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One of the few things Chuuya knew when he was found aside from his name, his Ability, how to talk, and how to read a little bit, was when he was born. He didn’t know why--he couldn’t remember anything. But something about being born on that day seemed important.
(Maybe it was the emphasis the scientists put on his age, because certain things would work better on him when he was older instead of younger. Maybe it was important for the success of the experiment to know exactly how old he was.)
The Sheep celebrated birthdays, but Chuuya didn’t celebrate his. Apparently birthdays were something to be enjoyed, a reminder of having lived another year longer. Chuuya didn’t have any particular feelings towards living another year longer--he expected it. He thought nothing could hurt him.
A knife to the back changed that.
*
Chuuya learned to get people presents for their birthdays because that what the Sheep did for their members. He knew based on talking to people that this wasn’t a thing exclusive to the Sheep. Most people marked their birthdays in some way.
Dazai’s birthday was on June 19th, and as much as he pissed Chuuya off with every word that came out of his mouth, Chuuya wasn’t rude. He’d celebrate Dazai’s birthday like he would anyone else’s--by getting him a present.
He didn’t know what Dazai liked, but he’d seen Dazai holding a small gaming device a few times during meetings and some missions. Dazai enjoyed distractions. Chuuya had a feeling Dazai already had enough games on his gaming device, but he’d heard that larger gaming devices were also fun. Dazai had a television that he didn’t use.
Since joining the Port Mafia, Chuuya had gained a fair amount of money.
He purchased a gaming system and planned on giving it to Dazai along with a cake from a nearby bakery.
The day before, Chuuya asked Dazai if he had anything fun planned for his birthday. He was trying to gauge how and when he could give Dazai the present and the cake.
Dazai said, “Nothing. I’d rather no one knew it was my birthday.”
Chuuya looked at him in surprise. Dazai enjoyed reminding people (loudly and often) about how great he was. “Why?”
“It reminds me that I’ve lived another year.” Dazai flopped onto his couch. “Every birthday that passes is a reminder of my failure to die.” It sounded dramatic, but Dazai said it without any kind of emotion.
Chuuya knew Dazai wanted to die. In their few months as partners he’d already had to save Dazai from two suicide attempts. He’d never thought that Dazai’s suicide attempts and his birthday would be related, but now that Dazai mentioned it, he could see that they were.
“What’s with that look on your face?” Dazai asked.
“The best birthday present I could get you would be to kill you,” Chuuya said.
Dazai started laughing. “You really are an idiot, Chuuya!”
“What!”
“I want to kill myself! Not be murdered!” He sat up. “Did Chuuya buy me a present?”
Chuuya hesitated a second too long.
“He did!” Dazai smiled widely. “Well, as much as I hate birthdays I can’t say no to that. What is it?”
“You won’t get it until tomorrow,” Chuuya said.
“That’s not fair,” Dazai said. “I just told you that I’d rather be dead than live to see tomorrow.”
“Sadly, you’ll be alive,” Chuuya said. “So you’ll get your present when I give it to you, tomorrow.”
The next day, as normal as Dazai tried to make it, when Chuuya shoved the cake into his hands and pointed to the wrapped gaming system sitting on Dazai’s kitchen counter, he looked some emotion resembling touched.
*
They had a rare stretch of free time, and Dazai liked to spend his free time on the roofs of tall buildings.
Chuuya did too, but usually they spent those periods of free time separately and for different reasons. Now, Dazai sat with his legs dangling over the edge. Chuuya paced around while smoking a cigarette. Dazai had introduced him to cigarettes, and they gave him something to do with his hands when he didn’t have anything else to do.
“Chuuya, do you have a birthday?”
Chuuya briefly thought about being insulted by the question. Then he reminded himself of what Dazai learned about meeting him. The memories of that initial meeting somehow got pushed to the back of his mind by Dazai’s antics and his own integration into the Port Mafia.
“I do,” he said.
He saw a look in Dazai’s eyes which meant that Dazai was having a lot of thoughts in quick succession. Chuuya didn’t like that look. It usually meant bad things for him.
“How do you know you have a birthday?” Dazai asked.
“I don’t know,” Chuuya said. “I just do.” He’d never been asked that, not even by the Sheep. Then again, the Sheep hadn’t known where he’d come from, just that he didn’t know a lot about his background.
“Do you think you were born or made?”
Now Chuuya did allow himself to get angry. He grabbed the back of Dazai’s coat and pulled him away from the edge of the roof, throwing Dazai onto his back. Dazai scrambled to his feet before Chuuya could pin him to the ground.
Chuuya would have lunged at him, but Dazai held up his hands. “Hear me out, Chuuya.”
“I don’t have to hear anything you have to say,” Chuuya said.
“You’ll have to think about it,” Dazai said, “whether I ask you or not. You’ll find out one day when Mori lets you access the information about your past. Shouldn’t you be prepared for either option?”
Chuuya opened his mouth to tell Dazai to shut up, but then he realized Dazai was right. No matter what he found when he finally got access to his records, he would have to be prepared to handle it.
“Which one do you want more?” Dazai asked, searching Chuuya’s face.
Which one did he want more? Chuuya had never thought about it. He knew that he’d been kept with the scientists--that was his first memory, shortly before being broken out. He tried not to let it bother him just like he tried not to let everything else bother him--by acknowledging its existence and moving on.
It never occurred to Chuuya to actually think deeply about the problem and then deal with it.
But he would have to.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Does it change anything?” He still wouldn’t remember the first seven years of his life. He still would have been the product of an experiment gone wrong. He still would have ended up here, in the Mafia, with an Ability he partially couldn’t control and a bandage wasting bastard as a partner.
“I guess you’ll find out,” Dazai said. “By the way, when is your birthday?”
“Why? Are you getting me something?”
“Do you want something? Do you want a party? Does Chuuya want a celebration?” Dazai was smirking.
Chuuya glared at him. “No.”
“You seem suspicious,” Dazai said. “How did you usually celebrate your birthday?”
Chuya hesitated. “I didn’t.”
Dazai tilted his head. “Why not? You made a big enough deal out of celebrating mine.”
Chuuya shrugged. “Like you said, it’s a reminder that you’ve lived another year. But I don’t expect to die anytime soon.”
“Ah, because you’re so strong,” Dazai said. There was a pause. “Corruption kills you.”
Corruption. Chuuya hadn’t unleashed that power with the Sheep, but he’d started doing it with the Mafia because he knew Dazai could stop him.
“I guess you’re right,” he said.
He didn’t know how he felt about that other than the startling realization that he didn’t want to lose the body he was in.
He didn’t want to lose himself.
*
Shortly before Chuuya’s 17th birthday, he became an Executive. Mori handed him a thin folder containing what he would need to access the rest of his records. Chuuya took it and used that information to find out what he needed to know about himself.
The information didn’t surprise him. No possibility would have at this point--Chuuya had thought through every iteration of his past with a detachment only made possible by not being able to remember it.
Dazai came to find Chuuya at his apartment.
Chuuya had recently discovered that alcohol could make people feel better about things that made them feel bad. Maybe that was why Dazai came--to make sure Chuuya wasn’t doing that sort of thing.
He wasn’t.
He was thinking.
Well, he had opened a bottle of wine but part way through his first glass forgot about drinking.
Dazai plopped down on the couch next to him. Chuuya sort of resented his presence. It had been only hours since he’d come back after finding what he was looking for. He wasn’t finished thinking, and Dazai’s presence didn’t help.
For once, Dazai didn’t say anything. Chuuya leaned back and rested his head on the couch to look up at the ceiling. Then he closed his eyes and continued thinking as if Dazai wasn’t there. He thought about the experiments conducted on him. He thought about how painful it must have been, and how scared he must have been, as the scientists ran their tests to see if they could shove a sentient Ability into his body.
He wondered if he felt a sense of loss when his memories faded, although there was no documentation of how that happened. That bothered Chuuya. He’d never been bothered by it before, but now that he knew in greater detail what had happened, he felt like he should have at least some memories. People didn’t just forget so many years.
Had his memories vanished because they, and his personality, were replaced with that of the sentient Ability? He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure, and his throat felt a bit too tight every time he considered the possibility that his body and his mind weren’t connected.
Had his memories vanished because of the trauma of the experiments and of having the Ability forced to merge with his body? Chuuya thought that if that were the case, he might have remembered something upon learning about what had been done to him.
Had his memories vanished because the scientists took them away?
Maybe it didn’t matter.
Chuuya had answers to other questions, but not this one. It still bothered him, and he wished it didn’t.
“You’re thinking so loudly it’s ruining my relaxation,” Dazai said.
“Then leave,” Chuuya told him.
“I was curious,” Dazai said. “It’s not every day that your partner finds out whether or not he’s a god.”
Chuuya hit Dazai’s arm. “Shut up.” He lifted his head to glare at Dazai, who smiled back.
“Did you remember anything?” Dazai asked.
“No.”
Dazai played with the edge of a bandage coming loose at his wrist. “So, Chuuya...are you a god?”
“What do you think?”
Dazai smirked. “I can’t imagine a god being so tiny.”
Chuuya itched to punch him, but restrained himself. “You’re lucky I’m not in a bad mood.”
“But you’re not in a good one.”
“I’m not a god,” Chuuya said. “It’s just…” He’d heard Dazai talking about it before, telling Chuuya his thoughts about the whole Arahabaki thing whether Chuuya wanted to hear them or not. “It’s what you’d expect.”
“And what about the other thing?” Dazai asked.
“What other thing?”
“Were you born or made?”
“It doesn’t change anything,” Chuuya said. “I had parents.”
“Ah.” Dazai nodded. “So you’re somewhat normal after all.”
“What does that mean?” Chuuya asked.
“It means you’re human,” Dazai said. “At least part of you is.”
“And I wouldn’t be if I was made in a lab?” Chuuya asked.
“Depends on how they would’ve made you,” Dazai said with a shrug. “If the only thing they ever let you be was something artificial or not human that they put inside you.” He jumped up. “I have things to do.”
Chuuya jumped up as well. “You can’t just come here and say those sorts of things and then leave!”
“But that’s what I’m doing.” Dazai waved at him and practically skipped towards the door. “Don’t be late to the Executive meeting in half an hour!”
The door slammed shut.
Chuuya realized that in the search for information, he’d lost track of time.
“Executive meeting?!”
*
Two days later, Chuuya came out of the shower feeling a sense of dread.
Someone was in the apartment.
He didn’t have any concrete evidence, but he’d become so adept at listening to his instincts that he could usually tell when someone else was around. He went completely still, trying to listen.
He couldn’t hear anything.
Chuuya was lucky he’d taken his nightshirt and other clothes into the bathroom with him. Confronting an enemy without clothes would have been embarrassing even if Chuuya won.
He pulled on his shirt, annoyed that it wasn’t the best thing for fighting in. He didn’t want it to get destroyed. It was a really comfortable shirt.
Chuuya had also taken his knife with him just in case.
He grabbed the knife and poked his head out of the bathroom door. He couldn’t see anyone. It was almost suspiciously quiet.
“Surprise!”
Chuuya reacted before he processed what the sound actually was. He grabbed the intruder by the shirt and slammed him against the wall, knife pressed to his neck ready to slash open his throat if necessary.
Dazai grinned down at him, hands up in surrender.
“Fuck,” Chuuya hissed, stepping back. “Why did you--” He finally registered what Dazai had said. “Surprise?”
“Surprise!” Dazai pushed himself off the wall. “Is that any way to treat someone who’s trying to give you a gift?”
“Gift? You give someone a gift by making them try to kill you?”
There was no answer. Chuuya followed Dazai into the kitchen, where two things sat on the counter: a blob of something hastily wrapped in newspaper, and a tiny cake with a single candle stuck in it, unlit.
Dazai stood off to the side.
“What’s this?” Chuuya asked.
“It’s your birthday,” Dazai said. “Happy Birthday, Chuuya!”
Chuuya looked from Dazai to the cake. “My--” He really had lost track of time.
“It doesn’t really matter how you appeared in this world to annoy me,” Dazai said. “But I figured now that you knew it was about time you celebrated your birthday, since you subjected me to the same thing last year.”
“What the fuck is this?” Chuuya asked, picking up the newspaper package.
“Are you stupid? Did you forget that presents are wrapped?”
“You use wrapping paper,” Chuuya said. “Not newspaper. Even I know that. Don’t call me stupid. You’re the st--”
“I couldn’t find wrapping paper,” Dazai said. Which meant he’d expended all his effort on the cake and whatever was inside.
Chuuya was almost afraid to open it. But he tore into the paper.
A strip of fabric fell out onto the counter. It was a red color similar to the sweater Chuuya enjoyed wearing under his jacket.
“It’s a hat band for a hatrack like you!” Normally Chuuya would’ve gotten annoyed at the joke, but he saw it for what it was--an attempt at distraction in case Chuuya didn’t like the gift.
He stared at the hat band. He had one already, which he’d bought for himself because the black hat he loved so much looked rather plain otherwise, but he’d gotten it before he’d decided to change up his style. It didn’t match the clothes he usually wore. But this one did.
Chuuya put aside all reservations about Dazai’s motives for now, because the gift itself was so thoughtful that he didn’t know what to do with himself.
“Thank you,” he said, giving Dazai a genuine smile.
Dazai’s eyes widened. “Don’t think...that...I didn’t think you’d take it that seriously.”
Dazai lied often, and Chuuya knew he was lying now. He just didn’t know what to do with someone else’s feelings when they were directed towards him.
Chuuya decided to express his feelings a bit more. “It means a lot to me, Dazai. I’ll wear it every day.”
The look of horror on Dazai’s face was almost another gift itself.