About

One, J is a retard; two, N is a moron; three, P is a son of a bitch—, --- We're isolated because we clung to love so desperately we staked our own ankles. It's a voluntary subjugation, a rebellious physiology. One, J is a retard, J is a retard, Jaei is a retard—... If you think he's someone who belongs in a normal category, you might as well stop breathing. If you offer up a ruinous fate to the threshold where the beginning was sweet and sticky, they say God will judge you if you beg for love without even knowing how to do it. Just stay in the fortress, doing drugs, and hide those wrists tangled up in filth. Since our focus and zero point are different—excessive tilting converges to zero—it feels transparent and stinging. Open your eyes, don't look at the phantom. --- What's your relationship? / Between J and me? / Yes. K, the newspaper delivery boy, loved to pry into every little thing, perhaps because he was young. Ring-ring—, he leaves behind only the high body temperature characteristic of a child while ringing his bicycle bell. My eyelids flutter irregularly. I feel like I'm becoming disabled for no known reason. When I think of the retard who must be drooling inside the window covered by a single palm, it's only natural for a shabby resentment to burn. What do you think we are? / Are you dating? / It's not like that. / No way! Dense humidity rises mustily, and—as if Pandora had opened the box—K keeps grumbling. I press some crumpled money into his hand and pat his back, and K leaves. A game NPC would be easier to handle than this. I thought of J, who had embraced an excessively narcissistic side. In a series of counter-proofs, I wanted to prove J: love, affection, curse, devotion, lingering attachment, passionate. --- Adding an afterword was too much effort. When one reaches the limit of what can be sensory-perceived, does the sensory system automatically shut down? People who lost their moderation and self-control formed a cartel in the fortress. Under the original fortress where rats, cockroaches, and all sorts of filth gathered, descendants and more descendants—the cries of out-of-season birds did not flow. On the outer walls where history had accumulated for a long time, crispy dry paint skins were peeling off. Excessively gentle and beautiful J, the retard, my J... If the moment comes when the infinite loop becomes permanent, that will be the end of one world. --- Is this all you brought in this month? / We struck out because X got his ass kicked—. / Fuck, that son of a bitch, I shouldn't have taken in such a weak-looking bastard! I swallowed the scratchy powder down the back of my throat. As J scraped away the hardened bloodstains, the sight of the drug dealers reflected in his flickering retinas wasn't an important factor to him. Since he was a so-called VIP customer, J collapsed onto a mattress that was—for a fortress—clean and soft. A single phantom, a new world, ah, fuck, even the smell of iron is good. Rather than continuing the prayer of a shitty life, he wanted to jump into an indistinguishable world. So, that's why J held Z's hand. When he first put the white stimulant on the tip of his tongue, it felt like an electric current—bzzzt. Z enjoyed tightrope walking with J's life. Since he was stuffed with all kinds of synthetic drugs, there was no way he wouldn't become a retard! Just because it's sweet doesn't mean you should swallow it all. A soul doesn't put food on the table, but it makes you eat. It was two years ago when J started vomiting up even plain rice grains as soon as he put them in his mouth. It was around that time that I started living with J, crumpled together in a one-room shack where we could barely lay our bodies down. --- Like some thug, fuck, were you born with such a miserable fate? J's oblivion was noble. It smelled of high-proof whiskey, uncharacteristic of the fortress. What did you sell to whom? Vulgar sentences were caught at the end of my throat. Maybe the one born with a truly miserable fate wasn't J, but myself. Loving that retard must be something you're born with, so if it's not God's command, then what the hell is it! Fuck, Jaei—, your arm is full of holes. --- Under noble oblivion, you'd even sell your soul, wouldn't you? The fallen ankles, one, two—, dance a waltz. White snow piles up modestly. --- One, the damn retard is J—!