Chapter 22 Section VIII

With the new year coming, I decided to start journaling today.Thinking about it carefully, I have had the habit of keeping a diary since I was a teenager, but since the fire destroyed all the diaries, I have never picked up a pen at the end of the day. Last night, we were born again. Reborn as a new us. S' surgery was completed very quickly. A week ago, I contacted the doctor who used to frequent the house and told him the operation we wanted to perform, but he refused to nod.So, I hinted that I knew about his relationship with his mother and the cause of the factory fire, and finally he reluctantly agreed.On New Year's Eve yesterday, the doctor came home with a set of medical equipment.

We made up our minds to have an operation, starting from S's words. At the beginning of December, S mentioned that there was a vague sense of strangeness floating around the two of us, and described it as "like a white mist" and "separated by a thin film".These words are very apt, and my thoughts are exactly the same.It's just that I kept that anxiety deep in my heart before. I know the key to the strange feeling, and maybe S also knows it well, but he probably can't say it.The true face of the fog that pervades everyday life, the hateful film that envelops our lives, is the uneasiness within me.If S fulfills my wish, whether it is fog or film, it will be swept away immediately, so I couldn't help but want to speak several times.But I dare not, I still can't muster the courage.

When S poked out the hidden wrongness in my life, I hesitated very much, and hesitated for a long time.But I finally decided to hand everything over to S.I told S my only wish. Please don't look at me for the rest of your life. Please don't look at my ugly, rotten face that was burnt like Bodhidharma. Please promise not to leave me and leave me. This home has no mirrors.On the second day of cohabitation, I guessed to dispose of all the mirrors, and then pasted old newspapers on each piece of glass, so that my face would not show on it, so that I would not see the woman who lived with S, that love The real appearance of the woman wearing S.

Even so, there is still the thing that most clearly reflects my figure at home, and that is S's eyes.If it is the eyes of others, I don't care at all.But S's pupils are like a mirror to me, a mirror that reflects my body very vividly. After the operation, S quietly faced me. Decided not to look at my S so beautiful, my pity for S spontaneously arises.After the fire, S who traveled all the way to the hospital in Tokyo to look for me.Even if I become this kind of virtue, S who still loves me the same.S that fulfills my wish in the most authentic way. I asked the doctor to put S's eyeball into a plastic bag, then cut the bottom of Bodhidharma with a utility knife and put it in.That Bodhidharma is the only part of my past that remains, and now in this way merges with the eyeball that was part of S.How to deal with this Bodhidharma, I am going to spend a whole night thinking carefully.

I muttered, "Give Bodhidharma an eye, it sounds like a cold joke", and S couldn't help laughing loudly.It was a comfortable laughter without any haze, as if it could shake the ceiling and clean the air.At this moment, I realized that S's previous smile was not from the heart.From now on, I can hear S's real laughter, and I can also laugh with him. The money from selling the land in Tokyo should be enough for us to live on even if we don’t work, as long as we don’t waste it.We're going to play hide and seek here where the ghost never comes. Our hearts are not out of order.

I told S my wish, and S readily accepted it, that's all.So, we get happiness.This alone is the exact, the only truth. Our hearts are not out of order. That's what the man said to me in the cold, small room with no heating. Through the dirty lace curtains, a big crow with its huge beak pecked through the food waste bags thrown between the house and the outer wall of the courtyard outside, occasionally making a muddy sound. "You can't tell your parents, and of course you can't tell your friends." The skeletal-thin face turned to me, reconfirming. "I don't have a father."

"That's it." "I won't tell anyone, though. Don't worry." She stared at my pupils in disbelief for a while.Sitting on the raised tatami mat, she was holding a flat cloth bag.Something tightly wrapped in a dark green cloth, about the size of a classroom table. "Really?" "Ok." She seemed to finally agree.She slowly opened the cloth bag with fingers like dead branches, gradually revealing part of the contents. "that……" I can't help leaning out my upper body. Can this really help me? What is the use of this? There was another muffled sound outside the window.

How can I be in this kind of place?On the way from school, I ran into a strange woman's house.Who is this guy?My leg hurts, and the inside of my left leg feels like I've been stabbed with a fork.By the way, it was because of this injury that I came here. The dark green cloth was gently pulled aside, and the contents came into view.At that moment, I suddenly recalled what happened during the day.That happened in the classroom, it was him, it was S...