Again. There. Is. Yes
Hata was an old soul in a young body. He knew it from an early age, and there was no way to hide it anyway. Each year of his life counted as a year in human time measurement units. While other boys were measuring and competing in their strength, Hata's beard was growing and graying simultaneously. No one told him how to trim it, and in the world of the elderly souls, it didn't matter anyway. It was so long that it served him as a cozy scarf. Lu was happy about it; she was always worried Hata might get cold. He didn't like wearing many things, or maybe the crisp bite of the air brought him pleasure. Lu wasn't sure, but she was always concerned that Hata would get cold and his brain would be damaged. She also didn't know exactly how old Hata was, but that was unclear to him as well. At some point, Lu became obsessed with knowing, and then she became obsessed with knowing why she needed to know. She entered her loop but grew out of it and forgot that it was important.
Citizens of the place where Hata lived grew accustomed to the strange boy who wore his beard as a scarf, sported glasses, and always had a smile on his face. Sometimes they saw him freezing in front of the most unremarkable things and standing like that for hours, saying nothing at all. After a while, he would release a huge tear that ran down his cheek and watered the beard, awakening a dormant flower that was growing on it. Once the tear was free and the flower was in bloom, Hata started moving again, as if nothing had happened. While walking away he would say:
"Two, five, one. Again. There. Is. Yes"
There was something magical in numbers for Hata, a secret language to describe a universe. Perhaps he was secretly aiming to create a new one, different from what we have. If he could only understand how everything could be modeled, then nothing would be impossible. All the problems of the world would be solvable. Slowly but steadily, every corner of his room was mapped out, and he could separate reality from things and move them into the mathematical realm. Then he could begin building.
Hata's room was like a Temple of Measurement, where he created his own rituals and procedures. He made small marks on every object, diligently collecting information about their properties. Hata worked with precision and often forgot to sleep. If it weren't for the milkshakes that Lu sent him and his favorite berries, Hata would lose all his brain cells before losing his sanity.
Lu was preoccupied with his careless forgetting, but Hata was deliberately working on losing his sanity. Forgetting his sanity was Hata's dream; being sane was equivalent to conforming to boredom in his existential equation.
He spent a lot of time in the library and had invented his own reading method. Hata wasn't particularly interested in the content of the books. In fact, he thought that language was too rigid and constrained the imagination. In his opinion, it divided everything too much. Language was too orderly for Hata, who naturally liked to disorganize. Lu thought it was because Hata's hair was messy and he liked it that way. After thinking about it for a long time, he decided that there is beauty in things beyond structures, just like on his head. From that moment, instead of taming his hair, which he thought was perfect, he started to create what would be considered "chaos" by many, but Hata saw it as rescuing beauty.
He invented many ways to dismantle organized structures. Reading was an easy one to crack. Knowing the language seemed unnecessary to Hata.
Why would anyone agree to such a limiting rule?
On a sunny day, he occupied a local library, leaving only a tiny door to his dreams open so Lu could bring him milkshakes, and he invented a reading method. After a few circular dances between the moon and the sun and a couple of empty cups with soaked and chewed paper straws, Hata took his impermanent marker and wrote on the window glass facing the garden:
MP Measuring Present
Eye: surface, size, color, shape, form, white space, pressure points, vagueness, sharpness, distance, proximity, position in space.
Heart: concentration, precision, pointedness, isolation, cold-heartedness, unattachment, ruler.
RP Reconstructing Past
Skin: usage, exposure to light, presence of bodily fluids, torn pages, dust, position in time, action.
Heart: courage, fearlessness, boiling blood, seeing, regret, front, tyrant.
MF Modeling Future
Brain: imagination, intellect, why not?, yes and, always, oh, right!
Heart: cute, lightness, open, back, belly button, oracle.
TC Tracing Circles
Circle = home.
Line = no home.
Line is a dot moving through space.
Life is not about to start.
Dot.
He took a picture and sent it to Lu. She responded with an emoji of a drooling yellow face, which translated to something like:
"I have no idea what you are talking about, but I feel overwhelmingly excited and am taking my time to savor not knowing. Feed me more slowly."
Lu feared that Hata would become lonely when he would lose his sanity and made a promise that she would continue bringing milkshakes and berries even if he wouldn't recognize her anymore.
Her concern was constructive, as Hata was gradually moving towards madness as he was moving towards the truth of things.