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The times had already passed. Before he could hope to reach for something better, that glimmer of what seemed to be like a hope for redemption, it had all already passed him. Before he could taste the salt off his faded lips and know what he had done to himself, whatever he was searching for had disappeared. He knew because the feeling of something missing lingers where it used to be, like a cheap replacement.
Now and then, between the shadows of the past, the clear present broke up the monotony. Though, if Dazai was asked, he would not be able to tell the difference at all. A lot of being alive has been a game of cheap charades, really. Even if he doesn't really know how he could've lived otherwise. Simply put, this had to be enough, for there was nothing else left in his world. More than anything, he knows that there hasn't been anything there for a long time.
Still, it's not all that bleak if he thinks about it. The way he's been living lately, it reminds him like something of a long time back. When he was fifteen, perhaps. As far back as he can clearly piece things together. The memories stay in his mind, but they feel distant. It has been years since, a lot of them, but the past no longer feels like it. Rather, it just seems like something that might've happened in another life. Jamais vu. Not 'already seen', but 'never before seen'.
Even though he's certainly been in this position here, maybe even in this same building, he's never quite felt the way that he does now.
The bandages on his hands are loose. His gun is strewn across the floor all the way to the other side of the room. In his hands is the torn pieces of an organza curtain, ripped off from somewhere in the heat of the chaos earlier. The room breathes. In the aftershocks it is alive. A collective first breath, fragile in the fact that it will never occur again. The bodies on the ground quiver and shake, but they do not get up. Some breathe their last in that room, but Dazai felt like he's breathed his first in a long time. Too long since he'd stared death in the eye and found it ensnaring a hand around his neck. Come to me. I won't turn you away.
A gust of wind shakes the stillness of the room. He feels it through his bandages, and it's cold. The bodies on the floor stop breathing, and the last bullet is shot. He stares idly at Chuuya's back, unable to see the way his trigger finger trembles just the slightest bit. But he knows. There isn't much to be said between the two, not anymore.
Or rather, the time of what had to be said had already passed. Those words were stuck in another year, they had dried on their mouths, and now nothing like that will ever come to pass again.
Even still, when he looks at Chuuya's face, it really feels like nothing had ever changed.
Like he hadn't tried to find new ways of living all those years back and still ended up here. The inevitable leitmotif of failure. A tune that never really left his head.
The make believe was over and all those logical harms were starting to show through the cracks. All that's left is the sound of passing cars, heavy breathing and the clink of bullet casings hitting the ground.
If all our lives are circular, then how many times will we repeat ourselves before we learn our lesson?
Chuuya hadn't yet learnt his. Not if he was keeping Dazai around after all this time. Not if he was staggering back to him now, one hand on the wound on his shoulder. The grazing bullet that should've stopped before it hit him, but at the end of the day that must also be a part of all the same old stupid mistakes he's going to make again today. There's hope there, like the sight of a flower in a lazy eye. There's hope there that the old times can be capped shut for once and for all, but hope is such a dangerous thing.
Desire is about absence. It's also about failure.
Chuuya knows that there is no correcting their past mistakes. There's no correcting themselves. Whatever atonement they could have, or might've imagined another day, was fundamentally out of their reach. Not in this life, and neither of them could think of a life that could've been different than theirs.
Perhaps because in another life, if they had been anywhere other than this blood-streaked room, if they hadn't met there at day at the slums of Suribachi, then they would not have been Dazai and Chuuya. Something similar, maybe, a few shades too close, but it wouldn't have been them. For the better or worse, their growing pains had been unavoidable, and without them, they would not have existed.
The only silver lining is that they do, and that they have each other to share that pain with.
In that sense, perhaps this room—with it's broken shadows and corpses lying with their eyes wide, some mangled and some riddled with holes—was the kindest arrangement the universe could've made for them.
Strands of auburn faintly tickle Dazai's cheek. The weight on his shoulders feels like it had always been there. The leitmotif of failure is close, but he can't hear it right now. All he can hear is the clattering of the gun falling to the floor and heavy, labored breathing.
Then he knows it's time to go home. Wherever that is. Any place that could hold them both together was bound to be stained by their combined sins, but at the end of the day, even hell is a place of warmth.
And they know heaven will never be enough for them.
His greyish lips press on the side of Chuuya's head, touch featherlight. The blood seeps into his bandages, warm like the hope that slips through his fingers all too easily. But he says nothing, the corners of his lips slightly upturned in a sarcastic sort of smile.
"Come on, let's go home."