Back in character. One more time. Just to say goodbye to you, Tokyo.

The Butterfly Room was a deserted mess. Faded around the edges, like a point hundred long ago love letter, meaningless in the current life. Everyone had been sent home so they could take a break from their bona fide lies. Holding up a pseudo life with skin-deep arms was not an easy job. But Swallowtail was lying – at least a little bit. He wouldn't have cared less. When they joined his line of business, they had been made well aware of their situation. It was not his fault if their tendons gave way and their colour sets danced onto contrast grey. In Swallow's unfathomable eyes, there were one hundred and fifty one ways to say goodbye.

Not one of them involved the mask of a face to be in front of him.

He hauled a three-legged stool onto the blue-lit stage. The light frowned at him. Carefully, the microphone was picked up. Switch flick. Echo. It was on. 'Testing, one two three.' The harsh hit-back static noise glared through the sound box. The sound recorder sat sullenly on the table in front of him.

'Hello Tokyo.'

Pray to God the tape recorder was on – Swallow wasn't going to check, and once he started, he wasn't about to stop. Verbal orgasm rapture. Staring into empty space, the colour of deaf stars – instantly, then, Swallow couldn't even recognise the Butterfly Room. Kiss your mentality au revoir. Planets revolve around you now.

He closed his eyes and breathed in again. Deeply, truly, mildly. Tokyo air. He felt water in his lungs, but supposed it was just his imagination trying to trick him into causing another scene. His imagination always tried to drown him. In what? Affection? Love? Lust? Death--? A one of the above multiple choice question he wasn't about to guess on until he had made sure that there was a safety mat underneath him.

Swallowtail continued to spin a criss-cross knit of sayonara; words like a drug euphoria.

'This is your favourite songbird speaking – uprooted from foreign shores and planted upon your fertile soil to sing the songs of daybreak and moon fall for you, at the mere guidance of your whims. My songs were coddled once. My voice was yours. I wanted to give you my everything, Tokyo.'

He cracked a rueful smile. Moonlight hanging diagonally from the window gave way to floating pieces of dust. But one must admit: when staring directly into the end of his, one really runs down the list of symbolism pertaining to the last living strands. What you see is what is believed by millions of microscopic minions to the paper strips that small girls play with. Small strips turn into paper stars which burn brightly in their highly patterned state, hanging the end of a wire, delicate in the balance of colossal turmoil.

'But everything wasn't enough.'

Tokyo grimaced

Swallowtail raised the ladder-tethered ends of his sympathy. 'I don't blame you,' he said quickly. 'It's not your fault. How can you control the chemistry of my inborn fate, negated by the anterior backdrop of poor mental health? How could you control the spawning of cells in a beautiful mind, spawning with a libido unfounded by the overt healing powers of a possible love? How could you control a fight, a struggle, an unneeded death on the top of a building fifty stories removed from your grace …?'

He took out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. Suck in, blow out. Straighten. Dictate.

'The answer is really quick simple.' Smoke trailed from his mouth as he spoke. 'You can't.' He sighed. 'So Tokyo, I hear you're doing well.' I hear the rains have let up a little on your brothers and sisters. I hear your lights are bright. I hear that business is booming, your streets are bustling, and your sun is still rising.

But not for me.

'Tokyo, this is goodbye. I'm sorry …'

… if I'm running away. I hope you'll understand, but—

I'm going home.

Not to the apartment. Not back to the Butterfly. I feel so far removed … the hole in the back of my head is healing, but the hole in the left aorta of my back peddling heart is still a little bit sore.

And home happens to be anywhere but here.

'It'll go away if I make it,' he whispered, and in a louder voice: 'So goodnight, Tokyo. Goodnight and goodbye. They say that parting is such sweet sorrow, but I'm never been happier in my life.'

I'll start anew without you.

So.

The rapture dividing the twin peaked discovery of ratchet ratchet ratchet tears

will nevermore face the jury of twin past perfection. I laugh in the wake

of wood grain anomalies. You, in one instance, an O-type negative, never

really say what my hands did behind your back.

Shadow puppets.

In the light of your eyes.

Swallowtail had re-recorded later on. All the time he had been speaking, it had not been on. The red light had not flashed at him. He had known that, somewhere, secretly, stitched on his sleeve. It would play the next morning, playing out his voice. "Ja!"

He caught a taxi to the airport. Flying away from Tokyo, like the Swallow he was.

This is your last chance, little butterfly. Say your last …

'… Goodbye.'

-- &&& --

America was where all the scene kids wanted to be. America was top of the world – action, weaponry, money. The yakuza were beginning to spread world wide, and second after Japan, the US was where they went. There were several in Hong Kong, but Swallow didn't want to be anywhere near his birth right.

Tong Xin's clan situated in New York, but Tong Xin wasn't who he wanted to see. He wanted to see America's Dragonhead. He wanted to see Manhattan, where the Yamaguchi Gumi were.

They weren't as noble as the Japanese – the amount of gangster-looking chinks there with ball-ridden cocks was a dramatic change of scenery. They still worked in the drug, assassination and whore business like the original Dragonhead told them to, but they stole. It was his first job as part of the Yamaguchi-Gumi, his first utterance from a hot-headed sub-human leader of a gang that only made satin faces because they had guns in their hands.

Swallow needn't a gun in his hands. He needed blood.

The house was mere steps away. Cars slept in the garage and lined themselves on the street – they were home, so he wouldn't have to worry about hacking open an alarm. The first step sent a creak.

Immediately setting to birth beautiful lies, we spoke.

We chatted. You lived. I died a little more. But so was the want

Of the world. It always happens again and again and again and a

… gain …