Work Text:
Kunikida Doppo was a man of ideals.
His whole life was written down in his notebook from the moment he had learned how to write to his estimated time of death. He tried to follow the inked schedule exactly as it was written down even with the knowledge that there are circumstances that are completely out of his hands. Not being able to do so brought him more anxiety than anything else in his life. A messed-up schedule was immediately ripped away from the notebook and replaced as soon as possible, because he had found that not being able to follow anything made him realize just how lost he really is. The unpredictability of life was something that hit him hardest, making him feel like he was lost in the middle of the woods with nothing but shapeless trees surrounding him, where not even the sky was visible.
There were times, however, when he tried to imagine a life completely different from the life he was currently living.
Sometimes, Kunikida found himself unable to sleep despite having written down the exact time he had planned to in his precious notebook of ideals. These are the times when he was visited by questions he refused to entertain during the day, questions that he had always deemed too impossible to warrant even a minute off his schedule to think about.
After tossing and turning for about five minutes (four minutes and 23 seconds by his count), Kunikida let out a sigh and peeled off his blanket with a frustrated scowl, reaching for his notebook and pen. He tore off the page containing his sleeping schedule and proceeded to rewrite it, giving himself three hours as was the usual pattern to his insomniac episodes. His movements were quick and sharp, his handwriting clean without a single drop of unnecessary ink anywhere on the page. After precisely one minute and three seconds, he had finished. Satisfied with the outcome, he placed his pen down and closed his notebook, running his thumb along its spine thoughtfully.
He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but there were also times when he’d get l’appele du vide, completely different from how Dazai would experience it. No, Kunikida’s urges involved suddenly throwing his precious notebook at any direction with all the force he could muster. He had imagined the scenario around 521 times, already seeing the shocked looks on the face of whoever was accompanying him at the time, already feeling the harsh beating of his heart as his mind panicked, but oddly enough there was something else.
He’d feel a certain rush within him, screaming to him that he was finally free.
That thought terrified him more than the thought of being swept along by an ever-changing world. The thought that he felt imprisoned by his ideals never occurred to him on a normal day, but the rush of freedom he’d get whenever he imagined throwing away his notebook and what it represented felt way too real for comfort. Even now, Kunikida could feel his fingers tingling, so he tightened his grip on his notebook, suddenly afraid that he’d fling it out of his open window on a whim.
To distract himself, he flipped to a random page. What greeted him was his long (and, according to some people like Atsushi and the Azure Messenger, “too idealistic”) list of preferences when it comes to an ideal woman. Dazai had teased him time and time again about it, lecturing him about how he’d never find love (which was absolutely rich coming from the waste of bandages, Kunikida thought bitterly), but sometimes, sometimes Kunikida wondered. Did he really put that much ideals into his life that it took away from the raw emotions that were usually associated with living? As his eyes skimmed the list, reading the blurry words by memory rather than by sight, Kunikida was overcome with doubts. Of course he wanted someone he could love, but if he was going to be meticulous about his future partner, could he even call an experience heavy with expectations as such? Would he not be loving the traits that the woman had rather than the person itself?
Kunikida had always heard tales of true love being the kind wherein you love your significant other despite them not meeting the image that you had in your head. Love is blind, they say. And maybe that was true because he was surrounded by couples such as the brat, Atsushi, with the awful mafia dog Akutagawa, who had started out with nothing but hate for each other. Still, they found love. Another example worth noting was the bandage-squandering machine himself with that short mafia executive Nakahara. There really was no label for those two but Kunikida (and, quite frankly, everyone) could see the fondness and the overwhelming trust they had for each other. Seeing all these people that found love in the person they had hated sent Kunikida’s mind in a confused daze.
(And really, the thing that Kunikida was absolutely loathe to admit was that he was lonely, and terribly so—)
And now, Kunikida didn’t know which was more important for him—following his ideal woman or finding true love. Because of his wretched overthinking, he now believed the two to be at the opposite ends of a spectrum, two very different and irreconcilable concepts wherein he had to choose between one or the other.
For the first time, despite having a plan written down, Kunikida didn’t know what to do.
But the whole thing was to be locked inside a small chest in the back of his mind once again. Come morning, he woke up as he usually did just before the crack of dawn, ready for the day to go according to plan and schedule, with him determined to not waste any more pages than he needed to (for he could only spare so much for a certain live mummy). The thoughts of last night became nothing more than a fleeting memory, a particular annoying but easily brushed off itch by his side that he was determined to ignore for the sake of his peace of mind.
Whoever Kunikida’s destined (or planned) one, wherever they may be, he knew that he’ll meet them eventually (exactly five years from now). For now, he was content grounding himself to the present, comforted by the idea that at the top of the list, the words “she must love me and I her” was cleanly written, unmistakable.
(Once Kunikida settled down in the Agency office for that day, immediately bombarded by reports and an annoying Dazai, he realized that he had already found true love in his friends anyway.
Dazai had been quiet, unnerved by the sudden melancholic gaze Kunikida held, but when prompted about it, the blonde man merely waved him off.
“Dazai, how about we go drinking tonight?”
“… Did you eat my mushrooms, Kunikida-kun?”
“Just give me an answer so I can make a schedule, you bandage-wasting idiot.”)