Selective Memory
Sometimes, I watch the younger girls pretending to be princesses.
They are damsels in distress, needing to be rescued by a handsome Prince Charming.
Acting miserable and feigning terror, they wait for a knight in shining armor to rescue them.
Forgetting that men are fallible.
Forgetting that metal rusts and tarnishes.
Forgetting that they have neither immortality nor inexhaustable riches, no castle and no fairytale ending.
Some girls have a brother or a friend, a secret admirer or a loving father to play their champion and whisk them away.
But the lucky girls wait in vain for a nonexistent savior.
They will learn to stop hoping and start coping, to remember and stop trying to forget.
But like myself, they will forget that someone isn't always there.
They'll forget that they can only ever depend on their own strength.
At that age, Lee and I began to play shinobi.
We pretended we were protectors, because if shinobi weren't heroes, then who were?
Running around and doing chores, we helped to "preserve the peace" in our world of make-believe.
We forgot that shinobi kill.
We forgot that heroes don't exist.
We forgot that there is no such thing as a happy ending.
And now, I've learned better.
There are no heroes, only masked figures who follow commands.
Good doesn't always win; it's the side that is most willing to give up everything, the side with the most to lose that fights in spite of it.
Sometimes there is no good side and there is no bad, and the causes are neither worthy nor just.
Things can always get worse.
Always.
But at the same time, I'm still entertaining foolish fantasies.
That everything will be okay, that life can be peachy and all wounds will heal given time.
I do my job like everyone else does; like our jobs are perfectly simple, like there's nothing wrong because we've got justification and righteous excuses for everything.
And in the civilian daytime we ignore our tainted nights, pretending that we've done nothing worth noting, that life is a boring, tedious existence.
If only, if only.
We forget that the world is a scary place.
We forget that we have broken souls.
We forget that we can't sleep at night.
We forget that we can't dream.
And above all, we like to forget that we're not good people.
After all, if shinobi aren't heroes, then who are?
The ones who cope with selective memory, doing the best they can?
If only.
And at the same time, we're thankful it's not so.
Because "hero" is a glorified term for "willing sacrifice", and nobody wants to be asked to die.