Chapter Text
It starts with a grave.
The earth still hadn’t settled.
Rain soaked through the Port Mafia coat clinging to Chuuya’s back, cold and heavy.
It clung to his shoulders like a second skin, or perhaps a corpse he refused to bury. Wind howled through the empty cemetery, dragging leaves and memories alike through the air.
Chuuya stood still.
In front of him, a gravestone. Too new. Too clean. Too cruel.
Dazai Osamu
1990 - 2020
"Nothing gold can stay."
The words meant nothing to Chuuya. They weren’t his.
He'd fought the higher-ups on the inscription. Threatened to break the bones of the man who dared to engrave something so poetic on a coward’s grave. Because that’s what Dazai had been, in the end.
A coward.
He hadn’t died in a blaze of bullets. He hadn’t gone out fighting the war. He hadn’t let Chuuya—the only person who’d promised to end him when the time came—pull the trigger.
He’d jumped.
Off the Port Mafia’s highest tower.
A place Dazai knew—knew—was symbolic. Where enemies had been tossed from rooftops, where bodies broke before they bled. Where gravity ruled.
Gravity.
The bastard had jumped to his death knowing what Chuuya's ability was. Knowing.
He used the very force Chuuya commanded to end himself.
Like a joke.
Like a fucking mockery.
Chuuya’s breath hitched. His hand trembled as he curled it into a fist over the wet soil.
“You did this to spite me, didn’t you?” he hissed, voice high and cracking with fury. “You knew. You fucking knew what it would mean. You jumped—knowing I control gravity. You jumped to your death by my own power.”
He dug his fingers deeper into the earth, nails cracking, gloves tearing.
“You laughed when you went, didn’t you? Smiled all the way down. Left me behind with this shithole empire, with your blood on the pavement and your promise rotting in my hands. YOU PROMISED ME!”
The words echoed through the cemetery, torn away by the wind.
Protect me until you can’t. And when you can’t—kill me.
They had made that pact in blood and ash. Dazai was supposed to burn out in Chuuya’s hands. No one else’s.
But Dazai had chosen gravity over him.
Over their promise.
My gravity should’ve held you.
It should’ve caught you.
Why didn’t it? Why didn’t you let me?
“You were supposed to go out with me, not like some pathetic wraith flinging yourself into the air like you wanted me to see it. Like you wanted to make it hurt more.”
He pulled something from inside his coat. A page. Crumpled, stained.
The Book.
It was just a fragment. But it thrummed with potential.
He’d killed for it. Bled for it. Starved and hallucinated and screamed alone in a warehouse until it responded.
Chuuya looked at the page in disbelief that night. His breath caught in his throat, lungs refusing to expand as he watched the ink unravel like it was alive. The flame didn't consume—it transformed. And then the visions started.
He saw him. Dazai.
Not broken. Not bleeding. Not cold beneath a morgue sheet.
But smiling. Laughing under a streetlamp, eyes glinting in a way Chuuya hadn’t seen since they were kids. Hands in his pockets, coat flaring behind him like wings.
He saw Dazai slouched on a couch, head tipped back, sunlight pouring through a window as if the universe itself wanted to bask in him.
He saw Dazai eating ramen with someone beside him—no, another Chuuya—and laughing at something stupid, something soft.
Over and over, Chuuya watched. As if the page had burned open a hole in time. As if it were mocking him.
“You’re alive here?” he whispered, clutching the page. “You’re really… happy?”
His voice cracked into a breathless laugh. Then a sob. Then laughter again—guttural, violent, wrong.
“What kind of sick fucking joke is this, huh?” he screamed into the dark. “You show me this now? When I’m choking on your ghost and trying to lead the Mafia you left me with like a dog with a noose around its neck?”
He fell to his knees, page clenched so tight his knuckles bled.
“You’re not supposed to be happy without me, Dazai. That wasn’t the plan. You promised—”
He choked.
“You said you couldn’t be saved. So why are you laughing like you found heaven in someone else’s world?!”
Then reality cracked open.
It doesn’t feel like magic.
It feels like dying.
Chuuya had expected—what? Light, maybe. A hum. The soft pull of something divine.
Instead, every cell in his body rebelled. His skin went tight over his bones, nerves shrieking like violin strings dragged raw. Something ancient and cruel reached into him, grabbed hold, and twisted.
It was like being shattered from the inside out—
Like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the scaffolding of his being.
His spine arched. His breath caught and stayed. Starlight bloomed beneath his eyelids, searing and cold. His heartbeat stuttered against the weight of a universe trying to crush itself into his chest.
Chuuya remembered the metallic taste of blood on his tongue, of battlefields littered with corpses and silence. He screamed into the void, and no sound came out—his voice devoured by whatever force tore him through dimensions.
Then—
Light.
Air.
Pain.
Yokohama.
But not his.
He staggered out of the alley like a madman, boots scraping pavement too clean, sky too bright. Buildings stretched too high, unmarred by scorch marks or bullet holes.
The air didn’t carry the stench of gunpowder and rot.
Everything was wrong.
The people smiled. Smiled.
Children skipped across the crosswalk, giggling. A couple argued playfully near a vending machine. Businessmen walked without fear of snipers.
The Port Mafia insignia wasn’t branded into every wall. There were no shadows thick with murder, no corner that screamed run.
There was life here.
Not survival. Not blood. Not war.
For days, he wandered. Disheveled. Silent. Watching this unfamiliar paradise. He slept in crumbling stairwells. Ate scraps when he remembered to eat. And all the while, his eyes hunted.
At first, he thought the Book had lied.
Then he saw him.
Dazai.
Alive.
Leaning on a bridge railing like it was the most natural thing in the world, wind tousling his hair. He was smirking, eyes half-lidded in amusement, saying something to the man beside him.
And Chuuya’s world stopped.
No blood. No broken skull. No crimson pool spreading beneath a body.
Dazai was alive. Laughing.
Laughing.
The sound hit Chuuya like a gunshot. He stumbled behind a rooftop ledge, trembling.
Then he saw the one next to him.
Himself.
No—another version. Hair shorter, curled with softness instead of war. Less haunted. Still loud. Still biting. But his eyes weren’t hollowed out from grief. He carried no ghosts.
They bickered. Dazai rolled his eyes. That Chuuya shoved his shoulder. Dazai grinned like he wanted to be there.
It was everything Chuuya had clawed for in his own world—and lost.
He stared until his vision blurred, until the bile rose like fire in his throat.
Then he ran.
Fifteen minutes later, he was on his knees in an alley, coughing up acid and despair. His hands braced against brick, whole body shaking.
“No,” he rasped. “No, no, no, no—”
He punched the wall. Once. Twice. Again. His knuckles split open.
“How dare you,” he whispered, voice rising. “How fucking dare you live like this?”
Tears burned hot and bitter down his cheeks.
“Why does he get to have you? Why do I get the version of you that throws himself off a goddamn tower?!”
He laughed. The sound was wet. Fractured.
“You look happy. Content. Like all the rot in your chest never existed here.”
He dragged a hand down his face, smearing blood and tears.
“I came all this way,” he whispered. “And you’re here. But not mine. Not mine.”
He sank to his knees, trembling. The world around him spun, vibrant and whole, like it had never known ruin. It made him sick. It was like walking through a dream stitched together with someone else’s happiness—someone who wore his face, laughed with his Dazai, and never tasted the ash of war.
His thoughts churned into a storm, eating him from the inside out.
He saw Dazai’s corpse. He saw the blood, the way gravity painted the pavement with finality. And still, this version of him lived. Laughed. Loved. Like Chuuya had never mattered. Like he was just some stepping stone on the way to a better life, a better Chuuya.
He didn’t sleep. He didn’t blink. He walked the streets like a ghost, haunting the corners of a city that was never his. Everywhere he turned, he caught glimpses of them. Together.
A memory burned behind his eyelids—Dazai’s weight in his arms, broken and cold, eyes empty, lips parted like they had one more joke they’d never tell.
And now he was here.
Whole.
Happy.
With someone else.
Someone who had never been asked to kill him.
Someone who didn’t carry the weight of Dazai’s death like a shackle around their ribs.
“I loved you,” Chuuya muttered into the night, lips cracked, throat raw. “I protected you. I was supposed to be the one to kill you. With my hands. Like we promised.”
He wiped his face on his sleeve, blood and tears mixing on his skin.
“Why him?” he whispered. “Why that version?”
He spirals.
“Was this your joke, Dazai?”
He stared down at them from a rooftop. Hands twitching. Mind racing.
“Did you jump so you could haunt me with this? Is this your afterlife? Watching me crawl through a world where you’re not mine?”
He laughed. Harsh. Unhinged.
“What’s the difference between us, huh?”
He watched the other Chuuya laugh with Dazai.
“Why does he get you? What does he have that I didn’t? What did I do wrong?”
He clutched the edge of the building, fingernails cracking against the stone.
“That’s my Dazai. No matter what world, no matter what version—he’s mine. Mine.”
“You let him live. You stayed with him. But me?”
Beast Chuuya’s voice cracked as he slammed a fist against his own chest.
“You ran from me. You used gravity like it was a sick fucking joke. You knew I’d never forgive myself. You knew—and you wanted that.”
His breath hitched. His nails curled into his palms so hard they broke skin.
“You wanted me to suffer, didn’t you?” he seethed, voice spiraling between fury and collapse. “Well. Fine.”
He stopped eating.
Stopped sleeping.
His body became a husk his mind dragged around like it didn’t care if it broke.
He didn’t go out in the daylight anymore. The light made his skin itch. It made his memories louder. Dazai's face lingered in the sun—always half-turned, always walking ahead, always unreachable.
The Book had given him a miracle.
A page for a price.
And he had paid. In blood. In silence. In grief.
He never told anyone—not that anyone remained to tell—that the page hadn’t been used to fix things.
He hadn’t brought Dazai back.
He had brought himself here.
To another world.
To another life.
To his life.
A version where Dazai still breathed and still made that stupid half-smile like death was just another joke he could walk away from.
And this Chuuya—this other Chuuya—got to stand beside him. Got to fight with him, laugh with him, hurt with him. Like it was normal.
Like it was nothing.
At night, Beast Chuuya muttered to himself. The words spilled like ritual, rote and half-prayer.
“I’ll take it all back.”
His fingers would curl tight around the edge of the sink, knuckles white, arms trembling with repressed hate—hate for himself, for the world, for the joke the universe had played on him.
“I’ll take you back.”
The mirror was a cruel thing. It reflected too much.
One night, he pressed a knife to his own reflection. Cold steel met glass. The pressure built like a scream behind his eyes.
“You left me once,” he whispered to the double staring back. “You don’t get to do it again.”
Not when this world still had Dazai.
Not when this world had someone who still looked at him like he could be saved.
And Chuuya—the real Chuuya, the one who had lost—would do anything to get that back.
Anything.
He didn’t care if it broke him.
He didn’t care if it shattered them all.
And so, he began to watch.
To follow.
To memorize every breath, every movement, every inflection of the man who had stolen the life he’d bled for.
And when the time was right—when the blood was thick in the air and the city looked the other way—
Beast Chuuya waited like a predator.
He didn’t eat again. Didn’t sleep again.
He watched.
From the rooftops, the alleys, the reflection in shop windows.
Every step his double took, Beast Chuuya memorized. Every breath, every flinch of pain, every twitch of the fingers when Dazai’s name passed someone’s lips.
It was a slow obsession, the kind that dug under the skin and festered.
It burned in his gut like the phantom taste of a life that had been stolen.
Not just from him.
By him.
And tonight, he had his chance.
Canon Chuuya was limping through the backstreets after a botched mission—his coat torn, lip split, his usual grace dulled by fatigue and blood loss. The world around him was dim and half-dead. The alley he turned into was too narrow, too silent.
Perfect.
Beast Chuuya struck.
No sound. No warning.
A blur of motion as he hurled himself forward, shoulder-first, catching his double in the ribs and slamming him into the wall with a thunderous crack.
Canon Chuuya roared and elbowed him hard in the side of the head.
Beast Chuuya staggered—but smiled.
Split lip, eyes wild.
He wanted the pain.
He needed it.
Canon Chuuya turned, ready to activate his Ability—but the gravitational pulse sputtered and died.
What—?
He barely had time to react before Beast Chuuya was on him again.
“What the fuck—!” Canon Chuuya snarled, catching the other's wrist and throwing him over his shoulder with brutal efficiency. Beast Chuuya hit the ground hard, but rolled and sprang up like something feral.
Canon Chuuya stared at him.
Same eyes. Same snarl. Same voice when he spoke.
“Who are you?”
No answer. Just laughter. Hoarse and unhinged.
They collided again, and the fight devolved into something primal—elbows, knees, broken bones and broken breath. The alley turned into a battlefield made for two.
Flesh slapped against flesh.
Blood splattered across the walls.
Boots skidded, scraped, and drove into gut and thigh and ribs.
Canon Chuuya managed to hook a hand into the other's collar and slam him face-first into the concrete.
“Talk!” he growled. “Who sent you? Is this some kind of mimic? A clone? A goddamn Ability?!”
Beast Chuuya laughed as blood poured from his nose.
“God,” he gasped, coughing, “you don’t even recognize your own ruin.”
Canon Chuuya’s stomach turned. Something was wrong with this version of him—something deeper than just the uncanny resemblance. This man looked like he’d been shattered, glued back together with desperation and bone-deep grief.
Still, he didn’t hesitate. He drove his knee into Beast Chuuya’s chest.
“You think wearing my face makes you strong?” Canon Chuuya snapped. “You don’t know the first thing about—”
“About what?!” Beast Chuuya roared back, twisting and throwing him off. “About being the weapon?! About being the fucking backup plan?!”
His voice cracked with something that didn’t sound like hatred—it sounded like mourning.
They came at each other again, and this time, Beast Chuuya dug his fingers into the side of Canon’s neck and slammed him into a trash bin. Metal bent under the impact. Canon grunted, dizzy—but lashed out with a headbutt that snapped Beast Chuuya’s nose sideways.
Blood. Heat. White-hot noise in both their heads.
They broke apart for a breath, both staggering, both panting like cornered animals.
Canon Chuuya wiped blood from his mouth. “What the hell is this?”
Beast Chuuya’s hand trembled as he pulled a seal from his sleeve. It glowed faintly. Etched in old blood.
Canon Chuuya lunged. Too late.
The talisman slapped against his coat.
His gravitational pulse died.
“You—what the hell did you do?!”
Beast Chuuya didn’t answer.
He pulled the syringe from his pocket with shaking hands. It wasn’t clean. It didn’t matter. He tackled Canon Chuuya again, forcing the needle toward flesh.
They struggled. Grappling in a heap of limbs and snarling breath. Rolling through filth and blood. Canon Chuuya landed a punch so hard Beast saw stars—but he didn’t let go.
The needle plunged in.
Canon choked on a cry. Tried to tear it out.
Beast Chuuya held it steady. His lips were moving. Mouthing things that didn’t make sense.
“You don’t deserve this. You don’t get to live it again. Not when I—I died with him—”
Canon Chuuya slurred, “You’re insane—you’re a lunatic copy, get off me—”
His limbs were already going slack. Muscles unresponsive. Vision swimming.
He sagged to the pavement like a broken puppet.
Beast Chuuya stared down at him.
Shaking. Not from rage.
From grief.
Raw and howling beneath his ribs.
“You don’t understand,” he whispered, to no one. “You never had to bury him. You never held his corpse and begged for time to go back. You never screamed until your throat tore open. You have him. He’s still here. And you—you’re wasting him.”
He grabbed Canon Chuuya’s coat. His fingers curled in tight.
Too tight.
Then he dragged him.
Out of the alley.
Down the backstreets of a city that didn’t know it had just birthed something wrong.
His boots scraped over pavement slick with rain and filth. The limp body behind him thudded against the ground, over broken glass and gutter-water and memories that wouldn’t stay dead. No one stopped him. No one looked. The city blinked right past him like a dream that wanted to forget itself.
The silence outside was loud.
But the silence in his head was louder.
He didn’t speak again. Not aloud.
But his thoughts howled.
They rattled in his skull like broken teeth.
Like the echoes of every time he’d said I’m fine and I’ll survive and I can live without him.
Liar.
He was a liar.
He thought of Dazai’s last breath. The weightless way his body had folded in the end. The way gravity had clung to him like a curse and a cradle.
He thought of the Book. Of the blood it had taken. Of the way it had whispered choose, and he had, and now here he was—dragging a mirror version of himself into the underbelly of a world that didn’t belong to him.
The streets thinned. Twisted. Got smaller.
Stone became concrete. Concrete became rust. Rust became rot.
His feet knew where to go.
His hands didn’t loosen.
His mind was still and shrieking.
He passed through the last gate without breath.
The stairs spiraled down like a ribcage swallowing him whole.
And when he reached the end—when the shadows swallowed the last hint of sky, and the air pressed down on him like guilt—
The facility was cold.
Dead.
Underground.
The kind of place that forgot the sun centuries ago. The kind of place where even ghosts refused to linger, too ashamed of the memories that still clung to the walls like mildew.
He’d found it by accident.
Or maybe it found him.
An old Port Mafia site, half-rotted and buried beneath layers of concrete and secrets. Rooms carved out like wounds. Equipment left behind like a surgeon’s forgotten tools. The scent of rust, mold, and history soaked into every inch of it.
Perfect.
He carried the body down the winding halls, his double’s dead weight dragging with every stair. The man groaned once, head lolling—but the sedative still worked like a cage around his nervous system.
Good.
He kept going.
Deeper.
Down past where the map ended, into the marrow of the city.
He reached the lowest chamber. A surgery room, once. The table in the center had bolts at the corners and rust in the joints. Dust curled in the corners like old whispers.
He laid the other Chuuya out gently.
Too gently.
A strange tenderness flickered through his fingers, and he hated himself for it.
He stripped off the ruined coat. Set it aside. Checked the pulse. Still slow, still sedated. The bindings came next—metal, rope, and sealwork. Nothing pretty. Everything brutal. He bound the limbs at wrist and ankle, looped the rope behind the neck and across the chest like he’d done it a hundred times in his mind.
Because he had.
Because he’d imagined this moment every night since he got here.
The first brush of chalk across the floor felt like exhaling. A release.
He moved with precision, not speed—his hands shaking but never sloppy. Symbols in blood. Runes in ink. A language he didn’t know how to read, but one he understood in his bones. Wards Dazai had once taught him to break. Now he reforged them with the fury of a dog chewing off its own leg.
When the last seal flared to life, the room settled.
Quiet.
Still.
Caged.
He stood over the man who wore his skin.
His double didn’t stir. Didn’t dream.
Not yet.
But he would.
And when he did—when he opened his eyes and looked into the face of the thing wearing his voice—he’d see exactly what grief looked like when it learned how to walk again.
Beast Chuuya crouched beside the table.
Watched the rise and fall of that familiar chest.
He reached out. Brushed a piece of blood-matted hair away from the forehead.
“You got the life I was supposed to have,” he whispered. “But you’re not going to keep it.”
His voice cracked. He swallowed it down like poison.
“This time, I’m the one who gets to stay.”
But the seal hissed softly behind him.
Still warm. Still too new.
Still breakable.
He glanced back at the circle of ink and blood that surrounded the slab. The runes pulsed, alive with power—his power, borrowed and twisted and reborn.
But not perfect.
Not permanent.
Of course it wasn’t.
Of course it couldn’t be.
He sucked in a sharp breath, fingers curling into fists. His knuckles cracked with tension, fury clenching down like a vice.
“He’ll escape,” he muttered, eyes flicking back to his double. “He’s me. He is me. Of course he’ll find the cracks. The weak points. I would.”
Beast Dazai had taught him how to carve seals that held gods and monsters—and how to tear them apart with a breath and a blade.
Canon Chuuya… he’d break free. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week.
But one day.
One quiet hour, one pulled thread, and this whole damn thing would unravel.
And if he—if Chuuya—was out there wearing his skin, then Beast Chuuya would have to keep visiting. Checking. Risking everything just to make sure the man didn’t vanish into the night and reclaim the life Beast Chuuya had finally stolen.
He’d never be free.
Unless…
Unless…
His hand trembled as it reached into the folds of his coat.
The page.
He still had it.
That brittle scrap of otherworldly paper—ink faded and frayed by crossing over. The thing that had dragged him screaming through the boundaries of his world, dropped him here like a curse with a purpose.
He stared at it.
At the lines that didn’t make sense. That hummed with the ache of memories not his. A language he didn’t know how to read, but one he understood in his bones.
A slow, crooked smile split his face.
It was wrong. Too wide. A laugh almost tore itself from his throat, but came out as a breathless wheeze instead.
“Yeah…” he murmured, gaze sharpening like broken glass. “Yeah. I’m the one who gets to stay.”
If the page could bring him here…
Why couldn’t it send someone else back?
His smile twisted into something feral. Violent. Hungry.
Let him taste the Beast’s world. Let him wake up choking on blood and dirt and regret. Let him try to survive in a place where love died young and monsters wore your best friend’s face.
Beast Chuuya rose, slow and deliberate, still clutching the page in blood-slicked fingers.
“You’re me, right?” he said softly, voice barely a breath. “Then maybe you’ll understand.”
He glanced at the sleeping figure again. Watched the peaceful, fragile breath rise and fall.
“Let’s see how long you last on my side of the line.”
And this time, when he smiled, it wasn’t crooked.
It was a promise.
He enters the world through fire. Not literal fire, though it might as well be.
Beast Chuuya exhales into the silence like it’s his first breath in weeks. Maybe it is.
No alarms go off. No one screams. The universe doesn’t punish him for cheating it. Everything just... continues.
He blends in like a shadow slipping into place.
The Port Mafia accepts him without question. He knows everything. Too much, maybe.
The timing is easy—Canon Chuuya’s mission ends in silence, and Beast Chuuya walks back into the Port Mafia headquarters like nothing happened. His uniform is pristine. His posture controlled. There’s blood beneath his nails, but it’s his. Mostly.
Kouyou greets him with a nod. "You’re early."
He just shrugs. "Mission ended fast."
She doesn’t ask more. She looks tired. Everyone always does in this place.
The meetings are the same. The missions. The noise. He walks the corridors of the Port Mafia like a ghost in a borrowed body, except no one notices. No one questions. No one sees what’s been replaced.
He doesn’t talk much. When he does, the words are colder. Sharper.
No more banter. No more poetry. No more French under his breath.
Just reports. Objectives. Kill counts.
Cold steel in his voice.
Most think he’s just been pushed too hard. That he saw something out there that hollowed him out.
He lets them believe it.
He wears Canon Chuuya’s coat, Canon Chuuya’s boots, Canon Chuuya’s face. But the way he moves is wrong. Subtle, but wrong. His weight shifts like he’s waiting for a world that’s not here. His eyes sweep corners he doesn’t need to check. He listens for threats that don’t exist.
He drinks alone.
He used to love wine. Now he lets it go untouched, staring into the glass like it’s a grave.
Sometimes he wonders if this world feels the difference. Like a body rejecting an organ that looks perfect on paper but bleeds differently.
He mimics the gait. The voice. The muscle memory of laughter. But he’s forgotten how to laugh.
Conversations blur. Port Mafia agents speak to him with the same reverence, the same irritation. But they don’t notice the silence between his words growing. Don’t notice that the fire is colder now, that his smile never reaches his eyes.
In his room, the mirror lies. It shows a man no longer alive in the world he left, and not truly alive in this one either. He practices responses in that mirror. Sarcasm. Annoyance. Fury. But none of it fits. It’s like wearing someone else’s skin. It is someone else’s skin.
He hasn’t slept in days.
Memories come in waves—too loud, too bright. Dazai's corpse. The blood. The smell of gunmetal and silence. The final words that never came. He presses his hands to his temples and breathes through it. He always breathes through it.
He watches the city from rooftops, high above where anyone can see. Tries to feel the wind. It doesn’t bite here. It doesn’t hurt the same way. This world is quiet. Whole.
Too whole.
Sometimes, he wants to tear it apart just to make it match the ruin he carries.
But he doesn’t.
Because Dazai is here.
Not his Dazai. But a Dazai.
And that’s enough. It has to be.
So when the mission comes, when Akutagawa hands him the intel with a nod and no questions, Beast Chuuya doesn’t hesitate. In and out. No witnesses. No faces.
He tightens his coat—not his coat—and steps into the street.
He should’ve known better.
The bookstore was unassuming. A forgettable little thing between a boarded-up café and a flickering drugstore, just another stop in a city that didn’t belong to him.
Beast Chuuya hadn’t planned to be there.
That was the problem—he didn’t plan any of this. The mission was supposed to be fast. Pick up intel from a back alley drop. In and out. No witnesses. No faces.
His boots clicked against the sidewalk. The sun burned low, hazy, like blood behind gauze. He tugged the brim of the hat down, tilted his head slightly, and kept his mouth shut. Akutagawa walked beside him like a shade, quiet as always, sharp eyes scanning windows and doors.
Beast Chuuya’s shoulders ached. He’d been too tense all week—ever since the switch. Since the fight. Since he locked the other version of himself in a room full of blood-stained seals and silence.
He hadn’t slept much. Sleep opened doors.
The wind shifted.
“Make it quick,” he muttered to Akutagawa, voice tight, already looking toward the alleyway where their contact waited. “We’re not here for sightseeing.”
He felt it before he heard it.
That weight. That gravity. Not the ability—him.
“Oi~!”
Dazai’s voice cut through the air like it always had: with maddening levity. Sweet poison. The sound froze his blood and lit it up all at once.
Beast Chuuya turned, slowly. Every muscle locked into place. The hat cast a shadow over his eyes.
Dazai.
Standing across the street with a boy—tiger hybrid. Atsushi. Of course. And beside him, smiling like the past didn’t exist, like he hadn’t died with a hole in his chest and silence in his eyes, was Dazai Osamu.
Beast Chuuya forced his mouth into a smirk. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“Dazai,” he said, and it burned.
Dazai stepped forward, hands in his coat pockets, lazy grin spread wide like he didn’t already know. Like he hadn’t been watching for the cracks.
“Still throwing buildings instead of solving problems?”
Beast Chuuya shrugged, ignoring the way his ribs felt too tight in this body. “Still playing hero in a secondhand coat?”
The exchange was wrong. The rhythm wasn’t there. The air between them used to crackle with tension, bite, fire. Now it just felt like a needle in his gums.
He hated this.
He hated him.
Dazai tilted his head. "You’re quiet today. No threats? No poetic monologue about ripping my spine out?"
Beast Chuuya didn’t blink. “I’ve outgrown it.”
The words tasted like ash. Chuuya—his Chuuya—never would’ve said that.
He swallowed hard, eyes flicking to Akutagawa, who was staring now, not even trying to hide it.
Beast Chuuya’s hands were steady. His mind wasn’t.
Dazai stepped closer. His eyes flickered with something old. Something dangerous. Then his hand reached out, casual and light, brushing against Beast Chuuya’s wrist like he had every right.
It was reflex.
Beast Chuuya jerked back. The ghost of a scar that didn’t exist here throbbed like a scream.
Dazai’s smile twitched.
“Strange,” he said. “You used to flinch at this spot. Scar tissue. Remember?”
The line was bait. It was always bait.
Beast Chuuya met his gaze. Smile tight. Voice colder than bone.
“Healed.”
Lie. Clean. Flat. The way all his lies were now.
A beat passed.
Akutagawa broke the silence. “We should go.”
Beast Chuuya nodded. “Yeah. Waste of time here.”
He turned. Didn’t look back. Every step away from Dazai felt like dragging a corpse behind his ribs.
He couldn’t breathe until they were around the corner.
Atsushi’s voice echoed faintly behind them: “Was that really Chuuya?”
He wanted to scream. Rip open the sky. Tell the truth and choke on it.
But instead he walked.
Because Dazai was watching now.
And if Dazai knew—if Dazai saw—
Then everything he’d crossed worlds for would be ripped away.
Again.
In a world beneath the city, sealed behind rusted doors and forgotten rites, another heartbeat begins to stir.
Underground, Canon Chuuya wakes.
His first breath is fire. His lungs seize against the stale, metallic air. The second comes jagged, like glass dragged across his ribs. And by the third, he remembers.
Everything.
The alley. The voice that mimicked a memory. The weightless sensation of falling just before something struck.
The glint of his own eyes staring back at him—wrong. Empty.
Like looking into a mirror warped by grief and violence. The pressure on his ribs. The sting of sedatives. Darkness closing in.
His limbs jolt reflexively, but they're restrained. Arms pinned above his head. Ankles lashed tight. Seals burn cold into the air around him, symbols crawling like veins across the reinforced walls.
Panic hits like a wave crashing through shattered bone.
“Let me go!”
His scream rips free, hoarse and ragged, echoing uselessly in the room.
But no one hears.
The silence isn't natural. It's suffocating. The air is padded, muted by layers of soundproofing and enchantment. Nothing escapes here. Not noise. Not hope.
He thrashes harder. The metal cuts deeper. His pulse slams through his skull. The room spins. The cold from the concrete floor seeps into his spine.
And then it creeps in.
The realization.
Whoever did this—knew him. Too well. Knew where to hit. How to bind. How to replace him.
He replays it all. The mimicry. The perfect familiarity.
The coat.
The gloves.
The voice.
Not a stranger. Not an enemy from outside.
A reflection.
“Who the hell are you?” he breathes, not because he expects an answer—but because saying it aloud makes the horror real.
He lifts his head, straining against the cuffs, neck trembling. His gaze scans the room—barren, grim, sterile in its cruelty. A basin in the corner. An old medical lamp. Rust on the hinges. This wasn’t a warehouse.
This was a place meant for keeping things.
The symbols pulse once more. Heat flares under his skin where they touch—deep and burning. He feels the seal bend slightly beneath his will, but not break.
Not yet.
Dazai would’ve unraveled them in minutes. A sigh. A smirk. A flick of his hand and it’d all fall apart.
But Dazai isn’t here.
His chest hollows at the thought.
How long had he been down here?
How long had someone else been wearing his face?
The Port Mafia wouldn’t notice. Not yet. They’d just think he was quieter. Colder. That he’d snapped again.
And Dazai—Dazai wouldn’t ask questions until it was too late. If he ever did.
He exhales through gritted teeth.
He can get out. He knows that much.
But the seal is layered. Precise. Every line etched by someone who knew him. Who understood how to hold him.
The bastard who did this was too good.
Breaking it won’t be impossible.
Just slow.
Painful.
Like pulling his soul through broken glass.
He slams his head back against the wall, breathing hard. Rage scorches the inside of his mouth like fire made of copper and blood.
He screams again.
Not for help.
For vengeance.
This isn’t fear anymore.
It’s a promise.