.

The interview was going pretty well, Gackt mused, as he stared at the nervous-looking young man across from him.

“Gackt-san? What is your feeling on the matter?”

Gackt let his eyes wander to the ugly print wallpaper to one side of the man’s head.

“Nothing much,” he said, and then he got up and went out for a smoke, leaving the flabbergasted interviewer behind.

***

“Eccentric” was what people called him, or, if they were feeling less generous, just “weird”. Gackt knew what they said, and it never bothered him. Strange was relative, after all, and why should it matter what other people said? It was more important to believe in himself, that was what he always told people.

“You’re weird,” Hyde had said, the first or second or maybe the tenth time they’d hung out together.

“Am I?” Gackt had smiled, but his eyes had stayed focused on a point just slightly to the left of Hyde’s face.

“Yeah,” Hyde had said, wrinkling his nose and not-quite-smiling.

“People used to say I was crazy.” Gackt’s voice was a far-off murmur.

Hyde had taken a long drink of his beer, then set it decisively down on the tabletop and given Gackt a Look. “You’re not crazy. Just. You know, weird.”

Sharpen, focus. Suddenly Gackt’s eyes had moved to Hyde’s, too intense, like he was trying to stare the deep dark secrets out. Gackt couldn’t seem to find a happy medium between spacey and intent.

“I want to kiss you,” Gackt had said, unbelievably.

“Um,” Hyde had responded.

Gackt’s eyes had lowered to half-mast. “Should I?”

There had been a long pause, and then Hyde had laughed, voice too high. “Right, see, like I said. Weird.”

And watching Gackt fade, watching the sharpness drain out of his eyes—that had been the weirdest part of all.

Almost scary.

“I sometimes wonder about birds,” Gackt had said a moment later, and then launched into a long, drawn-out, and extremely absurd narrative which, by the end, had had nothing to do with birds at all. Hyde had laughed, which had made Gackt smile, almost shyly.

By the end of the night, everything was forgotten.

***

“What happened to your Playstation?” You asked, eyeing the mess of wires and metal bits scattered on the hardwood floor.

“I took it apart,” Gackt said.

“Again? Why?”

Gackt pursed his lips, expression thoughtful, as if he’d just been asked a difficult question.

“I wanted to see how many parts it actually needed to function.”

“So, how many?”

Gackt was staring at something far off that only he could see. “All of them,” he said, and something in his voice rang hollow and strange and not quite there.

You didn’t mind. He was used to it by now.

.

.