Chapter Text
Dazai’s floating down the river, upside down so his head and torso are fully submerged. His body is stiff, manifesting rigor mortis. His goal, as described in The Ultimate Guide to Suicide, is to be as still as possible. Just become one with the river, die in the river, and become a part of the beautiful river ecosystem. It’s in the chapter that describes the top ten least burdensome suicides; most like this one being suicides where the lucky success stories are devoured by scavenger wildlife at the end. He can feel something, a bird, land on his shoe and his oxygen deprived brain fills with glee. It’s starting.
But the river is strangely rapid today. Yesterday there was a storm, which the Ultimate Guide did warn could present some complications. It would have been quicker to do this submersion during the storm, but he likely would have been found by the sanitation workers who sift through the river in the mornings after to remove all of the garbage that has flown in. Dazai carefully chose a time in the afternoon, when the workers clock out and the sun has already set an orange glow over Yokohama, to begin his submersion in hopes to avoid being found before his body is really able to feed the fishes. The Ultimate Guide said this timing would ensure the unburdensome aspect of the suicide, but that the success rate would be lower due to the inability to control trajectory down such a tumultuous river current.
Said current takes him too close to the wide edge of the river, the concrete pathway starting to scratch against his face. It hurts, and he hates pain, but maybe, if he waits, the current will drag him back away from it?
He waits a few seconds, confident that despite his annoying capacity for holding his breath he will die before the pain becomes too much of a problem. But then he feels something start pawing at his pant leg – just slapping the shit out of him as he washes up. Dazai is fine with the wildlife using his body when he’s dead, is even excited about it, but whatever beast is attacking him now is taking the peace out of his perfect suicide.
Slap. Slap. Through the water distortion, Dazai hears the sound of his bird friend flapping its wings and cawing before the weight of it disappears as it takes off. The earth has rejected him as his offering. If he dies now, it will be as a washed-up corpse on the side of the river. He’ll be found in the morning by some runner, some family, some mom pushing her baby in its stroller on their own peaceful journey downriver. They’ll find him dead, his body rotten and wet. It will be a disruption in someone’s beautiful morning, an awful first memory. He’s already caused so much pain in his life, and by Odasaku’s last wish Dazai’s trying to do right for once. Traumatizing children is exactly the kind of trouble he’s trying to avoid causing other people by dying in the first place.
Oh well.
He has the rest of his life to die. If he’s going to do anything, he should do it right, so he flips over to cough the water out of his lungs and climb out of the river. The world is wet and blurry and his eyes are barely able to open through his hacking and the sting of dirty, polluted river water, so he just clings to that elevated concrete, holding his body out of the water with his elbows and spewing spit and sewage all over. Eugh. Maybe he should just die.
“Ruah!” He hears, and then a slap again. “Rubuhuh.” Two slaps.
Dazai holds his eyes open and sees a little hand as it descends to slap his cheek. “Rubah!” Yells a baby. It’s got freakish white hair like someone let a five year-old play salon with a doll, but it’s not albino because it also has crazy yellow-purple eyes. It's on fours (or threes, because the one hand is raised for slapping) wearing a blue onesie that’s stained dark by water and dirt around the sleeves and from the knees down. There’s a ring of drool and spit up around the neck that seeps down to its belly. It’s clammy, tiny palm is wet and scratched up presumably from crawling around on the concrete.
“You!” Dazai accuses. “You interfered with my submersion!”
“Boo!” The baby mimics rather poorly. Then it makes a warbling sound, or its stomach does. But it doesn’t cry.
Dazai’s always been told that babies cry when they’re hungry, and that it’s really annoying because they do so all the time.
“You must be a really good baby,” he notes, “but you’re being very rude. What about this: I give you food, and then you don’t interrupt me when I commit suicide next. I’ll even leave you all my things!”
“Rubabah,” the baby agrees, slapping him again.
Dazai glares at Baby. Baby giggles.
“That’s it, Baby!” Dazai swings himself onto the concrete fully and pulls the little demon onto his wet lap. Baby yelps. That shows Baby not to mess with him. He adjusts Baby so it has to look directly at his face as he uses his other hand to point in punctuation with his words. “Every time you hit me, you lose a fraction of your inheritance, you hear me? You won’t be able to invest nearly as much in Gerber Co, and then you won’t be able to afford a TV, and then you won't be able to use Kunikida’s streaming account to watch Hello Kitty and Friends. Do you want that?”
“Buh,” Baby says. Baby’s face is getting red and wrinkly. It seems really uncomfortable in his arms, but still doesn’t cry. It probably doesn’t get touched very often, or ever with very kind intentions. Dazai never was either, and he turned out fine.
Dazai checks his pocket with the hand he’d used to point at Baby. Then he checks his other pocket and the pockets of his coat. Hm. “Ah. I seem to have lost all of it already. At least you’ll still inherit my debts!”
“Ah!”
“I know, it is unfortunate. Oh well, I’m sure some benevolent and beautiful young waitress will take pity on a man and child in need.” Maybe, he thinks as he stands up with Baby on his hip, he should keep Baby around. Like a meal ticket, Baby can earn his keep by inciting the charity of strangers and they can watch Hello Kitty together as scheme partners.
Some persistent sound buzzes in his ears. Dazai doesn’t hear too well— one too many intentionally not-dodged bullets grazed his ear, and one too many guns went off too close to his head. He has to turn his face fully to see Kunikida waving his hand wildly through the air and clearly screaming something. Ah.
Dazai points. “Look, Baby! Our first customer!”
Baby, somewhat hesitantly, points also. “Bubuh.”
☀️
“Why are you carrying around a baby? Did you kidnap someone’s child?” Kunikida asks, walking side-by-side with Dazai and Baby, who is now in Dazai’s arms and playing with Dazai’s still-wet hair.
“Kidnapping? Kunikida thinks so lowly of me. Baby and I are to be partners, you see. I’m sure that when Waitress-chan sees me with such an useless dependent she’ll take pity and clear my debt!”
“Belladona-san will feel something about that, for sure,” Kunikida grumbles, furrowing his brow. When is it not furrowed, really?
“You know, if you keep making that face, your wrinkles are going to get a lot worse. Studies show that people who look old feel old, and they trick their body into dying faster! You could lose years off your life!”
“Oh? That sounds credible, actually.”
“Yes, of course it is! I’d try it, but it takes too long as a method of suicide. My goal is to die soon, so I’ll be cute and youthful forever. Just like Baby!” Dazai bounces Baby in his arms and Baby buh’s anxiously at the movement, tugging on his hair. Okay, Baby wants to be still. Dazai can get behind that.
Kunikida whips out his journal as they turn onto a familiar street, the one with the izakaya that is equidistant from the Agency and the shipyard where most of their cases seem to lead them. Kunikida tends to go to this one even when he’s further out than is convenient, citing the advantages of building a ‘regular’ reputation at such an establishment. There’s a girl who works there who, unlike Waitress-chan, is charmed by Dazai’s exuberant charade and sometimes — in the case that he does order bagged tea — brings his tea over with the string tied in a little noose. It’s uncomfortable and why Dazai prefers Uzumaki Cafe. No stranger would have ever felt comfortable enough with Dazai to give him such gifts back when he was the Demon.
They sit down while Kunikida is still writing and order drinks to start, getting Baby a barley tea. Dazai’s tea comes with the little noose and he stares at it as Baby sits on his lap and plays with the string. It’s simultaneously a reminder of how much he wants to leave and how much he might be missed. Despite this being Odasaku’s wish for him, kindness like this only makes him want to leave more.
“Can you forward me that study?” Kunikida finally asks.
“Ah, no. You see, it doesn’t actually exist!”
Kunikida’s pen breaks and he launches across the table. Dazai tilts his head up and closes his eyes preemptively, expecting Kunikida’s hand to land like a claw around his neck, but it never comes.
He opens his eyes and looks down. Baby’s crying, though silently, and though Baby can’t really stand it’s managed to prop itself up by gripping the table and reaching at Kunikida’s outstretched, frozen hand. Baby shakes with the effort and then lands in a plunk back down on Dazai’s lap, but makes to get up again until Kunikida withdraws.
They both stare at Baby.
“Well, looks like you have a friend,” Kunikida says, sitting back down and readjusting his glasses. “Even if you are a lying waste of space, I guess everyone does need them.”
Dazai looks down at Baby and feels totally enraptured. Baby tilts its head up, trying to look at him but failing a bit because of his chubby neck. Not as chubby though, he notes, as other babies that might be of a similar age. Clearly he doesn’t eat enough.
The izakaya doesn’t actually sell baby food, but again Kunikida gets to extol the virtues of regular status at a restaurant because one of the chefs agrees to make them some mashed up sweet potato to accommodate Baby's little amount of teeth. They won’t give Dazai cleaning fluid, but they will give him hokke, which he is funny for reasons he doesn’t elaborate to Kunikida when he starts laughing about it. Mackerel. If Chuuya could see him now.
Well. Chuuya’d have to look up a lot, anyway, which would still be funny for about three seconds before he kicked Dazai’s face off. To call Chuuya an ex would be both overstating and underselling the depth of their past relationship. Were they dating? No. Were they fucking? At times. Were they exclusive? Not really. Did they love each other? If Dazai was capable of such a thing, yes, because Chuuya definitely was. Did they ever say that? Absolutely not. Do they hate each other? Indubitably. Did they break up? Dazai blew up a car willed to Chuuya by one of his dead best friends, knowing how much the symbol of the gesture would hurt him but also exactly how much it would clear Chuuya’s name in regards to Dazai’s defection. Does he think about Chuuya nearly every day since they’ve been apart? Well, it’s been four years, but yeah.
Longer than they were ever together actually, the anniversary of their first meeting having passed somewhat recently.
(Oda and) Chuuya used to protect Dazai all the time, now all he has is Baby. And Kunikida, and the rest of the Armed Detective Agency. Who the fuck is Baby, actually? And what did Baby have to gain from (unfortunately) saving him by annoying him to live? This meal, probably.
Kunikida finishes ordering and the waitress makes a joke about how health-conscious his chosen meal is. Kunikida laughs awkwardly because he can’t talk to women and then she gives him a weird look and goes back to the kitchen. Dazai does him the favor of not laughing at all at the interaction, but apparently the bit-lip face he’s making to show he’s holding it in (because he could totally just poker-face it and Kunikida knows that) is doubly insulting, so the favor is in fact harshly received by Kunikida’s glasses-glare. Twice the eyes, twice the fury. His partner relents, though, to take out his notebook and start writing in it again. He keeps writing when he looks back at Dazai to ask: “So, where is he from? I assume you didn’t actually kidnap someone’s child?”
“Ah! Of course not! Why would I want such a thing?” Dazai lifts Baby from the underarms to get a closer look at it. The long white side-bangs, longer on the left, stick to Baby’s face as it cutely gurgles up at him. “Children are such gross, inconvenient things. No, I birthed Baby this morning from my own vagina. Very messy business, wouldn’t recommend.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize— wait a minute,” Kunikida halts his note-taking and also his predictably very understanding and trans-supporting speech to squint across the table. “I think I remember you calling me saying you needed my help because you got your penis caught where your doorknob should have been.”
“Ack! Don’t say penis in front of Baby! Very bad form, Kunikida-kun. You’re also talking very confidently for someone who has never seen my dick. I got it out all on my own, thank you very much.” Whether that was because Dazai has a dick or because his dick is detachable, he will never tell.
Kunikida finishes writing and as soon as he lifts his pen a familiar light emanates from the paper. From that brings forth a baby teething toy, the kind made of tempting yummy rubber formed in a round, bumpy mold. He hands it to Dazai, who jealously hands it t0 Baby, who immediately starts chewing on it. Lucky. Dazai is for sure stealing that when Baby leaves.
“Okay, but you didn’t birth him. I have access to your medical records, and I know you weren’t pregnant.”
“Creepy,” Dazai notes. Baby makes an ‘Eehee’ noise in agreement around it’s chewtoy. “I met Baby this morning during my submersion when Baby so rudely interrupted me. Clearly it doesn’t belong to anyone, though. No one was around, and just look at the thing. It was hungry and it’s hair and clothes are a total mess. Wherever it’s from, and I genuinely don’t know where, it wasn’t being treated very well. It doesn’t like being held, and it can’t even cry. It’s the perfect baby actually, low effort and low annoyance”
“So, you’re saying that this child was clearly neglected and abused by his previous caretakers, so much so that it has likely been conditioned to expect violence in response to crying, and was abandoned by a riverbank where it was likely to drown?”
“Yep! Ah, I wish I had been left by a riverbank,” Dazai ruffles Baby’s fucked-up hair with as much gentle care as he can exert. “You’re so lucky, Baby. Your life will already be so much better than mine!”
Kunikida gives Dazai that weird look the Agency’s members sometimes do where they are thinking complex thoughts about the inner workings of Dazai’s own mind and the layers of his speech. Joke’s on him though, almost no one actually understands what Dazai’s actually saying when he opens his mouth.
Baby for once doesn’t shy away from the touch though. Baby, who slapped a stranger back alive, although obviously expecting to be mistreated by them at every corner, has finally become enough used to Dazai that it just moves its head around again trying to look at him better. Unlike when a dog does it, Baby actually makes the curious fussing seem cute.
“Hm, it seems like that’s enough circumstantial evidence for the police to remove the child from his caregiver’s custody, especially if we have Ranpo sign off on it.”
Having Ranpo sign a document full of deductions is legally permissible as evidence due to the nature of his ability. Kunikida closes his notebook, but later at the office he will whip it back out and hand it to Ranpo to sign. They’ll probably have to stop at a candy store to bribe the notarization, but for cases like this Ranpo does usually relent rather easily. He always complains at the boring work, but all of the Agency seem to have a soft spot for hurt children. That might just be what people are like outside of the mafia.
“Now, have you figured out anything about the tiger, or have you been spending this whole time uselessly flailing about underwater?”
Dazai gasps in indignation, but at the word ‘tiger’ Baby makes a soft sound of distress. From any other child, it might have been a cry. Hm, Dazai thinks while going through his normal theatrics, interesting.
☀️
Night is falling quickly, so as Kunikida makes his detour to the sweet shop Dazai breaks off to walk himself and Baby to the shipyard. “There’s lots of sharp, rusty places to crawl around,” he says to Baby, who giggles again and puts his gross little hands on Dazai’s face. “It’s full of tetanus. You’ll love it.”
He sends a quick text to his coworkers before going inside of a mostly empty warehouse to wait for the full moon. He places Baby on a crate and lets him crawl around a bit, making happy little ‘buh’ noises at being so high up.
Normally he’d monologue, but Baby is a baby, and not smart enough yet to really get his uniquely intellectual sense of humor. He sits on the floor, careful to watch Baby so it doesn’t fall off, and rereads Ultimate Guide to fill the peaceful silence.
Sure enough, after an hour or so, when Baby’s chest is rising with the soft movements of sleep-breathing, the peace is interrupted by a blinding blue light. Baby is completely engulfed, and Dazai watches as the light grows way bigger than anything originating from Baby ought to. It clears in a snap to reveal a giant white tiger, the kind the Agency has been asked to apprehend.
“What a little criminal you are,” Dazai muses as he dodges Baby-Tiger’s first attack. “You know, the military has plans to kill you. What an easy out for such a young delinquent!”
Baby-Tiger lands somewhere behind Dazai in the dark, but Dazai doesn’t even need to turn to dodge the next attack. A large gust of air rushes by on his next narrow escape, that’s just how big Baby-Tiger has become. It makes sense, maybe, that Baby’s ability isn’t small just because Baby is — after all, it’s not like Kunikida could only make miniature items when he was small, or like Chuuya could only produce miniature black holes. Tsuribachi speaks to just how dangerous a young, out of control ability user can be.
“I can’t let such a young competitor overtake me, though,” Dazai apologizes. “It’s such an insult! My self-esteem can’t handle the blow, you see. I’d be so jealous I’d boil alive!”
Baby-Tiger lunges at him, but this time Dazai lets it hit, the ability nullifying on impact. Baby lands in his arms, still dead asleep, and Dazai turns to his audience of expectant agency members and bows.
Ranpo, Yosano, and Kenji all clap. Good job for them, they earn 10+ favorite points. Tanizaki and Kunikida look deeply disturbed.
“Why did you call us all here if you already knew this child was the tiger?” Kunikida asks, always quick to realize what Dazai was keeping from him and similarly always quick to complain about a useless expense of time.
“I didn’t know, I only suspected,” Dazai lies. “And it’s because I needed to introduce you all to our new member!”
“Huh?” Tanizaki asks, surprisingly uncomfortable around small children.
Dazai lifts Baby by its underarms and presents it to the sky. “Baby!”
☀️
“I’m not a pediatrician, but—“
“What kind of doctor are you, actually?” Dazai asks, knowing the answer is No kind, I don’t have a degree because my medical expertise comes from my time being kidnapped by the Japanese military. He lifts Baby from the exam table into his arms as Yosano glares. He pointedly sits down on the neighboring chair because their location makes him so wired he really would prefer to stand, but that kind of nervous energy is too much a weakness for him to comfortably show.
They’re in her office, which has never been Dazai’s favorite place ever. When Yosano usually approaches him from her position as medical personnel, she does so in the form of surprise attacks from different vantage points of the office. Or she drags him into the conference room and very quickly performs first aid and other sorts of treatment. It’s the most bearable medical experience Dazai thinks he can possibly have, and Yosano only makes fun of him a little for being squirmy about it. She lets him snip at her even if she does get riled up at times when he gets really uncomfortable and starts to push the line on what he can say to her, but she is mostly respectful of his avoidance.
Yosano has never played the Where is Dazai from? game, but she absolutely knows. There are shades of Yosano’s behavior that Dazai knows he has too and he can trace the source of them to the same place. Talking to Yosano is like looking at a map of all the worst parts of himself. It’s almost comforting, because if he can trace Yosano to himself in those regards, that means the root cause is not himself. He supposes it’s the same for her, but the unwitting reminder they both serve as this for each other makes it nearly impossible to spend large quantities of time together.
“You’re lucky that if I tried to dissect you, you’d just die,” Yosano says, pointing her scalpel at him. Since he is very lucky in this regard, Dazai just nods and starts absently playing with Baby’s hair as Yosano continues. She gestures for him to stand as she unclips Baby’s papers from her clipboard.
“Anyway, I’m not a pediatrician, but this kid is malnourished and definitely traumatized. I’ll have to send his charts to one of my ped friends and maybe a nutritionist, but the Agency will cover anything you need to take care of him.”
She says this as they walk together out of the office, Dazai patting Baby on his back like he’s seen parents do in movies and around Yokohama.
“What’s this? Why should Baby go to me, of all our options? There must be a zoo in Yokohama that would take it.” It’s true that in order for Baby to live anywhere peacefully Dazai has to be involved somehow, as Baby’s ability has caused enough trouble already. If Baby is left to run rampant without his nullifying handy, the military’s insistence on the tiger’s execution will only increase. He just expected that everyone else would assume, as he had, that it would be best for someone more respectable to take care of Baby and for Dazai just to visit.
He didn’t expect to get to keep Baby. The idea of such total power over a human being makes him — not shake, that kind of physical reaction doesn’t come to him naturally anymore, but — twitch, only in the smallest increment in the fingers stroking through Baby’s hair.
“You know why. Not that you’re the best example for any kid, but the rest of us should be around. You can’t do that much damage with supervision,” Yosano very boldly assumes. She clacks her high heels over to the work area and tries to hand Baby’s paperwork to Ranpo on his spinning chair. “Do you—“
Ranpo puts his hand up to swat the papers away, batting at it as he continues to spin around. “No, I’m not investigating this!”
Yosano cocks her hip, which is one of her danger signs, and stops the chair with a hand firmly squishing down on Ranpo’s cap. “Eh?”
Ranpo smushes himself down and pouts, bangs all fucked up at the squishing, head between his knees. “You already made me go to that boring murder-suicide this morning! I can’t do two awful things in one day!”
“Huh? You want this kid to die because we don’t have his health records? Is that what I’m hearing?”
Ranpo shakes Yosano off, lifting his head up and facing his chair to angle Baby better in his line of sight. Dazai holds Baby out to further Ranpo’s vision, twisting Baby around when Ranpo nods in the directions he wants. Baby makes some blubbering noises, but otherwise doesn’t protest much.
“Hmph. I don’t even need to activate my ability to know — there’s no point! No one cares enough about them for any such records to exist!” Ranpo says this like an I told you so! As if it’s not Baby’s whole history. “Besides, if something were really that wrong with them, you would have caught it, so there’s no reason to worry!”
Aw, such a sweet moment. A pity Baby chooses them to start making all kinds of weird noises. Dazai turns Baby back to himself and lifts him closer to his face to examine the problem and gets a faceful of warm, wet liquid. Ah.
As everyone looks upon Dazai standing stiff with baby throw-up all over him, Ranpo hums. “Actually, maybe you’re not such a good doctor after all.”
Yosano swiftly kicks Ranpo’s chair out from under him. Even as he lands with loudly voiced complaints, Dazai knows that Ranpo definitely predicted that course of action and chose to fuck with her anyway.
They get Dazai and Baby cleaned up, Kenji returning now with a big package of diapers and other baby needs he crowdsourced from his adoring elderly fanbase. Apparently and unsurprisingly, Kenji has lots of experience with small children. Dazai spectates as Kenji bathes Baby in the exam room’s sink, powders it, changes it, and explains every step while telling adorable anecdotes about putting infant children in foxholes or whatever the hell country folk get up to. Dazai has never been surer of his inability to leave Yokohama proper before meeting Kenji and hearing his tales of the bumpkin lifestyle. Terrifying.
“I guess now we really will get to watch Hello Kitty together,” Dazai muses over the towel they’ve laid Baby out on. He really does like children’s cartoons. They’re so funny and strange. What child were they made for, and how different was he from them. “Or maybe those cooking shows. You were very insistent about your dinner.”
“Oh! I can’t wait for him to have more teeth so he can try things for the first time!” Kenji beams up at him. “When I was a kid I had this cow bone I would chew on, and when I finally bit through we made bone marrow soup as my first meal!”
“Oh, very good.” Again, terrifying. How big was the bone Kenji was gnawing on for its marrow to feed not just himself but multiple people? “I’ll have to start it off with a dinosaur then! You’ll like dinosaur, won’t you Baby?”
Baby is, after all, a tiger. If Dazai has to live with a beast that teeths on giant bones, maybe seeing it will cause him to die of shock. Then Baby can make soup of his femur. Yeah, that sounds good.
Dazai still isn’t entirely sure Baby should stay with him. He’s somewhat taken to Baby, he can admit that, and clearly Baby has foolishly done the same. However, the people who are brave enough to say anything to Dazai let it be known that they barely believe he should be in charge of himself, let alone a whole other living person. Though maybe Baby doesn’t counts more as an eighth than as a whole.
The last time Dazai was in this kind of position was when he was assigned to Akutagawa.
Oda knew about Akutagawa. Dazai would tell some contrived stories about him when they drank together, if only because Oda would sometimes ask. Some sliver of truth would always manage to sneak through even with how accomplished a liar Dazai is; Oda was always good at sniffing those out. Those were always the worst nights at Lupin, when Dazai would have to grit his teeth and smile through Oda’s sad disappointment. How do you explain to someone like Odasaku that such harsh treatment is necessary for a child’s survival? How could Dazai possibly explain that that type of abuse was used on him, that it was the only method he absolutely knew would work, and he couldn’t risk Akutugawa’s livelihood with any kinder deviation?
He knows it was awful, objectively, but that’s the Mafia. However, he also wasted no thought on those kinder options. Maybe he could have been better. Maybe, for Baby and its new cow print onesie, he can do a better job.
Why risk it? Fair question to ask himself and these others misplacing their faith in him, but he refuses to expose the extent of his past to his coworkers. He needs their regard too much to risk losing it, so when they start sitting around the two opposite-facing couches and discussing the logistics of moving Baby into Dazai’s dorm, he doesn’t say anything at all.
“This is unwise. Dazai’s apartment is a biohazard,” Kunikida says, ever the voice of reason. He’s right, too, but that kind of rancid exposure is probably good for Baby’s immune system. Dazai lived in a shipping container with his usual hygienic practices for a fair portion of his childhood, and he almost never got sick. Kids these days are just soft.
Kunikida’s face takes on a haunted, purple shadow. Even the light reflected in his glasses looks less like forescents and more like the light of a flashlight by a campfire, telling harrowing tales of the dead returning to life. “I will help clean it, and baby proof it, but don’t ask me to babysit.”
There are ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ around the office. “Kunikida-san is so brave,” Naomi whispers to her brother, who nods in slow, amazed agreement.
Even Dazai is shocked. Kunikida really is a stand-up guy.
It’s at this point that the President, preceded by Haruno, walks out of his office into the common area. Dazai bows his head along with everyone else, but can’t dip too deeply without knocking skulls with Baby. When he rises, it’s to the president’s expectant gaze and open hands. Oh.
Dazai hands Baby over with perfect confidence and already feels cold, his insides belying his inner feelings. He keeps the calm smile set into his face as his eyes track both the President’s every movement and Baby’s every disgruntled expression. The President moves comfortably, maneuvering Baby to hold it with more experience and ease than Dazai has himself, but Baby’s face wrinkles more and more in displeasure the longer it is held by someone else.
Already, Baby is excruciatingly loyal. What a good minion Dazai is getting — although it is unable to be of much use until it grows up a bit more. Dazai finds himself staring unblinkingly at Baby as it progressively looks worse and worse off, squirming in the President’s arms. The tension builds. Dazai’s skin itches beneath his bandages.
The President hands Baby back to him and Dazai is admittedly too quick about the movement of grabbing it and pulling it to his chest. It’s like a toy plush or a pillow maybe, something cute and warm to hold onto. Dazai never had those growing up, so that’s probably why he’s so attached to it.
The President briefly sports those lowered-eyes he usually wears when rejected by the kittens he so adores, and Dazai supposes this case is similar, but he coughs it away in his embarrassment. “Ahem. I was able to secure the child’s safety through the military. It is no longer wanted as a criminal, but there is still another organization offering a bounty for his capture.”
“The Port Mafia?” Kunikida asks, but Dazai shakes his head.
“Can’t be. The Port Mafia would never pay someone to do what they could do themselves, at least not if they’re actually planning on paying up. It’s more likely to have been placed by a foreign organization, or another group with little manpower in Yokohama.” Dazai flattens Baby a bit closer to his chest as he talks, bouncing it in small movements.
“Exactly,” the President confirms. “We do not yet know which organization, but we do know that with how high the bounty is the Port Mafia will no doubt be after him.”
“How high could the bounty possibly be?” Tanizaki asks, returning to hand out paper cups from the water cooler. “He’s a baby, it shouldn’t be that hard to apprehend him.”
The President takes one and nods in thanks. “It would be difficult for a regular organization to apprehend the child in his tiger form, but it’s true that the price seems exorbitant. We believe that the organization that placed the bounty has information about the child and his ability we do not, to ask seven billion yen for him.”
Tanizaki tries to hand another cup to Kunikida, but after hearing the number trips into him instead, spilling the water all over his front. Kunikida squawks, but Tanizaki doesn’t turn to apologize from where he’s stuck open-mouth staring at the president.
“Seven what?” Naomi asks, similarly shocked.
Dazai feels Baby stir at her shriek and only then realizes he’s succeeded at rocking it to bed. He looks down at Baby and can feel his own eyes widen, but as it’s socially appropriate in context he doesn’t bother to fix them back to normal.
He did that, was a comfort enough that such a traumatized child actually went to sleep on top of him. That kind of blind faith is intoxicating. Maybe that’s why Odasaku had a billion of these things.
He doubts it was for such a thrill chasing reason. Odasaku had some kind of kindness in his heart, a force so overwhelming it seemed he just had to give it out to other people. Of course he had so many kids— he had too much love left over after just one. Must have been overflowing with it, to offer any to Dazai. Dazai, though, lacks this human compassion. He’s always been told so.
No, this feeling he has towards Baby is something he feels rarely. Baby is new and interesting in a way that makes him exciting to be around. He’s never really shared space with a baby before, not one this young, so maybe it’s the novelty.
They make some preliminary plans to discuss Baby’s issue later, and then clock out. It’s late, after all. Well past all their bedtimes, especially Baby’s.
☀️
It’s not until he’s lying in bed in Kunikida’s apartment (they’ll tackle Dazai’s in the morning, he says) wide awake on his back with Baby asleep on his chest, that he realizes what just happened. Haha, very funny. Good going Ranpo, as it must have been him. Who else would come up with such a scheme?
Baby needs to be around Dazai to be safe. In order for Baby to live a happy childhood, Dazai has to be around . They did not give Dazai a toy, they gave him a shackle.
“You conniving little rat,” Dazai whispers at Baby, hand softly petting Baby’s back. “I wonder when I’ll start to hate you. You’ll probably hate me first. Everyone else does.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off Baby the entire night. Baby sleeps soundly through it, sweetly dreaming in Dazai’s hold.