Dance With The Devil

I finished watching Maou about fifteen minutes ago. I should be sleeping now, but really, how can one sleep after having been made to -- as Kaelyn the Dove from Neverwinter Nights puts it -- wear someone else's skin, calluses and all? Because that is exactly what Maou makes you feel.

A little background on what I'm talking about. Maou, or Devil, is a Japanese drama series based on the original Korean drama, The Devil. It is about Ryou Naruse -- a lawyer whose younger brother was killed eleven years prior to when the series started. He grows up to be a very successful lawyer, and is referred to as the "Angelic Lawyer" by the media. Unknown to the public, however, Ryou has an alter ego -- Makoto Amano -- who, using his brilliant mind, draws out revenge on each person who was involved in his brother's death. Moving against Amano is Naoto Serizawa, a detective with a dark past who believes that a hand shrouded in layers and layers of mystery is controlling the series of deaths happening around him. Shiori Sakita, a woman with the the ability of psychometry, aids him in uncovering the shadows cast among these deaths.

Saying that this is a very painful series to watch is definitely an understatement. While Death Note treats death as a necessary tool -- a cold, unerring knife which a self-proclaimed God has power over, Maou pries it open with fruit-breaking, juices flowing, blood-warmed human hands. Ryou makes sure the terrible amount of pain he has shouldered for eleven years is felt in equal measure by the people who deserve it. And Naoto, bearing the burden of his past, suffers through these deaths as well. Throughout the series, the audience is compelled to empathize for either Ryou or Naoto, but any distinction is eventually blurred as both characters come to realize the human truth about the pain they were both carrying.


Truth by Arashi, Maou Opening Theme
There is one question Maou leaves the audience with at the end of the series though: What did Shiori see?

This Might Have Been Fiction

I was supposed to go out tonight. I wanted to finally get the two books I've been meaning to buy for quite some time now -- especially since I've recently been able to drop by the office again the other day to collect the check for my final pay. Originally I was planning on using that money on a date I was supposed to ask you out for, but after our talk last night over the phone -- you were pissed drunk from partying with your friends and words were marching out from you like some colorful parade -- I figured my heart needed some spoiling, so books it shall be.

I just about finished bathing and I was drying my hair with my towel when your message window winked at the forefront display of my laptop screen. "Are you there?" it said.

It took a while before I thought to respond. I eyed the system tray clock -- 5:44pm. Too early for dinner. We'd spoken earlier this afternoon over the phone; I'd just woken up after only four hours of sleep and I wanted to check up on you, sure as day you'd be nursing a massive hangover. As soon as I said "Hello," you cut me off, saying you were on your way to the gym and then a haircut after that, so you thought you might be home some time after dinner. We hung up after you made me promise to tell you everything you'd said last night before you passed out. I agreed, because there really wasn't much else to say. And now, as a curve ball from the Universe no doubt, you're here and you're online.

"Yes," I typed back. "I just finished taking a bath. You're home earlier than expected. What's up?"

"My hangover won't leave me alone," you said almost immediately. "Plus, I got hungry."

I didn't bother typing up a response anymore and called you up on the phone right away. "Hey."

"Hey."

"I was actually supposed to go out, pass the time until you get back, but now you're here so..." and then I chuckled like a 14-year old idiot. 'You weren't supposed to say that to him!' I scolded myself, biting my lip hard. 'You have officially made yourself sound like a codependent hatchling.'

"... yeah, I'm here. So... what despicable things did I say to you last night?" Your voice sounded childish -- almost apologetic -- like it was coming from a very cramped space.

"A lot of things," I said, absent-mindedly switching the phone receiver from my right ear to my left. I'd thought about this last night, what I would tell you. And what I would tell you was this: "You said a lot of things, all of them I believed to be true. And while I can't repeat every word that you said -- not because I don't remember them, but because they're too scalding and too true for me to say out loud -- I can, however, say that at this point, I think it's enough that you know how I feel for you. And whether you think and feel that all I am is worth making time for, that decision is yours to make. Until then, I can wait, like I have always done."

But the Universe will not permit me to be as articulate and as cautious with my words. The truth is way too complicated and unsatisfying and hard to believe. And it is in this vein where the words I was about to say would be flowing from. "A lot of things," I began, surprised at the distinct strength of each word. I could feel the initial clarity in my mind gradually losing to a thick mist. I started laughing, which I think was a terrible symptom to what I was experiencing -- you must be thinking I was going insane. And when all there was left was swirling, sloshing grey smoke, I grabbed on to the first idea I could like a drowning man on driftwood and trusted whatever it was I was going to say will save my life.

Everything you'd said last night started to flow out from me like a stray mountain river. You said you were introduced to this guy, a law student from the same university where you're teaching. You were attracted to him, and you're considering seeing him again soon. You also said talking with me has been becoming more of a pressure to you than anything else. "You are ever-present," you managed let out in between gasps of breath and drunken giggles.

I told you I could hear you were hitting and hitting your mobile phone against a hard surface, and you said you were trying to get it to work again since you dropped it earlier in the evening. Tak tak tak, it went, on and on in the background as you were talking, like a ritual drum. I must have told you to stop a lot of times, but clearly, the alcohol was jamming your comprehension.

Regardless, you continued. "You always have something new for me, I feel like I always have to keep up but I can't," you said. "Even if you keep saying 'It's fine, it's fine, you don't have to,' it isn't fine for me. If anything, it was making me feel guilty." There was a long pause, and I almost thought the Universe opened a pocket of lucidity in your senses. "You're too, too, too nice." Tak tak tak tak.


"I'm sorry," I heard you saying suddenly. I didn't notice I'd gone quiet. Your voice, piercing like a searchlight in a dark, gloomy, old Spanish house, pushed me back to the waking world.

"No, it's true!" I said quickly, all too defensively. "I guess I was being too imposing even without meaning to." And, thick with words unsaid, the silence stretched on from seconds to minutes. I felt drained. Lifeless. Only dry earth was left, parched and cracked and dying.

After a while however, I felt something primal stir from inside me, something longing for survival. I started digging. "You shouldn't have kissed me," came a sharp whisper from my throat, more to the air between my mouth and the receiver than to you. That night, two weeks ago, in the middle of an empty field, under the Sunday evening stars, you shouldn't have kissed me. There should have been a moment, a nanosecond, a rational heartbeat among hundreds of irrational heartbeats. You shouldn't have looked at me the way you did, leaned your head close, and touched your lips with mine.

"I'm sorry," you said again. I shut my eyes tight and punched a pillow in frustration. Crumpled. Crushed. Somewhere in between those words, I felt my heart resonating. I wanted to put the phone down. It seems you can't say anything else. And I can sense it, the familiar feeling of something draining, seeping out from you. The effects of that night were leaving you, evaporating from your every pore. Colors were simply refusing to vibrate within your periphery.

You mentioned you were feeling guilty. I understand that, more than you know. Guilty, because no matter how much you look into yourself, you can't find a well from where you can draw the same intensity of feeling I have for you. Guilty, because all you have for me is the empty space and the phantom pull of a soul-hurt. Guilty, because you're not brave enough to say anything else than "I'm sorry." I wanted to put the phone down before this guilt consumes you, before the boy who kissed me was completely gone, before this understanding solidifies itself into words, and an ice-blue cold corpse. I wanted to put the phone down, thinking that by cutting the line, I could postpone what was going to happen -- what always happens.

But... it does. And by the time we both put the phone down, we were both gone.

And Then There Was Hope

Last week, my sister shared an unexpected bit of news. It was not as solid as I preferred it to have been, so I decided to wait until something official was produced. This morning, a small beacon of something like hope caught my radar a bit far off in the distance. It was faint, but definitely, undeniably there. And, like a lost sailor unable to find words powerful enough to express the miracle of being found, I shall let this image do the mirthful shouting for me:


Six weeks, and it already has a heartbeat. What made me even happier was, according to my sister, her doctor said she's due on the 29th of June -- my birthday! Of course it's only an estimate, give or take a couple of weeks, but still! By my 27th birthday, I will be an uncle. :-)

The Haunting Hour

"This is the haunting period." A couple more hours and I will have been awake for two days. Much as I am unwilling, it is only at this time when I can admit it -- I am standing on a familiar precipice. The stage is set, the characters are all in place, the curtains are ready to part. It is only a matter of time before the inevitable fall, the catastrophic hurt. I can feel the wind on my face, and the empty, hollow, yawning space before me.

All it takes is a single step. Consider this a warning.

Behind Frozen Minutes

If I were to sort my life out in freeze frames, there would be an awful lot of silence and minutes stretching out into one static scene. Me, staring into a blank computer screen, watching the tireless cursor of a word processor winking in and out of existence. Me, waking up, blinking once, twice, dragging the heavy wooden window by my bed open to the grey wall of the next house. Me, sitting down on a park bench in a Monday afternoon, reading a book and not getting past a particular sentence for nearly ten minutes because an errant thought suddenly jammed the necessary pathways of comprehension in my mind.

After we had been in this gentle embrace for a while, Naoko touched her lips to my forehead and slipped out of bed. I could see her pale blue gown flash in the darkness like a fish. ... like a fish. ... like a fish. ... like a fish. And so forth.

It's worse when I have people with me. It feels like thinking through syrup, or talking through a mist-filled room. "Yes," "no," "maybe," I would always say. I would sound like I mean it, and you would feel so lucky to have a friend like me, so easy to talk to, so sincere, so agreeable. The irony would be lost on you, you with the neon smiles, the electric blue future. No one will hear the music fading into white noise behind vacant eyes. No one will see the camera zooming out, helplessly, hopelessly freezing that single moment. No one will hear the telltale cracks of something breaking.

A few good things about being with a man who is waiting to die are the random bursts of sharp turns he is wont to make. The cool and crisp brush-on-the-skin wind at four in the morning seems colder; the laughter of children playing under the afternoon sun brings more music to his heart than the tiny muscle can possibly contain; kisses taste sweeter than souls leaving, then returning. A man waiting to die sees the world in super-saturated colors, and loves like trainwrecks, like forest fires (which is the only proper way to love, really). One would be lucky to fall in love with a man just waiting to die.

Shoot to Move the Nation

Helping out a friend promote a photography contest. Shout out to my very talented and artistic friends; this might be something of interest.


Spread the love! Clicking on the pikachure will take you to the official website with contest details, mechanics, and application form. :-)

Worthy of Pursuit

"I just don't understand what you see in her," Sim said carefully. "I know she's charming. Fascinating and all of that. But she seems rather," he hesitated, "cruel."

I nodded, "She is."

Simmon watched me expectantly, finally said, "What? No defense for her?"

"No. Cruel is a good word for her. But I think you are saying cruel and thinking something else. Denna is not wicked, or mean, or spiteful. She is cruel."

Sim was quiet for a long while before responding. "I think she might be some of those other things, and cruel as well."

Good, honest, gentle Sim. He could never bring himself to say bad things about another person, just imply them. Even that was hard for him.

He looked up at me. "I talked with Sovoy. He's still not over her. He really loved her, you know. Treated her like a princess. He would have dome anything for her. But she left him anyway, no explanation."

"Denna is a wild thing," I explained. "Like a hind or a summer storm. If a storm blows down your house, or breaks a tree, you don't say the storm was mean. It was cruel. It acted according to its nature and something unfortunately was hurt. The same is true of Denna."


(Excerpt from The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss)