Urban Hymns

Schuldig, Farfarello. R.
The days are strange in this house.
2001 | 7100 words

-

With the same measure of strength he would use to crack open a skull or two, he cuts open a small coconut in uneven halves with an old kitchen knife. Spills the water down the sink and sits on the breakfast table, right across from me, staring at the knife. For a second I have the impression he forgot what he intended to do next. But just as soon, he stands up again and pours himself a cup of Nagi’s poor excuse for coffee, while I stretch my arms and grumble some sort of ‘good morning‘ just to make a point that I did just enter the kitchen a couple of minutes ago, even if the collective silence tells me just what either my presence or absence mean here.

Nagi sips from his own cup, sighing under his breath. I sound his thoughts at the surface - they’re oddly… domestic this morning. Nagi sometimes surprises me. So much anger, resentment and self-loathing inside that little head, so much struggle to not feeling anything -no fear, no anger, that strange desire to be an enhanced version of Crawford (only emptier), and suddenly I catch him thinking about homely, unimportant, idiotic stuff like wondering whether to add more or less water to the coffee next time or to simply resign to his lack of culinary skills; like asking himself if Farfarello intends to eat the coconut he’s just opened, and where the hell did he get a coconut anyway.

Crawford, on his side, follows his boring, annoying, invariable routine: reads the newspaper and forgets about his coffee while it turns into cold, sweet, undrinkable brown water, tapping his feet under the table without a sound to the beat of some imaginary song. I’ve always been curious as to what kind of music Crawford likes, but the very picture of Crawford listening to music that can be tapped to freaks me out of my skin. Somethings are probably best left unknown. I don’t have to listen to it - if Crawford doesn’t want us to hear his voice humming some old American blues, I don’t really feel like forcing it out of him. At least not today.

Farfarello finally mutters back a ‘~morning‘ I can barely hear. He doesn’t even raise the eye from his occupation to say that so I’m not sure he’s talking to me or the knife, but I smile in spite of myself and thank whatever the hell gods out there for the fact that at least someone here notices me.

In a sequence of quick, automatic moves, Farfarello pulls off the white, edible part of the fruit out and puts it aside, then starts to clean the shell, scraping the insides with the tip of the knife. I try a first sip of the coffee and decide it doesn’t taste half as bad as it did yesterday. The kid is learning.

The mornings are strange in this house.

{ . . . }

We have our own pacing, the happy Schwarz family.

While Farfarello is dressed and ready, sitting on the couch and scraping at the coconut shell, trying very very hard to mess up his pristine white suit, Crawford has just finished shaving. The kid walks around the house, searching for his shoes. Strange picture that, a barefoot teen in a businessman suit, searching for his shoes like finding them is what life is all about. Sometimes Nagi makes me feel almost sorry for him. But not really.

I grin at my reflex in the false mirror of the glass doors that lead to the balcony. The problem with being a flashy redhead is that you can never pass a serious impression of yourself - unless you braid/cut all the hair and wear a hat to hide the childish freckles in your white cheeks. It’s worked well for me, in some sort of twisted way. If I didn’t look like this big flashing red sign, I’d probably pass through all my life unnoticed.

I look back as I hear a low sound, low enough that I wouldn’t hear if not for the eternal silence within these walls. The sound comes from the boy with the knives. He hums something in such a low voice that not even in this silence I can quite hear him. It sounds like some catchy kindergarten rhyme, and for a second it occurs me that I don’t really remember ever being the kind of child who sang kindergarten rhymes. Farfarello sings his song and scrapes his shell, his expression changing to each syllable of his old native English, a bit rusted around the edges, maybe from lack of use.

I sit beside him and brush the dirt away from his leg. The song comes to a halt and he freezes. Stares at me with the eyes of a scared child caught doing something very, very wrong, and I don’t know what to do with this sudden glimpse of vulnerability. I smile, since it’s the only thing I can do when there’s nothing else to be said, then glance out the window, wondering if I too should start singing when I’m distracted.

{ . . . }

It’s only a matter of

a) knowing your place in the masterplan, and;

b) accepting the hierarchy.

Takatori is Crawford’s boss. Crawford is mine. I’m no one’s boss, but I’m well paid, have some fun and even get some kind of pyscopath friend as a freebie along with insurance and dental care. For this kind of job, no one needs a diploma.

And it’s also a matter of knowing how much not to know/care about your boss. Of making yourself present but letting Crawford say what has to be said, of shaking the creepy old hag’s hand and quickly excusing yourself when the conversation becomes way too “interesting”. Then it’s just a matter of taking your “some kind of friend” by the arm and leaving them room so you both can live through another day. The kid is not my problem. Crawford always kicks him off the room anyway so he and the big boss can conspire in peace, so the kid is not my problem.

Farfarello is. He talks to me, looks me in the eyes, smiles at me. Not the kind of friend I dreamed of when I was five years old, a friend that sleeps in a straight-jacket, but hey, it’s the best I could make out of it.

I glance at my watch and nod my permission for Farfarello to go to marketplace around the block, asking him not to drag too much attention to himself. Like you can ask that of someone with an eyepatch and scars all over his face. When Crawford finally comes out of Takatori’s room, Farfarello is already back without too many incidents, and I am looking through his shopping bag: limes, oranges and two packs of candles. My friend is odd.

A minute later, the same bag is thrown over the back seat as I turn on the engine and follow Takatori’s ridiculously expensive car, from where Crawford glances back just to make sure we’re following suit. The days of bodyguards of a man like Reiji Takatori are pretty boring: you drive around the city, sit in large waiting rooms of corporate office buildings, flash your gun at losers more often then you actually fire it… and eventually, if you’re lucky enough, you get to shoot one or two random idiots who think of themselves as the invincible armada of peace and justice.

Justice is a matter of point of view.

{ . . . }

When Farfarello finishes scraping the shell with the knife and starts working his masterpiece with a sandpaper, I’m getting quite annoyed with the constant scrap-scrap-scrap. My irritation might also have something to do with this suffocating silence we find ourselves in. I refuse to believe four men who have spent together every single day of the past how many years have nor a common topic to talk about nor the minimum interest in hearing each other’s voice.

I’m not utopic. I’ve never expected us to be a happy family with common dreams and expectations, talking and sharing our problems and joys like brothers at heart, willing to sacrifice our personal wishes for the well being of all. That kind of crazy talk you shoot losers for. I don’t even believe any of us still have any real dreams. Family? My family is a toothbrush, my hair band and a shining pistol.

“Which one you prefer?”

I look at the man sitting beside me in the kitsch red leather sofa (that would look better as decoration in a brothel than in an office) and blink once, losing my entire train of thought. “Sorry, didn’t get that.”

Farfarello shows me both half-shells he’s been carrying around since early morning. I know this game. One is clean, polished and scrapped, plain and smooth like it’s never been a coconut. The other was just washed and it’s otherwise the same dirty shell it’s always been. “Which one you prefer,” he repeats.

Questions like that make me think my life is a big joke only I can’t laugh about.

“I don’t know, whatever.”

He doesn’t look at me for a while, considering what’s in his hands. “You like the plain one.”

I do resist my first impulse to tell him where to shove his shells. “If you knew it, why asking?”

“Because I don’t like you when you pretend to enjoy all this.”

For the first time since we left the house in the morning, Nagi and Crawford look at me with the slightest hint interest. I’d be lying to say I’m not amused. They don’t like it when Farfarello has a point to make. They don’t like it that when Farfarello has a point to make, he always turns out to be right. They don’t like Farfarello too much.

I turn to him in the sofa, ignoring the other two. “Why do you think I like the plain one?”

He offers me both shells and leans back on the couch, “You tell me why.”

I watch what he’s done with the shells up to now, looking for the right answer to give him. If there even is a right answer here. “The half you cleaned up,” I explain, “looks more honest. I can see all these imperfections on it.” He nods and I proceed, “The other looks more like a real coconut, but just on the surface. There’s a lot more to it you can’t see because it’s under the dirt.”

Farfarello lays his head on the couch, staring at me without a word. His point is made, and I wish it was as simple as I want it to sound. Crawford moves to get my attention. I know he’s been following the conversation from the very beginning and he knows where this is heading. His thoughts run into a faster track as he tries to cut the talk right there, and I don’t try to hold my grin. Crawford knows my friend with the knives is not insane, and is maybe even saner than both of us and Nagi together. But the Farfarello he needs is not that intelligent one, it’s the maniac psycho obsessed with his quest against God. well, you don’t get one without the other, for better or worse. That’s what he is, sense and nonsense inside the same head. A lot like anyone else in the world.

“They’re both pretty,” I finish, giving the shells back and standing up to stretch my legs, cutting the conversation with a certain regret. There was more to it, and I wanted to hear.

“Yeah,” he wraps up too, saving the topic for later.

I wonder what would Crawford have to say about the coconuts. I wonder if he ever had time to think about coconuts in his whole life. Or to ask himself what has Farfarello bought citric fruits for and what does he intend to set on fire with so many candles. Or to ask himself why does Nagi look even younger in clothes made to older men, younger but never more innocent. Or to wonder why do I always manage to look outrageous even in full black and trying to look serious. Or to wonder why does he hide himself behind those glasses when he knows he’s perfectly able to see without them. Nah, I don’t think so. He never has time to worry with such mundane questions that disturb the mere mortals around him.

It’s sucks being Schuldig, but it must be real shit being Crawford.

{ . . . }

Getting home is both relief and frustration. You’re rid from the everyday mercenary occupations and free to be yourself again, but then you realise that off with the German suit, English tie and Italian shoes that cost you a small fortune, there’s very little left of anything you can call “yourself”. You are only what they expect out of you. So getting back home, changing designer’s clothes for old pajamas and looking for a book to read is pretty much all that’s left.

We could have televisions, but they’d never be turned on anyway. I don’t like them, Farfarello doesn’t understand them, Nagi just doesn’t care and Crawford has better to do with his time. He always has something better to do.

Farfarello eyes me from the kitchen’s door. I pretend not to see him, for no particular reason. I know he knows I’ve noticed him long ago. I keep reading, turn the page, drink my whatever juice, keep reading, ignore him a little more. He stares with nothing special in his eye, just staring. I realise I don’t mind being watched by him.

I don’t look up until I’ve finished the chapter a few minutes later, and then I smile at him. “Wanna go for a walk?”

He nods and turns, waiting for me to pass to follow me to my room. When we cross the living room, Nagi stops what he’s been doing, trying in some not so smooth way to avoid being caught. As if. Even if I hadn’t read it in his mind and his blushing face, I’ve seen him doing the trick with the rocks before. It’s nice, in some pathetic way.

Back in my closet, I change the comfortable pajama trousers for simple jogging outfit. Farfarello and I like to jog in the evening, but he likes to run everyday, while I don’t really feel like exercising when he doesn’t come tag along, and he’s not always allowed out. It’s funny when we jog together - there’s this morbid pleasure in scaring the shit out of people on the street. You don’t see such a bizarre thing as the two of us just running around everyday.

He’s more quiet than usual today. We still chat about unimportant stuff, just talking, asking, asnwering, but nothing too extended. We discuss some of his latest theories about how the world works and why. He trusts me.

He asks me to go to the next park with him and I have no objections. We run several laps around the park until we’re passing by the children’s area for the who knows what time, and I am forced to stop and hold Farfarello back. If I thought my day was kinda strange, I hadn’t seen anything yet: at least fifty metres ahead, two of the Weiss boys talk. Yohji, sitting on a swing like a child, talks to that annoying cutie thing they call Omi, who kneels on the sand before the other. Ah, Omi, my current favourite toy. I prob a little in his mind, and he’s the same angsty kid as yesterday, just a little angstier. Something about miserable Yohji and lost childhoods and sweet lord I’m so not interested.

We make a swell freak show, fours assassins walking in a children’s park at six in the evening.

I glance at Farfarello and see the instinct sparkling in his eye. I pull his hand and tell him no. Not now. He’s disappointed and thinks of protesting, but I cut him off and he takes me more seriously. I could play with the Omi kid and make him hurt his miserable friend even more, but I have other plans for him later.

I turn and pull Farfarello by the hand, starting our way back. “Wanna stay with me tonight?”

Sometimes Farfarello sleeps in my room, or I in his cell, when we manage to avoid Crawford. It’s nothing special, I think, I just happen to like his company. I don’t know if he also likes mine or if he just doesn’t care. I never know anything with him.

“Crawford won’t let you,” he says.

“Crawford can kiss my ass.”

{ . . . }

Crawford tells me only what he wants me to know about his conversations with Takatori. The rest, I have to steal from his mind, if I’m interested enough.

I listen patiently, paying attention because I know this is the only time he’ll tell me these things and give me these instructions. When you’re under Crawford’s wing, you learn pretty fast that he does not repeat instructions and does not give the same order twice. You and your buddies can play madman, zombie or devil-may-care all you want, but on the inside you pay attention and do what he tells you to, because on the inside you know you’re in his hands and he’s not in this ride for the thrill.

He looks at me with the same distant, superiour look he gives everyone. With this one look, I’m not his years long accomplice, I’m not his former Rozenkreuz partner in crime, I’m not an ally of our super secret plans, I’m not the friend who’s taken a bullet for him more than once. With this one look, I’m nothing - no one.

So maybe I do care. Maybe I feel irrelevant knowing that most of the time Crawford doesn’t give a shit about me when I don’t fit his plans. And maybe I get pissed to realise he pays more attention to those whatever morons who sell flowers in the off-clock hours of their nine-to-five assassin jobs than he pays to Nagi, Farfarello and I, who lick his feet everyday like obedient pets. But Aya and his own obedient pets are assholes who fights to exorcise their ghosts - I’m some sort of cheap slut who whores his soul for a buck to buy smokes. How can I compete?

And, in the end, you have to accept the hierarchy if you wanna have money to buy your cigarettes.

He’s finished speaking some time ago, and for some time I have been sitting here and staring at him, not sure of what I wanna do now. Maybe I’ll go to sleep, maybe I’ll go clubbing. Maybe I’ll go smoke in the balcony, maybe I’ll look for the book I dropped before. Or maybe I’ll just stay right here staring at him until he’s pissed off and tells me to leave. Sitting here with him feels okay when he’s not giving me The Look. Right now he isn’t, so I guess I’m back to being good ole Schuldig, the guy who’s gonna help him take over the world.

It feels good being that guy.

The smell of burning wax invades the room, spreading out all through the apartment.

“Farfarello’s sleeping in my room tonight,” I tell him. I’m not really asking.

“No, he is not.”

I’m surprised he’s used more than one word.

“Then I’m sleeping in his cell,” I insist, knowing I haven’t shown enough insubordination yet. He stares at me and I almost grin. Getting his attention, briefer it might be, is too easy, if you know better than risking your neck in the process.

“No, you are not.”

I crack the joints of my fingers, grin and make myself comfortable in his head. I’m not gonna do anything really, it’s just for the pleasure of looking up to face his gun well aimed at my forehead.

“You’re not that stupid,” he hisses.

“If I was, you wouldn’t have me working with you.”

He lowers the gun and stares at me for long seconds. Then he does the most unexpected thing: he chuckles.

He… chuckles.

“Go see what’s that smell,” he orders, waving in the general direction of the door. I go, hysterical laughter locked tight in the back of my throat.

I think deep down, but really really deep, I even like this son of a bitch.

{ . . . }

The smell comes from the kitchen. Fine - I’m hungry and intended to go there anyway. Of course, I don’t even need to ask to know that Farfarello is somehow responsible for the smell.

I go straight to my mini-refrigerator, looking for rests of anything. Oh yes, we have individual refrigerators. We live in a small palace of an apartment anyway, and the absurd lack of privacy in this hellish life is already big enough that if we had to share even the garbage we eat, we’d be one step away from driving each other nutshells.

There’re only leftovers and the usual crap in my refrigerator. The usual crap I buy myself, the leftovers I steal from the others. Rests from lunch, a snack, anything still edible lying around in the kitchen. They don’t mind. But I do find something there that’s not mine: the edible part of Farfarello’s coconut. I look back and show him the plate.

“Why is this in my stuff?”

He glances briefly and turns back to his work. “Eat it, I don’t need that.”

I try to eat that thing. It basically tastes like nothing, but it’s pretty hard to gnaw on. A little fun. I turn off the kitchen lights and sit before him, taking a look at his work. There’s at least a dozen candles burning inside a pan in the middle of the table, the only source of light in the room now. Beside the pan, dry limes around two glasses filled with their juices. Meanwhile, Farfarello squeezes the oranges in another glass. With his own dirty hands, of course.

“He didn’t let me,” I say.

“Told you he wouldn’t.”

I take the pan by the handle and turn it around left and right, making the light flicker around the room. It’s a pretty sight. “How did you know?”

“He’s mad at me today.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t find a reason to be mad at you,” he shrugs, indifferent.

The worst part is that it makes sense. I nod and chew on my snack, observing him. He gives me an annoyed look and I only grin in response.

“You said you preferred the plain shell because it’s honest.”

I didn’t even remember that anymore, but I guess that’s what I said, so I nod. “The stuff about real nature of things, right?”

“Yes,” he agrees. “But what if the real nature is exactly the opposite?”

“What do you mean?”

He takes the shells from the chair beside him and puts them before me, pointing to the he hasn’t cleaned. “You said it yourself, it looks more like a real coconut-”

“But only on the outside,” I complete. “Where are you trying to get?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the prettier one is honest, but it doesn’t look like what it’s supposed to be. The other one is full of imperfections, but it doesn’t deny that it’s just a shell in the end.”

I’m forced to laugh at his logics. “Like the patch hides part of your true face but makes it pretty clear that you’re not too good on the head? Good metaphor. Smooth too.”

He laughs too, a soft laughter not at all like his lunatic cackles when he’s done a good killing. I can taste his satisfaction with the twisted compliment, and realise that this is not where he was going. He hadn’t thought of that one.

“No, it’s not a metaphor. They’re just shells,” he replies, taking them back.

“Fine, then, I prefer the dirty one.”

He shakes his head. “Too late.”

I watch, intrigued, as he pours the orange juice into one of the lime juice glasses. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

He offers me what’s left of the juice mix. I drink and think to myself that few things taste as odd and as good as coconut, orange, lime and dirt from Farfarello’s fingers together. He takes the other glass, the one still filled just with the lime juice, gets his knife and reaches out for me.

“Give me your arm.”

“What for?”

He flashes the knife, frowning. “Guess.”

I sigh and roll the sleeve up, offering my left arm, decorated with a few scars. “Is that at least clean?”

He takes my arm in one hand and slowly passes the knife through the flick of the candles, burning the blade until it’s reddish. “It’s clean now.”

Farfarello likes to cut me. He prefers to cut himself, yes, but has his fun cutting me too sometimes. When I let him. He wins me over not by insistence - but saying crazy things like asking me to see the colour of my blood. Says it’s a beautiful colour. I like to hear that, of course. Especially when I’m making drama about being despised by Crawford and ignored by the whole world. Farfarello knows just how much I love to hear that my blood is beautiful, that it smells so sweet to him. That’s the closest to a compliment I’ll ever get from anyone.

Two slow, painful cuts, four fingers up the wrist. Close enough to bleed a lot, far enough to not kill me. It cuts, it burns, it hurts like a bitch. I find the distance strange. He usually cuts higher and faster, leaving just a thin trail of blood. I find it even stranger when he turns my wrist around and squeezes, making blood run down into the glass, turning the white juice into bright red.

“You’re so… weird,” I whisper breathlessly because it hurts, but it hurts good.

He smiles, silently watching the blood running down my arm in two trails that gather to fall into the glass. I watch his face, shadows and candlelight dancing upon us, his yellow eye sparkling just like when he kills someone with great gusto, that hint of careless satisfaction he gets from stealing lives with his own hands, the small leer playing upon his lips. For a long moment, Farfarello is the most sick and the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen.

Suddenly, he turns my wrist around again and ties a white kerchief around the cuts.

“Now leave.”

He can’t be serious. But he is. He looks at me and points to the door, saying “Leave,” again.

Then the little sense of orientation I still managed to have is lost and the big joke of life, that one only I couldn’t laugh about, starts to sound funny.

It’s simple: either you are a crazy fuck, or they make one out of you.

{ . . . }

Hours later, those damn cuts still hurt a bit. I glance at the watch and it’s forty past the hour when my cell phone rings. I stand up and walk away from the table deliberately slow, dreaming that maybe he’ll give up before I reach some silent corner of the bar where I can get the call. But, Crawford, give up? Dream on.

He takes no more than ten or fifteen words to tell me to get back soon or have I forgotten already what he told me to do next morning. No, boss, I haven’t.

I have to say bye bye to the lovely prey I’ve been flirting with for an hour or more with no real intention of eating. Sex is relative. As relative as justice depends on the point of view. Some of my pseudo-intelligent mottos that make me believe nothing is too good or too bad to be worth caring about. Caring demands sentimentalism; sentimentalism is exactly what makes the Weiss morons a bunch of losers. I’m not a loser, thus I don’t need to be sentimental. That’s what I call logic.

It’s nearly one in the morning when I get back to the apartment. I’ve already been kicked out by Crawford and Farfarello, I’ve gone out for a drink, and a flirt, but I’m still not even starting to feel sleepy. My last option is to shower, look for my discman and get some air in the varanda. Some days are just too long and too weird.

I see the kid outside, his back turned on me. I open the glass doors with enough noise to warn him I’m here but not enough to scare him and make him send me flying against the wall. Again, he tries to hide the rocks.

“No need, I’ve seen it already.”

He gives up, realising it’s me.

“You never get tired of playing with that?” I ask, coming around him.

He shakes his head and starts again. It’s not only rocks, I’ve seen him doing this with leaves, flower petals, rice grains, sand… anything light enough. “I’m not playing, I’m killing time.” I sit beside him and watch him levitate the rocks, making them dance in the air at his hands’ commands, drawing spiraling circles as he conducts the dance. Like the lights in the kitchen, it’s a pretty sight. I could spend hours just watching it in silence.

“Crawford knows you can do this?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. He’d probably have said that I’m wasting my energy, or something equally wise, I guess.”

I’m surprised. Didn’t exactly expect Nagi to talk about Crawford with that much sarcasm. “Did you two have a spat?”

Nagi eyes me curiously. “No, why?”

“Honestly, I thought he was your hero or something.”

He turns his gaze to the rocks. “Crawford is not my hero. I respect his authority and thank him for helping me, but I owe him no more than my services as a member of Schwarz.”

“You’re his protegeé,” I insist, just to see how far we can go.

“Never asked to be.”

Oh, and this is exactly why I try the hardest to stay out of their heads. One peek, one small glance, and I could start to understand what goes on inside their minds. But then, I’d never have great moments of enjoying the surprise element like this, and what’s the fun in that?

Member of Schwarz. That’s what we are, right? No friendship, none of that crap of sharing a lifetime with your pals, no selling flowers with your little homicide-in-the-name-of-justice mates. That’s for dorky kids. We’re not dorky kids. We’re “members of Schwarz“. So Nagi is even worse then Crawford. Should I fear him? Should I care? i don’t know. As it goes, I’ll probably not live enough to see any of this make any difference.

“Teach me how to do it,” I ask.

“You can’t do it.”

“Of course I can. I’m as weird as you, but much more handsome. That has to count for something, right?”

He looks at me from the corner of his eyes, deciding whether to indulge me or not.

“Okay,” he says, dropping the rocks and putting his hands in the air above them, “Put your hands like this.”

I mirror his movements and lock my gaze on the rocks, making my best David Copperfield impression, or something like that. I know I can spend the whole night staring at the rocks and they won’t move an inch, but since I’m making a fool a myself anyway, better do it in style.

“No, you have to focus.”

I can’t believe he actually thinks I want to do this. I grin at him, finding all this much more amusing than it should be, and kneel in front of the stones, moving my hands and making faces, whispering words of encouragement to the poor rocks.

“Come on little bastards, you can make it… come ooon….”

As right as that chuckling a couple of hours ago was the most unexpected reaction I ever got from Crawford, to laugh out loud was the most unexpected thing Nagi could have done. “You’re such a huge fool,” he teases between bursts of chuckles.

I sit straight and laugh with him, taking the rare chance. “Thank you, I try my best.”

We burst into laughter that sounds odd and new. How many times have we laughed together like this? Never? I never heard my laugh with his before, and the sound of it is good. Nagi sometimes becomes almost interesting. But too bad, he’s never asked me to cut my arm just to see the colour of my blood.

“You’ve been with Farfarello?” Nagi asks, pointing at the red-stained kerchief in my wrist.

“Yeah, but he kicked me out.”

“How are the candles so far?” he asks. I look at him, the question clear in my eyes. He smiles and shakes his head. “Farfarello asked me to find out how to make scented candles.”

A minute of silence as my brains gathers its pieces from the floor. Oh. So that’s what it was all about. Oh. Farfarello. Candles.

Wait, let me change my mind about the most bizarre piece of information today. Weiss boys having a moment in the swings, Crawford chuckling, Nagi laughing out loud, nothing could, would or will never ever be more bizarre than Farfarello making scented candles.

Nagi stares at me, barely containing what’s left of his chuckles, and I feel hysteria coming up my throat again. Laughter bursts out loud from both of us again and echoes down the empty street below.

The door is opened behind us. Crawford gives us a very puzzled look. Schuldig and Nagi laughing together mustn’t be a good sign. Nagi laughing is not a good sign in itself.

“Schuldig, lock the other,” he orders.

“But Crawford-”

“No, he’s not sleeping with you.”

I really really wanna tell him to go fuck himself, and if it costs me a lot not to. The only thing that keeps me from doing it is a cold hand that takes mine as Nagi kneels beside me.

“You wanna stay in my room?”

My eyes widen, but that’s nothing compared to the shock in Crawford’s face. I take the chance of a small victory.

“Can I stay with him, then?”

Crawford sighs and rolls his eyes. “That’s your problem.”

Before I can think of anything decent to say, he’s gone. I still give him a mental finger, and he shouts something down the corridor.

I stand up and turn to Nagi. “Why did you do this?”

“Don’t think that I care,” he says, standing up too, “You don’t have to come, I just didn’t wanna have to separate you two from a fight this early in the morning.”

He leaves, taking with him a trail of small rocks hovering in the air after his fingers, and leaving me with no answer, but with a little smug smile on my lips.

{ . . . }

There’s nothing special about him. He’s just a psychopath with Oedipal religious issues who pretends to be an uncontrollable irrational animal just for the pleasure of seeing Crawford flinch when he snarls, gnaws on a meaty bone or fools around like that. He’s just a one-eyed boy with scars all over his body, who looks even scarier than freaking Crawford, a boy who cuts my arms because he likes to see me bleeding. Because he likes the colour of my blood. I’m his favourite prey because he hurts me and I like it.

But he’s just a boy, and there’s nothing special about him.

I must admit that I’m more than a little pathetic when, taking Farfarello to his cell, I tell him I’m sleeping in Nagi’s room, as if I needed his permission to sleep wherever I want to. He doesn’t own me.

Why, he asks.

“Because. He invited me, I’m going.”

Farfarello pulls his arm from my hand and opens the door to his cell. It’s not a room, it’s a cell. No matter what Crawford or Nagi say, it’s a cell. “Go to your room,” he says in a voice more demanding than his usual flat tone.

I walk inside after him and a terribly strong and nauseating smell of blood invades my nose. “Who are you to give me orders?”

“Just go to your room.”

I roll my eyes, now sleepy enough to nearly lose my patience, but still awake enough to remind myself that none of this is really worth the trouble. “Who did you kill inside here? This place stinks.”

He takes off his shirt and throws the knives away. “I like the smell.”

“Of course you do,” I smile.

It’s only when I smell way under the blood a scent of burning wax that things finally start to make sense. I look around and see a lit candle in a corner of the darkened room. When I kneel before it, I can see he’s filled the dirty half of the coconut shell with bright red wax and made a nice gothic scented candle, like a good housewife with too much free time in her hands learning small handicrafts.

Dozens of minuscule spots glitter in the surface of the wax, exploding with the heat in tiny bubbles, making the familiar burning noise to accompany to burning smell. The smell of burning blood.

My blood.

“How come it didn’t fade to pink?” is the only thing that occurs me as I’m watching the candle, fascinated by his work.

From the other corner of the cell, almost in complete darkness, he walks to me. I let my eyes wander over the scars in his chest and arms, recognising the old scars and discovering new ones. “Secrets of the craft,” he teases, taking a lock of my hair and toying with it, twirling it around his fingers, “The bright spots are from the lime. Just for the shiny effect; limes leave no smell.”

“And Nagi taught you all this?”

“He just let me kidnap his computer for a while.”

I laugh, leaning my head into his hand and looking back at the candle, happy and proud, in a very twisted way, that all that beautiful red is not just blood, but my own blood, now infesting the walls, the furniture, his clothes, the whole room with my glorious acrid, rancid smell.

“What did you do with the other shell?”

“It’s around,” he replies, grinning.

I stand up, the pale fingers that played with my hair staying in the same place to run over my face, neck and chest as I slide upwards against them. I feel a sharp pain in my arm and find that he’s just opened a brand new cut in me with the small spear hidden in his wrist. I should know he wouldn’t put all the knives away.

“I didn’t let you do this.”

“I know,” he whispers, taking my arm.

He squeezes around the cut to make it bleed more, then dive his fingers in the little red pool. He steps forward, intimidating me with that cold yellow eye, just inches from my face. His long, cold fingers, painted red with my own blood, slide down my face drawing patterns and tentatively feeling me. I breath shallow, not sure if I should like all this or just fear that he’ll pierce through my eyes or snap my neck broken any second next. He caresses my lower lip then digs his sharp nails into it, forcing my mouth open. I taste my own blood in my tongue from his fingertips, and it earns me a tiny sigh from him.

He leans an inch away from my ear in and whispers “Good night, Schuldig,” against my earlobe, promptly moving away and walking back to the center of the room.

There’s not a lot left to do but to take a deep breath, regain my heartbeat and walk to the door.

“Schuldig,” he calls when I’m almost out. I look back and he nods at the straight-jacket, waiting for me to help him into his “pajamas”. I shrug and turn around, leaving.

“Good night, Farfarello.”

{ . . . }

The fact that Crawford gives me one of his evil glares when I pass by him on the way to my room could have some relevance at any other moment. But right now, whatever.

He covers the phone speaker with a hand and calls me. “What’s that on your face?”

“Take a wild guess,” I answer as I unlock my door, the coppery taste of blood still in my mouth.

The first thing I notice when I open the door is the smell, a soft scent of oranges coming from my desk. I close the door behind me and see the pale light dancing upon the walls. There it is, the other shell, clean and filled with yellowish wax, those hundreds of lime spots sparkling and exploding, perfuming the air around me.

I couldn’t if I tried, but I really don’t want to stop the silly smile spreading itself all across my blood-stained face. That bastard son of a bitch. Let me not even try to guess how the hell did he get in here with the door locked.

Beside the candle, a water glass and a red kerchief. Under it, a piece of paper with a note written in, guess, red.

- Good night, Schuldig. -

I wet the kerchief in the water and wipe my face clean as I walk back to the door. Putting my head out, I call for Nagi, who’s coming from the kitchen to his bedroom, barely awake. “I’m staying here, okay?”

“Uh-hu,” he mumbles as he passes, practically sleepwalking.

I lock my door again and throw myself onto bed, discarding the dirty kerchief. I tie my hair and turn to the desk, to watch the candle burning little by little inside its perfectly clean shell in the dark, all beauty and deceipt. I smile, breathing in the sweet scent and still tasting Farfarello’s fingers in my tongue.

I close my eyes and allow myself to hum an old song long forgotten in the roots of my memory, lyrics I’ve long forgotten, feeling again like the child I don’t remember being. I know I won’t get any sleep tonight, so I just sing and wait for the morning to come.

The days are very, very strange in this house.

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