Dazai

I'm so glad. So glad I got away. From my past. From my memories. So many people think of memories as nostalgic, but I think that they're just little pieces hell, slowly creeping into your mind. Like a bunch of puzzle pieces, not fitting quite together. And it's torture thinking of everything I've been through. But I hide it all, tucked under a smile and jokes. My dead father told me once that hiding under a façade would never work, but it's worked for seventeen years.

I don't see why it wouldn't keep working. After all, my father died because of his expressions that one could read like an open book.

Of course, Chuuya's mother fell for the façade. I was slightly jealous of him- his mother cared so much about him and he seemed to not care at all, screaming at his mother to take me away. Whereas in public, my mom was the original soccer mom, but in private she was a drunken bitch, looking for any man to sleep with. Cigarette butts scattered the floors of our house, and translucent glass shards of beer bottles filled the trash.

I was expected to clean up her goddamn mess every morning, and every night she'd throw her drunken body into a pool of her own vomit and pass out. All the money that could've been used for my education, my career, my hopes and dreams, were wasted on nights of poker, and 300-dollar whiskey. But I wasn't supposed to complain. And I didn't. So every night, after she passed out, I would take some money out of her wallet, maybe two dollars, and buy a sandwich or some chips from the gas station nearest to us. I left her some food, but she never seemed to eat it, nor care that I, her never-demanding son, practically clothed and fed her every. Single. Day.

When she was really drunk, she would come to my room and cry. Sometimes a smack to the head would suffice. Then came the day when her boyfriend dumped her. This time, she took two fingers, and jammed them into my right eye. Not a word was said. Not when blood dripped down my shirt, like a waterfall. Not when I cried as she took her fingers from my eye, covered in slime and blood. Nothing. The following day, I got an infection. I couldn't see out of my right eye, because a thin layer of mold was covering it. I stayed in my room all day, fearing to go outside. My mom would only stand outside, probably wondering whether to come in. I'm glad she didn't. Because if she did, I swear to God I would've killed her. I didn't eat for days, and survived off of the tap water coming from my room's bathroom sink.

But I had a friend who became concerned when I didn't go to school for a week. His name was Oda Sakunosuke, better know as Odasaku. When he came to our house at seven at night to check on me, my mom took one of her kitchen knives and hacked every part of his body she could find in her drunken haze.

Odasaku died the next day in the hospital due to knife punctures in both lungs, and unnaturally large amounts of blood loss. My mother was charged with murder and child abuse after the police figured out what she did to me. I became basically blind in my right eye due to the infection and was forced to wear bandages around that eye for half a year due to the severity of the infection.

Afterwards, she sobered up. To protect her skin, she hired a lawyer to support her in the lawsuit started by Oda's parents. They were grieving, and they wanted something. Even a simple sorry would do. But she pleaded to insanity, and they institutionalized her for three years and, as soon as I turned eighteen, she was to fulfill a life in prison.

Six years later here we are, in a new city, looking brand new, as if our past was paper-thin. But I knew. She knew. We both know, that what happened to Oda could not be forgotten. So after rehab here she, is dropping me off at some stranger's house, practically begging them to take me in. She can have her own twisted version of fun, but I never want to see her again. Not her eyes that reeked unrestrained madness, not her pale face with her sunken eye sockets and thin cheeks.

My mother was a murderer. In about two months, when I became a legal adult, they would cart her off to prison and I would never see her again.

Lying down on the bed Chuuya's mother had so generously provided, I twisted my bandaged wrists around in the air. Bandages that hid the many scars of child abuse, bandages that hid the memory on my neck where my mother had almost killed me.

It had been months of awkward silence ever since I had moved in. There was a sort of tension in the air between Chuuya and I, but his mother was completely oblivious to the fact. It was like we were both waiting for something to happen-it didn't matter whether it was good or bad anymore. Even at school, when he passed me in the hall, we would exchange only the slightest of looks before disappearing into our classes.

But otherwise, I was surprised to see Atsushi, (a white haired child, also one of the most popular people in school) hangout with this hermit crab of a human. Then again, they were neighbors. As socially awkward as he was, there was only a small number of people who disliked Chuuya in our high school, considering how small and cute he was to the popular girls, and whoever disagreed with the popular girls got their asses kicked.

This group of Chuuya-hating monsters consisted of Ranpo, the smartest boy in school who was going to major in math in college, and Yosano, his girlfriend who was an up-and-coming doctor. They were soulmates, and also the most perfect pair for each other. They were both far too advanced for this school, and they were both extraordinarily perfect. Like, you could mess up Ranpo's hair for a good thirty seconds and it would still stay perfectly neat under his cap.

Then there was a blonde-haired senior in my mathematics and science classes: his name was Kunikida Doppo, and he spent a good part of break writing in his notebook with "ideals" taped on the cover. I once had stolen it (much to his chagrin), and read what was inside.

May I just say, gross?

After that came a freshman named Miyazawa Kenji, who lived on a farm on the outskirts of Yokohama and spent two hours on the morning commute. He disliked Chuuya for one reason and one reason only: Chuuya could keep his hat on when he couldn't. It was utterly hilarious.

Next was a small girl, no taller than Atsushi himself, named Izumi Kyouka. She had once been friends with both Chuuya and Akutagawa (surprisingly), but had somehow switched to hate Chuuya but still tolerated Akutagawa due to him being Atsushi's soulmate. She dressed in traditional Japanese clothes (kimono, sash, and all), and it was mystery to everyone in the school to what she looked like dressed in a uniform.

The last ones were Tanizaki Junichirou, his sister Naomi, and her gaggle of friends. Junichirou was one of those laid-back kids, and he was also friends with Ranpo, Kunikida, Yosano, Kyouka, and Kenji. Together, all eight or so of them made up the "We Hate Nakahara Chuuya" club.

I sat at a lunch table with Chuuya- he looked slightly peeved but was thankful for an anchor in the sea of girls who begged to sit with him. I could get why they were all so desperate. He had slightly enlarged eyes, and thin, but kind of pouty soft lips. Faint freckles were carelessly splashed around his face, and his lashes were dark and luscious. His face in general, looked as if God put extra care into creating his features.

One of the popular, Chuuya-craving girls was named Margaret Mitchell, and according to Atsushi, she'd had her eye set on Hawthorne, one of the popular boys, and had thought for six years (ever since the beginning of sixth grade), that they were soulmates. Of course, they weren't, so she went for the next hottest boy on premise.

Just watching her made me disgusted. Odasaku, if he were here, would've never approved. We would exchange glances and snort together into our disgusting cafeteria food, intertwining our fingers under the table. Margaret's sort of romance was the paper-thin shit like my mother thought our past to be. I knew what it was like to be in a real relationship, one that had been torn in half by my mother.

There was a rough shove in my side, and I turned to find Chuuya nearly on my lap, trying to pull his arm from Margaret's pertinent grasp. To be honest, I didn't hate the idea of him sitting on my lap. But a second later, Margaret was shoved off Chuuya by a pale hand, and Akutagawa haughtily sat himself down next to Chuuya, Atsushi following close behind. Higuchi, Akutagawa's former girlfriend, sat herself down on the opposite side of the table with Akutagawa's sister Gin.

Damn, Akutagawa had a shit ton of acquaintances.

"Hi, Dazai-san!" Atsushi grinned with the innocence of a sixth-grader rather than a sixteen-year old freshman. "Did you have a good day so far?"

I threw him a side grin and lowered a ramen noodle into my mouth with chopsticks. "Pretty much. But I have to keep Chuuya from getting molested, so it's been pretty rough."

In all the childhood innocence one could possess at such an age, Atsushi cocked his head to the side, raised an eyebrow, and somehow, with a completely straight face, asked: "What does 'molested' mean?"

Akutagawa snorted into his soup, trying to hide the insufferable smirk on his face. Chuuya nearly fell out of his seat, Higuchi hid her smile under her hair, and Gin put her mask back over her face and coughed, hiding her laugh.

If Odasaku were here, he'd be smiling that smile of a patient teacher and leaning down the table to educate Atsushi in the cleanest, most innocent way possible. However, I was not Oda, and therefore, Atsushi would learn this a bit differently.

I twisted my wrist into a flourish, Odasaku's ghostly smile still floating through my mind as I spoke. "Well, Atsushi, let me educate you into the beautiful world of puberty!"

The only sounds after that were chokes from around the table, and Atsushi's horrified expression staring at me for the rest of lunch.