do?”
“Nothing important.”