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Sometimes Dazai wishes he could talk to his customers, but most of the time he’s happy he doesn’t have to face them at all.
It works like this: people come to his building, located at the edge of Yokohama’s slums. They don’t go in, but rather walk up to a window similar to the sort of window where people buy tickets in a movie theater. There is a slot for things to be passed from the customer to whoever is at the window. Bars cover the window, partially obscuring the view of the inside. It’s dark as well, and just in case someone somehow manages to see through all of that, Dazai wears a white mask that covers his face and gives off the impression of him being faceless.
Like he’s not human. He’s just a way for people to try to forget.
Dazai doesn’t get money. People bring in all sorts of things to trade. Someone brought him a cat once, and he’d almost refused because he didn’t know what would happen to the cat. He never found out either — the cat, like everything else he received, disappeared.
The shop doesn’t have any storage. There is a shelf off to the side of the room that is normally empty except when someone brings something in. Once an object is passed through the window, when Dazai turns to the shelf, something else is there. Nothing appears until that moment, and Dazai never knows what it’ll be before it appears. He’s tried to guess a few times based on what he observes from the people through the window and what they give him, which is kind of a fun game, but he never wins.
Trying to guess passes time, though. Whether or not his thoughts linger on any particular customer depends on if it’s a good day or a bad day, how many people have come by, and whether the object they brought in versus the one they walked away with are interesting enough.
The mask feels unnecessary, because he never sees someone on the other side of the window that he knows.
Until he does.
*
Dazai already knows that the shop is abnormal because of the whole objects appearing and disappearing thing, but he learns something new every day and is somehow always surprised no matter how much he thought he’d figured out.
Today’s revelation: the shop can time travel.
Maybe that’s not accurate. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that the shop exists without regard for things like chronological time.
Dazai knows this because a fifteen year old boy with red hair walks up to the window, his expression heavy with a mix of anger and sadness that he’s trying hard to hide. Dazai knows what those emotions are, though, because he’s seen that look on this face before.
It’s Chuuya. Chuuya, who he last saw...he isn’t sure how long ago or how much time has passed. But the last time he saw Chuuya they were both eighteen, and people don’t just de-age.
Right?
Dazai finds himself at a loss for words as his brain struggles to come up with an explanation.
“Hey,” Chuuya says, and Dazai almost answers before realizing that he isn’t supposed to talk and that Chuuya can’t see his face anyway. “I dunno how this works...actually I don’t think this shit works but I have nothing better to do and apparently it’s free so…”
Dazai wants to pull off his mask and shout “surprise!” but he isn’t sure how well that would go over for either of them. When Chuuya looks up again he makes eye contact with Dazai — not that he would know that, given the mask, but Dazai knows and it sends a chill up his spine. Chuuya’s eyes were always so blue, so intense. They made Dazai feel — still make Dazai feel like Chuuya can see right through him.
Chuuya brings out reactions in him. He wants to insult Chuuya’s clothing choices. He wants to insult Chuuya’s height. He wants to shout through the window “why are you fifteen?!” Before he can think about it further, something is shoved through the window.
Dazai’s thoughts all come to a halt.
There’s a knife there. A switchblade, nothing impressive, but Dazai can imagine the stain of blood that probably had decorated it before Chuuya cleaned it up and brought it here. He’d seen this very knife sticking out of Chuuya’s body. He never thought that Chuuya had kept it and now, well, he knows he didn’t.
At least, in theory he didn’t keep it, if this is just some weird anomaly in their timeline but everything else is the same.
Dazai takes the knife and feels a surprising amount of anger towards the person who stabbed Chuuya with it in the first place. It’s been years since he saw Chuuya, even more years since this incident happened, and the emotion is still strong.
He almost doesn’t want to look over at the shelf to see what has appeared there. He thinks he knows, though. He knows enough about how this shop works, and he knows even more about how Chuuya works.
Dazai turns and almost doesn’t see it because the object is so small. He picks it up, remembers teasing Chuuya about holding on to this thing, how he said that it was childish and stupid.
He passes the small blue bracelet through the window and watches as Chuuya picks it up, staring at it in shock. Of course he’s surprised. Most people are, when the shop gives them something that only those close to them would know about.
“Thanks,” Chuuya says after a moment, and then he’s gone.
Dazai places the knife on the shelf and looks at the ceiling. He thinks about how much his friends’ betrayal had to be hurting Chuuya to make him come here of all places. He thinks about how Chuuya hid that hurt. He thinks about the blue bracelet that he saw dangling from Chuuya’s wrist shortly after he joined the Mafia and how it matched the blue bracelets he’d seen dangling from the wrists of the kids in the street gang Chuuya used to be part of.
He thinks about Chuuya, who had a bit of a temper back then, not wanting to hold a grudge, because that’s what this really means. He thinks about whether Chuuya felt the same way about him when he left, or if holding a grudge against Dazai is easier than thinking good things about him, if there are even good things to think.
He thinks about how he never realized that Chuuya would be a customer of this shop, because he isn’t like Dazai and never was, but maybe they’re more alike than he thought.
*
Dazai didn’t know about the shop until he was eighteen and everything had fallen apart in a way that meant he couldn’t just wrap up his problems in bandages and hope they held him together long enough for him to get used to the pain.
There was no getting used to this.
He wonders if things would have been different if he had known about the shop earlier, because he definitely would’ve been a repeat customer. One of Dazai’s many talents was insisting to himself and others that his problems didn’t exist.
It occurs to him a few days after Chuuya’s visit that Chuuya knew about this place and never told him. The bastard.
Dazai has managed to balance whatever emotions he might feel with not feeling anything so that he can function in this shop without wanting to stab himself with some of the things customers bring him (he isn’t even sure if he can) but now he can’t stop thinking and it’s all because of Chuuya. And Chuuya doesn’t even know.
He wonders if Chuuya will come back and if next time, it will be about him.
Maybe it’s arrogant to think that he’s had such an impact on Chuuya’s life, but it’s true. He knows it’s true because of, well...reasons he doesn’t want to admit, but they’re always there, lurking at the edge of his thoughts when he starts remembering the wrong things, because he didn't come here to deal with his Chuuya problem. He didn’t think he had to.
Dazai finds himself a bit jumpy for the next few days as people come and go. At any time it could be Chuuya, at any age and for any reason. What if he meets a future Chuuya? What will he do then? What if it’s a Chuuya who hadn’t met him yet, even younger than fifteen? What if…
What if Dazai doesn’t want to give him what the shop thinks he needs?
*
People come to the shop to forget, but it isn’t as straightforward as that. If it were, Dazai would’ve been able to go on living life like he didn’t have any problems, like there weren’t things he was constantly running from because if he couldn’t remember those things, they didn’t exist.
He doesn't explain how it works to the people who come, mostly because he never talks to them and he doesn’t want to waste time. What he has to say is what people don’t want to hear, so he lets them think that this will work, that they’ll forget the hurt and life will go on like it never happened.
That is not how it works. The shop, Dazai has learned, is a bit of a cruel thing, giving false hope until the slow and painful realization sets in that nothing has really changed.
Whoever created this must’ve been a sadist or something.
Dazai figured this out later than he normally would have figured out things because he, too, had hope. He was desperate and for the first time in his life, he let that desperation make him irrational. But it was fine because he had nothing left to lose except his life, and he didn’t care about his life.
How the shop actually works, from Dazai’s experience: something bad happens in someone’s life, and they feel like they can’t move on from it for whatever reason.
They feel like it’s keeping them from being happy. Memories often have objects attached to them, things that remind someone of that time or event or person. They bring an object representing that memory to the shop, at which point it is exchanged for another item.
Giving away the object associated with the memory doesn’t make them forget. It dulls the hurt temporarily, puts those emotions in a compartmentalized box that has now, in theory, been sent off somewhere else. Not their problem anymore.
The item they receive is associated with something else, something that for whatever reason makes the person think of something less painful (perhaps even something happy) in the place of whatever they were trying to forget when they came. In other words, it’s a distraction.
It’s always possible that one day the distraction won't be enough, and the box will return with all of the shitty emotions attached and the shock of it will feel worse than before, because it was supposed to be gone. It’s a toss up as to whether or not that happens.
Dazai has never really figured out what the objects mean to each individual because they’re so particular and personal, but that changes with Chuuya. He knows exactly what the shop thinks will help him, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it.
He’s always thought that Chuuya is too soft, that him wanting to get close to other people is a huge weakness that others can use as leverage against him. He should have learned to numb himself to emotions long ago, should have learned that loneliness is a necessary shield.
The shop doesn’t think so.
The shop wants Chuuya to think of what his old gang meant to him as a group of people he cared about and how much they’d helped Chuuya through his earlier years. It wants him to think of the fun times, of the comradery of a group of kids taking care of each other and taking on the world.
And Dazai thinks that Chuuya should let those feelings burn, because that would hurt less in the long run. Betrayal like that shouldn’t be forgotten.
After Chuuya’s visit, Dazai wonders just how many of the objects he’d disapprove of if he knew the reasoning behind them. Maybe not that many. Maybe a lot, enough that he’d start to refuse customers. He really only has two examples to go by, though, which is not enough.
So life goes on. Time passes slowly.
And then Chuuya shows up again.
*
Repeat customers aren’t rare. It’s just...Chuuya. Why does Chuuya have to be one of them?
Chuuya is older this time. If Dazai were to guess he’d say it was maybe a year or so ago. He walks up to the window and says “do you do consultations or something?”
Dazai stares at him, which Chuuya can’t see because of the mask. Like last time, he’s tempted to take it off.
“I need some advice,” Chuuya continues, deciding to ignore the silence, “about bringing something in. Does this shit work for like...things that are still around?”
Dazai frowns. Chuuya can’t see that either, and Dazai doesn’t want to use his voice. He feels like he can’t speak. Instead, he tilts his head.
Chuuya runs a hand through his hair. “Like..something that’s still a problem. Does the problem stop or get better if I bring something in?”
That is an intriguing question, and if Dazai were next to Chuuya right now he’d sarcastically congratulate him for having a brain capable of critical thinking while secretly actually being impressed.
He doesn’t know, so he shrugs his shoulders.
Chuuya curses under his breath. “Does anyone else? Are you the only employee?” He leans closer to the glass, narrowing his eyes. “Are you the same employee?”
Dazai nods.
“Okay.” Chuuya seems to be wrestling with himself over something. “Actually...I should just…”
Dazai suddenly wants to know something. He grabs his notebook and a pen, tears off a sheet of paper and writes “how did the bracelet work?” He slides it over before he can think better of it.
Chuuya raises an eyebrow but takes the note. “That was years ago,” he murmurs. Then he looks up at Dazai. “I mean, I was still sad and shit, but I guess...I didn’t think about the end so much. I just missed my friends.”
Dazai wants to ask if he regrets it, if it was actually helpful or if Chuuya didn’t want to miss his friends, but he does neither of those things. Instead he nods.
Chuuya looks at him for a long moment, eyes piercing enough that he should be able to see through the mask, but he doesn’t.
“Thanks,” he says, like he only half means it, and then he gives a weak wave and leaves.
*
That night Dazai has something between a dream and a memory.
He knew the true nature of the shop a few months in, when he had a nightmare about Odasaku’s death after going so long without them. It was less vivid than the ones he’d been having just after the fact, and he recovered more quickly, but it was still there and that made his head spin and his heart hurt.
He didn’t leave bed for a full day, and there wasn’t anyone to tell him off for it. But the day after he got up and did his job, because his thoughts would eat him alive otherwise. He had a feeling that the box he’d shoved his emotions into was not as airtight as he’d hoped, so he needed to distract himself. And now, with the shop, he always had a distraction. He was bitterly grateful.
When Dazai dreams it’s usually of gunshots and fire and blood and kind words that he’s always needed to hear spoken by someone who will never say a thing again. But this is different.
Chuuya walks along the edge of a rooftop high above the city. They’re in a building tall enough to contribute somewhat significantly to Yokohama’s skyline, but not the tallest.
Walking along the edge of the roof is a balancing act and Dazai is jealous that Chuuya has his Ability to fall back on. If Dazai lost his balance he’d just die and while he wants to die, it’s not necessarily here or today.
Today is the first time he’s seen Chuuya in a while. He can’t remember why, but he knows that he doesn’t want to leave even if watching Chuuya show off makes him irritated. The sun is too hot, but he won’t take off his suit jacket and he’d never take off his bandages, so he has to suffer until Chuuya decides he’s done playing around.
Chuuya does a spin on one foot and starts walking again. Maybe he doesn’t need his Ability. He has amazing balance. He could pull this off without the safety net of controlling gravity, and Dazai wonders if he would, in a different lifetime where none of them had Abilities. Was that the kind of person Chuuya was?
He usually wasn’t as careless about life as Dazai even though he dove headfirst into a lot of dangerous things. He could be careless, though, in certain situations, so it was a toss-up.
Chuuya jumps back onto the roof and makes his way towards Dazai, plopping down next to him. “Don’t look so miserable.”
“It’s hot,” Dazai complains.
“It’s summer,” Chuuya points out. “You knew this when we left, dumbass.”
“You knew this when we left,” Dazai mimics in a high-pitched, grating voice. Chuuya shoves him.
“Fuck off.”
Dazai just laughs at him.
Chuuya doesn’t seem angry, though, or even that annoyed. Today he’s in a good mood and Dazai can’t imagine why. They’re still in the Mafia, they still have a huge workload, they still…
“If you could forget things, would you?”
Chuuya’s question pulls Dazai out of his thoughts. “What?”
“If you. could forget. things,” Chuuya repeats, mockingly slow, “would. you?”
“People forget things all the time,” Dazai says.
“Don’t be a smart ass,” Chuuya snaps.
Dazai grins. “I thought I was a dumbass.”
“I’m gonna kick your ass if you don’t answer the fucking question.”
Now Chuuya does look a bit irritated, picking at a few loose threads of his shirt.
“I still don’t get it,” Dazai says. He actually does, but he wants to hear exactly what Chuuya wants to know and maybe to know why he’s asking in the first place.
“If you could choose to forget anything,” Chuuya says, frustrated, “and you’d just forget it forever, would you?”
“But I could never forget you,” Dazai says with a wink and then bursts out laughing.
Chuuya swats his arm. “I’m being serious!”
So am I Dazai doesn’t say, and maybe he never even thought it in real life, but dream Dazai is thinking it.
“If you insist…” Dazai thinks. All sorts of bad things have happened in his life, but he’s not sure he wants to forget any of them. It’s too late — his emotions are already numb to most things and besides, he can’t think of one particular thing that would make his life better if he forgot it.
Well...there is the night he witnessed the murder of the former Mafia Boss. Witnessing that certainly changed his life, so instead of being just a miserable kid he was a miserable kid in the Mafia holding more authority than most people ever could.
Where would he be if it wasn’t for that, though? Dead?
He’s not sure.
Forgetting people is an option too, he supposes, but people are so intricately woven into other people’s lives that forgetting one of them would probably just cause distress because there would be all of these things that are the result of that person’s existence and no explanation for them.
“I wouldn’t,” Dazai says.
Chuuya looks a bit surprised. “Really?”
“What’s so shocking about it?” Dazai asks. “What would you forget?”
“Dunno,” Chuuya says. “I haven’t done anything I’d want to forget yet except...the thing I guess I’d probably want to forget is something I’ve already forgotten.” He sighs. “But I want to know about it anyway.”
“How about something you’d never want to forget?” Dazai asks.
Chuuya’s eyes widen. He quickly looks Dazai up and down and then looks away, towards the water. “This view!”
Dazai scoffs. “Come on, Chuuya.”
“It’s not like you’d have a better answer,” Chuuya says, turning back around.
And suddenly Dazai’s brain has an idea that it thinks is good but probably actually isn’t. “I can give you something unforgettable,” he says quietly.
Chuuya frowns, turning all the way back around to face Dazai. “Like?”
“Come closer,” Dazai says, at the same time moving closer to Chuuya. The distance between them is so small now. He puts a hand on Chuuya’s shoulder and Chuuya stiffens.
“Dazai, what —”
Dazai leans forward, close enough that their lips are almost touching, and then he —-
Wakes up.
And can’t remember which parts of those were a dream and which parts are memory, but whatever they are, the emotion in them is strong and he knows it’s because if there’s one person alive that he can’t forget, it’s Chuuya.
Suddenly the shop seems suffocating.
*
Here is how Dazai ended up in the shop:
He needed a place to hide after he ran away from the Mafia.
He needed a distraction from the overwhelming grief of Odasaku’s death and the subsequent gaping hole of nothingness that he saw when he questioned his life choices, all because of a few words Odasaku told him.
Sometimes Dazai was a coward, so he wanted to forget. He didn’t want to deal with anything that he was feeling.
He’d tried to get a job as someone who could save people, but was told he’d have to lay low for two years. Two years was a very long time. Dazai wasn’t sure if he could survive two months, let alone two years, but he agreed to the plan anyway.
Then he started looking into other options.
The first and most obvious (to him) option was to die. He felt a bit guilty, though, because even though Odasaku was dead now and wouldn’t know if Dazai followed his words or not, Dazai respected Odasaku enough to not take them so lightly.
The second was to leave the city and start somewhere else, but that took time and effort and even though Dazai was smart and normally could plan this in less than a day, right now he was struggling to put together cohesive thoughts and wouldn’t even know where to start.
The third, he found while wandering Suribachi City.
There were a few signs here and there that he didn’t pay attention to until he’d seen it a few times, at which point he went to look out of curiosity. They were signs for a magic shop.
It wasn’t flashy or anything, but Dazai was amused. The sign claimed that a visit to the magic shop would make your problems disappear and that you would be happy. It sounded like something a drug dealer might say. Either that, or the shop could belong to some delusional person who actually believed that whatever they sold could help people enough that they would forget their problems.
So Dazai decided to check it out.
He observed for a bit, watching people come and go, always going up to the window with something in hand and leaving with another thing. No one ever went inside. It seemed like everything was done through the window at the front.
He wondered who worked there.
He wondered if they were hiring.
He asked around, trying not to be too noticeable. A few people told him that the magic shop made you forget things and that it seemed cool but they were afraid to try it. Others warned him away from it. There were others who said they would have gone if they had an object to exchange.
That was how Dazai learned that he needed to bring an object to the shop that would represent whatever problems he was trying to forget. And that was how Dazai came up with a plan to get himself a job, because he could easily lie to people, be charming, convince them that their problems would be solved by whatever this shop had to give them.
He went up to the window. A masked person sat behind it, which was a bit unnerving. Dazai hated not being able to see their eyes properly. They didn’t speak when Dazai stopped in front of them.
“I’m here to make an exchange,” he said. “But I don’t know if it’s something you can help me with.”
The masked person didn’t say anything. Didn’t even move.
“I heard that you solve problems by exchanging things people give you for...I don’t actually know what you exchange them for, and it makes them forget. I’d like to find out.” Dazai smiled his most charming smile. It hurt.
Again, the masked person said nothing.
“My biggest problem is...my life,” Dazai said, which was both true and not true. “My life sucks and there’s things about it I want to forget, but there’s so many that I don’t have any specific object to give. Just,” he gestured at his chest, “myself.”
It felt like time stopped.
It was ridiculous, because the person in the mask hadn’t moved at all before, but now it seemed like they weren’t even breathing and suddenly everything felt tense. Dazai almost walked away.
But then the person moved, reaching for something off to the side. Dazai stuck his hand in his pocket, curling his fingers around the handle of a knife. Just in case.
The person slid a small box through the window.
That was...interesting. “So...is this free or...do you get to keep me now?” Dazai asked, taking the box. “Do I have to work with you to pay for this? Is that what you want? I never said but I was assuming you figured out that I want to —” The words trailed off as he saw what was inside the box. A small, old-fashioned looking silver key. “Um.”
When he looked up, the masked person was gone.
Dazai cursed under his breath. What was he supposed to do with this? At least he hadn’t wasted money, but this all felt...bizarre. He didn’t know if he should be disappointed or not as he picked up the key to examine it.
“Does that mean it’s my shift now?” he murmured to himself, laughing a little. He took a step back to look at the building as a whole — it was small and run down, and there was a door to the side.
Dazai looked at the key and then at the door and then back at the key before walking over to the door.
If this key worked...he didn’t know what would happen. But if it didn’t, he also didn’t know what would happen. His life was being lived one minute at a time and at any point he could break.
He slid the key into the lock and turned it, and the door opened.
Dazai stepped inside, the door locking behind him.
*
Dazai wants to see Chuuya again. He can’t stop thinking about it. He wants to know what Chuuya’s life is like now, because after seeing him twice he can’t let him go. He wants to know if Chuuya wanted to forget him.
He doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. He wants someone to understand, and Chuuya is a dangerous choice but right now Chuuya is the only choice and he’s glad that if it’s anyone, it’s Chuuya. He knows Chuuya would understand because Chuuya has been here, just like Dazai is here, and even if he hadn’t been here they’d always understood each other on a level that no one else really did whether they wanted to or not.
The problem is the shop.
Dazai grows restless with the desire to leave. More days pass and Chuuya doesn’t come by, and Dazai is relieved because he doesn’t want Chuuya to be a frequent customer of a place like this, but is also frustrated because he doesn’t know where Chuuya is or what he’s thinking and he can’t find out. People come and go and Dazai barely pays attention to them.
Until one day, a person comes without an object.
Dazai could warn them about what they’re getting into. He could ask if this is what they want or not. But Dazai doesn’t do that. He lets it happen, and at the end of the exchange he’s outside of the shop for the first time in ages (months? years?) dressed in the clothes he’d arrived in. The gold key that had appeared next to the box that he’d given away, that he’d used to unlock the door and let himself out, is still in his pocket. He isn’t sure if he wants to keep it.
He probably will.
He starts walking aimlessly, thinking about what he needs. He doesn’t know how he feels. Sort of tired, not happy but not sad, he doesn’t want to die but there’s a vague anxiety humming behind everything else at the thought of how much he has to do to have a life.
Dazai enters a train station, planning to take a subway to another part of the city where he might be able to find some things he needs. He should also check in about that job. He should definitely figure out what day and month and year it is. He should —
He catches a glimpse of something familiar that makes him stop before he’s fully registered what it is. There’s a hat with a band around it, and then he sees the red hair, and the choker, and…
Chuuya is sleeping on a bench in the train station.
This feels a bit like a dream, but so has Dazai’s life for the past however-long, so he walks over and sits down. Chuuya is awake before Dazai even settles, and as soon as he turns to look his face pales.
“Dazai?”
Chuuya looks older. Not by much, but there’s a certain type of restless energy from when he was younger that’s missing now. He does look tired enough to need sleep, although Dazai wonders why he chose the train station of all places.
For once words fail him.
Chuuya grabs Dazai by the sleeve and drags him into the nearest bathroom and Dazai lets him, even though Chuuya is probably supposed to kill him on sight. He shoves Dazai against the sink.
“Explain yourself.”
Dazai blinks. “What?”
“You have a huge target on your head. What the fuck are you doing in a public train station acting like nothing happened?” Chuuya asks.
“Mori wouldn’t waste so many resources on me for too long,” Dazai says. “He’s probably not monitoring anywhere except places close to headquarters.”
“Did you forget about the part where we’re supposed to kill you if we find you?” Chuuya asks, anger in every word. “Or take you in? Did you forget that I’m an Executive when you sat down next to me?”
Dazai doesn’t let anything show on his face, though he feels a cold dread at the thought of going back. “Are you going to take me in?”
“I should.” Chuuya says.
“But you won’t.”
Chuuya narrows his eyes but doesn’t say anything, because it’s true. He lets Dazai go and steps back. “You could’ve avoided me. I wasn’t watching the area. But you came and sat next to me. Why?”
Dazai isn’t sure how to express this. “I’m the smartest person you know,” he starts, and Chuuya rolls his eyes, “but lately I’ve been having some really stupid thoughts. Chuuya-level stupid. I’ve gotten stupid since I left.”
“Do you want me to change my mind about killing you?” Chuuya asks.
“After I say this I might,” Dazai mutters. It feels a bit like he’s trying to turn himself inside out and he hates it, but he knows that it will feel worse if he doesn’t. “I don’t want to forget you.”
Chuuya stares at him. “Unless you’ve suddenly developed memory problems, you won’t.”
Dazai grits his teeth in frustration. “Let me rephrase that: I don’t want to pretend like you don’t exist.”
“That’s exactly what you should be doing,” Chuuya snaps. “You tried to pretend I didn’t exist for months before you left when we were partners and now that you should be pretending I don’t exist you don’t want to?”
“Chuuya-level stupid,” Dazai says and moves to the side before Chuuya can hit him. Chuuya’s hand hits the wall by his head, but he doesn’t flinch. “I miss you.”
“You’re lying.” The response is so fast that it kind of hurts.
“I’m trying to change,” Dazai tells him.
“Right.”
“It’s true. And I realized that I can’t just forget about you,” Dazai says. “And you’re not killing me or dragging me to Mori, so I’m guessing part of you feels the same way. I don’t really expect much, especially since you’re in the Mafia, but...yeah. You...you’re the only person alive right now who gets it.”
“Gets what?” Chuuya asks.
“Gets me,” Dazai says. “Gets the feeling of not being able to be like other people, not feeling human, the feeling of wanting something you shouldn’t because it’s dangerous.”
“You’re lying,” Chuuya repeats, but as strong as the words come out his expression wavers.
“I’m getting a new phone,” Dazai says, “and I remember your phone number, assuming it’s the same, so I’ll use it. I don’t think either of us should be making decisions in the bathroom of a train station.”
“You’re serious,” Chuuya’s eyes widen. “What happened to you?”
Dazai moves towards the door. He wants to ask how much time has passed, but he doesn’t. “That’s not something for the bathroom either.”
Chuuya looks like he wants to follow him, but they both know that right now this is all that they should be doing. They’re in public, in a highly monitored place, and this has been risky enough for both of them.
“Fine.” Chuuya takes a deep breath. “My number is the same.”
Dazai smiles wide. “I bet you missed my late night spam texting,” he says, “but you won’t have to keep missing it for long!” With that, he leaves Chuuya in the bathroom to find the train he’d meant to get on in the first place.
He feels lighter now. Apparently being turned inside out is good.
He knows this is just the beginning. There’s so much more he has to do, so many more ways that he has to open himself up to have something with Chuuya. Not just to have something with Chuuya, but to change his own life and become a good person. It will be painful, but the alternative is dying, which he promised not to do, or going back to the shop and spending his days numb and waiting for nothing. Maybe he’ll want those things again, but right now he doesn’t.
One day, he’ll probably tell Chuuya about the magic shop, and it won’t be a struggle to explain because he knows Chuuya has been there. Maybe he’ll even tell Chuuya that he was the person behind the window, and then he’ll tell Chuuya what he gave away and how he still doesn’t know if he regrets it or not.
Because Dazai didn’t let himself forget like he was supposed to.
He remembered, and he didn’t fall apart.