D.G-M(c)Hoshino Katsura

I'm not lonely.
Despite what people might say or think, I'm not.

I'm not solitary.
Sometimes I actually do enjoy laughing about stupid jokes with other people, emmersing myself in flippant, skin-deep conversations, clinking glasses with strangers before feeling the burning of liquid running down my throat.

I'm not unhappy.
I'm not particularly happy either.

There's some strange kind of shallow satisfaction when I watch humans replay their mindless faults, cruelties, wars and other follies time and again. Just as Jiji has shown me numerous times since the first day I went with him. Just as I have seen too often as to be able to enjoy the humans' hypocricies. They simply don't change, and there's this strange, shallow satisfaction about them being unable to do so.
But I sincerely wonder – although I don't really for lack of care – whether that shallow feeling constitutes as happiness.

I'm not cruel.
Despite what people might say or think.
I only act upon logical desicions made upon over a millenia of collected experience and a calculation of 'how does it benefit my purpose'. That is not cruel. That is as indifferent and just as it gets.

I cannot negate being cold-hearted.
And why should I since I am well aware of my lack of empathy. Truth be told, I am glad about the fact that other people's pain, sorrows, dreams, wishes, tears, beggings, wrath, hate doesn't touch me at all. Whether they break down crying in front me, shouting insults in my face, beseeching me to help them, tell me they love me... Their emotions don't reach anything under my scarred surface.
No-one touches that so-called cold heart of mine.
It hadn't always been like this, so easy, so irrelevant... But it is now and has been for the longest of times.
I wonder – althoug I don't care, really – if something is wrong with me or them.

I don't consider myself pitiful.
Or broken.
Or lacking.
Or even false.

Other people's expectations don't concern me, nor do they have any impact on my decision making, let alone emotional state.
Other people's standards don't apply to me because I am the next Bookman.
There is no reason for me to be pitied because I have everything I need in order to survive and keep my mind busied. I don't miss anything or anyone. I don't hurt. There's no reason for me to be broken because I don't feel broken, don't feel like damaged goods, don't feel at all sometimes, it seems. No reason for me to be lacking because if I survive, if I can do the job assigned to me by the current Bookman, if I can fulfill my purpose just the way I am right now – what could I be lacking?
Despite what people might say or think, those emotions they are referring to, clinging to desperately, and which they deem lacking in me are not necessary for the Bookman's apprentice. They are utterly dispensable. I neither need nor want them. I don't feel like there is something amiss in my life except for more knowledge.

And ultimately, there is no reason for me to be false because even though I lie through my teeth, am nothing but smoke and mirrors for others, and wouldn't think twice about selling those people out whom me and Jiji had sided with a second or even a year ago if that were to be required, I am true to my profession and logical in my decisions. The thing closest to the truth is logic. Consequently, if people were to use their heads a little, were to learn from past mistakes and see the world as it is – a place full of beings whose first and most important wish is to survive and be superior – they wouldn't accept anything I say at face value. They would think. Reconsider. Conclude.
But they don't. It's the human nature falling deeper and deeper in love with itself, suffocating this illogical race through wars and further imaginative carnage. It's those hypocritical, disingenuous, spineless, murdering, raping, small-minded humans who are false.
Give them a mask and they will tell you their truth.
But I have no interest in giving them that chance. In being generous towards them or even listen to their ridiculous excuses. So I keep the mask, take on another, change my skin to adapt to their lies and survive their madness, before Jiji and I journey on.
Give me a mask and I will tell you whatever you want. Will become whoever you want. As long as it is to my advantage.

The ever so slight vibration of other-worldly, unnatural Innocence in my right hand reminds me that the bloodbaths originating from human emotions have taken on another very tangible form, that of a mechanical nightmare, poised on killing anyone who is able to wield this shimmery substance with inexplicable powers. So-called Innocence forged into weapons, wielded by so-called Exorcists, used to destroy monsters that were originally two living beings bonded by an emotion called love. How ironic.

Despite what people might say or think about my current alias, who is mostly social, seemingly outgoing, often laughing and teasing others in a way comrades or friends might, not taking things very seriously, apart from destroying formerly human monsters – despite what people might say or think about that invented persona...

I am distant.
I am cynical.
I am indifferent.
And I am hurting.

I am fighting in a war although I don't care which side wins in the end, when it all comes down and all cards are on the table. As long as I survive and can continue to do my job, it's fine. I am saving and losing humans I have no deep bond with, for whom I feel nothing but pity, on whom I look down condescendingly because of their many weaknesses and shallow minds and stupidity.

Neither any human nor other monster will ever know my true name.
I discarded it and left it behind with a life and cruel fate that held no future.
And history will never remember my existence as I will remember history.
Because I am what I am, by not being what would chain me down in my destiny.

I won't feel sorry for ink on paper.

I am a Bookman.