Chapter Text
Formal education wasn’t something Chuuya Nakahara ever got the pleasure of experiencing. Perhaps at one point he had, but that experience belonged to a boy long gone, lost after years of government testing. Even after he escaped and joined The Sheep, there was never time for school. From that day forward, his entire life had been focused on survival and protecting those under him. He learned what he had to from the streets and not much else, but that all changed when he crossed paths with the infamous Demon Prodigy of the Port Mafia. The day he met Osamu Dazai was the catalyst for some of the most significant events in his life, but that didn’t mean he liked him.
“What?! There’s no way I’m gonna work with that damn mummy!” was the first thing out of the ginger’s mouth when Mori suggested the idea of a joint mission with the younger teen. Chuuya had been vaguely aware that Mori had sent Dazai on an undercover mission, not that he cared about it at all. The ginger was more occupied with his work rather than whatever bullshit the brunette was up to. When the boss asked him up to his office for a new assignment he was ready for almost anything, but he wasn’t expecting that.
“I see. Well, I suppose I can’t force you to do this if you really don’t want to,” Mori responded to his outburst with a calm and collected facade. His tone was that of a parent trying to gently scold a child. “However, this is a fairly simple high-security mission. The kind I’d only offer to an executive candidate. If you can’t handle something as simple as this, then perhaps I may have misjudged your intentions here. Perhaps you’re reconsidering going for an executive position…?” Although it was phrased as a question, it most certainly wasn’t one and they both knew it. He had a small, teasing smile plastered on his face that was paired with an amused tone.
Chuuya couldn’t find the right words to respond. The truth was there at the very heart of the statement. He didn’t just want to be an executive, he needed that position if he wanted any more details about his past. With a grumble, he bowed his head and thought about it, although there was very little to consider.
“I’ll do it. It’s not like I have a problem with doing the mission myself, but does that bandaged moron really have to be involved too?” Dazai was the kind of person to do anything possible just to get on his nerves. Even before either of them officially joined they’d mixed about as well as water and oil. During the few months since he’d joined, he had a handful of jobs with the taller teen already and all of them were a nightmare. From the planning and execution, all the way to the paperwork Dazai refused to do, it was a constant struggle.
“Good, I knew you’d be the perfect person for the job!” Mori grinned at him, folding his hands before his face while he thought about Chuuya’s complaints.
“I suppose you two wouldn’t technically have to interact… to be completely frank, I don’t particularly care how it gets done, I just want the information. If the two of you want to turn it into a complication, who am I to complain?”
Chuuya would be a liar if he said the idea wasn’t incredibly appealing. He’d “lost” their first-ever bet, but only because Dazai cheated. He hadn’t defeated the younger teen since, nor did he have the chance to do so. The satisfaction of beating Dazai alone would have been enough to get him into the job but if he were to sweep in and complete the job faster, wouldn’t that mean he’d be more likely to be considered for promotion? He’d be stupid not to take it, even if he never had a choice at all.
The next morning, he stood beside Kouyou in front of the gates to a semi-prestigious high school. The building itself was clean, the panels an off-white colour. The exterior of the building was well maintained, with freshly cut grass and swept concrete keeping the place looking new. It looked like someone had taken a picture of a freshly built school and placed it on the lot before them. Even the freshly pressed jacket and shiny gold buttons of his gakuran matched the image. It felt awkward for Chuuya, certainly not his usual style, but it certainly fit the scene.
“Well lad, how are you feeling? It’s your first day of school,” Kouyou asked while setting a secure hand on his shoulder. It was almost parental, a facade Chuuya could only assume was for appearance's sake since she had been listed as his legal guardian. Mori would have listed himself, but he’d already been registered as Dazai’s parent and it would have been suspicious if he had two children with different appearances attending at different times.
“It’s just another mission, so I’m not worried about it too much. I’ll be here for a few days tops, and then I drop out. Nothing special to feel.” The mission was a fairly routine one, the only real difference being the target. Rather than trying to get information directly from the source, they would befriend the daughter of a rival gang's higher-ranking members and get invited to her home to steal sensitive information. It was a classic in-and-out type mission, or at least it should have been if Dazai wasn’t taking his sweet time with it. Another reason Chuuya was sent in was to hopefully speed up the process.
She placed a hand on his head, affectionately ruffling his hair. “I know, but at least try to have fun? You’re still young, enjoy the experience a little,” she said with a faint smile. “I guess there’s nothing else for me to do then. One last thing before you go,” she took her hand away from his shoulder, bringing her hands to rest at her front.
“Have a good day at school, Chuuya.”
Chuuya couldn’t help the scoff that passed through his lips as he stepped through the school gates. Kouyou was really trying to play up the motherly role, even though they both knew he wasn’t there to learn or have fun. At the most, he’d pretend to be a normal kid with no mafia affiliation just to fit in, but none of it would be real.
The ginger took his time walking through the empty hallways. The bell had already rung so classes had begun, but he was told to wait out in the hall until the teacher was ready to introduce him. Like this, alone in the silent hallways, it was easy to pretend he was someone else for just a moment.
He could picture himself as a real student, someone unimportant— perhaps a kid from the countryside, who just transferred to a new school. Maybe in a different reality, this could be his life. One without bloodshed or a god sleeping inside him. A reality where he could be normal, with normal parents and normal friends. Although an interesting daydream, it was one so far out of reach that he saw it as nothing more than a silly, childish daydream. Besides, it would be a pretty boring life. If there was no one for him to fight, only living to study and get a corporate job until he retired, where was the fun in that?
No, he didn’t belong in the safety of a school environment. Yet, he couldn’t help letting his thoughts go adrift as he floated through the halls. It only took a few minutes to stop in front of the classroom he was assigned to. It took even less time for the teacher to open the door and invite him into the room.
“Everyone, I’d like you to welcome our newest transfer student, Chuuya Nakahara,” the middle-aged man introduced him as Chuuya took a step into the room and stood before the class. His gaze scanned over the room but it hadn’t told him much, most of the kids seemed like perfectly normal students. Some of them offered nothing but blank stares, while others gave him warm, polite smiles. Most didn’t even look at him, already mentally checked out for the remainder of the class. “Now, Nakahara, why don’t you give us a brief introduction of yourself?” The teacher put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, dragging him back into reality.
“Ah, yeah. Good morning, my name is Chuuya Nakahara. I recently moved to Yokohama from the countryside,” he began his introduction. There was no particular instruction for his backstory, so he decided to use his daydream as a starting point to make himself sound a little friendlier. He didn’t have his normal aggression to his voice either, switching out his tone for something friendlier. “Please be kind to me,” he took a respectful bow to end it off. Once he straightened back out at his full height, he was able to take another look around the room. For the most part, nothing had changed. A few more students were looking at him with curiosity now, but those weren’t the looks he cared about.
The first one that caught his eye was his target. The girl, Yoko Mishima, was hard to miss. The dress code was a little different compared to most high schools in the area. The students didn’t have to have black or brown hair at the very least, and Chuuya himself was thankful for it as he didn’t have to dye his fiery red hair. But, like him, Yoko stood out from the rest of the crowd. Sure, her hair was still brown but it was a lighter shade, ashy but not quite blonde. Her eyes, grey and bright with curiosity as they flew over his body. It was as if Yoko was a child who had just been shown the latest toy commercial before Christmas. Fascinated, but also slightly mischievous.
The other student who caught his eye was certainly nowhere near as happy to see him, although seemingly just as interested. He blended into most of the general crowd, aside from the bandages wrapping over one side of his face. In the back row of the room, one dark eye stared daggers at him. By now he was quite used to the feeling of Dazai filleting him open under his gaze, but it still sent a shiver down his spine. Making eye contact didn’t help the situation either.
Where Yoko looked excited to see what made him tick, Dazai stared at him with such intensity that most would have called it angry. It wouldn’t have surprised Chuuya at all if he was mad, they were rivals more than friends and this wasn’t supposed to be his job after all. Although there was rage, there was also quite a bit of confusion in his eye as well. The look was enough for the ginger to inwardly smirk, satisfied for finally getting the drop on the mackerel.
“Thank you very much. We’re happy to have you in class with us, Nakahara. Now, why don’t you go take a seat beside Dazai in the back? He’s another new transfer student here,” the teacher stated as if already trying to force him to get to know the other students. The last person he wanted to be closer to was Dazai, but he obliged. With a nod, he walked down the aisle to the only empty seat in the room. The ginger didn’t look at anyone while he moved, not even Dazai. They had no reason to know each other, so he had no real reason to glare back at him or pick a fight even though he desperately wanted to. It’d be bad for both of them if he broke their cover so quickly. His new desk neighbour caught on quickly, once again schooling his expression and feigning uninterest while looking back to the teacher.
So, he made himself comfortable in his cold, plastic seat while pulling a pen and notebook out of his new backpack. All of his school supplies had been picked out by Kouyou, all good quality items that he hadn’t paid any attention to while they were being purchased. Even though they were just average school supplies, they screamed ‘money’, a simple tactic to make him seem valuable, to lure a target in with the promise of riches should they succeed at becoming friends with him. Everything about his school persona was carefully crafted for this mission, but he also liked it. The lavishness of such a simple item filled him with childish joy, it was almost a giddy feeling, one he wouldn’t mind indulging in more often.
Once the class had gotten underway, it didn’t take long for a neatly folded-up piece of paper to appear on the top corner of his desk. Naturally, he noticed it right away but pretended to be too focused on his note-taking to see it, let alone take a peak. To his credit, Dazai at least tried to pretend he didn’t care about whether he read the note or not, but Chuuya had a sixth sense for the younger’s bullshit and could feel how often he glanced over, either staring at him or the paper between his writing.
With a low sigh, Chuuya grabbed the note with his left hand, still mainly focusing on writing his notes. He unfolded the note as quietly as he could and laid it flat against the pages of his notebook.
“What are you doing here?” As he expected, blue ink and Dazai’s neat handwriting stared up at him from the creased page. It was a simple question, but the answer was something he didn’t want to volunteer on his own. Dazai liked to boast about how smart he was, he could figure it out himself.
“Guess,” he scribbled quickly with his black pen. Rather than folding it neatly as Dazai had, he crumpled it in one of his hands and tossed it at Dazai’s head without looking up from his notebook. The paper ball hit the brunette's head with a slight “thunk,” but before it could fall and hit the ground Dazai caught it and set it down on his desk while he finished writing in his notebook.
Chuuya watched him out of the corner of his eye until he uncrumpled the paper ball. He already looked annoyed while doing so, but once his eye landed on the one-word response the expression only deepened on his face. He quickly wrote something else on the paper and threw it back onto the desk, not bothering to fold it up this time. It glided a little awkwardly but landed right on the edge of his notes where it was meant to.
“This is my job, drop out. Doggies aren’t supposed to be in school you know ;)~” Chuuya didn’t bother with giving the note a proper response. It took all his strength not to jump out of his seat and punch Dazai right there and then, but he kept his cool. Although he resisted resulting to physical violence, his mood was still soured for the rest of the period.
The rest of the class went by slowly and remained entirely uneventful. No more notes were shared between the two undercover mafioso’s and they went back to acting like two strangers until the bell rang. Once class had ended and they had a small break period while the teachers shuffled around, they finally had the chance to talk. In the end, Dazai was the first one to break.
“So, Nakahara-kun, right?” Dazai asked in a completely offputting way. His voice wasn’t trying to poke fun at him or make any attempt to sound bored. Instead of their usual banter, he sounded completely genuine in his intentions, as if this truly were their first time meeting and Dazai wanted to make an effort to introduce himself. It would have been completely fine coming from anyone but Dazai.
“Yeah. Just Chuuya’s fine, though,” he responded, not putting nearly the same amount of energy into his speech. Still, Dazai didn’t seem to mind and held out his hand for Chuuya to shake. Without a second thought, he took it, playing into their appearances.
“Alright, Chuuya then. My name’s Dazai, nice to meet you.” The conversation they had going was something that would seem perfectly normal to all the other students in the classroom, but to them, it was anything but. Maybe in another world, the daydream his whole facade was based on where this was their first time meeting, they could have been friends. This would be a normal conversation and, had Chuuya been delusional enough, they’d be good friends. If only that world were to become a reality then he hoped Dazai would be better, not as twisted or hurt. At the very least, maybe he wouldn’t be as insufferable all the time.
”Chuuya,” the sound of Dazai tapping his fingers filled his ears, and to anyone else Dazai it wouldn’t be any more complicated than that, but Chuuya knew better. It was too easy to pick out his name from the tapping. After all, it was their own personal language. The pitter-patter of fingertips was a language they’d developed early on in their partnership when other forms of communication weren’t viable. It was not entirely dissimilar to morse code, changed just enough so anyone who heard it wouldn’t identify it as such. ”Explain. This is my job, slug.”
“You too. Mister Satou said you also transferred recently, right?” he asked while tapping out a response. ”Got assigned too. You were taking too long” he couldn’t help but throw up a fake smile. One that could be seen as friendly, but one Dazai would only see as mocking.
“Yeah, I only transferred here about a week ago myself. So why’d your family move to Yokohama?”
”And Mori thought having my dog here would encourage me? How thoughtful.”
“Oh, well my mother actually got a really good job offer here in the city! Why’d you start here?”
”I’m not your fucking dog. I didn’t have to take this job, but how could I pass up the chance to show you up?”
“I was homeschooled until recently. I decided I wanted to give formal education a chance and this is where my father decided to stick me.”
”You? Yeah right, a toddler could get this job done faster and better than you could. Now be a good slug and go crawling back to Mori for a different assignment.”
“Huh, that’s pretty interesting.”
”Fuck off.”
“Not really. Hey, why don’t you eat lunch with me today? It’s pretty nice out, so why don’t we meet up on the roof?”
”Dumb Chibi.”
“Sounds like fun, I’ll be there.”
”Smelly Mackerel.”
And just like that, the bell rang to signify the start of the next period. Their conversation died off after that. No more notes were tossed about, the tapping ceased, and not even a look or whisper was shared between the two boys. To them, there was nothing else to talk about, at least not yet. Anything worth discussing would have to wait until lunch when they could be alone under the vast, blue sky.