Chapter Text
The Agency was in a mostly nondescript building on the corner of a street. Chuuya would never have guessed it was there if he wasn’t being led up the stairs by Dazai, his hand still firmly clasped in the other’s.
On the bottom floor there was a cafe, still open despite the time of night, a pretty waitress sitting on the other side of the counter looking bored in the empty evening, and the top floors appeared to be inhabited by offices or being used as storage.
But Dazai let himself past a green door, and the room opened into a space with a few desks, couches behind screens giving the impression of stained glass.
At the desk across the room, centre focus and near the windows, there sat a man who looked just a little older than them, feet kicked up on the desk as he leant back in his chair, looking entirely unsurprised to see them.
“Late as always, Dazai,” he said, a sharp grin on his face, and he kicked his feet back down, leaning forward and studying Chuuya with piercing green eyes, like he was trying to glean everything about him from a single look.
“If you knew I was coming already, you could have made it a lot easier for me by telling me where you were yourself, Ranpo,” Dazai responded, but his tone was playful. Chuuya couldn’t tell how much of that playfulness was genuine, and how much of it was masking his discomfort.
“Where’s the fun in that,” Ranpo responded, not taking his eyes off Chuuya as he shrugged. “I knew you’d find me.”
Finally, his gaze shifted to Dazai, expression turning more solemn.
“Besides. I’ve been busy.”
Dazai frowned, dropping Chuuya’s hand to walk closer, and Chuuya immediately missed the warmth. The Agency wasn’t cold, but the open space seemed a little foreboding.
“You already know Natsume is missing then,” Dazai assumed.
Ranpo nodded.
“We’ve been looking for him for a few days already. Fukuzawa has taken Atsushi and Akutagawa and they’re investigating a few leads. They left earlier today.” Ranpo stood, and as he did so, Chuuya looked around the office.
To the side, there was another door leading to a hallway, and in the doorway stood a young woman with dark hair pinned with a butterfly clip, watching Dazai and Ranpo interact, the slightest furrow to her brow.
“Chuuya, you should go with Yosano,” Ranpo instructed, gathering files off his desk and shoving them carelessly at Dazai. “I can feel the instability in your magic from here,” he added dryly, and Chuuya frowned.
“I feel fine. How do you know my name?”
Ranpo just ignored him, and Dazai didn’t even spare Chuuya a second glance before following Ranpo past Yosano and down the hall, heading into one of the rooms and closing the door behind them.
“Self-absorbed idiots,” Yosano said, not quite sympathetically, but not far from it either. “I think he just doesn’t want any outside ears hearing his explanation of his plans.”
Chuuya didn’t feel comforted by her response.
“What am I going to do with them, huh? It’s not like I’m going to go back to work after this and tell my friends ‘oh you’ll never guess what some guy at this magical detective agency is planning’. I’d be lucky if they didn’t call me insane. They’d ask what I’m high on.”
Yosano smiled, seeming at least a little amused.
“You’re not wrong. But Ranpo is more anxious than he will admit to anyone. At least he already knows Dazai. He knows he can trust him.”
Chuuya frowned, and as she turned down the same hall, leading him through another door into what appeared to be some kind of infirmary, he responded.
“Out of the two of us though, it should be Dazai he sends to you. If you’re the doctor of the two of you, it should be Dazai you see. His memories have been fucked over.”
Yosano sighed, and sat on a stool next to a computer, tidying things away as if she was just trying to keep her hands busy.
“Ranpo knows already. He figured that out ages ago. But the only way Dazai will get those back is if–” she cut herself off, shaking her head.
“It’s his source emotion that’s been tampered with. Until he’s fixed it, there’s nothing I can do. I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker, and not a therapist.”
“Dazai needs all three of those,” Chuuya muttered dryly, hearing Yosano scoff.
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Yosano responded, getting up and heading over to a counter that had a sink, a few cabinets, and a kettle. She filled the kettle, setting it to boil and setting out a few mugs.
Chuuya was quiet for a moment, watching her.
“How did Ranpo figure all this out? How did he know my name?” he asked.
Yosano glanced at him as she prepared the cups, five different ones, each a different shape and design.
“Ranpo is incredibly intelligent,” she answered after a long moment. “He believes it’s his magic, but it’s not. It really is just his natural intelligence. He’s quite hopeless with magic, his source emotion isn’t strong enough. I don’t know how he does it, really. He’s just that smart.”
“How do you know what your source emotion is?” Chuuya asked abruptly, surprising himself with the question. So many people talked about it, about knowing what it was, and its strength, but he had no idea how anyone ever knew what theirs was.
Yosano looked at him again, this time turning to face him and considering his question.
She didn’t answer, instead letting the kettle finish boiling and filling two of the cups, adding various things before bringing them both over, handing one to Chuuya, who was still standing, before sitting down.
“I don’t know that either,” she answered honestly. “I think it takes a lot of self-reflection.”
After a moment, she continued.
“Mine is love. No kind of love in particular, just love. As long as I feel loved, my source emotion stays strong.” She paused. “Ranpo’s is pride. A fine line between a positive and negative source. The problem with it is that Ranpo doesn’t genuinely feel proud of himself for much. So it’s not particularly strong.”
“It’s very difficult to figure out what someone else’s source emotion is. It’s also, typically, a very personal question. It reveals a lot about a person. Who they are, what they fear, what their values are. It also very quickly becomes a weakness if you share it with the wrong person.”
She gestured at his cup, which he was mainly holding for the warmth it replaced now that his hand was free from Dazai’s.
“Drink. You’ll need to sleep, and that will help.”
Chuuya wasn’t typically one to do what he was told, but for once he did without complaint, beginning to feel his exhaustion creep up on him. A lot had happened in the past twenty four hours, and he hadn’t slept well the previous night.
She hesitated, and after a moment asked, “Did Dazai ever tell you what his source emotion was?” She looked away, busying herself again with the mess of her desk. “He never told any of us.”
Chuuya didn’t know if he should tell her, but after a moment, nodded despite the fact she wasn’t looking at him.
“He did. He said it was hope.”
Her hands stilled mid-motion, and he watched her expression, the conflicted look that crossed her face, before she drew a deep breath.
“That makes sense,” she murmured.
She sat up straighter.
“The last time I saw Dazai,” she continued, voice stronger now, “he was a shell. Far from who I knew. Mori is a good teacher. He can shape anyone into a brilliant and talented magic wielder. But he is far from a good person. It makes sense he would drain Dazai of any hope he held for anything.”
Chuuya looked down at his cup.
It seemed like plain black tea, but it shimmered with something magical, and he knew it was infused with it.
“That’s the person he’s become again,” he said, voice sounding strange to his own ears. “When I met him, he was out of hope. That’s what he told me. But he can’t remember anything that happened after we met. It’s like it sucked the memories out of him when whatever shadow thing that attacked us took his hope.”
He sipped on his tea to shut himself up, finding it somehow exactly to his taste, like it had adjusted after his first sip, and so he drank some more, until nearly half the cup was gone.
Yosano wouldn’t look at him, staring at some papers laid out on her desk instead. They looked like medical charts.
“Well.” She swallowed. “If you brought his hope back in the first place, it’s a good thing you’re the one with him now.”
“I’m sorry that we couldn’t have been the ones to do that for him in the first place.”
A heavy silence fell between them, in which Chuuya just sipped on his tea until it was finished. The exhaustion was beginning to tug at the corners of his brain, making him feel slightly woozy.
Yosano stood up, taking his cup from him and placing it in the sink, before instructing him to follow her to a room he could sleep in for the evening.
He was guided to a small room with two twin beds in it, and told to take his pick, and fetch her if he needed anything. He promised he would, thankful for the opportunity to finally sleep, and then he was left alone.
He hadn’t brought much with him when he left earlier that morning, so he didn’t have anything to sleep in. Instead he just stripped to his boxers, crawling into one of the beds. He didn’t have any time to mull over anything that he had talked about that evening, or experienced that day, before he was being dragged under to sleep.
—
Inside the room Ranpo led him to, Dazai found a long table with chairs around it, a board in the corner with papers attached with silly magnets. A tall man with dark hair falling in his face was sitting at the table, drawing out what appeared to be maps with charcoal pencils, appearing to be taking way too much care with each section he drew.
He lingered near the doorway as Ranpo went over to him, leaning over his shoulder to analyse the drawings. They exchanged quiet words, and Ranpo picked one out, comparing it with another, and Dazai realised what was happening: Ranpo was explaining the layout of his plans, and the other man was drawing them out as a visual reference.
He was sure there were probably more efficient ways to do it, but the other just seemed relieved to have something to do.
Ranpo sat down after a moment, and Dazai handed him the papers he had been given a minute prior, still standing awkwardly.
Ranpo didn’t wait to see if Dazai would sit down, and just began speaking to him anyway, and as he did so Dazai realised he probably wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon, so pulled out a chair near the end of the table, trying not to come across as uncomfortable as he felt.
“Natsume appears to have disappeared two days ago,” Ranpo began, leaning back with his arms crossed, looking only at the table as he spoke. “We hadn’t received any correspondence for a few days, but when we sent Atsushi up that way to check, nothing suggested he’d been gone for more than a few hours, marking his time of departure to be somewhere in the early morning two days ago.”
“...Just over twelve hours before when I would have had my memories wiped,” Dazai said with a frown, and Ranpo nodded.
“Exactly. With Natsume's departure I knew that something big had to be happening, so I checked in with various users across Yokohama to see if anything strange had happened, and the only thing that came up was that suddenly both you and Chuuya had called out of work sick for an indeterminate amount of time, so it wasn’t hard to deduce from there.”
Dazai decided it was better not to ask how Ranpo got such specific information about him and Chuuya specifically.
“We’ve traced a few leads on Natsume’s whereabouts, largely thanks to outside help, I will admit. The most promising lead so far suggests that he’s somewhere further North, being held by an off-shoot group of the main people behind this. Like I said earlier, Fukuzawa is babysitting Atsushi and Akutagawa while they search for him.”
Dazai nodded.
That made sense. Atsushi and Akutagawa were incredibly powerful together, they always had been. Even when Dazai first found them, Akutagawa first and Atsushi second, dragging each starving orphan back to Natsume like proof of the fact that he wasn’t heartless, that there was still a person left behind the lack of source emotion left, they had been incredibly well-equipped to work together when they weren’t actively fighting each other.
“As for our main antagonist, we’ve sourced it back to one group, who are fondly referred to as ‘The Rats’. It’s short for something else, but it sounds too cool for them,” Ranpo added dismissively.
“This group is led by a man named Fyodor, and that’s who we’re looking for.”
Dazai felt bile rise in his throat, and he nodded. That was a wound a little too fresh for his liking. He hoped that the version of him that existed before this had all happened was not as hurt by the knowledge of how far gone Fyodor had truly been.
“I know. I’ve met him before,” he informed Ranpo, who shot him a look. It didn’t seem to be indicative of anything– curiosity, maybe. Pity, at worst.
“Well,” Ranpo continued after a moment. “We’ve traced his last whereabouts back to Russia. St. Petersburg. Now that you’re here, I’d like to send you and Chuuya after him.”
Dazai internally winced, and he bit his cheek, unsure how he felt about the concept of going after Fyodor like this.
Surprisingly, he found it wasn’t for his own sake. Sure, he didn’t want to go at all, but he knew it was important enough that if it was just him, he’d go with very little resistance. But Chuuya, who had only just learned about his own magic, who was in more danger than he probably realised, and who was attached to a version of himself he had no recollection of, and no idea of how to be, was his worry.
As if reading his mind, Ranpo continued.
“I know you’re worried about Chuuya, but quite frankly, between the two of you, he’s the least of my concern.” Ranpo looked at him, meeting his gaze and narrowing his eyes. “You don’t have any of your source emotion left, that’s obvious. But you’ve been performing magic anyway. I know how you do it.”
Dazai suddenly felt quite cornered. He didn’t like this, the attention from Ranpo, the way he brought up such a personal topic in front of someone he didn’t know, and in fact, the knowledge that Ranpo was aware in the first place was disconcerting, nevermind that he was confident enough in his assertion that he would bring it up to him.
“This is dangerous. You can’t keep it up forever.” He paused. “Does Chuuya know?”
Dazai reluctantly shook his head.
Ranpo clearly wasn’t pleased, but he looked away, returning to his papers.
“...I can get you flights for tomorrow morning. You’ll be in St. Petersburg by the evening.”
Dazai was quiet for a few moments.
“And if Fyodor isn’t there?” he asked.
The room was nearly silent for a little while, the only sound coming from the scratching of pencils on paper.
“Mori will be there,” Ranpo said at length, anticipating the reaction.
Dazai couldn’t hide the flinch, the way he tensed and nearly bolted like a spooked cat.
“Mori?!” he asked, unable to hide his disbelief.
“He’s been working on trying to deduce Fyodor’s plans and whereabouts for far longer than we have,” Ranpo argued, trying to justify it. “Yosano isn’t happy about it either, but he’s our best option at the moment. You don’t have to see him for long. At most a few days.”
Dazai floundered, completely lost for a moment. He wanted to argue, and say that there was no way he’d ever be in the company of that heinous man again, but that would mean speaking, justifying it, arguing over the severity of Mori’s actions, whether the consequences of being around him would be greater than the consequences of not.
And he did know which would win. Unfortunately, he wasn’t dumb enough to think that anything else would work in the time frame they had. Mori really was their best option.
So he forced himself to relax, and sighed airily.
“Fine. I suppose I’ll survive being around the slimy bastard for a few days.” He hummed. “So, we go find Mori, who’ll help us find Fyodor, then we… what?”
Ranpo was watching him, picking out the falseness in his tone and expression, but he didn’t comment on it, instead answering him.
“I have ideas. But I’m not sure yet. Once you’re sure of his whereabouts, we can finalise our plan.”
Dazai nodded, and there was a knock on the door. Yosano came in, precariously balancing three cups in two hands. She placed one before each of them, sitting down.
“Chuuya’s fine, I showed him to the room you’ll be staying in,” she addressed to Dazai, and he nodded gratefully, picking up the cup and inspecting it.
He recognised it almost immediately. When they were younger, Yosano had taken it upon herself to learn to make tea that would help him sleep. The same kind of thing Mori had given him.
He let Ranpo and Yosano talk, tuning out the noise as he sipped on the cup, hoping to quell his nausea. It seemed that most of the planning talk for the evening was over, so once his cup was done, he excused himself, and Yosano gave him the directions to the room he was to sleep in.
He wandered down the hall, trying to mull over the conversation, and trying to envision how he would react upon seeing Mori again, upon seeing Fyodor again. They were like relics of a person he was, firmly holding onto the person he is, and he had no idea how, and if, they corresponded to the person he could be, the person he had been a few days ago.
Dazai stood in the darkness of the room, unsure what to do with the empty feeling he was left with. It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to it– far from it.
But it ached.
And here he was, left with nothing he could do about it.
There were two twin beds, one of which (the one closest to the window) was already taken by Chuuya. He didn’t have anything to sleep in, but from how Chuuya had sprawled while sleeping, he could see the other had just mostly foregone clothes.
He hesitated, considering following suit, before quickly deciding that the idea made him feel ill. He looked at the other bed, dreading the idea of sleeping.
He heard Chuuya shift, and the next thing he knew a delirious Chuuya was speaking.
“Dazai?” he asked, sounding half-asleep.
Dazai looked at him, blinking in the dim light as he attempted to make out Chuuya’s features, soft in the lack of light.
“Yeah?” he asked quietly.
Chuuya didn’t respond properly, just falling back against the pillow again and shifting to the side, half heartedly attempting to fix the blanket again to make space for him. Dazai hesitated again, but the lure of a warm bed seemed tempting. And a nagging part of his brain that knew things he’d forgotten knew that Chuuya was safe.
Chuuya made a vague noise of exasperation as he didn’t come over, so Dazai made his decision, reasoning with himself that the worst had already happened, and nothing would come of it.
He made his way over quickly, remembering just as quickly that twin beds, despite how the name might suggest, were not made for two, but Chuuya was warm and unbothered by the contact between their shoulders.
Dazai stared unblinkingly at the ceiling.
He didn’t realise he’d fallen asleep until the next morning when he woke up alone.