Work Text:
I don’t understand.
The horrible feeling gripped his chest, his heart―if he ever had one―and wrung out everything he had, everything he didn’t know he had.
It was like drowning and choking all at the same time.
I don’t understand.
Loss was something he delivered to others: loss of assets, loss of hope, loss of life.
Loss was not something he was dealt with.
The Port Mafia prodigy never ‘lost’ anything he did not want to discard, and often, the prize was something greater and more beneficial for him.
Dazai Osamu never truly lost anything.
Until now.
I don’t understand.
He never cared to participate in connections deeper and more meaningful outside of business, for he viewed them merely as leverage against other people to get whatever he aimed for.
The more people you cared about, the more vulnerable you were; surely, the youngest Executive of Port Mafia kept that in mind.
After all, relationships were as brittle as age-old paper in a world that operated on high-risk deals and unimaginable sums of money―where people were weighed like animals and were only as valuable as their bodies, their brains and their Abilities.
‘Friendship’, in particular, might as well be as fragile and as impermanent as the ice in his whisky.
I knew all that―
And yet…
―why...?
Maybe it was because for the first time in his life, he genuinely wanted something.
For the first time, Dazai Osamu sincerely wanted something―friendship―and yet Fate decreed that he shall lose it in the worst way possible.
It was unfair, but that was how the world worked and he knew it.
However, it was next to impossible to convince himself when the entirety of his concentration was being spent on removing that sick, choking sensation in his throat.
Discovering one friend was actually a traitor, and now the other gone forever―
Was it selfish?
They say the universe was headed for endless disorder no matter what, and so all things were naturally—eventually—destroyed.
Was it selfish to wish otherwise?
Back then, it was easier to say, "I knew this would happen; I lost whatever I wanted the moment I obtained them," than to say, "I valued this ; I valued this more than you might ever imagine, more than you might ever had—and it hurts, it fucking hurts that we’ll lose it this way."
He had the desire to scream out those very words― I valued this, I valued what we had, I valued you ―to cry out, to carve out every inch of his pain, right now, in the walls of this empty mansion full of bullet holes and dead bodies.
"..."
But he didn’t, because the people they were meant for aren’t there any longer.
Instead, he reached for the phone in his pocket and dialled a number.
The ringing on the other side of the line was somehow deafeningly loud in the still air of the place, which was relieved shortly by the even cadence of the answering person’s voice, "Dazai-dono."
There was a long silence.
He felt as if he cannot trust his voice not to crack.
"Hirotsu-san…"
"Speaking."
"Send a squad here to clean up the mess. Mimic, along with their leader, André Gide, are finished. Unfortunately, even the back-up squad we sent are wiped out, along with…"
He trailed off, deeply sighing.
The elder kept quiet, patiently waiting.
"Along with Oda… Sakunosuke," he continued, balling up his other hand around the hem of his suit, "One of our own Ability users, has also perished in the conflict."
"Understood. I will send them over immediately."
Another pause; neither were hanging up the call.
Hirotsu took initiative, "Will there be anything more?"
"Only one," Dazai replied, gazing upon the person he held in his arms just a few minutes before, when that person was still alive and breathing out his last words.
It’s so unfair.
"Please... leave the arrangements for Odasaku’s burial to me."