And the walls kept tumbling on the city that we love.
But if you close your eyes,
does it almost seem like nothing has changed at all?
If you close your eyes, does it almost seem like you have been here before?
~Pompeii, Bastille
"What are you up to?"
Matt glances up from his Nintendo, Mario suffering an swift ignominious death on screen.
"I think it's fairly self-explanatory," comes the reply.
Rather than the sharp rejoinder Matt expected, his blond friend instead sinks heavily into the room's armchair with an uncharacteristic and ominous air of resignation.
"Alright Mello, what is up?" Matt decides, saving his progress and shutting the Nintendo with a definitive click.
"How are you able to tolerate wasting your time on silly games?" Mello wonders distantly, his hands over his eyes as he slouches spread-eagle on the chair, his legs dangling heedlessly into space.
"It too baffles me how you are able to tolerate spiking your blood sugar to diabetic levels before breakfast and rocket launching yourself to premature renal-failure," Matt replies evenly. "It's a coping mechanism. After all we have surrendered to this institution, we are hardly violating any boundaries of human decency by indulging in trivial personal quirks."
"Matt, I have a problem..."
"You are a workaholic who is biologically incapable of stopping unless if compelled by a natural disaster," Matt responds, "of course you have a problem."
"No, it's not that this time..." Mello interrupts with a snarl. "...I can no longer muster any motivation. In the past, the satisfaction of accomplishment - that perfect exam score, that side glance of approval from Roger - has provided sufficient incentive to power past the exhaustion and delaying of gratification. But nowadays... I can no longer derive joy from that. In general, I could no longer derive joy at all."
A brief reign of silence ensues. Matt sighs.
"I would tell you to suck it up on any other occasion, but seeing that you are not even munching on some Hersey's Extra Dark, I sense this is not the usual slump."
"I have spent the past three afternoons watching Maury," Mello whispers. "I am not joking." Matt raises his eyebrows.
"Indeed." Matt allows silence to reign until Mello begins with another exhausted sigh.
"If you do not mind me asking... whence do you derive purpose?" Matt raises an eyebrow yet higher.
"First, I am going to Ignore the fact that you used "whence" in normal speech rather than a period Shakespearean production where it rightfully and exclusively belong."
"Shut up I'm not joking," Mello mumble but utterly lacking his usual verbally combative verve, and Matt smirks at the easy victory.
"Mello, I anticipate that you would find a much more effective intellectual partner to engage issues of existentialism across the hallway. I am afraid that I do not have an answer much more illuminating than, simply, to appease Roger for the day, to earn cafeteria seating priority, to maintain my top bunk privileges, trivial rewards, really." Mello does not stir, and Matt senses the need for elaboration.
"The truth is that I have never fixated on such issues except when it pertains to the following day or week. I suppose it makes me irresponsible, but I have never suffered the category of existenstial crisis that is endemic to prepubescent orphan geniuses within this institution who have never experienced an oxytocin rush from a mother's embrace, so ultimately it works in my favor."
"I do not understand..." Mello replies distantly. "Objectively, you are brilliant Matt. You have secured the title of Wammy's third best since your matriculation, effortlessly, while I herniate a cranial ventricle for every evaluation to maintain my place behind the smarmy albino bastard. Have you wondered what it would be like to be the superlative - the best - untethered to a numerical ranking because you are singular?"
"I suppose, I fail to understand how someone of your mental caliber would settle for the inferior - mediocrity." Matt blinks, and Mello backtracks.
"I do not mean to disparage... I am only asking because it drives me mad, and you seem positively flourishing and all but immune to anxiety. Please - enlighten me, Matty-boy." Matt groans.
"I do not know what you want me to say, Mello," he replies, exasperation ill-concealed. "I am just not hardwired with the ambition that seems to be the one common denominator to the rival factions here. I wanted to be an astronaut or chemist when I was young, but those aspirations died with my parents in the shooting. During the few years when I was tossed between foster homes I had aspired to be, contingent on the profession of my caretaker, a fashion designer, a glass blower, a teacher. Those ambitions endured for as long as I was a novelty and the inconvenience of parenting did not yet exceed the nurturing capacity of my foster parents, which, mind you, did not take long to expire. Eventually I realized it was pragmatically valid to eschew aspiration altogether. While in a world that lacks an fair algorithm for doling out to one what is deserved there is no guarantee of tomorrow, at least no one can deprive me of the minor immediate joys of today."
"All of this is a circuitous way to express that I find extraneous the concept of perusing a calendar for any time beyond the current month. Hence, I am not a leader - a visionary - like you and Near. In fact, I have long accepted my place as a follower - a damn valuable one at that, don't you deny me credit where it is due - and I am content so long as I can competently carry out my duties as an accomplice, kitchen heist or whatever worldclass criminal shenanigans you would commit right after graduating this carnival." Mello has slumped back into the couch over the course of Matt's speech, his head dangling off the back at an anatomically impossible angle, but then Matt knows that science would one day corrobate his theory that the blond is, genetically, at least 20% feline. The man displays no response.
"Does that response dissappoint you?" Matt asks after an uncertain span of silence. The blonde's lack of response endured for another painful stretch during which Matt mentally retraced and poignantly regretted his vulnerability.
"No," Mello replies slowly, finally, one hand splayed over and concealing his upturned face. "To be frank, I anticipated a similar stream of reasoning. Yet I am just about sufficiently defeated to seriously contemplate its merit."
"In the domain of projecting grand long-term ambition I am second perhaps only to Kira himself; yet despite all my barking toward the future I am positively terrified of it." Sitting up abruptly, Mello makes unrelenting eye contact, and it takes considerably resolve for Matt to not flinch away.
"Let me describe the nature of my fear," he continues, solemn, morose. "Imagine a slab of marble that stretches into infinity, and you have been uniquely commissioned to chisel a masterpiece like the world has never seen. Forget Michelangelo or Bernini, this sculpture would render all other sculptures obsolete. In response to this work of perfection the Louvre would be emptied to the crematorium or landfill because everything else would be so vastly inferior. The problem is you are provided with no tools, no formal workshop training, and the entire artisan guild is hellbent on sabotage your enterprise. It is terrifying, not because I believe I would fail, but because I can anticipate the cost of sucess and, inevitably, am compelled to the question that turns wars and topples empires - is it worth it?"
Holding his gaze, Matt senses no response is necessary. Mello slumps back into the chair after a few seconds, exhaustion resuming its hold over his frame.
"To not worry about the future... would be blissful," he mutters finally.
"It is not my purpose to convert you," Matt replies evenly. "I simply want to remind you that being a genius - pardon my arrogance - is compatible with, to some extent, laxity. Or, if you will, with being mellow." There was a painful pause as Matt smirks and Mello winces terribly.
"You have fulfilled your purpose here, please get out of my arm reach before I clobber you upside the head for that offense on the English language."
Unperturbed, Matt climbs to his feet and retrieves his Nintendo. Glancing back at Mello - still splayed and immobile on the armchair, Matt realizes that indeed his purpose has been fulfilled and, thankfully, his friend is much more resilient than the average burnt out pre-adolescent.
"Admit it or not, my assault on the English language is what you will miss the most about Wammy's House," comes his final riposte.
Seven years later, as Mello gasps to breathe through the molten gas mask plastered to his face, the agony of the explosion's initial heat blast having given way to a more ominous numbness over his right cheek, crushed under a rubble of cement, industrial debris and glittering silicon CPU entrails, he takes one precious second to acknowledge the accuracy of Matt's prophetic prediction as Wammy's House flashes by before his eyes
Several hours later, losing consciousness and at the absolute end of his rope, when the suffocating weight and impenetrable mass of wreakage overhead trembles and dislodges in a storm of debris to reveal the said redhead face's silhouetted against a weak dusk halo of orange, when a swell of joy, relief and nostalgia at the sight of the dork's orange goggles surged so viscerally that it allowed him to temporarily forget the immediate reality he must face of being a cripple and a Interpol Wanted criminal - assuming if he makes it beyond today at all - Mello takes another precious second to acknowledge that seven years ago, his decision on the armchair while teetering on the brink between the redhead's ideology and his own, represented one of the few instances in his life in which he had missed the mark of being unequivocally correct.