Work Text:
0. we rode the bullet train / out to the countryside / in an old dream
There are three rules in Yokohama’s Port Mafia. Obey the boss. Do not betray the Port Mafia. Return attacks twofold. These are set in stone.
There is also a superstition in the Port Mafia:
Becoming Boss means death.
There are two interpretations of this. One is obvious, even to outsiders. All the previous bosses are dead. Retirement is heralded by a call to the crematorium. The funerals are open to public attendance. The Port Mafia has legitimate business, too.
The second interpretation is specific to the current boss. Even the rank and file, who have never seen the boss, know he is obsessed with death. His own death, most forwardly. The rumour goes that he often disappears from the day to day, immersed in some new fantasy. Eventually, one of his executives sniffs him out and drags him home. There is never hitch in the going’s on.
The boss is allowed this eccentricity. Those who have been part of the Port Mafia under previous bosses are vocal in preferring it. The Port Mafia is, with this boss, a well-oiled machine. He is an admirer of the beautiful death and runs the Port Mafia in this image. Unnecessary casualties are frowned upon. Executions are measured against reason. It is still the mafia, and it is still founded upon greed, but the outcomes are better. More predictable where it counts.
The Boss is a demon, nourishing his dogs with death.
The general consensus, since the boss solidified his position two years ago, is the Port Mafia is better off under this boss than Mori. The boss is more apt to pay off or sway officials, having always been adept at fraud. In the past year, the port’s security has been the mafia’s focus. With less time and resources spent on recurrent local turf wars, more sensitive materials make their way through the port than ever before.
Yokohama is booming. The legitimate businesses are happy. The Executives give out more paid leave because there are less casualties and larger budgets. They’re the only ones that haven’t changed.
“Don’t get used to it,” they always warn.
Even so, the dogs are happy to lie in the sun and smell the sea breeze.
i. the orange sunset / brings to memory a beach / that a child loved
It is more difficult to die than to live.
This is Dazai Osamu’s second thought upon waking in his own bed. His first thought, before he opened his eye, was a tired impression of disappointment.
A vitals machine lurks at the edge of his vision. He stares at the ceiling. The emergency sprinkler head.
I’m alive, is his third thought.
Of course, is his fourth thought, accompanied by exhausted despair.
This is not unusual. His suicide attempts are always sincere. They are always failures. They usually result in a feeling of irritation, which is marginally better than the overwhelming empty distress he experience before an attempt. The irritation allows him to pinpoint what went wrong. Not a high enough jump. The rope was low-quality. Sneezing in the middle of swallowing.
He usually knows what not to do next time. How to improve. Everything is a learning experience.
Staring at the sprinkler, at the ceiling’s off-white cleanliness:
Dazai cannot pinpoint what went wrong.
With an effort, he sits up. His vision wavers, spots going off in his eye. Dazai sits for a while, woozy.
He is certain he put a bullet through his head.
Several points on his chest itch. An electrocardiogram must have been attached. Dazai opens his eye. Looks down. He has a loose hospital shirt on. None of his bandages. His skin has developed a light rash all over from the exposure, and there are mild welts where the electrodes were attached.
He must have ended up in a regular hospital directly following his attempt.
He shot himself in the docks beyond the cargo containers. He was sure no one would find him.
“Ah.”
Dazai looks up. His bedroom door.
Oda looks at him. His hands are full of bandages.
This is wrong.
“You’re awake.”
Dazai opens his mouth.
Shuts it.
Opens it again.
A strange noise comes out.
His vision blurs.
This is wrong.
“Odasaku,” he says, reaching blindly.
Soft thumps. Two footsteps. The bed rocks.
Solid. Warm.
“Boss,” Oda says, familiar and warm and—
This is wrong.
Dazai, in despair, puts his forehead on Oda’s shoulder and cries.
The first time Oda held Dazai was after Mimic.
Everything went wrong. Dazai, for the first time in his life, hadn’t thought. Couldn’t. Mori called his phone, but he hadn’t picked up. He was too busy picking through the carnage left by Oda’s rampage. His heart pounded. In his chest. In his ears. His brain. His only thought, absurd in its clarity as he passed a soldier with his face caved in by a gunshot to his nose, was:
Run, Melos!
In the end, André Gide died under No Longer Human. Dazai was shot across the right side of his face and in the left lung, saved from a fatal wound by Oda’s Flawless. Dazai reached out instinctively, gripping Gide’s ankle. They were falling. Gide was screaming. Oda pistol-whipped Gide in the eye. He screamed.
“Dazai!”
Impact. Heat. Pain.
Dazai coughed. Wet. Saliva. Blood.
“Oda,” he tried to say; he vomited instead.
Oda screamed again.
He was injured. They were bleeding onto each other. Onto Gide, who was twitching and dead beneath them. Dazai’s stomach attempted to empty itself only to make him choke.
“Dazai,” Oda screamed; high and frantic and a million things more: “Stay with me.”
“I’m with you,” Dazai tried to say.
He coughed instead. Oda shifted, tugging Dazai with him. It hurt. Dazai tried to vomit again, his vision splotching out.
“Your eye,” Oda said; quieter; Dazai could barely register over the growing fire; the ringing of a concussion; the burning in his face and side; “Shit.”
How exactly they got to safety will always be a mystery. Oda admits that his mind stumbles over everything after he picked Dazai up and started staggering away. Dazai, who drifted in and out of consciousness, could only guide him to a safe house intermittently through his body’s attempts to aspirate blood and vomit. At some point, Oda tore through Dazai’s neck and torso bandages to help Dazai to breathe.
He found Dazai’s phone, ringing again in his pocket.
It was Mori.
“Odasaku,” Dazai remembers begging, dizzy, desperate, delirious, “double suicide with me.”
“I won’t let you die!” Oda shouted, even as Mori chattered on the line. “Dazai, stay with me.”
A command. Dazai would have laughed if he wasn’t choking on another blot clot. He curled his fingers in Oda’s shirt. Oda held him, new and dried blood between them.
“We are coming,” Mori shouted, audible through it all. “Oda, keep Dazai awake.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Oda said as Dazai, finally going mad, attempted to laugh.
The wait wasn’t long. Dazai has a flashbulb memory of Oda’s fingers in his throat, helping clear it of blood and bile. By the time Akutagawa and several others arrived, Dazai was wheezing more than breathing. There were sensations. Feelings.
Dazai clung to Odasaku.
“I won’t let you die.”
He didn’t think.
Stay with me.
This changed everything.
Oda helps him replace his bandages.
Or, more accurately, Dazai acts as a pliant ragdoll as Oda applies cream for his allergies. He is very quiet. Subdued. The crying jag unnerved him. Dazai would be unnerved by it himself if his brain could produce a modicum of anything aside from abject despair.
“I was dead,” Dazai says as Oda applies the second ointment to his right eye.
Oda pauses. His jaw works. His hand supporting Dazai’s chin doesn’t tremble even as his eyes flicker. Back and forth. Searching.
Frightened.
“You might have been,” he says, looking back at his hand.
He applies the ointment to Dazai’s eyelid. It stings badly enough to make him flinch. Oda makes a soothing noise. Wipes what is likely mucus from the socket. His touch is practiced. Careful. Caring. Soft.
Dazai despairs.
“We’ve already deleted your information from the hospital,” Oda says, leaning over to toss the tissue in the bin. “If you were wondering, the bullet hit this eye and lodged in it. You had a bad concussion and an allergic reaction to a hospital cleaning agent.”
Dazai laughs. Sobs. Not again. It’s the same.
Oda sighs.
They continue in silence. The bandages hide away most of the rash and a clean pair of underwear covers the rest. Dazai musters up enough strength to stand so that Oda can help him to the restroom. He supports Dazai so he can ignore the mirror and brush his teeth.
“A new eye should arrive in about a week,” Oda says as Dazai sips paste into the sink.
There’s no point in a new eye, Dazai thinks. He covers it most of the time. It tends to unnerve people, and it’s often more useful for people to think he’s harmless. Sometimes, despite all that Dazai has done voluntarily to mutilate his body, the false eye unnerves him. Oda and medical science argue that having the false eye keeps his eye socket healthy.
Keeping Dazai alive against his will is Oda’s sole purpose in life.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Oda says, handing him a small cup of mouthwash.
There is no point to having this argument. Dazai has not rallied enough of his preferred persona to pull it off.
Oda helps him put on clean pajamas back in the bedroom. The mirror on the back of the door has been covered, but Dazai finds his mind wandering to it. Over the familiarity of Oda dressing him. Suits before a meeting. Helping him out of his coat after a fight. Ties and cufflinks between theatre galas and dinner parties. Changing his bandages even on the days when Dazai just bleeds through the lot.
Oda, smoothing the shoulders of Dazai’s top, frowns at him.
“Boss,” he says, not unkindly.
Dazai looks at him.
A steady, focused gaze.
“You will not die.”
Dogs are loyal to a fault.
Dazai sighs.
“I know.”
Oda was still recovering in hospital from the Mimic incident. Nothing untoward had happened to him. It was a Port Mafia hospital, and Mori had personally taken care of the details. He even arranged for appropriate cremations and burial for Oda’s orphans. Reparations for getting his Demon Prodigy out of the mess alive.
“Thank you, Odasaku,” Mori said as Oda’s heart pounded in his ears, “for bringing my boy home.”
That was how Oda knew, as he lay temporarily immobile from a medically induced coma, that Dazai was in danger. On an edge. There was no way for him to know how close. He spent the hospital days of his recovery left alone aside from the doctors and nurses. For a month, until he regained enough coordination to walk and begin rehabilitation, Oda existed in an idyllic convalescence.
Aside from the time he spent asleep, he hated every moment of it.
Dazai finally visited the evening that Oda was given a timeline for his physical rehabilitation. He was seated next to the wardrobe when Oda returned from the resistance pool. He leaned on a crutch as he stood to greet Oda, a luminous smile spreading over his face.
He looked horrible.
“Odasaku,” he said as the nurse wheeled Oda towards the bed; Oda caught the worried look on the nurse’s face; Dazai didn’t even attempt to charm her; it felt like the wheel of fate was spinning; “Long time no see.”
At least his horrible humour was intact. The last time Oda saw Dazai his right eye was a mess of exposed nerves and leaking flesh.
Right now, Dazai’s good eye was dull and his skin sallow. Oda noticed he didn’t attempt to stay standing for very long, only until Oda was made comfortable. He watched the nurse go about marking Oda’s chart but didn’t attempt to interact any further. Oda didn’t ask for a visitor dinner menu, and she didn’t offer.
“You must,” Dazai said after the nurse stepped out, “be getting tired of hospital food.”
Oda breathed out. He focused fully on Dazai. Ignored the smile. The bandage covering Dazai’s right eye was slightly loose. His shirt beneath his coat was ill-fitting. It gaped awkwardly on his chest and twisted where it was tucked into his trousers. He wasn’t wearing shirt stays, and, from the way his shoes were buckled—
“What’s going on between you and the boss?”
Dazai smiled at him. His eye was empty.
Oda reached out and grabbed Dazai’s upper arm. Pulled him closer. There was no resistance. Oda’s fingers touched each other around Dazai’s arm. He watched Dazai blink.
Once.
Twice.
“The walls have ears,” Dazai said.
“Of course,” Oda said.
He knew Dazai wasn’t telling him to be kind. He didn’t think Oda was stupid. It was his way of saying that Mori wouldn’t kill him.
It was now and forever his job to keep Dazai alive.
This was not their choice.
Oda eased his grip.
Dazai didn’t pull away.
They sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Dazai listed slightly, leaning into the bedside. His head came to rest on the tray of the vitals machine. His left eyelid drooped. The bandages covering his right eye shifted with the movement.
The scent of infection was strong.
Oda opened his mouth.
A knock. The nurse coming back with Oda’s dinner. Dazai lurched back into a more upright sitting position. Oda cleared his throat.
“Come in.”
The nurse came in with the tray. Salmon, rice, fruit in syrup, nutritional drink. Dazai eyed the fruit like a starved animal as Oda made small talk with the nurse. She left, pausing only to look at Dazai with pursed lips before shutting the door.
Oda set down the nutritional drink. Dazai, his hand already skittering towards the fruit, paused.
“Show me your eye.”
Dazai sighed. Didn’t protest. He reached up. Gingerly unpicked the clasps at the top of his skull. Unravelled the bandage.
Oda felt the drink coming back up.
“My offer still stands,” Dazai said.
Glossy glass. Twitching in the socket. Dazai blinked. Pus crusted on his lashes. His lids were red.
“Double suicide with me?”
Oda didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.
He only had one value left.
He screamed it as he shot Gide in the head.
“Dazai,” he whispered:
Stay with me.
In the face of death, people become their truest forms.
This is theirs.
ii. split by thin clouds / they move across the sky / the pond beneath doesn’t know
The Port Mafia has a superstition:
The appearance of crab means good tidings.
It is a general superstition, easily tied to samurai crabs. The boss and at least a couple of the executives reportedly enjoy eating crabs in celebration of good deals or after retribution is carried out. Recently a legitimate business partnership was formed with a crab and tuna canning company. So, in the past couple of years, the rank and file have been able to come up with some of these amusements.
Some could argue that the Port Mafia is going soft.
Dazai gazes out of high rise windows that won’t open.
He smiles.
By the time the new eye is fitted and Dazai is into a regimen of eyedrops to help his body adjust, Chuuya comes back from his information gathering trip in Shanghai. Dazai clears his schedule for the late afternoon and early evening. He lounges in the light of the early winter sunset, watching the stock market report on his laptop on mute.
“I heard,” Chuuya says as he storms in through the main office doors, “you tried to suicide again.”
Dazai laughs. Pushes himself up from the floor beneath his desk. Chuuya grits his teeth, glaring. His eyes flicker, watching Dazai as he leans back against the front of his desk. His lips thin.
He doesn’t like the view, but that isn’t new.
Chuuya sets a box of Shanghai hairy crabs and a zippered folio on the low table. Dazai is not sure where the table came from. It appeared early in his time as boss after one of his attempts to escape the world. Before it’s appearance, Dazai had had a desk, several chairs, and nothing else. All of Mori’s furniture had been destroyed.
“Souvenirs?” Dazai singsongs. “You didn’t have to!”
“Like hell I’d buy anything for you,” Chuuya snarls.
“I think we only have packaged broth,” Dazai ponders, sighing dramatically. “Odasaku is super busy, so that’ll have to do.”
Chuuya’s left eye twitches as he opens the box to remove the cold pack. “You’re making him go grey, you know.”
Dazai smiles. Shakes his head. He has to immediately put his hand down on his desk to stop the wave of dizziness that causes.
“Even if he goes grey, Odasaku will be very handsome,” he says as Chuuya, in the process of tearing open the bubble wrap, glares. “Unlike you.”
“Fuck you,” is the calculated response.
They set up hot pot on the table. Chuuya puts his hat on the stand next to Dazai’s desk and goes into what used to be Elise’s room to get the portable burner and readymade broth. Dazai unwraps the crabs and arranges them in the pot. Chuuya sets the table as Dazai takes the hammers out of his desk. Chuuya eyes them suspiciously.
“You haven’t gone and used those for interrogation, have you?”
“These are for crabs,” Dazai says, scandalised.
“Crabs are very high in cholesterol,” Chuuya observes as he watches Dazai place the hammers next to the burner. “They’re supposed to be eaten in moderation.”
Dazai squints at him.
Chuuya squints back as he turns on the burner.
They regard each other suspiciously for a moment before sitting down.
They cook and eat the crabs. The only noise is bubbling broth, cracking shells, muted chewing and swallowing. Dazai watches the way Chuuya sucks the residue out of crevices. Chuuya watches Dazai use a thin claw to dig out meat from the connective tissue. They lick the bodies clean, the bitter taste faintly metallic.
“It would have gone well with wine,” Chuuya comments as he licks his fingers.
“Pity,” Dazai sighs.
He moves back to his desk to take the evening dose of antibiotic and mild painkiller. Chuuya ties up their trash and puts it outside the door. They clean their hands on wipes that the crabs came with, and Dazai applies eye drops.
“Odasaku will be back at ten,” Dazai says as Chuuya stretches out on one of the two couches.
“Kouyou wants to see me,” Chuuya agrees as Dazai slumps onto the opposite couch.
The Shanghai secret society that the Port Mafia has been courting is interested in discussing terms on the garment and jewelry trade. Specifically, they are interested in the Port Mafia’s influence on how long cargo may be stored in Yokohama’s ports before customs inspections are carried out. Chuuya eyes Dazai in that particular knowing way.
“Dazai.”
A twitch. Whenever Chuuya says his name, it feels like something just rolled over his grave. For a moment, they glare at each other over the leftover broth gone cold on the hotplate.
Dazai’s most recent attempt to leave the world exposed the last of the errors in the Port Mafia’s oversight of the docks. Kouyou and Odasaku have been hard at work correcting those lapses in surveillance and security.
Chuuya grinds his teeth.
Dazai smiles.
“You’re such,” Chuuya whispers, “a manipulative fuck.”
In the immediate aftermath of Mimic, Dazai didn’t see much of Chuuya.
He didn’t see much of anyone, really. He woke up in one of Mori’s personal rooms, which a few years before used to regularly keep both Dazai and Q. Mori and Elise filtered in and out, saving Dazai’s lung and trying twice to do the same to his eye. Even if they could have, the optic nerve was completely beyond repair.
“It seems we’ve finally found the limit of your resilience,” Mori said after he informed Dazai of this.
Dazai had not had anything to say to that. He felt, as drugged and sick as he was, only the familiar aching disappointment of life. He did not try to ask about Oda. He knew, with the same familiarity, that if he was still alive, then Oda would be, too. Mori would have found another use for them both.
Oda’s Flawless was now unique. Dazai, whether for his Ability or his mind, would always be unique. Oda had been able to induce the one unique reaction in Dazai that existed entirely outside of logic.
Mori loved nothing more than the unique.
It was by no coincidence that the first person that Dazai saw after Mimic who wasn’t Mori or Elise was Chuuya. There was a mission. Small in scope to what Soukoku usually dealt with, but the Port Mafia’s business permit’s ink was still drying. Mori and Elise dressed Dazai, and Chuuya came in. He was pale and unsettled and, upon seeing the condition Dazai was in, nervous.
It marked a shift in their dynamic, although no one then knew how deep it would run.
“Can he even stand?”
Dazai couldn’t. They were information gathering on an organisation suspected of ability superiority sentiment for the government. Chuuya pushed him in a wheelchair into a nook in the classical music salon several members of the group liked to meeting at, and they spent the most awkward six hours of their partnership simply sitting and eavesdropping. Their appearance was very convincing: nothing looked less threatening than Dazai clearly just off bedrest and Chuuya in a lounge suit.
Their conversation was less so.
For the first time, they barely spoke. A waiter, soft in contenance, brought menus and a pot of hot water. They mimed through the motions. Chuuya ordered coffee with milk and a plate of lemon and rose petits fours. Dazai ordered his own coffee decaf with sugar. He took one look at the cakes when they came and turned a faint greenish tone. It unnerved Chuuya further.
He watched Dazai turn his attention to the music selection. The case sat to his right, which was conveniently the same direction as the table where their targets were fooling around. For a long moment, Dazai considered the books. His hands rested on the handles of his chair. Chuuya got the distinct impression that he wasn’t sure what to do with them.
It was too human.
Chuuya hated himself intensely for how much he wanted Dazai to act like an annoying asshole instead of like a human being.
So he tried stabbing him.
“What happened to your disgusting sweet tooth?”
Dazai didn’t react. Chuuya breathed in. Out. Trying to calm his rapidly skyrocketing heart rate.
The stillness was excruciating.
Slowly, Dazai lifted his hand. Reached out. He pulled a binder of sheet music of the shelf.
Chuuya wondered, absurdly, if Dazai could even read music.
He never responded to Chuuya’s question. He said nothing and leafed through Beethoven’s sonatas. Chuuya, for lack of anything else to do, ate one of the lemon cakes. He attempted to savour the texture of royal icing. Meanwhile, their targets flipped a card deck between themselves, barely hiding how one of them was using their Ability to levitate the cards.
Bold. Over-confident. No wonder the government was onto them.
Watching them so blatantly flaunting themselves was completely harmless. It would have been normal to stare if Chuuya and Dazai were normal people. This made the situation oddly stressful. Chuuya ate another cake, not able to pretend enjoying it half as much as the first.
Dazai put the Beethoven binder back. He pulled out a handbound collection of Mendelssohn, which was larger and thicker. He shifted, resting the bottom of the spine on his lap. He stared at the table of contents for longer than it warranted.
Behind them, one of the group made a bubble out of the liquid in his glass and made a show of twisting it between his fingers.
Chuuya ate another cake.
“You should have ordered something substantial,” Dazai commented, finally turning a page and nearly scaring Chuuya out of his skin.
“I,” he said, a little too high; he coughed, pretending to clear his throat; his blood rang in his ears; “These are good.”
Behind them, the bubble maker puts the liquid in one of his companion’s glasses, starting an argument. Chuuya looked at them, but it was not intense. He didn’t know exactly why the government was onto them, but he suspected from their body types and the lazy why they conduct themself, it’s probably fraud.
Dazai turned although page. His fingers shook.
Chuuya thought of how Mori stood. His hands on Dazai’s shoulders.
The way Dazai stared forward—
“I,” Chuuya hissed, “could have done this on my own.”
This, finally, drew a look of derision. It was weak. Dazai seemed to lose interest in it halfway.
“Doctor’s orders,” Dazai said.
Maybe it was the pain he was in, but the bitterness in the quip was too real. It made Chuuya look. Look as he hadn’t wanted to all day.
His exposed eye was a black hole.
There were times when Chuuya feared Dazai. It was a logical fear. Dazai was a bad person. He was immoral. Hedonistic. The Demon Prodigy. Moulded of monstrous flesh.
Chuuya never thought of him as a person.
He couldn’t. It was not their life. Their history. Soukoku.
They survived as dog eating dog, self-cannibalising to continue fighting. No Longer Human to calm Corruption. They lived with the knowledge that, one day, Chuuya would run out of time. He would be Dazai’s one failure. He knew he could not hope for a peaceful death. He could not hope for a burial.
He could not live or die as he wanted.
In that moment, seeing the depth of Dazai’s despair, Chuuya understood:
Neither could Dazai.
Because they wasted time eating crabs, Chuuya runs into Oda on the way out of Dazai’s office. He’s carrying the familiar first aid kit of Dazai’s essentials and has mug of what smells strongly of ginger tea balanced on top. He smiles, a much more tolerable expression on his face. There’s very faint wrinkles between his brows as he raises them. He is not, in fact, going grey, but Chuuya doesn’t doubt it’s just a matter of time.
They don’t bother to chat beyond politely greeting each other. Even after all these years, they are polite but distant colleagues. Sharing Dazai as a strange, twisted other half has not given them any common ground. Or, perhaps, sharing Dazai prevents their relationship from progressing.
Chuuya and Dazai are, and will always be Soukoku.
Of the few who have ever seen Oda and Dazai on the field together, they’re simply called Flawless.
Chuuya cannot understand why Oda, who seems to be a fundamentally good man, can be so absolutely devoted to Dazai. At the same time, since Dazai lost his eye, he hasn’t asked anyone else to double suicide with him.
A part of Chuuya wishes Oda would give in. To be free of Dazai, to be free of the Port Mafia, to walk in a world without No Longer Human to hold him back: Chuuya would finally be able to taste freedom.
Another part hopes Oda never says yes. So long as Dazai’s heart beats: Chuuya can continue to entrust him with Corruption.
It is selfish. It makes Chuuya nauseous.
“I’ll call someone up for the trash,” Chuuya offers.
“No need,” Oda says, glancing at the small trash bag tied up neatly by the open double doors before slipping inside. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Odasaku!” Dazai cheers from inside.
He sounds sincerely happy.
Chuuya continues down the hall. Gets in the elevator. He deliberately does not listen to Dazai’s chirping as the doors slide closed.
What Odasaku and Dazai are to each other is none of his business.
At the same time, he is one half of Soukoku. He is one of the five Port Mafia Executives alongside Oda, Kouyou, Akutagawa, and Atsushi. Dazai is his partner. His Boss.
His other half.
What Odasaku does to keep Dazai alive is, therefore, Chuuya’s business.
It is upsetting.
iii. you could ask / what are you waiting for? / a fair question
Kouyou recently moved into the top rooms of her newest establishment.
It is full inn in the art district just inland from the amusement park and sightseeing piers. Kouyou picked it out from the list of property acquisitions made after the Port Mafia solidified its influence on Yokohama post and customs. Hirotsu has a pachinko parlour a block away that he’s made noise about retiring to run. No one, including Hirotsu, takes this seriously.
They are Port Mafia in their bones.
For the past two years, Kouyou dedicated the majority of her budget to bringing the building to her specifications. A kitchen and dinner counter now takes up the first floor of the main building, and a full sento with communal and private sections in the second renovated building. Artisans were brought in, and a stoneware expert assisted in picking out the dinner and tea wares. It is, with international clients old and new all agreeing, an exquisite labour of joy.
The Golden Demon preens.
“I love this,” Chuuya sighs as he joins her in her rooms on the third floor.
Kouyou smiles as he comes to embrace her. His hair is wet, since he bathed downstairs. The scent of mild lavender from the guest soap lingers. She smooths the front of his jinbei, patting away an imaginary wrinkle. Chuuya smiles, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek.
“Did you eat?”
“I had a crab with mackerel,” he says, irritated but without heat, “but that was about four hours ago.”
Kouyou makes a disapproving nose. Chuuya has at least the courtesy to pull a sheepish expression. He sits down across from her, peering at the embroidery that she has out on the table. He’s careful to keep his hair from dripping anywhere near it.
“What’s this?”
Kouyou stands up, motioning to the reference picture. “It will be for the fourth room on the ground floor.”
“Ah, the spring room,” Chuuya says approvingly as Kouyou goes to the phone to call up some of the staff dinner and a hot drink. “It has such a lovely view of the courtyard.”
“I’m thinking of planting some irises,” she says, returning to the table and beginning to clear the embroidery materials away enough to make room for the dinner tray. “Daffodils were lovely last year, but I’m not in the mood for them. I would also like to have everyone in proper attire for the opening of the social season.”
“Oh?” he looks up at her, very curious. “Is that why you’ve scheduled us executives and the boss tailoring?”
She nods, sharing a knowing look between them. It is highly likely she will have to corner Dazai and the recently promoted Akutagawa Ryunosuke to get updated measurements. Dazai and his primary protégé are great fun to torture in these benign matters.
Chuuya hums thoughtfully. He looks up slightly, mentally cataloguing. He smiles a little. It reaches his eyes.
“I want to watch,” he says.
Kouyou smiles.
A knock on the main door signals a couple of her girls arriving with the meal. Tai sashimi. Hot broth. Okara potato salad. Hot sake. It’s light fare for the mild winter they’ve been having.
“You’re spoiling me,” Chuuya murmurs, eyes zoned in on the sake.
“Someone has to,” she teases.
It gets a laugh out of Chuuya. Once they’re alone again, she continues.
“I invited,” she says while pouring them both sake, “Oda-san and the boss tonight.”
The tension returns immediately to Chuuya’s shoulders. He picks up his cup. Drains it. He stares at the ceiling with its mild, tasteful lights.
“Why.”
She smiles, mild and slightly pointed. Chuuya sucks in a breath through his teeth.
“Did the mackerel really die this time?”
Kouyou hums. Chuuya shuts his eyes. There’s a lot of things that they could say. None of them are worth saying.
“Oda-san needs a night to relax.”
Chuuya sags, opening his eyes and staring into his empty cup. He doesn’t ask to be refilled.
“You watered this down,” he says, only marginally accusatory.
“They should be here in about ten minutes,” Kouyou says serenely.
Chuuya sighs gustily. He sets about eating dinner, not bothering to further spoil his mood by attempting to challenge her. Kouyou sips her own cup. Resists making a face at the thin taste.
They arrive about eight minutes later, just as Chuuya finishes his food. Oda lingers in the hallway, chatting with the waitress who showed them up. Dazai leans in the door, grinning as if he’s actually in good spirits.
“My lovely lady!” he says, making his way over to accept Kouyou’s hand. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“Boss,” Kouyou sighs as Oda slides the door shut.
“I hope we’re not intruding,” Oda says, setting the familiar first aid kit on the floor next to the door.
“It is lovely to have you,” Kouyou soothes as Chuuya and Dazai begin to silently antagonise each other. “Would you like any refreshment?”
Oda, who had glanced between Chuuya and Dazai, doesn’t respond. He shifts forward just enough to touch his fingertips to the back of Dazai’s head. In his hair but not atop the bandages. It makes Dazai turn so his eye can focus. His eyebrows rise. Oda smiles a little. An endearing, sheepish look.
It puts a spark of light in Dazai’s eye.
This part is voyeuristic.
“Hungry?” Dazai asks.
“No,” Oda says as he sits down by Chuuya, whose attention is resolutely on the watered down sake bottle, “but I wouldn’t mind a drink.”
Dazai laughs. He flops down between Oda and Kouyou, a practiced fall of limbs that doesn’t actually jar his body or make any noise. He grins at Kouyou. She smiles back.
“What does our lovely host suggest?”
“Perhaps something warming,” she ponders, rising as she speaks. “I will select for some snacks, too.”
“Thank you,” Oda says, his shoulders lowering, relaxing.
That is voyeuristic, too.
“Oh, what’s this?” Dazai murmurs, already peering curiously at Kouyou’s abandoned embroidery.
“Be careful with that,” Chuuya barks as she moves to her wet bar.
Kouyou doesn’t attempt to see what Dazai went for. Doubtlessly, if it is the needle and he is about to actually attempt something, Oda would take care of it. From the rustling, it’s her reference book.
“That’s rather labour-intensive,” Oda says as Kouyou selects a scotch and the biscuits leftover from New Years.
“I don’t have the eye for this sort of thing,” Dazai declares.
“Hah hah,” Chuuya groans as Kouyou returns to them with everything on a tray. “Oh, good, real liquor.”
It makes Oda laugh. Dazai glances at him.
Holding Kouyou’s embroidery reference in hand—
Kouyou knows:
The strongest and weakest point of a human being is love.
Covered in the blood of her youthful mistake, Kouyou wove this knowledge into her heart and sealed it away.
No one can hurt you when you hurt yourself.
Before the Port Mafia received its business permit, Kouyou never thought of Dazai and love in the same sentence. Dazai was the Demon Prodigy, one half of Soukoku, and Mori’s most obvious inheritor. She was not close to any of Mori’s protégés. Her hand was more suitable for the recruits who needed steel woven over their hearts, who were too human and too apt to love.
Mori was not a bad boss. Not the scope of things. All humans have their flaws. Kouyou, dreamless and made of gold, knew this even as she pet the hair of her most vulnerable students.
There is no such thing as freedom in this world.
Mori did not want her involved with Dazai, so she kept her hands off except when it concerned Chuuya. Chuuya trusted Kouyou. He smiled at her without the shadows haunting him. There are only a handful of people who treated her like that. They were all dead.
Mori might have killed the old boss, but Chuuya was another asset. Another playing piece. Even if Chuuya was precious to her, he would die one day. Mori was only motivated to keep him alive because he motivated Dazai so well. The only other thing that motivated Dazai was the promise that that one day he would die.
Kouyou was selfish. Her life, empty and disgusting, made her possessive. Chuuya was hers.
It was therefore logical that her relationship with Dazai changed because of Chuuya. He came home with her in the aftermath of Soukoku’s first mission under the Ability Business Permit. It was a resounding success. Mori praised him in front of Kouyou, Dazai, and Ango. Kouyou and Chuuya, both very aware that Ango was a double agent and was now acting for the government, were glad not be seated next to him.
Dazai spent the entire debrief staring at Ango with palpable murderous intent.
It was emotional. It was unnerving.
There were many rumours of how Mori had gotten the Ability Business Permit. Sitting in on that meeting, Kouyou confirmed far too much of it.
Alone together in her sitting room, Chuuya sat for a long time. Hands flat against his thighs. Eyes on the window.
It was nighttime. The window had a view of a stone wall.
Kouyou opened a book of poetry. She had been looking forward to reading it. She comprehended nothing on the page.
It was long past one in the morning when Chuuya stirred.
“Ane-san.”
She looked up from her book. Chuuya looked away from the window. At his hands. He curled his fingers into fists. His wrists were visible between his shirtsleeves and gloves. He was going through a small growth spurt, the first after nearly two years. Kouyou suspected it would be his last.
“I think,” and his voice cracked; he swallowed; soldiered on; “I’m going crazy.”
Kouyou set her book aside. Moved closer. She took his hands. Uncurled his fingers from their fists. Chuuya blinked. Sighed. Shuddered.
Kouyou did not need to ask who was responsible for this. It was, and always would be, Dazai.
“What did he do?”
Chuuya shook his head. He curled their fingers together. Skin entwined with kid leather. The colour of her nail varnish jewels between the black.
“He didn’t do anything,” he whispered.
It made the hair on her neck stand up. Chuuya looked at her. Wide and dark and scared.
Sometimes Kouyou considered killing the children who came into her care.
It would spare them this.
“I don’t know what the Boss did to get the Ability Business Permit,” he said, so low that Kouyou had to stain to hear him, “but it wasn’t worth it.”
There are moments in a person’s life when the wheel of fate begins to spin.
This was one of them.
Those words sat in Kouyou’s heart. A shroud. She, more than anyone, knew what they meant.
She thought about them when Oda Sakunosuke was rewarded handsomely and promoted for his service to the Port Mafia. Kouyou, who was present for the promotion, was surprised to learn that Oda had killed nearly thirty people for it. He was therefore placed directly under Dazai for guerilla combat. Dazai, who was clearly suffering from some sort of long illness, was wan and extremely skinny. The black of the promotion envelope contrasted with his pale, slightly blue hands.
As Oda accepted the envelope, Kouyou made the mistake of looking at Dazai’s expression. The utter misery:
Kouyou knew intimately.
Despite the new permit, the Port Mafia fell into a darker age. Chuuya’s old complaints about Dazai became muted, replaced by a growth of trust and greater anxiety. Their joint missions as Soukoku grew in violence. Corruption became more necessary. Chuuya stopped growing. Dazai stopped healing. Chuuya slept more heavily. Dazai often missed meetings due to illness. It felt like a race to the grave.
Dazai’s guerrilla squad became more efficient due to Oda’s Flawless. Kouyou heard about a bar that Oda could be found at most nights. Mori appeared greatly satisfied, and Kouyou’s own missions became increasingly focused on expanding recruits. She looked at the children and thought about cutting their heads off.
Mori was gearing up for a war.
Kouyou felt trapped.
It was on a moonless autumn night nearly a year after this began that Kouyou heard a client was asking for her by name. The girls who had originally been assigned to the room were uncertain but not frightened, so Kouyou came down, dressed in her serving attire. She expected an old regular.
She did not expect Dazai.
“Ah,” he sighed, empty smile on his face as Kouyou knelt in the doorway, “I do enjoy the company of a beautiful mature woman.”
Kouyou didn’t take the bait. She stepped inside. Slid the door shut behind herself. Dazai shifted, his clothes a size too large and rumpling awkwardly around his shoulders. Kouyou, in the past few months, had begun to wonder if he was attempting suicide by starvation.
She couldn’t blame him.
She envied him.
“You look so apprehensive,” Dazai said.
He inflected the words to be teasing, but there was no energy to carry the tone. Kouyou sat a full body’s distance between them. Dazai watched her, elbow braced on the tabletop. There was a glass of scotch on the table. It was untouched.
“Kouyou-san,” Dazai said.
There was something off about his tone. Kouyou was very aware her Ability would be of no use here.
Slowly, Dazai pushed away from the table. He swayed slightly, his eye unfocusing. She tensed instinctively: for attack or to catch him.
“Odasaku,” Dazai said.
There was a world there.
Dazai slumped. Caught himself on his hands. He stared between his fingers. Swallowed.
“He deserves a flawless world.”
Kouyou froze.
She understood.
Of course she did. Kouyou, among the Port Mafia, was unique in her curse.
She knew love.
But she also knew what it could make a person do.
The wheel spun.
“Ane-san.”
She locks the embroidery hoop. Hums.
Downstairs, Oda and Dazai are in the private bath. They took the first aid kit with them. She hopes that Dazai actually relaxes a bit. Oda is able to see through his mime.
Chuuya lies on the floor next to her. His hands fold over his chest as he studies her ceiling. He blinks. Long eyelashes over distant, slightly glassy eyes.
“Do you think Oda is right?” he asks, just as distant but less drunk than his flushed skin would imply. “Can we really take in Ability users and only use them for legal business?”
It is Oda’s dream. He talks about it more often since Dazai solidified their postal and customs influence. Tonight’s conversation, after a couple of drinks, revolved around it. Chuuya and Oda went back and forth, hashing out scenarios. Ideal organisation charts. Ideas for report formats. Tax filing.
Kouyou finished a section of her embroidery, humming lightly at appropriate points. Dazai drank a glass of water and used Oda’s thigh as a pillow. He spent the evening scrolling through their phones, updating their encryptions and proxies.
She thinks about it. Going legitimate. Running her shop without looking over her shoulder when she turns away a customer. Hosting the local police force alongside her colleagues and not planning how to kill them. Giving the girls paychecks signed in ink.
Kouyou picks up green thread.
“Oda-san doesn’t lie.”
Chuuya sighs through his teeth. He shifts around to lie on his side. Watches her thread the needle. Perhaps she should buy him a beginner’s kit for his birthday.
“If we can keep the mackerel alive,” he says, low and tight, “it’s possible.”
Kouyou pulls the needle up. She thinks of Dazai, in love and trapped, wavering between the call of death and his beating heart. She thinks of love and double suicide. She thinks about rabid dogs, snapping at the hand that feeds them.
How she looked at him, in his desperation and humanity, and thought—
Standing over Mori’s body:
The Golden Demon pulled her sword out of Elise’s stomach.
Dazai, gripping Mori’s ankle, coughed. Blood trickled down his face. There was brain matter in his hair.
He dropped the gun on Mori’s chest.
Kouyou breathed out.
“Your death inconveniences everyone now.”
Dazai looked at her. A bit of bone fell on his eyelashes.
He didn’t blink.
“I know.”
iv. I am not the child / who waited on the beach / the sun moved on
Ooka River is peaceful tonight.
“Boss,” Oda says as Dazai peers over the ledge, “it’s late.”
Dazai straightens. Oda reaches up and adjusts his scarf. It is not particularly chilly, but Dazai is not good at telling small changes in temperature.
“We should get home.”
Home.
The luxury apartment building has a view of the sea and the river. Dazai moved into the top floor a month after Mori died when the building was completed. It was the first of a series of residential real estate acquisitions he made as boss, spurred on by the memory of Oda’s orphans upstairs in that curry restaurant. Oda technically lives in a different building, but that’s sublet to the Akutagawa siblings currently. Ryunosuke and Gin take very good care of it. Dazai, looking over their records on his laptop, wonders if he should start considering giving it to them permanently.
Instead, he clicks away from the files and switches proxies and encryption to scroll through the European news. In the bathroom, Oda gargles mouthwash. Spits. Dazai reads a statement about Ability users and reparations for the Great War.
“Boss.”
Oda stands in the doorway. Winter pajamas and the light at his back. He sniffs slightly. Swallows.
Something untwists beneath Dazai’s skin.
Dazai closes his laptop as Oda unties the bandages over his dead eye. He lets Oda ruffle his hair, more unruly than usual since he’d put the bandages on it while wet.
“Your hands are warm.”
Oda’s lip twitches. He keeps a hand on the crown of Dazai’s head and reaches up with the other to turn off the reading light. In the dark, the only light is the alarm clock on its dimmest setting.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Oda murmurs as they shift together, sharp bones and soft breaths. “You really scared me.”
Dazai rests his head on Oda’s chest. Over his heart. Listens to the movement of blood through organs. Air in. Out.
He thinks about the river. The breeze. The sun. The sea.
Dazai killed Mori on a mild spring day.
Only Oda, Chuuya, and Kouyou know the truth.
Not the whole truth. Just morsels. But that is enough.
Stray dogs must eat to survive after all.
Oda’s hand, carding fingers through his hair.
Stay with me.
Dazai breathes in. Out.
“I’m with you.”
A sigh. Oda holds him. No Longer Human cancels out Flawless. They both know this.
They are building a world where this won’t matter.
So they may have each other:
They will not die.