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“Give me back my friends.”
“Die now, as they did.”
Chuuya could see the bodies.
“All your friends killed themselves. Boring people are boring, even in death.”
They would never. Chuuya knew exactly what had happened and something in him broke. Something that was tired of losing people, furious at this man for taking them away and at himself for not doing enough to save them. He felt so angry that his thoughts became like static, and his body felt distant.
He could use that. He let go.
Or he almost did.
Dazai grabbed his wrist and No Longer Human washed over him, slamming him back into his own body. His anger has nowhere to go now.
“Dazai!”
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” Dazai said. “It won’t do a thing.”
“That’s not the point —“
“What a shame,” the man in white said, standing up. “I would have loved to see what the full extent of his powers were. I’ve heard things...but perhaps it would not have been satisfying.”
“I’m not here for your fucking entertainment,” Chuuya snarled. He pulled against Dazai’s hand again, but Dazai didn’t let go.
“I hope this ending doesn’t bore you,” Dazai said, pulling something out of his pocket with his free hand.
He tossed it, and the thing landed at the man’s feet.
“Run,” Dazai said quietly, yanking on Chuuya’s arm.
An explosion went off and they just managed to get out onto the street before the building fell.
“Why didn’t you let me kill him?” Chuuya shouted, finally getting his arm free.
“If this kills him, it’s a better alternative to me having to drag you back to the infirmary. You’re heavy, Chuuya.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope.” Dazai regarded him with an annoyed expression. “Plus the recovery time would mean you’re less useful for a while and there’s still a lot of things to resolve. Plus, it wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Fuck the plan,” Chuuya snapped. “My friends are dead!”
“Your friends, or people who take advantage of your strength?” Dazai asked. “At least I’m honest about it, but your so-called friends couldn’t even do that for you.”
“Shut up.”
“Isn’t it better this way? I’m telling you something that’ll make it easier for you to move on.”
“You don’t know,” Chuuya said. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose a friend. And my friends—they’re gone and I couldn’t do a fucking thing. I should’ve been able to.”
“It’s the Mafia,” Dazai said. “People die. You should know that by now.”
Chuuya gritted his teeth. He wanted to punch Dazai. He wanted to make Dazai feel the pain that he was feeling, that was squeezing him so tightly it felt hard to breathe. It felt like it was choking him.
Something about Dazai’s expression changed. He stared at Chuuya’s face and grimaced.
“This is why it’s a bad idea to get attached to people,” he said.
Chuuya punched him.
Dazai staggered back but didn’t fall. It wasn’t a horrible punch, but Dazai’s cheek would be bruised for at least a few days. All the energy had left Chuuya’s body.
He wished he could have done more. It was too late now. He needed to go back and drink himself into alcohol poisoning so that his thoughts and emotions wouldn’t try to kill him instead, and then go back to work as if nothing happened. Because Dazai was right, even if he didn’t want to admit it. Death happened in the Mafia and he would have no time to mourn. People didn’t get time to mourn in the Mafia.
He hated it.
As he turned away from Dazai to start walking back, he felt strangely light headed. His surroundings started to fade and then…
“Give me back my friends.”
The bodies were there again, and so was that man. Shibusawa, Chuuya remembered. This was their first meeting, back when he was a mysterious figure wreaking havoc on Yokohama’s underground organizations. He and Dazai had dealt with Shibusawa again, years after this. Right now he was sixteen, but at twenty-two Shibusawa would once again become a problem. Why was he sixteen? Why was he remembering this?
Why was he remembering it twice?
Last time, he realized he hadn’t thought of it as a memory. He’d taken it as face value, that he was sixteen and that it was the present. Now he felt the familiarity of it and realized he was remembering something that happened years ago. And something about it was off...but what?
He took a step forward, fists clenched. He felt strange, like he was a passenger in his own body even though he was also experiencing everything first hand. It was like being in a dream. Maybe it was a dream. A lucid dream.
Dazai grabbed his wrist. The rage that built within him didn’t die, but his Ability did. His friends were dead and there was nothing he could do. He tried to pull out of Dazai’s grip and Dazai held tight. Something about this felt wrong, but what was it?
An explosion. He felt light-headed and then…
“Give me back my friends.”
*
In reality, Chuuya barely remembered what his friend’s bodies looked like. They were half-obscured by a strange mist that seemed to shroud Shibusawa. The only thing Chuuya could say for certain was that there was blood, and that was it. Other than Shibusawa saying they’d committed suicide, he didn’t know how they died.
In the days that followed Chuuya buried his feelings beneath layers of anger and hours of work. He had one argument with Dazai, where Dazai tried to tell him that he’d been foolish for having friends in the first place. Chuuya had punched him back then.
In this...whatever it was...his friend’s bodies became more grotesque. Chuuya saw that some of them had slit their wrists. Others had limbs bent the wrong way, as if they’d jumped from a great height. Their eyes were open, the light long having left them, but they still stared at Chuuya as if berating him for not coming fast enough.
Each time it restarted, Chuuya remembered the last time and wondered what he was supposed to do. He couldn’t think of a way to save them because every time they were already dead. Was this his punishment?
His body was doing its own thing on autopilot. He saw more and more details. His friends’ bodies burned into his mind and he forced himself to not think of anything. If this was hell, then he supposed he deserved it for not being good enough. He’d always lost people by not being good enough. He lost the Sheep, he lost his friends, he lost Dazai.
But something kept eating away at him no matter how much he tried to distance himself from what was happening.
Dazai had never stopped Corruption before it started.
Even when Chuuya had used it against his plans, Dazai never stopped it until the destruction was over. Chuuya had never asked Dazai his reasoning behind that because it didn’t happen often — they both knew that Chuuya hated Corruption and for him to use it without being asked was a clear sign that for whatever reason Chuuya was at the end of his rope.
It wasn’t Shibusawa’s words that echoed in Chuuya’s head each time, but his own.
Give me back my friends.
He thought about all the people he’d lost and all the people who left him. He thought about how everything felt out of his control, so much so that he had to ask the enemy to give him his friends back rather than being able to save them himself. He thought about how disgusted that made him feel with himself, how angry, and how the only thing left to him was the monster lurking underneath his skin.
That power wasn’t enough to save his friends, but the worst thing Chuuya could do to someone else was to reveal his true nature and let that play out as it would. It was a punishment to himself, and to the enemy that had taken something important away from him.
That was what he did to Shibusawa. And Dazai…
It was a rash decision. Dazai would have stopped him. Dazai stopped him all the time from doing rash things when they were partners, from letting his emotions get away from him. For Chuuya to purposefully cast away his humanity without orders was a huge thing and it could have catastrophic results.
That was what made sense in his mind, but he knew that in this situation it was wrong for Dazai to reach out and grab his wrist. Dazai should have stopped him based on how things usually went, but he didn’t. Even though he realized that, Dazai kept stopping him. Something else was missing.
Then he realized — Dazai hadn’t stopped him because Chuuya told him not to. Dazai had listened to his partner. Otherwise he very well might have stopped him. Why he’d listened, Chuuya had no clue. Dazai was erratic about what he did and didn’t listen to depending on if it suited his needs, and maybe this did suit a need. Chuuya had never asked. He wanted to know now.
The events were still playing out and Chuuya, for whatever reason, hadn’t asked Dazai not to stop him. Maybe that was the key.
Maybe he needed to allow himself to experience everything fully again so he could take control of the situation.
So that’s what he did. He looked at his friends’ bodies, let the pain take over, and fully felt it. And when he said, “Don’t stop me,” Dazai didn’t.
After that came destruction and chaos and the complete separation of mind and body, and then nothing.
*
“Chuuya, open your eyes.”
Chuuya’s entire body ached and his face felt sticky. He was lying on a firm surface and when he opened his eyes he realized he was in an infirmary. The Agency infirmary. Someone — it looked like the Agency doctor — slipped out of the room. He sat up, ignoring the dizziness that came with it and the strange expression on Dazai’s face.
The events leading up to this came back in bits and pieces. He felt like he’d been stuck in that memory forever, but before that he’d been sent to gain information on the location of an Ability user that had been snuck into the country. It was a solo mission, although the Agency was aware and was also looking for that same Ability user. Chuuya had almost taken that as a challenge: he’d definitely find that person first and maybe even apprehend them, and the Agency could suck it.
He found the Ability user and then this happened. All he remembered was realizing someone was following him, spinning around to attempt to take them by surprised, and having someone’s hand grab his wrist. And then nothing.
“You shouldn’t have gone alone,” Dazai said. “We’re still looking for the Ability user but Atsushi-kun gained some valuable information in his search — their Ability is to make the victim relive one of their worst memories over and over. We didn’t find the actual Ability user, though, so I couldn’t nullify the Ability. You were out of it for two hours.”
“What?” He wondered who found him. Probably Akutagawa, who had been in communication with him up until that point.
“How did you wake up?” Dazai asked. “Maybe there’s a time limit…”
“One part of the memory was wrong,” Chuuya said. “I made it right.” He made to stand up and swayed. “Where’s Akutagawa?”
Dazai stood as well and grabbed his arm, pulling him back so that Chuuya was forced to sit down again. He was tired enough that he didn’t try to stand again right away. “Not so fast, chibikko! You’re in no condition to be out and about.”
“Dazai, I swear to god —”
“Chuuya, at least wait until the others get back,” Dazai said.
“What am I supposed to do until then?” Chuuya asked. “Sit here? Why are you still here, anyway? Did your doctor force you to stay in here with me?”
“Maybe,” Dazai said. “But I decided it would be fun to stay anyway so I could annoy you.” He smiled.
Chuuya wanted to slap him. “Well get the fuck out. I don’t want to see you.”
Dazai’s expression turned serious. “What was the memory, Chuuya?”
Chuuya stared at him. “Is that what you’re worried about? Go satisfy your curiosity elsewhere. It wasn’t about you.”
Dazai glanced away. Chuuya realized he was looking at the Agency doctor, who was still by the door, but before he could see what kind of look they were exchanging Dazai turned back around. He looked sheepish for some reason.
“That’s not why I want to know,” Dazai said.
“Then why?”
“Because...ugh, Yosano-sensei is going to kill me if I’m not honest —”
“I’d happily let her.”
“You were thrashing around,” Dazai said, his voice clinical, “crying. It came and went but for the entirety of those two hours it seemed like you were suffering. Sensei said that you should probably talk to someone about it and volunteered me.”
“How nice of her,” Chuuya said, looking away. “I don’t want to talk to someone who was forced into it. Talking to someone who doesn’t give a damn won’t help.”
Dazai was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I didn’t like seeing you like that.”
Chuuya turned back to Dazai, but Dazai’s gaze was elsewhere. “What?”
“It’s harder watching people suffer now,” Dazai said. “Even you.”
“Even me,” Chuuya repeated. Of course he was just an afterthought. “Well, I’m not suffering anymore —”
“Aren’t you?” Dazai asked, meeting Chuuya’s eyes. “You’ve never been good at putting away your feelings. In fact, I knew exactly what you were going to do after you woke up. You’d try to go straight back to work and pretend like it didn’t happen, but that wouldn’t mean you were over it, because you don’t just get over things. You let them get to you.”
“So? That’s no different than before,” Chuuya said, “and back then you didn’t give a shit. Is this you being a good man? You’re not a good anything if other people have to force you into shit.”
“I wouldn’t be here if part of me didn’t want to be,” Dazai said. “Yosano-sensei can be mean, but she wouldn’t subject you to being trapped with someone who doesn’t want anything to do with you after an experience like that. Even if you’re the enemy. We’re in a truce, after all.”
“Right.” Chuuya wanted to ask Yosano himself, but she seemed intent on ignoring both of them. “Well, you’re not obligated. You can leave.”
“Sometimes when someone doesn’t take care of themselves you have to do it for them,” Dazai said. “Sometimes they don’t realize they need it.”
There was something in Dazai’s voice that Chuuya found strange. He was tempted to leave anyway and he was sure that even in this condition, the Agency actually couldn’t stop him. Something about Dazai was making him rethink that, though. It wasn’t just Dazai’s words, because Dazai was good with words. It was the fact that Dazai sounded uncomfortable and that he looked uncomfortable, and Dazai in the past would have left as soon as given an out if he was feeling like that. Dazai now had been given a way out and hadn’t taken it. He was insisting on staying, and someone like Yosano couldn’t keep him here if Chuuya himself told him to leave.
It was conflict. Dazai looked stuck between convincing himself to stay and taking Chuuya’s word to leave, and that he was conflicted at all said that part of him did actually want to help for whatever reason.
“You never realized you needed to take care of yourself,” Chuuya said.
“Yeah, well, you’re not much better,” Dazai said.
“True. Do you really want to know?”
“Yes and no. You know I’m no good at these things, Chuuya...but I meant what I said.”
Chuuya searched Dazai’s face for a lie, knowing that Dazai was really good at making people see what he wanted them to see. But Dazai still looked uncomfortable, which was a sign of weakness, which was something he wouldn’t want anyone to see. “Uncomfortable” was not one of his masks because it was such a useless mask to wear.
“The memory was the first time we met Shibusawa,” Chuuya said after a moment. “Well, the first time I met him, since you met him before that. But yeah...when we found my dead friends.”
“And you activated Corruption,” Dazai murmured.
“Right. Except the one thing that changed in the memory was that I didn’t ask you not to stop me, so you stopped me,” Chuuya said. “Over and over again until I figured out why the memory was different to reality.”
“Interesting,” Dazai said, clearly filing that away for later. “A memory that ends in an event you can’t remember...I wonder if the Ability accounted for Corruption and that’s why it prevented you from activating it.”
“Uh huh.” Chuuya hadn’t really thought about that, nor did he particularly care. What he did care about… “Dazai, why didn’t you stop me?”
“Huh?”
“When I asked you not to stop me, why didn’t you?” Chuuya asked. “You never listened to half the shit I said and this wasn’t in your plan so why?”
Dazai was quiet for a moment. Nothing showed on his face, but Chuuya could tell he was deep in thought. Then he said, “I was fascinated.”
“What? You found me being upset fascinating?”
“Grief isn’t something you can afford in the Mafia,” Dazai said, “and yet...in the Mafia you can’t afford to be driven by emotions, but you were all the time and you’re still alive. You were willing to destroy yourself out of grief and out of anger for your friends, because you couldn’t do anything to prevent them dying. You always felt emotions strongly for others and let them consume you. It was fascinating because I didn’t understand that and I wanted to see what would happen.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed the show,” Chuuya snapped. “I’m not some fucking experiment.” Those words seemed to echo in the room and ring in Chuuya’s ears.
“Chuuya,” Dazai started.
Something in Dazai’s last statement caught Chuuya’s attention. He latched on to it, grateful. “Didn’t?”
Dazai blinked. “Well, I lost a friend and blamed myself for it,” he said. “It’s so tempting to destroy yourself, or to destroy something else, because you’re angry for not being able to prevent what happened. There’s nowhere for all of those feelings to go. I had nothing to do but think for a while, and I thought about that time...it’s funny that it’s the memory that came up for you.” He realized Chuuya was glaring at him and added, “not funny...I just never expected it to come up again.”
What Dazai was saying was very specific and vague at the same time. Chuuya had his suspicions about why Dazai had left the Mafia that were all but confirmed, and Dazai liked to talk around it. He was too tired to pry into Daza’s words any further, but it did make him feel odd that Dazai had, at some point, thought of the time Chuuya almost destroyed himself out of grief for his friends.
“Neither did I,” Chuuya muttered.
“It’s interesting...you still keep trying to get close to people as if that won’t happen again, and then you lose more people and the same thing happens, and every time you manage to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward.”
Chuuya couldn’t tell if Dazai was admiring him or telling him that he was stupid. “I don’t know how many times I can keep doing that.”
“But you keep doing it.”
“Because I’m a dumbass who needs people, as you used to say. But you’re one of those people who left.”
Dazai’s eyes widened before he laughed nervously. “I’m not dead, Chuuya.”
“There’s so many times you almost died,” Chuuya said. “So many times I had to save your ass. If you’d died I’m sure that would’ve been the memory, or at least it would’ve been one of the ones that could’ve been used by that Ability. As it is I wondered what I’d done wrong as a partner each time before trying to write you off. I should’ve written you off, but I never could. Because I’m a dumbass who needs other people.”
“You still haven’t written me off,” Dazai said.
“And you’re still gonna leave, aren’t you,” Chuuya said.
Dazai seemed wary. “What kind of leaving are you talking about?”
Chuuya didn’t even know anymore. He just knew at some point that Dazai would be out of his life again.
After a few moments of silence, Dazai added, “if it helps, I haven’t written you off either.”
“Yeah, because you find me fascinating or some shit like that.”
“No. Because you’re…” Dazai struggled for the word. “You.”
“Me?”
“Yes.” Dazai sounded more confident now. “You.”
It didn’t make sense to Chuuya. Dazai was the sort of person who could always find words, but this sounded vague. It was probably on purpose. At the same time it was such a weird attempt at comfort that he didn’t think Dazai was lying. Dazai lying was Dazai making people hear what they wanted to hear. Dazai right now was...just saying weird shit that Chuuya didn’t understand.
“Whatever,” Chuuya said. “Satisfied?”
“I’m not the one who needs to be satisfied,” Dazai said. “Does talking about it make you feel better?” He sounded genuinely curious.
“I don’t know,” Chuuya said. “I’m just tired...maybe. I...I guess I’m glad you were honest.”
He had a lot to think about with regards to Dazai and everything Dazai had said, but he was too tired to think about it right now.
Before either of them could say anything else, Dazai’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and his eyebrows shot up. “They caught the Ability user. And Akutagawa didn’t kill her. Incredible.”
“Akutagawa is capable of not killing people,” Chuuya snapped, standing up.
Dazai eyed him. “What are you doing, Chuuya?”
“If you’re going to retrieve them, I’m going with you.”
“But — you —”
“Don’t even bother,” Chuuya said. “I’m coming whether you like it or not.”
Dazai sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “And you wonder why I didn’t stop you. Regardless of my feelings, it’s not like I ever could.”
Something in Dazai’s voice caught Chuuya off-guard. He thought about it as they headed off to meet Atsushi and Akutagawa. In the past, that probably would have been an insult to Chuuya’s stubbornness and stupidity. He’d heard Dazai insult him like that before, countless times.
Now, Dazai sounded almost fond.