one death: tragedy / a million a statistic / incommensurate

[roc_on]

Beila gives Dao space. He is extremely right that she's not the best person to be sad about his dead serial killer friend with and that seems to be his principal occupation, so - space.

Comments

[roc_on]

"And the easiest way to drop to the bottom of the line is to start killing people and I feel like you resent me for making that tradeoff, maybe because it involved uncertainties and I wasn't positive he was going to kill anybody else?"

[thinklikethis]

"I... don't, or I don't think I do," he says. "Or. No. I don't resent you. I don't, I just, I..."

He trails off.

"I wanted him to be okay."

[roc_on]

"I wanted him to be okay too. But I didn't have a safe way to do it."

[thinklikethis]

"I know that. I just."

He rubs his face with both hands.

"You're the first friend I ever had. And Jun is the second. And Sora is the first person I ever... felt like I understood? Like, I don't even know if understood is the right word. But. I don't have that many friends in the first place and I never met anyone else who was as much like me as he was and that's why I'm so wrecked over the whole thing. It's not... I don't think you should have done something different? I think I would've done something different but you're a different person from me."

[roc_on]

"Maybe I'm not getting the significance of the resemblance..."

[thinklikethis]

"Probably not. You don't have weird problems like my weird problems."

[roc_on]

"That's true."

[thinklikethis]

"Which is great, I wouldn't wish my weird problems on anybody. But it does kinda mean you don't really know what being me is... like."

[roc_on]

"Yeah. ...which kind of bothers me."

[thinklikethis]

"...What do you mean?"

[roc_on]

"I dunno, I just - don't really understand you, and maybe you don't really understand me, and I'm not sure we have a way to fix that?"

[thinklikethis]

"Do we need to? Like, is that a thing that needs to be fixed?"

[roc_on]

"It's not the end of the world if we don't or anything but it might keep bothering me."

[thinklikethis]

"Well... I don't know what to do about that," he says.

[roc_on]

"Me either."

[thinklikethis]

"I guess I don't know... why you want to know what being me is like? Being me kinda sucks."

[roc_on]

"I like understanding things. Even things that suck. And I'm your girlfriend, I was expecting at some point I'd - know more about you on a deeper level than I've managed? I don't know if that was a realistic expectation or if I'm just being impatient or what."

[thinklikethis]

"I mean... if there's something you want me to explain, I can try? I'm just not sure it's going to work. I feel like... there are a lot of experiences in my life that you don't share, and most of them are bad experiences, and I don't know how to explain what they're like to somebody who, like, doesn't really have a 'hate yourself' setting as far as I can tell."

[roc_on]

"I... don't have that lever, no..."

[thinklikethis]

"Yeah. So. I have one and it sucks and I don't really know how to explain how it works in a way that makes sense when you don't have one."

[roc_on]

"I don't like assuming that my boyfriend is fundamentally never going to make sense to me."

[thinklikethis]

"I... guess I can see how that wouldn't be the greatest thing, yeah..."

[roc_on]

"Do I make sense to you? Or seem like I might eventually...?"

[thinklikethis]

"I mean, mostly, yeah?"

[roc_on]

"Mm?"