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Dazai had spent the last few minutes watching Atsushi instead of doing his paperwork. Atsushi was watching Kyouka, Naomi, and Kirako all make plans to go to a carnival that had arrived in the city a few days earlier. Dazai didn’t have much interest in it when he had first heard them start talking, but then he had glanced out of the corner of his eye and caught Atsushi watching their conversation unfold with a look of curiosity on his face.
Dazai spun around in his chair several times before abruptly coming to a stop facing Atsushi’s desk.
“Psst.” He subtly angled his head so that no one other than Atsushi could see him talking.
Atsushi turned towards him with a hum and a questioning look on his face. Dazai thought that Atsushi always looked vaguely surprised when he initiated a conversation with him; he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but he could assume that the younger male didn’t mind their interactions.
“Why don’t you ask if you can go with them?”
A look of shock crossed Atsushi’s face, probably wondering how Dazai always seemed to know what he was thinking. Then he shrugged and quietly answered the question.
“They’re doing a girls’ weekend thing.”
Dazai cocked his head to the side. “But don’t you want to go?”
“It’s fine.” Atsushi smiled softly. “I don’t want to intrude on their plans.”
Dazai was momentarily caught off guard. Atsushi never had ulterior motives of any kind and yet he continuously did kind things for others with hardly any recognition. He had become an important force in the Agency, so Dazai was constantly watching the other boy and had witnessed his seemingly random acts of unrecognized thoughtfulness towards others a few times before.
“Do you want to go with me?” The words were out of his mouth before he had much time to think about them.
Atsushi waved his hands in front of himself. “You don’t have to do that for-“
“I’ve never been to a carnival before either.” Not technically true.
Atsushi stopped his motions to stare at him.
“So,” Dazai prompted. “Do you want to go with me this weekend?”
Atsushi looked briefly perplexed before he narrowed his bicolored eyes. “Only if you promise to stop trying to kill yourself while we’re there.”
They made plans to meet a little after midday on Saturday. Kunikida returned from delivering a packet of papers just as they were done talking and started scolding all of them for slacking off while on the job. Atsushi looked thoroughly contrite while Dazai openly laughed at the look on his face as he spun around to his own desk.
Atsushi was practically buzzing with excitement by the time Saturday came around. He and Dazai hardly got opportunities to just hang out and be friends. And he would like to consider Dazai his friend if he could. The man was mysterious and dangerous and eccentric, but Atsushi always felt like he was somehow lighter in Dazai’s presence.
He dressed himself and made food when it was nearing time for lunch. Kyouka hadn’t yet left to meet Naomi and Kirako so they sat together and made idle conversation until it was time for either of them to leave. Kyouka looked surprised at first when Atsushi mentioned he was meeting Dazai later in the day, but then a strange look crossed her face and she smiled to herself. She wished him a good day and then she was gone, leaving Atsushi alone in their dorm.
Atsushi left half an hour later; walking slowly down the streets with his hands in his pockets. It was a warm but windy day, quite different from the downpour he had been caught in a few weeks earlier.
He arrived at the carnival entrance and looked around for a minute. He and Dazai had agreed to meet there but he didn’t see the other man just yet. Atsushi walked over to stand under the shade of a tree with leaves slowly turning red in a sure sign of fall being well underway.
Something suddenly snaked over Atsushi’s eyes and he would have cried out in alarm and possibly elbowed his assailant in the gut if it hadn’t been for the familiar voice speaking near his ear.
“Guess who,” the voice chirped.
“Hmm. . . Kunikida-san?”
“Nope. Try again.”
“It must be you then, Yosano-sensei.”
“Wrong.”
“Oh, I’ve got it. Hello, Chuuya-san.”
There was an inelegant sound near Atsushi’s ear and suddenly he could see in front of him again. He blinked his eyes rapidly as they became accustomed to the bright light again and he saw Dazai standing in front of him with a peeved expression on his face
“That was uncalled for, Atsushi-kun.”
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” Atsushi tried and failed to keep the small smirk off his face.
“I’ll forgive you this time.”
Atsushi gave Dazai an indulgent look as he often did when the older man was acting ridiculous for the sake of being ridiculous; but Dazai just sighed dramatically and started walking towards the carnival’s entrance. He bought a ticket for himself and then waited as Atsushi did the same.
They walked through the gate and Atsushi was instantly overwhelmed by everything around him. There were flashing lights, loud sounds, and people milling about all over the place. Atsushi was so busy staring wide-eyed at everything that he missed the sideways glance Dazai cast his way.
“What do you think of this?” Dazai pointed to a sign set up near the front.
Atsushi quickly came out of his stupor and considered the sign. “They have a new haunted house? It looks pretty creepy. . .”
“Hmm.” Dazai looked around the area, not paying much attention to any one thing. “We should see that while we’re here, Atsushi-kun. It could be fun.”
Atsushi cast a dubious look his way. He had never been overly fond of purposely frightening himself, he considered their lives already full of enough terror. But he also wouldn’t say no if Dazai really wanted to see the haunted house.
They walked by food carts selling cotton candy and popcorn to excited children. Atsushi looked on as some of them started throwing food at each other and then quickly picked up his pace when it was evident a food fight was on the horizon.
They soon came upon a carousel with various kinds of animals instead of just horses. Dazai pointed at it excitedly and started dragging Atsushi behind him. They got there just as the ride’s music stopped and the previous riders left. Dazai went around looking at the animals until he settled on a red fox; Atsushi chose a brown stag next to the fox and cautiously sat down.
He wasn’t sure what to expect as he’d never actually seen a carousel in person before, let alone been on one. Atsushi started in surprise when the music began and the ride jerked forward. His eyes roamed around restlessly as they started moving in a circle.
“Atsushi-kun, isn’t this fun?”
Dazai wasn’t even holding on to his animal. In fact, Atsushi was worried he would fall off if he continued to twist around to look at things as they rapidly became nothing but blurs of color.
Dazai stopped to grin at him for a moment before reaching over to lightly push at Atsushi’s shoulder. The younger man wrapped both arms around the pole in front of him and scowled at his mentor, though the other man just turned his head away with a self-satisfied look on his face.
Atsushi didn’t appreciate nearly being forcibly ejected from his seat, but he found his nervousness evaporating after that. It became easier for him to laugh at Dazai nearly falling from his fox, and at the resulting scandalized looks from the people around them.
Atsushi had a small smile on his face when they finally stepped off the ride and began wandering around the fairgrounds again. It was slightly warmer as all the clouds in the sky had moved away from the sun and into the distant horizon.
“What should we do next, Daz-“ Atsushi looked to his left. Dazai was gone.
He spun on his heels and frantically searched the crowd for the missing man only to catch sight of him waving from the entrance to another one of the attractions. He had a mischievous look on his face as he pointed towards the entrance before disappearing inside.
Atsushi nearly gave in to the urge to groan and slap a hand over his face.
When he finally made his way inside the building and looked around, he was instantly disoriented. Of course, Dazai would pick a hall of mirrors to disappear into.
“Dazai-san? Are you still here,” Atsushi called out, not really expecting an answer.
“Atsushi-kun,” a voice eerily called for him from somewhere inside. “This place is great.”
“Where are you?”
There was a pause and then, “I’m right here.”
Dazai appeared in front of Atsushi with a smirk on his face. Atsushi was instantly suspicious.
“Or am I here?” Suddenly Dazai walked to the left and his image was displayed on mirrors all around the room.
“Dazai-san.” Atsushi leveled a hard stare at one of the images of Dazai.
“I wonder if you’ll be able to find me, Atsushi-kun.” Dazai pondered briefly before he shrugged and disappeared from view.
Atsushi sighed and slowly wandered his way through the mirrors. He would occasionally bump in to one and end up rubbing his forehead from the sudden impact. He could hear Dazai laughing from somewhere, so the man must be close enough that he could hear, if not see, Atsushi bumbling around.
Atsushi ended up completely lost. He didn’t know if he would ever find Dazai at the rate things were going, let alone the exit; but at least the exit wasn’t trying to hide from him.
Dazai would occasionally show up on a group of mirrors, and Atsushi would try to make his way towards one of them before the other man could once more disappear only to be left staring at nothing but his own reflection.
Atsushi stopped when he entered a large circle with mirrors on all sides. He tapped his foot against the ground and looked carefully at each option; though choosing a particular path wouldn’t really make a difference considering he didn’t actually know where he was going.
Atsushi sighed and closed his eyes before he quickly spun and took a step forward-
And slammed into someone standing right behind him.
“Ow.” He rubbed at his forehead for what felt like the tenth time. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
“Really? That’s quite a feat with all these mirrors.”
Atsushi’s eyes shot open. “Dazai-san.”
The man in question looked down at him with a quirked brow. “I found the exit.”
Atsushi slumped. “Can we please leave?”
Dazai quietly laughed at his expression before he grabbed Atsushi’s wrist and began weaving their way out along a path Atsushi himself couldn’t even follow most of the time. When they finally passed through the exit he nearly rejoiced at being free.
“That was pretty disorienting,” Atsushi said quietly.
Dazai hummed in agreement, eyes searching the area. “Let’s check out some of the games.”
Atsushi perked up, that seemed relatively mild. “Alright.”
The games were all relatively simple things designed to test strengths and skills. Atsushi doubted he would be good at any of them, but they still looked fun. He stopped for a moment and watched a young girl toss rings around bottles until she won a stuffed dragon.
The two of them somehow ended up in front of a shooting game booth. The object of the game was to take a toy gun and shoot pellets at balloons stuck to a board. Atsushi thought it seemed fairly easy; but after trying it he discovered that he was actually pretty bad at shooting anything, let alone a target. He missed the balloons on two of his shots and even managed to miss the board entirely on the last one.
“Well, beginner’s luck doesn’t always work,” Dazai said as he grabbed a toy gun for his own turn.
Atsushi nodded as he watched Dazai take up a stance with the toy gun in hand. He had an eerily blank countenance that Atsushi rarely saw on him. He looked hyperfocused, but also as if he was a thousand miles away.
POPPOPPOP
Atsushi turned his head between Dazai and the board in a rapid beat. Dazai hadn’t missed a single shot, and it seemed as if he had even shot specific balloons at the corners of the board rather than shooting at random.
“You’re very good at this, Dazai-san. . .” Atsushi said warily. His mentor’s proficiency with firearms seemed incongruent with his personality.
Dazai ignored his comment, probably on purpose if the brief glance in Atsushi’s direction before he turned away meant anything. He pointed at a prize Atsushi couldn’t see and the booth operator handed it to him after telling him what a good shot he was compared to most of the other people that came by.
“Here, Atsushi-kun,” Dazai’s voice rang cheerfully through the air. “You can have it.”
And then Atsushi’s vision was obstructed for the second time that day. Only this time his face was covered with something fluffy and soft and. . . Orange? He pushed the object away from his face and found himself staring a stuffed tiger in the eyes. It was the size of a house cat and its arms and legs hung limply at its sides. Dazai grabbed one of the stuffed arms and began waving it back and forth in front of Atsushi’s face.
“Atsushi-kun, we are the same,” Dazai said in a high-pitched voice as he imitated the tiger.
“Thank you, Dazai-san.” Atsushi hugged the tiger to his chest and smiled at the older man.
They continued wandering around the games area. The pair eventually stopped in front of a game that involved throwing a ball at a pyramid of bottles. It seemed easy enough, so Atsushi stepped up and paid for a turn. Dazai was watching from the sidelines with the stuffed tiger under one arm.
Atsushi grabbed the small rubber ball offered to him and took a step back from the counter. He cocked his head to the side and eyed his target. Then he drew his arm back and flung the ball at the stack of bottles and-
He hit the bottle at a bottom corner of the pyramid, and the whole thing came tumbling down after it. Atsushi blinked in surprise, he had kind of thought he would completely miss the pyramid. A hushed cheering sound reached his ears and he turned to see Dazai clapping the stuffed tiger’s front paws together. Atsushi let out a bright burst of laughter before turning his attention to the game’s vendor, who was trying to get him to choose a prize.
Atsushi quickly scanned his eyes over the options and felt drawn to one item in particular. He pointed to it and was given the prize along with a short congratulations.
“Here, Dazai-san, I thought you’d like this.” Atsushi reached up and draped a long rubber snake over Dazai’s shoulders.
The other man oohed as he handed Atsushi’s tiger back to him. He reached up and started fiddling with one end of the snake while Atsushi looked on in confusion for a moment before he felt exasperation take over his face when he saw what Dazai was doing.
“Dazai-san, you said you wouldn’t do that while we were here.”
Dazai looked up from his careful construction of a noose. He took in Atsushi’s expression as he quickly undid the knot he had been tying; he raised the head of the snake when he was done and made a hissing noise at Atsushi.
“It was just a bit of fun, Atsushi-kun.”
“You could try using it to prank Kunikida-san if you want fun?”
A delighted gleam entered Dazai’s amber eyes as a contemplative look crossed his face.
“That sounds like a very good idea.”
“It sounds like a bad idea to me.”
Dazai shrugged and tugged at Atsushi’s wrist, leading them back to the livelier parts of the carnival. The sun was setting, and Atsushi was smiling. When he snuck a glance at Dazai’s face he thought that the older man might have looked more content than he had in a while.
They wandered the fairgrounds for a long while. Neither of them really felt like doing much as the sun sunk lower and lower beyond the horizon. The night was growing windy, but the weather still wasn’t cold enough to require jackets.
“Ah, Atsushi-kun, look.” Dazai was pointing at a large dark building decorated with jack-o-lanterns and cobwebs. There seemed to be flashing lights shining through some of the windows.
Atsushi felt himself inwardly cringe.
“Is that. . . The haunted house? That you wanted to see?” He glanced at Dazai.
Dazai was grinning at him, perhaps a bit manically; but Atsushi chose to ignore that for his own peace of mind. He felt himself getting tugged along and thought that the quickly darkening sky made for the perfect atmosphere to experience a haunted house.
They entered through a door that was decorated to look a bit like a dilapidated wooden door. When Dazai pushed the door open a loud creaking sound effect echoed through the first room; Atsushi grimaced. He felt Dazai squeeze his wrist for the briefest of seconds even though he was sure the older man couldn’t see him from his position in front of Atsushi.
They took a moment to look around the first room, it looked like it was supposed to be some sort of living room from Hell. There was fake blood splattered all over the walls and a television flickered with sinister static. There was a couch where two people playing corpses with half-rotten flesh covered in plenty of blood were leaning against each other. Atsushi hastily looked away, instead choosing to study the back of Dazai’s head.
“Bit melodramatic, don’t you think,” Dazai said after a moment.
“Isn’t that a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?”
Dazai turned, one eyebrow quirked in amusement. He looked like he was about to say something witty back when a loud wailing suddenly rung throughout the room. Atsushi flinched and looked around with wide eyes as he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.
The two actors were stumbling across the room, arms raised in a zombie-like fashion and mouths clacking open and closed as they pretended to grope around for flesh to devour. They were far too good at pretending for Atsushi’s liking.
Atsushi instantly hated the haunted house even more than he already had. Dazai just stood there and laughed quietly before dragging Atsushi further into the haunted house, where more horrors were lying in wait.
The two of them continued going through the haunted house in a similar fashion as they had gone through the first room. Atsushi cringed away from almost everything while Dazai just looked on passively.
They were going through a room that looked like a kitchen when something happened that sorely tempted Atsushi to leave Dazai behind and get out of the haunted house as fast as he could.
Atsushi had been standing next to Dazai for a moment, wondering what was supposed to be so frightening about a kitchen. Of course, it was covered in blood and gore. Atsushi hated the sink full of fake blood in particular, but the room seemed oddly unimaginative compared to the rest.
He had just thought about going to a different room when the refrigerator door had flown open and Dracula had flown out, fangs bared and hands raised like claws. Atsushi felt himself startle so violently he wondered if he would have hit the ceiling if his wrist hadn’t still been in Dazai’s grip as the other man chuckled at both the vampire and the look of complete horror on Atsushi’s face.
Atsushi would have left him right there if not for the fact that Dazai had then given his wrist a gentle squeeze as his laughter subsided.
Atsushi almost sagged in relief when they finally exited the haunted house after going through a seemingly endless maze of rooms filled with blood and monsters. He felt tension leak from his body and he hung his head with a soft sigh.
“That was awful.”
“I think you mean fun.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I mean that it was awful.” Atsushi’s arms hung loosely at his side. He noticed with a tilt of his head that Dazai had finally let go of his wrist.
“Then let’s end the night on something nice then.”
Atsushi looked up at the other man, face scrunched in confusion.
Dazai nodded his head towards something behind Atsushi. “How about that?”
Atsushi glanced over his shoulder, eyes instantly focusing on what Dazai was talking about. He turned back with a small smile on his face.
“I think that sounds good.”
Dazai walked past him without a word, hands in his pockets and steps a bit jaunty; Atsushi supposed he must genuinely be having fun. He’d seen Dazai faking happiness and he knew how he acted when he wanted other people to believe that he was enjoying their company. But with the sun now beyond the horizon and the sky turning a dark shade of indigo, Atsushi could say that he and Dazai were having a truly good time in each other’s company.
After waiting in line for ten minutes and then sitting in their seats as a metal bar was lowered across their laps, Atsushi and Dazai were slowly lifted into the air as the carnival’s Ferris wheel climbed higher and higher into the sky.
The night was growing windier as the sky got darker and Atsushi found his hair being lightly tousled by the breeze. He looked over at Dazai and found that the older man’s hair was also in a similar state of disarray.
Atsushi turned to look at the darkened city. It was as if thousands of stars flickered in the distance as Yokohama switched on its streetlights to stave off the night. It would have felt like a moment frozen in time if not for the slow ascension of the Ferris wheel.
When they finally reached the top Atsushi found himself returning to his earlier thoughts. Other than the heart attack he’d nearly suffered in the haunted house, his day had been great and full of memories he would fondly recall for a long time. He hoped it was the same for Dazai.
He never talked about it and was vague at best if someone ever questioned him about his past, but Atsushi could see the shadows in his eyes and the wariness in his posture when he thought no one was looking. Atsushi hoped that the day had been just as pleasant for Dazai as it had been for him.
As if somehow reading his mind, Dazai said in a quiet voice, “Today was a good day. Right, Atsushi-kun?”
“I think it was.” Atsushi nodded in agreement and smiled at Dazai until the man turned to look at him.
A small smile crossed his face after a few moments until it fell from his lips and he looked away again, eyes fixed on the sea of darkness with its flickering beacons of light.
In the dark, with the wind blowing through his hair and the carnival’s neon lights far below casting an almost otherworldly glow across Dazai’s face-
Atsushi thought he looked oddly beautiful.