My heart has become a desert
I feel the dry wind which plays with my long hair and I look in the sundown which happens in front of my eyes; the yellow embers of the sun which seems to be lazy because her beams shine tiredly on me with their decreasing warmth. The day is hot but the nights ice-cold and it is almost as if it would want to remind me constantly what I once have been - only in a time-lapse photography in the day itself.
I know that once I was warm and good-naturfed myself, but then I turned colder, only to sometimes get as cold as the night itself, without any hope for a new day.
Perhaps there is still something for me?
No, which absurd thought.
I have loaded myself with so much guilt that there is nothing which could free me from that again, and even the death itself would not be enough.
I feel the heavy harmonica dangle around my neck and when I reach for it and lead it to my lips to breathe in and let the music have a free run. Gentle tones rise into the wind while I am using the opportunity to think again. As if there was anything else than thinking for me now.
But why am I like that?
I had always been somebody, who swings from one extreme to another and there apparently is no middle ground for me - I always be only the one or the other, either dead or alive, full of courage to face life or with the wish to die once more.
I only remember happier days on which I still had been carefree before the darkness sank into my heart to never disappear from this again. On the contrary, it stayed and it got stronger and stronger and I still feel its icy grip now, around my heart.
And I wonder quietly through my lips, through which I send my breath, will there ever be a solution for me? Is there anybody in this world who feels just the same as me?
Is there somebody, who can listen to this music and is capable of knowing how to interpret it, to see what it stands for? Is there someone who understands me?
How much have Crow, Jack and Yusei understood of me? How much has she understood of me in the end, how much had we really in common?
Melancholy runs through me if I think back to the only people who have ever meant something to me and I have let all of them suffer infinite pains only because of a misunderstanding and furthermore I cannot do any penitence for this either.
But no, it could have come worse, I tell myself, but the voice in my head fights back, says that it still doesn't excuse my faults in no case.
But perhaps I would have been supposed to speak with you? But no, for what, if I know that you cannot forgive me. Especially you, Yusei, who has given everything for me, who has even risked your own life for me, just to save me - and it is you who I hated just because I couldn't understand? I haven't earned your kindness!!
And you Aki, who seem to be so like me. Often only a look sufficed and we immediatly knew what we wanted to tell each other with that. We had, as unbelievable as it might sound, made similiar experiences and wished for the very same: a place for us, somewhere in this rotting world. Is it so false if I, now that I have finally realized that it isn't worth it to look out for this place here... is it so false if I just don't want to be any longer?
Is the hope not promising that in death there might be a better place, one which promises me release? Or even if I should be condemned to the eternal damnation I wouldn't care since it only would be raked.
Do you think that I am only longing for death because I once had been a Dark Signer? Can it be that I want to experience this condition again, this "almost death"? Do you also feel like me, do you also wish to be as dead as I am?
I look up, only to remark that my steps have me carried unconsciously. I look at the houses in the distance in front of me and at the faded signpost at the entrance. "Welcome to crash Town!" is written there in no longer totally black letters and the signpost blows softly in the wind.
I look back in the sundown behind my now dull eyes. How had I come here, why have I decided to stay for the time being?
Everything had started in Japan and with my decision to see the world and to go away somewhere, whereever it would bring me to.
I don't know if it was some flight instinct or because out of my please of being really free now, because I really felt "free". The curse of the DarkSigners didn't lay on me any longer, I was alive again, and the mark on my face which brands me as valueless, was no hindrance for me any longer, but merely a muffled memory of painfgul things which I was able to replace with the pure joy that I felt.
"Hey, wait Kiryu!" The girl with the crimson hair came running towards me after waving at me and she shamelessly jumped at me, so intese that it almost had torn us both to the ground.
"Wah, Aki, not so stormy!", I laughed and looked at her in love, before we exchanged a short kiss. We then looked us in the eyes for a long time while she was taking my hand elegantly into hers and simply dragged me away. "H-hey wait! To where are you dragging me to?", I exclaimed, but she only giggled. "Oh, I haven't seen you in ages, and now that I found you, you are not going anywhere without me!" "ah, so you don't care what I planned to do?", I asked her and she nodded before replying: "What could be so important? You cannot shop because you don't have money. You cannot have a date either because you don't know so many people to have an appointment. So, what you perhaps should still plan apart from these things...??" "Maybe I have something to get for Yusei or Jack?" I paused when I realized that it sounded like an extremely flimsy excuse. And Aki also knew this quite exactly. I wondered why she was so over-subtle, but then it didn't further surprise me because she simply was that way.
When she heard my sighing, she knew that she had won already.
"Ah come on, Kiryu!", she said, "now don't be like that!" "I haven't said no, at least not completely." "Why are you defending yourself like that then?" "Because it is more fun like that?" "Ah you.. all of that only because you want to get your satisfaction! It isn't fun for you if you don't meet any resistance, right?", she snorted playfully while dragging me away further on. And when she noticed that I gave way, she already wrapped her arms around my left arm, too, to cuddle up to me.
Something I hadn't expected so was the sudden warmth and it came over me like a gruesome feeling.
Perhaps it was the memory of when she had lost this warmth ?? This it had been completely my fault?
And still furthermore something else tormented me.
I didn't know how to bring this across to her, how I shall tell her what I have planned to I wanted to stay no more, wanted to use my newly won liberty.
I stopped, and she also, only to look in my face astonished.
"Kiryu, what is the matter?" "Aki, I have to tell you something important. I...will no longer stay..."
What did I really want to tell her with these words??
That I wanted to go away from her, only to see other places on this world, or that I wanted to go away in reality so that I could go into death?
Because I am here now, in a come down town called "Crash Town" of which it is said that only people who are finished with themselves and want to find the last quiet come here.
Would she be angry at me because of this? I know that she loves the life and she is the perfect example of the life itself. Flowers, plants, they sprout constantly and rise from the dead again, cannot find the slightest last quiet. But the life is also only an up and down for them. And I know for me that I don't want this any more. I would like to find my peace or at least pay for what I have done to innocent people; because it is one thing to choose a destiny oneself and one other to force a destiny upon another person as it has worked at so many.
And I have done this, Aki, also to you.
Just like to Yusei.
You have suffered because of me and you shall not do it any more. It suffices. It suffices. And, if it must be, then, then I escape you completely. To protect you from myselft, because I can never know when the next time will come in which I injure you. And when this time will come, will it only because I have a mental illness again? Or will it be because I just cannot decide for a livestyle or because I think of something of my past as unpardonable?
Yusei, you are like the starry sky over me. You regard all people around yourself as sacred and you love them from the fullest heart. You say that the connection that is between the people which touches you the most, you say that no human in the world is unnecessary, that all of them have a place. But I cannot agree with you in the last point. Because I think it would be better if some people would never be there. Say, you don't think either that it would be better if there had never been some dictators or rulers who have terrorized their population? And don't you, if there would be no more criminals, think either that we all then could finally live in peace?
Why don't you agree with me then if I would say that I count myself as one of these people? People who are unnecessary, just like I am unnecessary. Because see, am I not someone who had pulled other people into damage by his crimes?
And I suspect anyway you will never understand and you will always do everything, no matter what comes, to save me. I already suspect that I perhaps haven't seen you for the last time.
Perhaps this may be one more reason why I have come into this town which is so far away from you - so that you cannot help me because I don't need help and haven't earned it either.
Please let me die here and find an end!
My heart has become a desert.
The starry sky has disappeared when it was replaced by the haze of the hot midday sun and the flowers to my feet have stopped growing when one had withdrawn the water from them.
Yes, this is the place I would like to die on.
"Kiryu!"
I hear a voice calling after me, a voice known to me. To this the distant noise of running engines. Motorcycles? Yes, it is Ramon who calls me to himself.
I unimportantly turn to him but as I do this I already feel his hand on my shoulder.
"Kiryu-sama, we still wanted to go on a drink to the bar, do you come along?"
I don't answer but simply follow willingly; if I don't care what I do now, then it is easier, too, if I do it without thinking about it much.
Because if I think about it ...
then I feel only pain and an inexplicable longing deep within myself.
