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Each of these opening instructions are things that one may hear said from an adult to a child, to sleep often and enough, to drink their milk to “grow up strong”. This helps to reinforce the idea that we are “Children” of the city. 

This same idea carries into the following lines, the second stanza notably having allusions to a schooling system, and the latter half of the first being similar instructions towards a child, teaching someone to behave or write properly.

The lines: 

Only eat, or write Or pull the trigger with your right hand Only thing that's left Is to work on following commands

Seemingly make reference to the fact that, in the past, left handed people were forced to learn and write using their right hand, and this is something that I didn’t originally pick up on. The other implication of these lines is (seemingly) that of death, either suicide or murder (my original interpretation of the song was the former, however due to… self, I am more likely to read into that understanding. Considering the later allusions to directed violence at others in similar prescript-lines, it is more likely the latter, however there is another, more direct reference to suicide later in the song, so both readings are possible. This is to say Carmen is bad at their job and can’t actually work things out) 

Note lyrical symmetry with the line following “Right Hand” ending with “Left” to reinforce the previous. I’m not a music major (nor am i an english major) so musical and lyric analysis of this sort is scarce, apologies. 

By the time you realize You'll be restrained to a desk And with your dreams on the floor, you comply Eyes chained to the test In 30 minutes, find a groom or bride Bonus if brunette In 90 hours, spill their insides Paint your room picturesque

Relating to the aforementioned idea of a schooling system. Likewise with the idea of a caregiver, this reinforces the notion of being a “Child”, while also being another form of authority that controls your free actions directly for those within. The use of 30 minutes, followed in two lines by 90 hours is incrementation of units, the use of numbers in a whole is a recurring lyrical idea throughout the song as a whole. 

Now it's time for another vendetta Going through the shelves Picking out my pre-written persona

The reference to a persona is one of Project Moon’s references to Jungian psychology, and notable due to the collapse of a persona being a step leading to distortion or EGO manifestation within the universe. Yan is the former. 

This idea of a persona being “pre-written” is in reference to Yan’s detachment and cold facade of a messenger, the only defence against the nature of the world; The idea of it being pre-written also implies the lack of autonomy in this role, which is Yan’s final realisation before distorting, his lack of free will and control over his life. 

It is also important to note (here because it’s convenient) that the song seems to reference most of the Fingers (or at least that we knew about), it is a song about all of the city’s children after all, not simply the Index. 

Vendetta is a term for familial vengeance, the middle has explicitly used this term in Limbus Company (Sinclair). 'Paint your room picturesque' and the 'test' mirrors the Ring's tests. And of course the song as a whole reflects the prescripts of the Index.

Children of the city sees only the neon stars Reflected upon the murky gutter sky Don't ask me why I desperately wish to be included in the city's night 

“Neon stars” and “to be included in the city’s night”; both referencing both the singularities//wishes that come from stars, which hold some seat of influence or power in the canon, and the rank of Star of the City. The use of “neon” could also be interpreted as a show of artificiality, neon streetlights upon the city’s construct, mistaken for lights for one who never looks up to see them; The cave so to speak.

In four hundred thousand meters, turn right

As is the case for most instruction-style lyrics in the song, this is an intentional subversion of what one could consider a reasonable instruction. This line in particular mimics that of a GPS, another form of instruction that you live or travel by, without direct thought about the reasoning or path, reminiscent of the song as a  whole.

Pick up a knife and stab a familiar warm body This line is, in my interpretation, Yan looking back upon having had a prescript to harm or kill someone close to him—or and including himself—which is hinted towards in Yan’s Key-page story in Ruina itself. 

[I] take the flower that’s slipped into my hand and nail it into the mannequin’s heart. A beautiful tree in bloom grows from the cracks the flower made. It’s as soft as the hands that caressed me, and it’s as pretty as the sound that consoled me. And it’s as sharp as the noise of that last moment when I was scolded for the first time.

The distortion—or rather altered perception—of traumas, of what happened to Yan in the past; The mannequins are very directly people from Yan’s past, which I would personally wager to be his family, his parents in particular. 

Note the language that the excerpt uses, “the hands that caressed me [...] the sound that consoled me [...] the last moment when I was scolded for the first time”, each being in part the act of a caregiver or guardian—this memory being explicitly from his childhood. There is a form of antithesis present in the final line of this excerpt, “Last moment where I was scolded for the first time”, which in turn creates multiple ideas.

The meaning could parse as the final moments of his childhood, the final moments of his parent’s life when he was first scolded for this action. It could also read as another form of reminiscence, looking back upon a vulnerable child who had never faced proper scolding, punishment, for his actions, and the pain of that single memory. The use of natural—botanic—imagery is also something to note, in part as it could be another form of antithesis towards the city itself, the flower and tree which tear through the plastic hearts of the ones who raised him.

Learned to fight before I knew love or bitterness of coffee

Once again returns to the literal concept of childhood and growth, learning and developing within the city, to become like it. This returning idea that, despite everything he believes, he is a child of the city like everyone else. 

Snippy scissors cut down the strings I set myself free Only to figure out everything I chose was by proxy

Snippy scissors [...] Strings [...] set.

Silabance, the alliteration of S to create emphasis on tones and the specific words.

The final two lines are a rhyming couplet, Free and Proxy. The use of the word Proxy is seemingly (intentionally) an allusion to the nature of the Index and the Will of the City, as well as a Pun on the Proxies of the Index such as Gloria and Hubert. 

As we suckled upon the nine millimeter pacifier Swallowing the fact that other than to expand We had no purpose

The first line of this verse tis what was mentioned afore, alluding once again to suicide, specifically by way of firearm. 

The lyrical trend of using measurements and numbers returns in this verse through the use of “Nine millimeter”. In this same line, the wording choice of ‘Pacifier’ returns to the imagery of a child or infant, raised both by and in the nihilism of the city; the use of a gun as a pacifier — which is less than recommended — is the primary reason that I choose to interpret the former line (see verse 1) as that of suicide, tracing back to Yan being destroyed by the precepts, in his own story claiming that:

I wanted to end my life because of Prescripts, and now the Prescripts won’t even let me do that. Where has my free will run off to?

The likeness of a pacifier, alongside the line “Swallowing” invokes images of breastfeeding, once again returning to the motif of a child, or childhood, implying that this belief is what feeds the city’s children as they grow. This line can be interpreted as the City at large taking the nature of humanity, of 'choice and goodness'—in the words of Clockwork Orange—and removing them by force, the brutality and ever expanding corporations supplanting meaning in whole.

As my ever-burning will to stay afloat backfires I now know I must be comfortable being Who I considered worthless

This line plays fairly straightforwardly into the story of Yan itself, returning to the keypage:

" I’ll gladly play along. Even if I can’t shatter the Prescripts, I’ll at least make a tiny crack. If I can show the masses that it’s possible to oppose the Prescripts, something might change… Something has to… It WILL make a difference [...] However, I realized it only just now. What I felt wasn’t hope, and that ignoring that Prescript and taking my own life as I’d planned might have been a truer expression of my free will. "

The will to live on, to stand up straight or, as Yan puts it: [to] see where to go, [to have] the strength to get up, is too what allowed him to come as far as he has, to live onwards and break the prescripts, and, in the end, become a pawn, become someone without a will of their own, or, “What [he] considered worthless”.

The very attempt to rebel against the system, the will to oppose the notion of a fatalistic world, is playing into the very will one tries to avoid and fulfilling the prophecy. A very Greek tragedy style story (See; Kronus eating his kids to avoid them overthrowing him, Oedipus being abandoned on the hill to avoid him overthrowing his parents, Odysseus blinding Posiedon’s son to attempt to get home). This is almost certainly intentional considering the references to weaving and direct usage of the name Moirai. 

Follow the city's ribbon To a heart nobody seems to listen It takes my heart being broken and broken again To know that I am the reason why The sufferings never end

The use of the term “Ribbon” is strange, seeming to mean will or path, however this is seemingly to facilitate wordplay within the following line of “heart”, retroactively creating the idea of its beat, thus, its rhythm. The second line in this verse is a double meaning as well, “A heart” referring to both the City’s, but too referring to Yan’s, as is stated in the following line of “My heart”. 

If we return to the Keypage story once again, we may see two mentions of heart here as well, the more notable of the two being one we saw earlier. 

[I] take the flower that’s slipped into my hand and nail it into the mannequin’s heart. 

The earlier connection in the lyrics of Yan’s heart with that of the city’s is one that tracks with his narrative arc within Ruina; Yan learns to see the will of the city as his own will, and that his will is in turn the will of the city. Through Yan’s story, as well as the wider story of Ruina, the themes of social/societal fatalism are very clearly present, most well put through the Index’s beliefs.

“You’re right, I think I see it now. It's the city… It's because people have always been cruel.  Humans are born that way… and they have desperate wishes.  It doesn't matter if they were pure wishes welled up from innocent hearts or ambitions born from greed, this is the result of what everyone wished for… What I did was part of the City… the will of the City. The City and I… and every single person in this city were one and the same. Do you think so, too?

It’s the city. It’s because of the people. They are children of the city, it is cruel because they are. The city is cruel because of the people within. 

Neither the nature of humanity nor the city but both in cycle. 

Project Moon is of course, at the end of the day, a company which frames its stories around the ability to “break the cycle”, so much so that their first game takes it to a literal extreme, and it’s all but spelled out all across the disparate and main stories of the following two. 

In so, Yan loses himself to despair and distorts, coming to believe that no action he takes is his own, and that no single person may redirect the flow, or break the cycle. Such, it is thus better to not exist as a person at all within this cycle.  The literal meaning of ego death is the death of the self, or specifically of the ego. This is death as an understanding of change, rather than an ending, however I feel it can be more than both in this moment. 

Understanding the concept of Yan’s heart, or his will, as the will of the city—of cruelty as the nature of humanity, borne of greed and innocence—something inescapable, something that needs to be healed, or cured. 

A beautiful tree in bloom grows from the cracks… [...] and it’s as pretty as the sound that consoled me. Every branch that grows from the tree causes a piercing buzz in my ears, the petals hurt as they brush past my cheeks to make me feel the pain they hold. I stand still like my feet were tied, until my body is covered in scars. 

In failing to kill the nature of humanity, desire and pain, of hurting those around you, in failing to curse this disease, a tree blossoms forth—not for him, but something to shine for others—what you might call “his” death, even if not truly.