iii. 3play

Not only is the third time on purpose; it's a test.

That's why it's not worth talking about.

You allow time to roll between incidents like a vast cavern, leaving far behind the day you let yourself die from fucking sepsis. A span of a couple months; longer than the mere weeks between the first two times. To this minute, you aren't sure which was more humiliating, more pathetic - dying alone on the street from pure stupidity on your part, as you deserved, or willingly expiring while surrounded by your brothers, as you most certainly didn't deserve.

In the end, it doesn't matter. You're alive now. And this time, it's on your terms.

So you start counting. One.

It doesn't matter because if Osomatsu-niisan had walked down that street, doubtlessly bundled in winter clothing because his spite doesn't deafen him to his brothers' counsel; if he'd been saved from the humiliation of sliding on ice by a neon-colored warning in the form of dark blood and the shape of his brother, he wouldn't have cared that much. Damn Ichimatsu, spilling the kerosene. If Todomatsu had accidentally discovered the damp and swollen flesh of your bite, if he'd come in to sit with you a few hours later than he did and found nothing but the still-flushed skin of a cooling corpse, he would have cleansed the room in actual fire but otherwise wouldn't have given much of a shit.

You're sure of it. They wouldn't have.

They go through the motions because five is hard to deal with when you've always been six, but if it means extra room in the futon at night, extra food on their table and a few more bills in their wallets, they wouldn't care that much about your life. They must care at least as little about it as you do.

Two and three, in succession.

Actually, you don't know why you even bothered to wait entire fucking months to do this. Maybe you're just a pathetic liar and you actually are afraid of dying. Maybe you were secretly hoping that your brothers would grow psychic powers, and figure out something was going on with you; or, its opposite, maybe you were afraid of that precise scenario. It's hard to die peacefully in a family with no privacy.

Maybe you just needed that long to drag up enough motivation to actually make an effort at something. If you're being honest, that's the most likely possibility.

Four, your lucky number. Right on target; you're beginning to feel a little unwell.

You're doing this because what's really fucking killing you is not knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt. Apparently, two miracles aren't enough for you. You're that kind of greedy, disgusting guy, who gets good things he doesn't deserve and then throws them all away like trash. One by one by one by one.

Five.

This is stupid. You're stupid.

Six.

It's going to be really funny if you actually just stay dead this time. Hilarious. You're stupid but you're not dumb; you doubt you're immortal, just screwed up. What normie can do the things you can do, anyway? You know cats. You know all about cats; for fuck's sake, you are one, when the conditions are right. It's a shitty explanation, but it's the only one that comes remotely close to making sense.

You've seen enough die under your semi-care to know that no, they don't have nine fucking lives. But they're not the unlucky, fourth-born Matsuno. They're not hated enough by whatever gods are out there to end up with a fate like this.

If you die on three lives, it would really be hilarious. Because you know for a fact that you wouldn't die on four.

You're not that lucky.

Seven eight nine.

It's not worth talking about. It's not even worth counting. You're just waiting for it to happen, letting it, completely docile to its necessary inevitability. As if you're not the one sitting here in the dark, crisp night, doing it to yourself. You're just allowing it.

Past ten, but you did lose count. You're feeling dizzy and ill. It doesn't feel nice; it doesn't connect you to a feeling of being, some unreachable canal of vitality that you might have been drifting parallel to all these years. Because you're weak, because you've indulged enough but just enough, you know how that feels. You did that to feel that. You're doing this to do this. There's no epiphany. There's nothing good, or bad. You just feel like you're dying.

And if you do wake up, which you're not fully expecting but it's the only result worth having a contingency plan for, you guess that pins you with some kind of new responsibility. The man who can't die, or at the very least, can die a few more times. Someone like that should be a little less selfish, shouldn't he? Someone like that could afford to let out his tender heart without fear of where it would lead him. Then again, that's why this is so hilarious; that's why you were chosen for this.

Who else would throw this away, for no other reason than that's all that happens to garbage?

It's so fucking funny and stupid, it's not worth talking about. It's not even worth all these mental gymnastics to justify. It's a punchline. You just let the joke tell itself.

You curl in on yourself, listen to a clatter on the asphalt, and just let it.

You wake up.

You feel sick, and you're tired. A blanket of fog bristles with gray sunshine, and it's still early enough that you're positive you can return home, clean up, and crawl back into bed before any of your brothers are awake.

Your legs hold your weight with ease. You shed your undershirt and fling it into the cobweb-frosted shrubbery. Slide on your damp winter coat, jokingly embellished by your younger brothers with kitty clips; with purple-striped pins and the number "4" by your elders. It hangs perfectly on your thin, unburdened frame.

Buttoning the coat and kicking your punchline underneath the park bench with another sharp clack, you head home.

You were right. Even now, it doesn't matter.

It wasn't worth anything at all.