Chapter Text
The night before Chuuya leaves for Tokyo, there are no goodbyes.
No promises to keep in touch, no dramatic speeches, no acknowledgment that tomorrow will change the quiet little routine they have somehow built together.
They simply sit on the sofa as they always do, Dazai reading through his emails while Chuuya sips his yogurt drink beside him, the television playing quietly in the background.
At some point, Dazai steals the drink from his hand, in which Chuuya immediately kicks his leg.
Dazai laughs, Chuuya glares, and within seconds they're both nearly falling off the sofa while fighting over the stupid bottle. It is ridiculous and familiar, and for those few minutes, Dazai almost forgot that tomorrow is different.
Eventually, Chuuya gets his drink back.
And he leaves not long after.
At the doorway, he slips his shoes on and looks back at Dazai.
“See you.”
Dazai smiles and waves but says nothing.
Then the door closes.
He stands there for a moment longer than he needs to before returning to his study. He sits at his desk, opens his laptop, and stares at the same email he has been ignoring for months.
The apartment is quiet again.
Too quiet.
There is no Chuuya complaining from the kitchen, no footsteps crossing the living room, no sarcastic comments whenever Dazai reads something aloud. The silence should feel familiar.
It is the same silence Dazai had lived with before Chuuya ever appeared.
But somehow, it doesn't feel the same anymore.
Dazai reads the email again.
An invitation to an overseas book fair to promote and announce the launching of his new novel, an offer he has postponed answering for months because he had never found a reason to leave his apartment.
Tonight, he accepts.
Perhaps leaving is easier when there is somewhere else to go.
And perhaps, somewhere along the way, two people who were never supposed to meet have simply reached the end of the same road.
Dazai closes the laptop and leans back in his chair.
For the first time, he wonders if fate is actually kind enough to bring people back.
He doesn't know.
So he waits, quietly, in an apartment that suddenly feels much too big.
_
The year following Dazai Osamu's departure from the quiet town passes in a strange sort of blur.
It begins with America.
The book fair is supposed to last only a few weeks, although Dazai's publisher managed to turn those weeks into months of interviews, meetings, photographs, dinners, and appearances that leave him wondering whether authors are actually expected to write books or simply stand around talking about them.
His latest novel has attracted more attention than anyone anticipated, and for the first time in months, Dazai finds himself surrounded by people who are genuinely interested in what he writes.
It should be exhausting.
Instead, he finds it strangely invigorating.
Perhaps because there is something satisfying about watching an idea that once existed only inside his head become something other people can hold in their hands.
The novel is called The Redhead at Midnight.
Dazai doesn't remember when he settled on the title.
He only remembers writing late into the night during the weeks after returning from the town, filling page after page with a story that seems to arrive faster than he can write it down.
A lonely man living in an unfamiliar apartment. A mysterious stranger appearing in the middle of the night. Quiet conversations. An impossible friendship. A person who keeps returning to a place he insists he has already left behind.
The book is nothing like Dazai's previous work.
His editor calls it warmer. His publisher calls it unexpectedly hopeful. One critic describes it as his most human novel yet.
Dazai finds all three observations mildly amusing. Although, he doesn't correct them.
By the time the book launches in America and Japan, his name is printed across posters in bookstores and displayed on enormous banners outside the convention center. Fans line up for hours to have their copies signed, and Dazai spends an entire afternoon smiling for photographs while wondering whether his face had begun to hurt permanently.
Kunikida, naturally, is delighted.
Dazai is less enthusiastic about the photographs but he signs books anyway. He answers questions about the novel, discusses his characters, and listens as strangers tell him which chapters made them laugh or cry. Some ask where he found the inspiration for the story.
Dazai always gives the same vague answer.
“Life is full of strange people.”
It is enough to satisfy most of them.
The months that follow are busy.
There are more interviews, more invitations, more flights between cities, and more hotel rooms that all begin to look the same after a while. Dazai rediscovers that being successful is considerably more tiring than being unknown, but there are moments when he catches himself enjoying it.
He starts leaving the country more often. He accepts invitations he would have ignored before. He goes to restaurants instead of forgetting to eat. He answers some of Kunikida's calls before the second attempt. He even begins attending book signings voluntarily, which Kunikida considers nothing short of a miracle.
Dazai's life becomes full again.
Not necessarily happier. Just fuller. And yet, certain habits refuse to disappear.
He still makes too much tea.
He still keeps two chairs on the balcony. He still occasionally buys things he doesn't need before realizing there is no one around to complain about them.
Once, while standing in a grocery store aisle, he picks up a yogurt drink and a few lemons without thinking. He stares at it for several seconds before putting it back.
He doesn't understand why the small gesture leaves him strangely unsettled.
So he forgets about it. At least, he tries to.
The novel continues to sell. Readers adore the mysterious redhead and Dazai finds this particularly amusing.
They praise the character's temper, his stubbornness, his strange tenderness, and the way he somehow manages to turn an otherwise lonely apartment into a home. People ask whether the character is based on someone Dazai knows.
He laughs every time.
“No.”
Because it's easier that way.
By winter, The Redhead at Midnight had become his most successful novel yet.
Dazai is invited to another international book fair. Then another. His publisher begins discussing translations. His calendar fills months in advance.
From the outside, everything looks perfect.
Perhaps it is.
But whenever he returns to the quiet apartment between trips, there is something strangely familiar about the silence. It isn't unpleasant. It simply reminds him of a time when silence wasn't the only thing waiting for him when he came home.
Dazai never gives that feeling a name.
He doesn't need to.
A year passes anyway.
And somewhere along the way, without realizing it, Dazai begins to understand that some people don't have to remain in your life to leave something behind.
Sometimes they leave a habit.
A chair, a book, a laugh buried somewhere in the walls. Or perhaps an entire story.
Then life continues and Dazai, as always, continues with it.
—
After his schedule finally clears, Dazai realizes just how much his absence had affected the apartment.
It isn't as though he had abandoned the place entirely, but months of traveling from one country to another have made it nearly impossible to keep the house alive.
Dust settled over the furniture, the kitchen remained untouched for so long that even the utensils look unfamiliar, and the air carries the stale scent of a room that spent too much time closed up.
His clothes and beddings have become so musty that he finally dropped them off at the laundry shop the day before, leaving himself with very little to do except clean what he can and wait until four in the afternoon to pick everything up.
There is plenty to keep him occupied.
He sweeps the floors, wipes down the shelves, opens the windows to let fresh air inside, and makes a mental note to deal with the kitchen later.
There are still boxes scattered around the apartment, some of them untouched since the day he moved in, and Dazai finds himself wondering how he managed to live among all this clutter for so long without noticing it.
Perhaps he simply had better things to think about.
Or perhaps the apartment had once been quieter.
While sweeping beneath the sofa, the broom suddenly catches against something solid. Dazai looks down and finds an old cardboard box tucked underneath the furniture, its surface coated in a thin layer of dust. He doesn't remember putting it there, and curiosity wins over his cleaning schedule as he sets the broom aside and pulls the box into the middle of the living room.
When he opens it, hundreds of colorful paper cranes greet him.
Dazai stares at them, then slowly, he smiles.
He remembers the afternoon immediately.
The balcony, the scattered pieces of colored paper, the sudden rain that had forced them inside, and the ridiculous argument over who was better at folding cranes. Chuuya had somehow managed to make hundreds while Dazai had stopped at exactly thirty-six, declaring that continuing would be an insult to his artistic dignity before spending the rest of the afternoon deliberately irritating the redhead instead.
Apparently, they had left the rest unfinished.
Dazai sits down beside the box and begins counting. He isn't entirely sure why. Perhaps he simply has nothing better to do.
Seven hundred and forty-nine paper cranes.
He counts them twice just to make sure. Then he looks toward the wall clock. Four hours until he has to leave for the laundry shop.
Dazai looks back at the cranes.
Two hundred and fifty-one left.
That should be enough time, so he starts folding. One by one, he works through the remaining pieces of colored paper, occasionally getting the folds wrong and having to start over. It is tedious work, but strangely calming, and for once Dazai doesn't feel the need to rush toward something else.
Noon slips quietly into the afternoon as the pile beside him grows smaller, until the last piece of paper finally rests between his fingers.
When the alarm on his phone rings, Dazai looks down.
Exactly one thousand.
He sits there for a while, surrounded by the cranes, his fingers resting against the last one he folded.
He should leave now to get the laundry. Instead, he looks at the colorful collection scattered across the floor and finds himself thinking about the old superstition attached to them, the childish belief that folding a thousand paper cranes will grant a wish.
It's ridiculous.
Dazai had never been particularly fond of wishes because they require hope, after all, and hope has always seemed like an unnecessarily troublesome thing to carry around.
Still, he closes his eyes.
“If fate is real,” he murmurs, almost embarrassed by the words as soon as they leave his mouth, “I wish for it to do its job.”
He opens his eyes and laughs quietly at himself.
How childish.
A grown man, a bestselling novelist, sitting alone in his living room surrounded by paper cranes and asking an imaginary force to interfere with his life.
Perhaps he finally lost his mind.
Dazai gets to his feet before he can reconsider the absurdity of it and heads toward his bedroom to change. He stops almost immediately.
Most of his decent clothes are currently sitting at the laundry shop.
What remains in his closet is a collection of unfortunate combinations that should never have been allowed to exist together. Dazai stares at the clothes for a moment, considers waiting until tomorrow, then remembers that his laundry needs to be picked up before the shop closes.
He sighs and puts them on.
The result is terrible.
He looks down at himself, decides that there is no point fixing what cannot be fixed, and reaches for his sunglasses instead. If anyone happens to recognize him in the neighborhood, perhaps they will be kind enough to assume the sunglasses are hiding something more fashionable underneath.
Dazai locks the apartment behind him and steps outside.
The afternoon air feels different after spending the entire day indoors.
He slips his hands into his pockets and starts walking toward the bus stop, completely unaware that somewhere beyond the quiet streets and ordinary afternoon traffic, the life he thought had already moved on is beginning to circle back toward him.
The nearest laundry shop is five streets away, which is far enough to make walking there feel unnecessarily troublesome, especially when Dazai has spent the better part of the afternoon sitting on the floor folding a thousand paper cranes. So, naturally, he chooses the bus.
It is already crowded when he gets on, leaving him with little choice but to stand near the middle and hold onto one of the overhead rails. He checks the number of stops on his phone and decides there is no reason to complain about standing for five of them. He has survived worse things, including several hours of interviews with journalists who insist on asking where he gets his inspiration.
The bus moves.
Two stops passed before someone gets on.
Dazai doesn't notice immediately. His attention is somewhere outside the window, watching the familiar streets blur together beneath the fading afternoon light, until a flash of red catches the corner of his vision.
His gaze shifts.
And stops.
For a moment, Dazai doesn't understand what he is looking at.
The red hair is familiar. So are the shoulders, the posture, the way the man stands with one hand wrapped around the overhead rail while the other holds his phone. Even after a year, Dazai recognizes him before he has the chance to think about recognizing him.
Chuuya.
He looks different.
Not enough to make him unfamiliar, but enough to remind Dazai that a whole year has passed without him seeing this face. His hair is a little different, his clothes more suited to someone who spends his days working rather than lounging around an apartment, and there is something calmer about him now.
He looks tired, though, his expression softened by exhaustion as he listens to whatever is playing through his headphones, completely unaware that Dazai is standing only a few feet away.
Dazai doesn't call him.
Not yet.
Instead, he watches.
There is something strangely surreal about seeing Chuuya again in a place so completely removed from the apartment that had once belonged to him. No balcony. No books scattered across the sofa. No half-finished cups of tea. No midnight entrances through a fourth-floor window.
Just a crowded bus on an ordinary afternoon.
Dazai finds himself smiling.
He carefully moves through the passengers until he is standing behind Chuuya, close enough that he can see the reflection of his face on the dark screen of the phone. Chuuya doesn't notice. He is too absorbed in his music, occasionally tapping his fingers against the phone in time with whatever song is playing.
Dazai could simply say his name. Instead, he waits. He doesn't quite know why.
Perhaps because after a year of absence, he wants to make the first moment last a little longer. Perhaps because there is something comforting about knowing that Chuuya is real and standing right there, close enough that Dazai could reach out and touch his shoulder.
The bus continues through another street.
The crowd begins to loosen as several passengers get off, leaving more room between them.
Dazai decides that is enough waiting.
He leans down slightly, careful not to startle him too badly, and gently pulls one side of his headphones away from his ear.
“Hello, grumpy~”
Chuuya jolts.
His phone nearly slips from his hand as he whirls around, blue eyes widening in genuine shock.
For one suspended second, neither of them says anything.
Dazai simply looks at him.
A year.
It has been a year since he last saw those eyes looking at him from across a balcony, a sofa, a kitchen counter, a doorway. A year since that voice filled his apartment. A year since someone made the silence feel less like silence.
And yet, standing there on a crowded bus, Dazai realizes that the distance between them somehow disappears in an instant.
Chuuya looks at him as though he is trying to determine whether he is actually there.
Then his expression changes.
Surprise gives way to disbelief, disbelief to something softer, something Dazai can't quite name before Chuuya hurriedly pulls the other headphone from his ear.
“Dazai?”
His voice sounds almost exactly the same.
Dazai smiles.
“Long time no see.”
Chuuya stares at him for another second before his eyebrows pull together. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Dazai glances around the bus. “Taking public transportation, apparently.”
“That isn't what I meant.”
“I know.”
Chuuya exhales through his nose, but there is no real irritation behind it. If anything, there is something almost relieved in his expression, although perhaps Dazai is simply imagining it.
They don't immediately talk about the year between them, or Tokyo, or America, or everything that happened while they were apart.
They simply stand there, surrounded by strangers, shoulder to shoulder in the cramped space of a city bus.
And somehow, it feels familiar.
Dazai looks at Chuuya again.
He had imagined this moment before, though he never admitted it to himself. In those quiet nights when the apartment felt too large, when his eyes wandered toward the second chair on the balcony, when he found himself remembering an argument over lemonade or a book left open on the sofa, he had occasionally wondered what it would feel like to see the redhead again.
He had imagined something grand.
Something worthy of a year apart.
Instead, Chuuya is standing in front of him with headphones hanging around his neck, looking tired and slightly annoyed, while Dazai is dressed in an absolutely terrible combination of clothes because he forgot to do his laundry.
It is perfect.
Dazai's smile grows.
“What?” Chuuya asks suspiciously.
“Nothing~” He winks.
“Stop staring.”
“I've missed your grumpy face.” The words escape before Dazai can decide whether he should say them.
Chuuya goes completely still. For once, he doesn't have a comeback. His ears slowly turn red and Dazai pretends not to notice.
Outside the window, the city continues moving as though nothing remarkable has happened.
Inside the bus, however, after a year of silence, Dazai finds himself thinking that perhaps his thousand paper cranes weren't such a ridiculous idea after all.
“The fuck is wrong with your clothes?”
Chuuya finally asks after a full minute of awkwardly staring at each other, his eyes traveling from Dazai's sunglasses to the unfortunate combination of clothes he has chosen to wear, lingering for a particularly judgmental moment on the shoes.
Dazai instinctively looks down at himself.
He already knows that there's no saving this.
“Something terrible,” he admits, tugging uselessly at his shirt as though that might somehow make the outfit less offensive.
Chuuya stares at him for another second before a laugh escapes.
It starts quietly, almost like he is trying to suppress it, but soon enough his shoulders are shaking and he has to turn his face away. Dazai watches him with an amused smile, finding the sound strangely familiar despite the year that passed.
“Your hair is still fucking ridiculous,” Chuuya manages between laughs.
“And you're still short.”
The laughter stops. Chuuya turns slowly, eyes sharper than ever.
Dazai smiles innocently. Whoops, touchy subject.
“You've got some nerve.”
“I've had a very difficult year. I deserve to have some fun.”
“You're lucky we're in public.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I'm promising you.”
Dazai laughs, and just like that, whatever awkwardness had settled between them seems to disappear.
It is almost unfair how easily it happens.
A year apart should have made them strangers, or at the very least, people who need to relearn how to speak to one another. Instead, within minutes, Chuuya is insulting his appearance and Dazai is returning the favor, and neither of them seems capable of acknowledging how comforting that familiarity feels.
When the bus finally reaches the next stop, they step off together.
“This is my stop,” they say simultaneously.
They look at each other. There is a beat of silence before they both burst out laughing.
“Of course it is,” Dazai says, shaking his head.
“Don't make it sound weird.”
“But I didn't say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking that fate has an interesting sense of humor.”
Chuuya rolls his eyes and starts walking. Dazai falls into step beside him without asking.
He explains that he's on his way to pick up his laundry, which earns him another round of criticism for somehow owning enough clothes to require an entire trip to the laundromat while still managing to leave himself with the outfit currently assaulting Chuuya's eyesight.
Chuuya, in turn, mentions that he's heading to Tachihara's place. Apparently, his cousin has been bothering him about visiting, and after spending the entire week working, Chuuya has finally surrendered.
Dazai remembers the name.
Tachihara.
The person responsible for apparently informing Chuuya's parents about his late-night habits all those months ago.
They continue walking side by side, their conversation drifting between meaningless things and whatever happens to cross their paths, until they pass a small bench outside a café. A woman is sitting there with a paperback resting in her hands.
Dazai doesn't pay much attention at first but Chuuya does. His gaze falls on the familiar cover.
He stops walking.
Dazai takes another step before realizing he's suddenly alone.
“What?”
Chuuya points at the book. Dazai follows his finger.
His latest novel. The Redhead at Midnight.
Chuuya looks at the cover, then slowly turns toward him. A grin spreads across his face.
“Couldn't come up with a better title?”
Dazai places a hand over his chest, pretending to be offended. “I thought it was fitting.”
Chuuya snorts. “Of course you did.”
Dazai looks at the woman reading his book, then back at Chuuya, who is still wearing that irritatingly amused expression.
For some reason, the sight makes him happier than the book being a bestseller ever did. Perhaps because a year ago, he had written a story about a mysterious redhead who wandered into his life in the middle of the night.
Now that same redhead is standing beside him in broad daylight, making fun of the title.
Dazai decides he prefers this version of the story.
—
Dazai isn't answering his calls.
If it were anyone else, Kunikida would probably sigh, put his phone away, and wait a few hours before trying again. People miss calls. People sleep. People get busy. There are perfectly reasonable explanations for someone not answering their phone at midnight.
But this is Dazai Osamu.
With Dazai, reasonable explanations have never been particularly reliable.
Kunikida had known him for eleven years, long enough to know that the successful novelist everyone sees on book covers and television interviews is still, in many ways, the same seventeen-year-old boy who once marched into the publishing office with a manuscript tucked beneath his arm and the absolute confidence of someone who had already decided that the world was going to read his work whether it wanted to or not.
Kunikida had been there from the beginning, watching that strange, brilliant boy grow into one of the most successful writers of his generation, and he had also been there for the quieter parts of Dazai's life that never make it into newspapers.
The bad days.
The long silences.
The periods when Dazai becomes so absorbed in his work that he forgets to eat properly, sleep properly, or acknowledge that there is a world outside his study.
Which is why Kunikida doesn't like the fact that his calls have been going unanswered for hours.
Now it is past midnight, and he is driving through the countryside with one hand on the steering wheel and the other repeatedly calling a man who seems determined to shave several years off his manager's life.
The call ends in voicemail again.
“Answer your phone, damnit.”
Kunikida grips the steering wheel tighter.
He has a meeting at eight in the morning. He should be asleep. He should not be driving several hours into the countryside because a certain novelist has decided that ignoring his phone is an acceptable form of communication.
Kunikida sincerely hopes this is nothing more than one of Dazai's ridiculous pranks.
He hopes even more that Dazai is safe.
By the time he reaches the apartment building, Kunikida is already mentally preparing the lecture he intends to deliver.
He takes the stairs two at a time, reaches Dazai's floor, and immediately notices something strange.
Music.
Loud music.
Very loud music.
Kunikida stops in front of the apartment door and stares.
The last time he visited, the place had been practically silent. Dazai specifically requested a soundproof apartment because he wanted somewhere quiet enough to write without interruption, and Kunikida personally helped arrange the entire thing.
Now the hallway is practically vibrating.
He reaches for the door, ready to knock hard enough to make his presence known, only to realize that it is already half open.
“Dazai?”
No answer. The music continues so Kunikida pushes the door open.
He expected disaster.
He expected scattered papers, empty cups, perhaps a suspiciously concerning sight that will require him to call an ambulance.
What he doesn't expect is two grown men dancing in the middle of the living room.
Kunikida stops dead.
One of them is holding what appears to be a blanket, swinging it through the air with absolutely no practical purpose whatsoever. The other is Dazai, who is holding a plastic container filled with bubbles in one hand and a smiley-faced sponge in the other, moving to the music with enough enthusiasm to suggest that he has completely forgotten how dignity works.
There is water on the floor and bubbles everywhere.
A trail of wet footprints leads from the kitchen to the living room.
And both men are laughing.
They are laughing so hard that Dazai nearly drops the container in his hand, while the redhead beside him has to lean against the sofa because he can barely keep himself upright.
Kunikida simply stares.
The scene is so absurd that for several seconds his brain refuses to process it.
Then he looks at the redhead.
Red hair. Blue eyes.
He's the strange man climbing into Dazai's apartment through the fourth-floor window. The same man Dazai had casually dismissed as someone he knew. The same man who had apparently been responsible for Kunikida's first and most confusing encounter with this entire situation.
“I know that person.”
Kunikida remembers Dazai saying it as though that explanation had been perfectly sufficient.
Apparently, it wasn't.
The redhead catches sight of him first, his dancing slows down
Dazai follows his gaze.
For a moment, all three men stare at one another.
Then Dazai's face lights up.
“Kunikida-kun!”
Kunikida's eye twitches.
“You-” He stops.
Because Dazai is smiling.
Not the polite smile he uses for interviews. Not the lazy smile he wears whenever he is trying to annoy someone. Not even the amused expression Kunikida has seen when Dazai thinks he has outsmarted everyone in the room.
This is different.
It's careless. Bright. Unrestrained. It reaches his eyes.
The kind of smile Kunikida had spent eleven years waiting to see.
He looks around the apartment again. The ridiculous stack of blankets. The bubbles and the wet floor. The redhead trying and failing to suppress his laughter. Dazai standing in the middle of it all with a sponge in one hand and absolutely no shame whatsoever.
Kunikida exhales.
He is still angry and he is still exhausted. He still intends to lecture Dazai about ignoring his phone and making him drive through the countryside in the middle of the night.
But somehow, none of that feels quite as important anymore.
For eleven years, Kunikida had watched Dazai pour every piece of himself into fictional stories. He watched him create worlds for strangers to disappear into, give his characters lives and loves and endings, and then quietly return to a life of his own that often seemed remarkably empty by comparison.
Kunikida used to wonder what kind of story could possibly make a person like Dazai happy.
Now, standing in the doorway of this ridiculous apartment, he thinks he finally understands.
Maybe Dazai doesn't need another story to write.
Maybe he finally needs one to live in.
And perhaps, somehow, this strange redheaded man had become part of it.
Kunikida looks at the two of them again, watches Dazai laugh at something Chuuya says, and feels the last of his worry loosen from his chest.
The drive was long, the hour is terrible, his meeting is only a few hours away.
But seeing the lonely seventeen-year-old boy he met eleven years ago standing in the middle of a warm apartment, laughing like he finally remembered how to enjoy being alive, makes every inconvenience feel strangely insignificant.
Kunikida pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Then he sighs.
“Clean this place up before you go to sleep and be careful not to slip."
Dazai grins. “Yes, dad!"
The redhead snorts.
Kunikida turns away before either of them can see the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
For once, he thinks, he can let Dazai make a mess.
—
Dazai finally puts his pen down sometime past midnight, leaning back in his chair as he reads the last few lines he has written.
It isn't finished yet, not even close, but the chapter feels right, and for the first time in a long while, he doesn't feel the desperate need to keep chasing the next sentence.
He saves the document, closes his notebook, and leaves his study with the intention of making himself a cup of tea, only to stop when he reached the living room.
The sofa is occupied.
Chuuya is asleep beneath the soft glow of the lamp, curled comfortably against the cushions with one arm resting protectively around Ara, their cat sprawled across his chest as though she owns the entire sofa.
The sight makes Dazai smile before he even realizes it.
There was a time when the same room felt unbearably quiet, when he could spend entire nights staring at the walls and wondering why everything around him seemed so dull.
Now there are books left open on the coffee table, a blanket carelessly thrown over the armrest, a cat who has apparently decided his boyfriend is the world's most comfortable pillow, and Chuuya breathing softly beneath her.
Dazai walks closer, careful not to wake either of them, and crouches beside the sofa.
He gently brushes a stray lock of red hair away from Chuuya's forehead before leaning down to leave a soft kiss there. Chuuya shifts slightly but doesn't wake, only tightening his arm around Ara, who responds with a sleepy little sound.
Dazai smiles.
“Good night, Chuuya.”
He then bends down and presses an equally gentle kiss to the top of Ara's head.
The cat opens one eye.
Dazai considers this a successful exchange.
He remains there for another moment, simply looking at them, and thinks about how strange life can be.
Once, he had moved to this quiet apartment because he wanted to escape everything. To be alone, to write, to find something interesting enough to make life feel less empty.
He thought inspiration was what he needed.
Instead, life had given him a redhead who climbed through his window, punched him on the shoulder, insulted his novels, occupied his sofa, and somehow turned a place that had once felt like an empty room into something resembling a home.
Dazai glances toward the study where his unfinished novel waits patiently for him.
For once, he doesn't feel the need to return to it.
There is nowhere else he would rather be.
So he pulls the blanket a little higher over Chuuya, gently scratches Ara beneath the chin, and settles down beside them, letting the quiet of the apartment surround him.
It is no longer the kind of silence that feels empty.
It is the kind that feels like home.