Entry 5

.. 2 Months 1 Week

What am I? I'm not human… So what I could be?

I learned something today, something about myself, something I should have known and that is vitally important. What am I? What am I?

I was making faces in the mirror while Yako-nee was at school. I do that sometimes, when I grow truly bored. I'll copy the expressions of people I see on the TV, or the blank expressions Neuro wears, in the mirror, learning how they feel, laughing at their ludicrousness. But something happened today, something truly different.

I was copying the face Yako-nee wears when Neuro surprises her, or says something that she wasn't expecting. Her eyes bug out of her head and she makes the most ridiculous expression. I could see it so clearly in my head, the exact way her face looked. I focused on that image, trying to copy every nuance of the expression that I could. I wanted to make Yako-nee laugh when she got home.

But when I looked in the mirror, it was Yako-nee who stared back at me.

I didn't just have her expression, I had her face, and her hair. Yako-nee's head was sitting on my body. In a moment I turned back into myself, my empty, stunned expression back on my face. I tried it with Godai, who always left whenever I entered the agency; he stared back at me from the mirror. I tried it with random people I had seen on the street, people I had seen on the television. My face went so easily between them all… male, female, child, adult. I changed my body, too, and found that it was as easy as my face and came as naturally as breathing. I was a hobbled old man in the boy Sai's pajamas; I was the glorious young singer Aya Aijia, who had been convicted of murder and caught in her plans by my own sister. I became her, looked at the way my pajamas sat on her body, how even the grinning, toothy hair-clips pulled my hair back. I turned back into myself, stared at myself.

The shock was over, and so was my confusion.

My arm burst into spikes, long ivory-yellow claws curled from my knuckles, my teeth grew long and sharp. It was easy. So easy. I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew exactly how to make my body take the shape I imagined, how my body moved its constantly metamorphisizing cells into the shapes I willed. It was so natural, like breathing. More natural. This was how I was.

I turned back into myself and with excitement started to think over what I would tell Yako-nee when she came back, when I showed her what I could do. She would be so happy for me!

But I suddenly stopped, and thought. I had seen Yako-nee go out for a mystery before in disguise. She had had to use Akane to make her hair longer, and temporary dye that Akane had first objected very firmly to. They had used makeup in a way that she hardly looked like my sister anymore. If Yako-nee could transform like this, too, why would she go through the effort of makeup and dye and Akane? Why would any of the people on the TV go through plastic surgery, or get their hair cut, or have hair extensions, or go to tanning booths, or wear masks if they could simply change their bodies?

It was because they couldn't. I realized it quickly, but it still crashed down on me and seemed to shatter my world. Humans couldn't change their shape and appearance so easily. Humans couldn't turn themselves into others with the slightest whim, or change their hair color as quickly as they blinked. This wasn't a human trait. But I had it? Then that meant I wasn't human.

I'm not human? But I feel like it…I look like it. I have two eyes, two ears, a mouth, a nose, arms, legs, a head. I was human, wasn't I?! I am, aren't I?! Human… I've lived so long thinking I'm human, knowing I'm human, aren't I human?! If I'm not human, then what could I possibly be?! What else is there?!

I looked at the mirror, my mind reeling with tortured images and thoughts. Yako-nee… Yako-nee, does she know? Know that I'm not human, that I'm not like everyone else? That I may not be like anyone else?

What am I? What am I that I can do this, that I'm not like the other humans? Why am I this way? What made me this way? Can anyone else do this, or is it just me? Am I the only kind of my kind in the world?

No, that can't possibly be true. I can't be something else, I can't be something that has never been before. I must be something. I must… but what? What could I possibly be that I don't know?

I looked in the mirror, and for a moment Neuro flashed before my eyes, the sharp, pointed teeth, the cruel, glowing eyes. I stared in the mirror and waited for him to appear. But it was still Sai who stared back at me. Sai, this… thing. I tried again and again, until I fell to my knees screaming at my cells. Neuro…what are you that I can't become you? What are you that I can't become what you are? I can turn into any human being I've ever seen—I know, I've tested it. Every face I couldn't see on the street, every commercial spokes-lady or pathetic actor, every criminal that's walked through the doors of the detective agency with the false ploy of employing you. Everyone. Every single human bein—

That's it, isn't it?! You aren't a human, are you Neuro? You look like one, but you aren't. You aren't a human, you're like me, aren't you? No… maybe not exactly. But we're different, aren't we? We can be different together, can't we? Neuro… you know what I am, don't you? You must! You know everything—you've solved every mystery, devoured the energy of every human who has done something and thought they could get away with it. I've seen them, how empty they are after they confront you, how they can't get the name "Neuro" off their lips afterwards. Neuro, what do you do to them? You aren't human either, are you?

But what makes a human? What is a human all about, anyway? Is it their bodies, this foolish thing I can change so easily? What makes a human a human, what makes a human realize that that is what they are? Is it what's in their body?

What does a human body look like, anyway? Without thinking I turned my finger into a knife and slit my chest, showing pulsing red muscle and the sharp contrast of my white ribs. These cells… these cells that always change, are they human? Blood splashed from the wound and poured onto the floor in great gushes, glistening against the tiles of the bathroom. Is that human blood? Or the blood of something else? How can I test it, how can I prove it? What does blood look like? Blood that isn't mine, blood that doesn't come from whatever I am. Blood, these muscles, this bone. Are all muscles this red color, with these fibers showing? How about bone, is it always white, like this?

What does Yako-nee look like without her skin? Or Godai? Or any of hte people on the street, those people that call themselves "humans"? What are they? What are they made of, what do they look like inside? Who can I ask? Humans…. What is a human?