A/N: The information after the first section of this is all a rewrite of the light novel, The Day I Picked Up Dazai, which was given out as a free bonus to all those that went to see the Beast live action movie in Japan during opening week, so I don't claim to own any of it. If you want to read that before reading these next few chapter then search the title on Google and you should be able to find a translation after a bit of digging. This stands for chapters fifty through fifty-four.
Dazai POV
The time following the incident that the Japanese government had seen fit to pin the blame on ongoing gang warfare rather than the consequences of illegal human experimentation had passed tensely as the Port Mafia had lost many ability users, weapons, and soldiers by the rather climatic end of it all. Though that was the expected outcome of mine from the start. The Port Mafia was currently scrambling to piece itself back together once more, something that I had no doubt within my mind that it would. The boss wouldn't allow for anything else after all.
The only apparent upside to the King of Assassins incident was that the organization was currently lying low from the intristed authorities, quietly rebuilding what had been loss, we were able to avoid immediately being drawn into the beginnings of another stirring conflict that seemed to be drawing almost every other organization in Yokohama to it. The downside, however, was that while laying low the menial tasks had begun to pile up. Which was how I found myself on a solo mission to retrieve the last of our counterfeit notes that Piano Man had made before his... unfortunate death, something that had been stolen during the commotion by a defector who thought the Port Mafia wouldn't notice.
Idiotic, really.
The Yokohama air was warm well into the night once more, the chilly breeze from the port a welcome respite, I imagine, to all those who found themselves running about the city either for the growing conflict or for the mafia itself.
The stolen counterfeit notes and the man that had stolen them had taken up a temporary residence in a rundown part of the city close enough to the slums that the crime rate had risen high enough for a good number of homes and other store buildings in the area to have become rundown or plain vacant with time. The crime in this part of the city tended to be solo acts that didn't belong to any organization and didn't care to tie themselves to one.
The criminals were largely left alone by most organizations in the port city because their presence served a purpose. Their activity had a tendency to drive people to move to and operate close to the heart of the city itself where all of the organizations themselves happened to reside. It was good for business, but also accidentally created quite the area for foolish strays to hide.
Good thing this one never seemed to learn hope to put a muzzle on.
The defector seemed to have the inability to not brag to anyone that would listen about how he'd managed to get away from the Port Mafia, of all places, unscathed. He was trying to build a name for himself in the run down area while waiting for a decent buyer for the notes to make themselves known while he decided whether or not he would be fleeing the city once the deal was done.
Personally, if I were to betray an organization that was known for brutally murdering those that betrayed their ranks, taking care to make a painful example of the offenders, I would get out of the city, country even, as fast as I possibly could. I wouldn't stay around and air the news of what I'd done for all in the area to know, all but offering myself up to the mafiosos waiting to take me away. But he so clearly wasn't me, as I was standing outside of the condemned building that had once been called a house before it had fallen into complete, hazardous, disarray.
Complete and utter idiocy.
Quietly, I slipped inside of the side door of the house and into the darkness of the building, only lit up by the dull light escaping from the only lit room in the entire building. The light had an almost sterile look to it, that of a flashlight propped up somehow rather than a ceiling fan.
How impossibly dull. The least that the boss could have done was not send me after a complete fool.
But I knew that he never did anything that wasn't for his own enjoyment or benefit.
Staying still by the door, I listened quietly for any signs of life and was met with a quiet murmur of multiple vocoders from inside of the lit room. I could hear at least three, two of which were becoming increasingly louder with the passage of time, as a third tried to placate the pair. I didn't make a move, decided it to allow the dramatics to come to something of a natural conclusion on their own.
The boss has made it apparently clear to everyone in my unit and all those in the mafia who handle the distribution of deadly weapons, that I wasn't allowed to have so much as a child's pistol or anything remotely deadly without some kind of supervision- though he'd made it seem at the time that I was too lazy or perhaps arrogant to carry my own weapons, most likely hoping to shame me for one thing or another. It didn't work. That rule meant that I was walking into solo missions, such as this, only armed with my switchblade, my own mind, and a pen of all things that was beyond useless in Yokohama, nothing more.
Very counterproductive it would seem if his goal were to keep me alive.
My missing were cut short by the familiar bang of a gunshot ringing starkly through the air, drowning out all other noise as if it had never existed at all. That was until a pained cry made itself known only a moment later, followed by a flurry of more ferocious shots. I could just make out the sounds of dull thuds of bodies hitting the ground as the gunfire died down.
When I walked into the small room there were three bodies bleeding out on the dirty floor of the garnished home. The counterfeit notes sitting prettily upon the table at the center of the room like a ticking time bomb.
Mutually assured destruction. Humans really are quite predictable creatures.
I suppose I should have paid more attention to their reselance.
Moving deeper into the small room, I made my way to the notes and slipped them into my left hand. I was fully prepared to leave the bodies to rot where they were, hand over the notes to the mafia grunt that had taken over the counterfeits department in the wake of everything, and then either throw myself into oncoming traffic or call for a car- intending on deciding that on the way back to headquarters -but that wasn't what happened. Not at all.
Three shots rang out through the room, each one quickly following the other as the bullets embedded themselves into my body, tearing through my belly and back as if they were nothing more than something for the bullets to break. My hand pressed instinctively to the wounds, pressing down on the ones that I could easily cover together. I waited for a moment for the pain to arrive, for my throat to rasps in something akin to a painful scream of my own, the kind that haunts nightmares, but all there was inside of me was a dull annoyance at it all. Honestly I was more upset about my white button up being stained than anything else.
Right, andrelinle.
Pivoting slowly, I turned towards the exit and found the shooter, the body closest to the door, looking at me as their hand shook. Their fingers were still wrapped weirdly around the gun though I could see the strain that it was taking to retain the grasp. There was a pool of blood around the woman large enough that they really should already be passed out by now, if not dead, but the body is known to do strange things when faced with the threat of death.
Looking down at the young woman, I noticed how my own hands were growing wet from my blood staining them. A mild soreness was beginning to set in as the small dose of chemicals began to work their way out of my system faster than they normally would in a situation such as this.
Notes still grasped tightly in my hand, I stumbled away as quickly as I could manage, leaving the woman to die alone in the room with the other two. A fate that I found myself being all too willing to share with the three as I walked out into the slowly fading night. The likelihood that the woman would live to see the sunrise once more was almost negligible, though mine, unfortunately, wasn't as far as I could tell without having a proper assessment of the damage that had been done.
Stumbling through the night, I pointed my feet in the direction of the Port Mafia towers until it became increasingly clear to me that the blurriness beginning to train my vision wasn't going to be going away anytime soon. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to make it back before it took over me completely.
Sweeping my eyes more thoroughly over the neighborhood that I had been walking through, for lack of a better term that wouldn't make me seem like a complete invilad, I found that I recognized the area that I was in, though I had never actually been here myself.
Not before today at least.
I'd heard many rumors over my past two years with the Port Mafia, but the most interesting of them by far had been one that I had first heard when I was fifteen about a house that no evil could come close to. None at all. It was a seemingly impossible 'calm-zone' that was rumored that not even the mafia itself could touch.
Back then the idea had seemed nothing short of impossible, little to nothing more than a fleeting story made by those who'd joined the organization not too long ago and had found themselves already regretting it, and were now looking for some type of entity to believe in as the gods had surely abandoned us all. And yet the rumors had never really died down in the way that most built of foolish hope normally would. They hadn't grown into anything more outlandish either, remaining as nothing more than a dedicated calm-zone.
I was almost ashamed to admit that the rumors had always stuck with me more than they properly should since I had first heard them. The idea of a relentless safety had been a little more than reassuring to the mess that I had been not long after Chuuya had joined the mafia, as it would be to anyone else.
And now I found myself only a street away.
Dragging my quickly shutting down body forwards, I thought through all of the possibilities that could come from this inane choice that I was making. A large part of me was hoping that Thanatos would claim me soon and the owner of the home would take the notes for themselves, as that was the outcome that was sure to annoy the doctor the most. I couldn't find it in myself to care about the trouble that this ordeal was bound to cause the owner of the home though, no matter the ending. I thought that perhaps I should, that maybe if I had been raised differently I would, but as I was I couldn't really see the point.
The single story house was white, mixed with just the barest touch of blue that one almost wouldn't even notice that it was there. My body finally gave out as I pushed myself up the steps, crumbling on top of them. The last thing that I saw was the sun rising slowly in the sky and the door opening as my eyes finally closed.
—-
When I feel hands on my body and a threatening brush of cool air dancing across my skin, my mind automatically wakes and begins taking in every ounce of information that it can consume. Survival instincts that I was born with and was grateful to have in situations where so many things worse than death could happen.
As far as I could tell not much time had passed at all, only a handful of minutes and little more. Just enough for the owner of the house to decide to bring me inside of his home, lay me down on their bed, and cut my shirt- and the bandages with it -down the middle. Panic threatens to flood my body at once, to try and take over, as that piece of information sorts itself out, but the rational part of my brain has been in control for close to three years now- much longer than any sixteen year old should be -so I stay still.
I wait.
The touch itself was rough. The owner's hands calloused in the way of someone who was used to a demanding line of work. Yet they didn't seem to be pudgy, more slim, like that of an artist. Or a sniper. The man never let his hands wander below the dip of my hips or above the hollow of my throat. It took more time than I was willing to admit for me to realize that the touch wasn't hostile in the least, but a helping one.
The man moved with a practiced precision as he applied a simple first aid that most mafia members knew by heart, though a good deal tended to be dead by the time that it became as effortless and effective as it so clearly was for the stranger. There was a towel under my back to catch any blood that might otherwise stain the stranger's sheets. I realized that he'd been checking my wounds earlier, looking for any lingering bullets that might still be there before he moved to apply pressure at each of the major pressure points to stop the blood flow. It wasn't long before the wounds were cleaned and stitched up nicely enough that I wasn't in an immediate threat of bleeding out.
Pity.
Though the man moved with clearly practiced hands, there was nothing strictly clinical to the way that he did so. The ease that he had most likely came from having to do such things on himself so many times that he could probably do so with his eyes closed now if he so wished to.
Though there was no kindness in the older man's touch, something about the other stopped my skin from crawling in the same way that it would have with anyone else (almost anyone else, but that wasn't really the point. Not anymore). His lack of clinicalness and almost disinterest was something that quickly became a comfort that kept me calm through it all. I couldn't even find it in myself to mind that he had a crystal view of the scars littering my torso, not when someone like him was bound to have more than a fair share of his own.
That was until the man made a move that messed it all up.
The man stood up from where he had been perched on the bed slowly, careful not to jostle me too much even as I knew that he was taking the moment to study me. He was considering exactly what to do with me now that the pressing promise of death had been taken away for the time being. A moment or two more passed before it happened.
Now familiar hands slipped in my own, pulling out the super notes there that I had managed to hold onto until now. I let him do so, having expected since the beginning for him to do something of the nature before this whole ordeal was over with. Humans were naturally curious creatures after all. Greedy ones too. The almost pleasant surprise had come when the man walked across the room, turning his back to the bed that he'd placed me on, allowing me to watch the stranger and study him as he'd done so to me.
The man was tall, though I'd already figured that out well enough from the long strides that I'd heard him use to cross the room since I'd woken up. He had red hair, a calming color that was much shorter than Chibi's and a fair shade or two darker than both his and Kouyou's as well. He was dressed in almost mute colors, tans and grays that should normally hold no personality of their own but somehow managed to almost radiate calmness from the man before me like some kind of sickness.
When he stood once more, seemingly done digging through his desk drawer in the back of the room, a magnifying glass was prized in his hand. I watched him with veiled interest as he held it away from the notes. That was how I noticed the slight change in the stranger's demeanor, an almost negligible one. Still the air in the room changed in a way that seemed to place the occupants on edge in the fastest way that I had felt it do so before.
He knew. He could tell that it was false and he knows exactly what such a note could stand to do if used.
The man before me was interesting indeed, being able to so quickly tell such a thing even without there being any differences between the forged notes and the real thing. That's what made it a super note after all, and Piano Kan had been the best in the trade.
The tall stranger moved slowly then, placing the notes onto his desk in a way that would minimize and further chance of his fingerprints continuing to spread across them as he let go of what could easily be seen as the equivalent to a nuclear warhead to those that knew just how to use such a thing the right way. Something that the stranger so clearly knew and understood.
I watched as the man hurried silently to the phone, something of a plan clearly written across his almost blank face as he made a move to reach for it. It wasn't all that hard to guess what the red headed man was planning to do, nor was the strategy a bad one for him. If he called now and told the police of what he had found, report the incident as it has happened thus far, then he might not even get into any legal trouble himself for what he has done. Extenuating circumstances and all that. It was nothing short of a brilliant deal for the stranger, less so for everyone else involved.
I watched as he picked up the receiver, pressing the phone to ear, but I spoke first.
"Put the phone down." My voice was faint as I spoke, but the stranger heard it all the same, turning to face me. Something like faint surprise flickered through the man's eyes, but it was there and gone before I should have been able to properly place it, had it not been something that I was looking for all the same.
The man looked at the receiver before turning his gaze back to me, still holding the phone calmly in his hand.
"What if I don't?" He doesn't ask the question in a patronizing manner that most adults would do so when speaking to someone younger than themselves, but in the simple way of someone who has a simple question and wants just as plain of an answer.
Interesting...
"I kill you," I tell the other, my voice lacking any of the shaky emotion that most of my age would hold if they were to say those words and mean them, but it's true nonetheless.
No matter how interesting or how strange the man before me has proved to be, killing is something easy for me. I would have no problem adding another mark to my ever growing ledger.
The stranger seemed to realize and understand this as well, as he kept his gaze trained on me. That calm gaze of his that would undoubtedly be perceived as unsettling had it belonged to anyone else.
"How?" He asks, putting the remover down slowly, though not back to the base of the station. Progress, I suppose. "You've got holes all over your body," he reminded me. "You can move anything. You're dying everywhere. You don't even have a gun. To kill me in the condition that you are currently in would take nearly two hundred of you."
He says each of these things like the facts that they are. No true emotion- other than perhaps disbelief -tainting anything about them, or betraying his tone. He knows each of his statements to be facts in the same way that a swimmer knows how to move through the water. From experience.
But he wasn't quite right in the end.
"I don't need that much," I tell the strange being before me, my voice colder than I would have liked it to be had the situation been slightly different than it was. But it was enough to get the across. "I'm Port Mafia." The words leave a sick feeling inside of me, one belonging entirely to the organization, but the words are enough for the man by the phone.
The man didn't quite react the way that a normal person would, showing fear or going into a brisk denial, but I hadn't actually expected him to do so. There was something about the stranger that made what had been labeled as a normal reaction to something of this nature seem almost outlandish, if not outright bizarre.
"Then I have no choice but to obey," the man says with the same calm tone of voice he'd been using this entire time.
He moved slowly after that, obviously well aware of what the words that I had spoken meant for him at this moment. The receiver was put back into the vase without so much as another sound.
"That's good," I tell him, a small chuckle escaping my lips at the absurdity of it all.
How very interesting. He's nothing like how I thought that the owner of the house would be and yet the picture that he is painting for me is perfect.
I don't think that I would have been happy with anyone else.
The stranger looks at me for a good three seconds before breezing past the bed that I was on and moving to the kitchen without so much as a whispered turn of phrase. The action was something of a surprise to me, so much so that my mouth feel agape as he walked away. I was quick to pull it shirt though as the door had purposely been left open so that the strange man could keep an eye on me from where he was in the kitchen. Something that gave me the opportunity to watch him as well.
Watching on silently, I studied the man as he walked to the kitchen and put a kettle on the fire before moving to grab the things that would be needed for a morning coffee. There was something of an unnatural heaviness to the way that the other walked and carried himself. It felt the same as when everything is quiet at night and you recognize the sounds of your own breathing. Something that had at one point been silent brought into sound. It was a forced action not befitting of a lowly salary man.
Nothing about the other truly was.
"If I'm not allowed to call the Police, then what about doctors?" The strange man asked, his eyes still transfixed on the water as he moved about the process of preparing the coffee, still making too much noise.
The way that he kept his back to me was oddly just as intriguing as everything else about the stranger tended to be it seemed. Or maybe it wasn't odd that it was intriguing at all. There was no trust there that I wouldn't attack the stranger, should the whim befall me, but an absolute surety that he would know when I did. Injuries or not.
"What I've done is only emergency first aid at best," the man explains, likely either assuming that I wouldn't know or just saying so as to fulfill some irrational need to do so. "If you don't get checked by a proper doctor, you will die soon."
My body goes unnaturally still at the words spoken by the man, locking up without my permission or opinion on the matter at hand. I would rather see Kronos rise once from his impossibly scattered state than let another doctor touch me again. Something that no one needed to know. That no one else could know.
"No need to worry," I assure the man, responding to the half truth with more of a strain found in my voice than I would have liked there to be. Something that I was quick to blame on exhaustion and blood loss rather than anything as mundane as emotion. "This much is no big deal," I tell him honestly. "I'm used to injuries."
Really the damage done was slightly more extensive than I would have liked for it to be. Having avoided gunshots up till now, stab wounds were a language that I was well versed in. Still, I could tell that the wounds weren't the worst that I had ever sustained before. Though certainly they were the worst that I had found without a doctor nearby to negate them.
"Is that so?" The stranger asked, speaking in the tone of someone that had been expecting as much but didn't want to assume, nor felt the need to hide their lack of surprise. "Then I will obey," he decides, stirring the coffee that he'd been working on and setting a timer for it. The whole process was almost soothing to watch, having a feeling akin to that of watching Kouyou prepaid tea. Not that I would like for her to know that. "In any case," he continues, "there is no way a normal postman like me can go against the Port Mafia demons."
... A postman?
Though nothing seems inherently wrong with the title, something about it doesn't quite sit right with me, buzzing through my mind in the way that half truths tended to when I had no evidence but my own instincts to back them up. And yet it was still there burning in the back of my mind in the same way that calling the Port Mafia members demons did. A rightness to the assumption.
He's not ordinary in the least.
My feelings of this nature have never been wrong before. Not that I would be around to find out.
"Being obedient is good," I tell the stranger, his back still to me as I began to pull myself up on the bed silently. "So next-"
A cough rips through my throat before I could push the words out, blood spilling down my lips in the same way that it would with some of the doctor's more volatile concoctions. I don't hear the footsteps coming towards me, but I know that they must have been there because the man is at my side, tilting my head down so that I wouldn't choke on my own blood before I realized that he'd left the kitchen.
When the coughing finally stops and my body quits trying to tear itself apart at the seams, the postman moves me back with much more care than he seemed to realize that he was using before opening my mouth to check inside. When he pulls away his brows are lightly knitted together in the barest display of frustration.
He doesn't know the cause of the bleeding.
The fact sends a small pleasant feeling through me, relief for something that I hadn't realized I'd truly been concerned about until now.
Definitely not a doctor then. Not even a discredited one.
"Go to the hospital," the stranger states simply, though not as an order. He knew better than to do that. "Get treatments. You really are going to die."
I turned my eyes to the ceiling, not wanting to see the way that the smallest bit of concern seemed to color those brown eyes of the postman. Not wanting to see such a human reaction wasted on the likes of me.
"That's perfect then," I tell him, my voice as soft as a mother's lullaby. Something much too gentle for the world that it was spoken into. "Just let me die like this."
I knew that he'd been thinking of putting me back onto the street before he saw the notes and we landed ourselves here, back when he still thought that I was asleep. Then he would have cast me out and this would have happened anyways, there was no real difference between then and now. Except that he didn't have to see it before.
Just like I wouldn't have had to see him.
I can still feel the postman's eyes on me, studying me in a way that he hadn't before. There was an all too familiar weight to that gaze of his, something that I could recognize without ever having to meet the other's eyes with my own.
He's looking at me in the way that most do when they finally realize that I'm something less than human.
He's looking at me like I'm some kind of damnation.
"Fine then," he decides at last, pulling himself together from what little unraveling he'd allowed himself to endure. "If you want to do so, I won't stop you. It's your life. But I will be in trouble if you do so here. No one will be able to prove that I wasn't the one who caused your injuries. I might be arrested," the man reasoned logically.
Ah, so true.
Though a part of me was absolutely sure that the postman could easily get himself out of almost anything if he so wished. It was everything else that the police found in the process of the investigation that would become the true issue for the stranger.
"To be arrested or killed by the Port Mafia later, which one is worse?" I muse, knowing the answer even if the other didn't quite.
If the boss wants me gone, then it will have to be on his terms. He won't accept anything else. Mr. Postman here is screwed no matter what he does or doesn't do, though he doesn't seem to be any stranger to the feeling.
"That's a hard question," he says simply.
I'm sure that it must be.
For the second time in as many minutes the man leaves the room without any preamble to his actions, returning to the kitchen once more to wait for the timer. When it goes off I watch as he takes out what looks to be a can of creamer.
"You want some coffee?" The postman call out over his shoulder, but I'm not listening and I'm not thinking of the peculiar way that the stranger seems to almost accept anything thrown at him with what I'm sure some might consider to be almost fatal ease.
"How did you collapse in front of my house?" He tries again but is met with the same response. "What the heck were those notes in your hand?" Not even the postman himself had truly been expecting an answer to that one. It would have made him a fool if he had been, but the stranger doesn't strike me as such.
As he talks and preoccupies himself with pointless questions that he knows that he won't be getting an answer to, I pull myself up from the bed to finish what I'd started before the incident that transpired before.
When my feet touch the ground they give out beneath me from my megar weight, but that was something that I'd been expecting to find. Too much blood had been lost and not enough time to recover for me to be able to hold my own weight as I normally would. So instead of walking I let my body fall silently to the floor and dragged myself along, keeping a watchful eye on the postman for as long as the maneuver would allow me to do so. The front door is well within my sights before I feel another pair of eyes fall on me.
When I twist and look back at the postman, I force a mocking smile onto my lips. Something that neither of us seem to believe, but I'm sure that the slug would have been proud of it. It was molded after his after all.
"You don't want me to die in the house, do you?" I ask rhetorically, restating the information that we had already agreed upon from my spot on the cool floor. The wounds were aching from the harsh treatment that I was subjecting them to, but everything would be fine once I got outside. It was an idiotic, adrenaline addled idea to come here anyways. "Then if I leave," I continue, "you'll have nothing to do with it. No need to help or ponder anything, just stay there."
The postman was still holding the coffee of his in his hands as he looked down at me with those hauntingly familiar eyes of his. I wouldn't have even stayed this long if it weren't for them, most likely anyways.
"Do you want to die that much?" He asked.
His voice lacks the judgment or disbelief that most would have, definitely lacks the anger that Chibi would have used. It's just a question, something that he wants an answer to before he makes an informed decision.
"Of course I do," I tell him, my voice betraying none of the emotion that one in a position similar to this should normally hold.
It wasn't that I didn't have it, I could feel a growing ache deep within me that I have always hoped that death would one day negate, but more that showing such things wasn't something that I've been raised to do. Not really.
"I joined the Port Mafia, but there was still nothing."
I'd thought that in joining that I would find a reason to live, to persist in a world that has only ever sought to expel me. I even thought for one foolish moment that I had, but reality came swiftly after that, just as cruel as any of the three fates.
"The only thing that I want now is death."
The man looks at me but he doesn't seem as if he has any intention of speaking anytime soon so I continue my slow crawl, making my peace with the postman being there to observe it.but then I hear the subtle clink of a coffee mug being set down by gentle hands and the sounds of footsteps drawing closer.
I know that I started spewing bullshit, but I didn't care as to what it was and just let my mouth run wild with me as I tried to futilely pull myself forward faster. An utterly useless endeavor and waste of energy as hands grabbed at my ankles and pulled me backwards none too softly. The next thing that I know a blanket is being wrapped around my body, the ends sealed like some form of demented candy wrapper as the postman picks me up and slumg my figure upside down, carrying me back to his room.
A voiceless grunt flows past me at the harsh treatment, my gut twisting in a now familiar pain that only became more prominent with each king stride that the older man made.
"This hurts!" I curse, forcing down the urge to kick like some kind of small child throwing a temper tantrum. Not that I could even if I wanted to, the blanket made sure of that. "My wounds are opening! What the hell are you doing, you blockhead? Do you want to be killed?"
I could imagine the calm look on the postman's face, it seemed to be the only expression that he was truly capable of executing.
"I don't want to be killed," he says simply, something that I would be much more inclined to believe if he wasn't currently carrying me as he was. "But I don't want you to die either," he continues. "If you go in this state, you will most definitely definitely die. Just create a death story without me in it when you get well again."
For the first time since being wrapped up I'm glad that I was. I didn't need that stranger to see the conflicted twinge in my eyes. I didn't need him to know how little I understood his motives, the way that he seemed to flit wildly between wanting to help me and be permanently rid of me.
He didn't seem to mind that I would just go and die once we were through, so maybe it was just a guilty conscience thing, because I know he could easily get out of jail unlike what he implies.
Maybe it's just the humanity in him, making him so illogical.
Maybe if the cloth weren't there he could tell me himself.
Maybe it was a good thing that it was.
Perhaps the postman thought that I was going to protest or complain more because the shaking of the cloth broke my train of thought with a fresh wave of pain running throughout my frame.
"Ouch!" I yell, exaggerating the amount that it truly hurt me to how much that I logically knew that it should had I been anyone else. Had I been like everyone else. "Stop it! I hate pain!"
I truly do hate pain, it makes idiots of perfectly logical beings. It was why I chose to allow myself to become so good at inflicting it upon others.
"Then will you give up?" The postman asks, still holding me in his arms though we've stopped moving, likely deciding just what to do with me. A question that no one yet had found a proper answer to in sixteen years.
"No!" I exclaimed, my stubborn streak running a mile wide.
He places me down on the bed and undoes the cloth before moving from the room, returning with a large towel not unlike the one that he'd put under me the first time, and a determined look in his eyes that made me think that even a gun would be useless against this particular brand of man. One that also seemed to have a stubborn streak as bad as my own. The postman moves swiftly and ties my arms together with the towel against my chest before using the blanket to tie my feet to the metal fittings on the bed.
I watch the man doing all of this with a stubborn curve to my mouth though I don't try to escape even though each of the bindings are simple enough that I could easily.really it wasn't worth the effort to do so, I would just end up right back here anyways.
It's not like I have much to run back to anyways.
The man continues on, raising the pillows in the fashion that one might expect a nurse to do so before replacing the blanket with one that was designed to be used in a bedroom. The postman walks to the windows once I'm properly covered up, throwing them open wide to let in the spring morning air before turning back to me.
"For the time being," the not - so - stranger starts, "until your wounds have healed, I will,have you stay like that," he decides, almost looking proud of himself at what he's just done, though it was hard to tell through the permanently fixed calm expression that he seemed to favor as he looked down at me. "I'd there anything you want?"
To know what makes you tick.
But even something like me knows that this isn't something that one asks, not if they ever want to revive an answer anyways. Some questions were like that, ones that could only only ever be answered when no one knows that you were ever asking them at all.
"My nose is itching," I decided to tell the postman instead, just to see what he would do. Putting on a show, I throw on something of a resentful expression, though I doubt that it had much of an effect given the position that I was currently in.
"Poor you," he replies simply.
He does a lot of things simply.
The postman leaves fast enough that he misses the way that a small smile falls onto my lips, just the barest of one but it is much more genuine then I have given otherwise I'm almost a year now.
Colorful insults fall onto deaf ears as the postman walks away, ones much more tame than what I would've used on any of the mafiosos that I come across. But he just goes about his morning and drinks his coffee as if my noise was little more than static.
This should prove to be an interesting few days.
I had no idea then just how rich that I was, or the effects that this encounter would one day have, all I knew was that for the first time in months there was a puzzle interesting enough to distract me properly.