Work Text:
MONDAY: I HAVE NOTHING TO TELL YOU SO I’LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING
I hate you sometimes, L tells me. His fingers climb up my neck like that of a bottle and he could kill me here, this ugly boy, this rooftop underneath me, the world a tree to fell. I hum in acknowledgement and it’s partly a reciprocation and partly because I can’t muster the energy to do anything else. How was today? Shit. Is that so?
I hate you too, I tell him, closing my eyes. Exhaustion is an admission of weakness but I’m out of back pockets – overflowing with frivolities, and tofu brained idiots who masquerade as college students, and professors who cannot see past the shine of their Oxfords to recognise that stupidity is both a vice and a disease and that they themselves are the vector, and my neatly shuffled deck of smiles, tucked at the forefront for ease of access - and the stitching of my front pocket struggles over the rotting enormity of the world. A tree, an infection, or a button, like something to thread a needle through to close around a gap. A bright and obvious gap. Disillusionment is a shroud and I am disappointed in everyone around me, and L, but only sometimes, and never myself.
He hates me and I hate him and, considering his fingers twitch but never decisively curl, it’s as good of a confession as it gets.
*
TUESDAY: DISQUIET IS QUIETING
I go home, and the lock is turned the wrong way. At the slightest nudge the lip of the door parts, bowing, and L isn’t there anymore but the traces of him pollute the sterility. Faint but persistent enough that, by the time I toe off my shoes, I can convince myself to be angry about it.
*
WEDNESDAY: ALL MY DREAMS OF YOU ARE NIGHTMARES; YOU’RE NEVER GONE LONG ENOUGH FOR ME TO LEARN
Wednesday, the middle child of the weekday, tame of heart and hesitant of breath, is ill-suited for the party that Misa, after a few well timed seductive blinks, convinced our class into hosting. I could have easily turned the vote around, but to be approachable you have to present yourself imperfect. I am just like you, see? I like inebriation and I associate with stupidity and I am so relatable. Around us our classmates stumble and laugh with sticky mouths, light pearling spit-shiny over the engine roar of warm bodies. Every time the light swings back over a new scene erupts on the floor. Dark, undulating sea. I only need to step forward and it will part around me, this swell and crest and break. From her perch at the edge of the crowd the deejay rocks her head so violently that her hair slices through the air, music squealing under the twitch of her fingers. Slowly everyone is losing their minds.
Still, I have limits. I sit at the fringe of the dancefloor and mouth the hem of my glass and steel myself for Misa’s presence. Despite being the biggest advocate for the party, she is sitting in the chair next to mine and inching towards me across the table that, just an hour ago, the bartender kindly informed me before I could rest my elbows on it, was nursing the fermenting remains of someone’s beer sickness.
The lights throw her hair into sharp relief, so blond that it becomes white. The long line of her throat pulses when she sucks down a shot – so quickly that the bartender darts over a worried glance, then swiftly moves forward to refill her glass – her eyes blown wide but still lucid. Drunk, but Misa is always drunk. She can easily drink our class under the table, cracking open beer cans with acrylic press on nails. I am not beyond admitting that she is beautiful, but I feel only disgust. Behind us a group of wasted guys with bad haircuts are ogling her bare thighs. Can’t she go to them instead? Hair is subjective, I’m sure.
“Light. Please date me. Light.” She slurs, smiling like a fool. My name is butchered inside her mouth and, as I’m expected to, I reward her with a smile. “Misa. You seem drunk. I don’t think you should be attempting to converse with me right now.”
“I love youuuu.” She croons. She is a beautiful singer when she isn’t drinking herself to early liver failure, and disgust, like a living thing, curls up inside me when I hear her voice breaking apart. Her false lashes scrape her cheekbones. “Will you date meeeee.”
I put a comforting, platonic hand on her shoulder. She sighs at the contact and nuzzles my palm. Her head sways and I move her drink aside before she can knock it over. She is the perfect image of everyone I hate: a sack of meat without originality. Society is a conglomerate of people. It can only function when the people make an effort.
She fumbles for her drink and I discreetly slide it out of her reach. I am above childish pettiness and this is because I care about her wellbeing, but I can’t deny that it’s entertaining watching her grope the air blindly and frowning for once. She gives up and leans towards me, cheap liquor steaming over my face. “You’re amazing and I’m amazing, which I know because everyone likes me and compliments me and thinks I’m pretty, so we should just date! I don’t understand why you don’t like me. Why don’t you like me, Light.”
L is not at the party. I close my eyes briefly and I see him like a dream: cocooned in my blanket, spilling crumbs over my bedsheet, running my hot water — and that shit is expensive — until the mirror fogs a thick white so that he can draw crude stick figures and insult my hair and cologne and speech cadence and whatever he likes most about me today. The shirt he’s wearing is too big for him, creasing unflatteringly at the elbows, even though my closet is right there beside the bed, ajar and unlocked, inviting his unconsented rummaging. I see all this and I hate being with him, but I should be with him, not here, dealing with the dregs of society.
A tree, I remind myself, and I imagine that outside, the moon hangs like a scythe, curved enough to hang a bag on.
“I think you’re pretty.” I tell Misa, and, bracing myself, put my hand on her cheek. Some of her makeup tacks to my palm as I steer her head towards the boys huddled at the back. “Look, I’m a little busy right now. The assignment is due in two days, remember? The ones over there, they like you. They’d love it if you talked to them, I’m sure.”
Misa, by virtue of being a pop idol, has a Pavlovian response to sentences like this. An industry doll at its finest. The subtlest tilt of her neck will flock crowds to her, those that love her like hammers love nails, that dream her into doorless rooms and handleless windows for harvest; you are a carnival ride, you are divinity, you are the face of all my faceless comforts. There is a word for it, parasocial, but Misa, hollow thing that she is, invites affection without discrimination. They validate her, and to her I’m just another source for her to leech validation from. She accepts the value I assign to her existence – a negligible amount – as her reason for living, a one-sided codependency, and it disgusts me. I am more than my body. I am far beyond maternal boundaries. I remove my hand and slowly she lifts her head, blinking like the world is very dead, and turns to where I’m subtly gesturing towards.
“Would they.” She murmurs. In a shocking display of dexterity, she swings her stocking-less legs, heels and all, over the stool without losing her balance.
“Yes.” I encourage.
She rubs her eyes. Her makeup is still perfectly intact. It must be very expensive. “Okay. I’ll do it for you, Light. You’re so caring. I don’t understand how you care about the people that you don’t even like, you’re a wonderful person.”
“I don’t dislike them.”
“It’s okay to dislike them. You’re trying anyway.” She blinks again. “Hey, where’s that guy that always follows you around?”
“L? We’re friends, don’t say that. It’s rude.” Hah. Wait till L hears this.
She pouts, expecting me to continue the conversation. There is no conversation. I exhale silently. Patience is a saint and I am God. I smile at her, and look at my teeth, all charm, no bite, I am so reliable. “Go on. They’re waiting for you.”
She drifts away and if tolerance was a drink sold at the bar I would buy it as she downs alcohol by the litre. I detest her because she is smarter than she consistently dissuades people into believing, beautiful in the shallow, browning way of overripe fruit. I tolerate her clumsy advances because, as they say, keep your friends close, your enemies hanging off your shoulder, and your potential allies as tight as a noose around your throat.
Still, a Fashion Design major. What a joke.
*
STILL WEDNESDAY: DIG UP THE ROOT OF THE ROOT AND HOLD IT TO THE LIGHT; A LIFETIME’S WORTH.
“You are a nerd.” L declares. He is eating cake straight out of the box and watching a National Geographic documentary on the television. His eyes flicker to me just once and then, like he’s somehow disappointed by what he sees, return the mating habits of blue whales. His sleeves are so large that they dip into his frosting, but, horrifyingly, he doesn’t seem to care.
I aggressively hang my coat on the hanger and try to pinch the creases away. Through the window the moon is like I imagined, opening up the ribcage of the sky with all of the grace and none of the precision: too many incisions showing too many stars, a salt shaker’s worth. We are so much smaller and insignificant than we believe, and I don’t doubt my own adequacy, but everything stands relative to each other, hunger incarnate, chasing and eating our own tails. Nobody will know my adequacy because everyone else is so painfully inadequate and it scares me more than I admit, even to myself, and even to him.
“The assignment is due in two days.” I tell him, opening my computer. I am too principled to lie about inane things.
He licks his fingers erotically to annoy me. “Nerd.”
“I am the future of our country.”
“You’re smart enough to ace everything without studying beforehand. Like I am.” He gestures to himself, his cream smeared sleeve swinging. He’s going to dirty my pillows and I’m going to let him and I don’t care as much as I should. I hate him like a lover, hate his idiodysyncrasies and his convoluted humor and the skeletons he christens his closet with, the domestic bitterness a small man on my doorstep, impatiently waiting to be let in, and I’ll let him, I will. I’ll water the plants I don’t have and wash the dishes I don’t use if that will chase away the cohabitation that, unobtrusively and entirely without consent, situated itself inside my dormitory, nameless, formless.
The fork drops from his hand. “Oops. Sorry.” He says unapologetically.
I heave a sigh and hand him a plastic ruler. “Pick that up.”
He takes the ruler and nudges the fork away with his toes. “Of course. Thank you.” He digs the ruler into his cake with exaggerated gusto. “Want some?”
No. “No.”
The normalcy of his presence is unsettling in how much it doesn’t unsettle. In the reflection of my Word document I can see the plot hewn into the rough cloak of time across my room, undone and redone stitches: the fog on the bathroom mirror melting into condensation, blurry drawings losing definition, the furthermost edge of my bedsheet yanked loose. The air conditioner hisses with a vengeance but I’m too disciplined to crawl into bed with him just to stave off a small chill. Hah, plan foiled. Take that!
“I can make a spare key.” He offers for what must be the umpteenth time. “Leaving your door open for me is a pretty big security hazard. You have too many worshippers for your own good. Sorry. Fans.” He corrects after a stilted pause.
“No, no, worshippers are fine.”
He frowns with amusement. “You can’t go around telling people that.”
You’re not people. “I don’t. Did you do the assignment?”
“No.”
“Oh. You should start soon.”
“No, of course I fucking did it. Who do you think I am? Mihael?”
“Woah, woah. Blue whales are making you aggressive. I think you should turn that off and come closer.”
He doesn’t turn off the documentary but, still wrapped in the blanket like the stuffing of a very unappetising bread roll, inches over to me. I accidentally press my space bar six times and delete it all in quick succession. He is hardly close and his presence is diminutive at best, uncomfortable at worst, but he smells like the detergent that I wash my pillows with, very meticulously, every other week. Frosting smudges on the seams of my blankets but I supposed I’ll have to deal with it. He has dirtied my pillows and my lack of annoyance only serves to annoy me further.
“If you love me, you should just say so.” L tells me flatly. He impales a strawberry with the long side of the ruler and checks its length. Even I can’t bite back a wince when a pale red stain blots the pristine landscape of my blanket. “This is an unusually small strawberry. Let’s set fire to every commercial bakery in Japan.”
“I don’t love you, and you’re overreacting. All of Japan?”
He grumbles and retreats further into my ruined blankets. At this point he is more amorphous shape than college student. “Tokyo.”
“Attaboy.”
“You are so fucking condescending.”
“You can leave if you want.”
He doesn’t want to leave his burrow and abandon his cake, and I don’t want him to leave. He knows that and I know that. He knows that I know that he knows that I know, and so on.
Politely he ignores me and I resist the overwhelming urge to hit my head on the table. It might damage my neurons and I shudder at the prospect of becoming like Misa. The clock has already ticked from 11 to midnight, and behind me L watches in unimpressed silence, licking cream around his mouth, as the great barnacled back of a whale breaches the thin division between the sea and the sky, cresting impossibly tall, the blue like that of a daydream. How flimsy the distinction of things. Division of power is a fundamentally human concept, because we cannot comprehend or accept entities greater than the individual us. So we fragment power, tuck them into silver spoons, and function in an incohesive system. That is why I’m not on the bed and mentally critiquing a National Geographic documentary and L isn’t sitting at his desk and berating himself for wasting his time with pointless conversation. They – referring to the ambiguous divine-beyond-divinity – decided that together we would be limitless and, terrified, decreed us two individual beings. But I know though. And so does he.
We are not soulmates, we are a catastrophe, the shipwreck lying in wait for the ship. His cheekbones sunken like the punctured hull of the aftermath. And I hate him, I do. If given the chance I have no doubt that he’ll kill me for a penny harvested from the sidewalk. But nobody has approached him with a coin yet and in the limbo we thrive, growing in all unsuitable directions.
Every day I see him is the day I met him. Sometimes he colonises my room and sometimes I see him up at the roof and let him amuse myself by dangling the bait of death in front of me with every unassuming touch. My hands, the back of my head, my throat.
He doesn’t know that I have nothing to be afraid of. I won’t die, you see. I am too good to die.
“Misa is fucking annoying.” I tell him after finishing my last paragraph.
He snickers and doesn’t bother covering it up. “Tell your mother that she’s your girlfriend to get her off your back.”
“She already thinks I have one.”
“Do you now?”
“She thinks I do. God, L, have some reading comprehension.”
But I have you.
*
THURSDAY: BUT IF BY YOU YOU MEAN WE
The next day he finds me before I do. I am sitting cross-legged and estimating the calories in my lunchbox. Usually I don’t do this but today my hair wouldn’t yield under my comb and I spent an embarrassing amount of time swearing vengeance on the communal dryer for shrinking my clothes before realising I was essentially forcing my head through my left arm sleeve. Despite my bad day I functioned perfectly throughout my lessons and ensured I stood in a very visible spot when I fed my leftover sourdough crust to the birds tottering around my feet as I do every Thursday. Still, my brain isn’t working as eloquently as it should and L rudely interrupts my lamentations about the cumbersome nature of a physical body by throwing a juice box at me.
It hits my forehead. I almost throw it back at him, but I channel my irritation into punching the straw through the hole instead.
“Orange juice.” He tells me unnecessarily, and shifts closer.
I squeeze the packet and it accidentally crumples. “L. Tell me something intelligent before I die of stupidity.”
“You’re so different when you’re with other people, do you know that?” He reaches forward and strokes my hair condescendingly. I bat his hand away immediately. “Mister Perfect isn’t worried that I might rat him out, and that’s funny, because that implies trust.”
“Nobody would believe you. You’re just a weirdo." I tell him as factually as possible. “Misa called you the guy who follows me around. She doesn’t even know your name.”
“Light, are you feeling okay? You’ve never used Misa as a reference point for your opinions before.”
“Fuck you.”
“Poor you, huh?”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m not that against the idea.” He smirks and fishes candy from his pocket. “Want one?”
“No. Don’t be vulgar.”
“Your loss.” He shoves the wrapper into my hand, sticky side down. Fucking bastard. “Be a dear and help me throw this away.”
“This is why no one likes you.” I fold it into my pocket anyway because I don’t litter. The purpose of food is nutritional content, not pleasure, so I bite into my store bought onigiri slowly. The afternoon bears down on us, bruising the open umbrella of the sky with opacity. Sweat pearls on L’s collarbone like a rarity to collect.
“You’re on the roof. You let me do all sorts of things to you. You’re a law student, don’t make inaccurate statements. However will you crush your opposition?”
I’m offended by this. “I don’t have worthy opposition.”
He laughs an ugly sound. “I never said anything about worthiness. God, you’re a piece of shit. You play model student to the entire world but behind all the masks and layers you’re just a college student with a god complex and a very bad case of narcissism trying to be more than he is, and it annoys me, you know. Try looking away from the mirror for once. There are so many people around you. In front of you. Right now.” For some reason he emphasises the last part.
I wait for his anger to dissipate by eating my onigiri as soundlessly as possible. He glances over at my lips like he’s expecting a grain of rice at the bow, but unlike him I am neat and organised in everything I do. I am his best and only entertainment – my existence is his bane; his name is sore under my tongue. A brittle thing, really, assembled like furniture: a bit of luck and a lot of mistakes. I am willing to look past his flaws and accept him as my slightly inferior predestined half because I am benevolent. Nothing he says will change that he feels the same.
“I’m looking at you.” I tell him, because I am.
His eyes widen imperceptibly. Then he laughs.
*
FRIDAY: I MEANT IT AS MUCH AS I DIDN’T
I get an A+ on the assignment.
*
SATURDAY: YOU REFUSE MY BLESSINGS BUT THAT’S OKAY; I ONLY GIVE YOU SINS
When Misa corners me it is a good day. The world is a tree and the sun is dangling by a brittle stem, in abeyance, like it might fall into my lap at any second. The collar of the polo shirt I’m wearing is tucked and half my buttons are undone, charming verging scandalous. But of course, you can’t be scandalous in a polo shirt, so I am unafraid. I am always unafraid, especially when L is beside me.
From the other end of the garden I catch his eye. His mouth twists into a vague approximation of a smile and even from the distance, heat beating the distance blurry, his face is shadowed with self-inflicted exhaustion.
How was today, he’ll ask later. Good, I’ll tell him, really good. His hands will reach for my body like a needle swinging towards a true North, and am I your true North? He is in my room. He is attending all the lectures I didn’t even sign up for. Today was a good day, it was, but it could be better. I won’t tell you why, but it’s because you weren’t with me.
Is that so?
Misa smiles at me like I’m a camera. Her hair waterfalls down her back, courting sunlight. “Will you date me?”
I have a bakery reservation for strawberry shortcake – a different bakery this time. Today he will come over again. This, all this, can be neatly smuggled into a monosyllabic word but classification offends me. I push the limits, so they can’t define me.
L is the infection and I am the scythe. We crumple the world at its knees.
One person at a time, of course.
I’ve mastered the art of faking eye contact since eight, and I employ it now, drawing it out of my bag of tricks. I am still looking at L and he, despite everything, is looking back. The corner of his mouth quirks up.
It is a good day. I give Misa my second best smile.