At first glance, one would be tempted to call the man ruggedly handsome.
At first glance.
At second, third, and all further, all that came through was an ordinary – if weather-beaten – face made harsh by many too many bottles of bad alcohol, a near-perpetual slouch, a broken nose. Clothing that seemed not so much picked out as picked up, and for all anyone could guess, was. He wasn't a destitute man, nor a visibly broken one, not with that roll of greenbacks tucked carelessly into the band on his hat. He was worse, though – a man who simply did not care. Who could glide through life, have it part soundlessly and then come back together as soon as he passed. A man who would fade out of existence as soon as his body did. A man who died twenty years ago and did not care for a second death.
It was his eyes, though, that troubled anyone foolish, or careless, enough to look at them. Eyes one can drown in are a cliché, and even the eyes of the most base, the most horrible person show emotion. Some emotion, at least. But with this man, the only thing one noticed was the cold stare. It didn't look at people, but through them. Regardless of how young or old the person was, how beautiful, of what gender. Except then there was also the tightness. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but it was there. A word was all it took, sometimes even not even that much – just a motion, a voice off in the distance, and the man's entire body would stiffen. Fists clenched, mouth shut, the eyes like twin headlights. Dead ahead, a metallic gaze and an inhuman one.
None knew, none that were alive, anyways, just how much control and emotion and…pain…it took to make them that way. To drain all color, all richness, all reminder that once, yesterday and twenty years ago, he was, for the last time in his life, happy.
Her eyes. The last thing he remembered – wanted to remember – was how the world reflected in her eyes that day. The day they kissed. The day she closed her eyes and smiled. The day she killed herself. For him.
He'd heard what they say, of course. Window to the soul, and all that. And even that made it hurt. Because for whatever his own eyes were, it were hers he always thought of – when he bothered to. The way they took in everything in the world – the tiniest variations in color, the tiniest movements. The magic in the chaotic drifting of a butterfly, the magic in the chaotic drifting of people through a crowd. The quiet magic of fireworks over a summer festival and of the garbled patterns of raindrops on a puddle's surface. It was her eyes that let her become a person. Become his friend, maybe give her the chance to become more.
Twenty years it time enough a hundred times over to look back. To dissect every moment they spent together, as he sat in deserted bars and deserted bus stations. As he twisted and turned and huddled under blankets and longcoats. As he screamed in pain. As he killed.
Like that day at the beach, when for the only time in their year or so together – the one thing he never did was actually bother to count the dates – they were one. The one day her eyes failed, and his had to work for the two of them. Impulses from his brain to his hands to her fingers to the trigger of her gun. It was the only time he saw her afraid and knew, she would gladly meet death. She gladly met death, didn't she? But she never did think, for lack of experience or lack of desire, that by her own death, she only made it worse for the one she left behind.
So he drank, drank again, drank some more, smiled, and put his head down on the bar. And for once, was comfortable in the knowledge that the first thought to race through his head next morning would be "where…am I," not "Mahoro-san!!!"