#dazai...

A nice day. There was a mild wind, and the scent of leaves in the air, with the noise of rustling far within the branches of trees that surrounded him. The sun shined down, soothing the small bits of exposed skin on his hands and face. It was a nice day, for the most part.

He sat at a bench, eyes glancing over the beige grain of the wooden seat, halfway focused, halfway gone. It was a buzz in his mind, noting only the feeling beneath his thumb nail as it dragged over the wooden armrest. It was a nice day, but there was something missing. Something in his chest was gone. Something that he wanted next to him. This didn't disturb Dazai, though. It was a feeling he had long since been accustomed to.

His feet kicked out, crossing one ankle over the other, leaves momentarily crunching underneath his heel. This was what normal people did, right? Sit outside, catch some air?

It still felt... inherently wrong, though. Out alone like this... did he come off as weird? Did people pass by and think, "Hey, who's this guy sitting all alone? How pathetic." His thumb nail dug deeper into the half-damp wood of the bench he sat on. Why should he care? This was college, no one was going to judge him. Yet his mind still sat in a panopticon of his own making- years of school tormenting his mind, drilling into him that he wasn't normal. That his every action was wrong.