Third [Jade Sunrise]

When Orpheus dragged himself back out of hell after watching his wife burn over his shoulder, was he filled with sorrow, pain, or something else?
A conflation of regret, hatred, directed inwards, and bursting outwards.
Something similar was bubbling in those jade eyes, bursting at the centre of his irises that were hazy and unstable, like the noise on a TV with no service.
But, as immediate as that dam broke and his emotions flooded out into the faded marble beams of light, they were swallowed up, subsided, like that haze of white had congealed into a new dam,
"Oh. I'm so glad!" came joyfully from his wet lips, which glittered under the light, and his soft words ironically jolted me with surprise.
I couldn't tell if the woman next to me had that same spark of anxiety.
"For a while, I thought I was the only one."
I suppose he was just like me, for all his scary, overbearing figure and overwhelming emotion, he had probably found himself in a similar situation.
It only clouded things even further.
Two of us had woken, seemingly with no memories, and were left to our devices in this smoky white world.
Although, it seemed like he had dragged something from his past life with him into the new world.
Pastel cream sheets were strewn all the way from the four-poster bed out into the hallway, like they had caught in his waves of heavy black hair that were cleaning the dust form the dark hardwood floorboards.
"Ah, I forgot to tie it up" the man mouthed almost silently, his jade whirls searching for something on the thin, neatly carved bedside table, eventually picking up a set of small turquoise rings that he threaded his extensive locks through.
While we entered hesitantly, it seemed he had cooled off a little, in fact, almost instantly. I could almost see the smoke drifting and sizzling from his forehead like a hot pan drenched under cool water. Once he had dragged up all those strands of hair, he seemed more royal than dishevelled, as the various tails and waves of hair seemed like a biological crown on his perfect features.
"You two also woke up here, yeah?"
"No, only I did. I met her soon after, but it seems like she didn't go through the same experience at us" I responded, not exactly in a whisper, but more out of concern that I was explaining the woman's life for her, and it felt kind of strange.
But it didn't seem like she wanted to chime in, so I was left as the interpreter of this now mute woman, who seemed to have a predisposition for staring out of these impressive, latticed European windows that seemed to line the entire building.
Just how big was this place, anyway?
It seemed like a castle, but also felt too tight, and more like one long corridor, or a set of rooms built into a long, sprawling wall.
"So it's the two of us. You don't have any memories, do you?"
"No, none. Sometimes emotions and sentiment bubble up, and I know what a TV is, but otherwise, no."
"We really are in the same boat then" he answered without hesitation, despite his emotional outburst earlier. Maybe it's like waking out of a nightmare, when the fear is still coursing through your bloodstream, and you can't help but throw yourself up like Dracula from his coffin.
"So tell me, what's with the smoke outside? Are we in heaven? I can't say I would believe it."
"Yeah, me neither" I let out a little stiffly. It was strange talking so openly with a stranger who looked so unlike anything I was used to, I guess.
More than that, it was an intrinsic tendency to be weary of the attractive, sociable types that seemed to be stubbornly ingrained in me, even in this world.
Wait, this world? 
For all that I've been spewing on about, was there every anything that cemented that idea in my mind?
Had I glimpsed something in the drowsiness of waking up, and like my eyes fixing on this woman who would always seem mother-like to me, had I fixated unconsciously on something that immediately pushed into my mind 'ah, this is a different world from where I came from'?
"Excuse me" I burst out with, bowing slightly before striding swiftly back out into the corridor, past the murals of discoloured plaster and paint, and back into the room I had first opened my eyes in.
Nothing was different, but somehow, with a new goal in mind, it seemed to all center in, like a whirlpool, on one particular characteristic.
"Haha! What a joke! Of all people, too! No, this really is a joke, isn't it?" I let out with exasperation, almost like a man wrinkled with dehydration in the desert, whose hand just clutched at his only solace, a mirage of a lake.
A single, neatly fitted volume, without even a slight splinter of paper poking from the top, or an upturned corner, was Ningen Shikkaku, with Dazai Osamu's name printed neatly on the teal-coloured spine.