Post
by ccdr » Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:48 pm
"Damn, we sure had some memories here, huh." Exhale smoke, inhale smoke. "Christ, I was such a little shit back then. I can't believe you hung out with me man. I was nuts."
"You're still nuts. I don't think that guy is ever going to recover. You're lucky you didn't get charged with assault. Kenji, hero of the war against women, beats a guy up for bad mouthing a girl."
Exhale, inhale. "He shouldn't have said that. I may be legally blind but not deaf. I could hear how he felt."
There is an awkward pause between the men on the roof. They stood here once, drunk off their asses, when they were younger. To Hisao, it seemed like such a far away memory that he couldn't even associate the two kids in it with their future counterparts. They seemed doppelgangers, similar but not quite the same.
"Still, good times. Good times." Kenji somehow sounds completely the same with a cigarette in his mouth. Hisao frowns, looks at the grin on his friend's face, then back towards the blue, open sky.
"Was it really that fun...?" He murmurs. He grips the decaying chain-link fence in one hand.
"You're tellin' me you didn't enjoy it? You seemed like you were having fun to me." Kenji with his bat-like hearing again.
"Kenji...let me say this. You were born with your sight issue, correct?"
The other man grinned at the understatement of 'sight issue'. Yamaku had made them all politically correct. "Yeah."
"This is kinda hard to explain, but...you wouldn't know what it would be like to be suddenly cured of it. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you woke up one morning and could see perfect. You might rejoice. You might experience sensory overload and try to put out your eyes again. I don't know. But...I remember what I was before Yamaku. I was normal. I had normal friends. I flirted with normal girls. I didn't need to get a check up every week. I was Alice before she looked in that stupid fucking mirror. One day I got curious and I decided to have a little peek at the mirror. Before you know it, boom, cripple wonderland." As he finished, Hisao's words took on a cynical distaste that was quite unlike him. Kenji frowned.
"So. Do you regret...this? Everything?"
"No. In fact, I'm infinitely grateful for what I've got now, considering. I found someone who I will love forever, gained friends that supported me at my lowest, and learned more about Risk tactics then I ever wanted to know. Still. Hell can have all your favorite people in it, but it'll still be Hell. Y'know." Hisao stopped for a second, seemingly at a loss for words. "Yamaku, to me, represents the turn for the worse in my life." He finished. Far below, on campus, cheers and laughter could be heard. Hisao could barely make out the cheerful sound of Emi's jokes and Rin's deadpan responses.
Kenji took a drag and exhaled. That seemed the appropriate response.
"Cheer up man. If Hanako heard you like this so close to your wedding she'd probably start sobbing."
"Ha. I know. It's just...hard, you know. To pretend. It sucks to go down there and smile and laugh, talk about Rin's new masterpiece, get my copy of Misha's book signed, talk to Lily about her kids, when we could all fall over and croak at any moment." Hisao sighed and let go of the fence. Harsh looking identations were embedded in his palms.
"Life is a game of pretend, mate. We're only true to ourselves when we're drunk or dying."
"Truth, huh..."
"Well!" Kenji stretched and flicked his cigarette through a hole in the fence. (Hisao marveled at his accuracy. Sometimes he felt more blind then Kenji.) "That's enough of that Zen koan depressing bullshit, let's go down there and get some soft pretzels or something."
"Sure."
They started walking, Hisao reaching the stairwell door before his friend. Holding the door open, he looked over his shoulder at the man in a deep black suit with thick glasses on. "Do me a favor, man." He says, starting his descent down the stairs.
"What?" Their voices echo in the stairwell.
"If I...y'know...ever get into some trouble or whatever-"
"Natch, I said no more depressing stuff." A pause. Footsteps echo. "I got your back. No worries."
"...Thanks."
"No problem. Now let's go enjoy this reunion."
The two men, boys no more, walk out into the warm sun. Emi, pausing in the middle of whatever joke she had half out of her mouth, shouts "Hey, Hisao!" into a microphone she seems to forget is there. Everyone turns and looks, and there is a startled pause for a second before everyone breaks out into laughter.
There, in the shadow of a building he hates, Hisao Nakai smiles genuinely for the first time in a long time.
Exhale, inhale.
It's a hell of a good day to die.
She heard mermaids, so it follows that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I have an everlasting cold, but luckily I’m terribly dishonest. I cling to that.
<NicolArmarfi> so yeah speed grapher was bad
<NicolArmarfi> damn i only watched it because i thought that it was about a mathematician
<NicolArmarfi> who graphs things incredibly fast
