I'm Bitter

“If my soul had a taste, and you put it in your mouth and savored it, at first it would be bitter, like mugwort or layer upon layer of mint, a faint chill and bitterness spreading across your tongue. You might briefly lose yourself in it, as if you were looking at a day that was neither good nor bad, with the sun setting and the sky still bright, a touch of orange-red just right to set it off. But then a storm would sweep in, fierce and unstoppable. The plain bitterness, or something even more bitter than bile, would strike your taste buds with force, like the fierce, hateful gaze of an enemy who bears a grudge against you, dark with hatred and heavy with bitterness. Or perhaps it would be like a young man’s hunched back in a room that had not seen the sun in ages, in Russian literature, muffled coughs sounding without end beneath his heavy coat. Yes, the smell of medicine has seeped into every corner of the room, leaving it steeped in weariness and hopelessness... The bitterness would become unbearable. In secret, you’d start to hope that once the dark, damp rainy season was over, a ray of sunlight might spill through the thick clouds. That warmth, inexpressible, like the loving hand of the Heavenly Father reaching toward you... Just a little would be enough. A single ray could soothe your taste buds, your taste buds dried up for so long... That yearning, that soul.

But there is none. My end, too, will be bitter.

I am bitter.”

I Am Bitter

* A product of too much stress, music, and a plot bunny. In short, it’s a conventional story about a female protagonist who becomes a writer in the Bungo Stray Dogs world.

* No romance plot. The female protagonist is like a stone in a latrine: stinky, hard, and cold.

Theme: Ethereal, yet rooted.