Chapter Text
Dawn broke over a sea of devastation.
The waterfront had been flattened, wiped clean as though a massive hand had descended from the skies to sweep away everything, buildings and streets alike. Seawater already lapped at the loosened earth, pulling it bit by bit into the ocean.
Just the previous day, the area had been home to a warehouse of dubious renown, which the Yokohama police strongly suspected was housing illegal ammunition and weaponry. Port Mafia weaponry, to be precise, which meant that the authorities had quietly decided to give it a wide berth, not wishing to spark a head-to-head conflict with the Mafia’s most dangerous ability users.
However, despite the forbearance of the police, a few hours prior the warehouse had been the site of a conflict just like the one they most wished to avoid. A small group of criminals banded together in a desperate attempt to fight against the Port Mafia, trying to seize the weapons in the warehouse to use for themselves.
They were caught, of course. In no time at all, the area became lively with gunfire, lighting up the night.
But that was before the explosion. Sudden, and catastrophic, swallowing everything in its path.
In the aftermath, the warehouse and its surroundings were gone, and everything was silent.
The wreckage had settled somewhat, but the acrid stench of ash and burned metal still lingered in the air, filling one’s lungs with every breath.
The scattered clouds above were stained red with the light of the rising sun, a mirror to the bloodstained earth below.
Chuuya’s gloves were stained red as well. Dripping with it.
He had been walking for so long, ignoring the aches in his bones in favor of pressing on. Yet his search yielded nothing, no matter how many chunks of rubble he pried up from the earth, no matter how many bodies he checked.
No one else was alive.
He was the only one left.
It was supposed to be a regular, predictable mission; defend the warehouse, and crush the upstart criminals foolish enough to try and seize control of a Port Mafia weapons cache.
It should have been simple.
But Chuuya had underestimated the desperation of their opponents.
Just like their opponents underestimated the strength of their own explosives.
The initial blast, meant to cripple the Port Mafia’s forces only, instead set off a chain reaction inside the warehouse itself. It sparked chemicals and ammunition, and before anyone could so much as take cover, the entire place blew to pieces.
It was sheer instinct that saved Chuuya. The moment before the shock wave reached him, his ability activated and increased his gravity to soak up the impact, keeping shrapnel from reaching his skin and keeping himself from being ripped apart by the force. As a result, the explosion left him bruised, scraped and raw, but painfully alive.
In the aftermath, he unearthed himself from the wreckage that had been buried atop him, and found himself left alone in a sea of red.
As he soon discovered, his instincts hadn’t been enough to save those around him.
He hadn’t stopped moving since then. On unsteady limbs he searched, and searched, combing through the broken battlefield for his subordinates, hoping against hope that even one of them had somehow survived. At that point, he would have even welcomed the sight of an enemy, so long as they weren’t dead.
But there was nothing and no one, no matter where he looked. Only lifeless bodies, scattered in pieces as far as his eye could see.
The explosion had reached as far as the docks, wiping out at least a square mile of the Yokohama shoreline. There was no way of knowing how many bystanders had been caught up in it as well — they probably wouldn’t be recognizable in the state they were left in.
Chuuya pressed on another step. And another. Each one felt heavier, weighed down against the earth despite him using his ability to keep himself upright and moving.
Everything was eerily silent. Anyone outside the radius of the blast would have fled as soon as it began. No police or military forces had yet arrived, most likely wary of being caught up in one of the mafia’s conflicts.
Still, that would only last so long. In the absence of any survivors, the most logical course of action would be to leave in order to avoid the authorities. It was Chuuya’s duty to return to headquarters and give the boss a report on the tragedy, and tell of those they had lost.
Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to go.
Finally, unable to stand any longer, Chuuya collapsed onto an outcrop of rubble. It must have been an hour since he began searching, at least, and still not a sign of life. Not a single sound stirred the blasted wasteland.
Aching, yet somehow numb at the same time, Chuuya dropped his gaze from the devastation and stared down at his gloves.
The leather was bloodied, drenched with the spent lives of his people. People he had been unable to protect.
It always came back to this, didn’t it? Chuuya and death, time-worn companions. Always the only one to make it out alive, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.
He just was so tired.
His eyes burned, his head throbbed, every one of his bones hurt, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
Maybe he should just stay there. Maybe if he sat long enough, he would become a statue, his bones and veins and heart all replaced by mercifully unfeeling crystals and stone.
Maybe that would be better. Easier.
Yet, that would also be the coward's way out. He couldn’t allow himself to give up, which meant that he had to get back on his feet. Had to go back, had to keep wading through an ever-deepening river of blood.
That was what he would do, in just a moment.
…If he could only convince himself to move.
At that moment, Chuuya heard something, the first sound other than his own footsteps to break the awful silence.
It was a high, shrill call, more of a chatter than anything else. Still, more than enough to capture Chuuya’s attention.
He looked up, searching the surroundings for the source, scanning across the wreckage and distant buildings of Yokohama beyond.
At last he looked towards the sea, and he saw it.
There was a bird out over the water. Large and fast-moving, swooping first low to the waves, then high, then back again, swirling in an endless cycle without ever seeming to flap its wings. Dipping and rising and wheeling through the air in a weightless dance.
A vague memory stirred in Chuuya’s mind. He had seen seabirds around before, of course; it was inevitable in a city right on the water. He had heard them call, seen them soaring over the city as he crossed the rooftops, but this one was unfamiliar.
Not a gull, too large to be that, which meant it was —
An albatross?
Chuuya’s aching eyes went wide, his mind suddenly blissfully blank, and he stumbled to his feet, never looking away from the distant bird on the waves.
And as he followed the path of the bird with his gaze, something shifted in his heart.
Memories, bittersweet and warm at the same time, rose up inside him. Memories of a group of men, eclectic and strange, who he had barely begun to consider friends when they were just as quickly ripped away from him.
He remembered the jokes about Albatross and the bird he took his name from. He remembered Pianoman teasing that Albatross already had the same sized brain as a bird, and he remembered that somehow led to Albatross boasting that with his motorcycle he could drive even faster than the birds could fly, so he was really superior to ‘other albatrosses’.
“However, it says here that those birds can sleep while flying. Are you proposing you could do the same, Albatross?”
“I’m saying I already have, Lippmann! What, you’ve never fallen asleep while driving before?”
“...I am astonished you’re still alive.”
“Ah, hey! Why do you look so disappointed about me surviving, Iceman?”
“I am not. Rather, I am disappointed in the way you live.”
“Ha, that’s cold. But there’s more in this article, ‘Tross — you think you could last years without touching the ground? Apparently they can do that too.”
“Heheh. I’d like to see that.”
“Stop encouraging him, Doc.”
“I bet I could do it! Aha, I’ve got it — hey, Chuuya, if you used your ability to keep me in the air, do you think I could manage —?”
Chuuya breathed in the cold ocean air, and closed his eyes.
He hadn’t indulged Albatross’s antics that day, shrugging him off with irritation at being teased.
Looking back, Chuuya wished he had.
He wished he had known they were his friends before it was too late.
With the voices of the Flags echoing in his mind, clearer than they had been in years, Chuuya wandered closer to the water’s edge, fixated on the far away movements of the giant bird.
Despite its size…it looked so light.
Driven by something beyond his own understanding, Chuuya walked onwards, stepping over the debris and ravaged earth, only gazing at the sea. On and on, his thoughts filled with everything and nothing at the same time.
He didn’t know where he was going, and he didn’t care.
At that moment, all he had to do was watch the bird fly.
Time passed strangely after that. Such things as the ticking of clocks and the steady arc of the sun overhead seemed inconsequential, unworthy of notice.
It was odd how simple it all felt. Following the albatross naturally led to Chuuya watching the ducks around the docks, which led to him following a small brown bird into a park, which led to him watching pigeons flying between the high roofs of the city. On, and on, until he found himself atop the roofs as well, leaping carefully from one to another, using his ability to soften his landings so he wouldn’t startle the birds into flight.
At last he made his way to the highest buildings in the city, and he sat perched atop the roof of the Port Mafia headquarters, letting his weary limbs rest as gulls soared around him.
Despite being in the center of Yokohama, the air was fairly clear. Perhaps it was the sheer height of the towers which kept the wind that whipped at his coat so untainted, flavored only with the distant taste of the sea.
The sea breeze was quite strong that day, not to mention cold, still bearing a slight hint of frost left over from the end of winter. But no matter how much it pulled and tugged at Chuuya’s clothes, he remained entirely unmoved. His hat and coat were weighted down by gravity, kept firmly pinned to his head and shoulders, just as Chuuya himself was weighed down against the rooftop. An instinctual use of his ability, as easy as breathing.
Chuuya swung his legs out over the edge of the rooftop, gazing downwards. It was a long, long way down beneath his feet, the base of the Port Mafia headquarters blurry with distance, but he didn’t pay that any mind. After all, there was no danger to be found in heights for him, not when he could walk down the length of the entire building, leaving scuff marks across all the shining windows.
So without concern for being swept over the edge, he simply watched the birds circling below, and wondered.
After what felt like a long time, or perhaps no time at all, the service door creaked open behind him. He didn’t need to look to know who it was — he could recognize the footsteps.
A flutter of pink and white robes settled beside him slowly, the swirl of fabric catching the corner of his eye, and he watched as Kouyou knelt, her movements bearing as much elegance as ever even on the rather grubby rooftop. She must be unusually concerned in order to ignore the potential damage to her clothes.
“Lad,” Kouyou said, quiet but just loud enough to be heard over the wind. “What are you doing up here?”
Chuuya kept staring out at the city, the skies, and the birds, and found he couldn’t think of any answer that would make sense. Not when spoken out loud.
“Watching birds,” he settled on at last.
“So I see,” Kouyou said drily. “An admirable hobby, I am sure, but why are you watching birds right now?”
“Why not?” Chuuya countered.
Kouyou clicked her tongue and shifted on the rooftop, folding her sleeves in her lap with irritable but precise movements, as though venting her anger through neatness. “Why not? My dear, whatever may have happened at that warehouse, all our reports indicated there were no survivors. You never reported back after the mission, and your phone isn’t taking any calls. My subordinates had to be the ones to tell me that you were sitting out here, entirely unscathed,” she said. She glowered at Chuuya for a moment, her gaze scorching even when not faced directly. “You might have at least told me you were alive, lad.”
There was a note of hurt buried in her words, and deep in Chuuya’s mind, he felt guilt for it, a pang that briefly cut through the odd weightlessness clouding the rest of his emotions.
And so Chuuya tried. He tried to think about the words she was saying, to feel a proper amount of contrition for worrying her.
However, when Chuuya attempted to return his thoughts to that place of blood and ruin beside the sea, to think of something to say, a dense shadow fell over his mind.
It didn’t feel like grief, it just felt like…nothing. A numb mass he instinctively recoiled from, a black hole of emotion that reminded him too much of dull red irises, bandages, and an empty smile. Everything Chuuya wasn’t, everything he couldn’t allow himself to be.
He took a breath.
It felt like he was dragging through treacle, but nevertheless, Chuuya fought against the heavy air to turn his head to meet Kouyou’s gaze.
“I’m the only one,” he said, and his voice came out oddly distant. “I’m the only one who survived, ane-san.”
Kouyou’s expression softened at that, and she let out a quiet sigh. “So I presumed,” she said, and laid her hand on his shoulder. A gesture that should have been comforting, but felt uneasily like yet another weight pulling him downwards. “I am sorry, lad. It is a tragedy, but one we can recover from with time and effort. And regardless of what went wrong, you cannot stay out here forever. The people who are left still need your strength. We all do.”
…Ah.
Chuuya was going to have to face them all, wasn’t he?
Not just the boss, not just Kouyou, not just those in the organization who remained, but also those who had died.
He was going to have to shoulder the weight of the lives he had let slip between his fingers, of the families and friends left behind by their loss.
Because it was his responsibility, it was his —
Chuuya went still. Beside him, Kouyou was saying something, but he couldn’t hear a word over the sudden and deafening ring in his ears.
It was his fault.
They all died because of him, because he hadn’t realized what their opponents had planned, because he hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t protected them.
Just like Suribachi city, just like the Dragonhead conflict, just like the Flags, the Sheep, just like every time Chuuya tried, or cared, or existed.
Because of me, my fault, always —
“Because of you, Chuuya.”
A precise, impartial voice.
Then, like floodgates had been opened, other voices followed. Some from memories, some imagined, but all with the potency of pure poison.
“This is your fault, Chuuya.”
“Your birth itself was a mistake.”
“We all died ‘cause of how unique you are.”
“It wouldn’t have had to be like this if you weren’t so strong.”
“All you did was ruin our lives.”
As Chuuya sat, frozen, the nothingness took on a shape. One of bones, with empty sockets for eyes, bearing down on him, crushing him into the earth.
This should have been you.
The words curled around him like a cage of suffocating wires, piercing his back, wrapping around his heart, his mind, until all he could see was red, and all he could hear were screams.
No. No, no no no no —
With a jolt of pure terror, Chuuya managed to wrench himself free for a precious few seconds. He stumbled to his feet, the wind sweeping around him, the chill only worsening the trembling in his hands.
The city laid spread out below, all the windows forming a kaleidoscope of eyes staring back at him.
And before he could think twice, he leapt.
“—? Lad!” he heard Kouyou shout after him, startled and desperate. “Chuuya, come back —!”
But harsh wind was rushing in Chuuya’s ears, his heart pounding with panic he couldn’t contain, and he didn't stop. He fell through the air, letting gravity pull him down, down, until he landed on a neighboring roof, cracking the concrete on impact.
Even then, he didn’t pause. He pushed himself forward, ignoring the leaden sensation in his limbs and the ever-looming presence of the black towers behind him. Sprinted across the rooftops, away, away. Took the next leap, and the next, escaping across the city through the skies, where no one else could hope to reach him. Each second he spent on the ground felt dangerous, like he could be caught and chained down at any moment.
The only coherent thoughts left in his frantic mind were of birds. Everything else was shoved down, locked in a box before it could swallow him up for good.
If only he were a bird, able to fly away into the skies, and never have to look down again.
He’d be free of everything, of the crushing weight, and of the invisible bonds tying him to the earth.
A terrifying thought, and a horrible one. It was never an acceptable time to run away, and yet Chuuya had done just that. Away from Kouyou, no less.
But he couldn’t go back. If he did, something would break, he could feel it. The nothingness would come back, and this time, it would crush him for good.
So, he ran.
The clock ticked on the wall, counting out the seconds. Pencils scratched, keyboards tapped without pause, busily filling up those seconds.
Dazai heaved a sigh, and went on staring up at the ceiling. He was laid out on his back, with his hands behind his head and his legs hooked over the arm of the couch, the very picture of languor.
It was an unusually relaxed day at the agency. Atsushi and Kyouka were out finding a missing cat, Kenji was busy tending the office plants, Yosano seemed set on sharpening every scalpel and hatchet in her infirmary, and the rest of the detectives had more or less resigned themselves to handling overdue reports and other tedious paperwork.
Dazai, of course, was not among those bent over their desks, writing diligently. Instead, he was occupied with thinking about why, exactly, things were so quiet, and why the agency hadn’t had any new cases in the past few days.
He thought he understood, at least in part.
A week prior, there was a sizable explosion in Yokohama’s port, one that blew up a swath of docks and warehouses, leaving nothing but rubble in its wake.
The source of the explosion was no mystery; in the days that followed, Mori had rather unexpectedly sent the detectives a brief but thorough explanation of the incident, detailing it as a conflict with a smaller organization that went tragically wrong. It was not, as Mori stressed in the letter, an intentional act of destruction, but an accident, and he did not wish for such an unfortunate event to lead to accusations of the Port Mafia violating their ceasefire.
In the aftermath of that accident, the entirety of Yokohama’s underworld went silent, like a bunch of rodents frightened away into their dens. It had been a boon, as the agency needed all the manpower they had in order to help the injured and clear the wreckage from the waterfront. Atsushi and Kenji in particular had been indispensable, their abilities responsible for much of the cleanup.
Even as the days passed and the city remained oddly law-abiding, it still made sense to Dazai. The Port Mafia was recovering from a large loss in their ranks, after all, and the rest of the underworld was no doubt shaken, especially considering that the exact nature of the destruction had not been revealed to anyone outside of the agency and the mafia. For all the rest of the underworld knew, it could have been caused by some new terrifying ability user who was now prowling throughout Yokohama. Hopefully, Dazai reflected, the rumors would serve as a deterrent for smaller organizations trying to engage with the Port Mafia.
In short, the situation was a tragedy, but not a mystery. Everything Mori claimed in his message matched perfectly with Dazai’s observations of the scene, and no reports they had received since had indicated that there was anything more to the incident.
…Which was why it didn’t make sense for Dazai to be filled with a creeping sense of dread, growing stronger the more days passed. He couldn’t pinpoint where the feeling was coming from, or why it was so persistent. It was just there, like a knot in his stomach that wouldn’t loosen, no matter what he tried.
The last time he had felt such a nagging feeling was four years ago, in a low lit bar, as a camera captured a friendship for the final time. So it wasn’t something he could ignore, not when the last time he had felt that dread had led to his hands covered in Odasaku’s blood.
Something felt wrong.
But for the life of him, Dazai couldn’t figure out what.
It was a testament to how on edge he was that when his phone began to ring in his pocket, loud and jarring in the busy quiet of the office, the sound nearly startled Dazai clear off the couch. He sat up at once, pulled the phone from his pocket, and frowned down at the screen.
…Hmm. For all his myriad predictions, a call like this certainly hadn’t featured among them.
“Dazai?” Kunikida called from his desk, after a few seconds had passed and Dazai continued to let it ring. “What is it?”
Dazai stood quickly, and poked his head around the divider to fix the other agency members with a grin. “Ah, simply a call from a woman of stunning beauty! Responding to my advances at last, it seems, so I’ll step out a moment to take this, if you don’t mind. Don’t be jealous of me, Kunikida-kun, I’m sure you’ll find your perfect ideal someday soon as well~!”
Kunikida spluttered and turned red, as thoroughly distracted as Dazai intended. “That is an entirely inappropriate discussion for a workplace!” he snapped, and returned his attention to his reports with a huff, his ears practically crimson. “Take the damn call then, but you’d better not use this as an excuse to skip work. Your reports are still only half-finished, you damn layabout!”
With a laugh and a frivolous wave, Dazai stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him, cutting off the curious stares from Tanizaki and Naomi, and the thoughtful gaze from Ranpo.
Only then, in the silence of the hall, did he tap at the screen of the still-ringing phone and raise it to his ear, his mind awhirl with questions.
“Ane-san,” Dazai said the moment the line connected. “What an unusual honor! What could possibly drive you to contact such a lowly traitor as myself?”
“I consider this more of a business call,” Kouyou’s voice crackled curtly through the receiver. “You are a detective these days, are you not?”
“Indeed,” Dazai said, performing a bright smile for an audience of none. “But whyever do you ask?”
“I have a job for you.”
“Haha, is that so? I’m afraid our rates are quite high for mafia, even you may not be able to afford —”
She cut him off, apparently in no mood for repartee. “I need you to find Chuuya-kun.”
Dazai’s head jerked up, and he stared at the wall across from him for a moment, all his theorizing abruptly ground to a halt.
The feeling of wrongness twisted inside him, and solidified into something cloying and terrible.
That explosion, the Port Mafia’s involvement — had Mori lied about the cause of the blast after all?
Except — no, there had been none of the usual traces of gravitons carving out the landscape, and if it had been Corruption, Chuuya would be dead.
“...Ane-san, when you say ‘find him’,” Dazai said slowly. “Am I to take it that Chuuya is missing? Under what circumstances?”
“He left,” Kouyou said, and her voice sounded strained. “I saw him once after the explosion at the docks, a week ago, but not since. He was at headquarters, and he seemed unharmed, but he was behaving strangely. Since then, all our search parties have been unable to locate him.”
Dazai tensed further. “He was there at the warehouse?”
“Yes, regrettably so.”
Something like that would certainly have an effect on Chuuya, given his past, but for him to disappear? “I would have expected the slug to be throwing himself into work after such an incident,” Dazai said, narrowing his eyes. “He’s not holed up in his office, or his apartment? What about somewhere high up? The roof, perhaps?”
“We’ve checked his office and his apartment, and he’s not there. When I saw him last, he was on the roof,” Kouyou admitted quietly. “But after we spoke, he…ran away. He hasn’t been back, not even for our weekly tea time.”
That couldn't be right. Besides the fact that Chuuya was never late for any of his appointments, especially not with Kouyou — “Chuuya doesn’t run from anything,” Dazai said, because that had always been a constant in his life, an undeniable fact that could be relied upon. “He’s far too loyal a dog for that.”
“I already told you, lad, he was behaving strangely,” Kouyou snapped. “Whether you call it running or not, it doesn’t matter — I didn’t call you to argue over semantics. Just find him. I’ll provide compensation to that wretched agency of yours, however much is necessary.”
It was the desperate note in her voice, more than the anger, that truly made the situation sink in.
Chuuya was missing, and had been for a week.
Dazai let out a breath, curled his nails into the bandages on his palm to calm the sudden storm in his mind, and only spoke when he was sure his voice would be as level and light as usual.
“Rest assured, you don’t have to ‘compensate’ me, ane-san,” he said, and began to make his way down the hall away from the agency door, heading for the stairs. At least Kunikida would just assume he had gone off to flirt — that would afford Dazai some time before he was pestered about work again. “If the mafia can’t manage their own unruly mutts, I’ll gladly step in. No charge required.”
A disapproving silence fell on the other end of the line for a moment, and when Kouyou spoke again, it was in a low and almost solemn warning.
“Be careful with him,” she said. “I expect him to be in one piece when you bring him back, or you will not enjoy the consequences, lad.”
Dazai stopped dead on the stairs, clutching the railing with one hand and his phone with the other, his fingers digging into both a little too harshly. “You said he was unharmed,” he said sharply.
“Physically, yes,” Kouyou said, grim and quiet.
Then, with a quiet beep, the line went dead.
For several moments Dazai stood there in the stairwell, listening to the silence, as though hoping the air itself could give him answers.
Then he began to race downwards, taking the steps two at a time.
Despite Kouyou’s words, the first place Dazai went was Chuuya’s apartment. Even if Chuuya himself wasn’t there, he might still manage to turn up a clue of some sort. And he had nowhere else to start.
A busy few moments spent knelt in front of the lock were all it took for the front door to creak open, and Dazai made his way inside, casually sliding his lockpicks back into his coat pocket as he went.
Inside the apartment was dark, the lights out and the curtains drawn. The air was stale, like it had been days since it was disturbed, and as Dazai wandered further down the hall into the kitchen, he found dishes still soaking in the sink, obviously abandoned there for some time.
By all appearances, Chuuya hadn’t been back within the past week at all.
Technically that meant it wouldn’t be particularly useful to linger. And yet…
Something was nagging at Dazai as he stared at the dishes. There were a fair few, the water filling them gone murky and flat. They hadn’t been put in the sink with much finesse, either, all tumbled together at uncomfortable angles.
How…messy.
Unusually so.
Dazai ventured further, poking his head into the living room next. A few books lay half-heartedly scattered across the coffee table, like they had been opened and then instantly abandoned, not even a bookmark to hold a place inside them.
On the table stood a half-empty bottle of wine, left open with the cork laid aside, which was more than a little odd. Normally Chuuya would at least reseal his wine if he wasn’t going to finish a bottle off. Perhaps he had been called away in a hurry to go on that mission?
But when Dazai approached the bottle, it was clear from the thickness of dust layered on the bottle that it had been sitting there far longer than a week.
And it was at that moment that Dazai realized that his gut feeling was entirely justified, and that there was indeed something very, very wrong.
He turned and made his way towards the bedroom, the discomfort roiling in his stomach even stronger than before.
Chuuya was never messy. He didn’t leave things out, or let dishes go unwashed, and he certainly never let his apartment get into a state like this.
Dazai came to a halt, staring through the next doorway.
The bedroom was even worse than the rest.
Clothes were piled up on the bed and the nearby office chair, no rhyme or reason to how they were cast aside. The bed was unmade, and the hamper was full, stuffed to the brink with waistcoats and trousers and dress shirts — all of them woefully crumpled and creased from the maltreatment.
Papers were spread out on the desk, in-progress reports and scattered scribbles alike all shuffled together in an affront to any semblance of organization.
Although Dazai had never seen Chuuya’s rooms in such a state, it was nevertheless a disturbingly familiar sight.
When Dazai’s own bad days bled into bad weeks, and even months, he always found himself grateful that none of his coworkers ever dared venture into his dorm room. If they did, a similar sight would confront them, a visible testament to the shambling darkness that periodically overwhelmed him.
But this was Chuuya. Chuuya, who had powered through his grief countless times, seemingly out of sheer determination and righteous fury. Always pressing onwards, somehow keeping hold of his past while never letting go of his present and future.
When did that change? What could have changed so drastically?
Slowly, feeling as unsteady as if the foundations of the world had just shifted beneath his feet, Dazai sank down on the rumpled bed sheets, rested his chin in his hands, and thought.
…Whatever had happened, it clearly didn’t start a week ago, which made it unlikely it was some sort of ability causing Chuuya’s change in behavior.
Kouyou had spoken as if it was only after the explosion that Chuuya began to act strangely. So the incident did act as some sort of trigger, but wasn’t the initial spark.
Perhaps it had merely been the final straw.
With a vigorous shake of his head, Dazai did his best to push that disquieting thought to the back of his mind. After all, dissecting Chuuya’s motives didn’t matter unless Dazai could actually find him, and brooding over the possibilities wouldn’t get him there any faster.
So instead, Dazai rummaged through his pockets for his phone, and set about hacking into Chuuya’s bank account.
Luckily it wasn’t his first time, and Chuuya didn’t seem to have introduced any new security measures since they were teenagers — at least, none that Dazai couldn’t bypass with ease.
Once he got access, he would be able to see the history of all Chuuya’s credit cards, and that, at least, might give Dazai some indication of where Chuuya had gone.
As long as he’s still alive and able to spend money, that unhelpful voice whispered at the back of Dazai’s mind.
Dazai ignored the unhelpful thought, and continued to tap rapidly across the keys. “If I were a stray dog,” he muttered to himself, “where would I go…?”
After a few moments, he paused, blinking down at the screen in surprise.
There were only a handful of charges on Chuuya’s account within the past week, all fairly inexpensive, and all from the same store.
A convenience store, to be precise, within Yokohama.
…Eh?
A quarter of an hour later, Dazai arrived in front of the store — and promptly had to stop to catch his breath, doubled over and wheezing as he clutched at his side. As he recovered, he squinted through the windows, trying to see past the pasted-on advertisements and signs.
From what he could make out, it looked like any other convenience store, not remarkable or unusual in any way.
Once he could breathe past the stitch in his side, Dazai straightened and pushed the door inwards, a cheery electronic tone announcing his entry. The shelves inside were neat and densely packed, and a scattering of people drifted down the rows, putting packaged foods and drinks in carts, some talking and laughing with each other as they shopped.
None of them were tiny and unfashionable enough to be Chuuya.
There was a line at the cash register, and no visible employees apart from one elderly gentleman manning the counter. The cashier was the best bet for information, Dazai knew, but he hesitated a moment, considering his best approach.
After a quick internal debate, he grabbed a few onigiri from one of the refrigerated shelves beside the entrance and joined the line, despite the latent restlessness urging him to surge forward. It wouldn’t be any use to startle a civilian with sudden questions — he was much better off being casual, and subtle as possible.
Despite that resolution, Dazai found himself struggling not to shift back and forth on his feet as the gentleman manning the counter chatted with the customers in front of him, sparing them each cheerful pleasantries. It all no doubt made for a splendid customer experience, but each second wasted made Dazai want to vibrate out of his skin with impatience.
Because even though Chuuya had been lurking somewhere in this area, even if the last charge on the card had been just earlier that very day, that didn’t mean Chuuya was going to stick in the same place forever. Goodness only knew what Chuuya had been doing around here in the first place, and Dazai might not catch him in time if he didn’t hurry, and this was his only lead —
“Excuse me, but I believe you’re next in line, young man,” the elderly man said kindly, and Dazai startled out of his whirlpool of thoughts with a jolt.
“Ah, my apologies,” Dazai said, moving forward and setting down the two rice balls on the counter with a winning smile. Then, as he took out his wallet and handed the money over, he began to speak, very calmly. “Sir, this may seem abrupt, but — have you seen a man in here? My age, but very short, wearing a dreadful hat? He mostly dresses in black, and he has light brown hair with a slight ginger tinge to it, but it’s cut like he lost a fight with a lawnmower, and he growls at everything so he might seem a bit like a punk but I’ve caught him helping little old ladies across the street before, and he has a collar that he insists is a fashionable choker —?”
“Well now, that does ring a bell,” the man said, cutting off Dazai’s very calm but rapid speech. He looked up at Dazai curiously, his eyes bright with concern behind his heavy wrinkled eyelids. “Is he a friend of yours, lad?”
…Friend?
“I —” Dazai began, feeling suddenly wrong-footed. “I suppose, in a way, he — that is, I’m his partner.”
Chuuya most likely wouldn’t agree, not anymore, but it was simpler than explaining what they really were to each other. Ex-partners, not-really-enemies, Double Black — none of it would make sense to this man.
“Oh dear, I do hope you can find him, in that case,” the man said sympathetically, handing over Dazai’s change. “I don’t have the best memory for newcomers nowadays, but I do believe I saw someone who looks as you say. A very quiet young man, but I remember him for the leaves in his hair. Ah yes, and when he came in this morning, I believe he had a bit of moss stuck on his coat as well. Quite peculiar, I thought, but he didn’t linger long enough for me to ask if he was alright.”
Dazai took his change and a small bag with the onigiri packed inside, entirely on automatic.
“Moss,” he repeated blankly. “And leaves?”
“Yes,” the elderly man said thoughtfully. “And it looked like the poor boy hadn’t been sleeping very well, he had the most dreadful shadows under his eyes. Make sure he takes care, won’t you?”
Dazai gripped the bag tighter. It was difficult to promise such a thing, when he still didn’t even know what was happening, let alone what state Chuuya would be in when he found him.
“Of course,” Dazai settled on at last, and he turned to go. “I’ll do my best.”
Several hours later, as the sun began to dip down towards the horizon, Dazai collapsed on a park bench, sweating, once again out of breath, and aggravated.
…Chuuya really was far too small. He should not be so difficult to locate.
Dazai had searched the whole area, and not a sign of the blasted chibi. Courtesy of his inquiries in more shops, Dazai’s bag of onigiri now also contained several drinks, a small bento, and melon bread, as well as disinfectant and bandages, and his arm was frankly too worn out and sore to still be carrying it.
The first place he had checked was the damn park, because surely it was the only place around where Chuuya could’ve gotten covered with moss and leaves? — but he had done two loops of the place, only to turn up nothing. After that he had checked the surrounding hotels, looked in cafes, spoken to passing strangers, strained his neck to try to see atop roofs, always scanning for that familiar silhouette — all to no avail. For an area that Chuuya had supposedly been occupying for the past week, absolutely no one seemed to have seen him, apart from the man in the convenience store.
At this point, it really seemed that Dazai might have missed him entirely. And if that were the case, what next? Hope that Chuuya bought something with one of his cards again, and try to catch him that way?
It was all taking too long, and Dazai still didn’t have enough information. He had to see Chuuya with his own eyes, and make sure…
…Make sure what?
Dazai felt a poke at his kneecap, startling him from his thoughts, and he raised his head from where it had been buried in his hands.
Before him stood a girl of perhaps seven or eight, with grass stains on her shirt and dirt smudged on her face. Her left knee was scraped and bloodied, like she had fallen, but she didn’t seem to be paying it any mind, and was glaring at Dazai as if in accusation.
“Hey, you alright, mister?” the kid demanded, poking his knee again. “You look like you’re gonna cry.”
Dazai blinked, baffled, and quickly plastered on a smile. What had his face been doing when he wasn’t paying attention? That wasn’t like himself, he should have better control than that. “Cry? Hardly, I’m perfectly alright,” he said lightly.
“Good,” the kid said, nodding fiercely. “Cause big kids don’t cry, and you’re even bigger’n me. I’m not gonna cry, so you can’t either. Okay?”
…Well, that was certainly a line of logic. Now that Dazai was looking, she wasn’t actually glaring at him; rather, it seemed she was screwing her face up to disguise the tears in her eyes.
And Dazai’s mind must have been even more broken than he thought, because for a moment, he saw reddish-brown hair and a twisted glower.
He shook his head at himself. This wasn’t Chuuya, this was just some stubborn kid, and their situations were hardly comparable.
Because when Chuuya was this girl’s age, he was trapped in a lab, suffering through hell.
…Dazai’s thoughts really weren't on his side today.
“You must be very grown up indeed, to not cry over such an injury,” Dazai remarked to the girl, and began digging through his bag of purchases. He pulled out one of the plasters and a packet of disinfectant, and handed both to her. “Here, kid. Put that on it, and then wrap it up properly.”
The girl took the makeshift first aid and looked down at the items a bit dubiously. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “It doesn’t even hurt —”
She broke off with a sniffle, and glowered harder.
Ah. It definitely hurt.
“Even if it doesn’t hurt now, you should still make sure it’s clean and covered up,” Dazai said diplomatically. “My doctor friend tells me infections are dreadfully painful, and you wouldn’t want her to have to treat you, trust me.”
The kid paled a little at that, clearly taken aback by the thought. “No no no, I don’t wanna go to a doctor!” she exclaimed.
“Well, you may have to, if you don’t take care,” Dazai said, summoning up his very gravest expression.
Apparently sufficiently motivated by that threat, the girl plopped down on the bench beside Dazai and began applying the disinfectant to the scrape at once, getting it everywhere in her hurry.
Oh, well. Her clumsy application would probably be good enough, the bleeding didn’t look deep.
And now Dazai had a bargaining chip.
“Now then, in exchange for my expert medical advice,” Dazai said, pulling out his phone. “Could you tell me if you’ve seen this man anywhere?”
The girl glanced at the photo on the screen, then at Dazai, squinting up at him. “Why? You the police?” she asked suspiciously.
“I — no, not exactly,” Dazai said, momentarily thrown. “Well, I’m a detective, but I’m not trying to arrest him — I’m his partner.”
“Oh. That’s alright then,” the girl said with a shrug, and returned her gaze to the picture.
It was a bit fuzzy, but it was the best one Dazai had of Chuuya. It was more than four years old, from a night when they had been celebrating one of their mission’s successes. The celebration had devolved quickly into bickering over which parts of their plan actually worked, and what had nearly gone wrong, until a drunken Chuuya became positively impassioned over the matter.
Finally, in his hurry to provide a counter-argument to Chuuya’s irritating barks, Dazai had accidentally spilled his drink on himself, splashing whisky all across his own face and collar as he tried to illustrate his point with a recklessly expansive gesture.
And Chuuya had burst out laughing, doubling over and howling as Dazai spluttered and whined.
Transfixed at the sight, startled from his frustration, Dazai had pulled out his phone and snapped a picture, quick and thoughtless. Chuuya had been too caught up in laughter to notice, and Dazai hid the phone before he could catch him, only daring to look at the picture later.
The result was a photo just barely in focus, blurry around the edges. In it, Chuuya’s face was flushed, tears of mirth caught on his eyelashes. His mouth was mostly covered by his hand, but behind it you could see the curve of his lips parted on a bellowing laugh.
Dazai had about a hundred different backups of it, all hidden in various secure locations. It was such perfect blackmail material, a memory of a time when Dazai genuinely made Chuuya laugh, even if it was by accident.
…Of course, it always seemed a waste to use such splendid blackmail to tease Chuuya unless the timing was perfect, and the perfect time never came.
Dazai certainly never thought he’d have to use it to search for his partner, but life truly was a winding road of twists and turns.
It was probably no use, anyway. It was a long shot to think this kid would have seen —
“Oh,” the kid said suddenly. “It’s the weird guy in the tree, isn’t it? I’ve seen him, he’s been in the park for days.”
Dazai nearly dropped the phone.
The kid gazed up at him, guileless, clearly unaware of the internal crisis her words had caused.
Chuuya was that close the whole damn time?
“Show me,” Dazai said, then hastily added, “please.”
After a very circuitous trip through the park, the kid finally came to a halt.
“That one,” she said, pointing at a fairly large tree which stood tall in a crowd of smaller, bushier trees. It was near the middle of the park, a fair distance from any of the paths. “He’s been up there every time I look. I keep checking to see if he’s still there, and I wanted to ask him what he’s doing, but my big sister told me I shouldn’t go talk to him.”
“Your sister is quite right to be careful of strangers,” Dazai said absently, staring at the tree. It was early spring, the new leaves only just beginning to grow, but it was apparently enough to completely conceal the mafia executive within its foliage. It was no wonder, really, that Dazai hadn’t been able to find him. “Speaking of your sister, you should go find her now, kid. But, thank you. And make sure you keep that scrape clean.”
“Kay,” said the kid, and poked him in the knee again, a parting jab. “See you, mister.”
Dazai waited until she was gone, running across the open grass the way they came.
Then, one hand in his pocket and the other casually swinging his shopping bag at his side, he approached the tree.
It wasn’t until he was right underneath that he could see anything up in the tangle of branches, but when he finally could, he stopped, and stared.
Chuuya’s hair was, indeed, full of leaves. And there was moss on his coat, just like the man at the convenience store said.
He was sitting cross legged on one of the branches, staring upwards, and his coat had gone shabby around him, probably from being dragged about a tree for a week.
Dazai let out a silent breath of relief.
He’s still here.
“Why, I see a little dog has gotten stuck up a tree,” Dazai drawled out loud. “Whatever are you doing up there, chibi?”
Chuuya didn’t look down at him, didn’t even flinch. “Shush,” he murmured, still staring up into the dense canopy of leaves.
More than a little taken aback, Dazai huffed indignantly. All that blood sweat and tears to find the infuriating man, and now Chuuya wouldn’t even acknowledge him?
“Dogs shouldn’t ignore their —” Dazai began to argue, but Chuuya cut him off at once with a wave of his hand.
“Go away,” Chuuya said dully, continuing not to spare him the slightest glance. “Go bother someone else, I don’t care who. You’re scaring them off.”
Dazai paused, and scanned the rest of the treetop suspiciously.
Scaring who off? By all appearances, Chuuya was completely alone.
Not only that, but he wasn’t reacting to Dazai’s taunts at all in the way he usually did. That, really, was most disconcerting of all.
As annoyed as Chuuya usually became with him, he had never shrugged Dazai off entirely, not like this. It didn’t even seem like he was particularly irritated, more…tired. Worn out.
Kouyou’s words echoed in Dazai’s ears. Be careful with him.
…Ah, blast.
New strategy, then.
Dazai glanced down at the bag in his hand, formulating a hasty plan.
“I suppose I’ll have to eat all this lunch myself, then,” Dazai sighed gustily, and began to turn away. “It’s Chuuya’s loss!”
He had only taken a few steps across the grass when he heard a slight shift in the tree above him.
“...Oi. You brought food?” Chuuya asked, an edge of incredulity entering his flattened voice.
Suppressing a smile, Dazai turned back to see Chuuya finally peering down at him, albeit with a slight frown.
The man at the shop was right about the shadows beneath Chuuya’s eyes, as well.
But despite that, there was still light to be found there.
Dazai hefted the bag up for Chuuya to see, letting it crinkle invitingly. “I happened to buy too much to eat by myself,” he lied. “Hungry, slug?”
Chuuya narrowed his eyes in suspicion, looking between Dazai and the bag. Like a feral animal, Dazai thought, deciding whether or not to trust a stranger.
And like he would with any skittish animal, Dazai held perfectly still and held his breath, keeping a teasing smile plastered across his lips.
Finally, Chuuya sighed, rolled his eyes, and reached down, offering his hand. “Fine,” he grunted. “But if you come up here, you have to be quiet.”
Dazai blinked. He hadn’t actually expected to be invited up himself, food or not.
“Hurry it up before I change my mind, mackerel.”
“Ah — right.”
Scrambling a little in his haste, Dazai stepped close to the trunk of the tree, hopped atop one of the more prominent roots, and stretched his arm upwards, straining to reach Chuuya’s gloved hand.
The leather brushed against Dazai’s fingers, and he shivered unthinkingly before he collected his wits and grasped Chuuya’s wrist, feeling Chuuya’s hand wrap around his own in return.
And then his feet were off the ground, and he was hauled up into the branches in one swift movement.
Chuuya deposited him on one of the thicker branches sprouting from the trunk, and Dazai flailed for a moment in his attempt to balance himself, breathless and a little dizzy from the sudden lift.
Goodness gracious. He knew Chuuya was strong, of course, but it was always something else to experience firsthand. Dazai had never truly gotten over it.
“Well?” Chuuya prompted, fixing Dazai with a distinctly unimpressed look. He was holding his hand out towards Dazai, palm upwards, and for a deranged moment Dazai thought he was meant to take it, at least until Chuuya clarified. “Hand over the food, then.”
Dazai dropped his hand from where he had begun to raise it to meet Chuuya’s, and laughed a little unsteadily. “Is this the toll for entry into your kingdom, Chuuya-sama?” he teased, digging through the bag to distract himself from his momentary lapse in sanity.
“Shut it,” Chuuya grumbled, and snatched the onigiri and bento that Dazai offered. “…Apparently it’s been longer than I thought since I ate last, that’s all.”
The last charge on Chuuya’s card had been from that morning, so if that was the last time Chuuya had eaten, it was no wonder he was hungry. Which begged the question, what was distracting him such that he had so thoroughly lost track of time?
That concern weighing on his mind, Dazai handed over both of the drinks he bought as well, and watched carefully as Chuuya dug in, absently unwrapping his own onigiri to eat.
“I thought Chuuya preferred fancier food than this,” Dazai remarked.
Not only that, but there was no trace of the manners Chuuya maintained for Kouyou during those weekly tea sessions the two of them had. Chuuya was simply shoveling the food into his mouth without care or finesse, spilling bits of rice and meat with every movement of his chopsticks.
“This’s still better than what we got in the Sheep most of the time,” Chuuya said through a mouthful of egg.
Dazai hummed in acknowledgement, and took advantage of the ensuing silence to give Chuuya a more thorough once-over.
Tangled hair, dirty clothes, leaves everywhere…he looked like a mess.
It was easy enough to conclude that Chuuya had, in fact, been up in the tree for the entire week, probably only leaving it to get food and use a public restroom.
Had he been sleeping in the tree as well? The spring air was still chilly when the sun took its leave, and Chuuya only had his black overcoat to wrap himself with.
At the very least he seemed uninjured, just as Kouyou said —
Except that when Dazai glanced down to return to his own small meal, he noticed dark flakes smudged across the bandages around his wrist. Brown, nearly black, but with a tinge of crimson.
Dazai’s breath caught. He had seen enough of that color enough to last a lifetime.
Dried blood. Right where Chuuya had grabbed him.
“Chuuya,” Dazai’s voice came out sharp, and he reached across the gap between their tree branches to catch Chuuya’s wrist. “Where are you hurt?”
If Chuuya had been sitting in a tree all week, letting some unseen injury fester all this time, it could be in any state by now — perhaps that was why he seemed so off, he could be about to collapse at any moment, about to —
But Chuuya was just staring at Dazai like he had lost it, his chopsticks suspended in the air between them, and he didn’t look like a man about to keel over and die.
“The fuck? I’m not hurt at all, I’m fuckin’ fine!” Chuuya snapped, sounding so much more like himself that Dazai sagged in relief.
Still, he couldn’t let it go that easily. “Then why is there blood on your gloves?” Dazai insisted, gripping Chuuya’s wrist tighter for emphasis.
Because despite the black of Chuuya’s gloves, there was an undeniable layer of rusty brown all over the leather.
And if wasn’t Chuuya’s blood, than that meant —
…Oh.
Chuuya’s subordinates, all those who died in the tragedy at the warehouse.
Oh, dear.
Chuuya hadn’t taken his gloves off at all since then, had he?
Dazai looked up, another question ready on his tongue, but he choked on it at once.
Because in response to Dazai’s words, Chuuya had frozen, his face pale, his expression wiped blank. His pupils were narrowed down to pinpoints, a storm raging his eyes.
And he was staring at his glove.
Dazai had never seen that look on Chuuya’s face before. Not even after the Flags, not even after the hell he went through in N’s lab.
Moving quickly, fumbling in his rush, Dazai stripped the bloodied glove from Chuuya’s hand, a reckless move which sent the chopsticks flying. Then he reached for the other, pulled it off as well, and threw them both down from the tree to land in the grass below.
“Chuuya,” Dazai said urgently, and found his hands on Chuuya’s cheeks, tipping his face up towards his own. “Chuuya, look at me. They’re gone, I got rid of them, you don’t have to look at them anymore, okay?”
Chuuya stared at him, but it was as though he was somehow looking past Dazai, at something only he could see.
“They are gone,” Chuuya said quietly. “ All of them.”
Shit, Dazai thought frantically. That hadn’t been the right thing to say at all, had it?
“I know,” Dazai said, something horribly like helplessness rising up in his chest. He searched for words, none of them feeling right. “But not everyone is gone, Chuuya — ane-san is worried about you, you know.”
The moment he said it, it was clear that wasn’t the right thing to say either. Chuuya’s face went somehow even more closed off than before, and he jerked his head free of Dazai’s grip to stare downwards at his now bare hands. Every muscle in Chuuya’s body looked tense, as though he was prepared to flee at any second, about to leave, and Dazai didn’t know how to stop him, not when every word out of his mouth only seemed to make the darkness in Chuuya’s eyes swirl darker.
Did Dazai even have a right to stop him? After bringing him into the mafia to begin with, only to leave him to suffer alone in the darkness?
If he had done something differently back then, if he had tried to push Chuuya into the light just as Odasaku had done for him, perhaps — perhaps Chuuya wouldn’t be in this state now.
But he had to say something, because if Chuuya vanished this time, Dazai might never find him again —
“— The bento!” Dazai blurted out, snatching the half-empty container up from Chuuya’s lap and pushing it against Chuuya's chest. “Eat it!”
It was a stupid instinct, but somehow, Dazai’s frantic mind thought that if Chuuya kept eating the food, everything would be alright, and Dazai wouldn’t be unceremoniously hurled from the tree.
Chuuya caught the box automatically, and looked down at it with a frown, eyes still hazy.
“...The fuck?” Chuuya rasped, far too apathetically. He began to push the container back at Dazai, his hands visibly shaking. “I’m not hungry anymore, you weird piece of —”
However, at that moment, they were both interrupted by a tiny, soft chirp somewhere above them.
And just like that, Chuuya’s expression cleared.
The tension drained out of him and he sagged back against the trunk of the tree, gazing upwards with a soft look in his eyes.
Baffled, Dazai glanced up and saw a little brown bird hopping through the branches above them, its tiny head cocking curiously in their direction before it continued on its way.
He looked back at Chuuya, and something clicked.
It was like the mere sight of the creature had breathed life back into his partner — even the bags under Chuuya’s eyes didn’t seem as dark anymore.
So Dazai held still, watching him, scarcely daring to breathe.
After a few moments of quiet, the tree began to come alive around them, more and more little birds emerging from the foliage to hop and flutter from branch to branch, pecking at the bark and chirping at one another.
And soon, Chuuya quietly began to eat again, watching the birds in silence. He used his bare hands this time, his chopsticks gone and forgotten.
For his part, Dazai remained rooted in place, wary of moving the slightest inch for fear of ruining the peace once again. But the longer he watched Chuuya, and watched the birds, the more clear a picture began to paint itself in his mind.
So that’s what I scared off when I arrived, he realized. Birds.
It was incomprehensible, but for some reason, looking at them seemed to actually be helping Chuuya.
…Alright, then. Dazai could work with that.
Slowly, painstakingly careful, he shifted back and made himself comfortable in the crook of his branch and the tree trunk.
Then, Dazai tried something new.
“Why do so many birds come up in this tree?” he asked. He shifted his gaze to the leaves around them as he spoke, some part of him irrationally worried that a careless glance might send Chuuya back into that blank state of nothingness. “Why do any birds hang out in trees, anyway?”
A nonsensical question, perhaps, but it would have to do. Dazai really didn’t know anything about birds; such things had never been necessary for him, not in the mafia or the agency.
Chuuya was quiet for a few long moments, then finally spoke.
“…Who knows,” Chuuya muttered. “Seeds, maybe. Looks like they’re pecking at shit sometimes. Think they’re just resting a lot of the time, though. Safer than on the ground.”
“Ah,” Dazai mused. “For a faster escape to the skies, hmm?”
Is that why you’re up here, as well? he restrained himself from asking. So you can run, if you have to?
After that, Dazai constrained himself to silence, simply watching the dance of feathers as the birds hopped and flew and fluttered around them.
The seeds were planted, and all he had to do was wait.
A bit later, as Dazai predicted, Chuuya began to speak, almost as if to himself.
“They’re everywhere,” Chuuya said. “Birds, I mean. These little ones, the seabirds that fly over the port, the ones that dive in the harbor…they’re all over the place.
“But I never really looked at them before. I didn’t realize there were so many different kinds. Did you know there’s more than one type of duck?”
Dazai shook his head, and chanced a sideways glance at Chuuya. “No, I didn’t,” he admitted.
“There’s tons of ‘em,” Chuuya said, beginning to make little gestures as he spoke. “Some have real fancy feathers, some have bright yellow eyes, and one I saw had this real big bill — I thought I was seeing things at first, it looked too big for its head — and they all sit in the water different, too! Their silhouette I mean, or whatever you’d call it. Actually, I’m not even sure some of them were ducks, I swear they were too little, or too weirdly shaped. Oh, and one of them had these feathers that flipped straight up, like this —”
It was like a door had been opened. Chuuya talked, and talked, and Dazai listened, resting his cheek on the slope of the tree trunk, utterly unable to look away from the spark in Chuuya’s eyes.
The sight of that spark lit an echoing flame in Dazai’s chest, and every time Chuuya went down another tangent of enthusiasm it grew warmer, like heated honey seeping through his veins.
How sickening, Dazai thought dazedly, and went on listening.
He heard about the bobbing displays of pigeons, about a flock of gulls banding together to chase off a predator bird, and about the social squabbles of sparrows. It seemed Chuuya had an endless supply of both observations and questions, such that all Dazai really had to do was hum and nod occasionally in response.
By the time Chuuya ran out of steam, the sun was long set, and the birds had all scattered into thin air, gone to roost somewhere for the night. Only when the tree was wreathed in shadow did Chuuya seem to realize how long he had been talking, and his cheeks turned a dark scarlet in the low light.
“Alright, now fuck off. You finished your food, didn’t you?” Chuuya snapped, hackles raised in a blatant attempt at recovering his lowered guard.
“Eh, I’m being kicked out?” Dazai lamented, grinning lazily and stretching out a leg to nudge at Chuuya. “How cruel! Chuuya just wants to keep this tree all to himself. I’ve taken a liking to it, you know!”
“The fuck does that even mean? It’s just a fuckin’ tree, it’s not mine. But you obviously can’t spend the night here,” Chuuya retorted, swatting Dazai’s foot away.
But you can? Dazai wondered to himself.
“Alas,” Dazai sighed. “It truly is such an elegant specimen, far too elegant to be housing a slug. Mark my words, I’ll be back tomorrow! Chuuya cannot be allowed to bask in its arboreal grace all alone!”
An odd expression crossed Chuuya’s face at that, the darkness veiling most of his eyes. “Whatever, you weirdo,” he muttered after a moment, averting his gaze. “Not like I can stop you.”
That was patently untrue. There were all sorts of things Chuuya could do to chase Dazai off, or at least torture him for being a nuisance. Chuuya didn’t have that list of one hundred and ninety punishment methods for nothing.
However, Chuuya hadn’t done any of that. Instead he had reached a hand down to Dazai, and pulled him up into his world.
It was that thought, of all things, which drove Dazai’s next move.
While Chuuya was still glaring off into the darkness, Dazai shrugged out of his own coat, then reached across to wrap it around Chuuya’s shoulders, engulfing the mafia black with tan.
Chuuya jolted a little under Dazai’s hands and looked down at the coat, then up at Dazai, his eyes wide and baffled.
“The fuck are you doing?” Chuuya demanded, digging his fingers into the fabric as though preparing to pull it off. “I don’t need —”
“Too bad! Chuuya touched it with his little paws already, so I’m not taking it back!” Dazai chirped, and swung himself down from his branch before Chuuya could try to give it back. He dropped down to the grass below with a quiet thud, then straightened to give Chuuya a cheery little wave, before making off at a run like a thief in the night.
“See you tomorrow, Chuuya~!”
“Oi! What the hell, Dazai?!”
As he passed through the stark labyrinth of city lights, suppressing shivers at the cold air, Dazai sent one single text to Kouyou’s number.
He’s safe, he wrote.
Then he pocketed the phone and looked up at the faint stars overhead, huffing out a sigh that billowed out in a cloud, a dragon’s breath of smoke.
The lights above reminded him of that spark in Chuuya’s eyes; a luminescent and burning flame, beautiful to behold yet incomprehensibly distant, impossible to grasp.
How was Dazai supposed to keep that spark alive, if he didn’t understand it? How could he be gentle, when everything he touched had inevitably ended up splintering beneath his fingertips? Even his attempts to guide Atsushi forward were always more merciless and clinical than they should have been, too often echoing the brutality of the ways in which he had broken Akutagawa.
How could he help someone as painfully human as Chuuya, when he hardly qualified as one himself?
The question remained in his mind throughout the walk to his dorm, turned over and over until it wore smooth as a stone tossed in a river. As he let himself through his front door, as he dodged his way between the bottles and cans he hadn’t gotten around to throwing out, as he collapsed onto his futon, he wondered, and wondered.
He stared up at his ceiling for a long, long time.
Finally, he took out his phone once more.
In the darkness of his room, only the dim light of his screen to illuminate the shadows, Dazai made a few carefully worded searches, and began to read.
It was a beautiful day. The freshly green leaves of spring were beginning to truly unfurl, and the sunlight dappled through them like golden syrup, warm and welcome after the chill of the night.
And —
“Oh chibi, chibi, let down your hair!”
The peace was shattered.
Chuuya opened his eyes, and scowled down at the irritating man standing on the grass below.
So, the mackerel was back again, just as he threatened.
“It’s the middle of the damn day, don’t you have a job?” Chuuya griped.
His instincts were screaming at him to hide the folded up coat cushioning the back of his head against the hard trunk of the tree, but he kept still, knowing that trying to cover it up would just make Dazai more likely to make fun of him. If he acted like it was normal to use Dazai’s coat as a pillow, perhaps Dazai would follow suit.
…Ugh. Admittedly, some part of Chuuya was grateful to have had another layer of warmth to curl up beneath as he slept, but like hell was he going to say that out loud. Dazai would probably make it into some weird dog thing again, anyway.
“Please, someone of my intellect? I already finished all my paperwork for the day,” Dazai said airily, for all the world like that was a normal thing for such an incorrigibly lazy bastard as himself to do.
Chuuya blinked, then squinted suspiciously. “Wait, really —?”
“Nevermind that,” Dazai cut him off, and raised a bag of what looked like groceries and a lumpy bundle for Chuuya to see. Before Chuuya could get a clear look, however, Dazai tucked the bundle under the arm carrying the bag and raised his freed hand into the air, wiggling his fingers invitingly. “I come bearing offerings! Will that suffice for the toll, Chuuya-sama?”
Chuuya clicked his tongue, but offered his hand down to the other nevertheless. “Quit with that nonsense and get up here, if you’re that determined to pester me.”
“Hoist away, then~!”
Their hands met, and Chuuya nearly let go in shock.
In Chuuya’s distraction he had forgotten he wasn’t wearing his gloves anymore, and Dazai’s palm was startlingly warm against his own.
It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t know when he had last touched someone without his gloves to provide a barrier between them.
Before his mind could do something stupid ( like focus on the feeling of Dazai’s fingers winding tight around his wrist), Chuuya yanked Dazai up and dropped him roughly on his branch, before letting go with an angry little flick of his hand.
“What did you bring?” Chuuya demanded, using the hunger stirring in his stomach to distract himself from whatever that had been.
Dazai had brought a lot, it turned out. Not only had he bought enough food to last Chuuya all day, but the bundle turned out to be multiple duvets, both of them dense and warm.
Chuuya didn’t know what to make of any of that, but Dazai didn’t give him a chance to voice his confusion.
“Did you know that bird lungs don’t expand and contract the same way ours do?” Dazai asked brightly. “And their lungs are proportionately smaller, too!”
Caught struggling with the tall stack of food containers Dazai had just handed him, Chuuya simply stared in response.
“What?” he asked blankly.
“Their breathing is much more efficient than ours,” Dazai said, making complicated gestures in the air as though trying to illustrate his explanation with his hands alone. “Usually, when humans breathe, the old air that’s already gotten the oxygen pulled out gets mixed with the influx of fresh air, because it’s all traveling down the same tube. But in birds, they have this complex system of air sacs that pumps air through in one direction, with each breath pushing the air into the next air sac along pathways where the oxygen can get absorbed into the blood. It means they maintain a steady influx of air, because each expansion and contraction of their chest pushes the air through, both inhalations and exhalations.”
Chuuya’s mouth opened, then closed again.
Dazai didn’t wait for a response, and just tucked in to his own lunch. He was smiling, flushed with what seemed to be pride, like he had just successfully delivered a practiced speech.
“How did ya find all that out?” Chuuya asked carefully, after regaining some of his wits.
“I looked it up,” Dazai said through a mouthful of rice, pulling out his phone and waving it for emphasis. “Much can be gleaned by searching for things, chibi!”
As the device caught the light, Chuuya’s breath hitched.
Just like that, another realization rose up to choke him.
“Oh,” he said, turning to stare off into the middle distance. “...My phone was destroyed, I think. At the warehouse.”
He hadn’t even thought about it, too distracted by escaping the numbness. It simply hadn’t occurred to him, but…
Chuuya reached into his pocket, palm protected by a careful layer of gravity, and pulled out something so smashed and unrecognizable that it couldn’t really be called a phone anymore.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dazai stiffen.
As the silence stretched, Chuuya quietly dropped the shattered device into the now-empty bag Dazai brought, and set it aside.
It wasn’t that Chuuya was particularly attached to it. Thanks to the kinds of skirmishes the mafia engaged in, he had destroyed countless other phones over the years, and he could easily afford a new one.
It was just that the sight of it made him remember the state his subordinates were left in after the blast. The way they had shattered, just the same as his phone.
Bits of glass and bones, strewn alike across the earth.
Something pressed into Chuuya’s hand, and his fingers curled around it automatically, his thoughts as slow as treacle. It took him a moment to look down, and then another to process the sight.
Dazai’s phone, resting in his palm.
“Chuuya can use mine,” Dazai was saying, and as Chuuya was still struggling to think through the clouds in his mind, he took Chuuya’s other hand and pulled out a pen. “This is the passcode, chibi, don’t wash your hand until you memorize it.”
The pen scribbled across Chuuya’s palm, a ticklish and odd sensation. Dazai’s fingers were holding Chuuya’s wrist again, each one a warm brand against his skin.
Chuuya roused just enough to speak. “I don’t need it,” he said, every word heavier than it had any right to be.
After all, there was a reason he hadn’t noticed that it was broken up until that point. Even if he had a phone, who would he call?
Dazai’s fingers let go of Chuuya’s wrist, only to hook under his chin instead, tipping it up until their eyes met.
“Use it to look up birds,” Dazai said, an inscrutable expression hidden behind the curl of his lips. “Doesn’t Chuuya want to know why songbirds can’t walk on the ground very well, and only perch in trees and bushes?”
…Odd.
When Dazai spoke like that, as soft as a feather, the air felt less like he was drowning.
“Sounds like you already know all about it,” Chuuya said, a quiet challenge. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
“Does Chuuya want me to?” an equally quiet offer, an unexpectedly unassuming look in those deep rust-brown eyes.
Chuuya thought about it.
“Just while I eat,” he said, fiddling with the containers in his lap. “...If you insist on being here, you might as well.”
“Of course,” Dazai agreed, releasing Chuuya’s chin with an easy smile. “Well, it all comes down to this tendon in their feet which helps them grip onto branches —”
Chuuya propped his head on Dazai’s folded up coat, unwrapped a platter of vegetables, and listened.
That night, Chuuya lay wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, surrounded by the gentle whisper of wind through the leaves, and read about birds.
It turned out the seabird he saw that first day out on the ocean was, indeed, an albatross. The swirling, up-and-down flight pattern he had seen was the bird riding the aircurrents, using both gravity and lift in turn to maintain its momentum while expending very little energy. That was how albatrosses could stay aloft for years without ever touching land, just like Lippmann had read out all those years ago.
How nice, Chuuya thought. He rather wished he could do the same. Mindlessly wheel through the sky, letting his instincts guide him. What would it feel like to be able to let go like that, to entrust oneself to the swirling embrace of thin air without more than a couple of feathered wings keeping you aloft? The closest Chuuya ever got to that kind of blind trust was giving himself over to Corruption, and that could hardly be called a gentle experience.
Except…sometimes, there were those moments in the aftermath that could almost come close. Moments where he drifted in and out of consciousness, feeling bandaged hands hold him tightly yet gently. A feeling of lightness, of trust, of the stomach-dropping surprise of being caught when he was mid-freefall.
Chuuya gripped the phone tighter, cursing himself for his unruly thoughts. Try as he might, they kept drifting back to the owner of the phone and the coat beneath his head, and the blankets wrapped around him.
It was Dazai’s fault for behaving so peculiarly. The hell was he on, hanging around so much? Chuuya wasn’t foolish enough to take it as an expression of honest concern. Dazai was nothing if not a scheming bastard, and he always did things for a reason. Clearly, there was something he was getting out of bringing Chuuya food, some strategy it was all playing into.
Hell, it could well just be him trying to get Chuuya into a state where he would fight again, making sure he could go back to being useful, instead of avoiding…
Chuuya felt his mind slipping back towards the bad thoughts, the ones that made the heaviness worse, and he sought for a swift distraction. He found one by flipping between different screens of Dazai’s phone, tapping on different applications and mindlessly exploring each one.
…He wasn’t being nosy. After all, Dazai insisted he take the phone, so really, he must have expected Chuuya to look through it.
Most of it was dull, or downright incomprehensible. Dazai’s notes were full of random phrases and collections of words that no doubt meant something to him, but were gibberish to Chuuya. What the hell was “big-cat-fling-cannon” supposed to mean?
The text conversations recorded in Dazai’s messages were similarly uninteresting, mostly exchanges with coworkers containing simple coordinates or one-word instructions. The log of texts from that uptight blonde — Kunikida, was it? — was more sad than anything else, a one-sided stream of endless cursing and demands for Dazai to actually do his work, all left on read.
Only one of the records caught Chuuya off guard — a single text, sent to a number he recognized as Kouyou’s.
He’s safe, it read. It was dated the previous night.
…Oh. Right, Dazai had mentioned that Kouyou was worried about him.
Dull guilt coursed through him, and for a moment Chuuya considered sending her a message himself, or even calling.
But the longer he stared at the screen, the more the task seemed insurmountable.
Because if he spoke to her, he would have to explain why he ran away, and he hardly knew himself.
At the mere thought, the nothingness began to creep back into his mind, and before he knew it he was exiting the app, searching for anything that would keep the numbness from overtaking him.
That was how he found himself opening the photos, some small part of him curious about what such an annoying fish would even take pictures of.
The app opened, a photo flashing up on the screen, and Chuuya nearly dropped the phone, a startled sound slipping past his lips.
It was…Chuuya.
Younger, laughing, flushed and happy. His surroundings looked like one of the Port Mafia bars, but it was a bit blurred and difficult to see, Chuuya himself the only part in focus.
Chuuya didn’t remember a picture like this being taken of him. Why couldn’t he remember it? Had he been drunk? He could reluctantly admit that he looked a bit drunk, but still —
Actually, scratch all that, why was the picture on Dazai’s phone, and why was it the last viewed?!
Had Dazai been using it to ask around to find Chuuya…? That was horrendously embarrassing, if so.
…
But still, why had Chuuya himself never seen it?
It looked like the kind of picture Dazai would use to mercilessly tease him, taunting him for how stupid he looked when he was unguarded and vulnerable.
And yet, Dazai had apparently kept it to himself for years, without saying a word.
The hell was that mackerel up to? Was it part of some long game Chuuya couldn’t piece together yet?
Chuuya hit the back button slowly, still mulling it over, and began strolling absently through the rest of the photos. None of them were nearly as shocking as the first: some were of those agency bastards, some were of ghastly looking crime scenes that must have been for cases, and some were of random little things that must have caught Dazai’s fancy, like a one-eyed cat with a face like a grizzled old pirate, or a cloud shaped like a fish.
It was strangely intimate to look through them all, like seeing the world through someone else’s eyes for a brief moment.
Which only made that first photo seem all the more suspicious, because that couldn’t be how Dazai saw him.
But then, what was it for?
Eventually, unable to keep his eyes open under the heavy weight of night, his thoughts still trapped in a muddled whirl, Chuuya locked the phone screen, tucked it under Dazai’s coat, and curled the blankets tighter around himself.
…Hah. It really is warmer like this…
The next day, it rained, and Chuuya had to concentrate very hard in order to keep himself dry with his ability.
Until Dazai arrived, anyway.
“Such a troublesome dog, making his master go on errands for him!” Dazai sighed gustily as he settled into the tree beside him, wrapped in a comically oversized raincoat. “In such abhorrent weather, too!”
“I didn’t make you do shit,” Chuuya muttered to himself, but he accepted the umbrella Dazai offered him without complaint.
They didn’t speak about the contents of Dazai’s phone that day. In fact, they hardly spoke at all, even when Chuuya shifted over to sit on the same branch as Dazai, holding the umbrella over them both.
They just sat in the tree, and listened to the gentle drum of rain falling around them.
By his fifth day in the tree, Dazai had to admit to himself that he had no idea what he was doing.
Every morning he sped through his work (a rarity which was slowly driving Kunikida mad with disbelief), each day hoping against hope that the agency wouldn’t receive an urgent case that the rest couldn’t handle on their own. So far, he had been lucky, but he was forever expecting the other shoe to drop.
Then, in the afternoon, he would buy as much food as he could carry, and go to the park, where he and Chuuya ate together and talked about birds. Dazai would tease him in ways carefully calculated to be harmless, and Chuuya would snipe back when he had the energy, or simply roll his eyes on the days when his dark circles sunk deeper and his shoulders slumped heavier.
It was peculiar. Dazai had never entertained the thought of having such a human thing as a hobby, unless one could count his morbid preoccupation with death. Yet now he found himself taking every spare moment to read about birds; finding out what the big-billed duck Chuuya saw was just so that he could tell Chuuya about how it filter-fed like a whale, looking up the most peculiar birds he could find, learning about what made feathers function, all just to try to keep that faint spark alight in Chuuya’s eyes.
And still, he wasn’t sure if it could be called helping.
Because while Chuuya didn’t seem to be getting worse, he also didn’t seem to be getting better. He remained abnormally quiet, closing off whenever a subject drifted too close to whatever shadows were hanging over him, and not once did he show any intent to go back to his apartment. His clothes were becoming shabbier by the day, and although Dazai had poked and prodded Chuuya into letting him rinse his hair in a public restroom, the permanent residence in the tree was taking an undeniable toll.
Clearly, their current routine couldn’t continue indefinitely, but Dazai was wary of pushing Chuuya any more than necessary. If he wound up pulling at one of the invisible threads wrapped around his partner, he couldn’t help but fear he would get banished from the tree for good, forced to leave Chuuya to fester alone once again.
It was a delicate balance, one which left Dazai feeling like he was walking blindfolded along a tightrope with a sheer drop on either side, unable to see where the line was wearing thin.
Sooner or later, something had to give.
Dazai sighed, hefted his shopping bags higher on his shoulders, and walked faster across the grass, approaching the tree as swiftly as he could without jostling the groceries too badly. He was later than usual that day, Kunikida insisting on checking his work before he left, and the delay was making his stomach stir uneasily, restlessness propelling him forward.
“Chuuya!” he called up as he reached the base of the tree. “I brought some wine today, if the lightweight slug thinks he can handle a bit of liquor without passing out —”
He broke off.
Chuuya wasn’t on his usual branch.
Or on any of the other branches for that matter, no matter how Dazai craned his neck to scan the tree’s canopy.
His things were still there: the blankets, the leftover containers from yesterday’s dinner, and Dazai’s folded-up coat, crumpled from its constant use as a pillow.
But no Chuuya.
…
Dazai didn’t panic.
He didn’t. He stood there at the foot of their tree, and thought very calmly and rationally about all the possible reasons why Chuuya might not be there.
Perhaps Chuuya got hungry and went to get food. He had done that before Dazai started coming, after all. There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t have done it again, especially when Dazai didn’t show up at his usual time.
Or perhaps Chuuya was feeling better, and had decided he didn’t need to stay in the tree anymore.
…Or, perhaps, something had happened.
Something happened, the uneasy feeling in Dazai’s stomach whispered with terrible conviction. Find him, find him, find him —!
Very calmly and rationally, Dazai got out his new phone. It had been quite a task to convince Kunikida that he lost his old one, even harder to convince him to issue Dazai a new one on company funds, but he was glad of it. Because as long as Chuuya still had the old phone on him, Dazai would be able to find him.
…The thing was, although Dazai felt a pinch of guilt at having given Chuuya a glorified tracking device under the guise of letting him search for bird facts, well. Really, Chuuya should have expected that kind of thing when Dazai offered his phone. And didn’t everyone know that phones could be used like that, nowadays?
It was well worth the further corruption of his own soul to be able to pull up the correct app and search for Chuuya’s location.
The moments as it loaded were torturous, but as soon as the red marker showed up on the map, Dazai let out a quiet breath of relief. It showed Chuuya was still in the park, not vanished entirely. Probably just gone to the shops for some food, as Dazai had first considered.
…Except, as moments went by, the little red dot on the map wasn’t moving.
At all.
More seconds dragged past, and it stayed in the same spot, blinking at Dazai like it was taunting him.
Something was wrong.
Very calmly and rationally, Dazai pocketed his phone, and set down the bags of food at the base of the tree.
And then, he began to run.
Sprint, really, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste. He ran and ran, dodging around benches, children, people with dogs, and trees, all the while unable to quell the violent thudding of his heart. He got odd glances as he went, but he ignored them all, pushing himself onwards.
As he approached the location the tracker had shown, Dazai slowed, gasping for breath. It was a more remote corner of the park, with far fewer passersby wandering the paths than the more high-traffic areas. There were high hedges everywhere, forming narrow walkways beneath the canopy of trees that made the paths feel all the more isolated and cut off from the busy city surroundings.
A perfect place for an ambush, the paranoid part of Dazai’s mind insisted. Anything could have happened to him, shouldn’t have let him out my sight —!
Dazai rounded a corner of the path, prepared for any number of terrible things: to find just the phone with Chuuya nowhere in sight, or to find Chuuya injured, surrounded by enemies, or suffering from Corruption.
None of his predictions quite prepared him from what he found.
Chuuya was there, kneeling on the stones of the path beside one of the hedges. There were no enemies, no red marks tainting Chuuya’s skin. He looked entirely unharmed, at least physically. There was an abandoned bag of shopping on the ground beside him, confirming Dazai’s suspicion that he had merely gone looking for lunch.
But Chuuya’s hands lay limp in his lap, his eyes empty as he stared downwards.
And on the path in front of him was a bird, very clearly dead.
It was a sparrow, one of the mottled brown ones. Probably done in by a cat, judging by the state of it.
And really, Dazai should have known. After everything he had witnessed in his life, after Odasaku, after all the things he had lost —
He should have known that the universe, above all else, was not kind.
It took, and took, even from those who had nothing left to give.
Dazai stepped closer, silent, and knelt by Chuuya’s side.
He didn’t offer any words, and Chuuya didn’t speak.
There was beauty in the creature, even in death. In the spread of its feathers, and the delicacy of its beak.
It was strange. Dazai had always felt a twisted sort of envy for those he killed, feeling it was altogether too kind a gift to bestow upon his enemies.
He couldn’t find any trace of that feeling while looking down at this bird, so small and broken. Only an ache somewhere in his chest, a feeling of resignation rather than vindication.
Of all the many instances he had witnessed the world’s cruelty, somehow this was among those he resented the most.
Absurdly, he wished Yosano could bring the sparrow back to life, but even if her ability had worked on animals, it was clear from the bird’s state that it had been dead for many hours. It even appeared to have been shoved to the side of the path by a careless foot, passed by and dismissed by other park-goers.
After many long moments, Dazai looked at Chuuya.
He saw despair.
It was there in the dull slump of Chuuya’s shoulders, in the utter stillness of his form, and the darkness in Chuuya’s eyes.
It was an expression Dazai knew all too well. He had seen it in the mirror, and in Odasaku’s eyes after he lost the children.
A dead man walking.
When Chuuya did move, it was slow and weighed down, like his ability had turned on him, working to drag him down to earth.
Exhaustion in every line of his body, Chuuya shrugged off his coat, and wrapped the corner of it around the little bird's form. He picked it up with steady gentleness, cradling it in his palms.
Then he stood, Dazai close behind him, and in utter silence, they walked back through the park.
The hole they dug beneath the tree was small. Just big enough to contain the bundle of fabric Chuuya placed inside, torn from the larger whole of his coat.
There was nothing to use as a marker, nothing to distinguish the break in turf from any other displaced clod of grass. However, it would have to do.
As they worked, the other sparrows still called out to one another in the tree above them, just as cheerful as ever, and that somehow seemed cruelest of all. How life continued without care, regardless of what had been lost.
It was only after the final bit of dirt was patted into place that Chuuya broke the silence.
“Most of them didn’t even have full bodies when we buried them,” Chuuya said, staring down at the earth beneath his bare fingertips.
Dazai remained quiet.
He didn’t need to ask to know who Chuuya meant. He had seen the Flags, seen the destruction wreaked by Verlaine.
Back then, Dazai had left Chuuya to suffer the aftermath of that carnage alone. It had all been part of his master plan, an act of careless inhumanity in the name of a greater cause, and yet…
This wasn’t what he had wanted, even then.
“There’s no point,” Chuuya breathed, so quiet Dazai almost didn’t catch it over the whisper of the wind.
Don’t say that.
“There’s no point to anything. Everything ends up dead, no matter what I do.”
You’re the one who never gives up, Dazai wanted to beg. If you say that —
If you say that, then what am I supposed to do?
But he kept the words locked up in his throat. They were selfish words, a desperate cry from the broken thing inside him, and they wouldn’t help. He knew they wouldn’t.
Chuuya tipped his head back to gaze up at the sky. His eyes were just as deadened as his voice.
“I…don’t want to do this anymore.”
Ah.
So that was what it felt like, when a pillar of the world crumbled.
Through the aftershocks, as the light gave way to darkness, Dazai remained knelt at Chuuya’s side, his hands covered in dirt, his knuckles scraped and aching, and he thought.
What would others do in this sort of situation?
Mori would probably find the right words and the right motivation to refasten Chuuya’s broken puppet strings, guiding him back into functioning as the perfect chess piece. Either that or he would discard him, should Chuuya prove too far gone.
Fukuzawa? Although he was a far more righteous man than Mori, he wasn’t the most comforting. He might offer Chuuya a better place to work, as part of the agency, but…
Was that what Chuuya needed? Another workplace, where he would have to fight to save people instead? When he was already so shattered?
No. Not that.
Then, what would Odasaku do?
…Listen, probably. He was always good at that. Sympathize, perhaps, in his odd way. Perhaps even try to push Chuuya towards the light, just as he had with Dazai.
Dazai blinked, and looked at his partner.
What would Chuuya himself do, in this kind of situation?
Chuuya, who always leapt into the fray if he thought Dazai was in genuine danger. Chuuya, who had continued to protect the Sheep for years, even after being stabbed in the back by them all. Chuuya, who stayed in the Port Mafia all this time because he saw it as his family.
Chuuya, who never ever stopped giving everything he had in him for the sake of others.
Chuuya.
And Dazai made a decision.
It didn’t matter what anyone else would do, because Dazai was the only one there.
So he reached out to take one of Chuuya’s dirt-smudged hands between both his own.
“Chuuya,” he said quietly. “Come with me.”
Chuuya raised his head, his eyes far-away and dull. “…Where?” he asked.
“Away,” Dazai said simply. “Out of Yokohama.”
A narrowing of hazel-brown eyes. “Why?” Chuuya asked, a flicker of his usual suspicion darkening his voice.
“Because,” Dazai said. “Nothing matters, right? So come with me.”
Chuuya blinked, slowly. For a moment, that familiar spark flickered in his eyes, a guttering flame.
But before it could catch, it was smothered into nothingness.
Chuuya slumped, letting out a faint, weary breath. “Do what you want.”
I don’t care anymore.
Words unspoken, but no less painful.
Chuuya clearly had no intention of standing, let alone walking, so Dazai carefully gathered him up in his arms, one around his back and another beneath his knees. Chuuya didn’t help, didn’t move to hold on, but he didn’t resist either, letting Dazai maneuver him however he wished.
It was terrifying, how pliant he was.
In the process of Dazai getting to his feet, Chuuya’s black coat fell to the grass, knocked from his shoulders by Dazai’s awkward movements.
Dazai began to crouch back down, prepared to pick it up and carry it with them —
But then he thought about it.
He glanced at the distant towers of the Port Mafia looming over the city, and thought about how Chuuya had gotten into his current state to begin with.
…Perhaps if Mori couldn’t take better care of his executives, Dazai reflected, then he had only himself to blame when someone stole one from him.
So with one last glance at the tree, and the small grave beneath —
Dazai took Chuuya away.
Away from the park, away from the mafia, and away from Yokohama.
Apathetic, the numbness having overtaken him at last, Chuuya rested his head against Dazai’s shoulder, and felt nothing.
Nothing remained. Only an encompassing void, crushing every last emotion from his heart and mind.
Everything was gone, and he couldn’t even bring himself to care what he had lost anymore.
He was so, so tired.
As the last flicker of fire inside him went out, a final cry into the night, Chuuya closed his eyes.
…And drifted.