[That's the core tragedy of it, isn't it? For all Dazai's intelligence, his ability to make uncannily accurate predictions, to read moves in a fight, to strategize and plot several moves ahead, he's always ... struggled to grasp at the core of humanity, of what it meant to live, rather than simply not die.
He has spent twenty-two years not dying. In a year, he will be as old as Odasaku was when he stopped living. And yet, for all that he lives in a way he likes better, he still doesn't understand anything about living. Chuuya is his natural opposite, in that way; he shines so brightly with life that it's difficult to look at him, and some part of him will always envy that. His own heart struggles so desperately to beat in that way, to thrum with more than the memory of three glasses of whiskey, but he is akin to a man lost in the desert, chasing mirages. Whenever he thinks he's reached an oasis, it slips through his fingers, fading away into so much dust and wind.
The door is open, yet his legs feel as though they weigh a thousand pounds. He can't find the energy to get them off the ground.]
It's ironic, isn't it? That my ability is called No Longer Human. I never really have been, I think. All I can do is reach out my hand toward humanity, knowing that anything that comes into my grasp will be reverted to nothingness the same way. If things were different ... maybe I could've saved him.
[If he weren't so inherently empty, so fundamentally disconnected, maybe he would've known what to say. Maybe even with the mistakes he'd made, the betrayals he didn't see coming, he could've stopped Odasaku from walking out to the very last fight of his life. He doesn't forgive Mori, but more importantly, he can never forgive himself for that.]
All of my plans and strategies -- they were all meaningless, in the end. I couldn't protect what mattered to me. So I want to protect his memory instead ... and die with that most human part of me intact. I can't do that here. So let’s leave, shall we?
no subject
He has spent twenty-two years not dying. In a year, he will be as old as Odasaku was when he stopped living. And yet, for all that he lives in a way he likes better, he still doesn't understand anything about living. Chuuya is his natural opposite, in that way; he shines so brightly with life that it's difficult to look at him, and some part of him will always envy that. His own heart struggles so desperately to beat in that way, to thrum with more than the memory of three glasses of whiskey, but he is akin to a man lost in the desert, chasing mirages. Whenever he thinks he's reached an oasis, it slips through his fingers, fading away into so much dust and wind.
The door is open, yet his legs feel as though they weigh a thousand pounds. He can't find the energy to get them off the ground.]
It's ironic, isn't it? That my ability is called No Longer Human. I never really have been, I think. All I can do is reach out my hand toward humanity, knowing that anything that comes into my grasp will be reverted to nothingness the same way. If things were different ... maybe I could've saved him.
[If he weren't so inherently empty, so fundamentally disconnected, maybe he would've known what to say. Maybe even with the mistakes he'd made, the betrayals he didn't see coming, he could've stopped Odasaku from walking out to the very last fight of his life. He doesn't forgive Mori, but more importantly, he can never forgive himself for that.]
All of my plans and strategies -- they were all meaningless, in the end. I couldn't protect what mattered to me. So I want to protect his memory instead ... and die with that most human part of me intact. I can't do that here. So let’s leave, shall we?