Aug 31, 2023
Throughout the story, the most common theme was the mask we imposed on ourselves. With this flashback, however, a new dynamic is introduced, that of the mask imposed on us.
Think of "the mask imposed on others", as Lihal's story underlined, as a kind of box (a mold) of expectations and hopes into which we force someone - or at least make someone - fit. There are various reasons for this phenomenon: with Lihal, for example, it was the mold of the nobility.
So what does this have to do with Agreste and Nagahiro? Well, I think Agreste used the same dynamic with Nagahiro.
To understand this, we first have to put together all the flashbacks concerning Nagahiro since the beginning of the story. Of these, only once is she described "positively" by Agreste: when he meets her for the first time and they read Alice in Wonderland together. For the rest, every description is pejorative or at least negative, whether physical - a dress that doesn't suit her, her face bathed in tears, her emotions that don't match her face - or mental - here it's more of a general impression, but she was portrayed as someone who wanted to make Agreste suffer and force him to love her.
Middle side note: These differences in description were something that struck me - considering that she meant so much to Agreste and that he never or very rarely described her as he described Theresia - but I couldn't come up with a plausible explanation for them-.
All this to say that, on the one hand, I think he first started putting this mask of negativity on her out of simple jealousy, because she had something he didn't have - a family -, then because she symbolized all the introspection he didn't want to do - more generally love -, and finally because he chose her to be responsible for his unhappiness .
More generally, since the beginning of the story, we've always seen Nagahiro in Agreste's frame of reference, without seeing the person she really was. With this flashback, I don't know but I get the impression that, in reality, she was someone who loved him very much and just wanted to help him.
Of course, the choices she made were a bit "crude", awkward and callous. Callous because she asked a lot of him all at once, without necessarily taking into account his malaise and the fact that he needed time to recover. On the other hand, however, if I were to bring her words back to the knife/wound metaphor: Nagahiro's words were like pains that reminded Agreste that he was indeed suffering, despite the trouble he took to conceal it (I'll come back to this later).
What I also want to say is that Agreste always wanted to perceive Nagahiro's choices as being made with the aim of hurting him, but also to perceive her as someone who hated him, whereas on the contrary, I think she was one of the people who loved him the most, right up until her death.
Wasn't her death a choice out of love, not punishment? In the sense that it was her way of "leaving" Agreste as he had asked. This would explain, among other things, why in her posthumous letter she says "It is your fault I've died", in the sense that it was he who asked her to leave.
It would also explain the shock on her face when he caught her when she threw herself off the balcony: she realized that his heart really didn't want her to leave.
Of course, there were other ways to leave him. Maybe Nagahiro really wanted to make him suffer too, but that wasn't the only reason.
Let's talk about Agreste.
He built the Baron's mask with the sole aim of filling the void left by the absence of his family, the emptiness in his heart. Once again, this echoes the human behavior of trying to fill a void or a lack. The ways of doing this can be varied, from the material with food, drink and addictions, to the more abstract with emotional dependencies.
In my opinion, the Baron's mask uses both of these means: filling the void materially with wealth, and filling the void more abstractly by creating an "emotional dependency". Here, "emotional dependence" is surely a big word, but it's the only one I've found to describe the fact that he wants to beam the world in hapiness because he wants to feel loved in return (which he explained to Cassea and which he explains again to Theresia) => in a way, he fills the void in a emotional form. It's all part of the "band-aid dynamic" to try and hide the wound, the emptiness in his heart.
But, unfortunately, it doesn't work, because he's not satisfied, or at least there's something missing. And maybe that's why he'd always hated the Baron's mask. On the other hand, his goals were contradictory in the sense that how could he feel loved when he didn't know what love was/wasn't willing to talk about it/was unwilling to receive it?
Also, in his words to Nagahiro, I have the impression that he's saying the opposite of what he really thinks. Again, this may be part of the mechanics of the Baron's mask, which prevents him from introspection. And again, this may be another reason why he doesn't like the Baron's mask, because through it, he's spoken words that hurt. This reaction could echo the human behavior of hurting others to externalize anger or discomfort - as is often the case in arguments, where we tend to say hurtful things just to hurt others, without necessarily meaning what we say.
Agreste as a person didn't want to hurt Nagahiro and, on the contrary, I think he was guilty for having hurt her with his problems, rather like Lihal and her mask of thorns. In a way, his reaction was perhaps a way of protecting Nagahiro from the wounds his past could cause her. Although I think this point needs to be qualified.
Finally lets go back to the present moment, when he confides in Theresia.
As well as illustrating the healthy aspect of their relationship, this discussion allows Agreste to put into words his inability to commit. So, not committing to Theresia is, for him, a way of protecting her from himself. In other words, he loves her but doesn't want to give her his love so as not to hurt her. Simply neva
Then, once again, there's a parallel with the discussion he had with Shirakawa about his perception as a person or his ego. Here, what's interesting to see is that Agreste still defines himself as he did before, or at least uses the same process in the sense that it's his flaws that define him - so his qualities are just a facade/mask to hide them. More generally, he doesn't attach his qualities to his person, his ego, but to his faults - in particular, the faults of each of his masks. => He's depersonalizing himself.
As Shirakawa did, Theresia will tell him that his flaws aren't what define him entirely, nor, more generally, the feelings bubbling up in his heart. What people see is simply his person, his ego.
So, one of our mc's choices would be to be simply Agreste, to simply be himself, to free his ego.
Will he take this risk? The risk he needs to be happy? Or will he choose to run away, as he's always done?
I can't wait to find out ^^
Side note 1 : Agreste alone contemplating the sky reminds me of the choice Shirakawa told him, in the sense that he could always choose to be alone, but he won't be happy that way, and that the only way to be happy is to be free, to trust and to love.
Side note 2: Theresia's reaction to Agreste's explanations could have been one of the choices Nagahiro could have made.
Side note 3 : This flashback makes me think that Nagahiro and Agreste were good people who just met at the wrong time.
Side note 4: The notion of "family" is very important. I think it should be understood more as the fact that "someone is waiting for us" than the simple father/mother/child relationship. I don't know how to explain it clearly, but the concept reminds me of the one dealt with in the Odyssey - basically, no matter what island Ulysses was on, no matter whether he was happy or not there (especially the part where he's with Circe), he was always looking towards the horizon and never felt at home, because he knew that those he loved were waiting for him: his home, his family - more generally, the Odyssey itself is Ulysses' journey to find his family. Could this be the case for Agreste's journey too in a way ?
Side note 5 : Again I have a bad feeling with the " I will wait forever for you" T^T
