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Written for ADA Week 2018, Day 6
“This I want to believe implicitly:
Man is born for love and revolution.”
-Osamu Dazai
The rooftop of the Agency’s building wasn’t the most extravagant place in the world, but Dazai still found it to be a fun spot to escape to. The roadway below wasn’t visible unless one peered over the building’s edge, so not particularly feeling like drawing the attention that standing there would cause, he kept to the center of the roof. This left him with just what he could gleam through the open windows on nearby buildings, which wasn’t much, but it was still entertaining enough.
A biting wind ruffled his coat. Coupled with the freezing, prickling brick of the stairwell to his back and the concrete he was sitting on, it had him shivering.
The sight of Yokohama at night, Chuuya had once told him, was worth the cold. Dazai wasn’t convinced, but even he had to admit, the lights glittering out from cars and signs and buildings made the cityscape a much more interesting sight than it was in daylight.
He sneezed. “Maybe I should have brought out an extra coat…”
The sound of the door to the roof clattering open, a heavy and echoing sound, almost made him jump. He blinked, craning his neck to try and see who it was.
“I can’t believe this.”
Ah. Dazai thought, an amused smile creeping through his features at the familiar voice. It’s Kunikida.
“Come on, Mr. Uptight, not right now,” another voice chided. He recognized it instantly as Yosano. Her bored and clipped dulcet tones were too distinct to forget.
The heavy metal door swung shut, judging from the sound, and Dazai’s coworkers rounded the corner. Yosano, oddly enough, had a bottle of sake with her and three cups, while Kunikida had his characteristic scowl.
“If you keep frowning like that,” Dazai started, “your face is going to get stuck like that!”
Kunikida took a measured breath, and it was an impressive show of self-discipline that he’d yet to start going off on Dazai.
“The roof was locked,” Kunikida said, sitting across from Dazai with his legs tucked underneath him. “I thought we’d discussed your lock picking habits before.”
“Aw, but it’s so much fun!”
Yosano snorted as she sat to one side of them and set the cups out. She took a much more languid position, making herself comfortable in spite of the unforgiving concrete and the biting night air. “Kunikida, lay into him tomorrow. It’s past work hours, so it’s drinking time.”
“Scolding him isn’t a part of my job description,” he pointed out.
“Really?” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Huh. That’s weird because it’s literally half of what you spend your day doing.”
“That’s hardly my fault!”
“You could just learn to ignore me!” Dazai chimed in. “Everyone else has by now. I think Kunikida’s skin must be very thin.”
Kunikida was, clearly, about to explode, and Yosano seemed to pick up on that since she chose that moment to claim a cup and raise it towards Dazai. “Hit me up, birthday boy.”
“Is that really the custom on these things?” he asked, though he still picked up the sake container and tipped it over her cup, stopping when it was nearly full.
Yosano shrugged before downing half of it. “No idea. Never cared to remember.”
Well, fair enough. Dazai wasn’t terribly interested in etiquette, either, though he recognized its usefulness. He went ahead and filled the other two cups then replaced the sake container in the center. Not a moment after, he claimed the cup closest to him and eagerly started nursing it.
“You’re not supposed to pour for yourself, you know,” Kunikida sighed. He adjusted his glasses, apparently hesitant in taking his own cup, but he gave it after a moment. “But I suppose I’ll excuse your lack of manners for today. Consider it your present.”
“Awww, it seems Kunikida does have a soft spot for me,” Dazai sang, leaning back into the brick of the wall. “Ranpo figured it out?”
“Atsushi, actually,” Yosano supplied. “He somehow managed to get it out of Akutagawa.”
Dazai hummed his acknowledgment as he took another sip. Akutagawa could have access to that information, he supposed, but it was still impressive that he’d managed to convince Mori to give it to him. “That explains why he was acting strange all day.”
“Is that why you came up here instead of going home?” Kunikida asked, his cup set back down in front of him and his arms crossed.
“Maybe.” Truthfully, Atsushi was bad at keeping secrets. When Dazai had noticed his odd behavior and asked him if he was hiding something, he’d burst out of the office with an incoherent excuse, and Dazai received a text from him later telling him that there was a “super important emergency” with about twenty exclamation points and that he needed to return to his company dorm immediately. So, naturally, Dazai ignored it and instead chose to hide out on the rooftop.
“It’s just a surprise party, you big baby,” Yosano said. She raised her empty cup, and this time, Kunikida filled it. “Once the sake is gone, you better get your butt over there. Those kids worked hard to put it together; at least indulge them a little bit.”
“Hm. I suppose that’s what a good mentor should do.” He hadn’t actually put together that it was a surprise party, but it was much less intimidating than all of the other explanations Dazai’s mind had supplied him with. Really, he should be smarter than this.
“If you knew about their surprise party,” Dazai continued, gesturing to the alcohol, “then what is all this?”
“Consider it my present to you,” Yosano replied. “Adults should get some adult celebration time before they indulge their children.”
At that, he chuckled. It was clearly a joke, but there was still a hint of honest sentiment to it. “They’re not really children, and they’re hardly mine. I never pegged you as a considerate mastermind, Sensei.”
“They’re the Agency’s kids, which makes them yours by association. And actually”—Yosano shot Kunikida a knowing glance—“it wasn’t me that guessed you’d try to skip out on the party.”
“Really now?” Dazai raised an eyebrow his way, while he looked for all the world like he wanted to melt into the concrete he was sitting on. Embarrassment was an odd and funny emotion on Kunikida.
He coughed and adjusted his glasses. “You skip out on work all the time. It was a safe assumption.”
Parties and work weren’t the same, and Kunikida knew it. Dazai could only conclude that Kunikida was a bit more observant and had seen through more of his farces than he’d thought, and strangely, that didn’t bother him nearly as much as it might once have.
Yosano caught his attention by tipping her cup back, polishing off the last of the alcohol without a shred of grace. She smirked at him and said, “Alright, now get going. You’re made them wait long enough. We’ll take care of the cleanup.”
“I didn’t agree to that,” Kunikida said, only to be silenced a moment later by Yosano’s elbow in his side.
Dazai smiled at them, and maybe, it was a little bit more genuine than what he normally plastered onto his face. He stood and made his way over to the door, pausing when he was about halfway through it to glance back at them.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “Both of you.”
He wasn’t sure if they heard, and he left before he saw their reactions. But he hummed the whole way back to his apartment.