Putting Pen To Paper - Naegami Story

Eyeteeth Arc - 6: strange heart

Byakuya,

Your letter was one that surprised me. Thinking of how you write to me now in comparison of how you wrote to me many months ago, it is like night and day. I am happy about it. Your writings reassured me. I have felt overwhelmed here, seeing people do whatever they could to help, and feeling useless. But I have put myself to work. When I come back, I will be shredded, so prepare for that. I sleep in a tent, Togami. It made me wonder if you've ever done something like that, which I could hear you describe as "crude". I went camping with my family twice in my life. Once was proper camping, the other the kind where you just live like you would in the suburbs but in the woods. My mother was excellent at cooking, and she was able to make delicious foods out of things that seemed mundane to me and Komaru, since there wasn't an apparent overuse of sugar in them. My father knew how to camp like a pro, he set up the tent so quickly, Komaru and I only opened a box of snacks in the meantime. It would just be us, in the woods, in the peaceful nature. There were so many birds.

Anyway, put camping on the bucket list. Bird watching too.

You don't consider yourself a strange person, Byakuya? I think that's funny. Of course you wouldn't, but to me you are very strange. You are arrogant, sophisticated, a bully, but you are also hopelessly weak with me sometimes. To me, the person who probably knows you best, you are very strange and I like that.

The intimacy of your letter was a welcome surprise. I'm still not sure how to respond to it. The way you write to me makes me fall in love with you over and over again. Every word is an arrow to my heart, Byakuya!

I concede that those scars are handsome on you, Byakuya, but you are handsome no matter what. After showering when your hair is slicked to your head...after we touch and you are breathless and wanting...when you are momentarily flustered and when your glasses fall down the slope of your nose. But I don't like those scars. And reading about them made me soil the paper you wrote such sweet words on with my tears. I think of those scars and I wish I could never see anything again. The way you wrote about the scars is another thing that makes you permanently strange. You wrote of a "certain arousal", Byakuya. Do you realize that? Abhorrently strange behavior. I love you and I hate myself for putting those scars on you. You could have died. I've heard about people bleeding out from stab wounds to the shoulder and the area around it, which is only one of the places I got you. Or if I had plunged the knife a little deeper at your lip and hit your jaw, I wonder if I could have ruined any chance of you speaking again, any chance of me hearing you again. And if I had cut your hand apart from the rest of your body, there would be no "perverse" way of thinking about it. I would have never let myself kiss you that day, and that day never would have happened if I had striked you any worse than I did. Do not try to convince me that the scars I left are any good. They are reminders of everything wrong with me.

I will be in the kitchen soon, with no kitchen skills. I wonder where you learned yours. One day I woke up and you were strange and making food. Lend that talent to me, so I don't humiliate myself. Right now I'm assigned to clearing out rubble, hauling it across to make room for the new buildings. In my eyes, there isn't a trace of what used to be here.

I miss you. And don't stare into the sun. You'll go blind. Look to the moon. Like we used to.