C - Blog Posts

Tyki

(DGM chapter 250)

LIU XIAO link click: bridon arc ➝ prelude

This isn’t how you’re going to die! I won’t let you!

I’m so glad you’re okay, Ogata! I’m gonna fucking kill you!

→ Sugimoto and Ogata in Golden Kamuy chapters 188 and 309, written by Satoru Noda.

he said, with bad intentions

I’m not about…to let you be the only one who dies!

All tragedies deal with fated meetings; how else could there be a play? Fate deals its stroke; sorrow is purged, or turned to rejoicing; there is death, or triumph; there has been a meeting, and a change. No one will ever make a tragedy—and that is as well, for one could not bear it—whose grief is that the principals never met.

Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo

what color character are you?

 MUSE   VS   MUN.

grey/black. you are intense, cool, pragmatic, and incredibly streetwise. you follow your convictions through and are great in a crisis. you are able to get what you want and protect others easily. just remember that letting your emotions take control doesn't make you weak, it only increases what you can do. examples of grey/black characters include cinna (the hunger games, mj (spiderman homecoming/far from home), edward cullen (twilight), and mai (avatar the last airbender)

blue. you're pragmatic and love to learn, and have a taste for the intellectually minded few. you have a good heart and moral compass, and an eternal curiosity that guides you in all of your endeavors. remember to take care of yourself, the world can be a difficult place and you deserve to rest every once in awhile. examples of blue characters are chidi anagonye (the good place), beth harmon (the queens gambit), t'challa (black panther), and alice cullen (twilight)

edit: forgot to tag people @psielapki @cymerae @12reset @hourdive @koseigu

@cursedfell

so that barbie meme huh!

“Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

What? Want me to thank you?

ゴールデンカムイ 北海道刺青囚人争奪編 GOLDEN KAMUY 2: The Hunt Of Prisoners In Hokkaido

❛ you’re a fucking nightmare. kiss me. ❜ (sugimoto @ ogata) let the rivalmance begin

during winter, when anglerfish was available, his mother cooked for a father that would never come.

in these periods of lucidness, she would always tell him the same “he will come, you see… i have to make his favorite food. it’s a long way from the north, so he will be hungry.”

he’d heard from her, too, about the relentless winter in hokkaido, of the mountains that surrounded his father’s base and he’d always imagined what it would be like to descend from a frozen land to the noticeably warmer weather of ibaraki. he imagined it would go like this: his father, the shining medals — his lieutenant general uniform pristine and ironed as he saw it in the bromide his mother kept atop her vanity, in the corner of their room. wrought in the finest metals, he would step inside, and he’d greet her, like lovers do in books, the stories he’s heard other children tell about their own parents. about the way their fathers kissed their mothers at the doorstep.

 and they would sit at the low-table, pouring his portion in their finest plates. would his father nod approvingly after tasting mother’s molten love in the nabe’s broth? or would he go about it silently, like ogata did? quiet enjoyment, because there’s no use saying these things, his mother barely spoke a word back. but maybe this time would be different. she’d be talkative, serene; she often reminded him of a butterfly. fragile and beautiful.

but he’d been around nine-years-old, and naive.

love did not exist. not as people painted it. it’s instinct, swirling egos, the necessity to have something that will bend beneath your palm at will. it’s vulnerability, and ogata abhors anything that puts him at a disadvantage. on some night, sugimto watches him, amber eyes possessing a quiet certainty about something that makes ogata’s stomach turn, an absolute belief that whatever it is that sugimoto sees, what he thinks he sees in ogata, is only but a projection of his own deluded fantasies.

ogata held sugimoto’s gaze, lips taut and his face a blank canvas. sugimoto’s lips taste of sake, of herbs; his scars are more vivid up close, as though slashed only moments prior, like they would bleed at any moment. he could feel the part that split sugimoto’s mouth in halves brush against his skin, humid, forcefully pressing forth, but ogata doesn’t budge. staring down sugimoto’s face, like he would do to a target through the lens of his type 30 arisaka.

what would his innards look like? if he shot sugimoto now, here, in the quiet of the wilderness, with the rest cramped up in the kotan like snakes in a pit, would that rouse any of them up? he could pretend they’d been attacked, that a spy from the 7th division followed their trail, right up here, and ogata had no other choice but to kill both.

load of bullshit, there’s no way that asirpa brat would believe it.

“afraid you’ll bleed?” he settles for this: in a swift movement, ogata’s hand clasps around sugimoto’s jaw, his thumb burying itself deep in the dent of sugimoto’s facial scars, and if he willed it, ogata could probably pluck one of his eyes out. sugimoto’s reflexes are quick, blood-shot adrenalin, an elbow to ogata’s ribs. that’s when his expressionless mask finally breaks, because he knows this, he knows anger, he knows what a starving beast looks like driven to a corner. ogata smiles, teeth showing through thinned lips. “i guess not.”

“quit playing, sugimoto, and get to what we came here for. i don’t know how long you’ll try to keep playing house, just don’t waste my time.”

i've been walking through a world gone blind . // @ Kogami !

playing clever, isn’t he?

it’s only for a moment - a minute twitch of his hand and a perk of his brow that gives away the absurdity of makishima’s words. blindness. blindness. kogami laughs, curt and listless as he meets makishima’s gaze impassively.

“The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.” he quotes, “it doesn’t make me happy that we agree on something like the stripping of man’s conviction in favor of automatized data processing.”

and of course it doesn’t. he’d left without so much as a warning to keep their guard on, after all, tossing aside his own connections for the pursuit of his own personal devil and though he isn’t precisely at Hell’s doorstep, his heart aches with sickness, hatred that’s boiled for too long, a necrosis of the heart. hoping he might see that batard’s face one more time before it all came crashing down, so he could bash it in, had suddenly turn into reality.

fuck makishima, honestly, for even bringing that up.

but it’s enough to rattle kogami’s nerves. he’s certain that he’d been searching for makishima’s face just a moment too long, desperate for a hint that remorse is foreign and that his ghostly silhouette framed in a polaroid hadn’t only existed in his darkest nightmares - the kind that haunt him at night, curled up under the sheets while sasayama’s memory breathes in the back of his mind. when the dark, oppressive silence leaves him with nothing to do but imagine blood - his, makishima’s blood - coating him like crimson rain. makishima’s eyes are clear, he notices, through the distance, through the gun’s lens and amplified only by nebulous contempt. clear and indifferent and offering more questions than answers.

kogami doesn’t lower his gun.

he’s grateful, suddenly, for the privacy that came after the chase, hiding from onlookers as though there was anything else to bury besides the corpse that he will soon make. he’s not killing time. but he doesn’t dare speak of how desperately he wanted, waited for this - how quickly his hunger was reignited when he saw makishima stumble, ragged breathing, blood-stained and snaking his way out into the empty landscape.

briefly, kogami wonders, if he’ll be disappointed in himself tomorrow, so quick to pull the trigger and shove a bullet into that pretty skull. he’s almost certain he would be as he reveled in the weight of metal in his palm, so different from how a dominator felt when his badge still meant something. the taste of gunpowder. the subtle scent of makishima’s blood in the breeze. the way his back is turned and facing him, brittle as a bird. it’s all and the same, the man in the photograph, the shadow in his memories, the man kneeling in front of him. the helping hand that skinned sasayama alive. kogami lets that consume him. he doesn’t want to think about what makishima wants. not here. not now.

“that’s all you have to say? unless you want to piss me off any more than you’ve done. then by all means, keep talking.”

@achroanimus

The night drags on and yet, restless, Li Tianchen has found no sleep. Fresh emotional wounds haunt his mind. He rubs his eyes and frowns while scrolling further through his phone. His new phone. All ties were severed. He’s learned that life changes at a rate no one can prepare for. No one, except seemingly…

Tianchen lowers the screen and peers at his company. Liu Xiao. His childhood friend — perhaps the only friend he’s ever had — reads on the sofa opposite his chair, also awake. Tianchen doesn’t know what they both seem to be waiting for. Chances are, Liu Xiao has entirely different plans than he does with his fickle procrastination, anyway.

Setting his phone down on the armrest, Tianchen stares more prominently. Almost glaring. A moment passes; in a fit of impulse, he stands and moves to join Liu Xiao, side by side. Everything thereafter happens slowly, cautiously, like a stray animal’s approach. He leans closer so he can read the words on the page with a narrowed focus.

Is that… English? He recognizes bits and pieces, although his lessons were admittedly subpar. The way he snorts, amused, should let Liu Xiao know exactly what he wants to think of all this. Dorky. Weird. But despite that dismissal, he remains by Liu Xiao, trying to make sense of fragmented phrases. There must be a reason he is reading it, right?

❛ read . silently read a book alongside my muse . ( also hi, hello, you are no longer safe from me 🥺 )

a dispassionate read, if he’s ever seen any.

even if he’d waited, he doubted any interest beyond surface curiosity would maintain itself alight and sparkling in li tianchen’s mind. he imagined this is how it would be, from that moment where their paths merged and liu xiao’s space had soon been invaded by a surge of bright hues, contrasting his own dark shades. their opposing tastes regarding hobbies, the books they’d read, everything felt like a makeshift dreamland, and whoever’s dream this was, it certainly doesn’t feed liu xiao’s interest or keep li tianchen out of his boredom. 

“it’s a retelling of Theseus myth. you’ve probably heard of it before.” he pauses for a second, turns to face him for the first time, eyes sharp and dark above the rim of his glasses. a look of confusion - or possibly judgement towards his book choice, tell him better than prying would of li tianche’s most sincere thoughts.

and liu xiau laughs, like sand over rocks, dry, throaty. he waits for no response, “well, just part of it. i find it fascinating, that regardless of his glory, an epic hero is still cast aside and into the underworld. isn’t it ironic? that one’s name lives on through the ages, though he’ll never know it while he’s conscious and breathing. they say madness and glory are more alike than we think.”

mirth, wry cynicism, as though he’d seen much of the world and found himself wanting it entirely. he tries to keep it at bay, dormant, because there are better uses for this kind enrapturing confidence. li tianchen’s interest is piqued, or so he believes. liu xiao pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, closes the book with a light tud, “it’s subjective, that’s what i’m trying to say. fame is poison, some drink it, unknowing or not. either way, it’s bitter stuff, is what i think.”

“do you care to read it? i’ve already done it a couple of times. i can lend the book if you ask.”

@timeislikemusic

i'll only hurt you if you let me . / Uta @ Yomo

hurt, by definition, comes together with pain.

pain is familiar. pain is something that ghouls as species have known for longer than they’d remembered each other’s faces, what little they saw of them, when the masks were cast off. renji observes more than he speaks, notices the wounds and torn skin already patching itself together in a gruesome display of rank: back then, they’d been considered a dangerous threat to the CCG, or to the general public. 

humans. ordinary humans whose bodies broke and didn’t mend. 

bodies that did nothing similar to what uta’s system is beginning to try, under the influence of whatever it is that kept that clownish smile plastered on his face. excitement? seems likely.

he waits until the open tissue is all healed, black ink molten across a pale canvas. there’s a revelation in the way uta’s eyes reflect the dim moonlight. fluorescent signs sprout from the tall buildings, further narrowing the already reduced space in this back alley, cascading them in bright hues and deep contrasts, their shapes a pair of protruding anachronisms in the urban landscape. 

this privacy - the pause that follows feels loud enough to drown everything else: noise of artillery, debris moved around and across the asphalt, disaster and what comes with chaos. even the rattling heartbeat in his ribcage which hadn’t ceased to plague him since they first laid their fists onto each other sinks deep into oblivion. he picks up where uta left off, his voice returning to its usual listless baritone, “it won’t be pleasant, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

there’s childish amusement in this, in the thrills uta seeks. he’s never understood it, always drawing a blank when he tried to sympathize with it. what he knows, however, is rage. he’d tasted it on the roof of his mouth, even now, if he searched long for it. on the cusp of an old era, only uta and, perhaps itori, were unburdened by it, his baggage, his vengeful appetite. 

they’d cannibalized, and they’d probably done so much worse, sins that follow them each to the grave - but it’s not all there is to it. not all there is to uta and him. perhaps he simply wants to drain it all dry: his options, the reasoning, any word that can keep his friend from self-immolation. renji paces closer. 

“aren’t you cold?” he doesn’t know if uta misses him. renji’s never asked. part of him, a shallow part, believes that uta’s unselfconsciousness is indicator enough that he’d do well no matter renji’s stance in his circle. another part - a more selfish, boyish part that hadn’t entirely died out since their rooftoof talks, had mistaken these jabs and mockery for fondness, of a kind. so it often went. he exhales through his nostrils, sharp breeze cutting through loose strands of white hair. the scent of rain, drying blood, this; it’s all a grim reminder that anything could’ve gone wrong, had he not been sincere from the start.

“do you remember” renji asks, “the first time we met? it wasn’t much different than how we are now.” normally, teens outgrow their fixations. renji doesn’t think uta has dropped it entirely, but it’s still difficult to figure him out in a way that won’t piss renji off. even now, he feels annoyed. there’s time for the two of them to try and hurt the other. that entirely depends on how well uta fares from here on. a creature of terrible potential. renji lowers his knees until they’re touching the ground, hooks uta’s arm around his shoulder, working as an achor, and eases him back to his feet, eye to eye, just like it’d been a decade or so ago. 

“it was like this, too.” his lip twitches, the birth of a smile, one that he’d thought long lost. “you can walk, let’s go.”

@antinomos

had to come here to post this extremely Liu Xiao thing. and while we're at it let me tell you this is also Mukuro and Luka.

holy crap ,  you're alive  … / Kagari & Kogami, after their roughest task yet!

were you always this loud?

kogami tries to keep his voice even; to give off the facade of level-headadness beyond sickness, the illusion of fast recovery that brings him closer to leaving this all-white plastic room for good.

as he swallows through a dry throat, the thought that, perhaps, maybe, kagari might be here not to deliver good news but to sentence him to another night of smelling antiseptic and disinfectant, sets into his shoulders as a familiar stiffness that he hopes won’t be so obvious through the fabric of his hospital clothes. without sparing a second thought, kogami makes his unamusement obvious, tugging at his wristband for lack of anything better to do.

“it doesn’t feel like i am.” even if he’d tried, kogami doubts he could have stopped the tired exhale that escapes his lips. “it might be a joke to you, but i’ve seen the nurse’s faces more than i’ve seen yours or ginoza’s for that matter.”

coming and going, the vague sense of control slipping through his fingers is enough to rattle his nerves.

no. that’s not the right word. it would be more accurate to say weakness frustrates him, franctically looking for answers where there were none to be found. it gives him something else to worry about, just as he’s been drawing close to the target he’s been chasing for so long. kogami lets out a terse breath, forehead falling loosely against his own fist. “any news? i don’t suppose we’re both here killing time. don’t tell me you want something else. it’s not like you. so just deliver the message.”

@yeonban

did you really think this is the right thing to do ? ( @ geto w/ nagi and his soccer-based jujutsu that i haven’t fleshed out yet lets go 🙂‍↕️ )

‘ correctness is based on the whims of whoever stands at the top. usually, the strongest get to decide. ’ after all, it’s easy to fear things that one doesn’t understand.

that is how institutions are created.

that is how monsters are born.

suguru paces around the room, tatami creaking beneath the weight of each step. though nagi’s question would have garnered any other person a violent end, something about his words feels sincere in ways that suguru hadn’t seen since… well, since his last conversation with haibara. it makes him wary.

nagi seishiro is relaxed in ways he shouldn’t have been, languid when he should have been cautious. uncanny in his boldness, though not so far that suguru’s senses would call it a threat. suguru reasons it’s little wonder that nagi is loathed even amongst their allies, or the followers. the sound of his footsteps is obscured by the prayers coming from the other room. the smell of burning incense, of ashes; he wonders how longer he’ll be able to stand listening to their drifting voices before something in him collapses. 

suguru exhales a breath, watching nagi grow more comfortable in his position, bathed in the gentle midday light coming through the paper-thin walls. the look of innocence, treacherous in a way that he’s learned to discern.

‘ i can find a more creative way to pursue my goals, but i doubt it would be anything pretty, by anyone’s standards. uncooperative beasts are tamed. i don’t hope you understand what i intend with this. ’ the rational part of him knows that he should have ended this conversation before it even began - shouldn’t have humored this meeting in the first place. if he’d been anyone else. but when the bleary eyes of a newborn sorcerer look at him in that familiar way that he’d thought forgotten, impossible to mirror once more, suguru finds that can’t finish what he’s started.

he wonders if haibara - if anyone resents him for that.

these overlapping images are a headache. he lifts a hand, right from under his sleeve, signaling towards the open door. ‘ is that all you had to ask? you’ll have to forgive me, nagi. you see… i am a very busy man. ’

@trapshot

an important part about ogata's character is how much he actually loved his mother. for some reason it's a source of argument on certain spaces but i think the og work was clear enough: ogata never learned how to love, so his love is bound to hurt.

neglected as a kid as he was, his mother stopping talking to him at some point during his childhood and spending day and night submerged in her hallucinations and daydreaming of a man who would never come back for her, growing up in poverty and with no other contact than his elderly grandparents, ogata never truly learned how to display love, never even felt as though he received it.

so when he explained "...then one day i fed rat poison to her. i thought that if father truly loved her, he would at least come back to her funeral. but you never came." it's the logic of a kid who wants his mother to be happy, to at least meet the man she loved and so she can go back to her old self who used to sing lullabies to him.

in the end it didn't work.

fast forward years later and skipping the fact he killed his father, because that's a whole other topic, i think his dynamic with asirpa is another big example that he can't properly conceptualize love and often offers "affection" or shows that he "cares" in the same way a cat would bring dead birds or mice to your bed.

ogata shooting wilk is an example of it. wilk, a father whose intention was to send his young girl to lead a war and to her demise, ogata understood killing him as making a favor for her because he did kill his own father, and as he explains "i think patricide is taking a step forward into adulthood" in barato arc, his mind understand this killing as a blessing to her even though she doesn't see it that way.

and throughout the story ogata continously makes offerings like these, because it's logical, that's how it's always been for him, so why shouldn't it be that way for everyone else?

but it's during the bad omen arc - and when the images of the brother he shot during the siege in PA and the girl he's gradually growing fond of as a projection of his own dead brother - that he begins to realize "oh, maybe there IS something wrong with me after all" and he rejects the idea because it scares him, scares him more than anything that love has always existed and that his father could have loved him, could have loved his mother, he just chose not to. and that his mother could have also loved him and he couldn't see it. scares him that love had always been there but never for him.

it's easier to rule out the existence of a sentiment than to admit that he's never received it, that he remains unloved.

A lot of sketches have been piling up since last month… on twitter

@cursedfell

the different font being used is so amusing to me. also are we sure they havent kissed

“ I’m sorry. I couldn’t keep my promise. I wanted to go into a line of work where I could protect people. That’s why I became a detective. But Makishima changed everything. That man will continue to kill people. And yet, the law can’t judge him. As long as I’m a detective, I can’t touch him. This case made me aware… that the law can’t protect people.” - shinya kougami.​

Happy Birthday, Selle! ♦

thinking about how kogami must've felt alone all this time, like time would pass and he'd never be truly seen, all that comes with it, and he'd probably resigned to make do with the world he had at hand but the catalyst to his switch into discovering aspects of himself that hed never thought existed was no other than makishima and even after he's long dead, kogami still invokes his ghost because that's the only person who's ever truly understood him, and by killing him kogami sentenced himself to that cycle of isolation

what's your literary archetype? — tagged by @lustraveil for kogami

the mentor.

you're a natural leader, you've got a specific aura about you that draws people to you. you're smart, not just academically, but worldly smart. people tend to go to you for help and advice, and you're more than happy to help. of course, that also means that you feel like you're a therapist rather than a friend, family, or lover. it can make you feel isolated from everyone else, and i hope that people realize you are human before a teacher.

tagging: @psielapki @limel1ghts @burntpa1ace @sukareo @cymerae @yeonban

You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything–and I advise you to do the same.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

kissing your client enemy while holding them at knife point / a kiss to end sexual tension. @ lx ( -and then xf goes missing…. jk )

wired-shut jaw, the distant throb of his arm. the blade’s kiss around his throat is cold and unyielding, much like the blue fire behind xia fei’s pupils. he feels more than he notices the anger: it leaks through the pores, dark and thick like tar, painting everything the color of the night. liu xiao can only affirm the imprisonment by offering a smile, willful, calm as the breeze: “it isn’t me who you’re looking for. i know you’ve heard about powers, but mine aren’t something so significant that you ought to consider me a prime suspect in vein’s death.”

as if on cue, the very mention of vein’s name garners him a hiss through sharp teeth, knife pressed deeper and more cruelly into tender skin. any more than this and the fibers will give in under the sharpness of it.

liu xiao often thought about fear.

when he was young, and naive, and his brother was still alive, liu min asked him why he wasn’t scared of the dark as he was. they shared the same blood, the same upbringing, so why was it?

is it because you’re younger?

that’s foolish, shouldn’t the older brother be more brave? he’d asked.

it’s instinct, he supposes. he’d come to the conclusion that some people are meant to fear, to feel it as something strictly human. others lay awake in the dark and trembled - not like the first people did but for something else entirely. it’s a simple fact, knowing you have something to lose, something that awaits dormant in a corner that makes it all so terrifying.

loss, pain, regret.

liu xiao doesn’t know what he’s afraid of, but it might have been something less substantial. something that can’t be controlled.

he also knows that he should’ve drawn his own knife.

their figures blend with their surroundings, the alley growing darker and narrower as the sun is engulfed in an array of blue and purple shades, both of them perched in the shadows just out of sight of the main streets and unwitting eyes. if xia fei’s come this far, he could have easily slipped past vein’s monitoring, their defenses and out of the cover of anonymity, given his missing status. but instead he’d come here, looking for answers, body drawn flush and steady against liu xiao’s own that it was almost comical that he hadn’t noticed it before. xia fei is as dangerous a piece on the board as the rest, especially when gaining partial awareness.

“why is that you’ve come, besides asking — well, demanding, information. ” his gaze darts from the knife to xia fei’s expression, wary, so close that he could feel the damp touch of hot breath as it crept along his mouth. his answer comes and he’s not surprised by it: soft lips and a hungry bite, tasting like copper and pounding adrenalin. red blossoms from his wounded lip, making his heart catch in his throat.

what was he afraid of?

not death. not the dark.

the leap that his stomach brings him closer to fear than he’s ever been. so there are other ways - some other way that humans could be hurt that they feared more than dying. dark eyes stare back at xia fei, stained with the usual hues of apathy and quiet amusement - black, unmarred, like gunpowder. the sting of steel against flesh. it’s his own special agony. “why was that? to kill me? you should be more ruthless, i might grow fond of this new you.”

@limel1ghts

it didn’t take a strategist to recognize the advantage presented to their forces. 

the thought had been nagging at him since then, since his eyes laid on the digital shape of the ghost he’d chased for so long. kogami hardly notices the abstract sort of anger that drifts from his grip as an afterthought, subdued as it eases through the quiet of the shared space: “it’ll only be makishima’s grave.”

if only that were true.

he’d lament for the lack of action and pursuit, but he knew better than to rush the persecution. makishima is meticulous, clever, has a tendency for the theatrics and whatnot. making a halfhearted attempt at identifying his whereabouts would cost them more than just kogami’s life or an enforcer’s badge. it’s unfair for anyone else involved, for makishima to be the source of many headaches.

“figured i’d let you know, in case you thought this was going anywhere different.” his attempt at a lighthearted joke isn’t well-received, if the glare flashed in his direction is any indicator.

“i thought we weren’t doing this again.” kogami says, though he knew his words couldn’t possibly be convincing with the festering sickness inside of him, forgotten some days while others were so painfully acute he can barely stand it. time and stubbornness are the only things that numbed him to the painful sense of awareness that he’s no more different than a hungry beast and prey dangling on the limits of his territory. kogami hated himself for it. he hated himself now, too, for mercilessly rubbing salt into old wounds.

talk about selfishness.

“guess i don’t listen.”

kogami’s hand retrieve a second cigarette, caging it between sharp teeth. a lover’s kiss. as if nicotine still needed an invitation. “i don’t know what else to say to that. you’ve got me, gino. it might be my own foolishness which drives me right into the wolf’s den, but at the very least i can say that any progress that’s created a window for me to pass through and bring me one step closer to where i want to be couldn’t have been possible solely with my own efforts.”

he’d tried to keep his voice even; to give off a facade of level-headedness and sensibiliity that he’d tried to maintain since the confirmation of makishima’s existence, but as he swallows coarsely and a bitter aftertaste coats his tongue, kogami thinks that perhaps this hunt, makishima, whatever it is that he’s mapping out across the terrain’s of sybil’s jurisdiction might be driving him a little fucking insane. stiffness sets into his knuckles again, fingers clasped around the lighter. it takes him another second to finally ignite the flame, hues clinging to his features like molten gold. without sparing a second thought, and perhaps testing what’s left of his luck, kogami’s shoe taps lightly at ginoza’s side, for old times’ sake.

“liven up. you can start by punching me in the face if you see me derail too far from the path and be done with it.”

his jaw continues to tighten as he listens, the frustration clearly building. despite that, he does his best to mask it. the words don't seem to strike the chord Kogami might have intended. Part of him can appreciate the vulnerability, but there's a much stronger, overwhelming part of him that still only sees and hears utter betrayal.

"You're sorry," his tone biting as he turns to face him, "do you even understand what that means anymore? or is it just something you say when you know you've gone too far?"

there's a pause, his lips pressing into a thin line as if debating whether or not to even bother continuing. was he worth it? the words are already there, bubbling beneath the surface, ready to spill out. clearly, he's worth it. he exhales sharper, trying to regain some sense of control over the emotions tightening in his chest.

"You speak of Sasayama like his ghost is the only one in the story." his tone sharper, more pointed. "Like the rest of us don't have our own burdens to carry." wasn't that the point? Life being a constant cycle of suffering, and continuing to persevere? "But the difference between you and me, Kogami, is that I'm still trying to make something of this life. While you–" he has to refrain, as the emphasis is with a raised tone, "you're stuck in the past, chasing a memory, a history you can't change. You keep telling yourself this is the only way forward."

much like the story, Moby Dick – like Captain Ahab and his obsessive pursuits.. and if tale goes to show... the consequences of obsesion and the fine line between justice and revenge never end well for the martyr. "but, it's not forward, is it?" his voice wavers a moment, a crack once again, he has to contain himself. "I don't need your apologies. Sasayama's death doesn't give you the exclusive tight to a path of self-destruction."

he steps closer, the tension between them palpable now, "You think you're the only one who's lost someone?" he forces his composure back into place. he'd lost his father and thought of it every time he walked through this damned building. lost his best friend, in more ways than one. but he didn't let it consume. or , so he thinks, anyway.

he turns his head away, shaking it, shoulders taut. "I can't make you care about the people who are still here." him, namely. for a moment it seems like he might stop there, but he glances back at him. his features are suffused with a mix of anger, remorse, and resignation. "I'm tired of burying people who matter to me." he pause a beat. "Don't make me bury you, too."

// @einshi