Chapter 60 Arrogance
As a result, the next day, the leader Zai started to have a fever again.
Mikazuki Munechika began to study the way to go out and try to find a way out. Yakiri Hasebe took charge of the restoration of Honmaru and began to arrange shifts for the three-blade and one-fox to fight with swords. With someone in charge of planning, the entire Honmaru became well organized.
Only Kitsunesuke didn't look very happy.
As an auxiliary fox assigned by the Time Government, Kitsunesuke has a database that directly leads to the Time Government. On weekdays, Kitsunesuke is responsible for assisting the Shinsengumi and the Sword Men in their tasks, searching for information and organizing official duties. Although it can't be said to be a life of luxury, it is also a civil service job. Unfortunately, when it arrived at Honmaru, Kitsunesuke turned into a working fox on the spot, and no blade thought that it should be idle.
Qian Jianmu decided not to go out and concentrate on taking care of the leader. The leader did not resist, as if he had no strength to resist. He opened his eyelids, glanced at him lazily, and turned over, like a lazy big cat facing a human he hated.
Mikazuki Munechika came over to report the current distribution within the Honmaru. When he heard that Sengenmaku wanted paper and pen, he thought for a moment, brought out a stack of paper and pen of excellent quality, and let him use it with a smile.
The paper had beautiful patterns on it, the writing brush was a Chinese brush, and the ink was black with a faint silver glow. This is definitely not a normal pen and paper. When Qian Jianmu asked this, Sanrizuki gently covered her face.
"The Time Government sent us a lot of these things before. They seem to be called 'training tools'. Anyway, they are useless to us. You can use them first. There are still a lot left in the warehouse."
Speaking of training tools, Qian Jianmu suddenly remembered. When sword men are training, the Shinsengumi must prepare a set of equipment for them. In fact, this is a manifestation of the Shinsengumi's spiritual power, which can help swords integrate into history. Among them, paper and pen are relatively expensive, and are purely the work of the Time Government. This kind of paper and pen has a special material that can help the sword man report safety to the returning Shinsengumi, and has the power to travel through time without damage.
The Sword Man has three chances to mail a letter, so the amount of paper is not much, probably less than ten sheets per letter, which is more than enough if divided equally. But Qian Jianmu looked at the thick stack in his hand, which had about a dozen copies and felt heavy, and felt a little helpless. But since there were ready-made ones, he didn't want to make them himself, so he simply put them on the table.
He looked out the window, thought for a moment, and picked up the pen for the first time in a long time.
【
The times are like a storm, and disasters are like lightning. Sitting among the ruins, I began to recall my wonderful and empty life, and those unremarkable plots.
Theism has been around for more than fifty years. To fill the dark void left by the annihilation of love, gigantic idols were created, which gave rise to tens of millions of fanatics.
The rebels and the government are natural enemies, and "justice" has become an insignificant string of words in the division of power after years of struggle. Fortunately, the government killed the leader of the largest rebel group many years ago and gained a breath of peace. By the way, I was the commander in that war.
The world was torn into pieces. The rebels and the government were fighting a life-and-death war. Fanatics launched terrorist attacks regardless of place and time, so the lives of civilians were trampled to pieces. Amid the artillery fire, there was a blood-red sky and devastation all over the ground.
…
In the third year of my wandering after leaving the government, I met a strange person.
A middle-aged man living alone, with a crippled leg and emaciated to the point of being just a bag of bones, actually had the courage and strength to carry a wanted criminal who had fainted on the roadside back home. I still don't know why he did this, he never said, but I think it was just an artist's whim.
He was a writer, but he never published a single word in his life.
I say about the same as me because I have done so many things in my life and yet am nothing.
After hearing my comments, he said nothing, just took a puff of his cigarette. The low-quality tobacco formed white smoke clouds that made people dizzy.
After a long time, he asked me to summarize my life.
I never thought about summing up, I always just live day by day. There have never been any problems in my life. Victory and honor have always been with me. Money and power are just toys at hand. My fellow men kneel at my feet, but I have never thought of helping them up. I was born to be admired, I was born to be superior.
But because of this, I never found life interesting. When all difficulties are eliminated, life will eventually be swallowed up by long boredom. In the long connection between life and death, every minute and every second you can feel the strange dull pain caused by being worn out by the ordinary.
Since my self is so boring, I might as well think about my achievements, so I thought about my chaotic and extreme past, and the disasters I had caused.
Then I suddenly realized it, but I had no regrets.
I said, "I know, I am the murderer."
I said, "I discovered that my life is a bloody drama, and the world revolves around me, performing joys and sorrows. But I am the protagonist, so I can always get away with it unscathed."
Then he touched my forehead with the tip of his pen from a distance and said:
"arrogant."
Yes, yes, what kind of egomaniac would blame himself for the direction of the world?
I accepted the compliment without shame, so he looked at me, sighed, and turned away.
I have never seen a writer. In this era, everyone is born with an intelligent brain. All the big and small events in life are recorded in data. Creation is a worthless thing. As long as you input your needs, the machine will write a story with flesh and blood. Even diaries can be written by data. Our lives are no better than a string of blue coded numbers.
In this invisible cage, a disabled old writer lives in a poor room. He uses expensive banknotes bought on the black market to string together distorted symbols. How magical! What kind of story does he want to create?
Unfortunately, as he said in his self-introduction, he never wrote a complete work.
"What do you want to write? An attack on life? A complaint about society? A lament about being mediocre? Or just some really awful, boring joke?"
While eating the terrible nutritional paste, I asked my kind landlord:
"I really don't understand, what else do you want to write? What else can you write?"
“Writing is something that cannot be defined,” he said.
"But you've accomplished nothing," I accused.
"You too." He countered calmly.
So I held my breath and didn't want to say a word. The sticky nutrient paste dissolved between my lips and teeth, sticking my mouth together like glue.
I think I have killed more people than he has written, and the life I have witnessed is more luxurious than he can imagine. But thinking about it this way, I can also feel my own impotent rage and unreasonableness. The number of people killed and the number of words written cannot be generalized. No matter how much prosperity you have seen, it is nothing but a mirage and meaningless in the present chaos and desolation. He and I seemed to be standing on opposite sides of the world. Just as I said I had seen the beauty of the stars, he was only focused on finding the colorful sand on the ground.
But I have never seen five-colored sand.
I have everything that is expensive and cheap, I have everything that has a price and is priceless. But I don't have five-colored sand.
Writing is probably a better thing than killing. An army, a city, a country, no matter what is destroyed, it cannot compare to a small period flowing from the tip of the pen. When a line of ink-colored words appears, my life is completely lost.
It is better to write one word than to kill tens of millions of people.
I can't write that word.
As a result, past victories were reduced to ashes, and numerous honors turned into wanted warrants. My life has returned to zero, and my life is like dust that is easily blown away by the wind.
I think, that's it.
It turns out that my life is meaningless.
…
——Excerpt from "Meaningless Literature" Part 1
】
The chief woke up at noon, crawled over to watch him write, his iris-colored eyes fell on the paper, and it was unclear whether he could see into it or not.
I ignored him, scribbled half a page, and put it on the corner of the table. When I looked up again, he was gone.
Hearing the noise downstairs, I looked down and saw that the leader had found a piece of bandage from somewhere, wrapped it around a tree, and was practicing hanging himself.
It's really strange. Leader Zai seldom commits suicide. Rather than jumping into the water or hanging himself, he prefers to be pointed at by the enemy with a gun, and prefers a heroic death that is tense and mechanical. He is always ready to face the malice of the world, as if he regarded the malice as poison and swallowed it with joy.
He lay by the window and watched for a while, and sure enough, before he died, the bandage broke by itself, and the young man fell to the ground. He looked up at him, without saying anything, but he always felt very resentful.
Life and death are the eternal propositions that surround Dazai Osamu. No matter how he tries to commit suicide, he will be saved by various coincidences. It is hard to say whether it is a curse or something else, but from the outside, it is quite a kind of black humor that makes people laugh and cry.
So he went downstairs to pick the person up, comforted the swordsmen who had witnessed the strange human incident, tested the leader Zai's temperature, and tucked him into the quilt.
"With your health problem, you really need to cover the national flag." Qianjianmu complained.
"I saw it. You looked very excited when you committed suicide." The leader Zai complained.
"Really? Hahaha." Qian Jianmu's eyes wandered.
Mainly because I watch it a lot, and I think it’s pretty good as a show.
"You're such a bastard, never mind... I told you, I was sick when I came here." The leader had no strength to explain lazily, "I passed through the cracks in time by sleeping, but my body is still in that world. Combined with the information that I can't be seen or touched, my form here should be a non-□□ form similar to the 'Tsukumogami'. The two worlds are projected and connected to each other. Maybe that body has started to have a high fever. It will be fine in a day or two."
To be precise, the bug madman Dazai Osamu jumped into the cracks of time, abandoned his □□, fell into the Honmaru, and then stopped being a human being.
"...Wow, an anti-spiritual power weapon." Chigenmaku made a big mistake and missed the point.
"…It's the spiritual energy insulator Tsukusangami!" The leader protested loudly.
"Your fever is so high, do you want to go back for treatment?" Qian Jianmu asked in a low voice.
"……don't want."
There was a rare youthfulness on the leader's face. He pulled the quilt up to cover half of his face.
“…I don’t want to go back to work.”
I want to watch the birth of a new world at all times, I want to see the life of Oda Sakunosuke, I want to see what this person will do, and I want to touch his life with my own identity.
Wait till it's all over...wait till it's all over...
The fulfillment of his life is just around the corner.
**
That night, the leader Zai developed a high fever.
Feeling his body temperature slowly rising, Qian Jianmu sat up, stared at the person whose face was flushed but who whispered that he was cold, and sighed softly.
...Every cause has its effect, and his retribution is Dazai Osamu.
All Dazai Osamu.
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