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Guilt and Innocence

Urei Sachi

'Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word.

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword.'

-Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol


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It was the simple things in life that Daisuke valued. There were the little things that you never really glanced twice at, the kind of things that failed to capture your interest. A wave of hello in the hallways accompanied by laughter and the soft click-clacking of shoes against the floor, a budding flower in the garden freshly watered with care, a smile of recognition from a classmate or a friend - you took all those things for granted, the way you always did.

Nothing was supposed to change in your dull, monotonous life.

It made you guilty several times in the past when you watched your mother lovingly stroke the wilting flowers you had plucked from the fields when you thought no one was looking. Watching her chilled your bones and clogged your senses, because you realized that you felt nothing for those flowers, and she seemed to love them so much. You gave them, after all, but that was only because it seemed like a necessary thing, if not a good idea.

The next day you threw the flowers away and told her they were starting to smell bad.

They weren't.

You weren't exactly a good boy. You weren't a bad one either, but then again, is there really such a thing as good? You never met anyone who was the epitome of gentleness and virtue, and you, secretly, liked to laugh at the suck-up children who simpered and smiled at adults who were too stupid to notice.

You despised those children who dared to ruin the image of innocence.

Passive wasn't a word that would have best described your development. At an early age, your parents and teachers had recognized the sharpness of your mind. From a stranger's point of view, it was sort of eerie, you realized, that a child would be able to comprehend things that most people couldn't, and that this same child could easily manipulate the situation to his own benefit. That was what you were known for; you mapped out strategies in your head and made incomprehensible (to none but you) notes. Consequences were easily dealt with. You were the master of strategy and cunning.

Everything would work in your favor.

That was why you could look and feel so calm and composed, as if you had the world in your complete control.

But then you met Niwa Daisuke, and though you shrugged it off, the dizziness in your head never completely went away since he held out his small, slender hands to you - Artist's hands, you noted dryly, and evidently suffering from his bad habit of biting his nails whenever he was nervous, which, truthfully, happened very often.

Not the image of innocence you had in mind, but he was the closest thing to it.

You toyed with the idea of playing with him; you were frequently told of your shrewdness, hidden behind a cold front. People admired you for it, even respected your abilities, but there were others who, justifiably, abhorred you for it and kept their distance - smart move for selfish people, although you could have swayed them. If you wanted to.

Watching him nibble on his lower lip during Math class, you resolved to take your sweet time with this boy who, although somewhat average, fascinated you. So you would push all his buttons and watch him blush and stammer, his fingers twisting around each other as they tried to fumble for an imaginary anything that you never really understood.

Within a week, you saw every shade of red possible painted on his cheeks.

And you weren't supposed to enjoy every bit of it.

But you did.

So you would stand a little closer everyday and manage to get locked in the same room with him more than once a week, but it left you with the feeling that it wasn't enough, that maybe you wanted more than he could offer you, that you wanted this jittery, oblivious boy more than you wanted anything else. You wanted to clutch his hand a little longer than necessary and talk to him for hours on end, if only to hear him laugh and stutter and say anything that came to mind.

Somewhere in the middle of the game you orchestrated, you had unwittingly lost to the one who never had any notion of what you were doing all that time.

And then there was the ugly, sickening feeling of guilt twisting your insides when you reflected that you were only betraying him. You didn't want to be his friend. You wanted to be his everything.

You shouldn't have.

And you should have stayed away, because it wasn't normal to hope for a touch, a laugh, maybe a kiss, too, if he swung that way. Even a simple smile would suffice, and the knowledge that he thought about you once in a while.

You were too far gone to notice that you were being foolish.

Funny how you would become what you used to disdain. A lovesick sentimentalist. But was it love? It seemed to be an awfully strong word to use for a thirteen year old, but that didn't matter because he was your simple thing. Simple, but exquisite for all its insignificance at the same time.

You were content to watch from afar - after all, why ruin something so special and so fragile? And was it not that there would always be pain? Pain and pleasure, you read once, went hand in hand in this dance. This was the real world, not some misleading fairytale wherein the prince marries the princess.

You wondered what your parents would have said if they were still alive. How would they react, knowing that their son was in love with another boy? And a Niwa, at that! Would they be horrified? Or would they accept it? They seemed too distant, too cold in your eyes. Would Daisuke be able to melt the ice barrier? Would they allow him to? And what would your adoptive father say?

What would Krad say?

Secrecy had always been part of your life, so it wasn't so hard to keep it bottled up inside. Krad was your deadly secret, and you knew that he disdained, nay, loathed Daisuke. But sometimes, though, you wanted, desperately, to take him in your arms and say it all over again, harsh whispers and broken moans escaping your lips as you begged for his love, his forgiveness, his acceptance, his everything.

"Oh please stay, please stay..."

It was not enough.

One night he came to you, sobbing his precious, untainted heart out, and you let him cling to you like a lifeline, like a desperate man, like a boy who was learning how to let go of everything that mattered, while you held him with eyes that refused to close and hands that wouldn't stop shaking, petting his soft, spiky hair, whispering mindless consolations that your addled brain could muster ("Shh... it's alright, I'm here with you... everything is alright, I'll make sure of it... What happened? ... don't cry, don't cry, oh please don't cry...") even if he didn't - couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't - listen to you.

You shouldn't have.

He raised his head and looked at you while you kissed away his tears and crooned a sad love song to his ear, and you wondered how beautiful he could still be in his broken state.

You should have looked away, but you didn't.

And when you thought he would tell you what happened, his fingers curled into your hair and tightened when he whispered, "I love you," even if he didn't interpret it in the way you would have wanted him to.

You should have told him he didn't mean it, but you didn't.

You should have swallowed the lump in your throat and pushed him away, but you wouldn't.

You should have scowled and told him not to say anything if he didn't fucking mean it, but you couldn't.

Too delirious with happiness, you let yourself believe in a fallacy and held him tighter and tighter until you never wanted to let go.

You really shouldn't have.

But when had you been one to listen?

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END

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I totally hate D N Angel's anime ending. X( Someone shoot me now. People who thought that D N Angel was so SatoDai, review :d