Chapter Text
Dazai did not see Chuuya at dinner, but one of the men who often guarded them at night had a large bruise on the side of his face, and Dazai pieced the story together with no difficulty. The floor beneath Dazai’s bed did not give way to any sounds of conflict underneath. How he wished he could peer into the basement and witness whatever maniacal manipulation Mori was administering on Chuuya.
When Chuuya arrived at lunch the next day, Dazai was surprised to see unbroken skin under his raggedy shirt. Could it be that Mori found Chuuya so precious that he could not bear to hurt the boy? No way.
“What happened?” Dazai asked Chuuya as soon as Chuuya got his food.
Chuuya squinted at him, suspicious. His eyes burned brightly. Dazai found comfort in them, to his surprise. He hoped they never dwindled.
“Uh, I hit a guy. And they weren’t very happy.” Chuuya’s explanation was simple and blunt. Apparently, he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Okay.” Dazai shrugged, even though he desperately wanted to know. “I wanna show you something later.”
Chuuya frowned. “Is it something weird? Like… you killed one of these guards and hid the body? And now you wanna show me your good deed?”
“I wish.” Dazai shook his head. “It’s just somewhere away from everyone else.”
“Fine,” Chuuya agreed reluctantly. His orange bangs reached just below his eyes and he brushed them away.
A wave of giddiness washed over Dazai, and he masked it quickly. He didn’t understand why he suddenly felt so happy, but he knew it wasn’t an emotion he was supposed to have. There was something he learned one day, something Mori told him that he needed to learn fast. The sooner he understood it, the sooner his weaknesses would disappear. Dazai Osamu doesn’t have feelings, and that was that.
“Hey,” Chuuya gave him a judgemental glare, “if you don’t hurry up and eat, I’m leaving you here.”
Dazai rolled his eyes. “I’m the one waiting for you to finish, Chuuya.” His lips shaped Chuuya’s name naturally, like they were always meant to form those syllables.
Chuuya frowned again, his eyes trying to analyze Dazai. He would be unable to find any clues on Dazai’s face, for Dazai had made sure nobody could. Except Mori. He just hadn’t figured out how to mask himself from Mori yet. But he will.
“The only thing you touched was the banana.” Chuuya said.
Dazai nodded in agreement. Chuuya’s eyebrows knit together so tightly, Dazai wondered if it was even possible to pull them apart. Eventually, Chuuya just muttered something in French and continued to pick at his food, stuffing the occasional piece of bread in his mouth. The other children began to finish up, pulling at their friends’ grimy hands and skipping outside into the small courtyard. Dazai’s leg bounced up and down as he watched impatiently. Chuuya sipped his water slowly, eyeing Dazai while he was at it.
“You’re so slow. Like a slug. Hurry up.” Dazai finally complained.
Chuuya licked his spoon and shrugged, blinking slowly at him with a faux innocent look on his face. “I will when you stop staring at me like a mackerel.” Chuuya licked his spoon again.
“I doubt you’ve ever even seen a mackerel.”
“I’ve eaten many.” Chuuya stuck out his tongue.
Dazai wrinkled his nose, imagining a dead fish staring blankly at Chuuya before being devoured. He looked away. “Hurry up.”
Feeling like he won, Chuuya licked a few more spoonfuls of applesauce and stood up. “I’m done!”
“You didn’t eat much either,” Dazai commented with a note of surprise in his voice.
Chuuya shrugged. “I thought it might be poisoned.”
“But you ate the applesauce anyway?”
“I still need to eat, you know.”
“Whatever. Just come on.” Dazai pulled at Chuuya’s wrist and Chuuya stood, following him after stumbling a bit.
Dazai walked towards a place he kept secret ever since he found it. Every so often, Dazai glanced back, mainly to check that Chuuya was following, but also to make sure that Mori wasn’t lurking in the shadows.
“You wanted to show me something so urgently, but now we’re walking at a snail’s pace.” Chuuya complained.
Dazai pulled Chuuya forward so they were walking side by side. The boy was the same height as he was, if only a bit taller. Chuuya eyed him. “Can you answer my question? Or are you just gonna sulk about how I’m taller?” He gloated.
“Only by a half centimeter,” Dazai replied. “And you never asked me anything.”
“You know what I mean.”
“If you’re not smart enough to figure it out, you don’t deserve to know.”
Chuuya groaned in annoyance and scanned his surroundings. “Cameras,” Chuuya said, looking at Dazai for confirmation. He isn’t dumb. Dazai was pleasantly surprised.
“They get annoyed when we run.” Dazai said in explanation.
“Is that all?” Chuuya sounded unimpressed. “How dramatic.”
Dazai grinned. “In a nutshell.”
They approached a door. Dazai pushed it open and gestured for Chuuya to go inside. It was small enough to be a mere storage room. And in a way, it was. A storage of fantasies. The walls were lined with books, from fairy tales to the holy bible. “I knew you were a nerd,” Chuuya muttered to himself, his fingers dancing across the spines of any books he could reach.
“Nobody comes in here except for Mori-sensei,” Dazai said. “And that’s only when he observes me.”
“What do the other children do?” Chuuya asked.
“Play.”
“You don’t… learn?”
“I do,” Dazai said. Sitting on the carpeted floor, he stretched for a stray pillow hiding in a corner. “They don’t.” He reached out to grab a book whose spine bore a vibrant color similar to Chuuya’s hair.
Chuuya didn’t stare at the walls of books for long. He sat and tugged on a strand of hair. “What is this place, really?” He asked after leaving Dazai in silence for a few minutes.
“An orphanage.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
If Dazai lied, Chuuya’s value and somewhat loyalty to him would probably decrease. But if he didn’t lie, he would lose face. As he was weighing his options, Chuuya moved on again. “What do you like to read?” He asked, crawling over to sit beside Dazai.
“Everything,” Dazai said.
Chuuya stared at the pages of the book in Dazai’s hands, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Do you not know how to read Japanese?” Dazai asked.
Chuuya’s cheeks reddened. “I can read. A little.”
“And French?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t tried yet.”
Dazai supposed that made sense. According to Chuuya, the boy had simply been dropped in the middle of Japan with no memories. Dazai didn’t think Chuuya would lie about something like that, but then again, Dazai didn’t know Chuuya that well, anyway. “Well, there are a few books written in other languages here,” Dazai said. He stood up and searched for the titles, grabbing a book and tossing it to Chuuya. “This one.”
Chuuya collected it from him and opened it to the first page. “It’s the same with Japanese.”
“Well, I guess you just aren’t very smart then.” Dazai shrugged. “Not everyone is as literate as I am,” he felt the need to boast.
Chuuya frowned unhappily. “Reading isn’t that cool anyway.”
He stayed with Dazai until dinner rolled around, however, and snuck glances at Dazai’s book every once in a while. When Dazai heard the shrill sounds of bells ringing, he closed his book reluctantly. “Dinner,” he said to Chuuya in way of explanation.
He only nodded in response, staying right where he was. Dazai bit the inside of his lip impatiently. “What?” He asked.
“I don’t feel like going,” was the answer.
“Going to meals isn't optional.”
“They are for me.” He said it so confidently, as if it wasn’t the most absurd thing Dazai had ever heard.
“Mori-sensei makes exceptions for no one. Not even an amnesiac foreigner.”
Chuuya shrugged. “Ask him for all I care. I’m staying here.”
Dazai desperately wanted to stay too, but he’d gotten too many beatings to ever make that mistake again. “Fine.”
The other boy seemed to understand Dazai’s hesitance fairly quickly. He fiddled with the pages of the book Dazai had placed down. Dazai gave him one more glance before surrendering to the call of dinner, and walking outside towards the dining table.
He was determined not to flinch when the inevitable question of Chuuya’s absence approached him. Just his luck that Mori was the one who asked.
“Dazai-kun,” Mori said, and that was enough to cause an uncomfortable chill to run up Dazai’s spine. He’d long since become familiar with the feeling, however, and brushed it off like it was a hungry rumble in his stomach.
“Yes, Mori-sensei?” Dazai returned the orphanage head’s smile with a fake one of his own.
“Do you mind telling me where Chuuya-kun has run off to?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know. He’s an extremely rowdy and disobedient child that—” White hot pain flared on his left cheek and his eyes closed shut immediately, just in case a few more strikes were coming his way.
“Liars,” Mori said with a tut, “are not accepted in our family.”
What family? Dazai wanted to sneer. A family of orphaned sheep so you can be the big bad wolf and herd us however you please? Give me a break.
Instead, he looked down as remorsefully as he could and whispered out another lie. “He wasn’t feeling too well. Must be the beating he got earlier.”
Mori’s mouth flattened into a grim expression. “You’re awfully keen on protecting him, aren’t you, boy?”
The way the orphanage principal pronounced the word sounded more like he was referring to Dazai as an object than a person. It annoyed him, but only to an extent. His parents had often cut his name into the same shape, objectifying and demeaning. “I have no idea what you could possibly mean, sir.”
Mori’s response was only a smile, but Dazai had to resist the urge to pull away. “You haven’t disobeyed me in such ways since you were five.” He bent down and leaned close. “Lie to me again, and I’ll break him.”
Part of Dazai wanted to deny Chuuya’s importance. Go ahead, he wanted to say. Dazai wanted to call the principal’s bluff. He knew, somehow, that Mori would not touch Chuuya; he just didn’t know why. “You—” Dazai began.
The principal stopped his words with nothing but cold, dead eyes. “Yes?” Mori prompted after a moment of silence.
“Nothing.” He bowed his head, berating himself at the mere idea of speaking up against the principal. He was too weak for that right now. He needed to bide his time.
Mori straightened and ruffled Dazai’s hair, like he didn’t just threaten to beat up a seven-year-old orphan to keep Dazai in line. “Run along,” the principal ordered.
When Dazai glanced back, Mori was walking towards his office, instead of towards the library like he’d feared. He really wasn’t going to lay a hand on Chuuya for skipping dinner, Dazai mused.
He sat at the table alone, like he had for every meal. Before today, that is. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, for the first time in two years, another orphan approached him with a conversation topic in mind. “So,” Shirase sat down decisively, “who’s the rabid ginger one?”
“Ask him yourself.”
Shirase grew frustrated immediately. “I just wanna know! So tell me.”
“No, I don’t think I will.” Dazai smiled.
“Stop your freaky smiling.” Shirase mimed throwing up. To that, Dazai smiled even wider. “Ugh! I never should have talked to you. All the older kids say you’re weird!” He frowned. “I’ll ask the ginger boy myself.”
“He’ll definitely bite you,” Dazai warned seriously. “He’s able to beat up the adults. Why else would Mori-sensei have dropped him next to me?”
Shirase stood up abruptly and took a few steps back. “You’re—you’re lying!”
“I would never. Especially not about rabies! Trust me…” Dazai lowered his voice. “He scares me.”
That seemed to frighten Shirase the most. There wasn’t a single person in the orphanage that wasn’t at least a little scared of Dazai. Except for Mori, maybe. Yet, Dazai hadn’t lied. Chuuya scared him in the worst ways possible; the excitement of using the boy was too much for Dazai, who had trained himself not to feel anything since he was three.
Shirase made a weak noise and ran off. Dazai allowed himself a small, triumphant smile. Being selfish was his speciality.
When Chuuya was thrown into the dark room where the other kids were already asleep that night, Dazai was there, waiting. “We get the closet, special case,” Dazai whispered.
“Don’t call me that,” Chuuya mumbled.
The closet was small; darker than the room, yet much warmer. “I’ll take the top bunk,” Dazai said, before Chuuya could voice his preference.
“That’s fine.”
The top bunk was more of a shelf, and Dazai threw his single blanket and pillow up before doing his best to climb up. After slipping a few times, Dazai felt Chuuya supporting his weight with his two hands, giving him a boost.
“Don’t spy on me too much, weirdo,” Chuuya said quietly.
“No promises.”
Chuuya huffed, but made no further retort. Dazai heard the sounds of Chuuya shuffling under him to get settled, before a small “Goodnight.”
Dazai smiled in the darkness. Everything he was waiting for after all those years spent abused by Mori, his way out was so tangible, so real and so devastatingly human. Nakahara Chuuya was perfect.