Work Text:
MONDAY, JUNE SIXTEENTH.
. . . REGARDING FLOWERS.
I try not to think about flowers. That may sound ridiculous to the perspective of an outsider, but I assure you, I have my reasonings.
The first is simply that they are so complex– When I think about flowers, I start to think in terms of flowers. That lady is a sunflower. That lad is a tulip. Today is an azalea sort of day.
Dazai is a hydrangea.
Maybe that is a strange flower to assign him. Most would give him something more intimidating, like a black dahlia, or a black calla lily, but to me, he is a hydrangea. He is not the first hydrangea I have known. I hope he will not be the last.
He blooms in the morning, only rarely with the sun. He loves sunny mornings and shady afternoons. His eyes are bright and blossom with every touch, and you need not do much to keep him going. He does not need the tender care an orchid does, but oh, do I wish I could give it to him.
He needs space to grow, to spread, to sprout.
Hydrangeas have a dual meaning– They represent deep emotion, and simultaneously mean fickleness. How strange it must be to be volatile and heartfelt at the same time. I find it perfectly represents the walking contradiction that is Osamu Dazai. Hydrangeas are graceful, and though Dazai is a complete and utter degenerate, he has an undeniable grace to him. It’s hidden in the way his fabricated smile slides across his face like butter off toast, hidden in the way his hands untie any knot he is presented with, hidden in the way he dances with himself when he pretends he doesn’t know I’m watching.
Sasaki was a hydrangea too. She had a sort of melancholy to her, always thanking me for things she shouldn’t be thanking someone for, quiet and pleasant and smooth. She held a deep wound so buried inside of her that only in being shot was she finally laid bare to the world, a hydrangea of its own blossoming from her chest. She was a contradiction too, one that I couldn’t see until it was too late. She moved as if she were a sheet in the wind, grace incarnate. Even when looking down the barrel of her gun, even when she had shot a boy no older than fourteen, I could not deny her beauty. It was inscrutable, as set in stone as the ocean blue. Even as she died she was beautiful.
The second reason I try not to think about flowers is that I only buy them for the dead.
That might sound morbid, and I suppose it is, in a way, but I have no flowers to offer the living. Who would I even give it to? Red roses for my neighbors? Daffodils for my mailman? All I have to offer is white chrysanthemums for those who I was not able to save, because I have nothing left to give them. I leave them on their gravestones on rainy days, and I think of what they could’ve been. I wonder if there was another way. I torment myself with it, torment myself with these flowers. It is as if in preening the roses I am pricking myself on thorns. Even still, the dead are not even here to appreciate the petals, as they wilt and eventually fade just as they did. Even a master gardener cannot keep beautiful flowers alive forever, no matter how hard he tries. Is the world a garden full of flowers doomed to wilt?
I wish to be the water for the world to grow. Maybe I cannot save every flower, but I will water the hydrangea that is my work partner and hope that he will be okay. It is a graceful and beautiful deceit that he uses to spin walls of silk I have trouble tearing through, but I will try all the same.
That is why I try not to think about flowers. There’s less important reasons– I have a mild pollen allergy and the thought of them gives me the ghost of an itchy nose. There was also the time I insisted I knew flower language in front of my devil-hydrangea of a coworker and he’ll never let me live it down, and I do give daffodils to my mailman and roses to my neighbors and god , I need to stop giving flowers when they make my eyes red and my nose itchy. But I cannot. I buy another flower, set it on another grave, and pray that the number never grows once more.
— KUNIKIDA DOPPO.