someday, once again...

at this hour, foot traffic has slowed to something of a crawl. people move around him in a lethargic drag of loosened work-clothes and apathy. eiji is no different, infinitesimal in the evening’s daze. his suit jacket has been slung carelessly over the back of the park bench, with no regard for how the sleeves kiss the filthy ground. his tie hangs messily around his open collar after a quick tug of his wrist. it had been deftly knotted this morning by someone else, a painstaking gesture undone in an instant… he merely adds it to the list of things he has to apologize for. it’s grown long enough to wind around his neck all the same.

his phone buzzes against his leg, shoved deep into the pocket of his slacks, for the tenth or eleventh time in thirty minutes. a low sigh from the depths of his lungs is the only sign of exasperation he allows. he doesn’t scrub his increasingly weary face or push the unkempt hair back from his eyes… there’s nothing more than the same patient upturn of his lips, even when there’s no one around to convince. twelve, thirteen more. perhaps he should have just left it behind at his desk along with the rest of his abandoned responsibilities.

here he is, playing hooky, as if still meandering in the days of his youth. more aptly, “running away.” it seems that he still has a penchant for it. the never ending sky that seems to cage him in from all directions no longer feels like a beckoning call, but a miasma of dread. a taunting cicada’s cry in the manic swelter of night. a low, tolling bell reverberating its ominous tone ceaselessly. lately, he finds himself staring out at the sea with a morbid sense of wanderlust, the train tracks, the traffic crossing, the twelve story drop from the window.

if he could just get away. a childish wish that persists from the bottom of his heart. it’s despicable. he doesn’t want to be that person anymore, the eiji hino who runs away and denounces himself. he’s supposed to do the best he can with what’s in front of him. he fails to do so again and again.

the slightly scuffed dress shoes peeking from the mouth of those familiar loose-fitting pants settled in front of him are proof of this. sooner or later, he knew this is how it would end up, who he would be answering to. his uneventful venture has come to an uneventful end.

“ sorry… i’ve made trouble for you again, haven’t i? ” eiji begins, softly. the remorseful upturn of his brows complement a meek smile. it’s a classic look of his, birthed in the apex of adolescence, insincerely self-flagellant to appease teachers, parents, and superiors alike; a lukewarm insistence that he never meant any harm. none of it meets his dull, murky eyes. they bore into the man in front of him through the unnecessary frills, communicating an unequivocal sentiment of their own. he knows he’ll be seen through, he knows this little display isn‘t placating. it might even tick him off. the thought doesn’t deter him, or rather, it spurs him on. he finds himself wanting that irritable sneer directed towards him, those slender hands righteously fisted in the collar of his dress shirt. give him an earful, shake some sense into him, insist that he’s better than this. someone has to believe it… not for any reassurance that he’s been heroic in striving for what’s right or anything of the sort, but for the fact that there’s still even one person left whom he’s capable of letting down. the mere notion swells his ego shamefully.

“ i really was going to come back… ” he continues, though his sincerity wavers pitifully between his teeth. what difference would it have made, anyway? his efforts would be nothing but obligatory damage control for a mess he didn’t particularly care to clean. a deep bow of his humblest apologies which amount to no more than the dirt beneath his feet. though, in the back of his mind, he knows it’s more than that. at least when it comes to this, why he’s so agitated, why he came looking for him rather than awaiting his return…

“ ...were you worried? ” he breathes, an intimate whisper, bearing the weight of all the sins he’ll be made to count. he reaches for shotaro’s fingers, eclipsing them with his own. loose enough to draw away from with ease, yet heavier than anything else. a siren wails faintly in the distance. it paints the air a shade of disconsolation. a crisis such as this is something uncannily mundane. they’ll continue on forever and ever. he’ll do this tomorrow… he’ll do this for endless tomorrows. he’ll do this until he dies.

it’s quiet in the lull of late evening, and the light is dim. the sharp outline of another person is perceptible, but the features melt into shadow, like an illusion of anonymity. he wonders if it had been done on purpose so that he wouldn’t have to be looked at. the prospect is something goda only half-understands. his eyes glint curiously in the dark, periodically wandering towards the unoccupied billiards table just a few feet over. the balls are scattered, forgotten in uncanny stillness, like someone had abandoned them in the middle of a game. he’s never played, but he knows it’s not supposed to end like this. a long while back, shotaro had tried to teach him, in that venerable way of his, as if proud to know something eiji didn’t. it’s clear in the whirl of memories he finds himself groping around in. the weight of slender but sure hands guiding his fingers and elbows into the proper posture, the secret smile he’d worn as he’d let himself be corrected. he knows how to play this game, and more… but, perhaps it wasn’t an unfinished round at all… perhaps someone had merely struck the cue in a fit of frustration. a contained and inconsequential mess. he’d seen something like this, too, somewhere blurred and buried in this body’s consciousness. lost to some unnamable emotion.

a thoughtful hum passes through his nose, the sound trickling over his fingers, which are busy smudging amorphous shapes in the thin layer of dust coating the table. the truth of the matter evades his understanding. the murky veil of feeling that shrouds his face and voice in the corners of fuzzed recollections… perhaps it’s why this fascinates him, why he’s sitting here in the dark with him, poking around, playing detective himself. when he pulls his hand away, the dust has filled into the grooves of his fingerprints, obscuring them in grey. he pinches it between them, rolling and turning it over like the detective’s words in his head. was he insulting him? was this pity? whichever the answer was, it didn’t particularly matter to him. he rubs his fingers clean of it. a false blank slate. when he finally cants his head to meet his eyes, it’s with a gentle, dimpled smile. a movement telegraphed by muscle memory. 

“ well, isn’t that great? ” he croons, “ there’s no difference between us. ” 

he moves closer, because that’s what his host would have done. nearly nose to nose, enough to be able to inhale his scent. it’s distantly familiar, though this is his first time experiencing it so vividly. even the ache it brings is pleasant. he smiles wider, and the black expanse of his pupils swallow all else, blown ever-wide in delight. this, the air, the light, the ground beneath his feet, all please him indescribably. being “lost” was just as wonderful. 

“ me, or him, it doesn’t really matter when we’re the same… shouldn’t you understand something like that? ” the kindredness shared between replacements, he means. it’s said with such earnestness, as if the scathing cruelty of it was completely devoid… but therein lies the glaring difference between them: hino eiji does not possess this sort of innocence. in goda’s case, the wasp-sting of his sentiments are neither intentional nor of any concern to him. he brings a hand to shotaro’s cheek, a haphazard mimicry of something he’d seen before… but also his own impulse. coaxingly, as if to say, ‘see?’  he’s warm against his cold palm, thrumming with life underneath. blood, tissue, tendon. woven and pulsing in that gentle manner he’s yet to become attuned to. he runs a thumb over the swell of bone beneath his eyelid, delicate, curious, overcome with a desire to feel. it doesn’t matter from whom it had come from… he wishes to merge into one. there’s no need for any distinguishment. 

i've mentioned this before but i think it is very intentional that goda's representative medals are arthropods, which are necrophagous animals that aid in the decomposition process of dead things. there's a lot of emphasis on how ankh's possession of shingo is what eventually brings his body from the brink of death and allows for a full recovery he wouldn't otherwise be able to achieve, but eiji is just.. dead with no hope of survival, not even from prolonged possession, or so that is how it seems. there's that brief moment of consciousness, but otherwise he is presented as nothing more than a corpse being puppeted.. and that's it. there's nothing to be recovered. i kind of choose to believe it doesn't stop the body from decomposition but instead greatly slows the process down.

with this being established, unlike shingo, there are no bodily processes to be maintained. a corpse doesn't need to be fed, and doesn't need its wounds to be healed. if goda tries to eat for the fun of it, can he even taste it? he can will the body to move, but can he force bodily processes, like bloodflow and digestion?

alcoholism.    amnesia.    anxiety.    appetite loss.    binge eating.    co-dependence.    cynicism.    defensiveness.    denial.    depersonalization.    depression.    derealization.    devaluation.    displacement.    dissociation.    drug abuse.    emotional detachment.    flashbacks.    flat affect.    guilt.    hallucinations.    hypersomnia.    hypervigilance.    hypocondria.    idealization.    insomnia.    intellectualization.    introjection.    isolation.    low self esteem.    narcissism.    night terrors.    obsessive compulsion.    overeating.    panic attacks.    passive aggression.    paranoia.    phobias.    projection.    psychosis.    rationalization.    regression.    repression.    restrictive eating.    risky sex.    self-harm.    somatization.    splitting.    sublimation.    suicidal ideation.    sleep walking.    suppression.   thousand yard stare.    triggers.    trust issues.    violence.    whiplash temper.

it’s unusual, that shotaro has come home while the midday sun still filters in through the windows. his work has kept him especially busy these past few weeks, or at least that’s the good natured assumption eiji has come to by how rarely he sees him. if it happened to be that he was avoiding him instead… he had no intention to press him about it. either way, they’ve not had much opportunity to speak, or when they do it’s always clipped and impersonal. there’s the occasional morning greeting when the atmosphere between them is particularly amicable. after everything, this is only to be expected. he holds no resentment for it.

when i leave next, it might be some time before we see each other again, he’d said with an ill-fitting coyness, seated in the middle of shotaro’s bed as if it were his own. the surrounding clean scent of linen and his friend was more pleasant than usual, as if imprinting itself in his memory. as if this moment echoed with a sense of finality. i don’t know when i’ll be back. it would have been more truthful to say “if” rather than “when”... but he can’t bring himself to say such a thing. however, it’s a kindness he can only extend for a fleeting moment, because the supremely unkind statement he follows up with is: if you don’t hear from me, please don’t worry about it too much.

there’s no means for him to put himself on the line anymore, not in the way he used to, at least. as of now, his body is wholly undamaged, and has been for a long time. a clean and unmarred physique that doesn’t suit a hero. though, he doesn’t need to remind him of this. he should be more than familiar with its uncanny pristine state. this aspect of the relationship between them remains true beyond the distance… or perhaps because of it. the smile he gives him as if to silently relay this fact is both weightless and smothering. after all these years, they can say such things without words. it’s a cruel and roundabout act of warfare. there’s a gentle exhale, an interlude to more white lies, accompanying the kind way his eyes crinkle, though there is no light reflected in them. it’s all swallowed up in deep black. desolately asking, you’ll play along, won’t you? eiji leans back on the heels of his hands, his posture almost tauntingly open. his eyes flit over to the other side of the room, drifting from shotaro’s feet which are planted in the entryway, as if to block him from exiting, all the way up to his face, to look at him properly. he owes him this much at least.

“ you wouldn’t die, ” he lilts airily, like he were just telling a joke, like shotaro hadn’t said anything that warranted an honest response. “ there are too many people who wouldn’t let that happen. ” it’s not the same for me, is the unspoken continuation of that statement, remaining haphazardly hidden beneath his tongue. it isn’t a sentiment he feels any bitterness over… he’d made it this way himself, after all, in spite of the efforts wasted upon him. but, that truth must be in part the reason they’re having this conversation in the first place, so it’s best not to bring it up. though, this is all unnecessary, anyway. he’s well aware he isn’t fooling anyone. he’s well aware that this serves to do nothing but frustrate him at best, and to make him feel as if he’s been made a fool of at worst. it wears him down. it widens that unbearable, sprawling distance between them. but, like most of his endeavors, this exercise in frivolity is for the sake of his own feelings. this is his alternate method of escape when the exit is blocked.

a crosshatch of scabbing, shallow scratches burn lethargically along his forearms. the client’s cat had struggled in his grip the whole way back. the trouble was worth it for the smile he’d received in return… it’s a miracle that he’s still able to feel a sentiment like that, after everything. he’s vaguely satisfied, for the moment.

it’s short lived. 

the waning sun tinges the city orange. the job was finished before nightfall, when it would be much harder to search, which was the best case scenario. all things considered, it couldn’t have gone better. but he just can’t help feeling wrong. the stiff set of shotaro’s shoulders is telling… like he’s holding something back. eiji remains lax and turns a blind eye, out of mercy, out of his own cowardice. he has no desire to talk about this right now. or ever, really. the ever-present breeze has begun to feel accusatory. the air between them teems with a sort of tension, humming unsteadily, an arrhythmic beating of insect wings. a sweltering uncertainty housed in the underbelly of friendliness. it’s been like this lately, where every exchange feels like a double entendre; an anagram for some sort of confession hidden between words. when things become like this… he finds that latent urge to disappear creeping back up again. 

the message comes through loud and clear. he knows just what he’s talking about. how could he not? he’s seen his tears, his miserable expressions, the way his eyes quiver when he pleads with him to stay… his breezy smile stays perfectly in place even though it feels as if he’s being flayed right open. he doesn’t want to be looked inside of. 

“ that was really tough, huh? ” his guilt bleeds in a slow trickle down his wrist. he puts on a pathetic voice, but in truth he’s completely indifferent to the pain. he has to play his role, however. upholding this status quo is the easiest option… but, this in itself is pathetic, too. he’s begging for them both to go along with the idea that he’s someone with his head so far up in the clouds he doesn’t know left from right. it's degrading to both parties. “ but, she seemed so happy to have her back. i’m glad we were able to find her… well, it was you who did most of the work. ” he has no talent for finding missing pets, it seems. only for going missing himself. 

even now, he’s running. off somewhere he can remain unseen.