Wholesomeness of Butthole Sunning

　Waking up on a lukewarm morning, Tsuji Mizuno noticed, as usual, that his lover, Anzai Hatsukawa, was not beside him. Tsuji caressed disquieting ripples on the sheets, where moldy shadows mingled with the light that floated on the skin of a baby. There was the warmth of raw flesh, fatally different from the lukewarmness of the morning, which he stroked again and again, like a senile Austrian soldier stroking his beloved little gun. He knew where Anzai was. As Tsuji tried to stand up, he felt a dull, vicious pain in his lower back, like frigidity itself that burned cells and flesh down with a pyre born from a rainbow-colored block of ice. Tsuji thought that back pain was not for him, a 28-year-old relatively young male, but for his older brother, who would have been 40 years old if alive, or his incompetent boss at the office, but Tsuji's body ruthlessly told him that he was wrong. I became old, Tsuji thought, deeply, deeply old.
　He left the bedroom and walked quietly down the corridor. As if to hug the wood with the soles of his feet, Tsuji tried to walk sublimely, more bovinely than creeping mud so as not to make creaking echoes from the floor, so, when he reached the door to the living room, it seemed as if morning had already turned to noon. There was Anzai, doing yoga, naked. This was his obsessive morning routine that had started a little later than the spread of the Corona disaster. Anzai's body was beautiful, and Tsuji would like to describe its beauty in terms of, rather than the humorous, explosive rhetoric of bodybuilders, the incomprehensible rhetoric of philosophers in books, especially the German philosophers who played with rhetoric like a scapula so acute that it could sever human's carotid artery if pulled out. However, whenever he thought of it, he felt ashamed of his own ignorance, as he can only come up with commonplace words.
　However, his ecstasy over Anzai's body soon turned to nausea. He crawled on all fours on the floor, slowly thrusting his hips toward the window, while the curtains were completely open, and a dizzying avalanche of dawn sunshine was pouring into the room, towards which Anzai thrust his body, his waist, and his butt. Tsuji wished that he could have stopped this depiction here, but couldn't. Anzai was definitely, conspicuously exposing his own butthole to the dawn.
　"I heard that butthole sunning is popular in America, sounds ridiculous right?.
　Tsuji said to his boyfriend as he read a news article by chance. Pointing your anus at the sun for 30 seconds is as healthy as exposing your whole body to light all day, and the unusual movement of exposing your anus to the sun stimulates a part of the brain which released dopamine, causing people to experience feelings of pleasure and euphoria. Tsuji talked about this in the manner of a third-rate comedian on TV.
　"Oh yeah, hahaha."
　Anzai laughed frivolously. Later that, Tsuji witnessed him practicing butthole sunning in the morning, which surprised him to the bone abysmally. At first, Tsuji was able to suppress vomiting astonishment and even feel a sense of affection for Anzai, but the thoroughness of his posture when he turned his asshole toward the dawn, and the persistence with which he maintained that burdensome posture went beyond ridiculousness, which even made him shudder. And Anzai continued this sunning even this moring endlessly. Tsuji could only watch from the doorway. To him clearly, Anzai had been brainwashed by the absurd conspiracy theory of butthole sunning born from the absurdity of the Corona disaster possible to go on forever.h

　In the afternoon, Tsuji went to the psychosomatic clinic. He shuddered at Anzai's act, but could not laugh at its ridiculous insanity, because he understood the fearful irrationality of suffering from mental illness. He sat on the sofa, waiting for his name, Tsuji Mizuno, to be called. The walls were covered in aseptic whiteness by which the artificial plants give off an inorganic glamour, and, although they were supposed to be a design to calm the visitor's mind, there was a sense that the myriad folds of the mind were forced to be open, creating room for disquiet slipping in its minuscule gaps. Tsuji looked at his smartphone, letting a lot of trivial news flow into his brain.
　A young woman came to the clinic. She seemed to be a university student and talked to a receptionist while shaking her fragile body which might break at any moment. Her frail voice emerged, then being annihilated immediately by silence. She rummaged in her purse, but couldn't seem to find anything. It could be a clinic card or a health insurance card, Tsuji thought, and after he watched her growing impatience for a while, he was sure that it was an insurance card. The woman suddenly threw her bag on the floor, starting to rifle through it at a furious pace, while miserably erupted, like semen ejected from a glans, a large number of books scraps of paper, making Tsuji uncomfortable. But seemingly there was no insurance card. As if at a loss, she fell to her knees and began to cry, which surprised Tsuji.
　"Where is my card, I thought I put it in my wallet or something, but I'm sure it's there, why isn't it there, why, why, how can I drop my card, you idiot, why am I always like this, shit, I'm always like this, I'm always"
　Who are you making excuses for, bitch? Seriously, fucked-up.
　Because of her ranting incoherently, Tsuji finally felt the urge for violence clenching his fists, while the sensation of his freshly cut nails digging into the skin inflamed that urge. She was comforted by the receptionist, who advised her that she should report the loss of her insurance card and come back after it would be found. As the receptionist pat her back and calmed her down, the woman began to nod her head in response to her words. Suddenly, Tsuji could clearly see the mucus trailing down from her face to the floor. The overwhelming pity of the snot dripping down her face caused his urge for violence to reverse drastically.
　Hey, you should see her as a patient. Don't you know that it takes a lot of courage to come to a psychotherapist? What if she can't find the courage to come back and it leads her to suicide?
　Of course, he didn't dare to say this.
　His name Mizuno Tsuji called, he walked into the consultation room. He bowed politely to the doctor, Mutsumi Minakami, and sat down in the chair. Tsuji didn't trust this small, fat middle-aged woman with dull metal-framed glasses. Although he had been coming here for some time now, Mutsumi had not confirmed the name of Tsuji's disease and had been treating him with medication while keeping the possibility vague. He wanted her to diagnose him with an anxiety disorder or bipolar disorder right now. If she continued this kind of half-baked treatment, he couldn't trust her. On this day, as usual, he was forced to talk about the recent situation and how his symptoms were progressing, but surely he didn't talk about his boyfriend's butthole sunning. Mutsumi added a few random comments and suggestions to his words, which sent a zillion uncomfortable needles to his brain. Tsuji turned over, looking at his right hand. He noticed a skin peeling appearing on the left side of his index finger, and, when he touched it, a small but intense pain exploded. He on purpose continued to play with it, spinning meaningless words. The pain soothed him. But just as he was hit by an exceptionally vivid pain, a drop of blood appeared. I can't be saved, he thought.
　"No, come on, can't you just get it straight?"
　"......What is it?"
"Of course, the name of my disease. You're obviously avoiding diagnosing my disease. Invalid as fuck. I don't know what I'm doing because the only guideline you have for this treatment is the blurred concept of "mental illness". You're a psychiatrist, but you don't know what my disease is? If this situation keeps up, I'd like to stop coming"
　Tsuji was surprised at himself for unintentionally spewing out his indignation like vomit, but the words didn't stop, and he licked the blood.
　"I don't know what is happening," he said. "Can you just declare the name of my disease?"
　Although bewilderment on the face, she also showed a sense of composure. The fact that she was used to dealing with agitated patients like current Tsuji made him even more irritated.
　"I understand. Here's what I think. First of all, I suspect that you have clinical depression. And secondly, I think that you have Autism Spectrum Disorder which causes depression.
　The blood stopped.

　Walking through the city after the diagnosis, Tsuji kept feeling the worst kind of discomfort as if someone smeared diarrhea on his face.
　What the hell is Autism Spectrum Disorder, and what the hell is the difference between it and Autism?
　When he thought of the word "autism" in the head, he saw the faces of children whose facial parts are aberrantly centered, like a swarm of ladybugs hibernating under a damp rock. The face of a "gaiji" (ガイジ, a highly pejorative word for "disabled child"), Tsuji thought.
　No, that's Down syndrome, not autism. But I don't know what the difference is between Autism and Down syndrome. Is it the difference between having a face like that and not?
　He wrapped his face and a mask with both hands.
　But what's crystal-clear is that I'm also a natural-born mental cripple.
　He walked into a 7-Eleven on the street and looked for an ice cream named MOW PRIME Butter Cookies & Cream Cheese, which he had known about on Twitter and had been attracted by its luxurious figure and the description like
"This ice cream is made from carefully selected, rich-flavor cream cheese made in Hokkaido, and cookies with a subtle saltiness and fragrant butter." Tsuji thought he'll buy one for Anzai. But when he came to the ice cream booth, he saw a white woman with light blue hair carrying two MOW PRIMEs to the cash register, and, looking inside the booth, he noticed there were no more MOW PRIMEs. Tsuji was furious, wondering if there were not from the first place, but he became sure immediately that the ice creams that "hakujin manko" (白人マンコ, "white cunt") was holding were indeed MOW PRIMEs. Instead, he bought two bags of potato chips with the flavor of Korean seaweed which is 7-Eleven's limited edition. The foreign female clerk - this time, he thought she's Indian because of her dark brown skin - gave him the wrong change which made Tsuji destroy her brain with a hammer, along with the white woman. The clerk dropped a 32 yen change from her hand.
　At home, Anzai was cooking for Tsuji, who was repeatedly amazed by the sensuality of Anzai's unrealistically strong body, muscles, and the way he carefully performed daily tasks while his strongness remaining deeply rooted in the life. Tsuji was tempted to embrace him from behind, but suppressed this desire, as it would interfere with the cooking. Today Anzai made Vietnamese food which he had been obsessed with lately. Relying on information he had found on the Internet, they had been to a small Vietnamese restaurant in Asakusa, and when he tasted the dish, Anzai's expression was like that of an innocent girl who had fallen in love. Even when he had lovingly stroked Tsuji's neck, Anzai did not have such a sweet expression on the face. Since then, he had been using the time to try out various Vietnamese dishes and serve them to Tsuji. Today's dish was a small yet filling fried spring roll, a sweet and sour pickled papaya, and com hen, rice with a soup full of asari and shijimi, two types of clam. All of these dishes were made with a lot of time and repetitive trial and error, which made them so mellow, Tsuji's heart became richly warm.
　"It's delicious, it's delicious."
　When Tsuji said this, Anzai smiled softly.
　"Hey, about the hospital..."
　Tsuji's mood was instantly, nauseatingly clouded.
　"I don't want to talk much about what happened at the hospital or my symptoms yet. I don't want to tell my parents or even my boyfriend, you, about these things. It takes a lot of courage to even go to a psychosomatic clinic, and it's also hard to talk to someone close to me about what I said there."
　"I know, I know, but I want you to understand that I've heard it so many times that I feel like I need to hear about your real situation. If you share your conversation with the doctor and your symptoms, I'll know how to support you and be there for you. I want to support you, I really do."
　His kindness bothered Tsuji, who quickly ate the dinner with disgust and fled to the bathroom, never revealing his diagnosis as ASD. Staring into the mirror, he thought.
　This is the face of "gaiji", haha.
　This self-deprecating thought accelerated, especially when he saw the dark mole on the side of his nose. This moron-like appearance made his hatred for life purer, and now that he knew he was born with a mental disorder, he remembered strongly about the face of a boy named Nozomi Wakui. His face had been unusually long like an idiotic donkey. Moreover, his turned-up chin thrusting ahead had been like a deep-sea fish dominated by gluttony. A retarded donkey walking on two legs in the deep sea, that was an elementary school student Nozomi Wakui. He had had some kind of mental disability, obvious to his classmates because of his gestures and infantile words, and so they had naturally targeted him for a bully. But no matter how much ridiculed and abused, Nozomi had taken it all with a big smile on the face and had seemed not to understand the meaning of their vituperation in the first place. And then he had been mocked even more. When Nozomi had been being called a "gaiji", Tsuji had been also shouting "gaiji" in the crowd. In retrospect, it seemed that that was similar to an office worker going to a batting cage and swinging a bat. It was a casual stress reliever for elementary school kids.
"Hey, gaiji"
　Tsuji said to his reflection in the mirror, shuddered slightly at the thought that he might have been the victim of that abuse, but he couldn't stop himself from grinning.
"Gaiji, hey gaiji, gaiji!"
　He didn't speak to Anzai after dinner. Even when they slept together in the bedroom, the two of them were surrounded by disturbing tranquility, which was a soundless hostility at least for Tsuji.
"I'd be happy if you shared it with me"
　Anzai touched that hostility inadvertently.
"I told you many times that I'm not ready yet, didn't you hear me?"
　In a fit of rage, he slapped Anzai on the left cheek, deeply regretted the moment the echo of thin ice exploding shook the eardrums. Anzai had a sad expression on his face, which made Tsuji give him another slap on the left cheek with disgust. Anzai did not resist, and his attitude urged Tsuji's brain to boil. Just hit me with your strong fist and destroy my cheekbone. Tsuji hoped so, hoped that Anzai's fist would sink into his cheek. The agglomerate of tense, hardened skin, bone, muscle, and flesh would crash into his cheek like a meteorite, a terrible impact and intense pain would explode, ripples would run across his face, and a crack like spider webs would appear on the cheekbones. But then the fist would dig in more deeply, crushing flesh and bone, and the cheekbone would shatter whose fragments would penetrate the cheek from within. But his wish was not granted, and Tsuji's thin hand continued to strike Anzai's cheek.

　He dreamed. Tsuji and Anzai were on a train from Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, to Enschede, enjoying the warmth and intimacy of their own private space, when they saw the infinitely flat and magnificent land of the Netherlands from the window.
　"Van Gogh must have painted sunflowers and other weird self-portraits while experiencing nature like this."
　Tsuji said with admiration.
　"No, he painted those famous paintings when he was in France, not in the Netherlands."
　Anzai laughed. Tsuji laughed too.
　At some point, they began to see a few cows, but at an accelerating rate, the number of them increased as a herd. They weren't moving, they were all grazing peacefully. Odd to Tsuji, however, was that they were all looking in the same direction. Their backs were all turned to the glowing orange of twilight. Tsuji's mind boggled, as the tremendous herd of cows had their asses turned to the dusk. Anxiously, he took a gaze off the scenery outside and looked at Anzai's profile which was trembling slightly, having a hunch that this trembling came from ecstasy. There was a mole on the side of his nose. It shouldn't be there, it should be on Tsuji's face. Tsuji touched his own face without thinking, and sure enough, there was a mole. And there was also a mole on Anzai's face. He couldn't take the eyes off Anzai's mole as a sticky spit welled up in the mouth. It was getting bigger and bigger, a blackness darker than the darkness that was crawling faster and faster, getting bigger and bigger, bigger, getting bigger.