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Sunrise backdrops you in soft pink, the color of cherry blossoms and roses and blushing lotuses. In my head, you are surrounded by flowers and soft sunlight, the distant jingle of a store-bell and children’s laughter. You run a flower shop, maybe, and I buy flowers every day just to see you. I’m allowed to know the names of your girls and have the privilege of your sincerity. The world is kind to you, and your laughter comes freely, from the bottom of your heart. In my head, you are still kind.
Your face turns, and the illusion breaks; your expression is closed off, an opaque mask draw over it, dishonest in the softness of your eyes and cruel in the serenity of your little Buddha-smile. I know you well enough to know the insincerity of that expression, but not well enough to know what’s under it.
“Satoru,” you say, “you’re awake?”
I didn’t sleep in the first place. You probably know that.
I pull the blanket up around me, but even still, the floor is cold and the air colder when I step outside to join you. Early-autumn breeze brushes through your hair and rises goosebumps on your skin. Your ears are pink at the tips.
“I realized something recently,” I say.
You lean against the balcony’s railing. “Hm?”
You’ve changed, but so have I, y’know? “Yeah, I was like, thinking, right? And—promise you won’t laugh, it’s not like it sounds—but I was like ‘am I actually superior to other people?’ and decided that I’m not. It’s kinda weird, y’know?”
You don’t laugh, but your brow arches high and amusement curls in the corner of your lips. “Yeah?”
“Yeah!” Cold air rattles my chest. “By people I mean everyone, by the way. Like, I concluded I’m not better than monkeys—real monkeys, not your insane bullshit—or that bird over there. Or a fish. Et cetera.”
Something complicated flickers over your face. “...Are you trying to make a point?”
“Not really. Just felt like telling you. I mean, seriously, who else do I tell? My family? Half of them still can’t even accept woman as equals, y’know? I’d get laughed out of the room!”
“’Could tell Shōko.”
“She asked me if I was high.” I pout. “So rude, right! I don’t even drink, much less take drugs!”
“Ah.” I can see your careful deliberation, can see, too, the slump of your shoulders when you decide your next words. “How’d that happen, then?”
Courtesy, huh? Typical.
“’Dunno,” I say, “it feels right, though. Sort of like a weight lifted, actually.”
Your fingers tighten around the railing. Does it really bother you that much? I guess it would, considering your...everything. There’s defensiveness in your posture, in the tense line of your jaw, in the thin slit of your eyes, in the way your lips slant upward, mocking.
“What,” you say, “so you think a curse’s life is worth the same as yours, now?”
It’s a deliberate provocation, a distraction, a dismissal. Entirely bad-faith.
“Sure,” I answer, easily, “there are probably a decent number of them that are.”
You make a face. “Seriously?”
“What’s worth of life anyway? There’s worth of preservation, which curses have a negative value in, but worth of life? Seriously, Suguru, how do you measure that? How do you quantify that in a vacuum? Strength? Ability? Intelligence? Capacity for certain types of feelings? Species? It all feels petty.”
You eyes languidly drag over the horizon, before returning to me. A sardonic smile pulls at your lips. “Since when do you think about that sort of thing?”
Since you left.
You’re avoiding the subject, but that’s okay. I never expected anything else. What I said earlier is true: I’m not trying to make a point. You won’t listen unless you want to.
I shrug.
You sigh.
The thought comes almost idly: what’s the worth of your life in a vacuum? Does one’s character make a difference? I haven’t pondered that factor much—it doesn’t matter, really. After all, worth of preservation is different from worth of life, and the former is far easier to quantify. My inclination has always been more towards the rigid truth of equations and formulas, and when all variables are taken into account, you have a negative value to this world. It’s imperative to erase your existence.
So it doesn’t matter, the outcome of this thought experiment. It makes no practical difference. I won’t decide to spare you in the same way I switched honey to maple syrup, meats to seitan, dairy milk for vanilla almond milk. The practicality of it is that you need to die, and I need to kill you.
“Hey, Suguru?”
“Yeah?”
We once talked about a hypothetical ‘worst world’, or rather, you rambled and I listened. It was enamoring, once, to watch you in the heat of your passion. The brightness of your expression, eyes glinting, arms moving in broad, frantic motions. Your careful deliberation would fall, and your words would stumble over themselves, try to race each other out of your throat. Anyway—you went on about whether a world consisting purely of suffering was ‘worse’ than a world in which some of its occupants were happy, but most weren’t. I thought it was stupid, then. Because obviously the world consisting purely of suffering is worse, but I’m not sure, now.
You broke the apathy of my existence. Showed me love, happiness. The world feels crueler, now that I’ve tasted paradise. That doesn’t make sense, though. Are the constants of this world kind for allowing life? Cruel for it? They’re neither, it’s all they can do. It’s not a reflection of character.
You called me kind, once, in first year. For being a sorcerer despite my dislike of it. But I’m not kind, not really; I do what I do because what else would I do.
“...Nothing.”
I was mechanical before you, and am a broken machine without you; I wish you hadn’t taught me humanity.
Your eyes roll, and your head knocks against my shoulder. “Something you don’t wanna say?”
“Nah. Just forgot what I was gonna say.”
“Ah.” Fondness softens your face, and it’s honest, this time. “Typical.”
I’m not kind, but.
I want to give you a kind death, if it’s possible. I'd like to be kind for you.