Notes

I lay in bed and think about how Kato had looked that night we had dinner, so fluffy and beautiful, like the moon. His hair had grown over the ten months. I don't think he's gotten it cut at all.

I can't move from my bed, my body is hollow but weighs a million pounds. No matter how hard I try, my skin is stitched to the sheets. My bones feel heavy. My brain is leaking out memories of Kato like poison. I haven't seen Yori in days and I'm beginning to think that he hates me. I don't blame him, though. Who could love me? I am out of my mind.

I must be insane to think that I could ever stop being friends with Kato.

Every bad situation I thought about when the boy who lives downstairs told me I cringe at the name Joji; they're all just misunderstandings. And the point is, Kato has always been there. Kato knows it all, and he's always cared.

Kato. I need to see Kato.

I fumble around in my sheets until I find my phone. The cold device is freezing against my fur, and my shaking paws type in his phone number into the keypad from memory. I need to see him.

"Joji!" He answers.

"Hey," I smile. Joji. That's me. My name is Joji, and I am his. "Are you busy?"

"No, not at all, just breaking the world's record for most twinkles consumed at once," he replies. "Chad's here. Say hi!"

"Hey, sad cunt," Chad says into the phone.

"Please take me off speakerphone," I ask, and then I hear a groan. I feel bad, flinching a little, as if the groan lashed against me painfully.

"Yeah? What is it?" Kato asks. "What is this, the third time we've talked this week?"

"But I just- I just need to see you," I whine slowly. I really am just so pathetic, aren't I? So clingy. Clingy to someone who's not even mine.

"Joji, didn't you listen? I'm busy," Kato says. "But what is it?"

"It's," I stop, because I don't want to say his name. "It's Yori."

It's not Yori that's bothering me, but I am desperate for Kato to want to be there for me.

"Oh? Already?" He asks. What does that mean? "You knew how this would end up, didn't you? You must have seen this coming."

He doesn't ask questions on what happened, he already knows. And I think this is because Kato knows me so well, because he can read me like the back of a book. So that's where the boy downstairs was wrong. Kato does love me, and he does care, and he is my best friend.

"I just didn't think it would make me feel like this," I say into the phone.

"Like what?" Kato asks. He seems distant, as if he's distracted. But he said he was busy, so if anything, it's my fault for continuing to whine on while I know I'm stealing time from him.

"Sad," is the only word I can say, because I don't know how to describe the demented, distorted screams I hear echoing from my soul.

I don't know how to fix it, so I curl up in a ball and cry in the comfort of my home that I don't ever dare leaving when I get like this. At night, I can't sleep. The thoughts keep me awake and beg me to go to the roof, but I don't want to risk seeing Yori there. It's not just about Yori, but after someone picked me up and made me feel so happy after years of constant dread, the return back to earth was painful. I didn't brace for impact, and now it feels like there's a hole inside of me the size of a crater. When I eat, the very little meals I pick at every other day, they don't have any flavor. In my years of dealing with the slow-paced decay inside my body, I've never had to deal with this plastic taste before. Everything is drained of colors and smells and flavors and life, and all that's left is the black and white rain. I can't defeat rain. My senses are completely shutting down. My own actions scare me so much that I don't even know how to reach out for help, or if I even want it. Everyone will just tell me, "What did you expect?"


I wish this wasn't my fault. I really do.

"Joji, you're always sad," Kato scoffs in amusement.

"I'm sorry," I apologize. "I try to be better."

"I know you do," Kato comforts me. "You just don't try hard enough."

He's right. He's absolutely right. I don't try hard enough, because when something good comes into my life, I immediately shut down and can't stand the idea of it.

"I'm sorry, Kato. I love you," I say.

"Yeah, I know, Joji," he sighs. "Listen, I'll come by later with some food, okay? Fuck Yori. I didn't like him anyway. He thought he knew you better than I do. Can you believe that! The nerve of some people. Anyway, I know you probably aren't eating again, I'll bring you something."

I smile when he hangs up because he knows my destructive habits enough to try and help. I'll eat if it's what Kato wants me to do, I promise.

But he doesn't come.

And I wait in my living room all night until I fall asleep on the couch, still waiting for him to come.

He never comes. Not when I need him.

When I wake up, the muscles in my body have drained so hard. There's not a single part of me that the darkness hasn't touched, infecting my brain and taking over like a swarm of disease, just like how I was before. Before Yori. Before the three weeks of fleeting happiness.

I stand up, shakily, and can feel the absolute gloom just hanging over me. This is it. No matter how many people like Yori come and go, this is my default mood, this is how things will always be. It doesn't matter how high I fly, I will always have to come back down to earth, where these feelings and thoughts will be expecting me.

I leave my apartment as quietly as I can so that my neighbors have no last complaints about any possible rowdy behavior I may subject them to in my last moments.

I'm silent until I reach the staircase. Then, I'm running up it. I'm not going to pause on the edge and take a second to say goodbye. I'm going get a running start. I won't look down, either, because I can guarantee demons will be waiting at the bottom to welcome me to hell.

I reach the top breathlessly, pushing the door open. Immediately, before I even step onto the roof, I see him.

His thin body is wobbling in the wind, and his feet are planted firmly together on the ledge. He's looking down. Hesitating.

I look down and see a brick resting against the building, most likely the same one he used to prop the door open last time. I make sure that it keeps the door open so that we have a way down again. We're not jumping. Not tonight. He's my new mission.

I move across the roof carefully, so silent that he doesn't hear me, but I don't think he would when the traffic of the city is this loud tonight.

I don't climb up on the ledge because I know I'll be tempted to fall. So instead, I put my elbows on the concrete and rest my chin in my palms. Yori hasn't noticed me yet, too invested in his own thoughts.

My mind has gone surprisingly blank. Like he's a sponge, soaking it all up without realizing.

"Come here often?" I ask.

Yori jumps, like, in the scared way. Not off the building.

Immediately, he climbs off in shame that he got caught. "George," he says, as if its an apology.

"It's a bit windy tonight, don't you think?" I look out at the lights instead of at Yori.

"George, listen, I-" Yori starts, but I cut him off.

"I need to say something. I'm- I'm going to be complicated sometimes, Yori. I'm not going to want to talk to you because my own thoughts are scaring me. I'm going to get sad, and I'm going to want to come up here and jump off so bad. I'm not always going to be happy Joji, or George, and I'm not always going to drink water or eat right. Sometimes when I'm writing music I don't come out of my room for days. Not even to pee. I know I have frantic, manic moods, but they don't last very long. I let people use me over and over again because I can't tell the difference between kindness and being taken advantage of. And because I think I deserve it. And because I will do just about anything to receive validation, even from a stranger. I see death everywhere I go, and there's a loud, constant screaming inside of me that I've just learned to tune out," I confess all of my sins to him at once. It's like a flood has been released, the tides washing over the entire city. To be honest and not fear what someone thinks is a kind of emotion that a lot of people never get to experience in their lives, and yet, here I am. One of the lucky ones who was so ready to end it all and let that trust go to waste, go figure. "That's everything. You can decide if you still want to be friends with me. But, now it's your turn."
Yori stares at me for a second, like maybe he didn't hear me. Or maybe he's not ready to open up.

He looks over the ledge for a second, like he's weighing out the options here. Then, Yori turns back to me, and he takes a deep breath in.

"My mom calls me sociopathic because nothing makes me cry. This tells me that I'm not the son she wanted at all. I don't know how to feel happy, all of my interests are boring, and sometimes I hurt myself just to feel. Not bad things. Just punching walls, maybe, to make myself bleed. And I have these... existential crises. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life because nothing is worth living for. Sometimes this will last for a few days, where I just sit and shut down and think about my brain and why it's fucked up this way. I think about the point of even living if the universe is going to explode, or if the sun will expand and eventually kill us all. I can't stop thinking about how useless this all is if I can't- if I can't feel. That's why everyone hangs on to living. Because they're here to stay for things that make them feel alive, and loved, and sane, and I don't have any of that," Yori spills all at once. "And, it scares me that you are the only person I've told any of this to."

"You say you can't feel, but I scare you," I point out. "You feel fear around me."

"I know, and I think that's the scariest part out of everything," he says. "You scare me because I want to touch you and hold you and feel you all the time. And... I guess that's not necessarily the scary part. The scary part is that maybe you won't feel these things back. Maybe I'm not... I'm not a reason for you to stay because I don't make you feel alive, and loved, and sane. And that's truly the scary part, George. The worst part about being scared is that you make me feel these things and have these thoughts, and what if you come up here one day and I don't catch you? What will happen to me then?"

I stay silent, because I can't give him an empty promise I don't know if I'll keep.

"But you know what really scares me?" He sinks to his knees, no longer looking over the ledge but just staring ahead at the concrete wall. His paws begin to shake, and I watch in concern.

"What is it?" I sit down next to him. I consider taking his paws in mine just to help alleviate the trembles, but I don't risk it. Not when he is showing himself so vulnerably to me.

"That you love your friend Kato, and that you'll always love him, even though he treats you so terribly that it makes me mad."

I look at my shoes in shame.

"He's..." I say slowly. "Can I tell you something?"

"While we're on the roof of honesty," he laughs, but it has that sick, sad, desperation in it.

I can feel dark, swirling clouds accumulating in my brain. The memory is directly in the eye of the storm, and I have to go through hurricanes and tornadoes to get to it. But I want Ian to have it. I want him to know.

"Ten months ago," I say quietly. The wind is loud, but he's listening. "Kato and I went out to celebrate him doing well on his exams. It was just us, or, it was supposed to be. He didn't tell me he was inviting his friends. I thought... I thought it was a date. I was so embarrassed. I dressed up, and I brought him flowers."

"Oh, George," he reaches out to touch me, but his paw just hovers above me like maybe I'm vulnerable too.

"So, we met his friends at a bar, and I don't even drink. But I was there for Kato. I was proud of him. He's my best friend, you know, I just wanted to be there for him. I'll follow him just about anywhere if he asks me nicely enough. But that night, man, I don't know what happened. I sat outside for awhile because I couldn't deal with the amount of people pressed up against me in the bar, but it was raining. That didn't bother me, I guess. Kato came out then. Kato... Kato," I stop to laugh. "He was beautiful that night. He always is. My god, he always is. But this night he was just... he was glowing. He smiled at me, and he said Joji in this soft way that made me feel like... like I was the only one worth looking at even in that crowded ass club. He kissed me. I didn't know why, I still don't. He kissed me and held me there as the skies just dumped all their problems onto us, and it was my first and only kiss. He tasted like vodka, he held my face, he pulled away with that soft giggle, and he kissed me again."

Yori is watching carefully, like he's invested in the words I'm saying. Maybe I shouldn't tell him this after he confessed his big fear is me loving Max, but if I keep it inside of me, the memory will only continue to fester and rot until it drives me into insanity.

"And he said, "Joji, why'd you kiss back? What are you, fucking gay?" And I replied with "No. I don't know. Maybe." He smiled and kissed me again, a really, really deep kiss, because he said he felt bad for me. I think about that a lot when I get in the bad moods. The sad moods. I think about how the only person who has ever kissed me only did it because he pitied me and not because he wanted to. It makes me wonder; what's wrong with me? Why am I not worth kissing? He's the only one I've ever loved, but I don't even think I would call it that. That wasn't love. That was just... that was me being obsessed with him, and him knowing it and just letting me carry on that way. Unrequited love fucking hurts, but it hurts worse when the person knows and just doesn't care. So I don't think you'll have to worry about me loving Kato. It's too one-sided."

"George," Yori starts out, and he sets his paw on my knee like he isn't scared to touch me anymore. "I just want you to know that there's nothing wrong with you. I won't get into the specifics, because he is still your friend whether I like it or not, however, Kato is a dick. He didn't deserve to kiss you. And for what it's worth, I've thought about getting to kiss you since the night we met. But I know that where we currently are is not our time... so I'll wait. I just want you to know that, okay? Ignore that I'm the one saying it, and just know that someone does want to kiss you, and not because I feel bad for you. Because I want to. Because you are so very beautiful, on the inside too. Because I can't get you out of my head. Because you are George."

I smile. The dark feelings don't go away, and I'm trying to forget the pain that came with Kato pulling away and laughing, wiping at his lips to get the taste of me off of them. But I smile, because Yori is here and he does this to me.

"I think, um," I say. "This sounds crazy, and you might not understand what I'm saying. But I think there's a way for the sadness and the happiness to coexist at the same time. I don't think it's good to be just happy and feel nothing else, because when you're that happy, the long drop back down hurts worse than it would if you were juggling sadness and happiness. I always thought I couldn't have both, but, I think I can. I can have the plastic taste and you at the same time. Will they balance each other out?"

Yori's paw slides up my leg until it's next to my paw, where he slips his fingers between mine. There are electric currents that slither up my arm and mainline to my heart, making me giggle a little at the feeling.

"The human brain is one of the strangest enigmas that mankind has ever faced," Yori tells me. "So, if those things coexisting helps you find balance in this world, then I sincerely hope it works for you."

My paw slides from his to move up his arm, my fingertips running along the back of his arm, the fur feeling warm to my fingertips despite the bitter wind. So much of his body to explore.

"I'll admit that I'm afraid," I look at him. "Because I've never... I've never had this before. Any of this."

He smiles. "Neither have I."

I am afraid and I am not. I am happy and I am sad. And I'm okay with all of this, because I don't feel like I have to make up my mind. Maybe it's Yori's influence, but maybe it's just my mood swings switching me back into a manic high after being unable to move from my bed for a few days.

I am afraid, and I am not.

I look at Yori, and he does my favorite shy smile.

He is afraid, and he is not.

Someone who wants to kiss me and won't laugh afterwards because they don't feel bad for me. What an enigma he is himself.