blind
blīnd/
adjective
1.
unable to see; sightless.
2.
deprive (someone) of understanding, judgment, or perception.
They were all filthy.
All of the billions of people in the world were the same. Money was the language of the modern age. The world wasn't kind to anyone. Yet how easily money made the coldness of living bearable! How easily it would bring out the sycophants to play! Anything in the world could be bought.
Anything.
He too could be bought for a price.
And he despised himself for it.
He could have had it all. From the time when he could stand at his father's knee, he had wanted to be a professional baseball player. That dream had ended in high school when he had been forced to make a choice. The boys who had locked him in the closet threatened to break his pitching arm if he refused to try their latest "experiment" at fun.
Tch. What a fool he had been.
The experiment had lived on for seven years.
How was it his fault? His very soul yearned for the chance to become high again; to fill the exhilaration of the drug seep through out his body. It was a fix that he couldn't avoid.
With it, he could become a God.
Without it, he was a mere mortal once more.
He would have done anything for the chance to feel that way again. Everyone had their escape from life. Anyone who said they enjoyed life was a liar. You were born into filth, you died in filth. Because of this, couldn't a person be entitled to their own way of escape?
"Fuck" Kenji muttered, raising his hand to his mouth in order for his lips to curl about his cigarette once more. She was the cause of this. Imagine that, a simple whore like Ayu degrading him, Kenji the Gigolo who had once had the finest whores working for him, to this level.
"I need a place to stay."
Those had been her first words to him when he had opened the door that Saturday night. It wasn't a real surprise to him. What other gigolos had the reputation that he had? As long as his whores found clients, him among them, they could stay with him. It was better than living on the streets as some gigolos had their girls do. It was a surprise for Ayu to give him the same honest, piercing stare that his sister used to give him.
His sister would have been around Ayu's age, had he been around to see her. After the experiment, his family had forced him to move out, along with cutting their ties from him. Apparently seeing their prodigal son wracked with shakes and an unfathomable need for heroin had lowered their opinion of him.
How surprising.
His sister had been too young at the time to understand what was entirely happening. She had cried that he was abandoning her as he packed away his few belongings on to his bicycle. He had started down the street; never looking back.
That was the moment when she had begun to chase him.
Over the railroad tracks they went; his back wheel getting stuck in between the set of tracks. Racing towards him as he had tried to free the wheel, he had refused to look at her. Only boys cried, not men. Successfully pulling the wheel free from the track, he had turned his back to her.
That was when the train had come.
He had heard it.
He had felt the tracks shaking as it screamed its approach.
Yet his sister, his poor, poor deaf sister had been unaware to what was happening.
Paralyzed by his fear, he had let her die.
Let, oh that singular word that tortured him so. And just as it tortured him, it taunted him. He tried to excuse it away – the train had been going too fast for him to have saved her! If he would have tried, both of them would have died. That's what he had told himself every night since then.
What could he have done?
What should he have done?
Yet despite his drug caressed thinking, even he knew deep down that he could have saved her. If he had yanked her forwards or pushed her out of the way – there was a millennia worth of things he could have done. But he hadn't done anything.
Nothing.
He had done nothing.
Her lifeless gaze still filled his dreams.
"High school girls working these days…gives me the creeps."
That had been his reply before shutting the door. Like a damn dog Ayu had returned, night after night, to wait for him to see her by sitting on the front steps leading to his apartment complex. And night after night he had refused to look at her.
Until finally, he couldn't take it.
"If you're going to act like a mutt, at least follow me the whole way home."
After that, she began to live with him. It didn't matter what he did to her. He could lay his hands on her, force her to service him, take a larger percentage of the money she earned from clients, it was as if nothing mattered to her. Life itself had little meaning to her.
She was stronger than he was.
That was why resentment built inside of him. She didn't need the drugs that he forced her to inject to make herself feel better. She simply acted as if she felt nothing; as if she were simply going through the motions of living. Nothing mattered at all. He could drag her down to his level of filth and still she never cracked.
She didn't need to feel like a God.
And that was how she had led him into this mess! She was the one to blame for this. When he had demanded twenty thousand dollars from her, she had given it to him. It was as if she had actually cared about him.
How could she?
How could she feel something like this when she never showed weakness? Someone who never felt anything – not fear, not anger, nothing; how could they feel something like love?
He wasn't capable of loving.
He was only capable of using.
She knew that. Yet still she had given it to him.
"You'll get it back in no time."
How easily the lies had spilled from his mouth. The money had slipped like water through his fingers before he could clasp them around the bills. It would have been enough to keep the loan sharks that he had borrowed from at bay. It would have saved his life.
If only he hadn't spent it on a fix instead.
If only
That morning with shaking fingers, he had clumsily pulled out the envelope from underneath the bed. Surely there had to be enough left money! It was only a few dollars that he had spent, here and there. How carefully he had tried to make the highs last for as long as they had!
Delirious minutes had dragged on to desperately filled hours as his never ending lust for the drug threatened to consume him. And it had consumed him – entirely, burning through his veins ever too quickly, a pleasure that was forever just out of his grasp.
Plink, plink.
Three silver coins had dropped from the envelope, rolling along the floor until they had come to rest where they lay now; by his foot. Tipping his head back, Kenji blew a puff of smoke into the air. Even if he would have had the money, what would that have changed?
Nothing.
He wasn't so much of a fool as to think that he wouldn't go straight back to using again. Another coin, another dollar, it would all go to his habit. No matter how much he used, it would never be enough. The time he spent feeling and living as a God would always end a minute too soon. It would always be that way.
He was trapped.
Trapped in a cycle of everlasting addiction and need. It was the cravings that was the worst. He supposed once he was dirt, he wouldn't have them anymore. That alone would be a relief.
And now, now what was he doing? He was waiting to die. In his feeble attempts at living; he had locked the front door, turned off his cell phone, and tucked away the knives underneath his mattress. As if any of that would matter. He had been provided with three weeks to repay them and was on his fourth week, without sending them a single payment.
Ah well. What did it matter?
He always knew he was a son of a bitch.
When he passed, no one would miss him.
There would be no one and nothing. Nothing seemed to be the definition of his life. Nothing was his purpose; nothing was his hope; and nothing was his damnation. If there had been something, maybe there would have been a future besides nothing. But now, he was forever enraptured with nothing.
What had come of his life? He was a failure, a waste of life. He had let his sister die before his own eyes, he had forced others into filth, and he had sold his soul for a habit that had destroyed him. It wasn't as if anyone would say anything at his funeral. He had made little – or any accomplishments in life beyond heinous actions.
And as for his bitch, Ayu? What would anyone say when she passed?
Would they say something? Would she have the same fate as he? Mortal or god, what would her life come to?
Deep down, he knew they wouldn't.
They were both encased in the love of nothing. No purpose, only the dalliance with death provided a sliver of purpose. That was gone now, for as he passed so would she into an eternal sea of nothing.
For they were both still as filthy as the day they had been born.
Filthy.
Fin.
Kenji and Ayu are from the manga Deep Love Ayu.