2. Mask.
2. Mask.
As hard as I try not to, I smile. Buson has always had that effect on me.
He is my new razor.
At that sudden analogy, my hands automatically go to the sleeves of my blue shirt and tug them down to mask the scars from countless nights past.
I am safe now, I think.
I'm with him at last.
It was strange at first, when that door opened and Sakaki was standing beside him. I remember thinking, So this is my partner. My first impressions of him were miscaluculatedly low, I realize. Standing there with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, all muscular -- I thought he was all muscles and no brain whatsoever, a typical bodyguard-type person -- with a I'm-badass-so-watch-out-for-me expression on his face, I thought he was nothing but a wannabe Mr. Tough Guy.
He soon proved me wrong.
At first, I remember I was cold and distant to him, the same way I had been since my sister --
Quickly I twist away from that memory. I was disconnected, intent on staying an emotionless creature.
Buson inevitably changed that.
At night, when we lived apart, I would always try to wash out my stupid emotions with the blood that ran into the sink from the slits in my skin, forcing everything out with the liquid that escaped the confines of flesh and trickled into the basin. At these times I would try to sort out the complicated maze of feelings I had for my partner.
Feelings that grew as time went on, no matter how deep or how often I cut to get rid of them.
Finally, as I realized that in bits and pieces I was becoming more emotionally human, I screwed up my courage, went over to his condo, and showed him the scars, looking at him with a mixture of defiance and helplessness, and simply said, "You."
He understood, and since then has gently been prying off the mask of coldness I wear.