Sunday 1.9 Incommensurate

[genuinelie.livejournal.com]

Ran went to kitchen, setting on a pot to boil.

Hands on the counter, he considered what had just happened.

It left him feeling unsettled.

He had tried. It was probably the most normal conversation he had had in many years, however sparse the actual words were.

What books did he like. What did he do on his time off.

Normal questions. What was Yohji asking him normal questions for? Like he actually wanted to get to know him? There was nothing left for Yohji to know. There wasn't any inner being lurking just beneath his surface. He had lived for Aya, and still lived for Aya. She had filled his being, made him animate. But she was awake now, and whole, and he no longer had to live for her. She did not need to live for him. She couldn't.

He shouldn't have bothered with the book in his room. He didn't know why he'd tried. It was a lie.

Ran was a lie.

Aya was a lie.

And yet, he still felt like Aya inside of himself, if one could feel like such a person. A vessel only meant for killing and justice. Filled with the blood of people no worse than himself, and the breath of a sleeping girl.

But the girl was no longer sleeping. He could no longer use her breath.

She was asking him to find his own breath now, but memories do not breathe, however clearly you see them.

And Yohji, Yohji had the audacity to act as though he had something to offer.

He did not deserve to have his life back.

He did not deserve to read self-help books as if he could be saved, as if he were like everyone else.

Everything he had done he did not regret. He had known he was giving up his life and his soul. He had no other path open to him, either then or now. His reason was indisputable, always with him in the form of a borrowed earring.

But he had never expected to survive.

Ran poured himself a cup of green tea and took a seat at the table, facing the door.

He had nothing to do but wait for his sister to return.

He knew no other way to be.