Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

With the bustling university campus that stretched across Yokohama, there inevitably came the flock of anxious students -- no matter what the field of study -- that would wander into Illuminations Bookshop like clockwork, helplessly looking for used textbooks, old journals for essay research, and the occasional niche transcript of a modernist play nobody had ever heard of until their Drama teacher told them it was “the next Death of a Salesman, just you wait!”

The students -- dubbed “stray dogs” by the bookshop’s owner, Arthur Rimbaud -- would always fill the store to a swollen consumption during the first two to three weeks of a new semester, eventually trickling out once the majority of them had settled into classes, dropped out of the ridiculously bizarre courses, and deduced which professors would be a fair marker ergo worth staying for and which ones were just batshit insane.

The shop had its few regulars, though. Dazai was one of them.

When his afternoon classes ended, he rushed through the Global Arts and Science building and crossed the street connecting it to the campus hospital. Illuminations Bookshop was shoved in between a small restaurant that charged way too much for noodles and a convenience store with a grumpy owner who smoked three packs a day. It was about a ten minute walk from where Dazai spent most of his time attending lectures, and it had the delightfully pleasant status of being both hidden yet accessible: Waiting for him, but kept itself busy in the meantime.

The last time he was here was about a week ago. The aforementioned tirade of university students swarming to Illuminations was in full surge back then, and, though Dazai’s always been an advocate for supporting local businesses and buying things second hand, the envoy of mostly-eighteen-year-old-freshmen clogging up the small bookstore was annoying. By the time he’d wedged himself past the crowd and closer to his beloved Classics section, there were already about twenty kids there fingering through the shelves for Shakespeare (you’re not gonna find it here, check the Plays aisle, under ‘S’, right next to George Bernard Shaw) or some expensive anthology collection of short stories that you could just as easily pirate off the internet if you knew your way around PDF uploading sites (who the hell bought textbooks new nowadays?)

Dazai wasn’t having it. He’d come because Mr. Rimbaud had called him up earlier to tell him someone had donated a Centennial copy of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Dazai wanted -- needed -- it for his obsessively accumulated and beloved book collection.

It had become increasingly clear to him, however, that his beautiful affair with Hemingway would have to be postponed. Because so many people were there to buy Joseph Conrad instead of actually getting something to read for fun. (No, he wasn’t bitter about it or anything, rest assured, dear Reader, he wasn’t one of those geniuses who looked down on everyday people like they were inferior to him just because they didn’t indulge in the artistry he so scholastically thrived off of vociferously. Heavens, no).

Admitting silent defeat, Dazai had just wrestled his way to the counter where Mr. Rimbaud was methodically checking out books for the many people in line at the till. Dazai, who wasn’t the most considerate of people, impatiently shoved past them so he could get to Mr. Rimbaud and say, with a slight jab of the elbow to the person currently paying with their Visa so as to politely step the fuck aside, “Please put the Hemingway book on hold for me. I’ll come back next week when things quiet down.”

Arthur, who had known Dazai since he came to Yokohama for university last autumn and was very much used to and even adored the young man’s affinity for literature, gave him a smile and simply nodded, “Will do, Dazai.”

So now he was back, walking past the wooden door and setting off the entrance bell to signal he’d arrived at his own version of The Promised Land, but Mr. Rimbaud wasn’t there like he usually was. Instead, at the counter, splayed out on a chair with earbuds in and staring blankly at his phone, was some guy.

As he walked past the front, Dazai realized he looked familiar. He’d been coming to Illuminations religiously during the past year so of course he’d notice one of the only other people his age loitering around the bookshop. He’d even seen the guy around campus sometimes, but only in glimpses and always surrounded by a group of friends covered in shirts that had atomic particles on them as if science was some sort of clever design to advertise on your chest. (Engineering majors. Arguably the antithesis of everything Dazai studied).

He didn’t know the guy’s name though, but in Dazai’s obnoxious 20-year-old mind, anybody worth knowing on campus was either already in his literary circles or a professor he hadn’t met yet but will surely dazzle with his prodigal intelligence eventually. (He was only in second year; he’ll impress the Literature Department at his own pace).

The guy at the counter barely looked up from his phone when Dazai -- the only customer in the store at the moment -- walked past him to the Classics section at the very back of the shop. Even though it was tucked away, Mr. Rimbaud’s Classics section was -- as far as Dazai knew -- the best and largest collection of vintage copies from around the area. He’d found more than his fair share of unnoticed treasures back there, and today he was hoping to get another with the Hemingway book.

But it only took a quick scan of the 20th century American novelists shelf to see that the beautiful Centennial edition wasn’t there. Fuck.

With a silent groan, Dazai walked back to the counter to where the guy was still on his phone. Now that he was closer, Dazai could hear the loud music blasting from his earbuds and frowned at the noise.

After waiting for a beat without any customer attention, Dazai tapped the wooden counter and forced his signature dazzling smile when the guy looked up at him boredly with eyes that seemed insanely blue for somebody so ginger. (That wasn’t an understatement: His hair was a coppery red, sure, but it seemed to bleed from one long strand messily thrown over the guy’s shoulder and into his clothes, which, compared to Dazai’s fleece cardigan, Oxfords, and wire-rimmed glasses, screamed over-the-top from the maroon leopard-print tank top underneath the leather jacket to the ridiculously tight skinny jeans hugging long legs that were currently being propped up on the countertop. Not to mention the silver jewelry. Or the fucking pork pie hat that was just there for some reason).

“Can I help you?” Chuuya said, not moving from his position or even putting down his phone. (Just because he has to look over the store today doesn’t mean he has to be employee of the month).

Dazai pursed his lips. “I .. had a hold on a Centennial copy of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises but I can’t find it in the back.”

“The century copy of who now?”

Dazai’s silent groan from earlier came back as an internal scream.

“Centennial copy,” he repeated. “Ernest Hemingway. American author.” When the other guy’s dumb look of indifferent confusion didn’t pass from his face, he added, “He wrote A Farewell to Arms? For Whom The Bell Tolls?”

Clearly the bell only tolled for him, since Dazai quickly figured out that this guy -- who worked in a fucking bookstore, may he add -- had no idea what he was talking about. Giving up on explaining, he said, “Mr. Rimbaud said he’d keep it for me. Is it in storage or something?”

Chuuya, who indeed had absolutely no clue as to how Illuminations was organized and can barely work the registry by himself (let alone the computer system), took off his hat, sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and took his feet off the counter. Sliding the chair he was sitting on over to the desktop, he clicked on Rimbaud’s master file of business documents and found the bookshop’s list of held items. It was a short list of mostly older people asking for any copy of obscure WWII biographies or cook books to be placed on hold, so Chuuya was able to catch the outlier pretty quickly: “You’re Dazai?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s me,” the other replied, a little impatiently, shifting between his two legs.

If he caught the snap in Dazai’s reply, Chuuya didn’t show it. Slipping off the chair, he turned to the line of shelves behind him and opened the cabinet that had the held books. (Thank God he didn’t have to get up and walk all the way to the back staff room to help this guy out). Despite only hearing about him just 5 minutes ago, Chuuya found the Hemingway book easily enough. Tied with a rubber band and a scrap of paper with ‘DAZAI’ written on the surface, he took the book and handed it to its soon-to-be-owner. Dazai took it reverently, anxious to touch the copy -- it’s a Centennial edition -- and examine it for himself.

Chuuya watched him ogle the book with suppressed excitement -- (it’s just a book . . .) -- for a beat or two before interrupting, “My Dad wants it for ¥600.”

Dazai blinked, meeting the other one’s eyes. “Your Dad?”

“Arthur Rimbaud.” Chuuya replied, gesturing vaguely to the store. “I have to run things while he and Verlaine are in Kyūshū.”

Dazai knew Mr. Rimbaud had a husband named Verlaine. He didn’t put two and two together that the short redhead he sometimes saw on campus and mysteriously hanging around the bookstore was their son. “Oh,” he replied dumbly, not really knowing what to say.

“Oh?” Chuuya echoed, not so much out of interest but more so he can get the guy talking and hopefully take out his credit card so this customer-employee interaction can fucking end and he can go back to texting Ryuunosuke about their upcoming lab assignment.

But his phone would have to wait, unfortunately, because that was when the guy -- Dazai -- looked at something behind Chuuya’s shoulder and visibly lit up. (Seriously, his eyes grew twice as big and somehow started sparkling).

“Uh,” Chuuya, surprised, turned around automatically, but only saw the cabinet of held items he’d forgotten to close. Twisting back, he looked at Dazai questioningly. “What are you--”

Without another word, Dazai basically threw his entire skinny torso over the countertop to get a better look at that forbidden cabinet of secret treasures that had been opened up to him by chance.

Chuuya jumped back, getting a little freaked out and straight up annoyed that he has to deal with this now. “Hey, you can’t just --”

“Is that a clothbound collection of all of Oscar Wilde’s best plays?” Dazai interrupted, chocolate brown eyes shining behind his glasses.

When Chuuya didn’t answer him and gave a look of total -- and evidently pissed -- confusion, Dazai sighed, as all geniuses do when they demanded for an attention that the rest of the incompetent people -- I mean, non-genius people, don’t get me wrong, dear Reader, it was a slip-up -- couldn’t provide with their slow -- I mean unhurried, surely, I meant that -- little brains. Exasperatedly, he pointed, with a restrained fanaticism, at a hardcover book set and bound in a royal azure cloth inside the cabinet. Chuuya’s eyes followed his finger until he saw the gold and black lettering flamboyantly spelling ‘OSCAR WILDE’ on blue felt -- and, peeking out from the middle of its pages, he also saw a piece of paper with somebody else’s name on it. He picked up the book and, a little pleased with having to be the one to announce this obviously unwanted news, said, “André Gide already has it on hold.”

“Well I want it.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“But I want it.”

Chuuya was definitely starting to lose what little patience he had left for this guy -- and when he started to lose it, it got lost quickly. “That’s not how it works,” he repeated flatly, tightening his grip on the book for emphasis.

“Isn’t there a policy that if the customer doesn’t pick up their hold after a week, the held item gets put back on sale?”

“How do you even know that? I didn’t even know that.”

“I waited out and got a folio copy of Hamlet that way.”

“Isn’t Hamlet really easy to get a copy of?”

“Yes, I have four other copies of it, two annotated, but I also wanted this one.”

Before he could even think about keeping this pretentious customer happy -- He still hadn’t paid for that Hemingway book, and Chuuya was just about ready to just yank it from his hands and check it out by force, that’ll be ¥600 thanks, please don’t come back, have a nice day -- Chuuya deadpanned, “You’re crazy.”

“Rude!” Dazai gasped, and if Chuuya wasn’t as exponentially annoyed as he was just then he might have even laughed at his genuine yet melodramatic reaction. “Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me? What happened to ‘The customer is always right?’”

“Everyone knows that’s a horseshit concept,” Chuuya retorted. “Besides, most customers aren’t bratty man-children insisting they get whatever they want just ’cause they like the product.”

“I do want it,” Dazai whined (thus proving the freshly astute point). “If I can wait to get Hamlet, I can wait to get Wilde, too. And who are you calling a man-child? I’m twenty years old!”

Chuuya snorted, but also silently noted that he and this guy were the same age. Did he go to university here? The campus was huge, but Chuuya was the kind of person who knew everyone -- especially the undergraduates. Why hadn’t they run into each other? “I know André Gide,” he said, a little triumphantly. “He’s a friend of my dads’. He never misses a pickup.”

Before he could register what was happening, Dazai leaned over the counter again and grabbed the Oscar Wilde anthology from Chuuya’s hands and started flipping through the pages (not carelessly though, he didn’t want to damage the merchandise that will most certainly belong to him if he threw a big enough tantrum in due time). “Is The Importance of Being Earnest even in here . . .? It has to be, what’s the point of having a Wilde collection if--”

“Oi! Bastard!” Chuuya took the book back (rather violently, much to Dazai’s horror). “You can’t just grab things like you fucking work here!”

“Judging from how the staff manhandles the books, I’d say I am more than qualified to work here actually.”

“Manhandling?! What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Are you always this rude to customers? You’ll run Mr. Rimbaud out of business!”

“I’m only rude to annoying pricks like you,”

“‘Annoying pricks’, huh? My younger sibling could come up with a better insult than that and they’re eleven.”

“Why, you--”

“Anyway,” Dazai said breezily, cutting the other off with a fluidity that could only be described as a talent. “I’m gonna come back in a week,” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a plain leather wallet and placed ¥600 exactly on the counter. Tucking the Hemingway book under his arm, he gave a brilliant yet sarcastic smile. “For the Wilde book. Hope to see you when I do~!”

Chuuya grabbed the money and folded his arms over his chest, ignoring the taunt by glaring harder. “I already told you, Mr. Gide never misses a pickup.”

Dazai’s grin grew wider, and it made Chuuya’s stomach coil. “He’ll miss this one,” he said matter-of-factly. “Or something. That’s my prediction and my predictions always come true.”

The two of them stared at each other for a few beats, the taller one’s confidence not at all matching the preppy schoolboy soft look he was wearing, and the smaller one mentally envisioning what this guy’s bandaged neck would look like in a chokehold (y’know: self care).

It went on like that for a couple more seconds before Chuuya rolled his eyes and turned to put the bills in the cash register. By the time he was done and turned around to deal with Dazai again, he’d just barely caught him walking out the door with a clangor of the store bell.

Asshole, Chuuya thought to himself as he watched Dazai walk across the street towards the university campus. He felt a sense of unfinished, bubbling business, however, as he watched the bastard walk away, and it might have just made him stare a tiny second longer than he should’ve after Dazai had already gone and vanished from view.

Chapter Text

Arthur and Paul came home on the night bus from Hakata at around 10 PM. They weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, but Arthur’s poetry book signing didn’t have as many people as his manager anticipated, and Paul thought his husband would rather be at home than stay in another motel for the night. Kouyou was out with her journalism friends because their magazine’s publication date was fast approaching, so she would probably sleep over at one of their houses tonight.

That meant there was only Chuuya and the family dog Arahabaki to greet Arthur and Paul when they returned, tired from the travel but happy to be home all the same. Chuuya had cooked a sloppy but decent dinner, not expecting to be feeding three people tonight instead of just him and Baki, and was a bit relieved when his dads didn’t say anything about how the rice was kind of stickier than usual. (He was in Engineering, not Culinary school).

Arthur, of course, barely got any food in him before he immediately asked how running the bookshop was today. Despite being a fairly well-known poet and author in both Japan and the Western spheres, Illuminations was his baby. Paul had bought him the little, albeit decrepit, building near the university campus for their third-year anniversary with his first hospital paycheck, since the move to Japan had been hardest on Arthur: “I know you miss the libraries in the Cours d'Orléans. It isn’t much, but maybe you’ll start writing again, yeah?” A year later exactly -- just three months after Chuuya’s fifth birthday -- he published Illuminations and safeguarded his place in 21st century poetry, though he always said it was an incomplete suite. The collection still kept selling, but it's few minutes in the spotlight had long since ended, and Rimbaud was more than happy to just be a humble bookkeeper with a steady royalty rate and a quiet, beautiful family.

“How was it, Chuuya?” Arthur asked, tiredly offering a chunk of meat to Arahabaki underneath the table, much to his husband’s chagrin. (Paul was too tired to nag him about it though, and he’d be lying if he said Arthur’s soft spot for animals wasn’t one of the best things about him). “Do you think you’d be up for working there some more?” (This the poet asked hopefully, since he was very much enraptured with the idea of a father-son-run family business for some reason).

“Fine, I guess,” Chuuya replied, chewing absentmindedly before he fully registered the question. “Oh, except for that one guy.”

“One guy?” Arthur asked, reaching across the table to get more meat to feed Baki. Paul grunted, but he was ignored. “What one guy?”

“He said you knew him. Dazai something.”

“Ohhh, Dazai!” Arthur nodded. “He came by? It was for the Hemingway book, right?”

Chuuya frowned, dragging his chopsticks absentmindedly across his plate to mix the sauce up with the rice. “Yeah. He was kind of an asshole though.”

“Chuuya.” Paul scolded, but it was half hearted. (He was stricter about it when the kids were in high school, but now that they were both in college, he’d admitted defeat in the fight against foul language).

“Sorry, but he was.” Chuuya mumbled.

“What’d he do?” Arthur asked, genuinely curious. “I’ve known Dazai for a little over a year. He’s a bit eccentric, but I wouldn’t call him an asshole.” (Paul had given up on policing his husband’s potty mouth from back when they were dating, but the ‘asshole’ so liberally spoken in front of their 20-year-old son still warranted an eye-roll from him as he shoved a steamed vegetable in his mouth).

“He was an asshole. He kept leaning over the counter and being an annoying prick.” Chuuya’s frown deepened at the memory. “He even demanded I give over a hold Mr. Gide had on some Oscar Wilde book.”

“Oscar Wilde only wrote one book and I sold Dazai a copy of Dorian about three months ago.”

“Whatever, it was a collection of his stories or something.” Chuuya grumbled at being corrected. Figures his literary dad liked the book-obsessed maniac. Between the two of them, Kouyou had been the one most like Rimbaud in terms of passions; once she finished her fourth year in journalism, she wanted to become an editor for a big magazine somewhere. Chuuya, with the exception of liking some French poetry because of his dads, was more like Verlaine: Science. Math. Balancing equations on a graph page. Lab assignments. Particles. “Real life,” as Paul would say. Chuuya couldn’t even remember the last book he read.

“Oh, was it that anthology of Wilde’s plays? Funny thing you mention it actually: on the ride back home, André called me and said he didn’t want it anymore.” Arthur wiped his lips with a napkin, eyes softening when Baki took this movement as a sign of oncoming attention and petting the dog’s head affectionately by reflex.

Chuuya was stunned. “He . . . cancelled . . . the . . . hold?”

“Mhm. Odd, isn’t it? André never--”

“--Never misses a pickup, I know. Ugh, that’s what I told him.” Chuuya groaned, flopping his head on the table. “Fuck, he won.”

At this, Paul sighed, got up from his chair, and started collecting the plates and cutlery. Arthur smiled a little at his husband’s utter disdain for foul language -- he of all people knew how ironic it was that Paul Verlaine abstained from saying bad words now.

“I’ll make a note to keep the Wilde book in storage for Dazai,” Rimbaud said, thinking the conversation was over and started to get up to help clear the table too when Chuuya jolted up from his chair and shocked him into a standstill.

“No, you can’t do that, I already said it wasn’t for sale.”

“But it is for sale now?”

“But it wasn’t for sale back then.”

“Chuuya, you’re being ridiculous.” Arthur said wearily. “With André cancelling, I don’t see why I shouldn’t sell the book to Dazai.”

Chuuya knew he had a point, but he plopped his head back down on the tabletop again anyway.

Sharing a knowing look between each other, Paul quietly cleared away the rest of the dishes and made his way to the kitchen, leaving the two alone. Arthur sat beside Chuuya, who still had his face buried in folded arms like he used to do when he had his explosive tantrums in elementary school. “Did Dazai really bother you that much?”

“Mnplfh,” Chuuya replied, lifting his head up and tilting his chin to meet Rimbaud’s eyes. “No. Not really. Agh, I don’t know. I just hate pretentious people like him.”

Arthur chuckled. “Pretentious? Is that what they call literary prodigies these days?”

Chuuya blinked, stupefied. “What?”

“Oh yes, he’s the Literature Department’s shining new pupil,” his father said, amused. “He moved to Yokohama from Aomori for university over a year ago. Full scholarship, from what I’ve heard. The school recognizes him to have exceptional prowess. Hasn’t published anything -- how could you with the market so saturated, you know? -- but he’ll no doubt write something decadent that’ll shake literature to its core.”

“Like you did,” Chuuya said dumbly, not really knowing what to say with all this new information. Dazai was a prodigy? A literary one even his Dad acknowledges? His Dad who sometimes complained the youth of today never read anymore like the old man he was? Really?

“Like I did,” Arthur mused, not exactly denying it nor confirming it to the point of necessitating the act of elaboration.

A stab of bitterness shot through Chuuya’s heart just then as he subconsciously compared himself to Dazai -- especially in the eyes of his father. Again, he wasn’t much of a reader (let alone a writer like Rimbaud). He’d spent most of high school just barely passing his classes, not knowing what he wanted to do for his future, until, by some miracle, he’d come across an article written about anti-gravity and quantum physics while doing research for a final project. After he graduated, he chose Engineering on a whim, and he liked it, thank God, but he wasn’t a prodigy in it. All the frantic, I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-I’m-doing-at-3-AM texts to Ryuunosuke about calculus questions and lab reports were proof of that.

“I’ve read a few of his essays and analyses,” his father continued, interrupting his thoughts, still hung up on Dazai. “Bright young man. His thoughts on Dracula were particularly captivating. You see, he argued that Stoker and Wilde --”

“You can sell him the book, Dad,” Chuuya said quickly, not really eager to hear Arthur sing his praises about the guy who soured his day at the bookshop. “If he’s writing essays about him, I’m sure he’d love your copy.”

Fully knowing his son was deflecting yet also knowing he couldn’t get anywhere with Chuuya when it came to books, Rimbaud nodded and smiled tiredly, “Alright. Thanks for taking care of the shop.”

“No problem,” Chuuya said, shoving back the thought that there was at least one problem he could think of. Getting up from his seat, he said good night and gave Baki a couple head pats before making his way to his bedroom. He took a quick shower before dropping onto his bed and burying his face in a pile of stuffed animals ranging from sheep plushies to squishy Tsum-Tsums. Before closing his eyes and letting himself drift off, he checked his phone and sent a response to Ryuu: “Sorry for being away all day. Babysat the bookstore. I’ll see you tomorrow for the project.”

When Ryuu sent a thumbs-up, Chuuya shut his phone off and let the room settle in the darkness. He didn’t even think about literary prodigies or Oscar Wilde or essays about vampires as he snuggled up to his favorite ram plushie from childhood, immediately snoring loud enough for the whole house to hear (but, because love means getting used to foibles and sleeping sons that sounded like a lawnmower on opioids, Arthur and Paul, exhausted but in bed, finally hearing that tell-tale sign that Chuuya’s out for the night, shared a relieved, soft smile before closing the bedside lamp and finally getting some rest).

Chapter Text

Chuuya never studied at libraries, but he and Ryuu’s friend Tachihara Michizou had an unexpected devotion to them since he practically holed himself up in one to study for his university entrance exams over a year ago. He’d only studied at his family’s kitchen table, alone, sometimes with his older brother, but always in the middle of their small house, until then: “When I finally used the school library, I couldn’t believe it. It was quiet. I could actually focus. That’s how I managed to get into university, I’m serious.”

Chuuya thought literally any place that wasn’t the Tachihara’s boisterous household, which had two cats and about a dozen birds because his Mother liked them, was an upgrade in terms of proper studying spaces, but there was no point in arguing with him about it. He’d spent all of yesterday on his phone watching Illuminations despite their Robotics assignment being due this week. Ryuunosuke and Michizou called the shots for today. So that also meant the rest of their friend group was there at the library too, since everybody insisted on sticking together like some sort of stressed gaggle of coffee-medicated college students (which they were, don’t get me wrong, dear Reader, Chuuya just thought it was as weird as it was kind of sweet that everyone was so attached to one another): Gin Akutagawa, Ryuu’s sister, first year, Business major; Higuchi Ichiyou, second year, also in Business but minoring in Political Studies on top of it; Atsushi Nakajima, a second-year Computer Science major who would probably say yes if Ryuu asked him out but the asthmatic dumbass was too pathetic to try right now; the Tanizaki siblings, Junichirou and Naomi: studying Film and Women’s & Gender Studies respectively; and Lucy Maud Montgomery, in Agriculture and Anthropology. Other people trickled in and hung out with them as well, like Akiko Yosano (though not much since she graduated and started med school), Kunikida Doppo from Pharmacy, or the mystery boyfriends Edgar Allan Poe and Edogawa Ranpo (who had also not been very present recently -- not because they were busy with school or anything; they’d finally just started dating after a year of mutual pining and were making use of the Fall quarter’s lax time schedule).

As was mentioned previously before and with no bullshit intended: Chuuya knew a lot of people.

Kouyou and her girlfriend Agatha Christie sometimes came along for hangouts too. In fact, both fourth-years were sitting side by side on one of the maroon couches when Chuuya came into the Global Arts and Science building’s library, which was the campus’ biggest one and therefore its most rambunctious: Though it expanded out to a total of fifteen floors, the lower you were, the less studying you were most likely about to do. The main floor, armed with a large Starbucks cafe and numerous other cafeteria options, could hardly be called a place of academic productivity with all the noise, chatter, and jazz music that filtered through its walls.

“We’re not going to get the project done here,” Chuuya stated matter-of-factly as he sidled up on another couch next to Gin and Higuchi, who each gave him a silent wave before turning back to their individual laptops and typing out whatever it was that Business majors typed out. Tanizaki and Naomi, who were just a few feet away in a different cluster with Lucy, waved a hello too before returning to their homework.

Tachihara, Ryuunosuke, and Atsushi, who Chuuya was mainly addressing due to the fact that their joint Robotics Club membership was on the line for this assignment, all perked up from their place at a three-seater table near the couches. Atsushi slurped his iced tiramisu Starbucks latte and looked to the other two to respond to Chuuya’s (very true) statement, down for wherever they went to study because he had the low maintenance demand of a cat.

“We can totally get it done here!” Tachichara protested, obviously wanting to stay on the first floor because both Gin and endless vending machine energy drinks were here. (And yes, dear Reader, Gin was very much aware of Tachihara’s crush on them. They even found it rather funny and may even return his feelings in some way or another, but right now they’re entertained by the funny part, so they’re not going to do anything about it).

Ryuu, fully aware of Tachihara’s ulterior motives and feeling the universally-felt disdain siblings did when their friends had crushes on their little sisters, said, “Not all of us thrive off of chaotic environments.”

“The library isn’t a chaotic environment!” Tachihara retorted.

Ryuu turned his head left and right rhetorically to survey their very much indeed chaotic environment before looking at him in the eyes and deadpanning, “How did you get into university again?”

Atsushi didn’t exactly laugh at this, but he did smile into his straw as he took another sip of his drink, which understandably ruined Ryuunosuke and short-circuited his whipped brain, which also meant that Chuuya had to decide: “We’re moving to the upper floors.”

Tachihara, frowning from Ryuu’s comment, grumbled, “We don’t need to be in a quiet zone to go over a Robotics assignment.”

“Just do what my brother says, Michizou,” Kouyou piped in, not looking up from her iPad and swiping her perfectly manicured fingers over the screen. Covering her cherry lips with her pink sweater sleeve, she added, “He just had his first brush with the hellscape that is customer service yesterday.”

Chuuya whipped his head to face his sister, about to sputter out the appropriate questions before Agatha joined in and said, “Rimbaud called and told us this morning.” She showed the group her pink phone, dangling it teasingly with a perfectly-manicured hand that matched her girlfriend’s, “Your dads and I text.”

“I think it’s cute,” Kouyou mused, still not looking up from her work even when Agatha gave her a lipsticked peck on the cheek as thanks for the compliment.

“What did he tell you?” Chuuya asked, annoyed that his dad even mentioned how his day looking over Illumination went to Ane-san and Agatha.

“Oh, just that you threw a tantrum because Osamu Dazai came into the store,” Kouyou said breezily.

Chuuya’s first instinct was to get mad and deny he even threw a tantrum (one of his character’s many ironies), but instead asked, rather calmly given the circumstances, “How do you even know who Dazai is?”

Kouyou giggled, “Who doesn’t know Dazai? I don’t know about you STEM majors -- no offence to you, dear,” she said, turning to Agatha, who was in Biochemistry in hopes to work in Forensics one day, in a faux apology. “But the Humanities departments have been buzzing since he finished his first year here.”

“Why’s that?” Chuuya replied sardonically.

“He’s a genius!” Agatha sang, gesturing to her girlfriend. “Kouyou did an interview with him for the school newspaper just last month.”

“An interview for what?” Chuuya asked, dumbfounded.

“Lad, please, it’s not every day this place gets a literary prodigy,” Kouyou said dismissively. “Science, Math, and even Music ones, sure, but not Literature. Of course the journal wants a piece on him! He got in with a full scholarship, but nobody ever really paid him any attention until his first semester courses cultivated straight 90s and 100s: A feat almost impossible for a major that insists on making 70% the default and anything above 80% as needing to be exceptional.”

“That’s a shitty way to mark things,” Tachihara said dumbly, having been listening to this entire conversation along with Ryuu and Atsushi because, despite Chuuya’s usually collected demeanour, anybody who ticked off the explosive anger he’d “left behind” in childhood was interesting in their books.

Kouyou nodded absentmindedly. “Mmm, don’t get me started. Besides, it doesn’t seem to affect Dazai. Nothing really seems to phase him.” She smiled, flashing mischievous apricot eyes at Chuuya before turning them back to her iPad. “And, on top of his phenomenal essays about Shakespearean feminism . . . he’s also quite handsome.”

The entire friend group, who was very gay (contrary to heteronormative belief, gay people don’t exactly love hanging out with straight ones), all turned their heads or pricked up their ears for Chuuya’s reply. Most of them didn’t run in the Humanities circles, so few really knew this Dazai Kouyou was talking about, but they did all know that Chuuya’s last breakup over the summer with Shirase was messy and he needed a new boyfriend -- or, at the very least, a distracting rebound to put a stop to all the late-night drunk texts of him crying in the club about how lonely and unlovable he was.

But Chuuya, oblivious to just how much his friends really loathed cleaning up after his messy lightweight ass on weekends, simply snorted and said, “Yeah, if you’re into pretentious-looking nerds who seem like they care more about a fucking book than being a decent customer.”

“He’s eccentric, I’ll give him that much,” Atsushi piped up. “But Dazai-san’s a really good person.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Ryuunosuke nodded. (He barely knew Dazai outside of the few times he’d been in a couple Literature classes with him, but, even though he didn’t show it well, he took Atsushi’s word as gospel).

Tempted to ask how those two knew about him but deciding against it, Chuuya waved off the comments and tilted his head to the three still seated at the table. “Whatever. Come on, I’m not working here. It’s too loud.”

Atsushi and Ryuu got up accordingly and started gathering their stuff, which meant Tachihara had to comply too. The four of them said goodbye to the group and promised to meet up later before catching an elevator that brought them to the fifth floor.

Much to Chuuya’s annoyance -- he literally never ran into him until yesterday and now he was everywhere -- Dazai was there: sitting alone in one of the corner tables, his face buried in a book that looked heavier than a brick.

“Fucking shit,” Chuuya swore. “What’s he doing here?”

Tachihara was about to bring up how this was a public space and any and all university students had access to the library floors, but Atsushi beat him to making the first comment by saying, “Oh, he’s always here, somewhere. Practically lives in the libraries.”

“Doesn’t he have a house or an apartment or something?” Chuuya said bitterly.

“I think he lives on his own,” Atsushi replied, and before any of them could do anything, the boy had raised his arm and waved at their subject of conversation. “Hi, Dazai-san!”

At the mention of his name, Dazai perked his head out from his book and smiled at the sight of a friendly face. He waved back good-naturedly, and Chuuya kind of -- kind of -- thought he looked not-that-annoying when he was smiling like that. “Hi, Atsushi-kun! How are you?” he said cheerfully, but when his and Chuuya’s eyes met for a brief second, they turned dark and passive-aggressive.

What the fuck? What was his problem? Chuuya took it back, this guy was the most insufferable of people.

“Good!” Atsushi said in reply, not catching the two’s brief glimpse of pettiness and walking over to where Dazai was sitting, forcing the friend group of an introverted goth who was in love with him, a himbo who barely followed social cues, and a redhead currently seething that he’d chosen this floor to work on, to follow. The second he saw Dazai, Chuuya had wanted to move someplace else -- the main floor with the rowdy student crowd was better than having to do small-talk with the asshole that had indirectly infested his life for the past two days. But Atsushi had other ideas.

Him and Dazai started exchanging casual conversation: something about their shared World Literature class and an essay Atsushi was struggling to write -- “Ah, yeah, I’ve written 12 drafts for it but nothing seems to stick” -- and Dazai seemed so focused on Atsushi that Chuuya, with a laughable hope nobody else would have even tried getting away with, thought he could just be a bystander in this encounter along with Ryuu and Tachihara (who he was currently using as a shield to hide behind lest Dazai remembered he was there and unnecessarily glared at him again).

Unfortunately, though, since Ryuunosuke was also in a Literature class with Dazai, he joined in the topic -- talking about Chinese classics of all things -- and, when people were talking, Tachihara liked to butt in and give input (I say this endearingly, dear Reader, for most people didn’t find his butt-ins annoying, exactly, but rather pleasantly surprising. Like when one of your favorite side characters unexpectedly betrays one of the main plot’s biggest organizations and then reveals himself to actually be a secret member of another government group with hunting dog paraphernalia, thus ensuring said favorite side character more screen time and narrative development . . . but that’s a very arbitrary example that I have no idea how I came up with, dear Reader, let us press on).

“I’m not in any Literature classes right now,” Tachihara said sheepishly when there was a pause in Atsushi, Ryuu, and Dazai’s conversation. “But I like Rilke.”

“Ohh, Rainer Maria Rilke?” Dazai said, eyes lighting up like they did back at the bookstore when he saw the Hemingway and Wilde editions. (How did he manage to start sparkling like some sort of Christmas tree decoration whenever books were mentioned??) “ I love him. Along with Hermann Hesse, he’s one of my favorite German poets.”

Tachihara beamed at Dazai’s comment and was just about to reply, but Chuuya yanked him back by the jacket collar until he was eye level to the redhead. “Since when did you read German poetry???”

“Since forever?”

“I’ve known you since childhood and you have literally never mentioned this René Mary Riley or whatever the fuck.”

“It’s Rainer Maria Rilke. Interesting you said René though, that was his birth name before he changed --”

“I don’t care, Michi, why are we even talking to this guy?”

“Uhh, we’re talking to him, you’re kinda just . . . hiding behind me?”

“Tell Atsushi and Ryuu we’re leaving. Now.” Chuuya snarled, releasing Tachihara’s jacket. (We have not been given the most patient of co-protagonists, now have we, dear Reader?).

A bit dismayed that he couldn’t talk about Rilke some more, Tachihara sighed and turned to remind Atsushi and Ryuu about their Robotics project. Ryuu seemed disappointed that he couldn’t discuss classic Chinese literature as well anymore, but he nodded silently and waved a farewell to Dazai.

However, Atsushi, unlike the other two, wanted to stay a little longer and looked like a sad little kitten begging for more treats. Chuuya shot him a look that explicitly said, Talk to him any more and I’ll tell everyone about that time a lady at the shopping mall bullied you into spending ¥8000 on skin cream.

But Chuuya’s threat went unnoticed -- or unheeded, Atsushi could be sassy and pouty when he wanted to be -- and so, that day, Chuuya lost a friend to the Judas Syndrome of Biblical days and would henceforth mourn the loss of such a fine comrade --

“Sooooooo~~”

Fuck.

A chocolate voice -- the kind of chocolate that was, like, expired and made your stomach sick, may I clarify: not the good kind that still made you sick but hadn’t gone bad yet, you’re just lactose intolerant -- snaked across the room, “Why’re you so eager to leave, Chu~uya?”

Chuuya, who by now had had to watch three of his closest friends swarm around Dazai and gush about books and authors he’d never even read or heard of before (let alone knew his friends liked), was more than just eager to leave. At this point, he could commit fucking murder. “How the hell do you know my name?!”

“I read your name tag back at the bookstore.”

“I didn’t have a name tag!”

“Hehe, I know. Your dad mentioned he had a son that was my age once or twice. Said your name was Chuuya and when I met you I put two and two together. Not so hard,” Dazai, who had not even gotten up from his chair despite having already packed up all of his stuff during this time, leaned on his seat’s armrest tauntingly. “Although, I think I’ll call you chibi since I didn’t expect you to be this short at twenty years old.”

“Say that again, fuckface.”

“Mmm, chibi.”

“Why, you --”

“Your dad sure has a sense of humor.” The amusement in Dazai’s eyes seemed to metastasize with every word that fell from his lips. He controlled the conversation with the ease of somebody fully aware they were being a little twat and owning it. “Between you and me, and you, and you, and Atsushi-kun of course,” He gave an accommodating gesture to the three still standing there not doing their Robotics project but certainly enjoying the show nonetheless. “I think he was trying to set us up. You know, same age and all. Did he mention that I was a prodigy of his approved caliber?” He grinned wider at the same rate Chuuya glared deeper, telling Dazai that Rimbaud most certainly did babble about his small reputation as a literary genius. “But ehh, no offence to Mr. Rimbaud, but I wouldn’t exactly call someone who can’t differentiate between Hemingway and Wilde a catch.”

“You piece of --”

“Anyway,” Dazai cut in again. “Judging from that sour look of yours multiplying at the mention of Oscar Wilde I’d either say you’re either hilariously still closeted to your very gay parents or my prediction came true and the Mr. Gide you said ‘never missed a hold,’ missed it. Hm.” Dazai stood up from his spot, all but towering over Chuuya with his outrageous beanpole body. “Am I right?”

Chuuya didn’t say anything, but his three friends could practically see smoke coming out of his ears and from underneath his hat.

“Mmm, thought so. I’ll pick it up tomorrow then.” And with that, Dazai hoisted up his backpack, flashed a brilliantly bitchy smile, swivelled on one Oxford-clad foot, and sauntered away until his exit was marked with the ding of an opening elevator door.

The four watched him walk off in stunned silence until Chuuya finally declared (more like growled, though),“I hate him.”

“If I weren’t in love with Gin I’d totally let him make out with me,” Tachihara deadpanned.

Ryuu whipped his head to glower at Tachihara, who instantly sank into a defensive position that said, “Please don’t hurt me your sister’s really cool also you need me for the Robotics assignment we’re currently not doing.”

It was safe to say that the next few hours which consisted of them working on their project was littered with gloom and tension. They stayed in the Global Arts and Science library’s sixth floor until 10 PM -- after which, each boy returned home exhausted and drained; with one of them especially feeling viscerally enraged on top of it.

Chapter Text

Despite his previous bravado and grandiose exit from the library, Dazai had also gotten home late that night. His roommate Kunikida was in their shared apartment’s tiny kitchen, wearing a pink apron that said ‘MAMA’ on the chest and stirring something vegetarian in a pot.

When Dazai opened the front door and started taking off his shoes, he prepared himself to be lectured by Kunikida on the dangers of being outside past 8 PM, wearing headphones while walking will get you killed, there’d been a lot of crime in the area recently so he should be more careful, blah blah -- but, to his surprise, upon entering, Kunikida just turned around from his cooking, looked Dazai once over, and turned back after a second.

Huh, Dazai thought. Not my usual Welcome Committee. “Kunik~~iiiiiida~~?” he drawled.

The man in the kitchen stiffened but didn’t stop making his dinner. “What?” he spat, but there wasn’t really any malice to it.

“Aren’t you gonna say something about how I’m home laaaaaate?”

“You’re 20 years old. I shouldn’t have to supervise you every time you go out.”

Dazai frowned, kind of disappointed that he didn’t get a reaction out of him. “That’s true,” he mumbled, searching for his fluffy home slippers underneath the pile of shoes neither of them bothered to buy a rack for. “It doesn’t stop you from doing it every time though. Just last week you yelled at me for coming home tipsy on a school night--”

“Dazai,” Kunikida cleared his throat, interrupting him. “Your family called.”

The other went quiet and remained so until he’d found his slippers and put them on, numb hands reaching for his scarf to untie before he said, “Sorry. About that.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, I shouldn’t have given my Mom your number--”

“My Mom knows your number.”

“Awaji-san only calls to wish me happy birthday, never to ask about you.”

Kunikida dipped a spoon into the pot and tasted the broth before going back to the matter at hand, “Yumeno said you weren’t answering your phone.”

“That brat,” Dazai sighed exasperatedly, easing some of the tension in the room. (It was more for his roommate’s sake, though). “I told them I’d be studying all day.”

“You never study,” Kunikida pointed out, walking to the cupboard to look for some seasoning. He’d been dreading telling Dazai about Yumeno’s call this entire evening because, even though he’d only talked to the kid for a few minutes, their throat sounded blotchy over the phone. Like they had been crying.

Watching him silently, Dazai thought to tease Kunikida about the ‘MAMA’ apron (he’d bought it for him last Christmas as a joke and the man had only used it once since then and only because his plain one had been dirty), but he figured Kunikida must be tired from working at the lab today -- why else would he be stress-cooking at almost midnight? -- so he left it alone. Taking off his coat and unwrapping his scarf to hang, Dazai asked nonchalantly, “What did Q say?”

“That you should call home when you can,” Kunikida said curtly, still not looking Dazai in the eye. In all honesty, he didn’t know much about his roommate. At least, nothing substantial. Dazai never said anything about anything, but the two had known each other since high school and had been living together for a little over a year now. There was only so much you could hide when you lived with someone and had known them long enough for them to understand your rambunctiousness and annoyingly self destructive habits stemmed from something far deeper than just mere idiocy. These things, Dazai never said, but then again didn’t really have to.

Which is why Kunikida hadn’t just told Dazai that Yumeno called over text and waited until he’d come home to say it. His bedtime was at 10 PM and his entire schedule for tomorrow would have to be revised now, but Dazai was right: He had gotten home late. Had been getting home late for a little over a week now -- always smiling when he came back but looking heavier than he did when he left that morning underneath it all. Kunikida knew something was wrong. He also knew Dazai would never tell him what it was.

Dazai locked the front door behind him and yawned. Without another word, he walked past his roommate and into his small bedroom, which was really meant to be somebody’s office since their apartment was technically only built for one resident, but Dazai didn’t mind. He let Kunikida have the actual bedroom when they first moved in because he knew he needed the extra space for furniture and journals and a mini fridge and that weird fucking tapestry he ordered from some local place online and plants and pharmacy equipment and his tower of empty fizzy water cans he’d recycle once a week and whatever weird, Kunikida-esque clutter he’d dragged back home. Dazai didn’t need any of that. He just needed books.

Seriously. Like, his entire room was just: Bed. Desk. Closet. Bookshelves, book cases, baskets with books in them, book-swollen drawers, hatboxes with books, cabinets with books, his vintage teal record player, a typewriter, and more books. Just books. He single handedly turned the apartment into one giant fire hazard.

Tossing his bag in the corner, he started unbuttoning his dress shirt with one hand while dialling Yumeno’s number with the other. Q picked up by the time Dazai had put on a baggy shirt and blue flannel pajamas.

“Mom’s worried,” they said immediately, not bothering to say hello because having siblings meant one had a God-given right to be rude to them at all times.

“Mom’s always worried,” Dazai replied back, flopping onto his single bed -- it was more like a cot, really -- “What’s wrong now?”

“Can we do video? I’m bandaging Dazoo,”

Dazai accepted Q’s request to show video. Just a click of a button and his baby sibling was right there: In their tiny bedroom, wrapping gauze messily around the bald head of their hideously creepy toy. Yumeno was in pajamas too: the light blue ones with stars on them that their Mom had bought last winter. Dazai’s chest clenched a little because he could smell his house’s nostalgically familiar combination of laundry detergent, second-class carpeting, fresh-cut vegetables, sizzling meat, and dusty piano keys permeating from his phone screen. “Can you please stop calling your doll ‘Dazoo’?” he said once the video adjusted and stopped being so blurry. “It’s honestly kind of offensive.”

“No. His name is Dazoo.”

“It used to be Little Yumeno, like, two years ago.”

“Two years ago my big brother was still at home and hadn’t moved out and left me,” (This was said dramatically, dear Reader. Siblings don’t talk about their feelings.While Q does indeed miss their older brother and was indeed lonely sometimes, they still understood that getting an education was essential, and was even a bit glad that Dazai was away from home now, if just a little bit sorry for themself that they had to be the one left behind. Such were the hardships of being eleven and the baby of the family). “Besides, Dad dropped him down the stairs accidentally today so now I have to bandage him up.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re stealing the bandages from the supply in my room.”

“Where else would I get the bandages?”

“Literally anywhere else but my stash,”

“Whatever.” Q put down the gauze roll and pushed their doll closer to the camera so Dazai could see its bandaged head. “Look, he’s all better now.”

“His eyes are bleeding,”

“That’s just his design!”

“Why did the parents let you have such a creepy toy again?”

“Because I promised them if they bought me Dazoo they’d never have to get me any more plushies and stuffed animals like they had to with you while you were growing up.”

“I gave all of those to you!”

“They’re ugly. So I gave them away.”

“WHAT?!”

“Just kidding, they’re all in a box in my room,” Q giggled evilly and brought Dazoo back to their arms to squeeze. “I only like that one Pikachu stuffy you had but it’s dirty from all the times you’ve slobbered onto it.”

“So mean.” Dazai said. He wanted to change the subject and ask why Q had actually wanted to call before, but at that moment the door slammed open and their mother burst in: “YUMENO!”

Dazai closed his mouth. Q, only eleven but used to so much noise already, turned to her, “Yeah?”

“Time for bed,” she said, eyes turning from Yumeno to their phone screen, “What’re you doing?”

“I’m video-calling Nii-san,” they mumbled back.

Here we go, Dazai inhaled sharply, preparing himself for --

“Osamu? On the phone? Why didn’t you tell me? Osamu!” His mother shouted his name like it was one syllable, coming into Q’s room and leaning closer to the camera to get a better look at her eldest. “How are you doing there? You never call! Ungrateful child. Seriously, how are you?”

“I’m fine,” Dazai replied, trying to look like he was.

“You seem skinnier. Have you eaten?”

The truth was, quite predictably, no, he had not, but Dazai said, “Yeah. Noodles.”

“When?” his mother demanded, her voice bludgeoning past the phone screen with a volume Dazai instinctively flinched at.

“’Bout two hours ago. I was just about to go to bed.”

She stared at him for a long time before nodding once, believing it. “You better be eating, Osamu.” She sighed. “When’re you coming home?”

“I have essays to write, so not for a while.”

“Essays? What essays?”

“Research ones.”

“Research? What do you mean research? Don’t you just read books and talk about it?”

Dazai bit his lip. “I just have research to do, Mom.”

“I didn’t know Literature majors did research.”

“We do.”

“Hm. Kind of silly, if you ask me. Better to do research for Law. Or Medicine -- which I am still hoping you’ll take up once this book phase is over.”

“I know, Mom.” Dazai replied numbly.

“Why can’t you do research here? Back home?” she retorted. Every word she said felt like an unavoidable accusation Dazai always had to explain himself to.

“I need to be here.”

“Why? Can’t you read books anywhere?” When Dazai took too long to respond, she tsked in evident disappointment and said, her voice like honey now, “You haven’t been home in two weeks, Osamu.” She smiled sweetly, the glare of Q’s desk lamp illuminating her crooked yellow teeth. “We miss you.”

“I . . . miss you too,” Dazai said, not knowing if it was true or not. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’m really tired, Mom, I just called Yumeno to say good night.”

“Why do you call him but not me?”

At this misuse of pronouns, Dazai’s eyes reflexively darted to Q, who had been silently listening and clutching their doll this entire time. They didn’t look at their older brother and instead buried their face in the doll’s bandaged head.

“Osamu?”

“Sorry, Mom. Um, I’ll call you next time,” Dazai promised half-heartedly.

She hummed in approval, but neither child present felt accepted. After exchanging goodbyes and more “Make sure to eat,” “Go to sleep now,” and “Come visit soon, Osamu,” microaggressions, their mother left Q’s room and finally left the siblings alone.

After she slammed the door shut, Yumeno rolled their chair back to the desk, placing Dazoo on the surface and resting their head on it like a pillow. “Mom lost her job today,” they said finally, spilling the news all over the floor before Dazai could say anything. “She told Dad in the car when they picked me up from school. They thought I was asleep but I heard. Her boss said they were sick and tired of her being so slow. But really--”

“But really, it’s because she’s over sixty and half-deaf,” Dazai finished, too dissociated from his interaction with their mother to really be shocked by the news. This was the third time this year their mother had been fired from a minimum-wage job because of unchangeable prejudice. Their father had also been fired more than six times during the past three years because he’d fallen off a ladder while doing repair work and shattered his knee, which people stopped really caring about after a few off-days were allowed for him to get surgery that was more expensive than an entire year’s paycheck. Nobody wanted to hire a “broken man,” as his last superior called him when he handed him the termination letter. So it wasn’t really a surprise that this happened again. Dazai’s heart nonetheless dropped, though. He’d thought his mother’s recent job at the local drugstore would work out this time.

It was selfish, but the first thing he thought was, No Illuminations for a while.

Q remained silent on the other end of the line, and Dazai found himself wishing he could pick Yumeno up like he used to back when they were younger so they didn’t have to deal with whatever current disaster their family was burdened with.

“Had a therapy appointment today,” Dazai blurted out, not knowing what to say and feeling like an ocean separated them instead of just a few cities. “I hung out at the library beforehand and skipped my Gothic Lit class.”

“How was your therapy appointment?” Yumeno mumbled.

“They want me to ask for stronger antidepressants.”

“Sounds expensive,”

“Don’t worry about it, Q.” Dazai said in the way adults told younger kids everything was gonna be okay even though all parties involved could tell everything was definitely not going to be okay because nobody ever knows that for sure and just because you’re older doesn’t mean you’re any less scared of not knowing if it’ll be okay or not so why are you lying to me as if it won’t make me feel worse?

After a beat, Yumeno sat up, rubbed their eyes, and said,“I think I’m gonna go to sleep now.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Dazai ended the call, watching Q’s puffy, sleepy face yawn once before it and their doll disappeared as the screen turned to black and left behind a harsh, cotton silence.

Not wanting to think too much about what’ll happen now that Mom was jobless again, Dazai picked up the anthology of Gothic short stories next to his bedside and turned to the class reading he didn’t do today. Skimming its first three pages and last two paragraphs quickly, he sighed and dragged himself to his desk, turned on his computer and spuriously typed out 750 words of analysis and posted it to the online Class Discussion board. Out of curiosity, he checked submissions from other people in the course just to see what they thought.

Per usual, they were all wrong. (Or half-right, but not in the parts that really mattered). Dazai cringed at one person’s shoddy interpretation of Henry Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto: “Don’t pay attention to the scattered body parts, you fool, listen to what the maid has to say about size symbolism,” he muttered before closing the desktop, shutting off the lights, grabbing his Baymax Tsum Tsum plushie, and crawling into bed.

He’d get the highest mark for the class discussion in the morning: his professor praising him for such well-organized analysis and telling the rest of the class to, “Dedicate as much time on the assignments as much as Dazai is!!”

Because, tragic backstory and sad insight into his home life aside, dear Reader, he was still a genius. And those are always the most insufferable of assholes.

Chapter Text

The first semester of Chuuya’s second year in university passed by without much fanfare or metamorphosis on his part. Like a slug, he glissaded down the tracks of life and went along with its mundanities and surprises with the decorum of a gastropod only slightly taking advantage of its capacity to be sessile. A few things of note happened -- as does with any life that’s left alone for a long period of time tends to accrue -- and some of which I will list here using my highly regarded talent for brevity:

He got drunk a lot. Passed his exams hungover but still functioning. Witnessed the rise, fall, and irrelevancy of Tachihara trying to learn the guitar to impress Gin. Barely got all of his labs finished. No new boyfriend, as was expected from somebody who spent his weekends rewatching Big Hero 6 and pathetically weeping about how “Tadashi ??? Deserved ??? So much ??? Better???” while his entire household rolled their eyes and ignored him.

And, not that he was keeping score or anything, dear Reader, but he had not seen Dazai since that encounter in the library with his Robotics team.

Since a few of his friends were in some classes with him (and found him enticing for some reason), of course Chuuya heard the occasional commentary on the bastard’s genius and other supposedly admirable traits. (Atsushi in particular had spent a lot of time with Dazai because “He’s great! One time we parked at an automobile lubrication station to steal the wifi so we could watch anime as the sun set. He also likes my music!”). Subtly, and without Chuuya even consenting to it, he had become an unintentional and reluctant collector of information about Osamu Dazai. Kouyou and Agatha loved his consistently fashionable outfits that said “dark academia but bitchy” (Wasn’t dark academia already bitchy?). Naomi said he’d taken a Women’s and Gender Studies elective with her over the Fall quarter and had just the best opinions on humanitarianism and intersectional feminist thought (Okay, sis, but he’s still a guy). Ryuunosuke brought up how he might minor in Chinese Literature now because of some of the conversations he’d had with Dazai about Dream of the Red Chamber and its influence on the Qing dynasty (Literally who would minor in something so niche on top of an Engineering major?). Chuuya couldn’t understand them. He’d known his friends for most of his life yet everything he knew about them seemed to be swept away with the unwelcomed entrance of one dramatic bastard. (Like in King Lear, but you needn’t indulge me in my Shakespearean similes, dear Reader, I am just enjoying myself here).

Even so, all things considered, Chuuya could not deny that hearing about Dazai was better than interacting with him. So he protested little (by his standards, mind you; he actually complained quite a lot) whenever Dazai was brought up during conversation and passing dialogue. What did it matter that he’d submitted a paper about speculative fiction to a Conference meant for third and fourth years and got a spot in the event? Or that he ingested so much coffee during class times that he seemed to just be inviting early onset diabetes by age 20? Chuuya was more concerned with how his meeting with the academic guidance counsellor -- you’re supposed to meet with one of those to help with your degree?? -- had just landed him with the most regrettable of intimations:

“What do you mean I have to take a Literature class to fill in my degree requirements?!”

The counsellor, a woman in her mid-thirties with square glasses and nerves of steel from just two years of being in this job, met his outburst with an occupational grace, “Technically, it would be classified as an elective, and you need electives that fall under Category A: Humanities.”

“But I’d already gotten the preliminary credits required for Literature in my first year!”

“That isn’t enough, unfortunately. Those credits only allow you to register for higher-level Literature classes, which most students often do for electives in the Humanities section since this university has a wide array of literary courses to choose from.”

“Why do people pick Literature then?”

“Oh, it’s either read Jane Austen or take a 3-hour biweekly lecture for 5 months studying sedimentary rocks in the Geology building,”

“How does Geology have the same degree credits as Literature?”

“It is what the head of the university departments have decided.”

“But how is reading Jane Austen the same as studying rocks?”

“It is what the head of the university departments have decided.”

“When I’m an engineer, wouldn’t the rock stuff technically help me more? Like, why is Literature the more popular choice?”

“Because the Geology building is its own kind of fossil, and nobody wants to walk all the way there just to look at pebbles.”

“Shouldn’t the university invest more in improving the Geology building and other more practical courses’ curriculums instead of just filtering students like me who clearly don’t have any interest in the Humanities into Humanities courses?”

“There is value in expanding your education.”

“Yeah, but I could read Jane Austen or learn how to make ceramic pottery or start playing the accordion on my own time with way less stress and way less money if that policy wasn’t in place.” Chuuya said exasperatedly. “I’d probably enjoy it more too if I wasn’t forced to take it as a class with a full course load and permanent impacts on my transcript.”

The counsellor adjusted her glasses and ignored his very, very fair point, pulling up Chuuya’s student information to register him in a Literature class of his ‘choice’. Turning her computer screen towards him, she scrolled through a long list of choices ranging from the Literary Movement in the Edo Period to Romantic Poetry Of the 18th Century. “Like I said, people tend to go with Pride and Prejudice, but, as you can see here, there are a lot of other options.”

“Nothing about this feels very ‘optional,’ ma’am.”

Ignoring him again, she sighed and turned her computer screen back to face her. “Your allotted 30 minutes of appointment time are almost up, so you must choose an elective for Category A right now or do it by yourself in your own time without my assistance.”

Chuuya, utterly crushed by the academic and Kafkaesque institutions that dictated his everyday life, muttered, “Just put me in whatever’s available.”

“All right.”

And so, Chuuya, instead of meeting up with his friends after classes ended like he usually did, walked to his father’s Illuminations Bookshop that day feeling the crushing weight of mediocre obligation and the education system’s unfairness on his shoulders. When he walked into the store, Arthur, who was at the front and was just halfway done a crossword puzzle, perked his head up in shock. “Chuuya,” he said, surprised. (Chuuya never came to Illuminations unless either or both of his fathers begged him to). “Did something happen? Are you okay? Is Kouyou okay?”

“I’m fine. Kouyou’s fine.” Chuuya replied irritably, in the way children lash out at their usually undeserving parents whenever they have a bad day because they are, essentially, to blame for this existence’s inherent heartache and thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

Sensing the annoyance in his son’s voice, Arthur decided to give Chuuya as much space as possible (For his own sake, not because he was this Amazing 100% Perfect Parent or anything, dear Reader. You have -- very briefly, may I add -- seen the brutalities of Chuuya’s temper, yes, but Rimbaud had been witnessing it for years and knew when to stay in his fucking lane at this point in his fatherhood journey).

He returned to his crossword and waited for Chuuya to say something, which he did, after a moment of cathartic silence that could only be achieved when one actually showed respect to their child: “Dad, do you have any anthologies?”

Arthur blinked, looking up again. “I sure hope I do.”

“I need one for a class I have to take.”

“I didn’t know engineering students required anthologies,”

“It’s not for Engineering.” Chuuya sighed, rubbing the back of his neck and taking a deep breath. His frustration with the guidance counsellor appointment and the university’s stupid policies were starting to dissipate, but it still raged inside him. Like a fire god. Or a quadrupedal, black beast, with fur, a tail, and eyes all like fire and black smoke.

“It’s for a Literature class,” Chuuya said. “Crime and Detective Fiction.”

Arthur didn’t even try to hide his visible delight. “Why, that’s wonderful, Chuuya! I could recommend you some fantastic reads to get started. I would normally suggest you begin with Arthur Conan Doyle, but maybe some medieval ballads on the dangers of burglary would be more interesting--”

“What? No? Burgla . . .? --No! Dad, listen, I just need,” Chuuya pulled out his phone and scrolled through his courses’ syllabi. “The Longman Anthology of Detective Fiction. Doesn’t matter which edition so long as it’s been published in the last three decades.”

“The Longman Anthology . . . Oh! Funny you asked for that, actually, because--”

(In this brief pause Chuuya immediately felt the cosmological pull of Fate telling him he was about to get fucked over).

“--Dazai came by for the first time in months yesterday just to get my last copy!”

“You’ve got to be shitting me, Dad.”

“I am not . . . ah . . . shitting you, Chuuya.”

“Why did you turn around just now?”

“You know how your father hates swearing.”

“Dad, he’s not here. I think he’s working a late shift tonight.”

“Oh I know, but one can never be too careful. Marriage is a survival of the fittest, you know.”

“You sound like those old straight men who do nothing but complain about their wives all day.”

Arthur chucked, unconsciously lifting his hand to touch the red scarf Verlaine had bought him a year after they’d started dating around his neck. “No, I love your father too much to stoop that low.”

Chuuya rolled his eyes, internally gagging but also smiling at his parents’ long-lasting romance. “And yet you stoop so low as to sell last copies of anthologies to prodigy assholes instead of giving them to your son,” he said, half joking, half bitter.

Arthur shrugged, not taking the bait. “Dazai hadn’t come here in months. He usually shows up to buy something or look around once a week but, since he bought that Hemingway book, he’s been absent.”

“What about that Oscar Wilde book he was supposed to get?” Chuuya asked, a bit surprised Dazai had stopped coming to Illuminations when he proclaimed himself to be such a devoted regular.

Rimbaud was a little impressed that Chuuya remembered the author’s name, but he made no comment. “Never picked it up. I asked if he wanted to buy it when he came earlier, but he was only here for the anthology.”

“Maybe the literary prodigy’s losing his touch on reading.”

“Dazai? Stop reading?” Arthur smiled knowingly, taking a moment to write down the winning answer in the final text boxes to complete his afternoon crossword. “I think he’d die before that happened.”

Chapter Text

Dazai was late. Again.

He’d woken up ten minutes before his class was supposed to start. Again.

He promised himself he’d wake up at least an hour earlier so that he could get ready, take his meds, eat breakfast, and maybe whine enough outside Kunikida’s bedroom door to get him to drive Dazai to campus. But now it was noon -- yes, noon: He’d stayed up rereading A Midsummer Night’s Dream until 6 AM. Again. (Theseus had some really good points in that last act, I dare say) -- and Kunikida, who woke up at fucking 5 AM every day for some goddamn reason, had already taken the car and gone.

So that meant Dazai had to walk to the Global Arts and Science building, very sleep-deprived and very disorganized. He didn’t even know where his classroom was let alone if his professor was particularly stingy on late students, but at this point in the morning, Dazai didn’t really care. In under five minutes, he managed to make hot coffee in a thermos, take his pills, and put on a semi-decent outfit that was actually way more than decent since he effortlessly looked good anyway and don’t you just want to wring his neck, dear Reader? He barely even brushed his hair!

Dazai was out of the apartment, checking the class syllabus on his phone for the room number, speed-walking to campus, and chewing on a piece of chocolate (“Breakfast!”) by the time noon hit.

He was very late.

But thankfully the prof was too.

When Dazai got to the classroom it was about a quarter filled with students. Crime and Detective Fiction was secretly notorious for being a difficult course, so not a lot of people took it. Even though it was only a second-year class, its professor, Dr. Ougai Mori was rumored to be ruthless and a hard marker. Plenty of idiots outside of the Humanities departments just desperately wanting to fill in their major requirements registered for the course thinking it would be easy, it’s just cheap mystery books and film noir plus it’s got a lot of available spots, it’d be stupid not to take it, right?

Dazai knew better than to underestimate any type of literature, though. Especially if it was being taught by Ougai Mori, who, on top of his teaching job, also had a practicing medical license and vast knowledge on economic game theory, which he presented in Conference-level lectures to graduate students in fields ranging from Psychology to Music.

Dr. Mori’s class wouldn’t be easy, but Dazai thought he was overdue for a challenge. He’d breezed through most of the Literature courses this university had to offer for first, second, and third years (with his first attempt at a fourth level class coming up next semester). He was bored. And with boredom came apathy -- a state dangerously close to triggering yet another melancholic episode and mental slump Dazai and his therapist really wanted to avoid as much as possible this school year.

(For anybody perplexed at this seemingly unconventional learning detriment -- since prodigies are often thought to be flawless in the school department and therefore immune to struggles the average student represses every time they microwave cup ramen at 3 AM in the morning -- it would be wise to keep in mind that, despite being a genius and having certain privileges which exempted him from some responsibilities, academics were still a burden on Dazai due to their regimented nature. Yes, he was bored -- who wouldn’t be if none of their peers knew any of the basic Classical myths from the ancient civilizations and religions? -- but he was also trapped in the rhythms of a rigid, demanding, and tedious education system that compartmentalized his brain instead of cultivated it. In essence, dear Reader, this stereotypical portrait of a suave, couth, and all-knowing literary savant, though authentic and illuminating in its genuine brilliance, also casts its own dark shadows onto our cocky protagonist. You would think such caveats would humble him and thus decrease his douchebaggy brat behavior, but nay, that is not the case: He’s human, not an angel).

Not even bothering to survey the room, Dazai made his way past the front desk and lecturer’s podium looking for a seat near a wall or window he could lean on if and when the class got too dull to sit too vertically for. His plans for such a particular seating arrangement, however, were violently disturbed by Chuuya, who had been waiting for the bastard to show up for over half an hour by now so that he could grab him by his coattails and forcibly shove him into the seat next to him in the very front row. When the taller one’s flat, unsuspecting ass plopped onto the chair, Dazai quickly registered Mr. Rimbaud’s illiterately shallow and petite son from months ago and automatically frowned, none too happy to see him again -- let alone sit next to him in a class Dazai planned to ace with flying colors and minimal distractions. “That hurt,” he hissed, fighting the urge to go to the bathroom to check if his bandages had come undone somewhere in between all the unnecessary yanking.

“Like I care,” Chuuya (who at this point, I should also mention, was more than a little hungover from a pool party he’d only been dragged out of by his friends six hours ago) growled back.

Before Dazai could even ask why Chuuya was here -- you don’t read ?!?! why ??? are you ??? doing this ??? to yourself ?!? -- or inform him about his life-long hatred of any type of pain, Chuuya interrupted by beginning to lay out the plan he’d been working on since he figured out that he was stuck in a class with the one person he had been wanting to avoid since the fall: “You took the last Longman Anthology of Detective Fiction from Illuminations.”

Dazai blinked, not understanding why his most (and only) recent purchase was a big deal. “Yeah, so?”

“So, you’re gonna give it back to me.”

“Haah?! How does that work?!”

“Since it was technically my Dad’s book before yours, I own it by, like, birthright or whatever.”

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah the fuck!”

“Are you even your dads’ biological son??”

“What kinda homophobic shit are you implying?!”

“Homopho--? I’m literally bi?!?”

“Give me the anthology.”

“No!”

“Give it!”

“No! I bought it so it’s mine!”

“You want your money back? Fine, I can buy it off of you again --”

“No! Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Simple Art of Murder’ essay is on here and I’ve been looking for a translation since forever.”

“What -- Who? -- Can’t you find it online or something?”

Dazai looked at Chuuya like he’d somehow defied gravity and started floating midair. “Online isn’t paper,” he said, as if it was a sacred rule the other had senselessly plunged himself into heresy for forgetting. “Besides, if you signed up for this class you should’ve gotten the required textbook sooner.”

“I literally just registered for this class last Friday.”

“Why did you do that?! You’re in,” Dazai visibly gagged. “STEM.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Chuuya snapped, rubbing his temples in a weak attempt to ease the pounding headache mashing in his skull. “Look, it’s none of your business why I’m here. I want that anthology.”

“Nuh uh! My Raymond Chandler essay!”

“I will literally print out a copy and physically hardset and bind it for you if you give me the anthology.”

“No!”

“Fine! Fine -- oh my God -- fine, then you’re gonna have to share it with me.”

“Ehh?!?!”

“Yeah!”

“Again, how does that work?!”

“I don’t know, we could do like a custody thing --”

“Custody?!?! It’s a book!”

“I don’t fucking know what it’s called!!!”

“Why don’t you share with somebody else?!?!”

“Because I’m drunk and don’t want to interact with anybody else potentially better than you !!”

“Okay,” Dr. Mori, who had arrived about five minutes ago to a classroom awkwardly listening to these two vociferously bickering in loud whispers before he got there, clapped his hands and snapped them out of their argument. His (very underpaid) TA, Edgar Allan Poe, who had come in at the exact same time Mori did, peeked out from behind the man’s shoulders hesitantly (He was very sensitive to noise, dear Reader).

Dazai and Chuuya immediately shut their mouths like someone had smacked both of them into silence, whipping their heads to face the professor before turning to see that everybody else in the rows behind them were also looking at them with secondhand embarrassment (and fear: who shows up to the first day of class so hungover that their pork pie hat severely clashed with the puke-green hoodie they were wearing?).

“I --” both of them started stammering (simultaneously, may I add, for they were almost identical in their newly-acquired desire to not shit their pants right now). “Sorry, we were just --”

Mori held up a hand to quiet them before leaning to Edgar and saying, “Go ahead. I’ll handle this.”

Edgar, so glad that a large part of his job meant being invisible, didn’t need to be told twice. Fumbling with his duffel bag, he took out his laptop and began setting up his introductory slideshow presentation on the short story he just wrote, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which Dr. Mori read over on a whim one day and insisted must be used as Crime and Detective Fiction’s first reading because it had “the essence of a foundational modern detective story” to it. Today was Edgar’s first day as a TA, and having to anticipate listening to a room full of people analyze and discuss his work right in front of him later on was nerve-wracking, to say the least. Out of the corner of his eye and from underneath his bangs, Edgar saw his raccoon Karl and boyfriend Ranpo waving from outside the classroom window in encouragement (They had been hiding underneath the window for a few minutes now hoping to catch a glimpse of Poe in action; and yes, they had also overheard the hilariously mortifying quarrel between our two protagonists. While that isn’t exactly vital information for you to know, dear Reader, I, as your narrator, still wanted you to be aware of it anyway). Seeing his supporters, Edgar shyly smiled back at them from the lecturer’s podium, which prompted the whole class to look at where he was waving to only to find absolutely nothing beyond the window aside from the muffled noises of footsteps undoubtedly running away from the classroom in a big hurry along with the sounds of a screeching animal that was perhaps complaining about being so forcefully picked up for a mad dash to escape detection.

“Gentlemen,” Mori said, oblivious to everything that just happened but not really since he knew his TA was internally panicking always and needed frequent moral support even in times of uncomfortable individualism. “Forgive me for interrupting your . . . discussion, but class has started. Please do contain yourselves.” A tight smile twisted his thin lips just then, making him look like he wore the very countenance of evil. “I also would like to take this moment to apologize for my unexpected tardiness. I reassure you, it won’t happen again.” (At this, he turned to face his entire class, yet obviously directed the next sentence at the two insolent brats in the front row). “I would like to assume other hiccups which occurred on this first day will also not happen again from now on, hmm?”

Dazai and Chuuya, 20 years old and visibly pouting, twisted in their seats and refused to look at each other (or anybody else in the room) in the eye before nodding once and letting Dr. Mori take charge of the class.

The next hour and a half consisted of Mori taking attendance, reading out the class syllabus, and ordering Edgar to distribute so many handouts that some of the students wondered if he’d murdered an entire forest just to print them out. During the last twenty minutes, Poe nervously presented his power point on “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and gave an idea of what to look out for when they read it over for next time’s discussion.

Chuuya, who had been rigidly quiet the entire time hoping to draw the least amount of attention to himself, quickly realized that he should’ve probably taken that academic guidance counsellor meeting more seriously and maybe picked Geology instead of Literature because holy shit, he was way in over his head. When Mori finally dismissed the class, already sending them off with a shitton of readings and homework due next time, the redhead was internally panicking -- (anxiety highly exacerbated by the alcohol, no doubt) -- at all the weird terminology and linguistics he barely remembered from high school becoming inconveniently relevant again. To Chuuya’s surprise, though, Dazai, who was still sitting next to him, didn’t even look bothered when the syllabus and deadline schedule was read out. When the big final project -- a 3000-word research essay -- was outlined, the asshole even sighed like he was disappointed with the research prompts.

This gave Chuuya, in the midst of his exaggerated consternation, a (plot-driving) idea. “Hey! Fuckface!” he called charmingly, scrambling to get out of his seat with his slightly inebriated motor functions to follow Dazai out of the classroom, a new plan formulating in his vibrating head.

The genius rolled his eyes before stopping in the hallway for the other to catch up. “Yes?” he said drily.

Chuuya stumbled to him -- was this hallway always so dark?? why were there two water fountains right next to each other ?? wait, was everything just double ?? -- and beautifully blurted, “I need a chai latte.”

Dazai blinked, temporarily surprised, but sighed exasperatedly after Chuuya didn’t say any more. “I doubt that’ll help with your being drunk,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Doesn’t matter so long as I have something to drink,” Chuuya snapped, reaching into his hoodie pocket and pulling out his wallet. “Let’s go to the Starbucks in the library. I’ll buy you something.”

Dazai blinked again. “. . . Uhh . . . What?”

“Since you so rudely bought a textbook from my Dad that rightfully belongs to me and refuse to fucking give it back,” Chuuya replied, a grin crawling onto his face that made the other frown in confused irritability.“I figured I could persuade you into sharing it with me.”

Dazai folded his arms. “And how are you gonna do that?”

“By bribing you with coffee.”

“What makes you think I’ll get a coffee?”

Chuuya didn’t even try to hide the once-over he gave Dazai before deadpanning, “You look like half your bloodstream is caffeine and Ibuprofen.”

Dazai, who was used to being the bitch but not the one being bitched at, dropped his jaw, comically offended, which made the other snort and cover his mouth. “Come on,” Chuuya said, giggling, walking past him in the direction of the library and tilting his chin up in invitation (And if he extended his neck up just a little bit to show off his black choker in an unconscious attempt to take advantage of the situation, well, Chuuya would definitely deny it -- but, if he ever did entertain and had to answer for such an idea, dear Reader, he would simply say that Dazai should learn to keep his bisexuality more of a secret in the future instead of just carelessly bringing it up whilst arguing about Literature textbooks before class).

Dazai, who was just going to head home and lie in bed after school anyway (and was very much enticed by the thought of somebody paying for his Starbucks, considering that he had been in a state of unwanted frugality since his mother lost her job a few months ago), eventually -- and intelligently -- relented and decided to follow him.

The two barely said anything until they got to the line at the Starbucks. It didn’t exactly feel awkward, but Chuuya wasn’t the type to just not say anything. He watched Dazai silently fidget with his backpack straps and sweater sleeves absentmindedly before clearing his throat and saying, “What do you want?”

“A will to live would be nice,”

“I meant your coffee order, you fucking psycho.”

“Oh. Umm . . . a macchiato . . .? With no whipped cream and extra sugar . . .” Dazai bit his lip when he saw the price on the menu. “. . . Please and thanks.”

“Ohh, you have manners!” Chuuya smirked, enjoying how, for the most part, he’s pretty much had the upper hand today. “You softy. The goody-two-shoes thing doesn’t exactly suit you. It kind of makes me retch.”

Dazai frowned at the comment but didn’t say anything else. Chuuya placed their orders and the two waited in silence for the baristas to make them. When they were done, and Chuuya handed Dazai his drink, the taller one’s eyes seemed to widen behind his glasses.

“You almost look as weird as you do when you get a new book,” Chuuya joked.

Dazai ignored him and took a sip of his macchiato. Despite it being iced and frothing with sweetener, he absolutely melted.

After a moment of silence (and gawking at Dazai’s . . . admittedly . . . not that insufferable expression), Chuuya looked around the area and casually said, “So. Where do you want to sit?”

“Eh?”

“To do the homework Dr. Mori just assigned us.”

“Ehhh?”

“I just bought you coffee, dumbass. In exchange, you help me with this class.”

“I thought you said you only wanted to share the textbook?”

“Oh, so we are sharing the textbook now?” Chuuya grinned. “Glad we could settle on that.”

Dazai furrowed his eyebrows, huffing air out of his mouth so that some strands of hair from his bangs flew up and then flopped back down onto his forehead. “Chiiiibiiiii!” he whined.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Then don’t be such a toad!”

“What does that even mean?!”

“I hate toads!”

“How can you hate --”

“They have weird eyes!”

“Oh my fucking God just pick somewhere to sit.”

Dazai threw himself onto a nearby couch and brought his knees together, looking up at Chuuya with big brown eyes and sipping his drink curiously. He looked like a child.

Chuuya raised an eyebrow and put a hand to his hip. “So you are gonna help me? And share the textbook?”

Dazai slurped loudly before saying, “Keep buying me coffee and I’ll consider it.”

“What, don’t you usually buy yourself Starbucks every time you hang out here? Atsushi said you practically lived in the library.”

Dazai’s body stiffened momentarily, and it caught Chuuya a little off-guard before the other quickly shrugged it off and replied, “I consider any hangout that doesn’t involve me paying for anything a success. Even hangouts with slugs like you.”

Ignoring the jab, Chuuya sighed, making his way to the couch to sit next to him. “Isn’t it a little too loud here to study?” He plopped his bag down on the floor and began to rummage through its contents.

Dazai blinked (Why did he blink so much? Did he just do it to flutter those long eyelashes of his?). He didn’t make a move to get his stuff out. “For a harder assignment, yeah, I wouldn’t pick here, but this spot’s fine for ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue.’”

“You read it already?” Chuuya asked, taking his copy of Poe’s short story out of his backpack: unread, unannotated, and as untouched as Kunikida was since the man never went out or even talked to people outside of his Pharmacy circles.

“Skimmed it, but no harm in rereading.” Dazai hummed, snatching the paper from the redhead’s hands cheekily. “Do you have a pencil? Pen? Crayola marker?”

Chuuya glowered but handed him a pen from his pencil case anyway. The taller took the pen and twisted it between his long fingers, the writing tool dancing and tapping against his nails rhythmically. Looking down at the short story, Dazai bit his lip in unexpectedly intense concentration, his eyes scanning the words swiftly and occasionally making annotations in the margins of the paper. In what only felt like a few minutes, he finished skimming the last page and, with a dramatic flourish of the pen like it was some sort of magic wand, handed the short story back to Chuuya, declaring, “Here. You can look over my notes.”

Taking the paper hesitantly, Chuuya replied, “When I said ‘help me with the class,’ I didn’t mean do all the work for me.”

Dazai waved him off dismissively, putting down his backpack and taking out a copy of Sophocles’ Antigone from inside it. “I didn’t do all the work for you. I just marked up what you should look deeper into and picked some quotes to help you with the discussion assignment.” Running his hand through his hair, he took Chuuya’s pen and began to annotate the new play in his hands excitedly.

“. . . Do you have to read that for a class?” Chuuya asked.

“No? Why?”

“Bruh.”

Dazai frowned, deflating a little. “What?”

“You annotate stuff for fun?” Chuuya scoffed.

“Yeah??”

“Oh my God, you’re insane.”

“. . . I could annotate my Anton Chekhov copy of Uncle Vanya instead?”

“And you think that’ll make me think you’re less insane?”

“Chekhov’s better than Sophocles, I just wanted to finish reading all three Theban plays today,” Dazai mumbled, pouting a little as he capped and uncapped the pen inattentively.

Chuuya snorted, “For somebody who loves books so much, I’m surprised you didn’t even end up picking up that Oscar Wilde book you made such a huge deal about when we first met.”

Dazai went quiet, the sound of the pen clicking lazily -- but slower now -- the only sign he was still listening. He said nothing but began to mark up the Antigone copy on his lap, obviously thinking about something he wasn’t going to bring up any time soon.

Chuuya tilted his head, a bit put off by the sudden silence. Looking down to start reading the other’s notes on “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” he turned back and asked, “Hey, how did you know?”

“Huh?” Dazai didn’t even look up from Sophocles.

“Like, how did you know Mr. Gide would cancel the hold?”

“Oh, things just work out for me that way,” he confessed honestly (You didn’t really assume that Dazai had predicted such a turn of events in his favor, now did you, dear Reader? Oh yes, as we know, he is a genius and may as well also have a certain counterpart in an alternate -- dare I say more canonical -- universe that’s rather marvellous at orchestrating elaborate schemes and deductions on his own, but have you ever considered, even just by the tiniest of possibilities and in all dimensions wherein he exists, that Osamu Dazai was just one lucky bastard?).

“You can’t be fucking serious.” Chuuya scoffed disbelievingly. “You -- You were so confident--”

“Yes, confidence: the best charade you can pull in this world full of insecure idiots just waiting for somebody to swoop in and change everything as if faking it ’till you make it accounts to someone having a supernatural ability or something.”

“You’re such a prick.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dazai said breezily. “Read over the story, look at my notes, and tell me what you think when you’re done.”

Chuuya obeyed, and for a long stretch of blissful silence that consisted of him flipping through the pages and Dazai occasionally scribbling something in his own book, the two, from a very distant and generous viewpoint, seemed to be just fine with this predicament.

However, after about thirty minutes of this almost tranquility, Chuuya finished reading, set down the pages, turned to Dazai, and said, with unabashed shame, “I don’t get it.”

Dazai almost broke the pen trying to contain his scream.

Chapter Text

As Dazai predicted, teaching an Engineering major who couldn’t read to save himself in exchange for coffee was a pain in the ass.

“What do you mean the orangutan is the literary foil of C. Auguste Dupin?!” Chuuya finally snapped after Dazai spent a good 10 minutes literally answering this very question. It was Week 2 of the new semester, and Chuuya had deciphered enough of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” to survive the first class discussion, but Dr. Mori had assigned a practice analysis paper on it that was due next week -- which Chuuya did not know how the fuck to start on. He hadn’t written anything for Literature since high school, and even back then he’d barely gotten by with his mediocre interpretation skills and below-average capacity to take anything more than literally. (Bless him, dear Reader, but he was of the sort to think Charlotte Perkins-Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was just about a woman looking at her bedroom’s yellow wallpaper. Very tawdry interpretive skills, but we do not judge! Heavens, no! I am your narrator, after all, and we should always aim to be the utmost reliable, wouldn’t you agree?).

Dazai sighed exasperatedly, the caffeine from his second coffee order starting to make his head pound with slight irritation again. They were currently occupying a seating cluster on the fifth floor of the Global Arts and Science library. Since Chuuya always came out of the Crime and Detective Fiction class with a look that was half-confusion, half-unadulterated-panic, the two had always come here after lectures and studied -- right after popping by the Starbucks line to acquire the main source of payment for the resident genius, of course. (How they managed not to tear each other’s throats off during the past fourteen days, I cannot say, dear Reader).

(Also, I say ‘studied’ but really these sessions mostly consisted of Chuuya asking what Dazai considered to be ridiculously stupid questions -- “Isn’t a foil, like, something you wrap your food up with?” “Oh my God, that’s tinfoil.” -- and Dazai, well, screeching. Externally and internally. The scene we have just stumbled on now was one such session following the same established pattern of illiterate dumbass being silently judged and berated by the annoyed literary prodigy).

Dazai pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to sate his incoming headache and calm down because, whenever Chuuya got frustrated, his voice would get deeper and louder, which wasn’t exactly the best style of volume one should adopt in a library. He, quite literally in terms of both height and social dynamics, had to be the bigger person. “An orangutan is the ultimate symbol for animalistic brawn and brute strength while also reminiscent of the homo sapien, especially when you consider the story’s time period, which was an era throbbing with allure over Darwin’s On the Origin of Species,” Dazai replied slowly, looking up from the copy of T.S. Eliot’s poems he was currently perusing. “Ergo it is a degenerate parallel to Dupin’s brain and ratiocination, which emphasizes Poe’s point on how erudition reigns superior when it comes to solving elaborate crimes,” he explained, to the best of his ability and with as little condescension as possible.

“But why an orangutan??” Chuuya scoffed.

“It’s symbolic, Chuuya, I literally just said --”

“How is it symbolic?? It’s a fucking monkey!”

Staring at the ranting ginger sitting opposite him and glaring into the glow of his laptop screen -- which currently showed a blank Word document that was meant to have had at least an introductory paragraph by now -- Dazai couldn’t help but think about the dramatic irony of this situation (which, for any academic who is a stranger to how the history of contemporary detective literature as we know it was basically penned by the real Edgar Allan Poe with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” almost two centuries ago, I shall highlight neatly: Chuuya was the raging orangutan -- pun intended considering his hair color -- and Dazai was the bored scholar cackling in the face of commonwealth imbecility).

Dazai chose to ignore the other boy and instead opted to bury his face in the T.S. Eliot anthology.

Because the sudden silence bugged him (and, frankly, it was also an excuse to extend his procrastination), Chuuya perked his head up from his laptop screen and stole a glance at Dazai. Well, more than a glance really. The prodigy was wearing yet another outrageously pretentious outfit: a light blue polka-dotted dress shirt underneath a mustard brown wool cardigan that flopped in just the right places, coupled with black skinny jeans outlining legs that were crossed primly and neatly in the library chair; his trademark Oxfords tapped absentmindedly on the carpeted floor, and the vintage wristwatch with deep blue and red banding wrapped atop his bandaged arm caught small glints from the overhanging lights. His dark eyes shone underneath his glasses, scanning across the pages of his book gently and slowly, which contrasted highly against his usual apathetic skimming of required readings Chuuya’d been seeing more and more of these past few weeks. Dazai looked like he was actually taking in the words, chewing them in between his teeth and savoring the taste in his mind. Relishing the texture. Letting Eliot lead the dance. Unconsciously, when his eyes landed on a certain stanza, he bit his lip in consternation and frowned a little.

“What’re you reading?” Chuuya blurted out, quieter and more curious than he intended. (Funny how tongues tripped so gracefully).

A little startled, Dazai jumped and looked up at the other. “. . . ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’” he responded, biting his lip again. “Dr. Mori mentioned it in class the other day. I wanted to check it out.”

Chuuya, who hardly retained even half of their professor’s last lecture and certainly didn’t remember him mentioning something with such a ridiculously weird title, said, “What’s it about?”

“I don’t know,” Dazai admitted. “This is my first time reading it.”

“You don’t know what it’s about?” Chuuya said tauntingly, but it was half-hearted and more playful than malicious. “The literary prodigy can’t tell what one little poem’s about?”

Dazai rolled his eyes. In a tone that clearly showed he’d had to contend with such dumb comments before, he retorted, “Do you expect all mastermind mathematicians to know how to solve every single equation just by staring at it? Or a brilliant pianist to be able to play every new piece perfectly just in their head?”

Chuuya blinked, suddenly worried that he’d struck a nerve. This was the most Dazai had said that wasn’t interpretive or school-related in the past hour. “No, I guess not,” he mumbled back.

Catching Chuuya’s sudden discomfort and not liking it, Dazai nodded in a way that communicated the redhead was right and that, no, he didn’t really say anything overtly offensive, just stupid (which wasn’t always insulting, but very often gallingly bothersome). “Genius is layered,” Dazai said matter-of-factly. “Literature is complex in the same classification. It’s puzzlework. Analysis comes easily to me, and so do most narrative conventions. I understand the anatomy of a story,” He readjusted his glasses with one sleeved hand. “It doesn’t mean I know everything immediately. It just means I get things most people can’t. Or don’t even try to. Respect for literature and the arts in general has sporadically declined with the onset of ‘progress’ and technological advancements -- with very few still remembering we got those things because of languages, because of arts, and because of poetry. Most don’t consider these fields essential to life and living, but they are. Words mean something to me. They mean something to me.”

A beat of quiet passed between them, neither having expected such a speech to come out and settle amongst the particles above them and clouding over, before Chuuya said, “My Dad would say that makes you more human.”

Dazai snorted, turning his eyes back to his book. “Hardly. I have always shook with fright before human beings.”

“You’re one too, you know.”

“Ehhh,” Dazai said dismissively, turning the page without looking at Chuuya.

Another silence danced between them, and in that quietude Chuuya went through the five stages of grief when it came to doing homework -- eventually and regrettably accepting that there was no way he was getting out of this paper assignment until he actually did it but Jesus Christ he really didn’t want to do this academia is bullshit.

Dazai kept reading Eliot. By the time he finished looking over “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” once over again, Chuuya had at least typed his name down on the Word Document and (kind of, emphasis on kind of) started an introductory paragraph.

Dazai took the plain blue cloth bookmark that was sitting on his lap and stuck it in between the pages of his Eliot anthology. Chuuya, seeing this as a sign that he was done reading for a little bit, asked (again, to drag out his unproductivity), “So? What was the poem about?”

“Loneliness,” Dazai replied simply.

“Sounds fun,” Chuuya deadpanned. “Do all your interpretations have to be so gloomy and sad?”

“A lot of literature is gloomy and sad, chibi.”

“Stop calling me chibi.”

“No.”

“You bitch. I’m gonna --”

“Besides,” Dazai hummed airily, cutting the other off. “I like sad. What’s so wrong about sad?” (He’s full of philosophizing today, isn’t he, dear Reader?).

“Sad is sad.”

“Sad isn’t always sad. Sometimes it’s happy.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?”

“Sad is happy for sad people,” Dazai said, in a way that left the conversation dangling. Like mistletoe. Or a condemned pirate in the gallows.

“Sounds fun,” Chuuya repeated after a beat, not exactly understanding and still not used to the pockets of silence that inevitably came with Dazai. “Fun poem.”

“It was. Fun, I mean,” the other mused, crossing his legs once more and settling back into his seat after he tucked the Eliot book back into his bag. Smirking, and without much sympathy or consideration, Dazai said, “How’s the paper going? Looked over the short story again like I told you to?”

“. . . I still don’t really get it.”

“Do you ever?”

“Shut up.”

Dazai sighed, stood, and made his way to Chuuya’s side of the library table. Leaning over his shoulder to look at the laptop screen, Dazai snorted at his pathetic attempt at progress. “You spelled ‘L’Espanaye’ wrong. How embarrassing. Aren’t your dads both French?”

Chuuya flushed red when he realized Dazai was right. Fighting the urge to frantically erase the typo, he snapped, “Yeah, but neither of them spoke French to Ane-san or I growing up.”

Dazai blinked, still looking at the laptop screen boredly. “Yes, I was actually wondering about that: What’s the story there?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean: What possessed two gay Frenchmen to immigrate to Japan and start a completely different life here? Why not stay in France?” Dazai puffed his cheeks. “Mr. Rimbaud would have had way more money pouring in from fans of Illuminations if he’d just stayed in Paris.”

Chuuya scoffed, rolling his eyes until they landed on Dazai’s side profile that he only now realized was really close to his own cheek. “My dads really wanted to have kids,” he said eventually. “Japan had a lot of them, so they adopted Ane-san and I when they were still in France. I was barely one year old and she was three. They couldn’t get married until they got us (according to Japanese law obviously; in France you have to be married for two years minimum to qualify for adoption, which is weird), so Verlaine had to come here and ‘pretend’ he was a single parent adopting these two Japanese kids. None of his personal records showed any connection to Rimbaud back then since they were only dating, so the Japanese Department of Homophobia didn’t really notice anything. Foreigners adopted kids from here all the time, who cared if they were a single parent, you know?” He smiled a little at how his parents iconically bamboozled both France and Japan’s adoption policies. “Verlaine had studied abroad here for medical school, so he knew some people that helped him settle in Yokohama for about a year. Parents adopting from Japan have to be living in Japan during the entire court process, which takes a shitton of time.”

Dazai turned to look at Chuuya, his interest very much piqued. “Oh? How did that even work? Mr. Rimbaud all alone in Paris and all.”

Chuuya shrugged. “My dads don’t talk about it much. Knowing them, the long-distancing must’ve been hard, but obviously they got through it.”

“Because you and Kouyou entered the picture,”

“Yeah,” Chuuya replied, his chest tightening a little. (A good tight. Hugging-somebody-you-haven’t-seen-in-forever-but-oh-my-God-welcome-back-home-I missed-you-tight). “I don’t remember it at all, but Verlaine brought us back to France after everything got organized. My parents got married, and the four of us were a family ever since.”

Dazai tilted his head, the scent of his shampoo dolloping the air with every flamboyant twist of his neck -- Chuuya couldn’t tell what the smell was, only that it was kinda nice. “How did you all end up here though?”

Chuuya raised his eyebrow. Dazai was asking a lot of questions, but Chuuya was never really one to be so private or iffy with sharing information about himself. Sure, he didn’t yell out his parents’ love story through a megaphone in the streets every day, but even when he was a little kid he’d made it a point to be proud of what they’d done for him and Kouyou. And if people wanted to know, he was more than happy to tell them. “My dads basically decided raising Japanese kids in France was irresponsible.”

“Irresponsible how? It’s way better there for same-sex couples.”

“Yeah, but neither of them wanted Ane-san and I to lose our ‘cultural heritage’ and ‘homeland’ or whatever. So since Verlaine already had connections here, we came back when I was about three years old. Their marriage in France got annulled, obviously, but they didn’t really care; they were already husbands to everyone that mattered. Officially, they have a ‘common law’ partnership here, but they’re my dads, they are married, and they brought us here. Simple as that.” Chuuya smiled again. “But I don’t really remember anything from back then. To me, Yokohama’s always been home. So I don’t know a lot of French or anything; my dads didn’t even talk to us in French. The second our plane landed in Tokyo Haneda Airport, Verlaine booked Rimbaud for Japanese Language classes. Ane-san knows some French because she’s The Better Sibling, but the most I know are from the French poetry translations my Dad showed us while we were growing up.”

This interested Dazai very much. Leaning closer until their faces were mere inches from each other, Dazai said (in a voice that was noticeably at least a few octaves higher due to the shameless squealing coming from his throat), “You read French poetry?”

Chuuya instinctively tried to shuffle away from him, still not used to Dazai’s sudden outbursts of literary enthusiasm. His cheeks and the tops of his ears started heating up due to their close proximity. “Y-Yeah?” he stammered.

Whatever space Chuuya had cleared up for himself was immediately overtaken by Dazai coming all the more closer, with absolutely no regard for personal space (or, at least, Chuuya’s personal space), just like when they first met at Illuminations. “Which ones? Hugo? Baudelaire? Fontaine?”

Chuuya frowned, still trying to get away from him. “Uh . . . my Dad likes Théodore de Banville. I do too. Um . . . yeah, I’ve read some Baudelaire. I --”

Dazai gasped. “Amazing! I never would’ve thought you of all people would be into French symbolists!” The bratty bastard’s eyes were sparkling again. Like a fucking disco ball.

“Haah? What do you mean, ‘me of all people’?!” Chuuya spat. Arbitrarily remembering his essay’s mistake, he turned to his laptop and reached over to the keyboard to start erasing Madame L’Espanaye’s misspelled name. However, this unexpected movement caused Dazai’s chin to flop onto Chuuya’s shoulder unceremoniously, which the genius did absolutely nothing to reverse at all. “Wh--?! Hey, get off me!” Chuuya screeched.

Dazai, as a matter of fact, did not get off him. “Chuuuuuyaaaaaa, why didn’t you tell me you liked French poetryyyyyyy? We could’ve talked about it sooner!”

“Why the hell would I want to talk about that with you?!”

“Becaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuse iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!! I didn’t know Engineering majors were liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiterate! Amazing! Amazing! You taught me something, chibiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Noooooooooo. It’s payback for not telling me you liked French poetry.”

“What the fuck?” Chuuya all this time had been trying to elbow the other off of his shoulder, but Dazai had actually started to sag onto him, so it wasn’t long before Chuuya’s one scapula was carrying the full weight of a 5’9” Literature major currently whining that it hadn’t crossed Chuuya’s mind that he maybe wanted to chat about Paul Valéry this entire time why didn’t you mention it, Chuuuuuuuuuya? “You’re heavier than you look, shitdick!” Chuuya grunted. “Get off of me!”

Dazai sighed exasperatedly (he very much felt that he was the misunderstood victim in this scenario, dear Reader, and therefore wanted to avenge his personal honor by, justifiably -- or, at least, justifiably according to him -- being a little bitch about it). He finally took his head off of the other’s shoulder, leaning back and straightening until he was standing completely on his own and looking down at the redhead glaring up at him from the low library chair. After staring at each other in electrifying distaste for a few moments, Dazai huffed and gestured emphatically at Chuuya’s laptop screen. “You can’t even write a paper on an underpaid TA’s short story!”

Chuuya scowled, significantly annoyed now. (It didn’t help that Dazai was right). “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?!”

“It has everything to do with anything!”

“How?!”

“Because how could I possibly spend an entire semester dealing with your illiteracy, even with all the coffees? Caffeine isn’t a bullet cure, you know! You should’ve told me you liked something from my line of expertise so we could have bonded over it earlier.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?! We’ve been ??? Fine ??? I guess ??? This entire time ??? The fuck are you talking about ‘bonding’? Also, I don’t see you writing anything either, asshole! We’re still in the same class, last I checked, which means you have to write a paper too! All you’ve been doing is reading sad shit about loneliness!”

Dazai smirked, crossing his arms triumphantly and sneering down at him. “I already finished a first draft,” he sang cockily. “I’ll edit it once and then hand it in next week.”

A small part of Chuuya was kind of impressed and stunned at this new information, but he’d never let the bastard know that even if his life depended on it. “Then help me, what the fuck? I bought you two coffees today!”

“You shouldn’t have!” Dazai whined. “Now I have a headache! Ohhh . . .”

“A headache?!”

“Yeah, a headache -- ohhh . . . mngph . . . it hurts so baaaaad . . . Woe is me . . .!”

“Oh my God, I have Advil in my fucking --”

“No need,” Dazai said dismissively. Before Chuuya even registered it, the taller had leaned down again to peer at his laptop screen, brown eyes from underneath round glasses rapidly scanning what little Chuuya had for an introduction before Dazai reached over the mouse pad, highlighted the words, and promptly deleted everything Chuuya wrote down with a look of disgust.

“Hey! I’ve been working on that for over an hour!” Chuuya screeched, clamoring to press the Undo button.

Dazai grabbed his wrist, preventing him from doing so. “It’s garbage. From your first paragraph alone, Dr. Mori’ll be able to tell you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

“Maybe because I actually don’t know what the hell I’m doing?!”

“Yes you do. Everybody does.” Dazai said, suddenly serious. He looked around the library table until he spotted Chuuya’s copy of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Grabbing it, he took a red pen and began to circle and connect different passages together, scribbling little notes on top of his original annotations and sometimes crossing out lines and arrows. He bit his lip in concentration, furrowing his eyebrows when he skimmed over the things Chuuya highlighted and commented on when he read the short story for the first, the second, and however many times: a little surprised and -- dare I say -- a tad pleased that the Engineering major was actually able to pick out some key themes after all. Dazai checkmarked a few of Chuuya’s points and drew arrows to his annotations, stringing both of their arguments altogether across the story’s many pages until Chuuya’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” copy looked more like a cat’s cradle of chaotic interrelatedness. Like a spider web after a hurricane. Or a new universe coming alive from the aftermath of a dying star. Satisfied with his work, Dazai handed the papers back to Chuuya, who took it hesitantly and with a look of (surprise surprise) confusion.

“Uhh . . . what did you just do?” Chuuya said.

“Do you know how writing is so often referred to as being evolutionary?” Dazai replied, dismissing his far more reasonable question.

Chuuya opened his mouth to once again ask what the hell Dazai was talking about, but the genius’ eyes were buggy once more and something in Chuuya’s head told him to just go with whatever it was Dazai wanted to say. “Uh . . . Yeah?”

“Well that’s wrong!” the other announced dramatically, jumping a little for emphasis. “To say it’s ‘evolutionary’ implies that it just came about. Like some sort of natural phenomenon. Like the sun setting or death coming for all of us in the end after we kill ourselves.”

“Uhh . . .” Chuuya said dumbly.

Dazai shook his head, getting excited now. “It’s not. Natural, I mean. At least in the scientific way we describe evolution. Writing is invented. Was invented. Time and time and time again. In Egypt and China and Mesopotamia -- we kept making it! Words, words, words! Like fairytales.” He giggled a little, to which Chuuya reflexively smiled back at without even noticing. “That’s amazing! Isn’t it? Amazing, I mean. Sure, all human societies use some form of language, but writing? No! It’s special, it’s created. There were so many things so many of us couldn’t understand that we crafted words for it. Words for forever, for vegetables, for morality and planetariums . . . We made it all up. It didn’t just get here on its own. We made it up.”

Chuuya tilted his head, almost certain he was barely (if at all) keeping up with what Dazai was saying. “Okay. What’s your point?”

Dazai lightly gripped the “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” copy in Chuuya’s hands, beaming a little, not exactly sure why he was telling Chuuya all this but choosing to anyway. (Though perhaps the reason for why is merely just that our literary prodigy enjoyed showing off and maybe -- just maybe -- wanted to impress the boy in front of him a little bit).“My point is that things are created because there’s a need for them. Clothes! Medicine! Roofs over chicken coops! People from so long ago looked at this huge emptiness that was language and decided, ‘No. Enough. I want symbolism. I want words. I want meaning. Stories are that meaning,” Dazai shook the paper in between his fingers a little. “Everybody knows that. At least a little bit. Deep down. Sure, there are idiots who enter into STEM and develop a foolishly complete disregard for all humanities --” (At this, Chuuya frowned because Dazai wasn’t even trying to be subtle about the certain idiots -- or one idiot -- in STEM whom he was referring to). “-- But even then, they notice things. People cry over movies. Or songs. Or paintings. That’s not evolution, that’s human. By default, we know, even when we don’t, really. Like when you want to say something but you don’t know how to say it. Or you feel like you understand a book but can’t exactly explain why. We know but we forget.”

“Forget what?” Chuuya said, quietly, a little lightheaded.

Dazai shoved “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” further into Chuuya’s hands. He pointed at the lines, arrows, and connections he made between the two of their notes, which Chuuya, after looking down and actually looking, realized . . . kind of made sense . . . when put together. With the red ink on top of the highlighted passages and the mess that was both of their handwriting -- Dazai’s loopy penmanship next to Chuuya’s blocky one -- intertwining, overlapping, and coinciding, Chuuya . . . actually . . . kind of . . . got it.

He got it.

Dazai had circled specific quotes and drew arrows that went on for pages until it landed on other annotations Chuuya had absentmindedly made on a later page. Imagery he didn’t even think twice about popped up again and again when Dazai underlined them. In tiny boxes, he’d disarranged and rearranged both of their notes and merged them together, and for the first time since Chuuya had learned to read, he loved that he could.

Because this made sense.

Dazai made sense.

“Holy shit,” Chuuya breathed, turning his head up to meet Dazai’s grinning eyes. “My notes . . . line up with yours.”

Dazai nodded. “Yeah! I just connected some of yours with mine and reintegrated it back to the passages. A lot of your points were wrong, mind you, but you were on the right path for a few.”

“How . . . did you do that?”

“Well technically you did it. I just put it all together. Put flesh on the bones, as they say.” (Nobody says that).

“Yeah, but . . . how??” Chuuya said, his lungs unwinding in a disbelieved exhale.

“Stories are what we are.” Dazai said automatically, like he’d been waiting this entire time to say it, his smile only growing wider now that he had. “They’re what we breathe, how we bleed, and why we live. We need words. Why else would we have invented them?”

Stories are what we are.

Chuuya looked down at the papers again and couldn’t stop staring at his and Dazai’s notes, put together and crazily organized to make sense. His eyes darted to meet Dazai’s, who was still grinning, and Chuuya was about to say something -- he felt it welling and tripping in his throat -- but that was when Dazai piped, “Your annotations are still trash, mind you, you need to learn proper literary terminology. Seriously, did you even go to high school? If you did, you obviously paid zero attention to what matters -- See, you grossly misunderstand the difference between a symbol and a metaphor. A lot of people do, because people are idiots. So here, the difference is --”

Chuuya threw the pages at his face.

Chapter Text

His phone was ringing, jolting him awake from sleep and whatever nightmare he was going to start forgetting right about now because, intrusively, distractedly, sidetrack-tingly (that’s a word) his phone was ringing.

Tired, he did a quick review of every person in his contact list: Kunikida had definitely left the apartment and was in his labs by now, so he wasn’t calling; Atsushi was too polite to force him into social interaction via verbal conversation; Ango never called him, only texted; and there (probably) hadn’t been anybody he’d rejected recently to the point where it warranted an emotional phone call, so that meant . . . Dazai lifted his sleep mask off his face, groaned, and reached over his side desk to answer the call.

“Get up,” Yumeno said on the other line.

“I am up,” Dazai mumbled, rubbing his eyes. He checked the time before properly putting the phone to his ear. “It’s noon.”

“And? I’ve been in school since seven. Get up.” (Despite being nine years younger, Q was the more ‘mature’ one in many instances, dear Reader. Yes, if the stresses of everyday life got too much -- like if Yumeno had accidentally broken a bowl or something trying to get ice cream at 4 AM -- they would burst into tears and run to their big brother expecting him to know just what to do and, if not, would have absolutely no qualms with telling their parents that Dazai was the one who actually broke the bowl and that he should be the one to get into trouble, not Yumeno, no, no, they are a baby. Yes, such instances did happen -- rather frequently during Dazai’s high school days when he’d pass out from overwork on the family couch just to suddenly be woken up by a loud crashing from the kitchen only to find his little sibling on the floor crying because they’d spilled their brown sugar candies all over the floor -- but, on the other hand, Q also got up in the morning and managed to do stuff -- real life stuff! -- because they weren’t constantly paralyzed with ‘existential dread’ and ‘medically-concerning suicidal ideations past my line of general expertise please arrange for an appointment with a professional psychiatrist soon.’).

(What follows now is a typical conversation any pair of siblings would have when one of them is at home wrangling their parents’ emotional well-being alongside the chaos of eleven-year-old adolescence, and the other is miles away in university spending his weekends bored and alone aside from when Kunikida occasionally barged into his room demanding he drink water or whatever weird vegetable juice he got on sale at the grocery store near their apartment).

“That sounds like a ‘you’ problem,” Dazai mumbled in response to Q’s last comment. “How are you even calling me anyway?”

“It’s lunchtime, nii-san. I have a break.”

“So why don’t you go get food with Elise?” Dazai yawned, gently slapping his pale cheek to get some blood into his face to wake him up. A large part of him wanted to go back to sleep -- he hadn’t been getting much lately -- but he knew Q wouldn’t let him. Especially now that he realized they skipped their lunch break with their best friend to talk to him. “I don’t have class until 1 PM, why do I have to get up now?”

“Mom’s worried.”

Dazai snorted, but he felt his stomach tense anyway. “Why’s she worried now?”

“She keeps telling me to talk to you.”

“You’re doing that.”

“She’s been telling me to all weekend.”

“Why?”

“She said you didn’t text her yesterday, or Saturday, and you didn’t answer her calls. She got worried.”

“Mom’s always worried,” Dazai ran his hands through his messy hair, sitting up finally and taking off the sleep mask. Absentmindedly, he reached around his cot for his Baymax plushie, fingers squishing deeply into its cushiony body once he found it and plopped it on his chest to fidget with. “What’d you tell her?”

“I told her you were probably depressed and staying in bed again all day, then she nodded in complete understanding and left me alone and I’m only calling you now on this Monday 12 PM to tell you that a miracle’s happened and our mother has somehow managed to finally accept you have severe mental health problems that incapacitate you from functioning like a normal human being most days and isn’t choosing to repress it or call it childish laziness anymore.”

“Funny,” Dazai said drily, closing his eyes and leaning his head on his cot’s headboard. “What did you actually tell her?”

“I put off calling you all weekend until today so she’d leave you alone, but she texted me during class and I couldn’t keep ignoring her.”

“Thanks,” Dazai replied, meaning it but too tired to be overly grateful right now. “I’ll talk to her today. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. Did you take your meds?”

“I just woke up.”

“Take them. Or I’ll kick you.”

“Okay.”

“I’m gonna go. Don’t fall back asleep.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.”

Dazai hung up and leaned back again, his hand vaguely squishing Baymax’s butt as he tried to ease himself back down from the phone call. Looking around his room, he tried to piece back the last few hours before he (evidently) went to sleep. His collection of Franz Kafka’s short stories was next to his pillow, splayed open on a somewhat bent page that started with, “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense?” (He snorted at that). Twisting his head to look at his desk, Dazai saw that it was cluttered with notes, more books for his essay research, and too much stationary. Three coffee mugs and two soda cans lined the side of it. One of his cardigans was hanging off of his desk chair: one gray fleece sleeve catching the afternoon light licking at his window glass outside like a stray dog looking for food.

The weekend was blurry. Dazai could memorize literary terminologies, narrative theory, and the plots to thousands of ancient stories nobody had ever read anymore outside the walls of academia in 600 years, but recalling the last lonely 48 hours by himself which he spent just isolating and being a sad, depressed lump in day-old bandages? Nope.

He knew he didn’t leave the house and had spent most of it in his room avoiding talking to his family and what few friends noticed he was having one of his disappearing spells again -- Kunikida, Atsushi, Ango, of course, and a few of his discussion group members from one of his elective classes, and even Fyodor Dostoyevsky (who wasn’t exactly a friend, but more so a rival in their shared Russian Literature course) had texted him during the past few days, but he didn’t feel like replying to their messages right now. With a perfunctory scroll through all of his social media apps, which were dull and came with more overwhelming notifications, Dazai more or less remembered what he’d gotten done in terms of schoolwork (almost nothing), what personal reading he finished (he got through “The Hunger-Artist” in the Kafka collection but must’ve passed out in the middle of Metamorphosis), and other miscellaneous shit he’d gotten into between Friday night and right now (which comprised of barely eating, mindlessly looking at things on the internet, sleeping, online window-shopping at stuff he couldn’t buy, and waking up at random points in the day from bad dreams that he’d take a painkiller to drown out with before falling back to bed again: Such was the glamorous life of our literary prodigy protagonist).

(Did you expect such an abysmal melancholia from him, dear Reader? I imagine not, given how our story has been progressing so far. I must admit that I do feel rather bad for telling you all of this so suddenly, but you do understand, don’t you? That I was the insufferable git all along?).

Taking a deep breath, Dazai dragged his long legs off his mattress and opened his desk drawer to take his pills. Gulping them down with the water bottle next to his bed, he scratched the back of his neck before walking over to his small closet and peering inside, wondering if he had the brain energy in him today to actually try looking nice (He will look nice, as you well know and most likely spend hours drooling about: he is, after all, one of those privileged pretty people who shoots sunbeams out of their asses without even lifting a finger, as I have mentioned before, but, due to him being in an albeit very shitty mood this afternoon perhaps we should let him entertain such fantasies that he could ever possibly come back to the world fresh from a depressive episode with that face and those brown eyes and nobody would actually stare, hmm?).

Dazai wasn’t used to having a lot of time to get ready for responsibilities -- usually his everyday routine with handling them was scrambling out of bed sleep-deprived yet also overslept and messily checking his schedule on the speed-walk to wherever it was that needed him about ten minutes ago.

Today he could actually do stuff. Like eat breakfast (he didn’t, but he could’ve!), or change his bandages (he did do this, but he left it until the last minute), and check his agenda so he could actually know the shit he was going to get into today instead of just living by the hour and suddenly remembering, Oh yeah I have to go to the dentist, that’s what I’m doing now.

And he had a therapy appointment at 3:50. Fuck.

When Dazai got to Crime and Detective Fiction, Dr. Mori was handing out the practice analysis papers they’d handed in last class.

Chuuya was sitting at their usual spot at the front -- for neither of them really bothered to upset the holier-than-thou unspoken and accepted seating arrangements that were university students’ rightful claim to their own individual desks, for which the stealing of one’s own or demanding further changes to the agreed-upon organization was punishable by “Get fucked.” Chuuya was holding the paper the professor gave back to him and trying to hide his smile. He was absentmindedly biting the ends of his sleeves, grinning giddily in a way Dazai wanted to both wipe off his face and kind of stare at in amusement for a second or two or a million or--

“I can’t come to the library after class today,” he announced, plopping into the seat next to Chuuya gracelessly. Out of the corner of his eye, Dazai scanned his (once again) outrageous outfit: a yellow zip-up crop top with a barcode on the chest underneath a navy blue leather jacket coupled with white and black-striped high-waisted pants, a choker, and, quite surprisingly, a hat that was not the pork pie one but a black snap-back with . . . the recycling sign on it. “Do feel free to buy me coffee still.” Dazai added, still taking in the absurdity of the other’s outfit. “Seeing as I got you such a good mark and all.”

“How do you know I got a good mark?” Chuuya snapped back automatically, his elation a little soured now but still evident on his face nonetheless.

Dazai snorted. “I read over your essay, so of course you’d get a good mark.” He picked up the paper Dr. Mori had set on his desk spot and boredly checked the grade: 95% (Keeping in mind that it’s almost impossible to get above an 80% in Humanities, as the delightful Kouyou so subtly pointed out in this story’s expository stage -- I mean what? What? I am certainly not aware of the 5-level diagram meant to signify and explain the conventions of plot which all Literature students learn at the beginning of their education, what, haha heavens no, dear Reader, not at all). Unphased, he tilted his head a little and blinked at Chuuya. “Besides, it’s obvious. I can read you like a book, you know.”

“Not everything is about books,” Chuuya mumbled, lifting his chin in question. “What mark did you get?”

Dazai waved him away, a bit out of it still from the weekend and Q’s call this morning. Chuuya opened his mouth to ask again, but quickly noticed the other was preoccupied. Stuffing his graded paper into a notebook, he just shrugged and said, “Whatever. Thanks, anyway.”

Dazai blinked, turning to him then. “Uh . . . for what?”

“I got an 80% on the first major assignment. Because you helped me. Sure, you were a dick about it, but hey,” Chuuya grinned. “Thanks.”

Dazai didn’t know what to say. He’d helped people with literature before, sure, but he was either used to the person taking advantage of him to get a good grade or them being so suffocatingly grateful and insistent on paying him back that it was more of a hassle to get out of whatever favor they kept impinging on him than to have just left them alone to figure out the assignment in the first place. Hardly anybody said thank you without expecting something else out of it. And he certainly didn’t expect Chuuya to. That’s why Dazai had insisted on being given the coffees. Enough people had pretended to be nice to him and tried to be his friend for a week or so only to use his skills for some reason or another and ditch him once they were satisfied. The Starbucks made that null and void, because it showed that this was a transaction. Business. A deal with both parties mutually -- or somewhat mutually -- benefitting without any emotional obligation that went further than espresso shorts or matcha lattes. Chuuya saying thank you -- genuinely saying thank you -- was weird. So Dazai just nodded slowly and turned back to the front where Dr. Mori was at the podium, flipping through today’s lecture notes and trying not to be too concerned that Edgar looked like he was about to cry from one of the students coming up to him just to say that she loved his story so much, have you written anything else?

Class was a shitty drinking game for which nobody got drunk from; rather, everybody felt as if they’d skipped all that fun inebriation stuff and went straight to the morning-after hangover when you realize your mistakes eventually catch up to you in the end just to bite your ass and your wallet except this time the ‘mistakes’ took the form of a college application and handing over money for your tuition that you’ll have to spend your life paying off with that degree you didn’t even want and that job you only got out of sheer luck and not actual skill or experience. Such was the education system, which gave out hell for free. (I will bring up, however, when Dr. Mori picked Chuuya to answer one of the discussion questions at some point and Chuuya just charmingly said, “Uhhhhhhhh,” to which Dazai flashed him a look that said, “What the fuck dude, we talked about this??”).

(Such moments of mortifying exposure to the redhead’s literary and analytical inadequacy aside, not much really happened, so there is no need for further elaboration on the goings-on of what occurred during the next hour and a half. What is really of interest, as you all know, is):

“Why can’t you come to the library?” Chuuya asked once they finished the lesson and were out of the lecture room and in the hallway.

“Are you asking ’cause you’ll miss me?” Dazai smirked, not looking the other in the eye and trying to come up with an excuse that didn’t involve telling Chuuya the unfortified truth.

“No,” the other replied. “I just want to get a head start on that Dorothy L. Sayers novel we have to have prepped for next week.”

Dazai wrinkled his nose. “Why’re you stressing over something we don’t have to have done until next week?”

“Because I have labs to do this weekend and I don’t have time to read a whole book,” Chuuya scoffed. “Not all of us are natural prodigies at what we’re majoring in.”

“Mmmm,” Dazai mused. He checked his wristwatch: 20 minutes until his therapy appointment. “If you’re trying to get a quick run-through about the book, I’m only about halfway done it myself but I’m pretty sure the hung jury’ll be nullified because the solicitor cousin most certainly did it, don’t you think? There’s no way that great-aunt’s will is that convenient plus I’m a bit skeptical of all the vague references to the financial sphere --”

“Don’t give me spoilers!!” Chuuya hissed, lightly hitting Dazai on the arm, which he somewhat dodged but not really. “What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t just tell me what happens!”

“Why not?”

“Because that takes away the fun of it!”

“How?”

“Don’t be dumb. The ending’s supposed to be the best part.”

“Endings are too overrated. People give them too much credit.” Dazai said, frowning. “Endings are the saddest part.”

“That’s unnecessarily corny, even for you.”

“It’s true.”

“Whatever. Why can’t you come to the library? I know you’re deflecting.”

“I have a therapy appointment.”

“Oh.”

Despite how their surroundings were teeming with the mercurial energy of university students scurrying to their next class or loitering around in the hallways, an atom of silence hung between them. Briefly -- just the right amount of time one could blink or find themselves falling over a cliff -- everything felt like all vicissitudes of existence had paused and sat down nearby, forcing the world to endure on its own without the addictive noise.

Dazai didn’t know why he blurted out the appointment. He wasn’t really one to just tell people he went to therapy -- and for good reason. You can’t just tell somebody you go to therapy the same way you mention having a meeting with your doctor to talk about some weird shit he found in your stomach or because you broke your arm trying to lift something completely out of your bony arms’ league at the gym last week. In those scenarios, someone could look at your green face or plastered wrist and immediately understand, no questions asked. Therapy’s different. Brain stuff is different. It scared people, and when people’re scared because of you, they treat you differently. You can never just say you go to therapy. When you do, it comes with things. Heavy things. And everybody knows you just spilled all of your very, very human pain on the floor, and the people who see it -- more often than not -- feel the need to say something about the mess; try to help clean it up; awkwardly fall on their knees and take out a handkerchief to get rid of the spillage. Anything to prevent a stain. Anything to keep more scary things from being said.

That carousel dance of social etiquette colliding with vulnerability: Dazai hated it. At best, people’re uncomfortable and try to change the subject -- usually by making a dumb joke like, “Haha I know a few people who should go to therapy too!” or, “Didn’t realize you were that crazy.” At worst, there’s the silence: pregnant with pity that clawed at Dazai’s skin more than his own nails did during the bad days.

“When’ll you finish your appointment?” a voice said honestly amidst his thinking.

Dazai blinked, his thoughts coming to a halt. “Huh?”

“When’ll you finish your appointment?” Chuuya said, hands in his pockets and looking at him expectantly. Neutrally. Like he’d just told him he had to meet up with a professor to talk about an assignment instead of some vague psychological traumatic shit that warranted visits to a mental health professional.

“Um . . . around 5:00, I guess.” Dazai replied, swallowing a pit in his throat. He didn’t expect this.

“Okay.” Chuuya took out his phone and set an alarm for 5:15 PM, making Dazai furrow his eyebrows in more confusion. “Where do you want to meet? Starbucks’ll be closed by then but I can get our drinks early and we can just go someplace else --”

“I . . . don’t understand what you’re saying.” Dazai stammered.

“We made a deal, didn’t we?”

Dazai remained quiet, a dumb look glued on his face.

“I buy you coffee, you help me with this class, we share the textbook,” Chuuya reminded him, slowly enunciating the words and cracking a smile when Dazai opened his mouth and quickly closed it again, stupefied. “Don’t really know why you insisted on keeping the anthology though. I use it way more than you do.”

The other still didn’t say anything. He only stared at Chuuya with an unnerving intensity, which was beginning to kind of get unsettling since he wasn’t really used to the prodigy shutting up and allowing him to talk more than two sentences at a time before interrupting with a, “Wrong! You don’t get the poem at all!”

“Anyway,” Chuuya said, clearing his throat and turning to the direction of the Global Arts and Science library. “Just text me when you’re done and we can figure out where we study, yeah?” Not really knowing if Dazai heard him, Chuuya started to walk away, when the genius finally spoke up:

“Um.”

Chuuya stopped and looked over his shoulder at him. “Yeah?”

“Uh . . . It’s just . . . You’re not gonna . . .?”

“What?”

“You’re not going to say anything about my therapy appointment?”

Chuuya raised his eyebrow. “Why would I?”

“Because . . . it’s . . . therapy?” Dazai said, only realizing how ridiculous it sounded after he said it.

Chuuya twisted around again and crossed his arms. If Dazai didn’t know any better, he kind of looked unimpressed. “Ryuu does therapy; high school was hard for him. My Dads take it too; moving here and raising two kids can get overwhelming. A lot of people do it. Ane-san has a girlfriend and she mentioned looking into scheduling an --”

“That’s not what I meant,” the other interjected, biting his lip and unconsciously hugging his arms to his chest. Dazai shifted between his two legs, not knowing how to explain what he meant -- only that how Chuuya was reacting was not the normal way to react so he must have misunderstood or taken something the wrong way, or --

“It’s not that big of a deal.” Chuuya’s voice piped up.

Dazai, who was so used to people making it A Big Deal, looked at him a little helplessly, not knowing what to say.

Chuuya put his hands back in his pockets. “You’re gonna be late to your appointment,” he said matter-of-factly, tilting his head back cheekily and smiling a bit to try and lighten the mood. “Just text me when it’s over, all right? You already spoiled a lot of the Sayers novel for me, so now you owe me by helping me with some of it.”

Dazai checked his watch -- 3:45 PM -- and realized Chuuya was right. Like with all things, he was going to be late. The shorter between the two was still looking at him, expecting he’d say something else, but all Dazai did was mumble, “Where’ll you go for the next hour?”

Chuuya shrugged, running a hand through his copper hair. “I dunno. Doesn’t matter. I’ll wait for you, don’t worry.”

And that was that.

So, as you can probably guess, most of Dazai’s forthcoming therapy session was him untangling that scenario with Odasaku. (Yes, Oda -- more like Dr. Oda, actually, we should respect a man’s titles -- was his therapist. Had been since he entered this university, and only after Dazai left behind a body count of mental health professionals who only got through two to three sessions with him before giving up and transferring him to counsellor after counsellor because, “That kid made me want to start therapy, oh my God the issues!”).

Odasaku didn’t really know what they were talking about, but then again he also had five adopted kids of his own that he frequently dealt with, so one prodigy’s brattiness and particularly tragic backstory didn’t really phase him as much.

He still had to be patient though.

“And he just said, ‘It’s not that big of a deal.’” Dazai said exasperatedly, squeezing one of Dr. Oda’s complimentary Odasakuman mochis that he kept in-office for his patients to fidget with during sessions. “Like I know it isn’t a big deal but, like, I didn’t really think he’d think that, you know?”

Odasaku nodded from across the small table that sat between them. He barely touched his notepad (He knew it made Dazai nervous), so both of his hands were folded neatly on his lap. “Why didn’t you think he’d think that?”

Dazai dug his fingers hard into the plushie (Bad habit from childhood), organizing in his mind what he wanted to say instead of just babbling on for so long about absolutely nothing he wanted to actually talk about. “He’s . . . He’s not the . . . He just doesn’t seem like a ‘deep’ person.”

Odasaku, who had first heard about Chuuya Nakahara the annoyingly short (and, as Dazai mentioned faux casually, very gay) Engineering major whose parents owned his patient’s favorite secondhand bookshop at the beginning of the new term, was not a stranger to Dazai’s pretentious superiority complex when it came to Other People. It’s common for prodigies to look down on non-prodigies (moreso when they have mental health and social problems), and Dazai specifically, as you all may have concluded, had a negative penchant against STEM majors (for reasons they have avidly discussed within the walls of that therapy room, dear Reader, I don’t want you to think that fact is a useless plot point -- heavens no: please let me help you analyze this story).

And, though Odasaku fully understood -- or could at least infer from -- the situation and make his own liberal deductions (he went to med school, Your Honor, he could recite the Krebs Cycle and name all the bones in a human body while examining you, so figuring out when one of his patients was developing a hilariously ironic crush was elementary), he also knew Dazai wasn’t anywhere near coming to what he called the ‘Ohhh, I Get It!’ phase. Right now he was in the ‘Ranting’ part. And Odasaku was fine with that. His job was listening and advising, not chaotic matchmaking. He cared, of course, but caring doesn’t mean saving.

Caring also didn’t mean letting Dazai keep going on this embarrassingly extensive monologue for another minute longer.

“’Cause like the first time I saw him he didn’t know who Ernest Hemingway was so I just assumed he was just another science-crazed idiot with no redeeming qualities other than that he has the potential to, like, help cure cancer someday or something, but then lately he’s been listening to me ?? and acknowledging my literary genius ?? and he says he reads French poetry so I guess he isn’t too stupid?? And, like, some of his outfits aren’t that bad, you know, but he’s still so dumb but he says thank you and he means it and I think it’s because he kind of reminds me of my family --”

“Dazai.”

“Yes?”

“You mentioned your family. Let’s talk about them.”

Dazai went quiet for a second, staring down at the mochi in his bandaged hands. He knew it wasn’t real, but the gauze around his wrists felt like it tightened a bit. Like a firm grip. Or a claw. Teeth.

Odasaku, who was used to this silence and saw nothing bad about it, only melancholy, waited until Dazai lifted his head and looked into the therapist’s eyes: a little hesitant but determined.

The session trodded along with unsteady eggshell feet and promptly ended at 5:02 PM, with another follow-up appointment scheduled two weeks from now. Odasaku waved goodbye to Dazai from his office door, smiling encouragingly and letting himself hope that this “Engineering dumbass” would end up being a rather good thing for his patient and not the “incoming de-evolution of my precious brain cells” that Dazai insisted on.

The genius took the elevator back to the bottom floor of the clinic, where he walked through a tunnel that led to the Global Arts and Science building. When he got to the main doors, he leaned back against a wall and slowly took out his phone from his cardigan pocket. He stared at the blank screen, expecting an ocean of dread to trickle through him like it usually did when he had to talk to somebody (that wasn’t Q) who knew he had a therapy appointment and would probably ask about it and be --

“Hey.”

Dazai almost jumped and dropped his phone. The soles of his Oxfords squeaked pathetically against the newly mopped floor that he, Chuuya, and two other people -- a boy and a girl -- were standing on. Dazai awkwardly readjusted his glasses with the ends of his sleeves. “Hi, I was just about to text you,” he said, realizing it was true.

“Yeah I saw you took your phone out. I was already here though, so I saved you the burden of typing out a message,” Chuuya grinned, but he saw Dazai’s eyes land on the two people next to him. The boy smiled warmly and the girl, whose one arm was wrapped around his, gave a friendly wave with her free hand. Dazai returned the smile and wave, but something about him struck Chuuya as being a little odd. It was almost like . . .

“This is Tanizaki and Naomi Junichirou,” he said, gesturing to the siblings. “They’re Humanities majors like you, so you don’t have to hate them.”

Dazai shot him a glare, but otherwise didn’t say anything else. He readjusted his glasses again, almost like he was . . . Was he shy? No, that wasn’t it. Chuuya recalled all the times he’d cockily showed off his literary prowess in front of him and his friends (the infamous Library Incident being a top example -- if you’re interested in reviewing that, it is Chapter 3, dear Reader). He wasn’t being shy, but . . . if Chuuya didn’t know any better, Dazai was anxious. Or at least not completely in charge of a social situation, which was new.

“Do you remember me?” Naomi piped up sweetly. “We had Women’s and Gender Studies together last Fall quarter. Everyone was so shocked when the literature prodigy brilliantly started talking about modern Japanese feminism.” She giggled for good measure.

And normally Dazai would’ve eaten the compliment up and taken the obvious sign of flirting as an opportunity to flirt even more, but by the way Tanizaki’s eyes darkened a little in silent warning made the prodigy repress his tendency for being a shameless whore. He smiled humbly instead, the nervousness Chuuya thought was emanating from him slowly peeling off.

But he still kept readjusting his glasses.

And you can’t really expect much from a womanizing slut, because, humility aside, Dazai still said, “Of course. How could I forget such a beautiful --”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Tanizaki interrupted, his initially warm smile turning colder now and more protective. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” the prodigy replied coolly, reading between the lines and finally giving up on his wooing conquest. “What have you heard about me?”

Tanizaki, who relaxed a little, scratched the back of his neck. “Kouyou says you’re a genius, and so does everybody else --”

“-- A very handsome genius, as all the girls say,” Naomi added, winking. Tanizaki’s freckled neck turned a bit red at that, but his sister laughed good-naturedly and hugged his arm tighter. “Oh, don’t give me that look, brother. I didn’t mean anything naughty about it. Of course you’re the handsomest in the entire university. The entire country. The entire world!”

[THE NEXT PART HAS SINCE BEEN REDACTED BECAUSE NOT EVEN YOUR BASTARD NARRATOR WANTS TO DESCRIBE WHAT THE HELL NAOMI AND TANIZAKI STARTED DOING ALL OF A SUDDEN]

“Are you guys . . . friends?” Dazai slowly asked after [REDACTED] happened, already knowing the answer based on the way the three seemed so, uh, comfortable with each other.

“Yeah! Ever since high school. I just finished filming an assignment when Naomi and I ran into Chuuya at the Starbucks,” Tanizaki supplied hurriedly, rearranging his now-crumpled shirt because of [REDACTED, REDACTED, SO FUCKING REDACTED]. “We’re heading home now though.”

Dazai, who really could use a coffee right about now, nodded and turned to Chuuya, who tossed him a bottled mocha frappuccino that he barely caught. Chuuya smirked at the little sound Dazai yelped out when the glass gently hit his chest. “I bought tea for myself but figured any coffee I got you would melt or turn cold by the time we met up again, so I got you this instead.”

“How thoughtful,” the other replied sarcastically. He checked his wristwatch. “It’s almost 6 PM. The library’s definitely closed by now.”

“Oh it is,” Naomi sang, leaning on Tanizaki even more now. “Brother and I passed it on our way from the Theatrical Arts building.”

Dazai bit his lip, that anxiety Chuuya saw from earlier bubbling up a little again.

“Isn’t your place close by?” Chuuya blurted, not really knowing what he was doing. “Why don’t we just go there?”

Dazai blinked. “How do you know my apartment’s close by?”

“Atsushi mentioned it before.”

“That traitorous furry.”

“What?”

“What?”

Chapter Text

Dazai’s head wasn’t exactly spinning, but it was getting there. Per usual, he was really tired after the therapist appointment (that shit’s really emotionally draining!) and the icy sting from the mocha frappuccino he just opened only agitated it. The back of his head felt sharp and throbbing, the coffee seeming to melt into the base of his skull and digging into the muscle. His apartment wasn’t very far but it felt like miles away from where they were: paused at an intersection waiting for the light to turn green.

“Are you okay?” Chuuya said, the scream of a truck passing by almost muting his voice.

“Huh?”

The redhead had been silently walking beside him (more like following behind, really) until now. He scanned Dazai out of the corner of his eye. “You seem out of it,” he said plainly. “You okay?”

Dazai, who received this question -- in all its forms, metabolisms, and portraits -- with a consistent repetition he had already grown tired of long ago, recited out his prepared, perfunctory answer, “I’m always okay.”

“Nobody’s always okay, Dazai.”

“I am!” Dazai sang, cupping his lips around the coffee bottle in his hand and taking another sip. “I am always okay. I am the king of okay.”

“The only thing you’re king of is king of bullshit.” Chuuya scoffed. “Seriously, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Dazai replied dismissively (y’know, like an emotionally constipated liar).

When the light finally flashed green, they both took the cue and went down the crosswalk silently. When they reached the other side, Chuuya tried talking again, this time with humor, “So. You seemed to like Naomi.”

“I like all women.” Dazai said quickly, readjusting his glasses. “I remember Naomi from WGST, but something about her always seemed to say, ‘Don’t try anything.’”

“Oh yeah, that ‘something’ is Tanizaki.” Chuuya laughed. “They’re a pair. Do not separate. And especially do not flirt with one of them.”

“What, neither of them have dated anybody else before?” Dazai asked, refusing to be slutshamed and ignoring the other’s obvious teasing. “Not that you have to have been in relationships by now, but that seems weird.”

“Not really that I can remember.” Chuuya shrugged. “I think a guy asked Naomi out one time but after she supposedly said yes, he was never seen again.”

Dazai raised an inquisitive eyebrow, knowing fully well by his one interaction with the Junichirou siblings alone that they were both lowkey capable of murder if it was for the other’s sake.

Chuuya stuck out his tongue, laughing a bit. “I know what you’re thinking, but no. No, I think he moved to Aomori. Family stuff.”

Dazai snorted -- an inside joke with himself, though you can be a little in on it too if you were paying attention to Chapter 2, dear Reader -- and said, “How’d he explain that to Naomi? Girls hate it when you cancel dates. Trust me.”

“Oh according to Ane-san, I don’t have to trust you to know that’s true.” Chuuya smirked. “‘Leaves a trail of broken hearts wherever he goes,’ was how she put it.”

“Guilty,” Dazai said half-heartedly, the walk starting to take its toll on him.

“One time Tanizaki told me he found somebody cute,” Chuuya continued, staring straight ahead at the sidewalk beyond them that was littered with small patches of snow and chocolate mud. “But I couldn’t really tell if he meant it as in ‘awwww’ cute or ‘awgh’ cute, you know?”

Dazai frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Does too.”

“Does not.”

“Does too.”

“Does not.”

“Does too --”

“Was it you?”

“Eh?”

“Were you the person Tanizaki found cute?” Dazai said, side-eyeing the redhead now.

Chuuya flushed. “What? N-No. I . . .” His voice clenched. “No, I couldn’t have been.” The back of his neck was considerably pink now.

“Liar. You sound like you’re absolutely smitten with Tanizaki,” Dazai observed, knowing it wasn’t true but seizing the upper hand anyway.

As if to stress the suggestion’s folly, Chuuya snickered. “No. Definitely not. I was dating someone else when he brought it up to me and he really liked us together. So. Probably not me he had eyes on.”

This was news to Dazai, whose expression quickly shifted to Bastard Mode. “Ohhh, so you have been with people before~. I was curious,” he mused, taking another sip from his coffee. They were only a few minutes away from his apartment now and he probably should have told Kunikida he was having somebody over, but nah. (Not that he was specifically malicious or meant ill intent towards his roommate, dear Reader, no, not at all: The soon-to-be pharmacist’s reactions were just funny and endearingly ruffled whenever Dazai came back home with other people -- which was quite rare, to be fair, though it did happen: hardly whenever his roommate was present, but Kunikida often jumped to the extremest of possibilities during these absences; fantasies of what exactly Dazai did when he wasn’t being supervised taking on the most outrageous colors when left to fester in Kunikida’s mind).

“Of course I’ve been with people before,” Chuuya snapped, shoving his hands in his pockets huffily. “I may not go around sweet-talking everybody I see,” -- This earned Chuuya a bored yet non-denying glare -- “But I have had boyfriends. Well, boyfriend.”

“Only the one?” Dazai lilted, inclining his head a bit to signal that they should turn a right up here.

“Only the one.”

They climbed the few steps that led to his apartment’s back door, walking past the wooden gate and stopping only when they reached the front. The automatic light that turned on whenever it caught movement flashed lazily, illuminating the top of both their heads.

Dazai’s cold fingers hovered over the keycode lock, about to type in the password when he flicked his eyes to Chuuya suddenly, blinking a little when the other’s hair caught the light and turned a warm shade of orange just then. Like a rose. Or the setting sun.

“What was his name?” Dazai heard himself ask, turning his head back to the lock to punch in the numbers. By the time he had unlocked the storm door and put in the four-digit code (2846, if you were wondering. No, it is not my passcode nor is it the author’s: it is merely a fictitious, banal little fact that will never aid you in any burglary sprees or neighborhood heists, but I believe you’ll be glad to know it anyway, Reader, since it is a detail, and people love that complex crap), Chuuya had said a name:

“Shirase.”

A loud, squawking voice suddenly punctured the air, yelling, “DAZAIIIII!!” It was followed by the sound of heavy footsteps smacking down a staircase. The knob Dazai was holding clumsily twisted, the door whipping open to reveal his very annoyed roommate in a fuzzy maroon robe, a messy bun, and cotton pajama bottoms.

“Kunikidaaaaaaaaa! Hello!” Dazai sang, lifting up his arms as if asking for a hug everybody knew he would not be getting any time soon. “I didn’t know you were home!”

“YES YOU DID I TOLD YOU I HAD AN EXAM TOMORROW --”

“So why aren’t you stuuuuuuudying for it?”

“BECAUSE SOME OF YOUR BANDAGES GOT CAUGHT IN THE SHOWER DRAIN AGAIN AND NOW THE BATHROOM’S FLOODED!! SERIOUSLY, WHY DO YOU KEEP SHOWERING WITH THEM ON ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE --”

“You shower with your glasses on sometimes,” Dazai pointed out calmly.

“-- MY GLASSES ARE A PART OF MY BODY!!” Kunikida snapped. “I HAD TO UNCLOG THE DRAIN AGAIN BECAUSE OF YOU!! I LOOKED UP YOUTUBE TUTORIALS AND EVERYTHING BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING!!”

“Why didn’t you just call the plumber?”

“WE’RE FUCKING BROKE DAZAI HOW THE FUCK WOULD WE HAVE PAID FOR A PLUMBER?”

“Ohh, you’re right, you’re right, my bad.” Dazai agreed, touching the base of his chin in thought before brightening up. “Well, hey! I heard from someone once that plumbing helps with shoulder tension and muscle cramps. Hasn’t your back been hurting you lately?”

Like a switch, the man in front of them seemed to go from a chastising mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown to just . . . some guy in a pink bathrobe: a little flustered and kinda confused, but not exactly the lady of the house. “Yes . . . it has. Wow. Wait, really? You heard that from someone?” he said, in a voice Chuuya was surprised to find rather deep considering he had spent the last few seconds screeching.

“Really.” Dazai echoed, nodding enthusiastically. “You should write that down!”

Kunikida reached behind his robe pocket and pulled out an evergreen notebook and fountain pen, flipping to a blank page and starting to write something while muttering, “Good . . . for . . . back . . . pain . . .”

Dazai, who had taken off his shoes at some point during this exchange, glided past him into the foyer and evinced Chuuya to do the same. The redhead obeyed. They had already reached the top of the stairs that lead to the main apartment before Dazai piped, “I’m messing with you~!”

With a violent crack, the pen in Kunikida’s hand broke in half and fell to pieces at his slippered feet. Slamming his notebook shut and shoving it back into his robe, the man stormed up the stairs and took no hesitation in wrapping his hands around Dazai’s throat and wringing it, all while shouting, “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! THAT’S THE THIRD PEN I’VE BROKEN THIS MONTH AND IT’LL BE WEEKS UNTIL THE STORE HAS ANOTHER SALE ON STATIONARY!! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU!! I BUST MY ASS ALL DAY NOT STUDYING FOR MY TEST JUST TO UNCLOG THE BATHROOM WE BOTH USE AND --”

“Yes, ye -- augklgh -- yes, thank you very much for doing that, you’re amaaaa -- chlk! -- zzzhhhhinggggg, Kunikidaaaaa!” Dazai choked out, audaciously sounding unphased by his current asphyxiation slash chastisement slash Face Turning Blue From Lack Of Blood And Oxygen Entering His Brain.

“-- BUT NOW MY SCHEDULE’S ALL MESSED UP BECAUSE IT TOOK TWO HOURS TO FISH ALL OF YOUR GAUZE OUT OF THE GODDAMN DRAIN AND CLEAN UP THE MESS AFTERWARDS UGHHH ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE I’VE TOLD YOU A HUNDRED TIMES NOT TO BATHE WITH THE BANDAGES ON I EVEN SHOWED YOU MY PHARMACY NOTES THAT ADVISED NOT TO DO THAT BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF INFECTION OR FURTHER INJURY IT COULD POTENTIALLY CAUSE BUT NOOOOO YOU AND YOUR CRACKHEAD FLAT ASS NEVER LISTEN TO KUNIKIDA OR HIS AWARD-WINNING, DEAN-APPROVED PHARMACY NOTES AND NOW YOU COME WALTZING BACK HERE WITH --”

“Oh -- czzlth! -- I seem to have forgotten,” Dazai gurgled, making his roommate halt in the evidently recreational and cathartic strangulation. “Kunikida, this is Chuuya.”

The man’s grip on Dazai completely relaxed now -- to the point where it kind of just looked like he was trying to warm up the other’s neck instead of aggressively suffocating him. Kunikida turned to the person his roommate was gesturing to. During all the ranting, his messy bun had fallen out and long, curly waves of blond hair had drifted down to his -- very slim, very toned, very fit -- waist, which had been exposed a little during the commotion.

“Nice to meet you.” Chuuya, who lowkey had an asphyxiation kink but was definitely not going to think about it after witnessing that quarrel fest, said eventually, extending a hand out in friendship because like hell he was gonna check out Dazai’s temperamental pharmacist roommate now. (Yes, if you were thinking, the irony is very much lost on him here).

(Though, Kunikida was admittedly good-looking now that the bun was off and he wasn’t hollering at a hundred decibels over the normal human vocal range also did his robe just fall away a little because oh my God his chest . . .). “Uh, er,” Chuuya stammered. “Yeah. Um -- I think we’ve seen each other a couple times, but we’ve never really talked, yeah? Hi.” (This ‘hi’ sounding more like a high pitched wheeze). “I’m Kouyou’s younger brother.”

(Nice save, Chuuya. We applaud you. Come, let’s all clap for him. Huzzah! Huzzah! Come on, readers, do it, yes, be encouraging -- wait, hey, but not too encouraging, no, no, clap a little slower please, don’t be ridiculous: we’re lauding him, yes, but we don’t have to be obscenely genuine about it, goodness, no!).

Kunikida, oblivious to the gay thirsting taking place, stepped back from Dazai and straightened his glasses. “Yes, Miss Kouyou. Little brother. I remember you. We were in a few preliminary classes together but you’re right: we’ve never really talked outside of class.” Clearing his throat, he took Chuuya’s hand and gave it one firm shake. “And thus: Nice to meet you too. Apologies for, uh . . .”

“No need,” Chuuya squeaked interjectedly, waving a hand in good nature and vaguely gesturing to Dazai and the everything about him that justified anybody who was in his vicinity going batshit crazy. “I get it.”

Kunikida, a bit surprised, closed his mouth and opened it again, but that was when Dazai said, “Okay! Now that you’ve met each other, let’s all stop following stupid social etiquette and let Kunikida study for his test~!” He smiled, taking Chuuya’s hand out of his roommate’s grip and nudging him towards his bedroom door. “We won’t bother you, Kida, really, thanks for cleaning up the bathroom I really owe you one, love you, ’kay byeeeee~!” Dazai twirled around swiftly only to be yanked back by his coattails to face Kunikida again.

“Dazai,” he said, sternly, but when he met the other’s eyes they showed some hesitation.

“Yes?” Dazai hummed, tilting his head to emphasize an innocence he most certainly did not have nor will ever convince anybody within this scene’s parameters that he did have.

Kunikida cleared his throat, his eyes darting to Chuuya, who was just a few feet away from them blinking dumbly. “Um . . .” His voice dropped low. “Will you two . . . ? Um . . . I’m usually not around the house when you bring people over, and -- and I’m not judging you or anything, I just know how you are sometimes and how people describe you and -- i-if you need me to s-study in the library or --”

“I’m ace, Kunikida.” Dazai deadpanned. “Remember?”

“Right.” Kunikida coughed, straightening his back awkwardly. He grabbed his long hair as he cleared his throat again. “Right. Er, just . . .” He sighed. “Stay quiet. Please.”

Dazai hopped on his toes and saluted him, grinning exaggeratedly. “You got it!”

Not completely sure he’d ‘got it,’ Kunikida nevertheless had work to do, so he just frowned, shot one last threatening look at his roommate, and sauntered back to his room before closing the door and locking it.

“Ace people can still have sex and want to have sex,” Chuuya piped up from his spot, having heard everything because Kunikida couldn’t whisper for shit.

“Yeah no I know,” Dazai replied, turning to him, “But he’s too awkward to ask about it.” He shrugged. “I came out to him a few months ago and he’s supportive but he’s also Kunikida.”

“Yes, and you didn’t tell me Kunikida was hot,” Chuuya deadpanned, not even trying to hide a playful smirk.

“Eugghh!!” Dazai immediately shivered and hugged himself, not even trying to be sensible and instead opting to be entirely dramatic about this. “Why would you say that?! Gross! He’s like my Mom!”

“MILF then,” Chuuya replied shamelessly.

Dazai visibly gagged in disgust and stuck out his tongue. “Vile! Vile!”

“From how flustered he got about his exam tomorrow, you can tell he’s smart too!” Chuuya sing-songed, kind of enjoying how huffy the other was getting. “On top of that he’s a sweetheart. A bit eccentric, but there’s a gentleman in there. Plus anybody who lives with you must turn feral eventually.”

Dazai frowned, refusing to indulge Chuuya’s appreciation for all of Kunikida’s fine attributes and Austenian prospects.

“Has he been working out recently?” the redhead continued, hands in his pocket and cockily balancing on the balls of his socked feet. “I’ve seen him around Ane-san’s circles a few times but I never saw him properly until now. Damn.”

Dazai scrunched up his face like he’d just sucked on a lemon, squeezing his eyes shut in retaliation. “Where is your shame?”

“Says the notorious heartbreaker and self-proclaimed flirt,” Chuuya retorted. He started walking around the main area of the apartment, which was really just your average, scarcely furnished living room complete with a hand-me-down couch that its previous owners probably had sex on, a coffee table that needed wiping, and some potted plants that sat on a small shelf overlooking the wall-high balcony windows. (Because university students think owning succulents and posting pretty pictures of them on Instagram will cure their depression). Plain, cream curtains kept the glass covered, but the fabric had liver stains and rips. There was a small flatscreen television mounted on the wall: a layer of dust growing on the surface to indicate lack of use.

“Is that . . .” Chuuya leaned closer to inspect what seemed to be sticky-notes taped to the wall underneath the flatscreen TV. Each of the yellow squares collectively spelled out F-U-C-K M-E-N in blocky, red letters. Chuuya snorted, “Never thought I’d see that in an apartment shared by two guys.”

“Yosano comes by sometimes since her family’s old friends with Kunikida’s. They’re both in medical fields, so it works out.” Dazai shrugged, gesturing to the sticky-notes. “She just left that there one day after a visit. ‘So you can remember the inferiority of your kind,’ she said. It was mostly a joke and I doubt she expected us to keep it, but I guess Kunikida and I were too lazy to take it down.”

“You call it laziness, but I don’t think that’s it.” Chuuya said knowingly, looking towards Dazai, who was still a few feet away from the front door, hugging his shoulders like a trembling twig. “I think you’re both just scared of her.”

“We should all be scared of women, even just a little bit.” Dazai said matter-of-factly. “I don’t know how they haven’t all killed us for the bullshit we put them through.”

“To be fair, some have,” Chuuya added light-heartedly. “Like I’m pretty sure Agatha has killed somebody. She knows way too much about poisons and one time she went missing for like ten days and nobody really knows what she did.”

“Creepy,” Dazai agreed. “I hope she murdered misogynists.”

Chuuya laughed, taking the small silence that came afterward to look further around the apartment. The place wasn’t exactly a mess, but it wasn’t exactly clean either: Mismatched house slippers were tucked in awkward corners, empty board game boxes opened on the coffee table, mugs and half-finished cups standing sentinel in every place one could place a drink and completely forget about it, only to remember it was there the millisecond it turned cold and became ghastly to even take a sip from. The floorboards were clear, but obviously in need of sweeping. The lights peering down from the ceiling looked anemic and tired. There weren’t really any decorations or signs of significant personalization anywhere. College quarters always looked half-lived in, like ghosts were sleeping there instead of people.

Not surprisingly to Chuuya, there were books, books, and more books that seemed to be splattered all over the apartment -- ones with weird titles too, like Humorous Epigraphs from 1800 or Feminist Saints and Soldiers. They were more or less everywhere, but most if not all of them had undoubtedly trickled into the main area with Dazai’s bedroom as the source. The room in question had its door cracked open to reveal what looked more like a library than where somebody came home to every day.

Chuuya was about to step inside it to take a look, but the sound of something opening brought his attention to the kitchen, where Dazai was peering into a small fridge and grabbing pop cans from the inside shelves. “You’re probably hungry, right?” he called, rummaging through sealed pots with day-old soup, wrapped salad bowls, and half-empty milk jugs (these were all Kunikida’s, mind you, Dazai’s side of the fridge mostly had junk food, alcohol, and Tupperware containers from his relatives and parents filled with meals he barely ate. Kunikida had the good stuff: snacks, fruit, vegetables, juice, a water purifier. He even had a mini fridge in his own room because he stress-ate constantly -- and, as you might have guessed, dear Reader the Pharmacy major was stressed a lot).

“Yeah I am,” Chuuya said in response to Dazai’s question, walking to where he was. He watched him shove a frozen packet of edamame beans into his mouth, tuck the pop cans under both arms, and use his lanky leg to close the fridge door behind him. The fridge and freezer doors had a lot of magnets that held up various sheets of paper and photographs: dumb, lewd doodles on class notes undoubtedly made by Dazai, miscellaneous coupon flyers for take-out deals, grainy pictures of the two roommates spanning from high school to present day, recipes, and . . . “What’s this?” Chuuya asked, fingering a cluster of paper that looked about ten pages long and took more than half of the freezer door space. The title read, “ARFID: Foods To Eat, Foods To Avoid.” It looked like a long list categorized from fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, and dairy with portion sizes and texture descriptions.

Dazai, who had taken out two empty bowls and put the edamame beans in the microwave, slammed it shut and stiffened. “Oh, that’s . . .” He readjusted his glasses. “That’s a food pamphlet from my nutritionist.” He met Chuuya’s eyes, who seemed to be asking a million questions -- because who wouldn’t have a million questions? -- and Dazai bit his lip. “I have eating disorders. Anorexia. Well, that’s the big one. ’s why I’m so skinny. Heh.”

“That isn’t funny,” Chuuya blurted, quiet but firm.

Dazai waved his hand dismissively and turned on the microwave, distractingly setting the counter for 10 minutes. (Please keep in mind, dear Reader, that 10 minutes is far too long for edamame beans to cook. This fact will prove useful for enjoying -- uh, I mean understanding -- the following events to come). “I hate eating. It’s a chore,” Dazai mumbled, not really knowing why he felt like explaining. “But everybody insists I do it, so I do it. And the pamphlet helps me. I almost never starve myself for days now!” He tried to sound cheery, but of course it didn’t work.

Chuuya stayed silent, not really knowing what to say but knowing enough not to say anything.

“You are learning a lot of things about me today,” Dazai observed after a while, trying to keep his tone light. The dry hum of the kitchen appliances around them buzzed dully, like a fly thumping its freckle body against a glass. “Usually you have to be friends to unlock the sad shit, you know?”

“Aren’t we friends?”

Dazai paused. Then said, “Yeah. We’re friends.”

“Gross,” Chuuya replied, but he smiled after he said it, and Dazai felt relieved. Rolling his eyes, he walked past Chuuya and into his bedroom. The redhead followed him.

Unlike the rest of the apartment, Dazai’s bedroom was definitely messy. The cot was unmade, the pillows shoved underneath the comforters in jagged angles. His desk still had remnants of snack wrappers, sodas, and half-eaten candy bars. All his pens and highlighters looked like they’d spilled on his desktop surface. Shoes, clothes, paper scraps, notebooks, and -- was that a Baymax plushie? -- so much clutter lined the floor. The bookshelves were, of course, swollen full, but volumes and anthology collections of Emily Dickinson’s letters, James Joyce’s essays, Leo Tolstoy’s grocery lists (I’m kidding, dear Reader, there is no published book of the great Russian genius’ grocery lists -- I have checked! -- though I imagine most of it would just be: Eggs, Vodka, Vodka, Vodka . . .) were everywhere else: on the bed, in disorganized wicker baskets, laid open under the window sill or simply on the floor unopened.

Chuuya decided to take it upon himself to comment on the chaos: “Jesus, you’re worse than Ryuunosuke.”

Dazai snorted. “You invited yourself over, need I remind you,” He plopped onto his spinny desk chair and began swaying right to left. “Beggars aren’t choosers.”

“Your room is so small, where am I supposed to sit?” Chuuya complained.

Dazai leaned over to his cot and moved some books and the pillows around until there was enough space for the other to sit on the mattress. He turned to Chuuya and petted the soft blankets exaggeratedly. “Here you go. You’re so tiny, so this much room is enough.”

“Asshole.”

“Beggar.”

“You want me to sit in your bed while we do homework?” Chuuya said, wrinkling his nose. “I spilled tea on my pants like an hour ago.”

Dazai made a sound of exasperation and rolled the chair back to his desk. “I was gonna change the bedding tonight anyway so I don’t really care if your clothes are dirty.” With one twist of his arm, he’d cleared away most of the trash on the tabletop by nudging all of it into a bin that was next to his desk. He turned on his computer. Darting his eyes back to Chuuya, who still hadn’t moved from the doorway, he sighed again and jokingly added, “Don’t worry: I haven’t masturbated in weeks so the sheets are clean!”

Without another word, Chuuya picked up a tiny folio copy of a Shakespeare play near him -- The Merchant of Venice -- and threw it at Dazai’s face before clambering onto the bed. It was far smaller than the one Chuuya slept in: one person could hardly fit, let alone two. Even so, surrounded by the pillows, warm blankets, and Baymax plushie (why did he have a Baymax plushie?), Chuuya wouldn’t say it was uncomfortable. In fact, it was kind of cozy.

A beat of silence passed between them that was broken by the sound of Dazai’s computer booting up and opening to his home page, which was mostly blank except for a few tab links. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a copy of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Strong Poison. “So. What can I help you with?” he asked boredly, flipping through the novel’s pages.

“Oh, I figured I’d just start reading the book and, if I had any questions, I’d bother you about it.” Chuuya said simply, as if this option was the more practical one instead of, oh, I don’t know, texting Dazai whenever he had problems instead? Or calling? Smoke signals? Literally anything but social interaction that required entertaining Chuuya in some form or another because he was a guest now. One may ask, “Well why did he insist on meeting up today then?” Good question. Dazai, however, didn’t seem to consider this and only chose to focus on their current situation’s weirdness. “You . . . you just want to read? In my room?”

“We read in the library all the time,” Chuuya said, raising an eyebrow, clapping his hands and lifting his chin in a gesture that asked Dazai to toss Strong Poison to him, which he did, and Chuuya caught it flawlessly. He turned to Chapter 1 before meeting the genius’ eyes again. They both blinked in unison.

“What’s wrong?” Chuuya asked.

“W-Well,” Dazai started. “What am I supposed to do then?”

The other shrugged. “Your apartment. Your room. I’m just crashing here.”

“Why?”

“Because I tried reading the book last night and I didn’t get it.”

“What could you possibly not get about it?”

“Like, what the fuck is even happening?”

“A trial ?? For ?? Murder ?? Like ?? The synopsis ?? Said ??”

“Oh. I didn’t read the synopsis.”

“Why didn’t you read the synopsis?”

“Because you’re, like, my synopsis. My Synopsis Man.”

“What the fuck does that even mean??”

“I dunno. Shut up, I’m trying to read.”

“Again, what am I supposed to do? You’re in my bed!”

“Don’t you have homework?”

“Bold of you to assume I do my homework.”

“Dumbass, then read a book or something. You’re always doing that.”

“I don’t want to --”

It was at that moment that the edamame beans exploded inside the microwave. Its door violently burst open with a pop and out spilled the plastic wrapping -- sizzling with concentrated heat -- along with what was left of the beans. (Not to say there wasn’t a lot that came out, oh no, dear Reader, there was a lot, it’s just that the majority of them were severely burnt and/or charred to the point of deformity. Some, may I add, were even on fire).

The two boys immediately jumped, startled by the smoke detector that started blaring mercilessly.

Amidst the siren call alerting all inhabitants of the residences (and probably a lot of the nearby neighborhood too) that there was smoke! smoke! oh, horrifying smoke! (How could you possibly survive this unwanted invasion of smoke without a goddamn alarm ringing with the volume of a fucking percussion band?), a muffled -- yet very distinct -- other form of noise permeated across the apartment, and it was shouting, “DAZAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!”

“Think I can convince him that exploding edamame beans is good for digestion or something?” Dazai said after he got his bearings and realized that the other thing hollering in the house aside from the smoke detector was not a banshee with raging diarrhea.

“Not a chance,” Chuuya responded, not sure whether to start laughing or join Kunikida in shrieking at Dazai’s stupid, brainless ass.

The genius groaned, snapping Chuuya out of his thoughts. “Fuck,” he whined, slumping back in his chair. “This is the second time I broke the microwave this month.”

“Jesus Christ.”

//

“What’re you reading, lad?” Kouyou popped her head into Chuuya’s room on her way out of the bath. She was wearing a gold robe and her hair was wrapped up in a towel. With her, she brought the scent of cherry blossoms.

“A Sayers novel for Crime and Detective Fiction class,” Chuuya answered from his nest of stuffed animals and big pillows, not even hiding his gloom and the fact that he was pouting.

“Why the long face?” Kouyou asked, knowing there was no escaping her little brother’s emotional recounting of his woes so she might as well get the pity party started as soon as possible. She stepped into the room and sat at the edge of his bed.

“I was supposed to have Dazai on standby to ask for help with the book but then he made his kitchen explode --”

“He made his kitchen explode?!”

“Yeah, he does that. Anyway, his roommate got mad that Dazai cooked his last batch of edamame beans and exploded the microwave, and Dazai told me it would be better if I just went home because I wouldn’t get any work done now that Kunikida was on a murder spree.”

“Kunikida is Dazai’s roommate?” Kouyou blinked. “Huh. Didn’t know that. Although, knowing him, yeah, it was probably best you left. His temper’s almost as bad as yours.”

“But now I have to read the book by myself,” Chuuya frowned, effortlessly ignoring his sister’s jab at him due to years of her teasing and him learning to just lick his wounds and go. He slouched back on his pillows, one of his plushies giving out a wheezing squeak from underneath his elbow. “I still don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Can’t you just call or text him?” his sister suggested..

“I am,” Chuuya replied, grabbing his phone and showing her a glimpse of his message history with Dazai. It looked like he was waiting for a reply, but their digital conversation seemed to flow easily enough. “We’ve been texting since I caught the subway.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

“Agh, it’s just . . . I don’t know, it’s easier to make sense of all this when he explains it to me face to face. Do you know what I mean?”

“Mmmm,” Kouyou hummed, lifting her arms up to take her hair out of the towel and raking her fingers through apricot strands carefully. “Perks of having a genius around.”

“‘Around’ implies that he’s nearby.” Chuuya sulked. “I have questions, damnit! He hasn’t replied in three minutes!”

“Lad, Kunikida is probably still yelling at him,” Kouyou sighed exasperatedly, shaking some of the wet from her hair. “You’ll get your turn soon.”

“Hey! I don’t yell at him!”

“You were yelling at him just last week when Higuchi, Gin, and I passed by your usual table at the library.”

“That’s not really yelling. That’s like . . . friendly banter.”

Kouyou raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “‘Friendly,’ huh? When did that happen? It was only a few months ago that you loathed even the very mention of him.”

Chuuya set his book (I say ‘his’ book but we all know whose book it really is, right, dear Reader?) down and grabbed his favorite stuffed ram, squishing it against his chest. “Today, actually,” he responded. “He said we were friends. It was the first time he -- we -- called it that.”

If Chuuya had looked at his sister just then, he would’ve been able to catch the knowing smile that flashed across her lips before she said, “Mmmm. That’s nice.” She hoisted herself up from the bed to leave, still running her hands through her hair. When she reached the doorway, she paused. “Oh, Dad wanted me to ask you something.”

Chuuya, who had picked up Strong Poison again and was now holding it with one hand while the other was fidgeting with his plushie, absentmindedly murmured, “What does Dad want?”

“They’re going to Hachiōji this weekend. Arthur needs you to run Illuminations again.”

Chuuya groaned in obvious protest. “Sis, why can’t you do it?”

Kouyou shrugged innocently. “I have to take Baki to the vet, and afterward I have a date.” She winked. “Guess you’re out of luck.”

(She said this, however, thinking Chuuya had absolutely not run out of luck at all).

Chapter Text

“This isn’t a library, you know.” Chuuya muttered from his place at the front counter to Dazai, who, when finding out the other was stuck with cashier duties yet again for Illuminations, insisted on tagging along “out of the kindness of his heart.”(He just wanted to check out more books, Chuuya knew that, but nonetheless, it was still nice having company).

Even if ‘company’ was currently plopped down on the floor right next to him leaning back against the stool he was sitting on. Dazai had arrived at the store about an hour ago and almost immediately disappeared into the Classics section, coming back with a vintage copy of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations that he set about reading the moment he came back to the front. He hadn’t put it down since then.

Chuuya eyed the genius out of the corner of his eye. He had his regular get-up of a wool cardigan, a dress shirt, dark pants, and Oxfords, but since he started the Dickens novel his eyes behind the glasses had started shining excitedly again. Chuuya, as was tradition, wanted to make fun of how much of a nerd he was for getting thrilled over a dusty Victorian story about some sad little orphan discovering himself through education and monologues about human suffering, but he didn’t, because it seemed as if every time he opened his mouth to do so, a customer would walk in or some other distraction would keep him from making Dazai’s life an inconvenient hell.

That being said, Illuminations had been fairly slow that morning and the majority of the afternoon only brought in a few people asking for cookbooks or the latest in cheap, harlequin horror stories. Nothing noteworthy happened, with each transaction smoothly passing by sans shitty people demanding to see the manager or complaining about their shopping retail experience. And, as one may guess: no literary prodigies had come in asking for Hemingway novels and harassed the cashier. The only one who could -- for brilliance is very rare in the realms of literature and is most often only seen posthumously or after the critics feel kind of bad for being so mean about how metaphors worked after said genius had a mental breakdown over a particularly bad review and needed to go to rehab now or something -- was currently on Page 64 of Great Expectations, thumbing the paper in between cold fingers and looking like he was having the time of his life.

“Dazai,” Chuuya said, bored out of his mind and needing a distraction. Since this morning, he and the genius had maintained a relatively steady -- yet not wholly uncomfortable -- silence that mechanically beat at the hours until they felt like stringy pulp dangling languidly in front of the two boys’ periphery. “Why do you only read foreign authors?”

Without looking up, Dazai replied, “I can only tolerate Westerners when they’re dead or in a book.”

“My dads are Westerners.”

“They’re an exception because Mr. Rimbaud is nice to me.” Dazai said matter-of-factly. “Besides, they’ve been in Japan for a while, haven’t they? Not exactly ‘foreigners,’ if you ask me.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Chuuya retorted, rolling his eyes and leaning an elbow on the counter, placing a sulky chin on the palm of his hand and waiting intently for Dazai’s response.

The boy below him shrugged. “I guess I’ve always preferred Western canon ever since I left America.”

“You were in America?” Chuuya blinked, surprised. “I thought you were born and raised here.”

Dazai nodded. “Oh, I was. Born here, I mean, but we moved to California for a few years when I turned four years old. My father got a job and my mother thought it would be a good opportunity for me to get an American education.” From his tone, Chuuya could tell Dazai didn’t share the same views as his parents did about the value of Western scholarship. “Anyway, fast forward five years later and my little sibling Yumeno was born, so we moved back.”

“You have a younger sibling?” Chuuya blurted, trying to take in all this new information. “You don’t exactly strike me as the big brother type.”

Dazai frowned. “Q and I are nine years apart. My Mom didn’t expect to get pregnant at fifty, but she did, and all of a sudden it was, ‘Hey! You’re not an only child anymore!’”

“Pregnant at fifty,” Chuuya whistled. “I didn’t even think that was possible.”

“Women are amazing,” Dazai mused.

It felt like their conversation had come to a natural stop, but Chuuya wanted to know more. “Are you and Yumeno close like Ane-san and I are?”

“The age gap certainly allows for a different dynamic,” Dazai said without missing a beat. His eyes seemed to soften just a little behind his glasses. “But yeah, I’d say we are. We text every week. They’re really annoying and steal a lot of my stuff, but I love that brat.” Reaching into his cardigan, Dazai pulled out his phone to show Chuuya a recent picture of Yumeno eating cupcakes. The photo was of a little kid that looked very close to Dazai but tinier and with crumbs all over their face. They were grinning widely into the camera. A young girl with golden yellow hair in red and blue ribbons was beside them, halfway through her own cupcake with marshmallow toppings on it. Dazai was next to them holding up his phone so all three could squish together to take a group selfie.

It was such a wholesome thing to see that Chuuya couldn’t have not smiled even if he wanted to. “Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to the girl and feeling warm just staring at the photo.

“Elise.” Dazai said, putting his phone back in his pocket. “She moved here from Germany and has been Q’s best friend for a few years now. She made the cupcakes. She comes over so much that she’s basically like a little sister to me.”

“Perfect for you, then, Mr. Big Brother.”

Dazai snorted. “I was just glad Yumeno found a friend.” He fingered the book on his lap absentmindedly. “I had to help raise Q because when our parents moved back here they had to work all the time. So it was just the two of us for a little while. Mom and Dad were worried we wouldn’t make any friends.”

“Glad at least Q has friends now.”

The genius frowned but otherwise ignored the jab. “Me too. I was basically their third parent.”

“Lot of responsibility for a nine-year-old.”

“A lot of nine-year-olds are more grown-up than people give them credit for.”

“I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even a human being until I was, like, thirteen.”

“That’s okay because I’m not a human being even now!” Dazai deadpanned, readjusting his glasses and shifting his position so he could see the words in his book better.

Chuuya didn’t know how to respond. Dazai had made comments like this before -- about not feeling human or really understanding what it was like to be a ‘functioning’ person, but whenever he brought it up something inside Chuuya just went cold, and he didn’t know how to melt it or chip away at the block it left behind. “You read pretty fast,” Chuuya said instead, deciding to switch topics. “You’re almost on the hundredth page, yeah? Can’t say I’m surprised though. Even I could’ve guessed you were a fast reader.”

Dazai turned an annoyed head to the other, clearly a bit irritated that his concentration had been interrupted once again. “The last time I was tested, I could read 300 words per minute.”

“When were you last tested?”

“Elementary school.”

“Oh, so you read slower now since your brain’s obviously degraded.”

“Shut up. If anybody’s brain’s degraded it’s yours.”

“I’m not the one mooching off of a secondhand bookstore and treating its merchandise like public property,”

“When I first started coming here last year, Mr. Rimbaud said it was fine so long as I buy more than I borrowed.”

“Well you haven’t exactly bought anything from here in months,” Chuuya rolled his eyes, but when the other didn’t reply, he turned to look down at him and saw that Dazai had gone quiet again. His eyes were on a page in his book, but it was obvious he wasn’t reading and that something else was on his mind.

Chuuya was more or less used to Dazai’s silent spells now -- sometimes he just quit talking or drifted off; he got distracted out of conversations more than he started them -- but lately a lot of things had resulted in no response.

It bothered Chuuya. It reminded him too much of when some of his friends during high school would just shrug off how stressed they were, or not say anything when he asked them if things were okay at home. He knew it was rude to pry about personal stuff, but he’d drifted away from a lot of people because he never pushed it or asked any further questions. And he knew it wasn’t necessarily his fault nor was it his job to keep checking up on everybody, but since Ryuunosuke opened up to him after graduation about how he particularly suffered during the last year of high school and was on some new medications now to help him deal with the aftermath of all that mental strain, Chuuya’d realized something: So often silence was just for somebody else’s sake, and, if given the right push, it could easily turn to so many words if you just let the stillness go.

Taking a sharp breath, Chuuya lifted a leg and nudged Dazai beside him with a socked foot. “Hey,” he said, firm but not hard.

Dazai jumped a little at the contact, twisting his head to meet the other’s eyes dazedly like he’d just been woken from a daydream. “Huh?”

“Are . . .” Chuuya looked away, suddenly feeling the back of his neck get warm. “. . . Are you okay?” He was so bad at this. He was better with Ryuu and his other friends but only because they’d known each other all their lives.

To his surprise, Dazai smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes, but at the moment Chuuya didn’t really care. At least, not too much. “Yes, I’m alright,” he laughed a little, turning back to his book and flipping the page. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I just . . .” Chuuya looked away as well, staring at a display near the front of the store that had hardback editions of world encyclopedias. “. . . Didn’t think you’d still be in one piece after Kunikida finished yelling at you.” (And here we see a classic example of one of life’s greatest truths, dear Reader: deflect shit you can’t deal with through humor).

“Ohhhh!” Dazai hummed, bouncing his leg a little now, which eased some of the tension. “Yeah, I think he would have scolded me the entire night if our floorboards hadn’t caught on fire.”

“Your floorboards caught on fire!?”

“Well, yes, because while I was cleaning up I guess I missed some edamame beans that flew off to a corner of the kitchen and we didn’t really notice it until the smoke detector started beeping again.”

“Dazai oh my God.”

“It’s okay because I slapped it with my hand and the fire went out.”

“Dazai oh my God. Wh -- Why? -- Shit, are you okay?”

“Mmm, I think I burned my wrist. I thought my bandages would take the most of it but I was wrong, and --”

“Dazai,” Chuuya sat up from his chair, concerned. When he turned to the other, though, the genius had a smirk on his face and his tongue was out.

“Kidding,” Dazai deadpanned. “Not about the fire thing. The floorboards did catch on fire but we managed. Not because I sacrificed my beautiful hands to the edamame bean gods’ flaming wrath, mind you. Kunikida threw a wet towel over it and put it out. He’s very smart, you know.”

Chuuya frowned, relaxing a little and sitting back down. “Don’t joke about that stuff, shitbrick. I thought you seriously hurt yourself.”

“Chibi worries too much.” Dazai said dismissively.

“Stop calling me chibi.”

“No.”

“Haaah?”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“I can kick you out of this store right now for being a nuisance.”

“But you wooooooooon’t~~”

“No, I won’t, but fuck you anyway.”

“So mean. You and Kunikida are so much alike. Agh, I can still hear him screaming at me to --” Dazai’s voice turned high-pitched to mimic his roommate’s screeching. “-- ‘Put out the fire Dazai! Oh my God, Dazai, you stupid, crackhead moron! I have absolutely no words to say to you right now! No words, I say! Bahahahahehuehgheh!’” Dazai dropped back to his regular voice. “Y’know, he always says that yet still manages to yell at me for at least another twenty minutes straight.”

Chuuya snorted. “I would say I’m sorry for you but the microwave exploding was really all your fault.”

“So mean! Mean! You two are just a pair of meanies!” Dazai groaned childishly. “It’s okay though. I’m used to getting yelled at.”

“Doesn’t that suck?.”

“Um. You yell at me.”

“I don’t yell at you!” Chuuya yelled, yellingly, in his yell-y voice filled with yelling. “Why does everybody keep saying that?”

“Uhhh because it’s true -- also . . . who else says it?” Dazai raised an eyebrow, meeting the other’s gaze and putting Great Expectations down. He wasn’t going to get any more reading done and had finally come to terms with it, but he didn’t mind. His interest was piqued.

Chuuya flushed. “Um. Ane-san might have. Mentioned it. Kind of.”

Dazai’s eyes were sparkling saucers. “I didn’t know Chuuya talked about me when I’m not arouuuuuund~~”

“I don’t make it a habit,” Chuuya grumbled.

“I wouldn’t mind if you did.” Dazai blurted. Accidentally.

Chuuya didn’t know how to respond, and for a second his stomach kind of felt like it died and then got revived again through hard drugs and divine intervention, but thankfully he didn’t have to think of a reply because that was when Atsushi and Ryuunosuke came into the store. Holding hands.

(Here we take a brief interlude so that I may explain to you, dear Reader, that these two have finally started dating. Whoooooo.

I shall not go into further details as to how their romance awkwardly blossomed in the background scenes of our main plotline, but I will say it involved many, many episodes of severe and frankly embarrassing bouts of blushing from both parties involved, although with Atsushi it was always to excess. Ryuu more or less just stood by and tried to pretend everything was okay when his entire body was just one giant exothermic reaction on steroids.

Anyway, yes, they were now together and had since enjoyed the many pleasantries of a new, long-awaited relationship -- not excluding or limited to various makeout sessions in each other’s houses that increased levels of procrastination, stress, and, as one may concur, horniness.

And thus, why they had -- to put it candidly -- barged their gay asses into Illuminations just now: To beg Chuuya for help with their Physics assignment. And various other sundry projects their mutually similar degrees required completion for that they could maybe convince Chuuya to do for them -- I mean, help do for them -- so that they could get back to feeling each other up with liberal and enthusiastic abandon in Ryuunosuke’s car with tinted windows).

“You need help with the calculations?” Chuuya asked once the dilemma -- with some slight censorship, of course -- was presented to him by the two. “Atsushi, are you sure? I always call you for help with the math stuff.”

Atsushi bit his lip, his eyes never meeting Chuuya’s for fear his whorish tendencies would be recognized and shared with the rest of the group. “Uhh . . . Yeah, um, I just couldn’t understand what the long answer questions were asking ??? Plus by the time I got past the standard equation stuff it was already late and you know how much of a night owl I am and I always get so busy during the day --”

Dazai, who had been listening to this conversation from his spot behind the counter until now and had only since then contributed a lazy wave hello to the two newcomers, popped his head up and said, “-- ‘Busy’ meaning getting absolutely destroyed by Akutagawa-kun’s dick?”

Ryuunosuke, ever the stoic, replied calmly, “Yes.”

A strangled cry left the back of Atsushi’s throat as he dived behind Ryuu and clung to his jacket -- as if he could run away from his slutty ways that easily. (There is an old saying, dear Reader, and you should heed it: “If you’re going to open your legs, make sure it won’t catch up to you.”

I’m just kidding nobody fucking says that it doesn’t even make any sense. Who wrote that? Certainly not me).

Chuuya whipped around to glare at Dazai for not reading the room, but you can’t glare at somebody who wouldn’t even meet your eye [insert smartthinking.jpeg image here] and was instead humming without a care in the world in the other direction of your feral scowl.

“I-It wasn’t entirely my fault!” Atsushi whimpered, both his arms now wrapped around Ryuunosuke’s torso. “R-Ryuu s-said he had the charts figured out when he didn’t so I was fooled into thinking we were more productive than we actually were!”

“If you keep at it, maybe you’ll break the laws of biology and be more reproductive in your recreational pass-times,” Dazai muttered just loud enough for everybody in the room including a few customers to hear.

“Dazai.” Chuuya growled again, always defensive when it came to his friends. “You heard Atsushi, it wasn’t entirely his fault.”

“Oh, I know, Atsushi-kun will believe anything.”

“Hey! That’s not true!”

“My real name is Tsushima.”

“Oh my gosh, it is??” Atsushi said, excited.

“No, catboy, my name is not Tsushima! You fucking know that!”

Atsushi returned to his corner of shame behind his boyfriend, who sighed and handed Chuuya a handful of papers with charts and equations on them. “Anyway,” he coughed. “Can you take a look?”

“I guess, but . . . I’m working,” Chuuya said, but it was obvious he would rather be doing literally anything else. Even homework.

“I’ll run the front,” Dazai suggested, jumping up to his full height now and smiling from behind the counter. “How hard can it be?”

“Have you ever even had a job?” Chuuya frowned, turning to him with his hand on his hip.

“One time I flirted with a girl at an ice cream shop and she gave me a chocolate cone for free.”

“How in any way is that a job?”

“I saved money!”

“You didn’t earn or work for it!”

“Yes I did! Below minimum wage for charming a pretty lady -- we’re truly just stray dogs under the crippling metal whale that is capitalism.”

“What in the goddamned fuck are you talking about?”

“Go and do your weird Engineering stuff!” Dazai said, shooing all three of them away and plopping his flat ass on the stool Chuuya had been occupying just a few minutes ago. “How hard could it be?” To prove his point, he pressed a button on the cash register that made the machine start beeping uncontrollably.

After Chuuya worked out how to stop the beeping, he eventually agreed to go to the back of the store to help Atsushi and Ryuu for a few minutes. His brilliant reasoning was that Dazai was a literary prodigy -- practically inhaled books! -- and therefore he should be fine running Illuminations for only a few minutes, right?

The three of them had barely gone two minutes talking about the Physics assignment before they heard somebody burst into fitful sobbing.

Chuuya rushed back to the front, Atsushi and Ryuunosuke following behind, to find a little boy with tears streaming down his face, helplessly looking up at Dazai, who was using one hand to hold a thick paperback book out of his reach and the other to wave a disappointed finger at him. “-- Why do you read this filth, do you know who the author is? An evil, bigoted witch, that’s who! And not the good kind either, the Macbeth kind! Ugh! Completely unacceptable that people still read her -- there are much better fanfictions online that are far better written and gayer and --” (This lecture, as you might be able to tell, dear Reader, was not being appreciated, since every word from the prodigy just made the child cry harder).

“Dazai!” Chuuya interrupted, immediately crouching down to the little boy’s eye level and putting a gentle arm on his shoulder. “Hey, hey,” he said soothingly. “Are you okay? No need to cry.” Whipping his head to glare daggers at the genius, he snarled, “What happened?!”

Dazai crossed his arms and huffed. “This infant is trying to buy a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“So?!?!” Chuuya said shrilly, his voice still low so as not to frighten the child but also high enough to express that he was very upset right now. “Why do you care what this kid wants to buy?!”

“It’s not right for children to read this trash, this abomination to literature!”

“It’s Harry freaking Potter!”

“Yeah! And it’s written by a snake of a woman and I am not going to sit here and let some child corrupt himself with --”

“He’s literally, like -- hey, buddy, how old are you?” (“Six,” the little boy choked out, hiccuping). “He’s literally six, Dazai, who the hell cares about Harry Potter discourse --”

“You are never too young to learn that J.K. Rowling’s a cunt!”

“Dazai!” Chuuya shrieked, panicking and putting his hands over the little boy’s ears to shield him from the rancid potty mouth language. “Are you fucking insane?!” (Now that the child was protected, of course, Chuuya held no qualms in personally engaging himself in the aforementioned rancid potty mouth language). “You were just supposed to run the front!”

“I refuse to distribute shitty books to innocent children and proceed to take their money to be sent to that hag.”

“It’s a secondhand copy, Dazai! None of the money will go to J.K. Fucking Rowling the money’ll probably go to my Dad’s cheesecake addiction!”

“I don’t care! All books in this series should be burned!”

“It’s fucking store property!”

Dazai, paralyzed by technicalities, suddenly just decided to give up on being coherent at that point and simply opted to make a lot of distressed, whining baby sounds. Chuuya took his hands off the little boy’s ears and put them over Dazai’s mouth to shut him up, to which Dazai obviously very much disagreed to (since he started screaming louder), resulting in both of them bickering at each other -- Chuuya yelling at him (See, he does do that!) and Dazai, well, wailing like a widow who just found out her late husband left all his money to his bitch of a mother instead of her.

Amongst this chaos, the little boy was still, quite understandably, crying. He was already confused before as to why the tall beanpole man with the bandages wouldn’t let him buy the book he wanted to get but he was even more confused now over why the other man with the funny hat -- who seemed so, so kind before and gave nice, soothing back rubs -- was choking the bandage guy within an inch of his life.

The little boy was very, very stressed indeed, and he was also very small, and he had just spent all his allowance money on a book he apparently couldn’t buy, and so the horrors of life terrified him. And he cried. Oh, he cried.

That is, until another man -- this time with silver hair and a pink sweater with cat whiskers on the front -- leaned down close to him like Funny Hat Guy did and said, “Hi, please excuse them, they’re --”

“Performing mating rituals,” Ryuunosuke -- to the little boy he was Goth Dude -- interrupted, crouching down beside his boyfriend to hand the child his copy of The Philosopher’s Stone that Dazai had since discarded.

“W-What’s a mating ritual?” the little boy asked, sniffling.

“Er . . .” Atsushi paused, turning his head to look at Dazai and Chuuya -- who were still arguing, but now over something completely unrelated to what they were initially fighting about (something about “No, no, no if we joined the mafia, I’d be the brains and you’d be the brawn!!” “Says the dumbass who refused customer service to a six-year-old!”) -- and turned back to the little boy. “You see, when two people really love each other --”

“Kitten, don’t even try,” Ryuunosuke interjected, hopelessly in love and, because of love, chose to save his boyfriend from being just as stupid as the two dipshits in the background.

“My Mommy and Daddy don’t love each other. They’re getting a divorce,” the little boy piped up, his tears suddenly gone now that he had his book.

Atsushi’s eyes widened, jaw dropping, but Ryuunosuke, knowing just how brutally honest and savage kids could be from helping raise Gin since they were a baby, simply took the book back from him and deadpanned, “Oh, kid, if your parents are getting a divorce then I’m with Dazai-san, stick with fanfiction, it heals the soul. Kitten,” He gave a warm smile to Atsushi. “Give him some decent fic recommendations, yeah? That one you were reading this morning was really good. I’ll go get our homework from the back, I don’t think Chuuya’s going to help us.”

Atsushi furrowed his eyebrows. “H-How do you know I read Harry Potter fanfiction . . .?”

Ryuunosuke kissed him then and smirked against his lips. “Don’t tell me you forgot what you requested for last night, hmm?” he whispered against Atsushi’s ear, momentarily relishing in how his adorable boyfriend shivered under his hot breath before hoisting himself up and walking back to grab their papers.

And that is the story of how that little boy had his gay awakening in the aftermath of his parent’s announcement for legal separation and also in the midst of so much going on that he didn’t even know what to be traumatized about first.

By the time Ryuunosuke came back, Atsushi had given the kid some Harry Potter fanfic recommendations and told him to check out some online sources just so he could understand the basics of the wizarding world without actually reading the original trash -- I mean, books, yes, I meant books; I surely don’t share Dazai’s petty vendetta against a certain transphobic, rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril whom shall not be named further.

“Chuuya-san!” Ryuunosuke called curtly, intertwining his fingers with Atsushi’s and stepping outside the store, replenished and ready to waste more time they didn’t have making an absolutely beautiful mess of each other (preferably with tongue). “We’re leaving!”

And maybe there was just something about being told by your weird goth friend with a proclivity for cravats and barking (yeah) that he was leaving your dad’s store with his furry boyfriend just as you were grabbing a literary prodigy who never shut the fuck up half the time about dead authors and always badmouthed anything that relied on calculators to function by his stupid wool cardigan --

And, by hilariously ironic contrast, maybe there was also just something about being choked out by somebody utterly dense and stupid to all literature applying all the force of their tiny, 5’4” body on top of your mouth which had since stopped making bratty noises and was instead very quiet now, all of a sudden --

Yes, dear Reader, it was then -- so close together that not even the gods could untangle the moments to properly say which was which -- yes, it was then that they both fell into a love that had always been meant for them and them alone. A love so clumsy and riddled with inexactitudes that measured far across silly distances neither, in their young hearts, could fathom. A love that was long awaited, yet unforeseen. A love that would, like, fill ten whole chapters so far and rope everybody who’s had the misfortune of reading it into thinking this point was -- and how do I say this lightly -- hmmm . . . Well. A big deal.

Because it was not! A big deal, I mean. At least, not at the time. From anybody else’s perspective, those two were either frozen in a juvenile staring contest or had both suddenly lost the ability to see all known reality and must thus rectify such a shock by donning countenances of sheer dumbassery.

No, dear Reader, it was not A Big Deal, because all life-changing things happen in ways ones does not expect and certainly needs more ample time to keep denying before you even begin to accept that holy shiiiiiiiiiit, he’s kind of hotter than I signed up for and I don’t think I can survive being attracted to such an outrageous turd right now.

“ATSUSHII-KUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!” Dazai screamed, the first to snap out of it. Stumbling the entire time, he untangled himself from Chuuya and bolted to the door to catch up with the two boys who had just left and immediately yanked Atsushi’s sweater down to grab his attention. “I NEED YOU TO COME OVER RIGHT NOW FOR AN EMERGENCY SLEEPOVER!”

“Wh-What, w-why?!?”

“BECAUSE I’M HAVING A CRISIS AND I NEED TO BE DRAMATIC ABOUT IT!!”

“O-Okay, can R-Ryuu come??”

“NO I DON’T WANT YOUR GROSS BUDDING ROMANCE IN MY HOUSE!”

“B-But you just told me I should bring him over to your place just last week s-so you could get to know h-him better??”

“EUAUAGHEGHAHEHEHA?!!?!?”

“Dazai-san, your eyes look really wild and crazy, are you alri -- AAAH!”

The catboy was dragged -- still by his sweater -- away from the scene, exeunt, pursu’d by a . . . Oh, this joke would have been extremely funny if Akutagawa was, well, you know.

You know.

Meanwhile, back in Illuminations -- which at this point was pretty much empty save for some deaf old woman who had no idea what the fuck just happened because she was in the Cookbook aisle looking for a recipe for wet bottom pie (look it up) -- Chuuya was back where he started that afternoon: behind the counter of his Dad’s bookstore, running the cash register. But this time, ohhhhh-ho-ho this time, he wasn’t very bored, now was he?

Chapter Text

And so we have come to the point where both our strapping protagonists have let one hideous thought enter their minds -- the thought being that, maybe (and certainly after a vociferous amount of nononononononononononononono’s), they have, fortuitously, slowly, during a span of a few (*cough* ten) chapters, fallen in love with the other, to the vehement distaste of each.

Neither of them took it well. Embracing such a bullshit hand dealt by Fate is never really accepted graciously.

Or, in Dazai and Chuuya’s cases, gracefully.

Keep in mind, dear Reader, that neither idiot -- I mean main character, yes, main character, that objective nomenclature that fundamentally holds no bias or rudimentary judgement -- knows that their feelings are mutual, meaning that they have both been thrust into the entropic and assiduously unwanted venture of stupidly pining after the other. One may argue it is just for the sake of keeping the plot going, but I also just think it’s very funny.

After Dazai had left to run after Atsushi and Ryuunosuke, Chuuya -- who we had left in a suspended state of ‘what the fuck,’ mind you -- mechanically dealt with the goings-on of the bookshop and, since nobody else came in after 9 PM, decided to just close the store an hour early so he could maturely process the last couple of hours and work out healthy ways to communicate his thoughts and emotions through productive, adult mindfulness.

Just kidding, he got drunk and played video games all night. Didn’t even touch his homework. Kouyou came home with Baki from the vet to her little brother sobbing on the living room floor about how he’d rolled six times on his gacha game and still hadn’t gotten an SSR yet.

Meanwhile, Dazai had a more . . . elaborate way of dealing with his revelation. See, he always thought he’d fall in love with a writer. Or a literary prodigy like him. Maybe a poet. He would even have sunk down into believing he’d find a linguistics person attractive, but an Engineering major who didn’t even know who Ernest Hemingway was the first time they met?

God was mocking him. Dazai was an ant and God had a huge magnifying glass on a hot summer afternoon. Life was the birthday party of a rage-filled eight-year-old who had just been informed of his parent’s upcoming divorce, and Dazai was the piñata. All feasible realms of existence have converged into one Pompeii-exploding, Titanic-sinking, Starbucks-discontinuing-triple-mocha-frappuccinos-from-the-menu MESS (okay, that last one wasn’t as catastrophic as the former two, but Jesus, that shit sucked -- where else is a narrator supposed to get just the right amount of chocolate, caffeine, and diabetes for just $6.99?).

“Dazai?”

This was the worst realization of his fucking life. Fuck, why did he let this happen, shit shit shit shit --

“Dazai?”

He would quite literally commit any feasible capital offense including 138 murders, 312 cases of extortion, and 625 cases of fraud, along with various and sundry other crimes, if it meant he wouldn’t have realized he had these feelings. He didn’t even want to think about how /long/ they could have been there or how /deep/ he was now in inescapable, uncharted, and nonsensical emotional hell.

“Dazai?”

Oh, this would ruin him. Oh, he was never going to recover. He was going to die. He was sure he was going to die. Nothing of this sort had ever been authorized to happen to him before and there must be some cosmological fuckery behind it, like a curse or a divine reckoning for all of his past sins -- Oh, he was going to die over a STEM major that’s so fucking embarrassing -- “Dazai!!!”

The genius finally snapped out of his thoughts and came back to himself. He was currently braiding a strand of Kunikida’s long hair as his roommate, pajamaed and annoyed that he got dragged into this emergency sleepover, glared at him silently behind thick glasses. Atsushi, also in pajamas and braiding a strand of Kunikida’s hair, sat cross-legged on the futon he brought with him (it was black-and-white, tiger-print patterned, ethically sourced and may or may not have been cut at certain areas of fabric to hopefully make a fursuit one day!). All three boys had mugs of hot chocolate next to them, complete with stuffed animals and cookies just to get into the Vibe™ of things.

“Sorry, what?” Dazai said, taking a hair tie from his wrist and biting onto it as he finished the tail end of Kunikida’s braid.

Atsushi, who had been the one saying his name, replied, “Were you internally monologuing and overthinking about Chuuya-san again?”

Dazai flinched and accidentally made his teeth bite through the hair tie in his mouth, answering Atsushi’s question.

Kunikida, who was also wearing an extra blanket over his shoulders and a mud face mask, sighed exasperatedly. Taking another hair tie from his wrist and handing it to Dazai, who took it meekly, he said, “I don’t even understand what the problem is.”

“The problem is Chuuya,” Dazai said, scrunching his eyebrows in determination. “See, I’m on new sleeping pills for my insomnia and Oda said some side effects may include mood swings and hallucinations, so --”

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to argue that Chuuya’s a hallucination,” Kunikida groaned.

“No, don’t be stupid.” Dazai huffed. “My supposed,” He gagged. “‘Feelings’ are the hallucination, bolstered by random, uncontrollable mood swings!”

“You’re being ridiculous. If you don’t even trust your own emotions, how do you expect us to believe you?”

“You can trust me, Kunikida! Let’s not forget about that time in senior year when I heroically pulled you out of that river!”

“Let’s not forget who pushed me into that river.”

“I did not push you, I lightly bumped into you and you reacted dramatically.”

“How is adhering to gravity dramatic?!?!”

“Details, details, what matters is, would somebody who saved you from such a watery doom lie to you?”

“Yes! Many times!” Kunikida enunciated. “Last week you texted me in the middle of my lectures saying you were torn between a life and death decision and that it was imperative that I helped you with your situation.”

“It was a life and death situation!”

“YOU WERE BUYING HOUSE SLIPPERS AND COULDN’T DECIDE WHETHER TO GET THE BLUE ONES WITH THE BUNNIES OR THE BROWN ONES WITH THE BEARS.”

Dazai wiggled his toes instinctively in his pink house slippers with the chickens.

(And now we interrupt our regularly scheduled plot shenanigans to share with you the brief dialogue that passed between these two roommates after Kunikida left his class in a rush and drove to the department store because he thought Dazai was in danger:

** Please keep in mind that this conversation happened after at least 20 minutes of yelling from the more responsible of the pair. **

“YOU DIDN’T EVEN GET THE ONES I TOLD YOU TO GET!! I SAID GET THE GREEN ONES BECAUSE THEY’RE MADE OF SOFTER MATERIAL AND --”

“But Kunikiiiiiiiiiiiiida-kuuuuuuuuuuuun, I don’t like being told what to doooooooooooo!”

“YOU CALLED ME TO ASK FOR MY OPINION!!”

“Yeah, but that was just because I got lonelyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy uwu.”

“GO TO HELL AND ROT!”

“I need you to drive me home thouuuuugh uwu.”

So he did. After he helped Dazai pay for his new house slippers because he’d forgotten his wallet at home. uwu).

Now, coming back to current happenings, Kunikida sighed and threw his arms up in the air. “Look, the fact of the matter is, is that you’ve developed feelings for someone, so the logical step is to tell him you l--”

Just then Dazai started shrieking in protest, pulling the hair strands in his hands in the process and stopping Kunikida from finishing his point. “SHSHSHSHSHSHHHHH!!” The genius screeched. “No! No! Nonononono! Don’t say it! Don’t --!”

“Say what?” Kunikida yanked his hair back and tied the end of the braid himself with one fluid movement, flipping the strand over his shoulder and looking at Dazai dead in the eyes. (He was very serious-looking despite all the pink bows and clips in his hair, dear Reader, you must understand that he looked very scary, very stern). “That you like -- maybe even love --”

Dazai screamed again, falling back on the floor and grabbing his Baymax plushie. He buried his reddening face into its butt and let out a muffled wail.

Kunikida blinked, turning to Atsushi in confusion. “Um, what did I --”

“Don’t say the L word, it confuses and upsets him.”

“What L word? Lo -- AAAAAH!!”

Dazai lunged forward without warning, tossing Baymax aside in favor of putting a hand over Kunikida’s mouth, which unfortunately smeared some face mask mud into the man’s mouth, making him squawk as he choked on, well, mud.

“DAZAI!! YOU LITTLE --”

“I DON’T LOVE A STEM MAJOR, THAT’S BARBARIC!” Dazai insisted, pressing his skinny weight on top of his roommate. “THERE MUST HAVE BEEN SOME MISTAKE, MAYBE HE WAS A WRITER IN ANOTHER LIFE -- MAYBE HE WROTE SONGS ABOUT GOATS --”

“They say that the first stage of depression is denial, Dazai-san,” Atsushi murmured, backing up a little from Kunikida’s flailing body so he could grab his mug and sip at the cotton marshmallows floating on the surface.

“Okay, first of all,” Dazai said, sitting up because he was straddling Kunikida’s torso now. “I reached the ‘first stage of depression’ when I was conceived, okay? I’m past ‘stages,’ Atsushi, I am a Broadway musical with, like, seventy different spin-off sequels and upcoming TV shows -- preferably starring Mamorou Miyano as me because let’s be real he’s the only man for the job.” Kunikida finally managed to throw him off just then and stood up to go to the bathroom to wipe off his face, grumbling the entire way as Dazai continued, unperturbed. “Second of all, I am not in denial. I am being perfectly reasonable in my --”

“Denial?”

“Uncertainty, leaning on rejection.”

Atsushi rolled his eyes, wrinkling his nose a little because the steam from his hot chocolate tickled his upper lip. “I don’t understand why you’re so intent on not admitting your feelings.”

“We just called each other friends, like, two chapters ago!”

“What?”

“What?”

“It’s also almost the end of the term!” Dazai whined. “Not a good time to fall in love.”

“But is there really a good time to ever fall in love?” Atsushi sighed dreamily, obviously thinking of his reserved yet surprisingly kind boyfriend, who seems so hard on the outside, but once you get to know him, he can be really gentle and --

“Stop being cute and romantic, this is serious business!” Dazai interrupted, shutting that squishy montage shit down. “I have my grades to think about! I should focus on exams.”

“Dazai-san, you don’t need to study for exams, and you don’t.” Atsushi said matter-of-factly, remembering that one time when Dazai waited until the night before a final to even look at the syllabus -- only skimming it so he could memorize the authors’ names and book titles and get away with not having read the novels before he bullshitted the rest of the test. He got the highest score in the class.

“Whatever,” Dazai said dismissively, eyes darting to his phone that was charging on the floor from a lone socket in the wall. “I have research essays to do. And I have to go home.”

To anybody else, this would have seemed like a throwaway comment, but Atsushi knew better than to think that was the case. It was hard to catch, but Dazai’s voice sounded different when he talked about going back to his parent’s house in Aomori. It was like crumpled paper, and no matter how much he smoothed it down, the creases could still be seen by the ones who knew where to look for them.

Atsushi opened his mouth awkwardly, wanting to say something comforting or reassuring, but Dazai didn’t give him a chance. “My dysfunctional family will get my mind off of this nonsense!” he lilted. “And if they don’t, the stress of travelling all the way back home with all my textbooks and research materials to a house that’s always loud and disorganized will do the trick!”

An uneasy feeling crept up in Atsushi’s stomach, but he took Dazai’s lure anyway. “Y-You can’t just run away from this sort of problem.”

“Why not? That’s what happened with my last girlfriend.”

“I thought your last girlfriend kept complaining that you didn’t have a driver’s license but when you ended things with her she was so heartbroken that she went back home to South Korea, got pregnant, and now she has twins at, like, the age of twenty-three.”

“Oh yeah.” Dazai grimaced, choosing not to dwell on the past. (At least, until it was inconvenient for him). “Ummm. I meant my last, /last/ girlfriend.”

“Wasn’t she the one who joined a cult after you --”

“Anyway,” Dazai cleared his throat, his eyes clearly going out of focus for a second. “Going home will be good, just wait and see.” That feeling in Atsushi’s stomach came back, but he was barely able to register it before Dazai laughed emptily and added, “Mother will yell at me so much that I’ll forget what Chuuya even sounds like! And Father’ll passive aggressively bring up how disappointed he is in my academic choices and threaten to cut me off that I won’t even think about Engineering majors or just how perfect someone like Chuuya would have been as my parents’ son because they wanted a doctor or a moneymaking lawyer but instead they got some worthless shithead bastard who just reads books all day.”

“Dazai-san . . .” Atsushi said softly, blurting out the name in desperation. He knew his friend hated pity more than anything, but he still felt it nonetheless. Especially when Dazai got like this. It wasn’t often anymore, and Atsushi could usually catch on to these destructive trains of thought: Like with anybody else who loved the genius and knew how he was, Atsushi had come to learn how to maneuver him back to something simple or small. Mercurial distractions. After all, sad boys have the attention span of golden retrievers, you know.

“Stop . . .” Atsushi whispered, bunching his hands into fists underneath his blanket.

And a few years ago, before the good therapists and better medications came into his life, Dazai wouldn’t have. Stopped, I mean. He would’ve kept going with the self deprecatory soliloquy. It was so easy to slip into the bitterness of it all: mocking it with the fake laughter, the jokes, the façade of a would-be person. For Dazai, it was as simple as slipping on a pair of shoes or tying a scarf around your neck when you’re alone in your closet and the lights are off and it’s cold in here but at least there’s nobody around to stop you.

But, my dearest Reader, this wasn’t a few years ago. The minute Dazai saw the fear and concern in Atsushi’s eyes, he stopped. Making a mental note to mention this little episode of making a tiny yet healthy life choice to Oda later, Dazai let his masks down and gave a genuine, yet hesitant, smile. “Sorry, Atsushi-kun,” he said, meaning it.

Atsushi stared at him for a few more seconds before he nodded in understanding.

Kunikida came back from the bathroom (although, admittedly, he took far too much time in there just to wash off that face mask, and so it would not be outside the realms of possibility to speculate that he’d finished long before he actually returned to the room and instead stood in the hallway listening to Dazai and Atsushi’s conversation). Nevertheless, he plopped down on the floor and sighed, looking like he was about to pass out and succeeding in lightening the mood.

“Damn roomie, you look pretty tired,” Dazai observed, the sombre look in his eyes almost vanishing upon seeing his friend (much to Atsushi’s relief). “Would watching another period drama movie adaptation of a 19th century British novel cheer you up?”

“Dazai, that only cheers you up because you like pointing out all the stuff the movie got wrong and how the book is so much better,” Kunikida said, groaning. “Besides, you’re the reason why I’m so tired in the first place.”

“Awww, don’t be like that!” Dazai pouted. “You could’ve said no to the emergency sleepover!”

“You came into my room dragging Atsushi by his hoodie shouting, ‘I’M FUCKED!! THIS IS THE DAY I DIE!! GOD HAS FINALLY ABANDONED ME!!’ at the top of your lungs.”

“You make it sound like I was overreacting,”

“You were overreacting. Over some boy you fell in lo--”

Dazai visibly cringed and let out a strangled squeal, but refrained from throwing a tantrum.

Kunikida sighed again. “At any rate, no I didn’t have a choice to say yes or no.”

Dazai stuck out his tongue, picking up his Baymax Tsum-Tsum again and holding it against his chest. “Phoo, phoo, it’s not like you had anything better to do. You were probably going to stay in bed all night reviewing your notes and getting yourself into a food coma after eating one of your weird salads.”

“A healthy diet means a healthy mind!” Kunikida snapped. “And how could you say that about my notes? Reviewing them is of the utmost importance. Agh, we’re not even doing anything here, I should just go back to my room and pull an all-nighter to study --”

“Okay, Kunikida, babe, there’s literally only room for one chaotic mess in this partnership and I, quite frankly, have held that position for far too long a reign for you to do dumb crap like that, so you’re just gonna -- mmm, how do you say it, Atsushi?”

“Er, you’re just gonna have to . . . have to get your shit together Kunikida-san!” Atsushi piped up, half awake. While the two were bickering, he’d tucked himself into his futon and was cuddling the white stuffed tiger Ryuu had gotten him. He yawned contentedly, drifting to sleep in minutes.

And so, without another word, Kunikida got up and collected all their mugs and put them in the sink. Dazai shut off the living room lights and pulled Atsushi’s blanket over his chest. Thinking Kunikida had left to go sleep, Dazai made his way to his own room, but was stopped by his roommate calling him from the hallway. “Dazai,” Kunikida cleared his throat.

Dazai peered over his shoulder at him. “Hmm?”

Kunikida seemed like he wanted to say something, but when Dazai turned to look at him, he suddenly felt that feeling we so rarely get when somebody we really care about reminds us that they’re here, despite so many disadvantages and opportunities to have not been. The moonlight from outside their living room windows, coupled with the glowing, weak hum from their kitchen’s illuminated appliances, hid the way Kunikida held his tongue and just took a moment to look at his friend, whom he’d watched grow up and get older since high school, and was all at once possessed with honest gratitude for his just standing there, in their shared apartment hallway, blinking back at him with drowsy chocolate eyes.

“Good night,” Kunikida finally said, randomly deciding in the back of his head that he wouldn’t take out the braids Atsushi and Dazai did that night. He turned and went to his bedroom, closing the light almost immediately after taking off his glasses and setting them on his headboard.

Dazai stayed where he was, even after Kunikida had shut his door and started snoring about five minutes after he said good night.

After a while -- give or take a few heartbeats touching the edges of his chest in a steady, quiet rhythm -- Dazai also went to his room and slept. He didn’t have nightmares, and if any did come, even for just a moment, they would flare and fade in passing. Almost without pain.

And somewhere, just a few fucking miles away, Chuuya Nakahara was passed out drunk in his own bed with not a single thought running through his mind other than the fact that he’d spent so many scout tickets just to get one rare card that he already had, godfuckingdamnit.

Chapter Text

It took both Atsushi and Kunikida dragging him out of bed and vociferously nagging him for Dazai to get his flat ass to Crime and Detective Fiction the following day. To make sure he made it to school, Kunikida even drove him to the main campus and shoved a lunchbox full of food he’d cooked in the morning while Atsushi was peeling the prodigy off of his mattress one flailing skinny limb at a time.

Similarly, it also took Kouyou putting a slobbering Baki right next to Chuuya’s sleeping face to wake him up, and that was when Chuuya had found himself on the living room couch with no shirt on -- one of his dads’ credit cards in hand -- and it was already almost noon. (He skipped brunch with Arthur and Paul -- who’d just come back last night from their weekend trip -- so he wouldn’t have to tell them that he got drunk and spent about ¥1500 of their money rolling for his gacha game just a few hours ago . . .).

And so, when our two protagonists met again after they both simultaneously -- yet unbeknownst to one another -- realized they were about six feet deep in the no-take-backsies kind of love with each other, Chuuya was hungover and Dazai was kind of covered in feathers because he’d used his pillow as a shield to keep his friends at arm’s length this morning. (It obviously didn’t work, since it was two against one, dear Reader, but may I just tenderly add that while Kunikida was driving Dazai to school earlier today he was muttering out loud about how there was a sale at the superstore on pillows and I guess he can drop by after his labs to get his roommate a new one).

Class started earlier than usual since it was the week before break and finals season. Dr. Mori had already been talking by the time Chuuya’s brain registered that the person who’d just plopped down on the seat next to him covered in white fluffy things was Dazai. Their eyes met for a second, but that was when the last time they’d been together flashed explicitly in both of their minds. Dazai was the first one to look away, much to Chuuya’s relief since he was suddenly nervous he would say something stupid or -- God forbid -- bring it up. (However, this was a rather stupid presumption on Chuuya’s part since it requires Dazai to actually acknowledge his feelings instead of like, doing literally anything else).

The next few hours went by smoothly because it was that point in the semester where everybody’d pretty much given up and were just grateful to have made it to school on time because in their head it compensated for the fact that nobody had a goddamn clue what in the absolute fuck heck they were doing anymore.

An immense awkwardness stood between Dazai and Chuuya the entire time. Neither felt like they could even move their head in fear of catching a glimpse of the other because who knows what seeing him could lead to?! Another embarrassing revelation?! The sky falling?!??!? Unsolicited boners?!?!?!

There was a particular moment in the class when Dazai and Chuuya had to consult a chapter in the textbook and both of them had to lean in really close because the text was so small but that meant that they could feel each other’s breath on their cheek and had to pretend that Everything Was Fine but everything was clearly Not Fine.

The millisecond Dr. Mori pronounced class was over and wished everybody a safe and rejuvenating break (as if he hadn’t just assigned a crapton of readings and other miscellaneous homework to slave over during the holidays), Dazai bolted from his chair and sped-walk out the lecture room, leaving behind a flurry of pillow feathers (one of which a poor nearby student accidentally inhaled directly into his asthmatic lungs, but we don’t have time to worry about that obscure fuck).

Dazai felt somebody grab his sleeve from behind, making him stop dead in his tracks. He whirled around and, sure enough, the hand ~ fisting ~ his sweater was Chuuya’s (So suggestive! Perhaps it would foreshadow later, more lubricous encounters between the two, hmm? hmm?? HMMMMM?????).

“Where are you going?” Chuuya groaned, clutching the side of his head in agony. He’d drunk too much last night (Unsurprisingly, he thought this thought at least five times a month).

Dazai, who had touch issues galore (although it never really seemed to be a bother when it came to Chuuya until now), stiffened at the contact. “Class is over,” Dazai mumbled dumbly. “Have to go.”

“Do you have another appointment?” Chuuya asked, forcing his eyes to meet his. He was way too tipsy for this, but something told him that if he didn’t talk to Dazai and make sure everything was okay between them, he’d never get to. And if he never did, soon enough, they’d just . . . stop talking. Dazai seemed like the type of person who ran away when things got like this. Whatever this was.

And, despite everything, Chuuya didn’t want that.

“No, I --” the prodigy stammered. Since the hallway was fluttering with students moving in and out of classes, somebody inevitably bumped into the tall lanky idiot clutching at his bookbag which he’d left unzipped because he was in such a rush to find somewhere to hide from Chuuya. Dazai dropped his bag and out came a handful of books and stationary.

“Geez, you’re clumsy.” Chuuya laughed a little, immediately bending down the moment Dazai did too. In stereotypical rom-com fashion, their hands touched trying to pick up a notebook, and when they looked up to gaze at each other's eyes, all the world stopped and everything they had known or would ever have to face against their raging love didn’t matter so long as they were together.

Just kidding, they bonked foreheads.

Dazai’s butt hit the floor hard, and he winced. Chuuya had managed to remain squatting and was rubbing the spot where Dazai’s wire glasses hit his face. When he noticed Dazai had fallen, he inched closer, picking up the last of his stuff off the ground, and held out a hand. Dazai took it without thinking too much, and Chuuya, despite being the shorter of the two, hoisted him up no problem.

Even though he was perfectly sober (unless you counted the antidepressants and insane amounts of caffeine in his system), Dazai felt like the one who was lightheaded.

Chuuya handed him the things he’d dropped, searching his face for anything that could indicate what he was thinking.

Neither of them knew how happy they could make each other.

Dazai shifted in his Oxfords and looked like he was about to run off again, but Chuuya blurted out, “Do you want your coffee? My dads got me a gift card when they were in Hachiōji last Friday, though thinking back I should probably return it to them because I spent so much money playing games last night, and --”

Dazai, who felt a sharp stab in his chest once he was told Chuuya had spent his night having fun and doing stupid video games without a care in his life while he had had a full-on breakdown, cut him off, saying, “No thanks. On the coffee, I mean.”

Chuuya blinked. His vision was still kind of hazy. “Oh,” he replied. “Are you sure? ’Cause it’s almost the last week of the term and I figured you’d want a macchiato.”

Dazai, who was a perpetual slut for coffee, bit his lip. For a second, he considered it. Going to the library like they usually did after class and letting Chuuya buy him something. Letting the tension drop so they could go back to their regular bickering. Review notes for the upcoming exam season like they were just two complete opposite students who’d accidentally been put in the same class together but ended up becoming friends along the way.

Friends.

With those eyes? Dazai couldn’t handle it. Not right now.

Without a word, he put his stuff in his bookbag and slung it properly over his shoulder. “No thanks,” he repeated. “Kunikida’s waiting for me, he’s driving me home.” (Lie! -- Kunikida was still in his labs taking down notes on the side effects of painkillers and nodding along because yes, yes, he knows this medication may cause dangerous side effects, he lived with a lunatic who pounded them like Skittles).

The inside of Chuuya’s mind was screaming for Dazai to just say yes, goddamnit, let me buy your coffee for you you piece of shit it doesn’t even have to be like a sugar daddy situation if we’re just friends that’s fine me having an unrequited crush on you doesn’t have to affect our little shared textbook deal like I can just be your a paypal or something so can you please just let me spend seven fucking dollars on your Starbucks order like I used to? “Well,” Chuuya babbled, his voice lopsided. “W-We should meet up. Um. During the break. I’ll buy you a coffee then.”

Dazai’s eyes widened a little, but it might have just been a trick of the light. “I’m not in Yokohama during the holiday,” he admitted, his head visibly hanging the moment he said it. “I have to go home. To Aomori.”

“Oh,” Chuuya replied dumbly, not wanting the conversation to end just yet. “Are you gonna be with your family?”

“Yeah,” Dazai said, frowning. “I’ve been putting off going back for weeks. My Mother insisted I come back at least before exams.”

“But I thought you had a lot of essays to do over the break?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“And don’t you have a lot of research materials for them?”

“Yeah.”

“Our one paper for Crime and Detective Fiction already requires at least two published books on your essay topic . . .”

“Yeah.”

“But . . . you’re taking a full course load, Dazai . . . With everything added up you’d have to lug at least ten different textbooks on top of your other stuff . . . Even though you’re smart and everything, that’s still so much work, and --”

“I’ll be fine, Chuuya.” Dazai interrupted. To be perfectly honest, he had barely heard the other’s worrying. He was too busy looking at him. At Chuuya.

Maybe this was what all those authors wrote about in all the books he read so much but didn’t really understand ’till now. He’d thought everything he ever needed was in his stories. He never really cared for ones about love or anything, but now all he could think about was --

“Dazai,” Chuuya said, taking a step towards him.

The genius looked really tired all of a sudden. Twisting around with a fluid movement, Dazai started walking to the campus parking lot before Chuuya could say anything else. “See you.” He gave a small wave, and then he was gone.

Chuuya thought he’d never seen anyone so good at goodbyes.

//

The train to Aomori wasn’t as hard as it usually was. (And, for the purposes of this story, let’s just live in a happy, cheerful world where Japan’s railway system specifically catered to Dazai’s home trips because your narrator -- that’s me, dear Reader -- is far too tired to even think about how many stops and platforms he would have to go through just to get to Aomori and, quite frankly, I don’t have the energy to conceptualize it, let alone write it all down. So here we are. And we’re gonna have a fucking grand old time). Travelling for Dazai was hard because it meant being alone with his thoughts for almost five hours, with just the passing grayscale scenery and no amount of music blasting through his headphones loud enough to blot out the noise in his head.

It also didn’t help that he got sick reading on moving vehicles. Because God has a sense of fucking humor.

When he first started university and had to go back and forth between cities to play the good eldest son, travelling had been extremely hard. Back then, Dazai would just sit in his seat, anxiously craving for something to grab on to or to keep his hands busy with. The restlessness would sink into his very bones. He’d even tried to get Oda to prescribe him some special painkillers for his stomach so that he could read a book or two while riding the train, but that only ended with him rushing to the bathroom and throwing up his one meal of the day.

In some ways, Dazai dreaded the train ride more than he dreaded going home. But that always changed once the trip ended and suddenly he couldn’t rely on the tracks to keep him moving anymore.

Dazai took a fat nap to eat away at the hours. He used to be a bit embarrassed being the crazy guy with a cozy blanket, sleep mask, and sweatpants cuddling a Baymax Tsum Tsum during an almost-800 km train ride, but, like with most things when put into the perspective of a chronically depressed college student, Dazai just stopped giving a fuck.

By the time he woke up, it was dark outside. It had been raining when he boarded and it was still raining now. The second he got off the train car with his suitcase, he headed straight for a stray vending machine and got himself an iced coffee. Sometimes, if the trip had been especially bad and he couldn’t relax, he’d buy himself some fast liquor (with cash, never with his debit card lest his parents got curious and traced it) to prep himself for homecoming, but he didn’t have much on him. He’d rather have bought a new book than cheap alcohol anyway.

The machine sputtered out the coffee can and Dazai reached out to pick it up. It was really chilly outside, so it probably wasn’t the best choice to have picked a cold drink. But he didn’t care. He pressed the can to his lips and kissed the metal, letting the frozen liquid rush down his throat, his eyes wandering drearily around the station. Everybody was either scurrying to catch their next ride or waiting for one to arrive with open arms. They were all strangers -- new unknowns -- but what difference did a different crowd of strangers make? They were would-be creatures and pedestrian no-faces that swam around him like old film reels. He was at an in-between place and in-between places always had too many lonely people clustered together.

Dazai’s eyes landed on a lone woman sitting on a bench with a handbag. She was dressed warmly and smoking, the tremoring city lights just barely offering him a glance at her murky silhouette. The end of her cigarette seemed to flicker against the bright darkness. The way ghosts must shimmer when it was time to dance.

He was supposed to call a cab, but he much preferred to walk. Even if it took a little longer. If his parents knew he’d skipped out on the taxi, they’d scold him for the entire week, but Dazai was willing to take the risk.

He didn’t have much on him, after all.

Aomori was smaller than Yokohama, but Dazai always thought that it was the most beautiful city in the world. He’d been born here, and, while he barely retained anything during his years in California (not anything good at least), he remembered coming home again and feeling so relieved. They’d barely gotten out of the airport baggage claim before Dazai had grabbed Yumeno’s baby stroller and wheeled them out past the doors, breathing in Japan for the first time in a long time. Their parents had caught up to them eventually, but not before Dazai had leaned down to Yumeno and pointed to a neon sign with kanji symbols on it, saying, “Hey, we’re home! Not English anymore, yeah? Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Trust me, the food’s way better.”

Yumeno just cooed adorably since they were, like, a newborn baby and didn’t have any hard-set opinions on the supremacy of Asian cuisine.

By the time Dazai reached his neighborhood, and soon enough his house, his feet hurt and he was ready to take a shower. Like always, he was quiet in opening the gate and getting to the front door. It was late, but not too late. No one in his family ever slept early. The lone porch light hung above him, casting a welcoming orange hue over the doorbell, which he rang right after taking a deep breath and letting all the air in his body leave him. Just like Oda had told him to do.

His Mother was the first to greet him. Every time he saw her, she looked so much older. She was wearing her usual pink pajama set -- the one with the holes in the worn fabric that she refused to replace even when they offered to buy her a new one. She smiled at him -- the kind of smile a child would think held all the love they would ever need in the world -- and stepped aside to let him in the house. She coughed as he stepped inside and started taking off his shoes. Dazai quickly shoved them in the mudroom closet and hurried over to pat his Mom’s back. Without even putting down his bags, Dazai walked to their small kitchen fridge and took out the water pitcher, grabbing a glass from the cabinet before pouring a drink and handing it to her swiftly. He put everything back in its place almost as efficiently as he’d taken them out.

“Thank you, Osamu,” his Mom said, sighing into the cup.

“Where’s Q? And Dad?” Dazai asked, flitting his eyes around the main area instinctively. He was glad to find the place where they put the bills somewhat lacking in envelopes carrying thick red letters and loopy numbers. It was a manageable emptiness.

His Mother cleared her throat. “Yumeno’s in his room. He wanted to stay up and wait for you, but I don’t know if he’s still --”

“Yeah.” Dazai said, biting his lip. “And Dad?”

“Night shift,” she said wearily.

“What? But it’s Saturday.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.”

Dazai, who had had to worry about that and so much more since he was nine, opened his mouth to protest, but she just flapped her hand dismissively, setting the glass down on the counter and walking over to the stove. “Did you eat? Did the cab overcharge you?”

Dazai, in a similar fashion to how his Mother just waved away things she didn’t want to talk about, said nothing and shrugged off his bag. Taking a seat at the dining table, which was adjacent to the kitchen and even smaller, he let his Mom heat up the food she’d undoubtedly been cooking all day, now that she had nowhere else to be.

Out of habit, Dazai’s Mom watched him eat. All the weariness of travelling and the stress of coming here rushed through him the second her questions came. Like torrents.

She asked about school, but it was really only out of politeness: A precursor to what she really wanted to know.

Still, she didn’t hide her disapproval and boredom when Dazai mentioned having a lot of research essays to write this break.

“Oh, so you won’t be spending much time with us.”

“I’ll try my best, Mom.”

“You go away to study books and only ever come back home to study more books. They’re not law books either! Or medicine. Osamu, you’d make such a good doctor, you know.”

“I know, Mom.”

“What happened to the little boy who told me he’d grow up to be a doctor so he could save his Mama’s bad health?”

“. . . I don’t know, Mom.”

“Tch. What else have you been doing?”

“Nothing really.”

“Haah? You always say you’re so busy and that’s why you never call me.”

“I do call you, Mom.”

“When!”

“When I can.”

“Tch! I was talking to Awaji-san the other day, asking about Kunikida.”

“Mhmm?”

“And she says he calls her! Every night. They talk for hours.”

“Kunikida must have a lot to say.”

“Kunikida is a good son.”

“I know, Mom.”

“Good student too. Pharmacy school. You should --”

“-- Be more like him, I know.”

Dazai knew that if he played the part of the most dull person to ever walk the earth, it’d discourage his Mother’s tempestuous interrogation. And if he could get through this conversation as painlessly as possible and finish his food quickly, he could charm her into sleeping early by promising to wait for his Father to come home. Then he could take that shower.

He didn’t talk to his Dad when he got back. He used to ask him all the usual questions a parent would ask their child, but Dazai had learned to convey anything that needed to be said in one reassuring look. His Father and him shared an understanding nod before Dazai left him in the kitchen to make himself a very, very late and cold dinner.

Dazai peeked into Yumeno’s room just to make sure that they were, in fact, passed out in bed surrounded by Dazai’s hand-me-down plushies and that accursed doll of theirs.

At seeing his sibling, Dazai’s last bit of energy sapped out of him. He dragged himself to his old room, not even bothering to turn on the light before collapsing onto the mattress, breathing in laundry detergent, second-class carpeting, fresh-cut vegetables, sizzling meat, and dusty piano keys. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to fall asleep.

//

Dazai was woken up by Yumeno body-slamming themselves onto his sleeping form like some sort of pro wrestler that was out for blood. The air left his lungs immediately and he started desperately wheezing while Yumeno giggled, kicking their feet over the bedside and shoving their doll in Dazai’s face (which was now turning very blue and pale).

“Nii-saaaaan, let’s go get ramen!”

Dazai was still choking, so Yumeno got off him -- not out of mercy, oh no. Q just didn’t feel like trying to make out what Dazai was saying in between his strangled, subdued gurgles.

Dazai heaved himself up to a sitting position, punching his chest lightly for better airflow. When his breathing settled for a bit, Yumeno sat beside him on the bed and crossed their arms, raising an unphased eyebrow. “Are you done?”

“Am I done temporarily dying?! Yeah! I think so!” Dazai scoffed, rubbing his eyelids tiredly.

“You’re being dramatic.” Yumeno rolled their eyes, hugging their doll tightly. “C’moooooonnn, let’s go out and get food!”

“I can’t drive, we have no money, and you have school.” Dazai groaned, eyeing his little sibling’s navy school uniform and hat. The doll, of course, was wearing a matching set.

“Why do I have to go to school?” Yumeno whined, throwing themself onto Dazai’s bed suddenly.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the law.” Dazai deadpanned.

Q poked their head up from the pillow they’d buried their face in. “Who said?”

“The government?” Dazai said. “I’m pretty sure if you stopped going, they’d put the parents in jail.”

“Would they put you in jail too?”

“Sure.”

“That’s okay.” Yumeno sighed, flopping back. “I’d visit you guys.”

“You little shit.”

“Awwwww, don’t be like thaaaaaaaat! Nii-saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!”

Dazai’s phone started ringing.

Chuuya wanted to video call.

Oh God.

Before he could hide his phone, Yumeno had wrapped their tiny self around Dazai’s shoulders and looked at the screen. “Who’s . . . Slug?” Q asked, ignoring how one of their fingers was dangerously close to poking out one of Dazai’s eyeballs. They made grabby-hands at the device, but Dazai refused to let them have it.

Yumeno, who had learned from the very best, thus decided to choose violence. They started whining even louder and thrashing their small limbs against Dazai’s back. They punched his arms with litol baby fists and buried their face in his shirt for a second before darting away in horror and screeching, “You stink!! Stinky!! Stinky Nii-san!!”

“Shut up, you’re gonna wake up Mom and Dad.”

“Stinky!!”

“I literally took a shower last night.”

“Still stinky!! It’s that detergent you started using ever since you left for college. Blech!!”

Dazai’s phone kept ringing, but Q wasn’t really giving him much time to panic over whether to answer it or not. What he was panicking over was Q finding out who Chuuya was.

Dazai very much kept his social and family life as far apart as he could. Kunikida, Atsushi, and most of his friends had learned to accept it and not ask too many questions, but Yumeno was relentless when it came to getting information about their older brother. It wasn’t just for curiosity’s sake. Oh, no, dear Reader. Yumeno wanted dirt.

With a quick lunge, Yumeno had thrown their doll onto Dazai and distracted him long enough to grab his phone and hit answer. Dazai, thrust into a battle with the stuffed toy from hell, only realized what Q had done when he heard Chuuya’s voice. “Hello?”

He wanted to die. His life sucked. He dropped to the floor and planted his face in the rug.

“Dazai?”

Come on. It was Day 1 of being back home. Couldn’t he get a few minutes of peace?

“Helloooooooo!!” Yumeno drawled, pressing their face close to Dazai’s camera and giving Chuuya a close-up look of their big brown and yellow eyes.

Why couldn’t Q have just been born a sweet little angel who didn’t torment their older sibling because they were the literal spawn of Satan? Like those tiny kids in the nice family-friendly movies that always supported their brothers and cheered them on from the sidelines and sometimes did cutesy little tea parties?

“Are you looking for my Nii-saaaaaaan?”

“Uh.” Chuuya was a bit confused, but anybody would’ve heard the smile in his voice. “You must be Yumeno.”

“Wowowowow!” Q jumped excitedly, squealing a little. “You know about me?”

“Not much. Just a little.”

“Still cool!” Q insisted, moving the phone so Chuuya could see them better. They waved, and the redheaded boy in a choker, loose graphic T-shirt, skinny jeans, and a porkpie hat waved back (Q was internally judging their brother for having such a weird-looking friend).

“How’s it going?” Chuuya asked casually, like meeting Dazai’s eccentric little sibling was something he did everyday.

“Pretty good!” Yumeno sang. “How about you?”

“Pretty good too.” Chuuya laughed. The sound of it was enough for Dazai to poke his head up from the floor.

“Nii-san is currently face-down on the floor.”

“Like a YuGiOh card?”

“Ew, gross. My older brother was obsessed with that show when he was growing up. You oldies with your old anime.”

Dazai scrambled to yank the phone out of Q’s hand, but Chuuya just laughed again because he’d embraced the most useful life hack one could have when it came to children: Just accept that they’re assholes. Smile it off. Smile it off, dear Reader!

“Anyway, here he is.” Yumeno said, throwing the phone to Dazai, who just barely caught it.

Dazai adjusted his camera and got the video to stabilize, finally showing his face to Chuuya, who, upon seeing him, flashed him a brilliant smile only a person who regularly woke up before noon and therefore was capable of experiencing joy in the morning could give.

It was stupid, but Dazai’s stomach flipped anyway. (Especially since the collar on Chuuya’s shirt was so low and showed way too much skin and just a hint of boob under the white fabric).

“Hi,” Dazai said dumbly.

“Hey,” Chuuya was smirking.

“Why are you smiling?”

“I’m not smiling.”

“Yes you are!”

“Oh. Huh. Maybe I am.”

“Why are you smiling??”

“Not telling.”

Dazai frowned, unimpressed. “Why did you call me? It’s,” He checked the clock on the wall. “8 AM.”

“Oh, I was gonna call you last night to make sure you got to Aomori okay, but I fell asleep.”

“. . . Wait. How did you know I would be home by last night?”

“I asked Kunikida.”

“You two talk?”

“Sometimes. Mostly about you and how insufferable you are.” Chuuya paused, grinning again. “Although he is insanely hot, so I . . . delight in our conversations.”

Dazai groaned. Yumeno, who didn’t really know what was going on but had registered that their older sibling was being somewhat harassed, giggled in the far corner of Dazai’s room.

“Anyway,” Chuuya said. It might have just been the screen glitching, but Dazai thought he saw a look of worry pass by his face. “I didn’t know you’d leave the first day of break.”

“I . . .” Dazai gulped, feeling his stomach doing somersaults again. “Uh . . .”

“You could’ve at least taken the gift card my dads gave me,” Chuuya joked, secretly relieved that Dazai seemed to be more like himself than he was the last time they’d talked. “They freaked when I told them about how I used their cards to get ahead in my game.”

“You spent money on your game?”

“Well, yeah, but in my defence I hadn’t done that in months.”

Dazai couldn’t help retorting, “Well. That sounds like a ‘you’ problem, so.”

Chuuya laughed again. Dazai wasn’t really sure where this call was going but had just come to the conclusion that it was kind of really fucking nice before he heard, “YUMENO!! OSAMU!!”

Both siblings froze.

Chuuya went silent, not really processing what that screaming was until it happened again:

“YUMENO!! OSAMU!! COME OUT AND EAT BREAKFAST!! YUMENO!!”

Their Father’s muffled voice reached past Dazai’s bedroom door. “Stop yelling, woman, you’re going to wake up the entire neighborhood!”

“I’M NOT YELLING!! WHO’S YELLING?!”

“YOU ARE! I swear, I can’t get ANY rest with you in this house.”

“OH! WELL I’M SORRY FOR BEING JOBLESS!! MAYBE YOU’RE ALL BETTER OFF IF I WAS DEAD!! IS THAT IT? NO MORE LOUD-MOUTH ME?!”

There was more screaming, and the sound of furniture banging. Without another word, Yumeno picked up their doll and left the room, hoping that walking into this early-morning fight would calm their parents down long enough for Dazai to apologize and maybe even explain what was going on.

But Dazai didn’t do that.

The last thing Chuuya saw before his phone screen went black was Dazai closing his eyes and reflexively grabbing his arm through his shirt: nails digging in far enough for the bandages underneath to give way.

“Oi, Dazai. Are you --” Chuuya stammered, but he’d already hung up.

Good at goodbyes, I’m telling you.

Chapter Text

Time always seems to pass by faster when it’s break season, bringing with it the crushing reality of school’s everyday tortures and responsibilities once that last Sunday of freedom concludes with you scurrying to get all the assignments you didn’t do, done.

Except, with Dazai, he didn’t really get a break. He’d spent the majority of the next week hiding in his room, distracting himself with work, and occasionally coming out to see his family at dinner or whenever his Mother called him to do something. He tried spending time with Q one-on-one, but they were busy with their own stuff. Usually whenever Dazai came back home, he’d plop himself in Q’s messy room and hang out aimlessly until Yumeno suddenly suggested they do something like have a Barbie movie marathon or look at gross video compilations on YouTube about pimple-popping techniques or whatever deep-sea creatures were lurking within the Marianas Trench. (Sometimes Dazai suggested stuff to do too, like watch historical documentaries on the Boer Wars or read out whatever book he was on to Q like he used to when they were little, but Yumeno rejected “that old man shit” nine times out of ten and had things their way eventually).

Before he knew it, the break ended, and Dazai found himself on the train to Yokohama again, feeling more exceptionally exhausted than relaxed.

And, since I know you were wondering, dear Reader, no, he hadn’t returned any of Chuuya’s calls.

Ever since their interrupted video chat, Chuuya had been sending Dazai text messages that totally didn’t expose how worried he was, no, not at all dear Reader. Dazai had only replied to the ones concerning school, and even then with monosyllabic and/or halfhearted responses that flexed his natural genius (“It’s obviously an allusion to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, didn’t you catch the pastoral imagery from eight chapters ago?). And any ones where Chuuya tried to reel him in with a question or a corny joke (“Yo Dazai, why do we even need to write conclusions for essays anyway? Like, weren’t you paying attention? Just stop reading!”) would either be met with a READ at 3:07 AM or a “You can just say you’re incompetent and go, chibi.”

By the time he’d gotten back to Yokohama, reorganized everything from his suitcase, and dropped himself right next to Chuuya in Crime and Detective Fiction class, Dazai looked like he’d been hitting himself in the face repeatedly with a bus.

It also didn’t help that Mori had handed back their essays that day and Dazai got the lowest, most pathetic mark he’d gotten in the course. (It was still above the normal class average, don’t get me wrong, dear Reader, but geniuses don’t really like to be reminded that they can fuck up too sometimes).

Typical of anybody who dealt with the hard, unexpected blows of life on their own, Dazai’s face remained neutral when reading over the scathing comments Dr. Mori had given him (“I expected better from the faculty’s supposed literary prodigy, though I do understand students have been under a lot of stress lately . . .”) before shoving the lacklustre, subpar essay into his bag and setting his eyes forward to the man himself at the front of the class, who seemed to be smiling smugly at him from the podium.

Nobody would’ve known Dazai’d just gotten a bad mark. It looked like business as usual with him.

Except Chuuya had noticed that Dazai had gotten the same mark as he did. And, while he was happy with his grade, he certainly knew Dazai wasn’t.

Chuuya decided not to bring it up. He’d barely even nodded a hello when he got to class that afternoon, and it was obvious from the get-go that Dazai wasn’t going to acknowledge how he basically disappeared for days with no explanation.

Evidently, he wouldn’t bring up the video call either.

So, after class ended, Chuuya trailed behind Dazai yet again to suggest hanging out at the library just like usual.

Dazai, who had lowkey kind of accepted that Chuuya’s little glimpse of his maladjusted home life would scare him off from ever speaking to him again, was a bit taken aback by his suggestion to spend the rest of the afternoon together. As if nothing had happened and a whole week of radio silence didn’t hang between them like some sort of rotted, pickled mistletoe.

Dazai reluctantly agreed, and Chuuya bought him his usual coffee without complaint or questions. There was a two-for-one sale at Starbucks that let anybody who bought a normal drink get one of its specialized coffees for free, which meant Chuuya had accepted the barista’s offer of an M&M and fudge cappuccino on the house.

While the two of them sipped in silence, looking for a spot to sit, Chuuya fingered at the two chocolates at the very top of his drink and said, “That’s us,” pointing to the two M&Ms floating on top of his iced coffee.

“Which one is me?” Dazai asked, leaning over his shoulder to peer at the candy.

“The little blue deformed one,” Chuuya suggested.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Hey! Chuuya!” somebody called out.

The two boys turned their heads in the direction of the voice. At a cluster of tables and chairs a few feet away were Tachihara, Gin, Higuchi, Ryuunosuke, and Atsushi. Tachihara was waving for them to come over, and both obliged. (Or, more like Chuuya ran over happily and Dazai followed behind).

Upon closer inspection, it became very clear that Atsushi was Not Doing Okay. He was hugging Ryuu’s arm and had his face buried in the folds of his sweater, nuzzling into his collarbone like some blind baby looking for something to just grab onto because literally nothing in the world makes sense I just got out a few minutes ago bro.

Dazai raised an eyebrow. Gin cleared their throat and held up a piece of loose leaf paper that said, “Atsushi tried to code while high last night because his professor joked about it.”

Dazai made a “Hmm!” face and was debating whether or not to ask another question, but Gin was already ahead of him. They turned the paper, the new side saying, “He got frustrated with the coding and tried to play Mystic Messenger. Unfortunately, nobody told him that it was fucked up and he got spooked.”

Dazai snorted. “Which route did he take?”

“We don’t know,” Higuchi jumped in. “Ryuu and him just showed up here like this and we’ve been trying to get answers out of Atsushi but even the mention of Mystic --”

Atsushi pulled his head out of his boyfriend’s sweater and half hissed, half whimpered. “DO NOT MENTION THE CURSEDSDHGJDSAS --!!”

(If you couldn’t make sense of that last word because of the distressed keyboard smash, dear Reader, imagine how I felt when somebody sent it to me just a few days ago unsolicited. I literally copy-pasted it on here so we can suffer the nonsense together. Look at us, we’re bonding. D’awwwww).

Ryuunosuke tucked Atsushi’s head back in and patted his hair. “Shhh.”

“I thought it was a wholesome dating game!!” Atsushi sobbed into the fabric. “Why are there bombs?!?!”

“Shh. Shh, I know.”

The rest of the group just let this happen. Because everybody knew that the best way to get over being spooked by a video game was to get ahold of your goth boyfriend so he could calm you down and call you a “good little kitty” enough times that you forget all about 707, Yoosung, Jumin Han, Zen, and. . . *looks at smudged handwriting* Number Five?

Anyway, the others made room for Dazai and Chuuya to sit, and the customary “Ugh, school” and “Education under capitalism is such a soul-sucking, lifeless pursuit that only robs vulnerable students of money and mental energy that they don’t even have!” were exchanged.

It didn’t take long for the pool party at Ryuu and Gin’s house to be brought up.

“There’s a pool party at Ryuu and Gin’s house?” Dazai blurted out.

“Yeah, dumbass,” Chuuya nudged him playfully, making Dazai almost spill his coffee, to which the genius let out a little panicked squeak in surprise. “Somebody wasn’t picking up his phone the whole break, so I couldn’t tell him.” He tried not to make his voice sound strained.

Dazai furrowed his eyebrows. “I’m . . . invited?”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Ryuunosuke piped up. Atsushi didn’t peek out or change positions, but there was a small nod that came from him in agreement.

“’Cause I don’t get invited to parties?” Dazai said.

“You don’t get invited to parties. You just go to one!” Chuuya laughed. “It’s college!”

“A lot of murder and crime happening on university campuses suddenly makes so much sense now,” Dazai muttered.

“Don’t be so gloomy,” Chuuya tutted. “Come to the party!”

Even though Dazai absolutely did not want to go, he asked the polite questions anyway: “When is it?”

“Tonight. We were just chilling here but we were actually going to head out soon,” Tachihara filled in. “Everybody else is coming too: Yosano-sensei, Ranpo, Edgar. Tanizaki and Naomi. It’s one of those rare times when we can all make it to something.”

“. . . I guess it could be interesting.” Dazai said earnestly, feigning consideration while already envisioning how he was going to spend his night flipping through a Robert Louis Stevenson anthology, spiraling into a depressive episode because of his shitty Crime and Detective Fiction essay grade, and not hanging out with STEM majors. “Where is it?”

“The Akutagawa estate is pretty far from here,” Tachihara replied. Gin nodded beside him. “They’re loaded so they practically live in a mansion.”

Gin held up a piece of paper that said, “The wealth of our family is very gross and selfish. When I inherit my share of the blood fortune, I plan to give it away and just keep giving until our family has nothing left.” Flipping it, the other side of the page said, “Eat the rich.”

Dazai nodded in approval before turning to Tachihara again. “I’m gonna have to pass, sorry,” Dazai said, not that sorry at all because rejecting plans gave him more instant gratification than snorting cocaine. “I don’t have a ride and I was planning on finishing some essay research tonight.”

Chuuya rolled his eyes and gently hit him on the back. “I’ll drive you.”

Dazai’s eyes widened. “What? No, you don’t have to --”

“I’m going anyway, might as well bring your scrawny ass along.” Chuuya said this in a way that made it sound like Dazai’s attendance was now non-negotiable. He took out his car keys from his back pocket and twirled the connecting ring between his fingers: the metal bodies clacking against each other like tiny bells. And, because Chuuya was never really one to let chances slip by, he winked, locking eyes with Dazai.

The prodigy frowned, feeling the tip of his nose heat up and hating it. “Didn’t you guys say it was a pool party? I don’t have anything to swim with.” He crossed his arms defiantly. And, for good measure, he added, “Besides, I can’t even swim!” As if this was a flex.

“You don’t have to swim at a pool party,” Higuchi said matter-of-factly. “Besides, I’m sure one of the boys can spare you a pair of swimming trunks. You and Ryuu are about the same size, why not borrow from him?”

Gin held up a piece of paper that also confirmed they have spare swimming trunks if needed.

Dazai quickly realized he was sinking into a very, very deep hole that he couldn’t necessarily bullshit his way out of like his literature exams. In a last desperate attempt, he said, “But I have so many essays --”

“Shut up, genius,” Chuuya deadpanned, but he was teasing. “You’re going. That’s that.”

Before Dazai could protest, Chuuya had yanked him up by his cardigan sleeves and promised the group that they’d be at the party before dragging Dazai out of the library, kicking and whining.

He’d more or less calmed down by the time they’d made it to the Global Arts and Science building’s parking lot, where Chuuya’s apple-red vehicle was (And if you were wondering what kind of vehicle it was, the honest truth is that I don’t goddamn know, dear Reader. Who knows the breeds of cars? Straight men with alcohol addictions and mommy issues, that’s who. You could literally tell me it was from some manufacturer called Hello Kitty and I wouldn’t have questioned you and just accepted it. Life is too short to memorize car names.

Seriously, the day we started using automobiles instead of non-pollutant horse-drawn carriages for transport was the day the Industrial Revolution gaslighted us into thinking getting a driver’s license was cooler than saying ‘Hiyah!’ every time you asked the cabbie to take you to the cinema. Them moving pictures).

Chuuya put Dazai in the passenger seat and belted him down before getting behind the wheel and starting the car. Foreign music started playing from the speakers because of course Chuuya listened to foreign music. Dazai’s eyes surveyed the car’s interior. Unlike most people his age, Chuuya’s car was impeccably tidy. Nothing really seemed all that amiss, save for an empty pop can weakly fizzling on its own in the front cup holder. Everything also looked brand new and glossy, as if Chuuya had just bought this conspicuously expensive thing an hour ago.

While Chuuya started the car, Dazai kept puking up excuses.

“Kunikida needs me home tonight.”

“Liar. Kunikida’s coming to the party.”

“I have so much work to do.”

“Bold of you to assume I’d forget the fact that you barely do any homework.”

“I have a therapist appointment at 8:00.”

“Nobody has therapy at 8:00. Pretty sure only therapists who work all day have therapy at 8:00.”

Dazai groaned, giving up. He slid down his seat with a troubled slouch, glaring at the outside that was bathed in rustic, melancholy hues from the passing by of sunset and ushering in of that sad, in-between time amid partial light and total darkness.

“It’s going to be fuuuuuuuuuuuuuun,” Chuuya insisted good-naturedly, eyes on the road yet occasionally stealing glances at the moping idiot sitting next to him.

“Yeah! Fun! Alcohol, debilitating lack of self worth, and trashy music gathered under one roof so that simpleminded, vacuous people can cope with the emptiness of not being able to understand Sylvia Plath. What could I possibly not love about that!” Dazai muttered pettily, trying not to linger too long when looking at Chuuya’s side profile while driving. Or the way his choker illuminated the moving city port glares like a shining disco ball. Or his sharp jawline. Or --

“Think of it as a field trip,” Chuuya proposed, so used to Dazai’s sarcastic egocentricity by now that his ongoing commentary ‘exposing’ STEM majors for the brainless little halfwits they were just bounced right off of him with an unimpressive recoil. “Be optimistic.”

“Oh, like Macbeth Act I level of optimistic?”

“Very funny.”

“You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

“Yes I do,” Chuuya said, stopping the car at a red light and turning to Dazai. The city around them hummed in an absentminded contralto, as if it was settling down for a nap but hadn’t quite found the right position to sleep just yet. “You’re talking about when everything seems like it’s gonna work out for him in the first Act because he gets the thane title and the witches told him he’d be king or whatever, but really he’s just on a road of self destructive tragedy that’s a cause of his own hubris, as well as the hand of Fate guiding his own downfall. You’re trying to say that the party will end up in some none-of-woman-born-shall-kill-me-loophole-level of shitfest that’ll also result in your head being paraded around on a stick and your wife committing suicide out of guilty madness or something..”

Dazai was surprised. “When the fuck did you read Macbeth?”

Chuuya shrugged, starting the car again since the light had turned green. “I guess if people like me can read Macbeth, you can lighten up and go to a university STEM party.”

Dazai scoffed. He scrambled back up into his seat and looked out the window for a while, the city lights thrashing against the glass in neon yellows, pinks, and blues. Suddenly, he jolted, making Chuuya jump a little. He pumped a fist filled with enthusiasm, turning to the redhead and saying, “Oh I get it! You’re just bringing me along because you’ve noticed how my failure to relate to you people has been gradually ruining my sanity!” He gripped his fist harder, rolling with the idea like a soggy hotdog going down a really, really steep hill. “This party is the perfect opportunity for me to better understand you illiterate imbeciles! I’ll get to study STEM majors in their natural environment: drinking while engaging in worthless social activities because their souls are so tragically deprived of good artistic taste!”

Had Chuuya not been driving, Dazai would’ve gotten a smack to his pretty face. Several smacks, actually. If you wanted to be Macbeth Act I level of optimistic about it.

“Oh wait, but why am I going with you?” Dazai asked.

“What do you mean?” Chuuya sighed exasperatedly, mentally thanking whatever God was out there that they were almost at the Akutagawa estate.

“Doesn’t me coming with you harm my credibility as an impartial observer?”

“You’re coming with me to have fun, Dazai,” Chuuya groaned. “Now can you quit with the vainglorious deflection shit? I know you’re just being a cunt to distract yourself from how nervous you are over attending an event that isn’t just literature profs ready to praise you up and down and dedicate entire altars to you --”

“I’m not nervous!” Dazai lied.

“Right, because you go to so many college parties on school nights with STEM majors who outnumber you and your cocky bookworm brain by a shitton. Nothing about this should be intimidating to you at all.”

“You guys aren’t intimidating!”

“Oh, then why’re you intimidated?”

“Am not!”

Chuuya gave him a disbelieving look but didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “Maybe you’re right,” he said, his voice quiet now all of a sudden. Barely audible against the thrum of the music, but still distinct. “Maybe you’ll get to know us more.” He turned to Dazai, meeting eyes. “Maybe you’ll finally stop being such an ignorant jackass and actually let us be your friends.”

Dazai hesitated. “You . . . You are my friends.”

Chuuya smiled. At him. Like he’d won something. The street lights and city signs freckled his face like tarot card stars. “Gross,” he stated, half laughing.

If a truck had hit them then and there (because, let’s be real, Chuuya wasn’t exactly paying so much attention to the road as he was to this little tender gay moment between them), Dazai would’ve probably died and would still be sorta cool with that. Not in like a “Death please take me now I am so empty of purpose!” way but, like, in a “I have literally reached my peak in life and that is him smiling at me like that oh God.”

But no, they just kept driving.

Now, I’d love to tell you that Dazai had some deep, serious revelation on these last few miles on his way to the party, that he conquered his inner demons, laughed in the face of the paralyzing prospect of social interaction, and came to terms with his mortality or whatever, but no. Honestly, his only thought while in Chuuya’s fancy, clean, and rich ass car with leather seats and built-in heaters for your ass was: Aaaaggghhhhh!

They had to talk to some guards at the gate to be let in, and even after they were allowed through the main foyer, it took a good five minutes for the whole estate to come into view.

Tachihara saying the Akutagawa estate was practically a mansion was an understatement in and of itself. Their house looked like it had swallowed a suburban neighborhood. Their house looked like it had absorbed a small country just off the Pacific islands that was probably in a trade war with Japan. Their house looked like a suspiciously colossal military base that responded with “no comment” whenever conspiracy journalists tried to ask them if they were keeping aliens or lizard people underground. (I’m exaggerating, dear Reader, but I simply cannot convey anything without the flair of overdramatic hyperboles so do bear with me).

I also cannot even tell you why the Akutagawas were so rich in the first place because the answer to that question is a mystery on its own. If anybody ever asked either sibling how much the house cost to build, what their guardians did for a living, what businesses their family must be involved with, Ryuunosuke would just cough awkwardly into his palm and Gin would start ripping out pages from The Communist Manifesto and quietly screech in socialism. Some have speculated they were descended from royalty, or old money from the Imperial Era. Some even suggested that they could be in the mafia, but pffffffffft. That’s crazy. The Akutagawa siblings? Part of the mafia? That’d never happen. Not even if you made an entire manga series out of it.

Dazai’s jaw had dropped at the ridiculous amount of luxury just evident from the outside, but Chuuya had just kept driving, unphased. He’d grown up with the Akutagawas and was more or less used to their insanely titanic wealth. (Still, Dazai’s unfiltered reaction upon seeing it all for the first time was funny. Chuuya had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing).

He sloppily stopped the car right outside the main entrance, where a young valet in a black-and-white checkered uniform was ready to welcome them and take Chuuya’s keys.

They didn’t go inside. Or, at least, they didn’t go inside the main building. Instead, somebody -- a butler? do people unironically still have butlers? aren’t those just a fetish thing now? -- led them to the indoor pool house area, where the party was in full swing. Just as Dazai predicted, bad music was playing on the loudspeakers. Even just from a distance, he could already tell nobody here was sober enough to make it out of the estate grounds -- neither on foot, nor through an alternate mode of transportation.

Also, was that a fucking bar right next to a triplet set of jacuzzis side by side? What the hell?

Out of the people there (which were a lot, mostly comprising of STEM majors from the university), Dazai quickly recognized Tanizaki and Naomi, who were tossing around an inflatable beach ball in the massive, luminescent pool that definitely took up more space than the entirety of Dazai’s house in Aomori. The pool was a glittering, lustrous cerulean blue that looked like candy water against the blackness of the night clouds filtering in through the overhanging skylight. Naomi, wearing one of her brother’s shirts on top of a black and red strawberry-patterned bikini, waved at Dazai when she saw him and Chuuya approach the scene. Dazai kind of felt dizzy, but he thinks he waved back.

As the boys drew closer, they also saw Ranpo and Edgar in the pool, though at the deeper end because they were evidently trying to teach Karl how to swim using a dinosaur-shaped floatie. Near them, on the pool deck, were Lucy and two other girls Dazai didn’t know but nevertheless smiled charmingly at because he was a barbarian. One, who wasn’t even in a swimsuit like the others and was instead wearing a cute floral-printed summer dress, blushed shyly at being acknowledged. The other one, who was talking in a very heavy American Southern accent, ignored him.

“Why are white people here?” Dazai muttered under his breath to Chuuya, since Westerners are the best wakeup call to jar you out of whatever shocked state you fell into upon finding out that you went to school with people who could probably colonize Mars if they really wanted to.

“Oh, that’s Louisa May Alcott and Margaret Mitchell. Lucy’s friends.” Chuuya supplied. “Don’t hit on them.”

Dazai rolled his eyes. “Are you going to say that for every woman you introduce me to?”

Chuuya, who now had his own reasons to not want Dazai flirting with anything with two legs, scoffed exaggeratedly. “Don’t be stupid,” he spluttered, not at all smooth. “Louisa’s had a crush on Lucy and vice versa since high school. And Margaret,” Chuuya gestured to a guy in swim trunks and a shirt that said “Jesus Wins!” who was sitting on one of the patio chairs reading . . . the King James Bible? “She’s Nathaniel’s girlfriend. Lord knows why.”

(I think you should be a little more weirded out by the fact that motherfucker’s pounding through Corinthians in the middle of a fucking pool party, but that’s just me).

“Maybe she was raised in an oppressively Irish Catholic household and wanted to rebel once she got older but still didn’t totally want to reject the religious scene so she made a compromise by dating the first guy who could recite the Gospel of Matthew to her while also being down for some worship play,” pointed out Dazai.

“You’re despicable.”

“I know.”

Most of the people they had met at the library earlier were present. None of them were swimming, but they all had bathing suits on. Everybody was more or less clustered around one of the deck tables. Atsushi was still clinging onto Ryuu, but he seemed to be on the road to post-Mystic Messenger recovery. Ryuu, while balancing Atsushi on his lap, was showing him a nicer, more wholesome video game he could play on his Switch. Atsushi was nodding along, very determined to put his days simping over Zen behind him.

When Dazai and Chuuya joined them, Higuchi promptly said that Kunikida had just called last minute and cancelled because of school reasons, which sucked for Dazai because, aside from Chuuya and Atsushi, he didn’t really know these people beyond his few interactions with them. It would’ve been really comforting to have had his trusty old, manic roommate standing by -- primed for bullying and affectionate harassment.

Thankfully though, the party was too batshit insane for anybody to really concern themselves with the one introverted literature major who lived in constant fear of human beings and had just arrived to judge them.

A JPop song was playing now, and a bunch of half-naked people were either dancing too close to the pool or were grinding against each other in the pool. (How considerate). All three jacuzzis were turned on and filled with people. A couple was making out in one of them. (A lot of people were making out with each other actually. Maybe there was just something in the air that made everybody horny and impulsive).

Of course, there was the stereotypical group of meatheaded jocks barking and howling at each other nearby, placing bets on who could do the most push-ups or vodka shots while also disrespecting women with their inane euphemisms and references to bitches they most certainly did not land. Most of them were holding beer cans and wore varsity jackets (some were only wearing varsity jackets). One guy who had FITZGERALD written on the back of his windbreaker had a necktie wrapped around his head and was drinking straight from a bottle of tequila. On top of the fact that he oozed repulsive testosterone, he was also throwing handfuls of paper money to his friends, whooping and shouting something about how the American Dream was real and his trust fund baby ass was proof of it.

Their shouts and exclamations, along with the clinking of cocktail glasses and metal spoons from other people drinking and eating in the background, added to the rapid tempo of the music, the chatter, the energy. Other clusters ebbed and flowed, with the people in them looking nothing more like vignettes in the illuminated darkness and room’s compactness. The night was young, but it felt like time didn’t matter even if it wasn’t, as if this were a different planet, with its own set of moralities that were as gray and as speckled as cobblestone streets.

There was also the ever-pervasive smell of something on fire, but it was probably fine.

Probably.

“I’ll admit, I’ve never seen so many formula-obsessed idiots gathered so closely without the prompt of something insidiously dull and banal like a science fair or the release of a new Nintendo product,” Dazai said sourly -- partly because he knew it was expected of him to be put off by everything, but also because he was actually, literally put off by everything.

Somebody shouted “CANON-BALL!” and jumped from one deck table to another, body-slamming into it and the large array of sweets on it that could’ve been eaten and enjoyed (the Akutagawas hired only the best patisseries) if it weren’t for the fact that they were now being rolled around and stomped on by some girl who’d somehow tied three pool noodles to her back and was now trying to do the butterfly stroke on top of melted cheesecakes.

Dazai opened his mouth to say something. He didn’t know what he was gonna say, but he figured he would start a sentence and then maybe it’d work itself out into something comprehensible enough to sound like Japanese.

But that was when Tachihara burst out of one of the changing rooms in an unforeseen, thunderous glory, which elicited laughs from everybody who saw him.

The reason for their laughter, dear Reader, was because he was wearing nothing but a pink speedo.

Tachihara, who was pinker than the tiny slip of fabric that barely covered his balls, suddenly locked eyes with the table they were gathered around. Recognizing salvation, he threw all fucks to the wind and ran towards his friends, half whimpering pathetically and half . .. . kinda liking it? Are speedos always this breezy? So tight in all the sweet little places? How versatile!

(I say he threw all fucks to the wind because it was in this moment when Tachihara chose speed over foresight, thinking that if he ran fast enough he could reduce the amount of embarrassing exposure he’d receive from being out in the open.

Unfortunately, however, *clears throat* hrrrrrrrrrrngh, Reader, he was trying to sneak around. But he’s dummy thicc. And the clap from his ass cheeks kept alerting the homophobic fratboys).

By the time Tachihara had gotten to his friends, he had been catcalled and sexually objectified, much to both his horror and . . . enjoyment? (He’s twenty and still kinda figuring some stuff out; he’ll realize he actually has a degradation kink later, don’t worry). He threw himself on top of Gin, using their body as a shield from his onlookers and cowering behind them.

Dazai was the first to size him up and say, “Nice outfit.”

Tachihara fell to his knees, face in his hands.

“Do we even want to ask?” Chuuya said, not knowing if he should laugh or sign Tachihara up for a support group. (Are there even support groups for this kind of thing? Basically-Streaked-At-My-Rich-Friend’s-Pool-Party-And-Publically-Humiliated-Myself-Since-Several-People-Probably-Recorded-It-On-Their-Phones For Cringey Youths? I dunno. Maybe there’s some money in that. Stonks).

Without a word, Tachihara handed him a piece of paper. Chuuya took it.

“This just says ‘I lost to Mark Twain at Mario Kart’ with your signature on it.”

Tachihara sobbed at the mention of his tormentor.

“Who’s Mark Twain?” Dazai asked.

(FDGUHADFODSAJFSDSCXHGAFODBACSAHDDSAPDSAJO)

(Sorry, just give me a minute. The fact that he’s supposed to be a literary prodigy and he just said that but it still makes perfect sense in the context of this metahistorical alternate universe is sending me into hysterics, hold on let me get one more good laugh out).

(I’M WHEEZING DAHDSAHIDSADFAVDSBISA -- HELPPPP!!!)

Okay, back to this dilemma:

“Mark’s in Agriculture with Lucy,” Tanizaki explained from his spot at one of the deck chairs. He and his sister had moved there from the pool the minute they saw Tachihra jump out of the changing rooms looking like a male model on his way to European Fashion Week. “He likes starting shit at parties.”

“His usual targets are idiots who take whatever lame taunt he throws their way,” Naomi deadpanned, frowning at Tachihara’s trembling form.

“He said his hair was better than mine!” he cried defensively, tears streaming down his face. “So I challenged him to Mario Kart!”

“Michizou, you don’t even know how to play Mario Kart.” Chuuya pointed out.

“I don’t care!! He said my hair looked like a carrot in rehab!” Tachihara wailed. “I had to win back my honor!!”

“Through Mario Kart?!?!”

“Yes!!” (He said this in a way that made anybody else listening sound like they were the crazy one).

“That isn’t even your natural hair color!” Higuchi threw up her hands. “HOW DID YOU EVEN END UP WITH A PINK SPEEDO?!?!”

“He said, ‘Loser has to end up in a pink speedo!’” moaned Tachihara.

“AND YOU TOOK THE BET ANYWAY??!?!” Higuchi snapped. “How could you let him bait you like that?! Where did you even get --”

Gin, who had been characteristically silent this whole time, interjected and held up a piece of paper that said, “Poor Tachihara.”

Everybody read it and nodded solemnly.

Gin flipped the paper to the other side, which said, “I didn’t think he’d let out his sensitive side so easily.”

It was then that Tachihara sprang up, excitement in his eyes. “Wait, Gin, are you -- do you ?? feel sorry for me?” (If this were an anime, hearts would start shooting out of his ass). “And you think I’m sensitive? Do you like sensitive?” He cupped his face in both hands, blushing shamelessly. “You think I’m sensitive? Like as a good thing? -- Ooooh! Could it be that you actually like the speedo?”

(Nobody liked the speedo).

Tachihara made an empowered fist. “Yes! I always knew I’d rope you in with my manly soft side! Wow, I can’t believe I finally --”

Unfortunately for him, Gin didn’t really care for that gendered shit and walked away to get themselves a refill for their juice.

Tachihara died, and everybody was very sad. The party ended because of the startling, fatal tragedy, and funeral arrangements were made a few hours later.

Just kidding, he just started crying harder and fell to the ground again while everybody looked on at him, disappointed but not surprised.

But hey, on the bright side, such a sad, pitiful, heartbreaking, miserable, woeful, sorry, deplorable, [insert all the other synonyms for ‘pathetic’ here that I certainly didn’t just look up right now] attempts at wooing actually lifted up Dazai’s apprehensive spirits.

That is, until he heard Tanizaki casually say, “Is that Shirase?”

Chapter Text

Shirase looked like a twat. On top of a loose-fitting, low-cut black shirt and tight skinny jeans, he had on an expensive-looking bomber jacket; a silver chain dangled from around his neck, along with many other items of shiny matching jewelry and piercings that littered his entire getup. The side of his neck revealed just a hint of a smoky tattoo that definitely reached all the way down to his back. The area was only dimly lit, but the copious amounts of metal on Shirase’s outfit made him look like a disco ball going through cardiac arrest.

If Dazai hadn’t been falling in love with Chuuya at an embarrassingly fast rate that he was too pretty to do the math to calculate, he would’ve probably started teasing him then and there because seriously? This kind of person is your type? He looks like a delinquent, rockstar, and a Tik Tok e-boy all rolled into one. Like, he looks like he unironically believes Marvel movies are high-quality cinema. He looks like he would be the first person to get eliminated at a spelling bee contest after genuinely trying to spell out a four-letter word. He looks like he thought Steve Jobs was “a super cool guy” and totally built the entire Apple empire from his parent’s garage. He looked like --

“I’m surprised you got past Kouyou and Agatha,” said Ryuu drily. Atsushi on his lap reached behind him to grab a glass of juice that was on the table, sipping on the silly straw nervously because he had cat-like instincts and those instincts were telling him that shit was about to go down.

“Actually, when I came into the house they looked really happy to see me,” Shirase laughed, swaggering over, his eyes scanning everyone present obviously searching for a certain 160 cm-tall somebody who couldn’t help but be hidden amongst the small crowd. “Kouyou even smiled! It was like the chance to banish me from a party and maybe beat me up on the way out was the best thing that ever happened to her.”

“That should’ve been an indicator to run away,” Chuuya said coolly, stepping forward from his spot next to Dazai to meet Shirase. “When my older sister and her feral girlfriend in Forensics who definitely knows how to get rid of a body start staring you down like you’re some kind of sitting duck, you’re fucked. Or have you forgotten about that since you left for England?”

A moment of tense silence hung between the two of them, during which Shirase’s eyes helped themselves to a good roam up and down Chuuya’s petite frame. Dazai saw his mouth turn up in a self-satisfied grin, and he was just about ready to call the police and DIY a conspiracy against this guy and frame him for the murder of Princess Diana or something, but that was when Chuuya and Shirase broke the silence by laughing, and, before Dazai could even stop thinking about how he’d cleverly shift the blame from the royal family because they obviously killed her she WAS THE PEOPLE’S PRINCESS OH MY GOD, the two exes were hugging.

Excuse the fuck what bitch I beg your goddamn pardon? :)))

When they broke away from each other, still chuckling, Shirase was the first to speak. “You haven’t changed a bit, Chuu-Chuu.”

Chuu-Chuu? :))))))))

“Not true. I got hotter.” Chuuya retorted good-naturedly.

“Can’t argue with that,” Shirase responded, shamelessly looking him up and down again.

“What’re you doing here?”

“I got home two days ago; thought I’d drop by to see some old friends.”

“And by ‘drop by’ you mean crashing a party?”

“Hey now, you say that like I’m a stranger!”

Chuuya crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, but, much to Dazai’s horror, he was evidently enjoying this.

(Dazai would like me to repeat the previous statement, for he believes that it accurately sums up everything that he was feeling and would be feeling for the rest of this chapter: Excuse the fuck what bitch I beg your goddamn pardon? :))))))))))))))) )

Naomi cleared her throat, snapping everybody into attention. “Anyway,” she mused, getting up and dragging her brother along with her. “Brother and I are gonna go get a refill on our drinks! Nice seeing you again Shira~se!” Tanizaki, who looked very relieved, followed her away from the scene.

Atsushi, Ryuunosuke, and Tachihara moved to make their leave too but Higuchi glared them down to a halt because like hell you’re gonna leave me alone with this situation that might as well have been written by Riverdale’s scriptwriters. All three boys groaned inwardly but stayed right where they were.

“Dude,” Shirase chuckled, turning his head to Tachihara after catching a glimpse of the pink speedo. “That’s cute, but --?”

“Don’t ask,” moaned Tachihara.

“And you,” Shirase shifted his eyes to the tall nerd with Harry Potter glasses. (If Dazai knew Shirase actually called them that he would’ve probably started growling and foaming at the mouth). “You’re new.”

Atsushi, bless his soul, tried to make the proper introductions and delay Dazai having to interact with Shirase. “Oh, this is --”

“Dazai,” Chuuya interrupted, making Shirase turn to him, prompting yet another look-over from the ex that seemed to have forgotten that he was an ex meaning excuse the fuck what bitch I beg your goddamn pardon stop LOOKING at him like you want to have his babies like I get it he’s VERY gorgeous but could you maybe PLEASE just chill?!

“Dazai,” Shirase repeated, extending out a friendly hand because he was among those fools in the world who were optimistic and thought the best in people.

Dazai, who’s prime bitch mode had immediately been activated, smiled sarcastically at him but didn’t return the handshake.

Shirase came out here to have a good time and he was honestly feeling so attacked right now. “Uh . . .”

Since Chuuya was further from them, he didn’t notice Dazai’s snubbing. He only shrugged and continued, “He majors in literature.”

“Genius at it, actually,” Dazai added defiantly, maintaining full petty eye contact with Shirase, who couldn’t really decide whether to actually find this guy wearing a mustard-yellow wool-knit cardigan and Oxfords intimidating or just downright crazy.

Chuuya frowned in mock annoyance, hands on his hips. “Yeah. He’s like the McDonald’s of the university’s Humanities department. Everywhere you turned -- there he was.”

Shirase clung onto the joke. “Oh, really? How’d you guys meet? Last I checked, Chuu-Chuu was still in engineering.”

Dazai glowered.

“Long story, but enough about that,” Chuuya said nonchalantly, still blissfully unaware that Dazai was internally dying inside and also mentally thinking up of ways he could push Shirase into the pool fully-clothed and make it look like an accident oh nooo now he has to leave :(( “Why’re you back?”

“Is there something so wrong about missing home and wanting to go back?” Shirase replied innocently.

“There is if you keep scrounging your allowance on booze and airplane tickets,” Chuuya scoffed heartily. “How’d Yuan react when she confronted you with the bill?”

“I played dumb.”

“Oh I bet you were good at that,” Dazai muttered.

Shirase pretended not to hear him. “It was nice meeting you,” he said politely before twisting his neck to look at Chuuya again.“I think I’ll take a walk around. I’ll be seeing you later, right, Chuu-Chuu?”

Chuuya smiled warmly, and by the time Shirase was gone, Dazai had already thought of eighty-seven different ways to torture him. The redhead, oblivious to it all, announced that he wanted to get a drink and started walking towards the bar.

Everything in Dazai wanted to follow him, but he didn’t feel like drinking anything and it’d be stupid to tag along for a quick bar order. He took a seat at the table, not even trying to hide the gumpy on his face.

Higuchi, Tachihara, Ryuunosuke, and Atsushi eyed each other warily, that underlying sense of shit’s-about-to-go-down-fuuuuuuck still pervasively wriggling between all of them.

“Dazai-san,” Atsushi said hesitatingly. “Ryuu and I were just about to go to the pool, do you want to join us?”

Dazai frowned. “I didn’t bring any swimming trunks.”

Tachihara padded over to a nearby chair with a bag slumped over the handle. After digging around in it for a bit, he pulled out a pair of navy blue and orange shorts and tossed them to Dazai, who caught them on reflex. “Here, you can borrow mine. I was gonna wear them for the pool but then, uh,” His face turned red. “I lost at Mario Kart.”

Dazai looked down at the shorts apprehensively. “I don’t know . . .”

“Oh wait, didn’t you say you can’t swim?” said Ryuu. “You don’t have to go in.”

“I’m sure he can, like,” Tachihara gestured vaguely to illustrate his point. “Float? Like that’s physics right? I’m pretty sure that’s physics.”

“How have you made it this far?” Ryuu deadpanned. Atsushi gave him a playful look that said, “You’re very funny but please do try not to be mean, dear.”

A peal of laughter shot out from the bar, and everybody turned to see Chuuya holding a drink that was already half-empty, idly leaning against the wall with a stupid grin on his face and talking to Shirase.

“Okay, I’m gonna come right out and say it,” Higuchi declared exasperatedly. “Why is he here? And why is Chuuya fine with it?”

Ryuunosuke shrugged. “I didn’t invite him. Gin didn’t either. Like Chuuya said, he must have crashed.”

“I haven’t seen him since he left for med school in England,” Tachihara sighed. “Ever since then, the only time I heard about Shirase was --”

“-- Whenever Chuuya got wasted on the weekends and video-called the entire group chat so he could unflatteringly press his face too close to the camera and cry his ¥18 000 mascara off while sobbing loudly into the microphone about ‘I’m gonna die alone I can’t believe God’s gonna let this sweet ass go to waste’ or ‘I should get another dog that way at least SOMEONE will love me,’” Higuchi supplied helpfully.

“Yeah exactly,” Tachihara nodded. “I agree. Why is he here? Their breakup was so sudden and messy.”

“I mean, they were best friends right before college,” Atsushi shrugged. “Maybe they kept in touch.”

Chuuya laughed again across from them, and Dazai, who had been listening quietly until now, of course, took this all personally. He clenched his fist around the fabric of his dress shirt before standing up and dramatically taking off his cardigan.

Similar reactions of “Oh my God he took off the cardigan he’s quite literally never worn anything less than three layers this entire fanfic until now :0” and “LORD ALMIGHTY, he has arms underneath those sleeves?!” were expressed from everyone present, but Dazai didn’t notice because he’d thoughtlessly thrown the cardigan onto the chair and was now bending down to untie his shoelaces.

Speechless, everybody watched as he got back up and took off his glasses.

Tachihara, upon seeing his big brown eyes without glasses for the first time, couldn’t help but provide the following, albeit necessary, comment: “Like I said before: Would 100% let him make out with me if it weren’t for Gin.”

Ryuu scrambled in his seat to rip off the pink speedo which covered the balls Tachihara so clearly didn’t want to keep attached to him, but Atsushi settled him down with a light peck on his cheek. Ryuu flopped back down, almost as grumpy as Dazai was just a few minutes ago but most definitely happier because he got a kith.

Dazai snatched the shorts Tachihara threw at him and went inside one of the changing rooms. He emerged a few seconds later wearing only the shorts and a blue sleeveless hoodie because he was an out-of-control slut.

(Hi, yeah, is anyone gonna ask ?? How he got the hoodie ??)

With everyone’s eyes on him, he began to huffily march towards the pool and proceeded to fall gracelessly into the water.

(Seriously NO ONE is gonna ask about the hoodie ?? Like it’s obviously an unexplained plothole self-indulgently inspired by that one Beach Day official art so is no one gonna --)

“Man, he dropped into that water flat,” Tachihara winced. “That’s gonna sting.”

“He barely made a sound,” Higuchi noted.

“It was like watching a stick bug land in the water,” roasted Atsushi savagely.

Everybody nodded in agreement, and that was when Dazai finally surfaced for air and started awkwardly dog-paddling to keep himself afloat. No one could tell if he could manage his situation for very long -- as a matter of fact, he kinda sounded like a hyperventilating seal that just got a leg cramp.

(“Oh but Narrator, seals don’t have legs!” Well Dazai didn’t have a blue hoodie up until now either so --)

Higuchi turned to the rest of them. “Should we . . . help him?”

(You SHOULD be criticizing lazy writing, but THAT’S JUST ME I FUCKING GUESS!)

Before anyone could answer the very imperative question, the door to the pool house erupted open to let in a very drunk Kouyou in a black bikini, pink silk slip, and flip-flops, followed by an equally excited and chaos enabling Agatha in an emerald-green one-piece suit, carrying a bottle of wine on each hand.

“YOU CALL THIS A PARTY?!?!” Kouyou screeched, her apricot hair flying. “TURN UP THE MUSIC!! I JUST GOT A PROMOTION FROM MY MAGAZINE SO LET’S CELEBRATE, BITCHES!!”

The last thing heard was a general cry of “FUCK YEAH SISTER!!!” before somebody who apparently controlled all the music switched the upbeat JPop song that was blasting through the speakers with the most godawful Western trap music. But, as it was with parties, the quality of the music didn’t matter -- only that it was loud.

Everybody, who had only been mildly losing their shut up until this point, actually lost their shit and started partying even harder. At the same time this happened, the Akutagawa servants in the background, who thought they had lost all hope working for this insane ass family for so long, lost an additional bit of hope that they didn’t even know they had until now at the thought of how much property damage and garbage they would have to clean up after all this was over. The seasoned ones, who’d been under the Akutagawas for years, remained placidly stoic. The rest of them just burst into tears.

Kouyou gave a loud whoop! from her spot at the stairs and threw off her slip. She wrapped an arm around Agatha and drew her closer, sloppily crashing their lips together before throwing her head back and giggling. “God, I love you,” she exhaled, tucking a strand of curly blond hair behind one of Agatha’s ears before taking one of the bottles from her hand and drinking straight from it. “I love you so much!”

“I love you too!” Agatha tittered back happily, knowing it was just a matter of time before . . .

“Let’s get married!” Kouyou insisted eagerly, wobbling a bit on her feet.

“Okay!” Agatha laughed, extending her arms out just in time to catch her girlfriend (er, I mean . . . fiancee? how seriously do you take drunken sapphic proposals made at batshit crazy college parties, dear Reader, is there a handbook for that, or?).

Both girls gently fell to the ground, Agatha holding Kouyou and smiling because she knew she’d pass out after one last sip of the vino. It didn’t matter though, she was happy to just hold her girlfriend (FIANCEE ??? QUESTION MARK ???) while the party raged on.

“Why is my older sister on the floor wasted?” Chuuya asked, having just made his way back to his friends and was side-eyeing Kouyou passed out on Agatha’s lap.

“You’re one to talk,” Ryuunosuke muttered, unphased by the fact that his house lowkey looked like an amusement park that Jay Gatsby designed in his spare time after he got home from an AA meeting. (After all, it could have been worse, and, besides, he had his arms around Atsushi so he wasn’t really complaining about the chaotic yet entertaining circumstances that were currently happening).

“Where’s Dazai?” Chuuya asked, just now noticing that the group was lacking one less asshat of a literary prodigy.

Higuchi and Tachihara gestured to the pool in sync, where Dazai was still doggy-paddling stiffly albeit somehow looking like he’d gotten his bearings a little.

Kinda.

“Uh . . . why is Dazai . . . swimming?” (Chuuya was being kind, because I wouldn’t have called that swimming; it was more like Dazai was rehearsing how to drown. Badly).

“We don’t know,” Tachihara shrugged, leaning back on the table, which made his speedo tighten around his hips in the worst way imaginable. Higuchi rolled her eyes, grabbed a towel, and threw it over his legs, because not all heroes wore capes. “He just started taking off his clothes and changed into my shorts then dove in.”

“Er, more like . . . tripped in.” Atsushi piped up.

Chuuya sighed and took a swig of the beer bottle in his hand. He made his way towards where Dazai was in the pool and promptly sat at the edge, grinning down at the genius way too endearingly to be considered legal. “You look like a wet raccoon,” he joked.

“You take that back!” a voice squeaked a few metres away. Both boys looked to see Edgar hugging Karl close to his skinny chest, flustered and defensive. “You’ve h-hurt Karl’s feelings! Say sorry!”

“Um. Sorry?” Chuuya suggested.

“Sorry to who?”

“Sorry to . . . Karl?”

“Sorry about what?”

“Sorry to Karl that I compared you to this extra-stuff-that-comes-with-bandages,” Chuuya kicked a bit of water at Dazai, who, in trying to dodge it, just squealed stupidly and lost his balance. “I swear I will never do it again.”

Edgar, satisfied and very proud of himself for sticking up for what’s right, gave them a grateful smile and walked off to find Ranpo.

“I thought you couldn’t swim,” Chuuya hummed after watching their TA waddle away from them with his best friend the raccoon. He used his beer bottle to genuflect at Dazai.

Dazai paddled over to the edge and slung his arms over it, breathing heavily.

“Geez, are you okay?” Chuuya said, fighting back the urge to laugh. Fuck, Chuuya thought, He’s actually . . . really adorable. Willing himself not to stare too long at Dazai’s eyes sans glasses -- Jesus, were they always so dark and perfect? -- Chuuya leaned over and offered his beer to Dazai, but he just shook his head and took a few more seconds to catch his breath. He started squirming his way back up onto the deck, but his arms were tired from all the futile flapping.

Chuuya, amused at how he seemed to be experiencing some difficulties, watched him struggle for a little bit longer before sighing exasperatedly and, in one quick move, set his bottle down on the edge and shouldered off his T-shirt; jumped into the water. He waded over to Dazai and placed both hands on his side, lifting him up almost effortlessly onto the deck. Dazai’s wet flat ass plopped dumbly on the wood, his legs pressed together clumsily so that only everything below his calves was submerged in the pool. Chuuya looked up at him, kicking his feet underneath the water lazily -- very much showing off but nobody needed to know that.

Dazai had been too distracted with getting out of the pool to really notice that Chuuya had helped him up, but now that he was out and staring down at a very shirtless and very wet Chuuya who was now laughing at him, looking like literally the most beautiful person in the galaxy, Dazai felt his face grow warm.

“. . . Thanks,” he mumbled, water droplets falling from his shivering body and forming a puddle underneath him. He shuddered.

“Are you cold?” Chuuya asked, swimming closer to him.

Dazai opened his mouth to splutter out a reply, but that was when he felt somebody plunk right next to him and plunge their feet in the water. To Dazai’s unmitigated disgust, it was Shirase.

Shirase who had taken off his bomber jacket and pants and was only wearing his ridiculous amount of jewelry, piercings, and all-black expensive-looking swim trunks. An impressively large tattoo of a ram that went down his back was now visible on his skin.

“Oh shit,” Tachihara swore once he saw Shirase sit next to Dazai. He beckoned the others around him to look, almost breaking his wrist trying to get their attention. “Guys, I don’t like this.”

Higuchi grimaced once her eyes landed on the worst two men who could have interacted, much less around Chuuya. “Crap,” she mumbled. “We have to do something.”

They gathered together and made a master plan.

“I didn’t know you’d get in,” Shirase chuckled, not even acknowledging Dazai who was sitting next to him and only focusing his words on Chuuya. “When was the last time we went swimming?”

“Probably when you and Yuan dragged me to the beach after graduation,” Chuuya smirked. “So it’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” Shirase murmured, a boyish grin plastering his face. “It has been a while.”

Dazai, utterly done and Not Having It anymore, made to get up and leave, but that was when Chuuya ran a wet hand across his hair and whistled, “Hey, where are you going?”

The hair thing really wasn’t fair, dear Reader, but it did the trick because Dazai’s legs suddenly felt like jelly. He remained where he was and opened his mouth dumbly like some sort of gutted fish. “I . . . was gonna get some beer.”

Chuuya furrowed his eyebrows. “What? You don’t like beer.”

I’d gladly inject a water tank full of beer into my bloodstream if it meant not having to witness this asshole try to flirt with you, Dazai thought bitterly, but instead he said, “I figured I’d give it a try.”

“You sure about that?” Shirase butted in, not at all taking the hint that the person right next to him wanted to bite his head off and feed it to a family of rabid opossums. “No offence, Bookworm, but you don’t really look like the hard drinker type.”

“And what,” Dazai snapped, his voice getting high. “Is that supposed to mean?”

“Whoa,” Shirase held up his hands in faux defence. “It’s just, I never thought literature majors would like that stuff. Thought it’d be beneath you guys.”

“Beneath us?” Dazai repeated, eye twitching.

“Yeah, you know. Again, no offence, but I always thought you guys were all pretentious hipsters who didn’t drink anything that wasn’t the gods’ ambrosia or something.”

“Do you know, like, anything about authors?” Dazai deadpanned. “You could put sewer piss into a glass, said it was alcoholic, and pretty much all of them would have taken it and said, ‘Good enough for me!’ Literally offer Lord Byron his own puke and --”

Shirase laughed, clapping his hand on Dazai’s back. “Shit, you’re really funny, Bookworm.”

“Don’t call me Bookworm,” Dazai grumbled.

“But aren’t you one?” Shirase tilted his head. “Didn’t you say you were a genius or something?”

Dazai didn’t give him the privilege of a response.

After a minute of awkward silence, Shirase turned to Chuuya for help. “Hey Chuu-Chuu, help me out here. Is he a Bookworm or isn’t he?”

Chuuya snorted, “Well he is, but judging by our recent essay marks we got today I’d say I’m either catching up to him, or he’s more average than he says he is.”

At the same time Dazai realized that Chuuya must’ve seen his paper grade earlier that day and was probably bringing it up now just to make fun of him, Chuuya knew he had just colossally fucked up.

He was drunk.

And when he got drunk, he said stuff he didn’t mean.

Stuff that he otherwise would’ve kept to himself but, now that he was more than tipsy and jackass levels of confident, he said without a filter.

He wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t grasp the effect of what just happened though, because how could anyone not notice when they exposed their genius crush’s embarrassingly low grade -- not only in front of him, but in front of a stranger -- as if it was priceless news to pass around a table of even more strangers.

Yeah, not exactly the smoothest move. The situation was so pathetically sad that it was almost funny. (I certainly think it’s funny, but you probably don’t share my views in that regard, dear Reader -- and for that I say bless you for having a heart, but also: BORING!!

I must say, though, I do empathize. I doubt neither of our strapping young protagonists thought it was funny either.

It must be hard to enjoy a joke this hilariously disastrous when your whole life feels like one).

Dazai had been shaking from the cold before, but he was still now.

Never in his life did Chuuya just want the bastard to start talking again. “Hey, Dazai,” he said, voice terribly soft as he placed an arm on the edge of the pool near Dazai’s leg. Maybe it was the beer or maybe it was because Chuuya genuinely felt his stomach drop just then, but he hesitatingly took Dazai’s hand and forced their fingers to intertwine.

Dazai inhaled sharply at the touch -- touch he that was never used to and definitely couldn’t comprehend now -- but still didn’t say anything. He looked down at Chuuya’s glistening hand in his.

He started trembling.

“Dazai --”

“I can’t imagine how you two broke up,” Dazai spat, not thinking just then, only numb. He glared at the two boys before snatching away his hand, hoisting himself up, and accidentally kicking over Chuuya’s beer bottle so that it spilled into the pool inelegantly. “You’re both laughably illiterate, so I’d say it was a perfect match!”

“Hey, you can’t just go around saying --”

“Oh, I think I can.” Dazai snapped. He twisted his neck to glare at Shirase. “I may not go to a med school in England, but I think I know when two people are absolutely meant for each other, hmm?”

“Dazai,” Chuuya interrupted, mad now too. “Look, I’m sorry --”

“What for?” Dazai barked, laughing emptily. His eyes were glazed over. “No need to apologize to someone so average, right, Chuu-Chuu?”

“Dazai, come on --”

The door to the pool area opened again, but this time it was Yosano who came out. She was dragging a protesting Kunikida by his shirt and into the very wholesome, very festive atmosphere because “You can’t just cancel on me the night of the party, Doppo, nuh uh, you said you’d come with me tonight so if you’re gonna be dull and sober you could at least be my designated driver.”

“You’ve gotten meaner since you became a doctor!” wailed Kunikida pathetically.

“As a doctor, I diagnose you with working too much and prescribe you with go out and have some fucking fun!”

Kunikida choked at this terrifyingly foreign concept, but, since he had already given up on trying to get out of Yosano’s grasp, he just whimpered again.

Unbeknownst to them, however, this was quite possibly the worst time to enter into the drama. Yosano didn’t really get a chance to pause and read the room before Dazai stalked over towards her and replaced her grip on Kunikida’s shirt with his.

“What are you --?”

Dazai cut her off by handing her a full wine bottle he’d snagged from the bar on his way to the exit. “I’ll trade you this for him.”

Yosano, confused but not really keen on asking right now, accepted the offer and dumped Kunikida at Dazai’s feet. The stressed Pharmacy major honked, not knowing what was happening anymore because one minute he was making anatomy flash cards in his room and the next minute Yosano had slammed him into the front seat of his car and said, “Step on it, twink!”

Dazai went back to the deck table and hastily grabbed all of his stuff with a deadened autonomy. He didn’t even think of returning Tachihara’s shorts to him before he helped Kunikida off the ground and asked him to drive them both home.

Kunikida, jarred from being Yosano-handled by the sight of his roommate so visibly upset, didn’t need to be told twice. Normally, he would say no since, even though the doctor had brought him here against his will, he still felt a duty to drive her home. But he knew Yosano would understand. This was important. Dazai hardly ever let himself be like this in front of anybody, let alone at a huge public party.

Kunikida offered a hand to carry Dazai’s things, but Dazai just brushed past him curtly to get to where the cars were, shaking hands fumbling for his glasses and putting them back on in a daze without even looking back to see if Kunikida was following him.

Just then, a melodramatic scream pierced the air, and everyone turned to see Tachihara, still in his pink speedo but this time welcoming the attention aimed at him. “Save yourselves!” he warned, flapping his arms wildly. “It is too late for us!” Then he gasped and pointed to the spot where Atsushi had been hiding near one of the jacuzzis. “Oh, no! Atsushi is turning into a man-eating tiger!”

Nothing happened.

“I said,” Tachihara repeated, “Atsushi is turning into a man-eating tiger!”

Atsushi stumbled out of nowhere, making a big show of grabbing his chest. “Oh, no,” he said, like he was reading from a teleprompter. “I am turning into a man-eating tiger.”

Unfortunately, Dazai had already stormed out of the pool house with Kunikida by the time this crackshow began to be put in motion, so, while it did manage to “do something” and grab people’s attention, the issue they were trying to avoid in question had already occurred without our cast of characters’ knowledge.

“I thought this AU was supposed to be without Ability users?” Ranpo muttered under his breath.

“Did you say something?” Edgar asked, twisting around to look at his boyfriend.

“Nothing babe, can you get me more candy?”

Chapter Text

Dazai had graduated to a totally different level of fucking annoying. What little slack Kunikida’d granted him at the Akutagawas’ party a few nights ago had long since dissipated by now.

He’d driven both of them home in strained silence, Dazai on the passenger seat stewing in angsty, brooding silence while Kunikida actually drove safely and without interruptions for once -- a feat he’d never been able to do before because whenever they went on drives Dazai would try to distract Kunikida by pointing to random billboard signs or people on the street like, “A discount?!?! On professionally-taken photographs if you call the company before the end of the month?!?!? No way !!! Kunikida, let’s do nude postcard shots and send it to everybody at your job” or “Look at the tits on that girl!! (respectfully).”

No such comments from Dazai were uttered then, and Kunikida couldn’t even enjoy it because he knew that whenever Dazai was quiet, it really meant that he -- and probably some other poor souls -- would pay for it later. Peace just wasn’t an option if Dazai was in your life: it was what everybody traded in exchange for caring about him. And everyone knew that if it ever settled on him -- all that quiet he always tried to block out with chaos -- nothing good would come out of it.

When they’d reached the apartment, Dazai had jumped out without a word -- leaving behind, much to Kunikida’s chagrin, a big wet puddle on the passenger seat since he didn’t even bother to change out of Tachihara’s shorts before storming out of the Akutagawa estate. By the time Kunikida had come into their house and locked everything up, Dazai had already retreated into his bedroom and shut the door like some child having a tantrum. Still worried, Kunikida was about to knock and force his roommate to come out to sort through his feelings, but the second his hand hovered above the doorknob was also the second Dazai started blasting a Taylor Swift song on his record player speakers, meaning he would probably be altering between her and sad classical music for the rest of the night.

When they saw each other again the next morning (or noon, since his roommate always slept through lunchtime), Dazai, true to character, had acted like nothing had happened -- which, unfortunately for Kunikida, meant that not only would he have to be the one to get rid of the irritating smell of chlorine from out of his car, but he was also now sharing a living space with a brokenhearted brat in denial.

Kunikida didn’t really know why exactly Dazai was moping, but it didn’t take a literary genius to understand that this one was lovesick over Nakahara. Though Kunikida’d been on the sidelines -- y’know, going to college, doing homework, getting a degree ??? -- these past few months and had therefore been unable to pay as close attention to everything his blithering roommate got himself into, it was glaringly obvious that something good has been happening in Dazai’s life lately. Sure, he was still morose, reclusive, and would probably never get the eating-three-meals-a-day-is-healthy-for-you thing right, but he didn’t come home as late anymore. He seemed to be taking his meds on time, so his mood swings were more or less in control. Q hadn’t called either.

But now, whatever ‘improvement’ Dazai had been showing recently was thrown out the window and left to die. Like he did with anything that made him sad in a way he couldn’t completely understand, Dazai went on a self-destructive spree. No, he didn’t go out and throw himself onto anybody who’d give him the slightest bit of attention for the night, but he did self-isolate a lot in his room, where Kunikida’d find him either sleeping for erratic hours or simply rotting on his bed scrolling through Twitter like some sort of sad little antisocial media gremlin. He’d nagged him to eat, of course, but Dazai had only obeyed mechanically, which didn’t make Kunikida feel any better. The prodigy had also bought some booze with the money Kunikida knew he’d been saving to buy himself some books after finals were over. He was taking long depression showers and lying flat on the floor staring up at the ceiling for hours at a time. Kunikida had even found him on their couch wrapped up in three layers of blankets like a burrito going through mourning: binge-watching shōjo anime on their Netflix account -- well, it was really Kunikida’s Netflix account; Dazai just guessed the password every time he had tried to change it. Lord, he was watching Clannad again.

(Shit’s gone real bad when Dazai starts rewatching Clannad again).

The most worrying thing, though, was that he hadn’t touched any of his books.

Oop.

In hindsight, dear Reader, Kunikida is technically the best one to be subject to this situation seeing as he’s used to Dazai’s shit by now. He’d been through it all -- even Dazai’s hormonal, edgy high school years when he just listened to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat and drank more iced coffee than water -- but he truly, truly had not had enough of Dazai’s sad gay moping until the genius came into his room -- unnanounced, like usual -- and started rubbing something viscously sticky against Kunikida’s shirt three days after the party fiasco.

“W-What are you doing?!” Kunikida screeched, dropping the book he’d been reading against his chest.

“There was a bug in my room and it peed.” Dazai explained, still rubbing.

“WHAT THE HELL?!?!?!!?”

Dazai climbed into the bed with him and kept rubbing. The roommates locked eyes in an intense staredown between two people who definitely and platonically loved each other but one party did so unwillingly because he most certainly did not sign up for this shit when they’d first met at fourteen. “I need you to kill the bug,” Dazai said gravely, like somebody had fucking died.

“Why can’t you kill it?? AND STOP WIPING INSECT PISS ON MY SLEEVE I JUST DID THE LAUNDRY!!!”

Dazai let out an exceptionally annoying whine. “Kunikiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiida, can you kill it pleaaaaase? It’s so grossssssssssssssss.”

“I have to study,” Kunikida huffed, fully knowing Dazai wouldn’t shut up until he got what he wanted but choosing to delay the inevitable anyway.

“What’re you stuuuuuuuuudyiiiiiiiiiing~~?”

“It doesn’t matter, just get out of my room; I have an exam soon.”

Dazai groaned and buried his face into the hollow of Kunikida’s neck, trapping his roommate in a tight full-body hug. “Why’re you always studying, Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiida! Come onnnnnnn,”

“I study because I’m a student. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Yeah but surely being around me automatically makes you smarter by osmosis so why do you even need to study?”

“THAT’S NOT WHAT OSMOSIS IS, DAZAI!!”

“What do I know?” Dazai shimmied under the covers, forcing Kunikida’s torso to wiggle along beside him. “I read books hurdydurdur.”

“I want to move out.”

“But you wooooooooon’t~~~~”

Kunikida thwacked him with his book before getting up to go kill the bug. Marching to Dazai’s room, he quickly located it buzzing idly on the far wall and proceeded to hit it flat with his house slipper. Dazai, who’d trailed behind him and was peeking from behind the door frame, hopped and started clapping happily, “Thaaaaaaanks, you’re the best, Kidaaaaaa!”

Kunikida frowned, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket to scrape the now-dead insect remains off the wall. He made his way to the garbage to dispose of it, glaring at Dazai the entire time and muttering, “I live with a child,” under his breath.

He had started to make his way back to his own room, but that was when Dazai innocently piped up, “Are we still on for movie and baking night tonight?”

Kunikida whipped around. “What movie and baking night tonight?”

Dazai pouted, because it was his vocation. “Y’know, our tradition: get drunk, watch a movie, and bake something that may or may not develop its own conscience.”

“We did that one time in first year after exams,” Kunikida groaned. “That’s not a tradition. And I only did it because you talked me into trying out that wine your parents bought you.”

Dazai grinned, remembering how Kunikida had drunk a quarter of a glass, immediately got wasted, and spent the whole night (unknowingly) being videotaped by his roommate as he tried to confusedly make banana bread in their kitchen. At one point he’d tried to boil water by microwaving a flat plate with water on it, and then proceeded to be surprised when his strategy to avoid the kettle didn’t work (it is unknown why Kunikida had such a petty grudge against the kettle that night) and he’d only ended up with all the water on the plate spilling everywhere inside the microwave.

It’s truly sad that you’ll never see the footage Dazai got on his phone and then privately posted on his Instagram story, dear Reader, but do please forgive me as I Amn just …….. a litle creacher …… with no budget to even conceptually illustrate such a scenario into form other than with my flighty bastard words ….. Thatse It ……. I Canot change this.

“We’re not doing that again,” Kunikida said finally with a slight shudder.

Dazai did what he was best at: proceeded to bitch and moan. “Why noooooooooooooooot?”

“I already told you I have an exam.”

“But I found such a good recipe for sugar cookies online!” Dazai insisted, joining his hands together as if in prayer. “Plus, I downloaded the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie on my laptop.”

This made Kunikida stop, because it is a truth universally acknowledged that the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfayden as Fitzwilliam Darcy, as we all know, is the peak of romantic comedy cinema and is never simply turned down for supposedly more ‘important’ priorities because what could be more important than the hand twitch scene?!

Dazai knew that even a Type A STEM major like Kunikida was not immune to Jane Austen’s irresistible levels of Yearning™ and Slow Burn™. If we were being honest about it, it was really quite cruel to have brought out the big guns -- AKA the distraction of Pemberley -- onto his roommate so late in the semester, but Dazai just wanted to not think about his fucking feelings right now, and drunk-baking while also watching Kunikida get tipsier and more uncharacteristically disastrous over time seemed a better way to spend the night than brooding for hours alone in the library. Again.

Maybe a few months ago, he’d have done that -- complete with a Virginia Woolf novel and a shitton of caffeine -- but something in Dazai now prevented him from completely falling into himself this time. The worst of his depressive episode had passed, and he couldn’t really find the energy to keep it going like he did when he was a teenager.

Chuuya exposing his bad essay grade in front of Shit-rase was the loneliest he’d felt in a long time.

So. He didn’t want to be by himself. Not in a library or even in his own room anymore.

And maybe Kunikida saw all this, despite Dazai being pristine at hiding it. He was good at making people believe that he was hung up over something else when really it went further than just a bad day or a stupid migraine. Maybe that’s why, when he finally locked eyes with his pleading roommate and saw the exhaustion plain on his face, Kunikida reluctantly agreed to the movie night and baking, sighing heavily when Dazai did another celebratory jump and grabbed his phone to order booze from the campus liquor store.

“Do you want anything specific?” Dazai twittered. “Vodka sodas? Rum?”

“Just get whatever you want,” Kunikida frowned. “Just don’t get --”

“Ooooh, I’ll get saké!” Dazai brightened, not catching Kunikida’s grimace because he literally would’ve been fine with anything but saké. (That shit was so bitter; drinking it was like making out with a permanent marker). “And canned crab too!”

“They don’t sell canned crab at the liquor store, Dazai,” Kunikida said, knowing his roommate wasn’t really listening.

“I have class until 6:30 PM, but when I get home we can get started, yeah?” Dazai suggested, blinking excitedly -- almost as if it was forced -- behind his glasses.

Kunikida stared at him for a long moment -- from his disheveled brown hair still in a messy bun to his plain T-shirt on top of striped pajama bottoms. “You’re . . . going to class like that?”

Dazai looked down at himself blankly. “Yeah. There’s no dress code.”

“Apparently there’s no dignity either.” Kunikida muttered.

Dazai waved the comment off. “Whatever. So are we on for 6:30 tonight?”

Kunikida stared at him again. He crossed his arms. “Sure,” he agreed. “Let’s do that.”

Dazai gave him a winning smile before gathering his things and making his way to class.

You can imagine the feeling of utter betrayal he felt when he came home afterwards and found Chuuya sitting on the couch waiting for him.

Comedically, that was also when Kunikida decided to send Dazai an audaciously blunt text: “Don’t explode the microwave again. I’ll be at the library.”

And so, that day, Dazai lost a friend to the Judas Syndrome of Biblical days and would henceforth mourn the loss of such a fine comrade --

“Um . . .” Chuuya started to make his way towards him, but Dazai Wasn’t Having It. He threw his bag down on the hallway floor and scampered away into his bedroom. He didn’t slam the door or lock it, but after a few minutes it became clear that he wasn’t planning on coming out anytime soon. Chuuya had no choice but to get up and go to his room, where he found a huge Dazai-shaped bulge underneath the covers on the bed.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Chuuya sighed. He yanked back the blankets, revealing -- surprise, surprise -- Dazai sitting on the mattress clutching a book so tightly near his eyes that it must’ve been impossible to read even one word of the page. Amusedly, he looked like a little kid who’d been caught staying up too late past his bedtime; a flash of guilt even crossed his face when Chuuya called out his name to get his attention.

Dazai, of course, ignored him, instead scrunching his face in mock concentration until his eyes turned into squinted slits behind his glasses. He bit his lip. It was as if he thought that if he pretended he did not see and just ‘read’ his book, Chuuya’d go away and he wouldn’t have to talk to him.

“I’ve been calling you,” Chuuya said finally, determined not to get distracted by how adorable Dazai’s pathetic attempt at hiding was. “And texting. And stalking your social media.”

Dazai didn’t acknowledge any of this. (Although he did have flashbacks to when Chuuya had tried to contact him recently; he would always react the same way, which was: panic, scream, and then yeet his phone ten feet across the room until it stopped ringing. The phone crashing and thudding against the wall would often wake up Kunikida at the other side of the apartment, but at that point in the night he didn’t even have the patience to deal with a ghost coming into his room because “I’m too tired for this shit if you’re here to haunt me kindly fuck off,” so Dazai remained alive).

Chuuya took a step towards him, but the brat genius suddenly lunged forward and snatched Chuuya’s hat from his head, dragged himself by the butt to the corner of the bed, and stood up to lean against the wall so that he could hold the hat up even higher. The book he’d been holding fell gracelessly on the floor.

Despite being a little shocked, Chuuya wasn’t very phased. He didn’t even make an attempt to get the hat back. “Dazai --”

“STAY WHERE YOU ARE!!” Dazai screeched, straining to keep it out of Chuuya’s reach. “OR THE HAT GETS IT !!!”

“Dazai --”

“I’LL DO IT!! I’M CRAZY!!”

“Dazai --”

“How did you get here?!” he demanded. “Did you break in?!”

“No! I drove here and bribed Kunikida with some coffee and he let me inside.” Chuuya crossed his arms. “You two are so easily won over by coffee; you’re like male prostitutes ready to fall on your knees, ass up for whatever free battery acid anyone offers you.”

“Great way to apologize, chibi: slutshame the already-stressed university students whose only joys in life can be found at the bottom of a Starbucks cup. You didn’t even bring me one!”

“Don’t call me chibi.”

“Chibi.” A beat passed. Dazai’s arm got tired eventually so he brought the hat down against his chest and clutched at its rim absentmindedly with his bandagey bastard hands. The mattress creaked underneath him. Dumbly, he looked down at what he was holding after a beat of silence and mumbled, “I don’t want this.”

“Then give it back,” Chuuya said, extending a hand out.

Dazai did. Chuuya took it and put the hat back on, but his hand didn’t drop. He met Dazai’s eyes and raised his brows cheekily, almost like a dare, so of course Dazai harrumphed and slapped his hand in Chuuya’s, using the other boy’s steady grip to let himself down and off the bed. He awkwardly plopped on the sheets -- flat ass not at all cushioning the fall -- and then pulled back his hand stubbornly. Chuuya let him.

“Kunikida and I were supposed to have a movie night,” Dazai said under his breath. He’d actually been looking forward to it. Lord knows he’d never confide in Kunikida about his problems -- even if Dazai’d already asked so much of him by demanding he drive him back home from the Akutagawas’ party after Kunikia’d just arrived -- but he thought his roommate knew him well enough to understand that, even though he didn’t want to talk about it, he wouldn’t necessarily oppose to unhealthily dealing with it via making Kunikida’s life one giant nuisance for the night. Dazai really thought he’d take one for the team. Man. How selfish. How dare Kunikida not let Dazai harass him for hours on end ??? He was really hurting??? And like ??? Some people (Dazai) ??? Use being an insufferable cunt (Dazai) ??? To cope (Dazai) ???

“I know,” Chuuya responded, snapping Dazai out of his thoughts. “He texted me.”

Dazai’s head whipped up. “What? What’d he say?”

“He asked me to save him from another night of dealing with your antics about a few hours ago.” Dazai pouted, but Chuuya continued. “He said, and I quote, ‘I can’t take this anymore please help me,’ followed by several distressed-looking emojis.”

“Kunikida doesn’t know how to use emojis; I bet he asked Atsushi for help.”

Chuuya opened his mouth to comment on this, but what really was there to say other than ‘what the fuck isn’t he a grown ass man?’ He sighed, putting his hands in his pockets. “He asked me to come over. Said it would be a big relief. So I did.”

“Why?” Dazai half shrieked, half moaned in exasperated horror.

“What do you mean ‘why’?”

“You’ve made Kunikida happy!” Dazai whined. “He’s probably gloating right now thinking he pulled a prank over me.”

“What? How?”

“Whenever Kunikida tries to be cleverly sly on purpose he sucks at it. Like, one time he wanted to get revenge for how I used up all his good fancy shampoo from Korea but all he did was go up to me and go,” Dazai’s voice dropped to mimic his roommate’s flustered tone. “‘I hope tonight you’ll go to bed and then suddenly have to pee so you’ll have to get up even though you already made yourself comfy and warm!’ and then walked away.”

“That’s . . . it?”

“Well yeah. He can’t be mean so he tries to curse me with small inconveniences.” Dazai sighed. “Not even those work though. And even if I’d gone to the bathroom that night after getting into bed, Kunikida would overhear it and feel bad.”

“So naturally you went to the bathroom that night after getting into bed so Kunikida would overhear it and feel bad.”

“Hey! How dare you accuse me of something so low, so cruel so yes I did, he apologized the next morning and it was kinda funny because I didn’t even pee I just turned on the sink and T-posed in the bathroom to assert dominance over the toilet.”

“Is that right? Cool story bro.”

“Yeah! So why did you come here? Now Kida’s gonna --”

“I wanted to apologize.” Chuuya cut in, like it had been at the edge of his tongue for days and he couldn’t hold back from saying it anymore. “I’m sorry.”

Dazai just looked at him.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said. In front of Shirase, yeah, but just in general. I’m sorry.”

Dazai kept looking at him.

“Also,” Chuuya tilted his head. Boldly, the edge of his mouth curled up into a lopsided smile. “I miss you. Can you please just start talking to me again?”

A moment of infinite, infinite silence. Then, almost shyly, “I am talking to you.”

It was meant to sound teasing, but to Chuuya it felt like the most forced thing in the world. He also took note of how his apology was neither accepted nor rejected: it just laid between them like a splintered carcass.

In the quiet that followed, Chuuya slowly realized something. Dazai didn’t get mad; and he wasn’t mad now. Any anger he’d been feeling had quietly packed up its things and left days ago. Even then, Chuuya ironically couldn’t imagine him throwing a real tantrum -- a melodramatic one, sure, but actually letting go and being upset? Screaming? Crying? Perfect storms, I can make all the tables turn -- Wait, sorry, the song was just stuck in my head (Unlike you, dear Reader, I had to listen to Dazai’s one-man solo concert after coming home from the party so right now Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major and Miss Swift’s “Blank Space” are simultaneously playing in my brain like some sort of surrealist orchestra that just went through a bad kidney operation).

Anyway, Chuuya realized that Dazai didn’t get mad. Dazai got hurt. And he just kept hurting.

That’s why he ran off. Didn’t even stick around for an explanation or an apology. Whatever little bit of himself he’d found himself coming out from because of Chuuya -- because of these past few months together -- was swallowed up. Spat out and chewed. It didn’t matter if Chuuya hadn’t apologized now and just waited until they saw each other again in class or randomly on campus later. You can’t forgive something you always thought was inevitable. You can’t watch things fall apart when you’ve already run away ages ago.

Dazai fell into himself like a reflex.

He wasn’t mad.

He was gone.

The immensity of how badly Chuuya had fucked up finally dawned on him. He was so angry during the party -- mostly at himself, but at Dazai too -- that he didn’t see it. He’d thought the genius was overreacting like usual. That he was judging Shirase too harshly. That he was just another one of those arrogant pricks who got sensitive any time their ego was taken down a notch. But no. Dazai had snapped, but it was more in defence than out of any real malice.

He was used to this, and he had accepted it.

No. He was used to this and he’d given up on thinking it could be anything else but this.

Suddenly, Chuuya didn’t want to be forgiven. Or even tolerated. Not like this. He wanted to make things right.

So he wouldn’t do things his way. If it were up to him, the both of them would have been yelling at each other back and forth by now -- spilling everything and letting it get on the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Their clothes. They’d be fighting. Viciously. Dipping their fists into the sirocco rage and blurring the entire room with raucous noise. And afterwards, they’d move on: They’d let it out, so it could go somewhere else; it didn’t have to stay between them. When he was with Shirase, that was all that it was: Argue, kiss and make up, repeat. It worked for a while. Sometimes it was even fun -- insatiably addicting -- to argue. But nothing ever really got solved. It was just bandaged solutions and sloppy attempts at communication.

No war is ever won -- especially not by the ones who started it. Victory isn’t a trophy; it’s a gravesite, and each time you visit it, you surrender more and more of what’s been left behind in the fallout. It doesn’t bring anything back. It doesn’t heal.

Did they ever really even talk to each other? Him and Shirase?

What did they fight about?

Chuuya couldn’t remember. It scared him.

“What movie were you going to watch?” he said quietly.

Dazai blinked. “Huh?”

“You said you and Kunikida were going to watch a movie. Let’s watch it.”

Dazai didn’t know what to say. No offence, dear Reader, but Chuuya hadn’t unlocked the Watch Pride and Prejudice (2005) Movie option yet -- and that shit at the party definitely took him back a few spaces. P&P was, like, for if things got serious. Like sharing-a-Costco-membership-and-adopting-a-pet-bird-together-serious. Or if Dazai was dying and didn’t have anybody else to watch it with on such short notice.

They put on another movie based on a book Dazai had read a while ago. He’d expected Chuuya to be against it -- it was literally just two and a half hours of people coming over to other people’s houses -- but he agreed without complaint in the way spouses acquiesced to their partner’s whims because they knew if they didn’t they would be sleeping on the couch that night. Or the doghouse. Chuuya didn’t really mind watching a movie with Dazai though.

That is, until the oh-so-wonderful literary prodigy started predicting everything that would happen and literally spoiled every single plot point with narrative theory: “See, the color of her dress and that small bit of dialogue that she said a few scenes earlier obviously foreshadow that she’s going to die -- I’d say in about ten minutes, probably of consumption or something -- but that’s not that important.”

“It was probably pretty important to her.” Chuuya muttered, not following.

Sure enough, though, the character did die. The exact way Dazai said she would.

Dazai turned to Chuuya, who was on the other side of the couch hugging a throw pillow, and said, “Oh wow it’s like I was right or something.”

Chuuya groaned internally, but stayed quiet hoping it’d stop once the movie progressed further.

It, in fact, did not. It, quite foreseeably, got worse.

It was only until Dazai reassured him that the murderer could not possibly be the great aunt because she had sinisterly bitten into a carrot the first five minutes of the movie, ergo she couldn’t have killed the patriarch to steal the diamonds because she was obviously a lame attempt at a red herring besides look at her hairdo and the way her outfit isn’t symmetrical --

“Why do you do that?” Chuuya blurted out.

Dazai stopped babbling and looked down at his clasped hands. “Do what?”

“Spoil things for yourself. Figure out the ending before it even starts.”

“Just comes naturally to me, I guess.”

“Does it have to?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Can’t you just . . . Let yourself be surprised?”

“Eh? Why?”

“Because you said stories are what we are.”

“So?”

“So why are you telling yourself how things end? That ruins the fun of it.”

“Because endings are sad, chibi.”

“Don’t call me chibi.”

“They’re the saddest part of everything.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“The saddest is thinking about how it ends before you even give it a chance.”

(Yeesh. The vibes really just switched to Sad Boi hours, huh? It’s almost like the author made up this entire section of dialogue in her head like almost a year ago during a fit of imaginative insomnia and crushing loneliness before anything else and then only wrote the rest of this fanfiction to maximize the emotional output of this scene haha.

Hope that wasn’t the case. Because if it was I totally just ruined the mood lmaooo).

“You’re the best at what you do,” Chuuya stated, but it didn’t exactly sound like a compliment. It wasn’t accusatory either. It was just the truth. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like for the rest of us.”

“The rest of you?”

“Ordinary people.”

Dazai was quiet for a second. It felt like something was fighting its way out of his throat, beating against his teeth and making his mouth wobble uncertainly. Like it didn’t know where to land. “I’m not even ordinary,” he said. “I’m less ordinary than you.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

The movie filled in the silence like water pouring from a cracked pitcher. The screenplay hummed monotonously, as if they were both in a fish bowl looking out at the static screen instead of in Dazai’s living room.

“What’s so good about being the best if you’re not even proud of it?” he mumbled finally.

(Jesus Christ, I wanna head out. Did he really just say that? That’s so cringe. Like oh my God).

Chuuya twisted to look at him, but Dazai kept staring straight ahead at the TV. “Why aren’t you proud of it?” Chuuya asked, bewildered.

“Well, my parents aren’t, so why should I be?”

He was stunned to even have said that at all, but Chuuya surprised him further by answering, “You’re not your parents.”

Dazai stared at him.

“You’re you.”

Dazai kept staring at him, like some malfunctioning ice machine that NASA refused to install in one of their spaceships because if they did, it’d probably implode and waste billions of dollars of tax money that rich people didn’t pay anyway so now we have to put more minorities in prison. (Oh and the people in the shitty spaceship would die too but haha ç'est la capitalisme).

“You should be proud of it.” Chuuya continued, because these two were dead set on continuing the plot for some reason. “I am.”

For once, Dazai was speechless.

He felt the tears right before he felt Chuuya’s lips on his.

He’d barely heard him move.

How suddenly you need to cry and then the next moment not. How swiftly the lump in your throat can just as easily dissolve itself into sweet, sweet sugar.

He was kissing him and he was kissing him back. All at once, like honey, Dazai felt his entire body sigh contentedly, pulling Chuuya in for more, and more, and more. He fell back where he was sitting on the couch, bringing the other boy down on top of him and blanketing them both in the most delicious, heavenly warmth that up until now they’d both surely thought had only existed in dreams. The hat must’ve fallen. Somewhere. The pillow he was holding, too, but what did it matter? Chuuya was smiling. Laughing, the way one does when everything suddenly makes sense and all that’s been hurting them simply leaves without any pain or fanfare. Dazai was shaking, but the kisses kept him grounded. His hands tangled in soft copper hair. Chuuya’s cupped flush skin.

Everything was melting.

A crashing sound from the movie brought both of them back, but it all still felt so distant. They leaned away from the other, carefully, slowly, wanting to come right back, kiss again and again and again, live out eternity in that little room, just the two of them, but Dazai couldn’t help himself from eloquently whispering, “Um.”

Chuuya smiled. “Yeah?” He traced his thumb over Dazai’s mouth; spellbound, despite himself.

“I was just thinking --”

“Oh, you were thinking?”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry.”

“I . . . I was thinking how --”

“Mhmm?”

“How -- um -- i-if this -- us -- if we were in a book, I’d --”

“Uh huh?”

“I’d . . . I’d say this was my favorite part.”

“You are such a fucking loser.”

Chapter Text

Okay, so Chuuya’s plan to make things right wasn’t exactly achieved through the most ethical of tactics. Kissing somebody until they forgave you would definitely raise some eyebrows in a court of law -- especially a homophobic one, but that’s already the justice system lololololol.

Anyway, Chuuya couldn’t help it, dear Reader. They were in love.

If you had asked either of them afterwards how that movie they were watching had ended, they wouldn’t be able to tell you because their unperceptive asses had alternated between smothering each other with kisses and giggling once they parted for air from said kisses. Nowhere in this urgently imperative itinerary was there room for movie-watching. That would be absurd, and if one wanted to disrupt such a serious schedule of affairs, they would have to take a number, go to the back of the line, and perhaps be forced to unionize the entire waiting room because Dazai and Chuuya were so lost in the gay sauce.

Kunikida had come home from his escapades at the library at midnight. Even though he was good at separating his stress for school from his stress over Everything Else (Mostly Involving Dazai, but that was its own subcategory), he had spent the evening worrying over what could have been happening back at the apartment. His roommate hadn’t texted him and he wasn’t even sure if Dazai reacted well when he saw Nakahara instead of him for their movie night. Dazai was an expert in avoiding confrontation. One time in high school everyone knew a guy had an enormous crush on him and he wanted to ask Dazai out soon but any time Dazai even saw him in the hallways, he’d turn around and book it in the other direction. When people told him he was going to have to talk to the guy eventually and he couldn’t possibly keep this up until graduation, Dazai said, “Nope!” and then proceeded to body-slam himself completely through a classroom window because he thought he heard the guy’s voice from the other side of the building. He never did get to ask out Dazai. Lord knows where he is now, not at all regretting that he dodged that bullet.

Grandiose reminisces of innocent schoolboy days gone by aside, Kunikida really hoped Dazai hadn’t broken, burnt, and/or exploded anything in the house because of Nakahara being there.

But for once, as we all know, he had nothing to fear. When he got back to the apartment and anxiously tip-toed to the living room, he had found Chuuya and Dazai still on the couch -- not eating each other’s faces off, thank God -- fast asleep. Another movie they’d put on (because it got into their heads somehow that they can’t possibly make out without a movie playing in the background) was still playing. Kunikida found the remote nestled in Dazai’s hand and turned it off.

Now that he was closer to them, Kunikida saw that Dazai must’ve grabbed some blankets, pillows, and stuffed toys from his room and made a small little fort on the couch. Nakahara was lying on top of him, head rising up and down with the rhythm of Dazai’s gentle breathing. Their arms and legs were wrapped around each other: enfolded in the blanket covers and emanating caramel warmth. Both boys had content looks on their faces. Chuuya was kind of drooling on Dazai’s shirt, but Kunikida doubted his roommate would really care if he knew. He’d never seen Dazai look this peaceful. Not even when he was high on painkillers and sleep meds. Or tranq darts. (Don’t ask).

The whole scene was so unapologetically affectionate and wholesome that Kunikida honestly would’ve rather walked in on Chuuya railing the absolute bejeezus out of his smartass roommate on their shitty coffee table, but whatever.

At least that mess was dealt with, Kunikida thought gullibly. He shut off the living room lights and headed to bed.

So you may be thinking, dear Reader: how does the plot continue from here? Surely we have reached the end goal, the crowning finale, the moment we have all been waiting and hoping for since our two protagonists serendipitously met in that secondhand bookshop and then proceeded to ruin each other’s (and everybody else’s) lives in the best way possible? Without a doubt -- truly! -- we could not possibly continue on as things are? We have reached a satisfactory resolution! Journeys end in lovers meeting! The story need not go further from here! How could one even accomplish it?

Au contraire, that’s easy: The author need only outdo herself and fuck shit up more.

We are not so cruel, however, as to deprive these two of a blissfully indulgent honeymoon stage where they made each other sweet, sweet promises of eternal devotion and ardent admiration forevermore -- ’till the sun turned black and hell froze over, there those two will be: existing as awkward dorks sitting on a pre-owned couch Kunikida and Dazai had gotten on sale online from sellers who had definitely either had a lot of sex or done numerous amounts of drugs on it but hey at least it was cheap and had a built-in recliner.

Just kidding (on the honeymoon bit, not the couch of sin part -- that was most likely very true judging from the weird stains neither of the roommates ever talked about since they found them underneath the cushions).

The honeymoon stage certainly happened, don’t get me wrong. They, like, *vague gesturing ft. exaggerated hand flourishes,* so if you wanted confirmation of that because you still think the author isn’t dead and has absolute, infallible authority on the way the narrative plays out, I am happy to oblige, but also: If you wanted purely fluffy romance, you came to the wrong bastard narrator.

I’m here for chaos.

And so, we come back to our two ninnies, both alike in dignity (in that they have very little of it by now), in fair Yokohama, where we lay our scene. It is two days later since their kiss kiss fall in love episode. Dazai and Chuuya were on video-call, which is now the traffic of our stage; the which if you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss, our (half-assed) toil shall strive to mend.

All was still, like it was the Prologue setting up for some Shakespeare play about two horny star cross’d lovers or something. Chuuya was doing homework and Dazai was reading a Brontë novel when the former mumbled, “So . . . are we . . . boyfriends now?”

Dazai stopped reading, surprised. “Yeah.”

His camera wasn’t on, but it was obvious Chuuya had the biggest grin on his face. “Okay,” he breathed, like he couldn’t believe it.

So, because Dazai wakes up everyday and says that we cannot have nice things, he piped up, “Just so you know, my ultimate sexual fantasy is being absolutely demolished by two monster dildoes while you call me your ‘sweet little pretty thing’ in a heavy German accent.”

“W-WHAT?!” came the flustered shriek from the other side.

“I’m kidding, it’s actually sleeping in on a Saturday and Sunday.” Dazai deadpanned, grinning now too. “But if you’re up for that, boyfriend --”

“How do you even make your mouth say these things ??”

“I can make my mouth say other --”

“DAZAI!”

The genius shrugged. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that asexuals have the best sex jokes?”

“NO!!”

“Hm. Shame you had to find out this way. Like, yeah, I’m ace, but I have a few kinks. For example, being dead.”

Chuuya’s face felt too hot to respond to the half-concerning, half-typical suicide reference. Dazai let out an amused laugh before getting up from his spot because he had to go grab something.

Chuuya wasn’t left alone for long though because that was when Baki started excitedly barking and scratching at the front door. Not a second later, Arthur, Paul, Kouyou, and Agatha walked into the foyer. They were all carrying paper bags; they must have gone grocery shopping together. Baki followed close behind, hoping for indefatigable proof of his unlimited supply of human love -- preferably in the form of treats.

As usual, Kouyou was in the middle of judging men. (A fine hobby, if I do say so myself, dear Reader. My doctor recommends one does this at least three times a day. It’s good for the soul). “Ugh, don’t even remind me about the men in our university,” Kouyou wrinkled her nose in disgust. Her eyes seemed to be on fire. (Out of the two siblings, Chuuya obviously had the bigger temper; Kouyou was always so composed and elegant: serene with a ferocity that could only be described as a gift. But men were special in that they each found new unique ways to disappoint you over and over again. Kouyou could handle many things in life, but she drew the line at tolerating male chauvinism). “Fitzgerald tried to talk to me in Japanese at the Akutagawas’ party the other day,” Kouyou huffed, running an exasperated hand through her apricot hair. “Even though I kept insisting we talk in English. His pronunciation is so bad, I’d literally rather be racially profiled.”

“What did he want, dear?” Arthur asked, hanging on her every word.

As Kouyou went on, Paul silently set his bag on the kitchen island. Turning, he gently took his husband’s from him as well and settled it next to his. He didn’t say anything during his daughter’s ranting, but he had an amused smile on his face that indicated he was at least listening to her. Agatha, just as quiet yet evidently also at ease, came up beside him and started unpacking the groceries before storing them in their proper places.

She and Kouyou had been dating for two years now. Agatha came by the house so often that Chuuya almost considered her like a proxy older sister sometimes. He couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t here working on the journal with Kouyou or just dropping by to give them some of the English sweets she’d ordered from home. Baki loved her, she was always willing to take him out on walks. Arthur and Paul adored her. Just a week after Kouyou and Agatha had started dating and introduced her to them, she’d practically taken over their small French-style kitchen and hardly ever left since. When she came too early during visits and was waiting for Kouyou, or was just simply hanging around with nothing better to do, she was either cooking or baking something supremely divine. She was still clumsy when it came to Japanese dishes, but she was a master when it came to her Western recipes. For the following two years, the house gradually took on a permanent aroma of butter, flour, and vanilla. For Christmas last year, Arthur and Paul had even bought Agatha a new mortar and pestle, though Chuuya suspected it was because they had really wanted her to try out some dishes from France that required such an instrument but were too awkward to directly suggest it.

Agatha was family.

And, of course, Kouyou and her were matchless. Chuuya couldn’t imagine his sister being with anyone else. They were just so right together. Even if Agatha wanted to go back to England, or Kouyou changed her plans for the future, such little things didn’t seem to matter in the face of so much love and dedication for one another.

From his spot at the counter, Paul waved at Chuuya, who nodded back almost dazedly. His Dad said something about the four of them all going to see a play later that evening so Chuuya’d have to hold down the fort while they were all gone.

A sound of muffled rustling suddenly came from his phone. He’d forgotten he was on call. Without thinking much, he requested to show video, which Dazai accepted. Instantly, his screen showed a blurry portrait of the genius sitting at his desk, one hand flipping through his Jane Eyre book while the other was buried in a bag of plain chips.

“Hey, I want to meet your parents,” Chuuya blurted out.

He could see Dazai’s eyes widen from the other side of the camera. He let out an audible laugh, but it sounded more like a baffled snort. “Jesus, Chuuya, I just went to get snacks.”

“I want to meet your parents,” he repeated.

“Why?”

“Because we’re dating now!” Chuuya started fidgeting in his seat after he’d said it. He’d have to get used to all this being real. “And I wanna meet them.”

“Oh yeah, sure, I was just thinking about that earlier today ’cause every time I start dating someone I’m always like, ‘This is good, this is splendid, but you know what’d make it perfect? Gen'emon and Tane Dazai --”

“No one thinks you’re funny Dazai.” Chuuya frowned. Then, changing tactics, he added sweetly, “I’m sure you can make an exception for me since I plan to be the last person you ever start dating~~.”

Dazai choked on a chip.

You could hear the alarm bells ringing in his head -- in fact he looked a little like somebody had told him his grandmother with one hand, no hair and only his grandmother with one hand, no hair had to give him an emergency prostate exam or else he’d spend the next twenty years of his life suffering over prostate-related agony -- but Chuuya wasn’t letting this go. His mind was made up. “Come on. I already met Q!”

“That was an accident,” Dazai pointed out. “I would have very much been fine if you two had never met.”

“We would’ve met eventually!”

“Would not.”

“Would too.”

Dazai sighed, poking his glasses back into proper position on his nose. “What brought this up all of a sudden?”

In the background, Chuuya heard Agatha laugh over something Arthur said. He bit his lip. “I just want to meet them.”

“Again: why?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Um, because you have a brain?”

“Oh, I have a brain now?” Chuuya teased. “Just a few weeks ago you were going on and on about how STEM majors had pudding in their skulls instead of brains.”

“They do.” Dazai said stubbornly. “You just get special treatment because you give me kisses.”

Chuuya flushed, but stood his guard. “You’re deflecting, Mackerel.”

“Hmm, I have no idea what you mean.”

“You’re literally doing it again.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am no -- Wait, what’s that book right next to your arm?”

“Collection of Emily Dickinson poems. Dad recommended I read some.”

“Ooooh, did anything stick out?” “‘Forever is composed of nows.’”

“Banger, she never misses. Maybe there’s some hope for you STEM majors after all.”

“Great! Is there any hope I’ll get to meet your parents?”

“I’d literally rather set my dick on fire.”

“I can bring them some pastries from France,” Chuuya offered good-naturedly, already thinking he could drive to his parents’ favorite bakery down the block from here. “Maybe some cakes?”

“Oh, desserts, that’s perfect!” Dazai replied sarcastically. “Maybe we could even provide some creative entertainment for my family! You could sing and I could, like, spontaneously choke and die.”

Chuuya crossed his arms. “So what I’m getting from this is that I can meet them?”

“Anyway,” Dazai cut in hastily. He flicked his wrist flamboyantly, making a show of how distraught he was because, “I made iced coffee earlier but some bitch downed it all in under two minutes. Unbelievable.”

Chuuya couldn’t help himself. “That bitch was you, wasn’t it.”

“Shut up.”

Chuuya saw an opportunity and went for it. “I’ll buy you coffee if you let me meet your family.” He smiled, showing off his dimples. “I’ll get you whatever you want, even those expensive cold brew decaf ones.”

“What is the point of decaf?” Dazai scoffed. “Like . . . Why would you voluntarily not take the drugs,”

Chuuya rolled his eyes. “You know that your relationship with coffee is different from everyone else’s relationship with coffee, right? Like your experiences aren’t universal, you know that, right?”

Dazai was quiet for a minute, as if he was weighing the pros and cons of letting Chuuya meet his dysfunctional family who would most definitely not be too happy if they actually knew this was Dazai introducing a boyfriend, rather than a friend.

Finally, he sighed. “Okay, but if you don’t buy me a coffee that has so much espresso in it that I give myself a heart attack when I drink it I’m gonna be pretty disappointed.”

Before he could take it back, Chuuya let out the biggest “whoop!” and punched the air. Doing so made him lose his balance on the spinny chair he was sitting on, and Dazai had just caught a look of pure fear cross Chuuya’s face before the boy toppled over and banged his elbow on the table, knocking over two of his notebooks and a calculator that clattered to the floor.

“Ow,” Chuuya groaned off-screen. His head popped up again after a few seconds.

Dazai, who up until now had been so considerate by holding back a laugh, snickered, “I retract what I said, you STEM majors never cease to amaze me with your ever-surpassing levels of idiocy.”

“Whatever, asshole, I don’t care what you say; you agreed to let me meet your parents.” Chuuya declared triumphantly, standing up from where he fell and sitting back down on his chair like it was a throne speckled with victory. “When can I see them?”

“After my order for lethal poison topped with bleach comes in the mail and I down it all with one last can of snow crab à la cheap saké.”

“Dazai.” Chuuya sighed. “Aren’t you going on one last trip home before the last stretch of finals start? Why don’t I come with you?”

“Oh come on!” Dazai complained. “That’s not fair! I’m going back this weekend!”

“No.” Chuuya’s mouth upturned in an impish smile that sent a small shudder down his prodigy boyfriend’s spine. “We’re going back this weekend.”

Chapter Text

If Dazai was annoying as Dazai, he was worse as Boyfriendzai. One thing Chuuya quickly realized was that it was now his designated duty to preserve and encourage Dazai’s relatively concerning narcissism, because if he wasn’t absolutely spoiled every five minutes his little bastard brain started growing rank moss.

The night before they set out for Aomori, Chuuya’d called to wish the genius good night for the first time because he thought it’d be sweet -- that relationship crap, y’know -- but it ended up being two whole hours of Dazai whining, “Noooooo don’t hang uppppppp until I fall asleeeeeeeepppp I have insomniaaaaaaaa,”

“And how will me staying on the line help you get more beauty sleep?” Chuuya had asked, his voice raspily muffled from his face being pressed into a pillow for the last half hour. (He was still smiling though. Uncontrollably so. Blech).

“Because I am already so pretty.” Dazai declared, just as tired but not wanting tomorrow to come yet. “My antipsychotics are beating me to a pulp.”

“I thought your antipsychotics helped you sleep.”

“They do. Don’t hang up.”

“My phone’s gonna die.”

“Mm . . . Jealous.”

He never did hang up. The last thing he remembered before going unconscious was Dazai contentedly humming an old song he said he had heard once playing in an Audrey Hepburn movie. Something about moon rivers and Huckleberry friends.

His phone was out of battery when he woke up. He’d have to charge it on the way.

To show how serious he was about the trip, Chuuya, armed with a piping hot Starbucks and his wallet (should and when the need arose for him to buy them more coffee), had offered to pick Dazai up from his apartment early in the morning. ‘Early in the morning’ for the genius, was, as we all know, synonymous with everything ugly, painful, and unpleasant in the known galaxy, so Chuuya had anticipated a grumpy boyfriend well in advance. He also knew that Dazai’s sulky attitude would probably stick for the entire time -- or at least hover behind the scenes of his usual moodiness -- so Chuuya wasn’t surprised when Dazai trudged out of his apartment looking like a Terracotta pot that got run over. His hair -- normally and effortlessly so perfectly framed around his face -- was a scrambled mop that jutted out in awkward angles since he was using his sleep mask to push his bangs up like a makeshift headband clip. Trampled sunlight fell on his droopy shoulders. He wasn’t clad in his trademark dark academia slash brooding scholar slash asshole debonair aesthetic -- instead, he was in a baggy pullover, navy sweatpants, and sneakers. (Here your narrator audibly gasps in disgust because, though you may not be able to see or even justifiably conceptualize his horrendous ensemble, dear Reader, I certainly can, and, though my descriptive powers of narration do leave much still wanting, at the very least I need to make absolutely sure that you know it was very cringe).

One might have even wailed over how O! how the fashionably mighty have fallen, but Dazai looked like he’d hit wardrobe rock bottom, took out a shovel, and then kept digging. (He was wearing the socks Ango had bought him as a joke last New Year’s that said, “Fuck Off I’m Reading” in cheekily bright orange writing over his sweatpants. For Christ’s sake). Judging from how some of the gauze sloppily peeked out from his pullover’s collar, he’d barely cared for changing his bandages this morning. A sliver of it even hung loosely from underneath his shirt.

Mumbling poetic affirmations to himself -- “Fuck this shit. My stomach hurts. I want to go back to bed. I miss Kunikida. And Atsushi-kun. I want to jump off the Grand Canyon. None of this is very girlboss gatekeep mansplain of me.” -- Dazai hauled himself to Chuuya’s car and made himself comfortable in the passenger seat without a word.

Chuuya didn’t mind the timely silence; he knew all too well that it never lasted long when it came to Dazai. And so, he greeted him with a small smile, because being in love with someone also blessed you with the powers of not fully seeing how straight up zooted they looked at 8 AM in the morning.

Love is blind, or whatever the hell Sesame Street or Shakespeare says.

Chuuya faintly gestured to the coffee in the cupholder between them before reaching out and starting the car.

Except that was when he noticed that Dazai had come in empty-handed and not with a suitcase that -- on top of keeping him alive, clothed, and hygienic for the weekend -- he was certain he’d seen his boyfriend lugging behind him on his way to the car.

“Dazai,”

“Hm?”

“Where’s your suitcase?”

Dazai slowly turned his head to look at Chuuya. “I left it outside.”

Chuuya blinked. “. . . Why . . . did you . . . leave it . . . outside . . .?”

“Because I didn’t feel like opening the trunk.”

“So you just left it outside.”

“Yes.”

“I was just about to drive off.”

“Well I would’ve said something.”

“When? At the train station?”

Dazai’s head flopped back on the car seat. Here we go. “Chuuuuuuyaaaaaaaaaaa. Can you put it in the trunk for meeeeeeeeee? I’m too tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiredddddddd.”

Chuuya rolled his eyes. Sighing exasperatedly, he unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out of the car. He was about to make his way to Dazai’s side of the road, but he shuffled back and popped his head inside to say, “Oi, drink your coffee. There’s a paper bag in the backseat; I got us croissants for breakfast.” He shot him a look that very much communicated that if Dazai did not eat his fucking croissant, Chuuya would break up with him.

Just kidding, can you imagine breaking up with someone over a croissant? So impractical. Everybody knows you should only sever a relationship for mature reasons like if your fiancé accidentally stabbed your stupid dad from behind an arras or that one time when I left my last girlfriend because my dog didn’t like her. Sense and sensibility, I always say, and totally did not steal off of Jane Austen right now but it’s okay because she’s long dead (Rest in peace Queen >~<) and therefore cannot sue me for copyright.

When Chuuya loaded Dazai’s suitcase in the trunk and went back into the car, he found his boyfriend depressedly eating the croissant. “This tastes like colon cancer,” he mumbled, making a face.

The rest of the drive to the train station, along with the buying their tickets and the lugging the luggage and the somehow getting rid of Chuuya’s car because the author just realized there’s nobody else there to drive it back so we are just simply going to ignore that <3, went quite smoothly. In fact, aside from a few anti-STEM jabs from the literary prodigy (“No actually. I tried to understand how coding works but it turns out I’m hot, so . . .”) and occasional whining of, “Are we there yeeeeeeeeet?”, the train ride was pretty nice. Chuuya remembered that Dazai hated travelling, so he was fine with the tongue-in-cheek bickering and listening to the genius chatter on about how he’d finally gotten around to reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and was particularly thrilled about it because the secondhand copy he’d bought from Illuminations over a year ago had annotations from its previous owners. However, when Chuuya optimistically said, “Oh, are you excited because you get to read their notes and see a glimpse of the book through their eyes?” Dazai frowned and replied, “No, the annotations are pedestrian at best; I just like skimming through them and going, ‘Ha, they’re focusing on the multiple personality disorder theory instead of looking at the punctuation. Amateur. Also, one of the notes just says FEAR in bold strokes in between paragraph margins and I thought it was kinda funny.”

Despite all this, the five hours pirouetted on with lazy ballet feet. At some point, Dazai had grown sleepy and announced he was going to take a nap for the rest of the way. When Chuuya asked if he wanted to take his suitcase down from the compartment so he could have Baymax to cuddle with, Dazai shook his head and laid it on his shoulder. “I don’t need him,” Dazai said. And he didn’t.

By the time they finally stopped at Aomori, Chuuya couldn’t feel his arm anymore. It had fallen asleep along with Dazai, but he didn’t care. When they reached the terminal, he gently shook him awake and tried not to stare too much when Dazai opened his chocolate eyes, fumbled for his glasses (he’d hung them on Chuuya’s shirt collar), and blinked away the dreams.

Dazai then proceeded to stall the situation with a mastery akin to some of the shittiest big-time airlines that I’m not even gonna name-drop or anything so we’re just gonna say WestJet Airlines.

Even though they’d managed to get out of the train relatively easily, the instant the two stopped trickling along to the flow of disembarking passengers and stepped onto the platform was also when Dazai cheerfully said, “Hey, let’s go get food! You’re paying!”

Chuuya had anticipated this, though. “Okay. I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

“Really?” Dazai gasped, clapping.

“Yeah after we drop off all our luggage at your house and I meet your parents.”

“Waaah, what if the sight of your ridiculous hat suddenly turns me into an orphan?”

“Then I’ll take it off.”

“You would . . . Do that . . .?”

“Nooo because I want to piss off my boyfriend’s parents the first time I meet them. Man, so glad we got that settled. Was starting to worry that you thought I was some sort of respectable gentleman or something.”

Dazai folded his arms huffily. “I’m not some mid-Victorian dandy whose parents you need to woo in order to secure my assets and hand in marriage.”

Chuuya smirked. “Yes you are.”

Even though they’d boarded the train in the early morning, it was getting late. It was still relatively light outside but the air had gotten a tad chillier and the sun was hidden behind what looked like a storm cloud. Fearing it would rain soon, Chuuya took out his phone to call a cab, but Dazai stopped his hand and lightly squeezed his wrist. Chuuya got the message.

They walked.

It did start to pour a little, but they were both wearing heavy jackets and scarves, so they weren’t cold. Chuuya had taken off one of his gloves to hold Dazai’s hand in his. He’d never been to Aomori before, and while he was sure his piece-of-shit boyfriend would lead them through various unnecessary detours and distractions to delay coming to his house -- and even though it was drizzling a little and the sky was turning a darker shade of pebbly gray -- Chuuya didn’t mind. This was the city where Dazai grew up. It raised him. And he knew that it wouldn’t have looked this beautiful in his eyes if he hadn’t been so personally predisposed to romanticize it, but Chuuya didn’t care. It was beautiful: neon signs, lantern lights, and all. He wanted to savor experiencing it for the first time.

At one point during their walk Dazai abruptly stopped at the end of a block and turned to Chuuya with a serious expression. “Put your hands around my neck,” he instructed.

The command sounded so grave and his face looked so imperative that Chuuya did as he was told without questioning it. He only asked why he looked like he was about to choke his boyfriend out and leave him for dead near an alleyway dumpster like a plastic bag (driftin’ through the wind, wantin’ to start agaiiiiiin --) after a minute or so of complete silence.

“What am I doing?” Chuuya sighed. He’d had to go on his tiptoes to reach Dazai’s neck and his ankles had begun to cramp.

“I’m willingly consenting to letting you murder me,” Dazai explained soundly. “Be gentle though it’s my first time.”

Chuuya smacked him.

(It in no way benefits the plot for me to have included that scene here but I figured you would like to know it happened anyway, dear Reader.

You’re welcome. I take payments in kudos and nice comments that specifically cater to my obnoxious god complex).

Eventually -- prodigiously -- miraculously, they reached his neighborhood, and soon enough his house. What little rain there was had stopped, but droplets and tiny cloud kisses dotted the fence and front gate. Dazai had been his usual bumbly, annoying self during their walk, but his face seemed to slacken -- as if the strings that were holding up his smile had been cut -- when his eyes landed on the front door and somehow willed himself to walk up to it. He was still holding Chuuya’s hand, but he felt far away, as if he was looking at something only he could see in the distance.

Then, to Chuuya’s surprise, the genius took his hand back and, with a flourish, gestured with the unmistakably flamboyant presentation of an unhinged peacock to the door before them. “Tremble before the horror!!” Dazai paused for dramatic effect. “Of my dysfunctional household!!” He gestured to a deck chair half concealed by the house’s -- rather neglected and overgrown -- front lawn. “I jacked off here one time.”

Chuuya choked on his own spit. “WHAT?!”

“It was winter though so when my dick did ye olde cum shot it kinda froze over the second it hit the porch.”

“Oh my Go -- Awgh, that’s --? That’s so disgust --”

“I’m messing with you.”

Chuuya stared at him for a beat. “I’m going to hit you,” he decided. “I’m going to hit you with a very large rock and kill you.”

Dazai locked eyes with him intensely. He opened his mouth to undoubtedly say something original and bastardy, but that was when Chuuya lunged at him and slapped his palm over his mouth. Too late though. Shittily muffled, Dazai let out a sinful moan, “Promise~?”

“WHAT THE FUCK WE’RE AT THE FRONT DOOR OF YOUR PARENT’S HOUSE!” Chuuya screeched, willing the boner he just got from that stunt to settle the fuck down don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing you thought that was kinda adorable and maybe I wanna spend the rest of my life hearing you moan like a sweet little, squishy, cute [CENSORED] on my [CENSORED].

(I’m not censoring it because of any contractual obligation to, dear Reader. This is a Teen and Up Audiences-rated fic, after all.

I just like withholding information.

Plus it doesn’t take a brainiac to know that at the very least the last censored word was cock --)

Dazai moved Chuuya’s hand away and laughed. “Relax. My parents are so out of touch with my life that they still think I’m a virgin.”

“Are you?” Chuuya blurted out without thinking. His face immediately turned crimson.

Dazai stuck out his tongue lasciviously. “My Mom told me that I had to tell her when I started having sex.” He winked. “But you can’t miss a deadline if it’s already past.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

Dazai winked again. Something seemed to flash across his face, but Chuuya hadn’t managed to catch it. With a quick turn, he had pushed the doorbell, which uttered a sing-song cry from inside the house. He stepped back and stood next to Chuuya, balancing on the balls of his sneakered feet with a dopey smile.

He hadn’t taken Chuuya’s hand back.

“Oh, by the way,” He shifted his chin, hiding his face. “Um. We don’t have a guest room, so your options are either sleep in my room and I take the couch, or --”

“We sleep together oh-my-gosh-there-was-only-one-bed-trope-style?” Chuuya finished for him. He’d said it cockily but anybody with an IQ level above maybe 40 (so like your average anti-vaxxer) would’ve been able to catch the sudden blush that heated up his cheeks just then. Dazai was still not looking at him and seemed instead to be utterly fascinated by a splotch of bird shit on the porch railing so Chuuya coughed, awkwardly, and added, “I’m surprised your parents are fine with letting your boyfriend sleep in the same bed as you.”

Dazai turned his head to face Chuuya, looking like he was about to say something that was probably important, but that was when the front door lamp lit up and the two boys quite literally looked like a pair of deers in front of headlights before Dazai’s Mother appeared and opened the door to let them both in.

Maybe it was because Chuuya was so tragically short himself (dwarf kin, if you like), but he immediately noticed the height difference between Mother and son. She was very small, stout, and compact, as if every little thing about her had been brushed away underneath a tidy rug, and her fragile body was held up by nothing but attic styrofoam. White streaks of hair lined her scalp, giving away that she was over sixty years old; but she wore her age well, and held her chin up with the confidence of someone who knew they had been beautiful once -- but alas, we all lose our charms in the end.

“Welcome to our home!” she exclaimed brightly, the smile not reaching her eyes. “Come in, come in.” She made a bidding gesture with an eagerness that expressed perfect hospitality.

Wordlessly, Dazai stepped inside first and Chuuya followed closely behind, carrying both of their luggages and bags. The genius then took off his shoes rather quickly and stuffed them in a nearby closet before abruptly disappearing into the house and leaving Chuuya alone in the mudroom with his Mother. Help, a voice in Chuuya’s head squeaked.

He didn’t have much time to ponder on this sudden abandonment though because the petite woman’s eyes in front of him were still locked onto him expectantly. She was still smiling sweetly -- so inviting yet at the same time unsettlingly closed off. There was no doubt that this lady was Dazai’s Mother.

“You must be Chuuya,”

He blinked dumbly, not sure whether to be nervous or really nervous. (There was a significant difference, dear Reader). “Y-Yeah, I am.”

“Osamu’s told me a lot about you.”

“Really?”

“No,” she giggled. Her airy laugh sounded like Dazai’s. “He never talks to us about things like that. All he ever talks about is --”

“Books,” they both said in unison.

She smiled, a twinkling inch of it fluttering underneath her eyelashes. “You can call me Tane-san. We’re very happy you’re staying with us this weekend. I’m sorry we don’t have a guest room for you.”

“Oh, it’s no problem. I was actually just saying to Dazai that I was surprised you guys --”

“Oh wait! Your parents do know you’re here, right? I wouldn’t want them to worry.”

“Yes, yes, they know I’m here.”

“Do you visit them often?”

Chuuya thought this was an odd question, but he was anxious to please. (And just anxious in general). “I still live with them. I haven’t moved out yet.”

Tane seemed to like this answer. “That’s nice. This new independence thing so many kids are chasing after is no good sometimes, you know,”

Seeing an opening, Chuuya said, “My family and I are really close. My older sister’s finishing her degree soon but she’s still living with us too.”

An almost wistful look flashed upon her face, but it disappeared as quickly as it surfaced. “Oh, that’s lovely,” she murmured. “What a good son you are.”

At this supposedly benign compliment that carried no extra foreboding weight in it whatsoever, Chuuya straightened his spine and puffed out his chest unconsciously, like those male cuttlefishes who try to impress female ones by making geometric patterns in the ocean bedrock. Except Chuuya didn’t really look like a Casanovian mollusk -- more like a wriggling trout fresh out of water and was about to be gobbled up by a psychotic seagull. “I’m really happy to finally be able to meet Dazai’s family,” he offered.

“My husband’s out running some errands, so he might be late coming; but Yumeno’ll be back from his visit at Elise’s in about an hour,”

A pause. Then, “I look forward to meeting them soon.”

“Oh yes,” she exhaled, shoulders sagging. “Gen’emon, Osamu, Yumeno -- they’re always out and about somewhere.” Her voice didn’t exactly change, but Chuuya felt something tense pass through her lips. “I have nowhere to go, see, since I recently just lost my --”

“Sorry I disappeared for a bit,” Dazai said, stepping back into the mudroom with a glass of water and an amber-colored bottle of pills in his hands. He handed both of them to his Mother and stood back in filial silence as he watched her take two tablets and drown them down with the water. After she’d swallowed them, she kept holding the cup. Dazai looked relieved. Chuuya thought he saw his hand inch closer to her, as if to pat her on the back or touch her shoulder, but instead he turned to him and gave a lopsided smile. “I was just checking in on dinner.”

“Dinner? You don’t cook.”

“I cook!”

“You don’t cook well,” Chuuya retorted automatically, only realizing he maybe should not have insulted his boyfriend’s culinary skills in front of his Mother the first time he officially met her.

Dazai put one hand near his mouth in a conspiratory way and used the other one to point accusingly at his Mother. “Where do you think I got it from? She’s worse than me!”

Hearing this, Tane jabbed his side with her finger and then reached up to pinch his cheek. She looked a little embarrassed, but also amused. “Osamu!” she shrieked.

“Owowowowow!! Whaaaaaaat? It’s the truth! Before you married Dad, you were so skinny from living on your own for so long and not being able to cook any meals! You said you lived off of cheap ramune and convenience store cup noodles, but now you’re the chubbiest woman on the block --”

She pinched his cheek harder, earning a whimpering groan that made Chuuya snort. She turned to him, completely ignoring the severe pain she was inflicting upon her son, and said apologetically, “Please don’t listen to him.”

“Oh, I never do,” Chuuya reassured her, thinking to himself that they would surely get along fine.

Satisfied with this, she let Dazai go and made a movement to grab the bags Chuuya was carrying. Not wanting to trouble her -- she looked like she couldn’t even carry a tea tray, let alone two college boys’ corpulent luggage -- Chuuya yanked them back and said, “I’m fine, thank you. Don’t worry, I can handle these.”

“You’re very strong for someone so little!”

You’re little too . . . , Chuuya thought weakly after receiving -2000 damage for her casual comment (Yeah, this was definitely Dazai’s Mom), but he elected to not verbalize it. Instead, he adjusted one of the bags’ straps on his shoulder and gave a winning smile.

“I like you very much,” she announced, and it sent a thrill of joy in Chuuya that lasted about 0.8 seconds (so like maybe just a little bit longer than a quarter of Hollywood’s celebrity marriages) because that was when she added, “Dazai never brings his friends over. Ha! He never brings himself over most times. He loves Yokohama more than he loves his Mama,”

“That’s not true, Mom,” Dazai frowned, furrowing his eyebrows. “You know I try to visit when I can; I just have so many essays because of my program, and --”

She brushed him off, eyes fixed on Chuuya. He suddenly remembered Dazai mentioning that his Mother was half-deaf, but he could’ve sworn she heard her son perfectly just then.

“Well anyway, like I said, we’re so glad you’re here.” Then, almost as if she had planned to drop the absolute worst thing possible to say after that, she also giggled teasingly and said, “Gives me hope that one day he might finally bring a girl home and make me some grandchildren!”

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

(Sorry for the sudden discordant onomatopoeia I just felt like adding sound effects to this unfortunate moment of heteronormative-induced despair).

Chuuya, who quite admittedly -- yet gullibly -- would have said everything had been going quite well up until this point, couldn’t help his jaw from slackening in disbelief.

Dazai’s Mother thought he was Dazai’s friend.

Just his friend.

He hadn’t told them. That they were together.

And, from what Tane just said, Dazai had barely mentioned Chuuya to his family in the first place.

(Yikes. Lol. Rest in peace, King >~<)

Chuuya knew that his mouth was open, but there were deadass no words that could save them from the awkward silence that just came and sat its fat ass in the middle of their conversation. If it weren’t for the fact that he was still blinking, it would’ve been fair enough to think that he had just started spontaneously malfunctioning on the spot. For all-knowing ones -- like us, dear Reader -- the numerous questions and broken octaves of high-pitched screaming that imploded inside Chuuya’s head could all be vaguely seen from behind his eyes.

Why did Dazai not tell his parents?

Was that why they were fine with him sleeping in his bed?

Oh God, was Dazai even out to his parents?

Wait, was that why they had been using the wrong pronouns for Q this entire time?!

Oh shit, shit, shit, Dazai’s parents didn’t know that their own kids were queer as fuck.

Oh shit, shit, shiiiiiiiiiiiiit --

Why did he just assume Dazai’s parents would be cool with their son dating another guy?

Chuuya had been so caught up in the euphoria of queer normalization in his life thanks to his dads and friends that for literally the entire time he’d known Dazai he had (blessedly) forgotten that straight people existed!! Even worse, he failed to realize that Dazai’s parents were het and most likely really uncool about a lot of things!! Ideologically-speaking!! They didn’t even know their eldest son was bi!! C’mon!! Did they not see the way he sat weird? He couldn’t do math! He didn’t have his license! How could you possibly think he was straight?!

That day, Chuuya experienced a special kind of horror, for it all too quickly dawned on him that he was standing in front of a woman he very much needed to get to like him but said woman also most probably thought people like him -- people like her children -- were gonna burn in hell.

But, Chuuya’s grandiose internal panic attack aside, this crisis is frankly taking up too much narrative space. To do it justice, I would have to type down the word “F U C K ! ! !” about three thousand times; and even then it wouldn’t really suffice because the level of utter humiliation and dread that washed over Chuuya just then transcended even the vast confines of this cosmos. Homeboy could see shrimp colors with how much he just wanted to disintegrate from corporeal form then and there.

He felt someone taking the bags and suitcases from his hands. It took a second for him to realize Dazai had reached out and grabbed them. He tried to meet his eyes -- looking for what, he didn’t know. Reassurance? An explanation? A look that said “Surprise! We hate gays in this house!”? -- but the genius just flashed one of his signature empty smiles and cheerfully said, “I’ll take these to my room. Be right back!”

His boyfriend (boyfriend, not friend! B-O-Y-F-R-I-E-N-D!!! We had a whole chapter emphasizing how they were very clearly and officially boyfriends! You can’t take those >3000 words away from me!! Nyet!! I refuse!!) was gone again -- now with more suspicious undertones -- and Chuuya was alone with Dazai’s Mother for the second time that day.

“Uh,”

Thankfully, that was when the front door opened with a swivel of bell keys and in came Yumeno -- the star of the show -- wearing a bright yellow raincoat and carrying their doll which donned a matching outfit. They tossed a set of keys into a glass bowl near the foyer and started to walk past the mudroom. Once their eyes landed on the weird stranger who was in the house, they took one earbud out and surveyed Chuuya. From Q’s point of view, he looked like he couldn’t decide whether he was dressed for a 1975 concert or a cocktail party hosted by Keanu Reeves. (Oh, so he dresses like that all the time, was what they were thinking).

Chuuya was about to give them a friendly wave but Yumeno whipped their head dismissively and turned to their Mama. “If he’s here, Nii-san’s here. Where’s Nii-san?”

“In his room,” she replied. Q nodded, but just before they could come any further inside Tane clicked her tongue and pointed at their muddy shoes. “Take those off. And your coat,” she ordered, in that tone most mothers spend their entire lives perfecting. “When your brother comes back, help him set the table.”

Yumeno pouted. “Can Chuuya help set the table?”

Tane tilted her head sarcastically to the side. “I don’t think three people are needed to set the table.”

Q placed a hand on their chin thoughtfully. “Hmm, normally I’d say that was true, but Chuuya-nii and I are both really short so we’d just need Brother’s help reaching the stuff at the top shelf and then the two of us can take it from there!”

Extra -2000 damage to Chuuya.

Actually, make it -2500. There was just something about an eleven year old bluntly pointing out how comparably short you are in relation to them that really plunges your soul into the deepest of mortal anguish. Dazai’s family was obliterating him. He’d literally only been in the house for about fifteen minutes.

He and Q got to work on setting the table. It turned out they didn’t need Dazai’s help after all and, pretty soon, everything was ready for dinner.

The genius still hadn’t come back.

Yumeno caught Chuuya searching for him with wondering eyes. So, to boost up his morale, they patted him on the back and said, “He’s probably still in his room. Either he got distracted with one of his Sudoku puzzle books or he’s just straight up sad. Don’t worry. Nii-san has to get a solid two to three hours of brooding per day.” Chuuya blinked down at them. Q nodded very seriously. “Quotas, you understand.”

“Uh . . .”

Tane said that the food would be ready in about five minutes. She declared it in a volume that would surely have reached Dazai’s ears, wherever he was in the house. A faint smell of smoke drifted through the main area, but the vegetables and spices mixed into whatever was cooking in the kitchen compensated for it.

Yumeno walked over to the dining table and took a seat, eyes now glued to their phone and no longer paying attention to Chuuya, their Mother, or the world outside of their Snapchat homepage.

Seemingly rooted in his spot, Chuuya let himself look around.

It was a small house. Smaller than his, with only a few windows that looked out into the messy lawn outside. Sections of the floor were carpeted, and others in hardwood, as if it couldn’t make up its mind on what to properly be and so had simply settled on a patchwork existence. The walls were painted a humble cream, but the lustre from the sheen had eroded -- to the point where the walls looked like they were constantly frowning, though not exactly in total disappointment: it was more so in the way clouds must look down on us right before a storm. Or a drizzling hurricane. Framed photographs and a few pieces of languorous yet simple art hung pointlessly on anemic string. Chuuya could barely make them out, but in some of the pictures he saw a younger Dazai standing next to a pink and blue ribboned crib that must have held his even younger sibling; Dazai in a middle school uniform holding up a certificate for something he’d won but evidently wasn’t that proud of; Dazai with a front tooth missing showing off a small hermit crab he must’ve found at the beach to whoever was holding the camera at the time. Miscellaneous shelves sat underneath these multicolored memories, lining the space like a cheerless library that hadn’t had a customer in years. Unsurprisingly, they held olympic sized books with titles like World History, Psychology 101, and The American Medical Association Family Medical Guide (the kinds of books Dazai didn’t read, because they were nonfiction, and factual, and -- as he would say -- “filled to the brim with hot air”). A handful of Pharmacy textbooks -- Dazai had mentioned his Mother had studied Pharmacy in one of Japan’s top universities when she was young -- and a few scattered, dusty trinkets seemed to have been placed on the mantle and shelf spaces as an afterthought, almost as if having souvenirs from Tokyo Disneyland or matching keychains from everywhere else they had forced themselves to go to was enough to make them look like a normal family. A small Yamaha piano was tucked away in the corner, neglected and lonely in how pathetically un-grand it was next to the sickly-looking lamp that towered over the black and white keys. Next to the worn piano stool was a casement that held coffee-stained music sheets, notebooks, and pamphlets from orchestra performances that were long dead and gone, yet still preserved -- almost accidentally -- on old schedules and calendars. A couple more photos -- ones without frames or borders -- were propped up against more books, decorations, and faded curios. These looked more recent, but there were significantly fewer of them in number than the earlier ones, because as time goes on people get very used to living together and think that these days will never stop happening, despite signs already showing that they will peeking their heads out every once in a while from behind the gray-veilied curtain. Everything was bathed in an almost sunset atmosphere, as if every chromosome that lived there only believed in the color orange.

Chuuya hadn’t noticed that Dazai had come back and sat down across from Yumeno until he heard him say, almost strained, “Hey, Chuuya. Food’s ready.”

Feeling as if he was on the brink of solving an equation, or finally recalling a complicated formula if he’d only just studied the flash cards hard enough, Chuuya made his way to where they were and sat down next to Dazai. Their eyes met, but before either of them could say anything Tane had come in from the kitchen. She put down a boiling platter of sautéed vegetables, rice, and pork mixed with dark brown sauce that reflected the ceiling light shyly. Some edges of the meat looked burnt, along with a few of the rice grains, but other than that it all looked rather good, and Chuuya said as much out loud, because something in him was getting quite tired of just standing by, watching things unfold like insect wings.

“This looks really good, Tane-san.”

She brightened. “Oh, thank you! Gen’emon’s usually the one who cooks, but tonight I wanted to make dinner, since we have a special guest.” She winked at Chuuya, and he felt the back of his neck heat up.

“Where’s Dad?” Dazai asked.

His Mother shrugged. “Late again. You know him. I’ll just save a plate for him when he gets home.”

Dazai nodded, and that was all there was to say.

Tane clapped her hands. Her eyes fell onto Yumeno, who was still on their phone. Clicking her tongue again, she told them to put it down so they could say grace, but Q went, “Just wait I’m on my Bible app,” which was honestly quite awe-inspiring to Chuuya, but when he snuck a peek at their phone screen he saw that the little brat was on an Archive of Our Own tab.

Dinner went quite well.

Dazai had cracked a few of his usual stupid jokes (“I would attend a public execution via guillotine. Why’d we ban those?”), but it was obvious that he was doing it just to annoy Yumeno. Their Mother rolled her eyes at her eldest’s more brainless comments; and there were certainly times when she seemed to have expertly blotted out their voices to give herself a few moments of reprieve to finish her meal; but otherwise, she didn’t seem to really mind her two children. In fact, there were even times when Chuuya caught her looking at the both of them, on either side of her, almost nostalgically -- as if she was in the other room flipping through old photo albums, or they were simply not there, and she was talking to ghosts.

Chuuya knew that look all too well.

More and more often -- since he had graduated high school and started university -- he’d seen his dads looking at him and Ane-san the same way. He had always known it was love -- there was no other word for it -- so it must have been love in Tane’s eyes too, but it felt different. More folded up.

Shit hit the fan after dinner was over -- and, like with most disasters, it started out with an innocent inquiry.

“So Chuuya, I heard you were in Engineering?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Is anyone else in your family an engineer?”

“No, we have authors and journalists in the family. I’m actually the odd one out,” Chuuya cleared his throat. “But my Dad is a doctor. And almost all of my friends are in some sort of STEM field with me.”

Tane frowned slightly. “Oh?” She cast a stray look at her son, but Dazai had gone quiet. Yumeno too. “Why are you taking a literature class with Osamu then?”

Chuuya, who had quite the exaggerated tale of woe to tell about how he had ended up where he was now -- balls-deep in love with a literary prodigy while still also constantly stressed that he was going to fail this course that had nothing to do with his major yet could still more or less get his degree revoked -- but he didn’t get the chance to tell it, because, as I said, shit hit the fan.

“Why are you not taking any Engineering classes then?” she asked, twisting her neck to speak to her son. Tane’s face, which seemed so content and happy-go-lucky just moments before, suddenly hardened into a deep displeasure that marked every surface of her skin. Her peppery hair looked like rotted tree branches hanging from her skull. The wrinkles around her muscles tightened painfully. Her lips became a thin line underneath her flaring nose. She almost looked like a whole different person . . . No. She didn’t change enough to warrant a complete metamorphosis. It was like when your eyes finally adjusted to an optical illusion -- the distorted lines and writhing symmetry inverting in on itself, as if an invisible hand was pulling on it from the inside-out.

“If he has to take literature, why do you not take more practical classes?” she asked breathlessly. “Has reading books all day become more important than real work in the world?”

“No, Mom,” Dazai mumbled.

“Did we send you to a stupid university?”

“No, Mom,” Dazai mumbled.

“Um, Dazai’s entrance scholarships waived off most of the science and math requirements for his degree,” Chuuya piped up, knowing he must have been making a fool of himself but unable to stop anyway. “And since the Literature Department recognizes him as a genius, then --”

“Chuuya, you get my Osamu to go into Engineering too, yes? I know it isn’t too late for him to stop wasting his talents away. Maybe even introduce him to a nice girl from there. Someone who’ll fix him up so I’ll have sensible grandbabies,”

Fell dead silent at the audacious amount of parental inconsideration for her son’s basic human happiness, is what Chuuya did.

The words his Dad had said to him a while ago flooded back to his mind: Dazai? Stop reading? I think he’d die before that happened.

Literature was Dazai’s whole world. It was the love of his life. Chuuya couldn’t imagine him being without it for even one second, let alone abandoning it altogether to study something so torturously different.

It wasn’t even that Chuuya doubted that Dazai could become a successful engineer, or doctor, or whatever it was that’d make his parents accept him. He knew he could, because he could do anything -- be anything -- and he’d do it exceptionally.

But what was all that to the way he looked when he talked excitedly about Virginia Woolf at the back of the Global Arts and Science library? To how he’d fall asleep at 6 AM after pulling an all-nighter annotating a Henrik Ibsen play -- exhausted and skinny hands cramping, yes, but with just a touch of contentment on his face because he’d finally finished it and God the ending was so worth it? What was money, or status, or a nine-to-five job behind a safely asinine cubicle to how he smiled over poetry? Glittered over metaphors? Laughed at silly, age-old stories nobody else would be able to understand -- let alone find gut-wrenchingly hilarious and wonderful?

“Mom --”

“Tch.”

Tane’s voice ripped Chuuya from his thoughts, careening him back to the present moment. Dazai was still hunched over beside him, head hanging low and looking very, very tired. Yumeno was still at the table, their phone forgotten and face pale with worry. The last time Chuuya saw both siblings like this was when he had video called Dazai all those weeks ago.

When he’d hung up, did something like this happen right afterwards? How many times did Dazai have this conversation? Is it possible to both regret that you made a call yet also feel so relieved that you did?

Tane sighed. “It’s like you want to make your parents worry about you,”

“I don’t,” Dazai murmured. “I try my best to --”

The front door opened. Everyone sat up and saw a middle-aged man carrying two paper bags sanding in the foyer, gawking at them.

That was when Yumeno and Dazai, as if of one mind, stood up from the table, brought their dishes to the sink, and quietly left the dining area.

“Thanks for the food,” Dazai said under his breath, but it didn’t even sound like he was saying it to anyone. He stalked off, undoubtedly heading for his bedroom, and Chuuya, who felt like his throat was going to burst from just the sight of Dazai walking away, had no choice but to stumble out of his chair and run after him.

Chapter Text

Nothing like having your entire identity brutally demolished by your Mother in front of the new boyfriend, I always say.

After that lovely dinner that was the envy of all everyday society for its loveliness and just a dash of manipulative parenting, Dazai, because he was stupid and anxiety’s a bitch, immediately decided that Chuuya would break up with him in less than ten minutes after he’d scampered off into his room, and so, somewhere in the middle of his busy scampering, it was imperative that he prepare himself for the humiliatingly fatal blow that would be a STEM major shattering his heart into a million itty-bitty pieces -- because the only thing worse than falling for an Engineering major who doesn’t read, is to be dumped by one, which is a totally real thing that people say and you should not Google it just to prove me wrong.

He also came to the groundbreaking conclusion that everybody in the entire goddamn world must be just about getting ready to dress up -- with fancy hats, lorgnettes, and monocles -- to stand at a pier and wave handkerchiefs at the Soukoku ship sailing away and then promptly sinking just before it had a chance to sail in the first place. RMS-Titanic-style. (I’m sure we can ask James Cameron to make another blockbuster movie about it, except instead of “My Heart Will Go On” the hit song would be something like “Céline Dion Watches Bungou Stray Dogs?! Oh my GOD !!! ft. GRANRODEO”).

When Dazai got to his room, he shoved past the barricade of suitcases that were blocking the entrance and was just about to brattily shut the door behind him, but Chuuya wedged himself in between the small opening. There was a slight struggle, where, like a scared child delaying the inevitable, Dazai tried to push him away and out into the hall so he could be alone in his room for however long, but Chuuya was stronger, and with a firm grip he managed to get the two of them inside and closed the door himself. It groaned shut, and they were alone: Dazai slumped at the edge of his bed and Chuuya standing across from him still reeling from what Tane had said just minutes ago.

Almost thankfully, the silence was brief, because Dazai -- who would say he was quite good at this, actually (he’s not) -- decided to rip the bandage out first. “Look, I understand that you don’t want to play the closet game,”

Chuuya lifted up his chin, his face unreadable. “What?”

“I’ve heard -- and given, mind you -- the speech multiple times, so I get it,” Dazai’s face suddenly turned grave; when he talked his voice was noticeably lower but in a smoldery way -- as if he was one of those excessively oiled up surgeons on cable TV who had just performed an impossible, life-saving operation while also rescuing a poor helpless cat with only two legs that had gotten trapped on the roof of a burning building which was right next to the hospital and required him to scale it shirtless and sexily covered in ash for some reason. “‘It’s not you, it’s me, it’s the gay drama of it all -- but mostly it’s your shattered serotonin receptors.’”

“What are you doing?” Chuuya finally said. His mouth was set in a hard line.

“Getting it over with.”

“Getting what over with?”

“This,”

“What’s this?”

“I’m ending it. For you.”

“Ending what?”

“Us. This is a breakup.”

“Who said so?”

“You said so.”

“I did not.”

“You’ve got that look,”

“What look?”

“The look that tells me I should leave now before you realize I’m not worth staying for.”

Dazai must have just thought that he was telling the honest, objective truth, so it meant nothing for him to say it. To Chuuya, though, it felt like a slap to the face.

His chest began to well and fill up like a clogged sink passing a really fat kidney stone through its sink anus, so he took a step closer, and then another, another, another, until he reached Dazai, cupped his face, and kissed him. He instantly froze in surprise, but Chuuya didn’t give him a chance to pull away out of reflex.

The truth of the matter was that he couldn’t make grand speeches. He wasn’t good with his words -- let alone explaining the meaning behind them. Dazai was obviously the more convincing one between the two, but that just made it harder to argue with him in times like these. In the months since they’d met -- especially after they’d gotten closer and started dating -- Chuuya had realized that whenever Dazai started regressing and saying stupid stuff like “What if you grow bored and leave me” or “You deserve someone better,” the best way to counter it was to just flat out say no and snuff out the spark of uncertainty before it turned into a fusillade. Dazai’s over-analytical mind moved fast, but oftentimes with a velocity that sent him spiralling into a place so buried deep inside himself that even Chuuya couldn’t get to it. Once that wall was up, no amount of patient comfort or words of affirmation would make the insufferable genius yield, so there was really only one thing left to do.

With a frankly rather impressive show of self-assured coordination, Chuuya maneuvered both of their bodies so that he could climb onto Dazai’s lap and straddle him. Almost urgently -- as if it was so important that he would do it a thousand times over just to get it right -- he kept their lips together: only pulling away when he felt the tension slightly leave Dazai enough for his hands to slide up and touch Chuuya’s spread thighs. When it looked like the idiot was going to start talking again, Chuuya pushed him down gently onto the mattress and laid on top of him, intertwining their bodies and kissing him some more. He could feel Dazai’s heart beating fast underneath all his clothes. Chuuya decided that he wouldn’t let him say anything until it slowed down to a calmer tempo. Boldly -- not thinking about it too much -- he stuck out his tongue and licked at Dazai’s bottom lip, which earned him a shy moan that melted into the bottom of his empty throat.

(And, I know what you’re thinking, dear Reader:

Are they gonna ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)?

Like are they gonna ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)?

Gonna do the ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Well, most probably as a penultimate disappointment to the general audience, no, they will not -- as they say in late 17th century England -- ride a dragon upon St. George.

To the bemoaning of the masses, I regret to announce to you all that they will neither fadoodle, dance the kipples, nor join giblets in a gloriously unwarranted smut scene for the pleasure of our slutty, slutty crowd because, as the author would like to remind everyone, the tags, as well as this punctuated yet brief message, must be heeded:

Stop asking me to write a sex scene. I am on so many libido-killing drugs and do not want to).

Thus, our PG-rated makeout session eventually teetered off in a way that didn’t leave anyone pregnant, and both boys found themselves in a twinkling, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) virgin ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) silence once again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Chuuya asked after a while, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.

Dazai snorted. “Uh, no, actually,” The one atop him frowned against his chest, but, really, it just egged Dazai on. (Kisses could only subdue him for so long, you see). “I was kinda just thinking,” he continued, sitting up and using his elbows to swiftly lift both of them up so that his back was now resting on the headboard and Chuuya was straddling him once again, “That I’d keep all of my emotions inside, and then -- one day -- I’ll die. Mysteriously!, forcing everyone in my life to try to unravel the enigma that was Osamu Dazai through mismatched clues I had scattered throughout my everyday life before meeting my timely doom, like cryptic text messages with double meanings and candid yet aesthetic photographs I took of birds vomiting in my backyard that could symbolize the fleetingness of my bad digestive system because whenever I eat something with too much acid I get the runs for a couple hours, but hey, I’m not ashamed; everybody knows all hot people have stomach problems --”

“It amazes me how you never shut the fuck up yet also never actually talk about anything.” Chuuya interrupted. Dazai tilted his head in mock confusion, but his boyfriend rolled his eyes and just brought their foreheads closer together. “Come on, talk to me,” he said, half pleading.

“About my metabolism? See, when I was thirteen, I think I puked up actual cud and --”

“No, dumbass-with-a-one-track-attention-span, I meant talk about what just happened.”

“Oh. That. Yeah.” Dazai blew air out of his mouth, causing his bangs to fly up and then flop down again unceremoniously. “Sometimes I wish I could just record every single conversation I have with my parents to show Oda later so he can listen to it and just be like, ‘Oh THAT’S why!’”

“Oh yeah,” Chuuya easily retorted, knowing that this was just confetti -- a scared head peeking out from under the stage -- and that playing along, passing this used ball, was something Dazai needed to do before he said anything significant. “Whenever my parents are acting crazy I just get audio evidence of them saying mean shit to me and then refuse to talk or think about it until there’s a therapist present who’ll hopefully deal with the problem for me lest I have to figure it out by myself. Works every time.” (Not very subtle, this boy).

Dazai nodded in approval. “Exactly. I’m pretty sure that’s a common family practice: adhering perfectly to family-related knowledge. Family dynamic-related knowledge that I am knowledgeable about.”

Despite himself, Chuuya laughed, but he knew they shouldn’t go too far off topic. “Is everyone in your family like that? Even relatives?”

“Yeah, my cousin twice removed murdered both his parents and the police never caught him so now everyone -- from my aunt in Connecticut to maternal grandpa lying six feet under -- is generally against adoption, which is crazy ’cause, like, if my kid killed me in cold blood I’d be chill with it so I personally don’t see an issue and, besides, why would you have biological kids anyway when the world is on the verge of total environmental collapse due to late-stage capitalist greed and irreparable climate change -- like I said, that’s crazy.”

[Insert moving GIF of the part in John Mulaney’s third Netflix standup comedy special Kid Gorgeous where he walks across the stage brandishing his weapon-of-choice microphone and says to the audience with a look of utter bafflement and unmistakable concern, “Now we don’t have time to unpack all of that . . .”]

“. . . Is there anything else I should know?” Chuuya blinked dumbly. “Peanut allergy, or something?”

Dazai furrowed his eyebrows, seeming to be under intense thought. “Mmm . . . No, nothing that I can think of at the moment. I mean, we could still talk about my acid reflux --”

“Why do you wear bandages?” Chuuya blurted out, finally -- unbelievingly -- saying the one question we’re all barred from asking due to the hard line between reality and a fiction we cannot viciously scrutinize in the same way dentists do when they have their entire fist shoved down your esophagus so how the fuck would I even begin to tell you how school’s going, Dr. Doesn’t Know the Meaning of Personal Space? “I want to know.”

Dazai stared at him blankly. For a moment, it seemed like he was going to make one of his stupid deflective jokes again, but he surprised everybody (including me, dear Reader!, and that’s saying something!) when he said, “I used to scratch myself a lot when I was younger. I still do, but the bandages help. I’m told the scars’ll heal, but it’s been years, and they haven’t.”

Stunned, Chuuya’s eyes wordlessly asked the next necessary question.

“Nobody’s sure why I do it.” A pause. “The doctors think it’s a small compulsion stemming from PTSD. It’s mild though. Or, I guess as mild as PTSD can be for someone like me.” Another pause. “Remember when I told you we lived in California for a while?”

Chuuya nodded, listening with anticipation.

Dazai bit his bottom lip so hard that it turned white. Hating it, Chuuya lightly touched his mouth with a cool index finger. The other boy gasped softly. His teeth let go, allowing the pink flush to come back. Hesitant.

Miraculously -- and also to his complete shock, because Dazai would literally rather gulp down a glass of cold lethal poison than be vulnerable -- he continued. “Since my parents both had to work back then, they left me alone with an old Japanese woman who lived in the same ratty apartment complex as us. She said she used to be a nanny, but she was retired, so she didn’t charge much,” Dazai exhaled slowly, offering Chuuya a broken smile once he saw how worried he looked.

It was different from how Kunikida or his other friends were when they worried about him. They would always be restrained and held back, as if they had just grabbed the back of Dazai’s shirt right before he’d plunged into a cliff, and they’d averted their eyes, giving him a chance to get up by himself. Pat off the dust. Walk away with all his bones intact.

Chuuya wasn’t like that.

Chuuya let him jump off the cliff, because it was okay, he would catch him.

He would be there when he hit the bottom.

“To two scared immigrants still trying to get their bearings while also desperately looking for a way to care for their young son, she was a definite godsend, but . . .” Dazai’s tongue felt oddly elastic.

Why was he telling him all this?

Why was it easy? Why was it simple?

How did Chuuya always manage to make him believe that things were simple? -- They could be frightening, maybe even hard to understand, but somehow, still, they were simple and they were worth it?

“S-She was nice at first. I remember she used to sing to me.” Dazai’s voice trailed off, the memory of a long-forgotten song flitting briefly underneath his eyelashes. Like skinny moth wings.

It took a second for him to say the next few words.

“My parents only realized something was wrong when they came home early one night. This was years later, so the woman had been watching over me for a while . . . She never left any marks or bruises, so no one but me knew what was really going on, but I’d started to scratch myself at the places she . . . Anyway . . . that day, my Dad got fired from work, so he picked Mom up early from the shop.”

“How’d he get fired?” Chuuya interrupted, like his heart had given him a shove.

Dazai shrugged. “Turns out dedicating nearly five gruelling years to an American company means shitall if your racist bosses saw you as nothing but disposable and already way past your prime.” His tone became unfathomably brittle. “My parents got back expecting to tell me bad news, but,” He breathed in sharply. It tore something inside Chuuya’s lungs. Dazai let out a half bitter, half sad smile. “I was always an unexpectedly troubled -- albeit adorable -- child.”

Despite himself, again, Chuuya gave a small laugh. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I could tell from the pictures on display outside.”

Dazai blushed. “You saw those?”

“I did.” Chuuya admitted, his hand coming up to brush against Dazai’s cheek softly. “I was wondering why there weren’t any earlier photos. The earliest one showed you and Q from when you were already nine. Nothing from before that.”

Dazai’s face relaxed under Chuuya’s touch.“We never took any pictures back then,” he said matter-of-factly. “Or maybe we did, and I just haven’t seen them . . . Maybe when you’re in America you develop as complete a disregard for sentimentality as you do for the metric system.” He chuckled at his own unpatriotic joke, but he frowned immediately afterward. “Y’know . . . my parents didn’t want to move back and tell everyone they’d failed. They knew that people would talk -- ‘How could you possibly not make it in the Land of Opportunity?’ ‘Wasn’t the reason they’d moved away in the first place was so that their son could get an American education?’ ‘Five years and all they’ve brought back is wasted potential and shame.’ -- . . . They knew that, and they were right; . . . but my Dad couldn’t find any more work.” Dazai swallowed hard. “To make things worse, my Mom was pregnant, and it was hard and really expensive to constantly meet with doctors who insisted on getting a second opinion, and then a third, and then a fourth . . . We had to move back. There was nothing left for us there.”

Chuuya listened quietly, tracing tiny circles on Dazai’s cheek. His other hand held the side of his neck: running a smooth thumb across the clammy skin. “What happened after that?”

“Q was born,” Dazai replied, a bit of pride flashing across his eyes. “My parents found work, but they were old and had lost track of where the Japanese economy was going during those five years. They weren’t home a lot while I was in middle and high school, but Q and I never blamed them. They’ve been employed on and off ever since . . . ” He sighed. “My Mom . . . recently lost her job a few months ago. That’s why I didn’t . . . That’s why I stopped coming to Illuminations for a while.”

Chuuya nodded, understanding. He felt like he was getting close to the end of an incredibly unsolvable equation.

“My parents don’t want Q or I to end up like them.” Dazai said quietly. He said it in a way that did not allow any room for protest or reconsideration. “Even though America had failed them, they still believed we could learn from their mistakes. Do it better than they did. Live the life they couldn’t have . . . ” Dazai paused. He hung his head. “Believe it or not, I was studying to become a doctor up until two years ago.”

The idea of Dazai studying to be a doctor -- a ‘real’ degree, as his Mother would probably call it -- was so preposterous that Chuuya instantly knew it was the truth and not one of Dazai’s cock and bull stories that would make any government’s propaganda team jealous. He looked so despondently earnest that there couldn’t possibly have been anything but fatigued honesty in his words. If I had to make an onion headline to illustrate our literary prodigy’s current state, I’d probably go with “Man Now Too Exhausted To Repress Both Painful Childhood Memories And Oddly Specific Grievance Against STEM Majors For Supposedly No Real Reason Other Than The Fact That They’re Total And Complete Ganks.”

Chuuya reached between them and felt for Dazai’s hand, squeezing it once to show him he was still listening. “Why’d you stop?”

“Hm?”

“Studying to be a doctor.”

“Oh. I’m too pretty to do math.”

“Yes you are,” Chuuya patronized. “But we both know that’s not why.”

Dazai sighed. Lifting his head up to the roof, he inhaled sharply before saying, “I tried for a really long time to be what they wanted me to be . . . But I just . . . couldn’t.”

Chuuya waited. He was still holding Dazai’s hand.

“For eighteen years, I did whatever my parents told me to do. After Yumeno was born, I became the eldest, and my family became my entire world. I didn’t trust anyone else. The kids at my elementary school kept their distance from me, even after I came back to live here for good. It got better in high school. I met Kunikida and a few others, but, even though I was friends with them, I was still alone. I was miserable. I didn’t want to admit that I was doing the monotonous crap I did every day just for the sake of passing time. The only thing that made me happy were the stories I read . . . For as long as I can remember, stories just made sense. I understood them. I thought everyone did too, so I figured it was just like one of those simple hobbies . . . But, in my third year, I signed up for an Advanced Literature course -- completely on a whim -- and . . .”

“And you loved it.”

“I loved it.” Dazai agreed. He looked like he could swoon, like he was an anime fan account on Twitter dedicated to simping after a random 2D man’s thighs or something. “I loved it, Chuuya, I loved it so much . . . I-It felt like it loved me back too. That’s so dumb, but --”

“It’s not dumb.”

“It was, because I threw myself into it. I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore -- I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be one in the first place . . . I brought it up to my parents. They got so mad. My Mom said I was being lazy, and I’d disappointed her. My Dad insisted I’d never find a job since I was so bad at making up my mind . . . I knew they were right . . . I had to get my shit together and turn my life around -- not end up like them -- but I also just wanted to fucking disappear.” Dazai’s voice quivered. Chuuya held his hand. “I didn’t know what the hell to do though. Nobody would help me, and it’s not like I asked them to, so . . . I turned into the stereotypical angsty teenager. The scratching came back. I slept less. Spent more time lying in bed than standing up. I got on meds, much to my Mother’s annoyance. They hardly helped. The days blurred by. By some miracle I didn’t fall too far behind in my studies, so even though everyone was pissed at me they made themselves believe I’d get over it soon and that it all must have just been me wanting some attention.”

“Just a phase?” Chuuya supplied.

“Yes, so naturally I brought myself to the brink of death.” Dazai deadpanned. “I ended up in the hospital after one particularly bad suicide attempt.”

What the fuck do you say to that, dearest Reader?

Chuuya was certainly taking suggestions.

Dazai went on. “I was in the psych ward for two weeks,”

“Shit,” the other finally managed to say. Oh-so-poignantly.

“I made a friend there. Dostoyevsky. We still text sometimes.”

“Jesus,”

“Hey, don’t tell anyone, but I kind of wanted to stay there forever.”

“Why?”

“The nurses were nice. There was a small library next to my room, so I just read all day. No one bothered me. Only the doctor came by once a day to ask how I was doing.”

“What about your family?”

“I requested for my visiting hours to only be open two times a week. They only came then. I didn’t want to burden them.”

“Dazai . . .”

“Yet, alas, o woe, everything must end.”

“Dazai . . .”

“When they discharged me I was almost tempted to try again, just to see what would happen.” While he’d been speaking, the color had sapped out of his eyes. “But apparently -- at least according to the body count of psychiatrists, therapists, counsellors, doctors, nutritionists, etc. who tossed me around between them since then like some sort of depressed hot potato that nobody wanted to deal with -- killing myself isn’t ‘a healthy life choice’ and I should, like, ‘remind myself that everything passes and that pain is temporary’ or whatever,” He laughed emptily. “I’m still waiting for confirmation on that though.”

“Why do you talk like that?” Chuuya hated that he sounded a little mad, but he was mad.

Dazai frowned. “Like what?” “Like you just want somebody to tell you you’re wrong and mean it?”

A flash of light from a passing car outside flew into the room: the window blinds slicing into it so it looked like golden beams were swimming in the air -- pulsing magnificently before they flared out to become like stars.

It was Dazai’s turn to surprise Chuuya with a kiss.

There wasn’t any heat or ambition in it.

In fact, the kiss was only alive for less than a minute.

But Chuuya wasn’t angry anymore.

When he pulled away, Dazai whispered, “M’sorry . . . I’m sorry . . .”

Before Chuuya could properly respond, though, Dazai -- of all things -- let out an idiotic giggle.

“What’s so funny?” Chuuya immediately snapped defensively, but there wasn’t any bite in it. This earned him another kiss, which led to more kisses, and more kisses, and eventually he felt so dizzy that he barely caught Dazai saying,

“I was scared I wouldn’t get to do that again,”

You can do it as many times as you want, Chuuya wanted to say, but the words were smothered out in the most delightful way possible.

They somehow ended up switching positions on the bed, with Chuuya lying flat, face up at the ceiling; Dazai resting atop his chest, one hand grabbing onto the collar of Chuuya’s shirt and bunching up the fabric in his fist. It was impossible to say how long they stayed like that. At some point one or both of them must have fallen asleep, but they found themselves coming back, just briefly enough to remember where they were, who they were with, why they were here, and then feel an utterly unapologetic burst of content before going back under, as if the gods had demanded that they commit this moment to memory.

So that some part of them could live in it forever.

Chapter Text

“Do you have anything to declare?”

“Yes,” Dazai said gravely, looking down at the machine. “I declare that this is stupid.”

(Psssstttttt !!! Hello hello, my dearest Reader. How I’ve missed you. You may have noticed my lack of narrative participation during the end of that last chapter.

Oh, what’s that? You didn’t? Oh pfffffft, you’re so funny!

I know you’re kidding. :)

Because if you weren’t, :) I’d be quite hurt. :)

Boohoohoo . . . Ohhooohoooo hooooo . . . hoooo . . .

:)

Now, as I am sure you’re all (b)itching to know, no, I do not know why I had to be silenced either. You’re certainly free to make complaintive inquiries to Management, but I’m assuming they’ll tell you the same thing they told me, which was ‘something-something . . . killing the vibe’ and ‘just go on your lunch break and let them work it out themselves we don’t want a snarky piece of shit commentator like you right now.’ (Which, on top of being quite rude -- who wouldn’t want me? -- it was also rather ludicrous! I can’t even have lunch. I’m a concept! We don’t eat sandwiches! How would that even work? Bah! Preposterous).

I also do not know why the author suddenly decided that this fanfic was going to be heartwarming and feel-good and as sensitive as 40-year-old incels on Reddit -- what’s with the in-depth commentary on American-Japanese immigration experiences and racism within dominantly white workplaces? Totally didn’t see that coming, considering this entire story reads like an acid trip gone South -- but, hey, I’m just the narrator guy. The chronicler of not-Narnia. Your ever-so-serviceable, trustworthy, and UNAPPRECIATED reporter of romance.

The sad little interns who run Twitter accounts of big-time companies, musical celebrities, and politicians are paid better than me. You’re so very lucky, dear Reader.

Anyway, as my brief protestory interlude regarding my appointed, sporadic absences -- which were decided wholly without my consent -- must have already told you, I am not running this crackshow. I am simply here to be evil).

Back to our story. As you know, after their homoerotically-charged and touching heart-to-heart (and mouth-to-mouth) session the night previously, our two fools had passed out in the literary genius’ childhood bedroom like a pair of innocent Boston Tea Partiers with little tarts and squeaky breeches who didn’t know the British were coming.

For their sake, I hope they kept calm, carried on, and locked the door.

(Sorry for the conflictingly unnecessary historical references. The author just came back from a trip to Boston and does not know what to do with all this new information about Paul Revere and the home city of Dunkin’ Donuts. Truthfully she’s still trying not to laugh over the fact that the state of Massachusetts has the word ‘ass’ in it).

But anyway, I said that English bit because, they, in fact, did not lock the door (amateurs!), which is how a nosy Yumeno easily managed to creep into the room at around 8 AM -- only to discover that their loser nerd brother was lovingly entangled around another loser nerd (except this one was in Engineering) who was not Yumeno’s brother -- and that, according to the lawful vicissitudes of sibling tolerance, was some disgusting ass shit that was not to be tolerated.

Chuuya felt a harsh camera flash blip over his face and instantly opened his eyes to see Q leaning over him and Dazai, phone held up in a way that could not possibly mean they were up to any good. (This was Dazai’s sibling after all: being a little shit was genetic by default).

“Wha --?” Chuuya groaned out, dazed.

“I’m gonna have to issue you both a citation and demand you stop that gay shit now,” Yumeno deadpanned, pocketing the phone and folding their arms together, looking down at the two as if the Spanish Inquisition had somehow been reincarnated into an eleven-year-old child thanks to the powers that be. “There are children present.”

“Oh,” Chuuya nodded. Without saying anything else, he disentangled himself from Dazai and ended up sitting at the edge of the bed, blinking dumbly like a dog waiting for instructions. (If Q had said, “Go fetch, boy!” and tossed their phone somewhere in the room, Chuuya would’ve probably gotten up and retrieved it. Woof woof).

“Come with me,” Yumeno ordered, electing to not anthropomorphize the older boy like BSD Wan did in Episode 1 and instead pivoting on their heels to make their way out into the hall.

Chuuya -- no thoughts head empty (woof woof) -- obeyed.

But, just before he closed the door behind him, he looked over his shoulder to sneak a peek at Dazai, who was, of course, still sleeping. When Chuuya left the bed, Dazai’s body had instinctively coiled around the chibi-less empty space, searching for the warmth he didn’t think he’d ever get used to but now can’t possibly imagine living without, so he was drowsily feeling around the bed covers for something to hug. Chuuya went back into the room and found his Baymax Tsum Tsum from the luggage and gently eased the plushie in between Dazai’s arms, which he took gratefully, -- still unconscious -- a faint smile of satisfaction crossing his face that nearly matched Chuuya’s tender one.

“I’m homophobic,” Q muttered from the doorway, revolted.

When Dazai woke up and found Chuuya gone, he thought he went to the bathroom or something; but after being without attention for twenty minutes Dazai left his bed (and Baymax) to find his boyfriend and little sibling in the kitchen. They seemed to be looking down at one of the appliances, so their backs were turned to him; Q was on their tip-toes and leaning on the counter to get a better look while Chuuya stood next to them. Heavily contrasting with Yumeno’s put-together outfit of a pink pullover and cream shorts, Chuuya was still in his red checkerboard pajama set that had cartoon puppies on it -- which he had changed into at some point between this chapter and the last: I am mentioning this now because it must logically have happened (one does not simply go from one outfit into the next, dear Reader, this isn’t a Sailor Moon transformation sequence nor a high school theater-level production of The Sound of Music); it’s just that I was too lazy to write a wardrobe change scene (see: my similar indolence with explaining the appearance of Dazai’s enigmatic blue hoodie at the Akutagawas’ pool party) -- so, to succinctly clarify: I am aware of the gaping plothole, I just don’t give a shit. Oh, also: Chuuya’s hair was also so incongruously unbrushed that from the back he kind of looked like Knuckles the Hedgehog. That detail isn’t all that important to mention, but now the next time you see Knuckles the Hedgehog (which I hope shall be very soon) you’ll be thinking about this fic, so I’d call that an accomplishment of very goblin proportions.

Yumeno poked the appliance in front of them, the way a doctor who didn’t know what the hell they were doing would look at someone’s body shutting down because of their period and go, “Have you tried not having a uterus?”. “If it’s broken, we should make Nii-san fix it,” they decided. (Except in that doctor scenario we would blame the patient. For having a uterus).

“What if he can’t?” Chuuya asked worriedly.

“Then we pin it on him for breaking it.”

“Thanks, I love you too.” Dazai piped up from behind, prompting both of them to turn around. “What’s going on?”

“I wanted to make myself breakfast,” Q answered, pointing at the coffee maker on the kitchen counter. “But the machine thing isn’t working, so I asked Chuuya-nii for help.”

“Wait,” Chuuya blinked, trying not to get too emotional over how Yumeno used “-nii” on his name just now. “I thought we were gonna make breakfast together.”

Q tilted their head in confusion. “Why would we make breakfast together?”

Chuuya was confused now too. It was infectious. (Or maybe there was just something about his face that automatically made Chuuya look like he was the dumbest person in the room -- keeping in mind that I say that rather affectionately, dear Reader, because I myself personally love stupid men). “To, like, bond and stuff.”

Q wrinkled their nose, as if the idea of Chuuya needing to eat the most important meal of the day while he was staying here at some point -- at some point! -- never crossed their mind as something that was even important to consider. “Ew.” (One syllable: Knife to the heart. Q was a badass). “I mean, I guess we could do that, but the machine is still broken.”

“Here, let me see,” Dazai tried to hide the bemused smile that was creeping onto his face from watching these two. He pushed past his little sibling and came up to the coffee maker, which, quite frankly, he had no clue where to begin to even try and fix but he was also a fresh new pair of eyes -- also the tallest. So that counted for something. Sort of.

After pressing a few buttons and getting no gracious technological response, he started muttering under his breath, “What’s wrong with you? Come on, tell daddy what’s wrong.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Chuuya deadpanned.

“Hey!” Q squeaked, prompting both ‘adults’ (bigger humans, let’s say; ‘adults’ is perhaps too . . . optimistic) to look down at them. “Language! There’s a fucking minor here!”

“You just said ‘fucking’!” protested Chuuya.

“I do what I fucking want!”

“Ouch!” Dazai yelped then, interrupting their intellectual bickering. “I just broke a nail trying to assess the damage,”

“Do you have anything to declare?”

“Yes,” Dazai said gravely, looking down at the machine. “I declare that this is stupid.” (And now we are caught up from where the chapter started -- wheeeeeeeeeeeee! -- it only took a couple pages of inexplicable nonsense that didn’t really supplement any valuable narrative context to the story whatsoever and probably didn’t at all disguise the fact that the author didn’t know where this part of the story was going to go so she just kept writing with the uncaring abandon of a cat shoving its fat ass into a tiny cardboard box because if it fits, it sits so wheeeeee!). He sighed, turning his head to ask over his shoulder, “How did it break, Q?”

“I dunno,” Yumeno supplied (which was very helpful). “I just remember it working last night when I made a cup of coffee; but now it’s almost as terribly impaired as you are, Nii-san.”

Dazai let out a dry laugh but chose not to comment further; instead turning back to the problem at hand and glaring at it super hard because that’s how they get the guys to spill all the beans in those gangster movies: protracted intimidation. (And guns, but Dazai didn’t have a gun nobody should ever give him a gun I feel like if someone did he’d end up mindlessly shooting the body of an already-dead GSS soldier who’d begged him to save them from five more minutes of endless mortal agony before passing on to the Great Unknown but that’s just something I completely made up on the fly it’s like Improv but plagiarized).

“Why were you drinking coffee late at night??” Chuuya piped up. “You’re, like, barely in middle school.”

“I was young,” Yumeno said gravely. “I made mistakes.”

“You said that was last night,” Chuuya frowned. “Also you’re eleven.”

“Cry about it, hag.”

“Haaaaaaaaaaah?!”

Dazai let out a wheeze and laughed into his hand, mentally giving Q a high-five and not at all realizing that, since Chuuya was the same age as him, Q was also calling him a hag by default. “Not your best comeback, chibi.”

Chuuya’s face went red, utterly floored by how this very small, very sassy child could insult him so effortlessly. “Says the guy who’s fine with his kid sibling drinking coffee at night! It’s probably not even decaf!”

“Hey, you may as well start ’em young,” Dazai shrugged. “Plus,” He pointed a finger up matter-of-factly and both siblings said, “The only acceptable time and place for decaf coffee is never and in the trash,” in unison.

“. . . Is that . . . A Dad Tip from the popular interactive dating sim video game Dream Daddy made by Game Grumps?” Chuuya spluttered in bewilderment.

“Mhmm!” (Again, in unison. Like it was a fucking routine or something).

“Oh my GOD! How could I forget???”

“Forget what?” Dazai batted his eyelashes expectantly.

“That you’re a fucking moron,” Chuuya said. “Of course you’ve played Dream Daddy,”

“Hey! You can shit-talk my brother and their pathetic attempt at being a gamer all you want but don’t be a potty-mouth about it!” Q interjected, having their priorities straight.

Chuuya groaned, giving up. “Fine, fine,”

A few minutes passed of the three of them uselessly suggesting ways in which they could fix the coffee machine. (“I could stick my hand in it and poke around.” “Dazai no.” “Hey, if God gave me two arms and this humble opportunity to sacrifice one of them in order to get my morning coffee, I’d gladly roll those dice,” “This is why you’re the family disappointment, Nii-san,”), until, suddenly, Dazai straightened up as if an arrow labelled ‘Eureka’ shot up his tragic flat ass. He was the very image of Archimedes just after he hopped out of that bath: his naked dick jiggling mathematically (Archimedes’ dick, not Dazai’s, just to be clear. I have no desire to ever describe or ponder over the latter appendage, lest the audience mistakes my hypothetically clever narrations -- Witticisms on a Sad Willy, let’s call it -- as interest in something that is otherwise -- and therefore always -- remarkably unimpressive and most certainly subpar in satisfactory performance to me).

Dazai whipped out his phone and placed a call. It rang three times before -- “Oh, Kunikidaaaaaaaaaaaaa, how have you been? You so rarely call me.”

“It was you who called me,” a static, muffled, and grumpy voice huffed exasperatedly.

“Always one to be so hung up on the details.”

“Shithead,” the Pharmacy major muttered something else incoherent on the other line. (It was probably insensitive and rude, but can we blame him?). “I am surprised though. It’s 9 AM. You’re never awake this early. On a weekend too.”

“I have a problem.”

“You have a problem or you are the problem?”

“So mean.” Dazai pouted. “The coffee machine at my parent’s place doesn’t work.”

“So why the hell’re you telling me about it?!”

“Because I’m gonna cook breakfast today and I can’t have breakfast without coffee!”

A pause. “You’re . . . going to cook?”

“Yup!”

“Lord help your family. And Nakahara.”

“How do you know Chuuya’s here?”

“I wrote it down in my notebook.”

“Awww, I didn’t know you were listening to me when I mentioned it!” Dazai cooed sweetly, his hand cupping his pink cheek like a bashful lady on her first season. “You really do caaaaaaare~.”

“I do,” Kunikida confirmed. (This he said with the admirable conviction of one who’s already gone through the five stages of depression since getting stuck with Dazai in his otherwise idealistic and organized life, and therefore saw the futility in denying the fact that he did -- cursedly, inconveniently, against-all-oddsly -- care, though not without bitching a perfectly good amount for someone in his situation: because if you’re going to submit to your unchangeably wretched fate you might as well goeth like a Karen and complain all the way to the heavens about it). “But not enough to support your cooking.”

Dazai pouted. “C’monnnnn Kiiiiiiiida, why can’t you believe in meeeeeeeeeeee?”

The last time you cooked something, you melted our rice cooker.”

“Why’re you so hung up on the past?”

“THAT WAS A WEEK AGO!!!”

“But nobody died!”

“THAT IS NOT THE THRESHOLD FOR SUCCESS!”

“Okay that one time I tried baking strawberry cake for Ango went fine --”

“IT LOOKED LIKE A FLAMINGO AND A GENDER-REVEAL-PARTY-GONE-WRONG COMMITTED SEX CRIMES ON INNOCENT DOUGH!!”

“I watched a YouTube video this week that said you should follow your dreams !!! why can’t you SHOW ME SOME SUPPORT!?”

“Because I value my mental health and everything you do with your crackhead levels of determination is a threat to it.”

It was then that Q grabbed the phone from Dazai and said, “I’m cooking with him. It’s okay. We’ll figure out the machine by ourselves. Sorry for bothering you, Kuni-san.”

Kunikida’s voice on the other line could be heard breathing out a relieved, “Oh thank God” before Yumeno hung up and tossed their brother’s phone on the counter.

(What was the point of that overextended telephonic exchange that solved absolutely zero technical obstacles which our simple filler plot has presented to us so far? Dear Reader, I just miss Kunikida. I love everything about him -- from his potent malewife behavior right down to that low ponytail that makes him look like a founding father that the Hamilton fandom would’ve shipped with Thomas Jefferson or something.

Plus, the author’s just doing whatever the hell she wants at this point -- please do forgive her: she has writer’s block and is starting her fourth year of undergrad).

“Move aside, you waste of time!” Yumeno declared, elbowing Dazai in the almost-out-of-reach hip because they were very smol but also violent. “Looks like I’m going to have to fix it, like always.”

“You asked us for help,” Dazai pointed out.

“I’m fully capable and unanimously better than you but I just wanted to let you do everything for the sake of it also I’m lazy.” Q shrugged. Twisting around and half-climbing up on the counter, they strained an arm out adorably to grab the black cord attached to the coffee machine and plugged it into the wall socket nearby. It hummed to life: a red light at the top beeping politely to signal that Q had triumphed -- huzzah huzzah! -- and in doing so practically solved all the world’s problems including their brother’s horrendously pompous fashion sense (Seriously though, is no one going to acknowledge how Dazai dresses like he’s one bowtie away from becoming the next Doctor Who? Geronimo that bitch out of the thrift store sales pile before he signs a three seasons-long contract with the BBC, my God).

The issue having been cleared up through a summoning of the electrical powers that be, Q hopped off the counter and leaned on the balls of their feet, arms behind their back, looking expectantly up at the two adu -- bigger humans (though I realize now that referring to Chuuya as that is a joke in and of itself). With two claps of their small hands, they announced, “Okay! Time to make breakfast! Chop chop!” Smiling oh-so-sweetly, they gave direct orders to both Dazai and Chuuya that suspiciously looked like they would have to do all the work while the little brat sat back and distributed further commands.

Neither of the boys protested though. Things somehow felt unavoidable when it came to Yumeno deciding the affairs, as if there was so much indisputable authority contained in their little body that everyone else was obliged to obey -- such was the makeup of an all-encompassing dictatorship, but Q could never be a totalitarian fascist.

They were simply just too cute.

Chuuya, who was not well-versed in this kitchen, was forced to stand back while his boyfriend rummaged around the cabinets, shelves, and pantry for ingredients and supplies. While he was doing that, Chuuya decided to make polite small talk with Q. “Do you two cook often together?”

Yumeno shifted from one socked foot to another, humming pleasantly: The picture of idyllic childhood innocence. “If by ‘cooking together’ you mean I basically do everything while Nii-san stands in one corner of the kitchen maniacally humming ‘when will the rice be done when will the rice be done when will the rice be doooooooooooooooone’ under his breath for half an hour, then yeah, I’d say we do it often,” they deadpanned brutally.

“You are quite literally doing nothing to help us right now,” Dazai pointed out, arm halfway in a drawer below the kitchen sink searching for a pan to cook with.

“I am doing something!” Q insisted very persuasively.

“Oh, what’re you doing?” replied Dazai.

“I’m . . . getting the brown sugar candies!” With that, Q went straight to one of the cupboards: a twinkle in their eye that promptly sputtered and died like Prince Philippines in 2020 because, “Awww . . . It’s all gone.”

Dazai sighed in exasperation. “Q, it’s all gone because you ate it.”

Yumeno started crying.

Chuuya again saw the familial resemblance.

Speaking of family, that was when Tane appeared from the hallway, dressed for work and holding her bag against her chest. She must’ve just finished getting ready and heard noises in the kitchen. When her eyes landed on her two children, that familiar softness came across her face once again. It was almost impossible to compare her to the high-handed, judgemental mother from last night. In fact, she showed zero signs that her outburst happened at all and greeted everyone with a complimentary smile. “Good morning, boys,” she sang, the light from the dining room windows lighting up her juxtapositionally graceful face.

“Hi Mom,” the siblings offered. It sounded like an apology, even though everyone with a heart and at least enough critical thinking skills to get past a kindergarten-level spelling quiz knew that the one who should be saying sorry was Tane.

Kids shouldn’t be the bigger person.

Though, when Chuuya looked over at them, both Dazai and Yumeno matched their Mother in how straightforward they seemed in forgetting everything that happened the night before. Yumeno promptly ran up to Tane and smiled as she patted their head affectionately. Dazai had stiffened a little when she came into the room, but it felt like that was a permanent feeling of unchangeable discomfort that he’d never be able to shake off, like a phantom limb itch or your boyfriend’s dick being long enough to just reach your G-Spot but not enough to make like a strapping young cow farmer and milk it so well that the dairy industry shits its pants. (I understand that that comparison is rather crass considering I’m describing the complicated psycho-emotional familial relationship between Dazai and his Mother -- and the inclusion of my imaginative cattle imagery, along with that snide lactic comment, should’ve probably been edited out so as not to have made it to the penultimate final draft -- but I needed a second simile to make the sentence go brrrrrrrrr so give me a break it wasn’t that bad -- Oh, unless your current boyfriend right now does fit my naughty yet honest illustration, however: in that case, break up with him bitch life’s too short to date men who say ‘I know a spot’ and then not find yours).

“What’re you all up to?” Tane asked, still smiling down at Yumeno; her hand was now resting on their head like a temporary dunce cap.

“Making breakfast,” Q said.

“Breakfast?” Tane scoffed and then gave an amused chuckle. “Your Father cooked you boys breakfast before he left for work. Didn’t you see the note on the dining table?”

Dazai shot an annoyed glare at Yumeno that said, If there was already breakfast, why did you interrupt my long-needed-since-I’m-so-goddamn-touch-starved-but-won’t-admit-it cuddle session with my boyfriend!! C’mon!! He’s cute!! It’s Saturday!!

Q answered back with a look that plainly communicated one word: Whoops!

“Wait,” Dazai paused, looking at his Mom. “Dad’s at work again? But it’s the weekend. And he came home so late last night . . .”

Tane didn’t meet his eyes. Her fingers began to thread absentmindedly through Yumeno’s hair, a brief memory of when they were just a squawling, bald newborn flashing in her mind before, “His boss called him this morning. Nothing to be done.”

“Mom,” Dazai’s voice sounded as strained as Tane’s. “Is that why you’re dressed up? Are you going to work today too?”

Tane blinked. “Oh! No,” She gave a small smile, her deep black eyes crinkling. “I woke up early to make sure you boys ate breakfast,”

What she really meant was that she was sorry for dinner last night, but God forbid she admit she was wrong and compromise her textbook narcissism and slight victim complex.

“I was also going to run some errands. Q, you need to come with me to the cleaners. They should’ve gotten the smudges out of your kimono by now.”

“. . . My kimono?”

“Yes. The light blue one with the sailboats that used to be Osamu’s,”

Yumeno groaned, unhappy with this impromptu excursion for an article of clothing they clearly didn’t see the point of venturing outside into the Real World and risking social interaction over. “Why do I have to go?” they whined. “I hate that kimono; I thought I’d ruined it for good with the oil stains,”

“Well, Sakurada Dry Cleaner’s doesn’t have five stars for nothing,” Tane sighed, running her fingers through Q’s hair again. (That’s true actually! About the five stars. Look it up! I’m not being sponsored by them or anything lmao I just feel like sending you off on a dumb Google search goose chase). “What’s the matter with you? You used to love that kimono when you were younger,”

“You mean when I was a boy,” Yumeno muttered: too quiet for her to hear.

“What was that, baby?”

Yumeno shook their head suddenly, making Tane retract her hand. “Nothing,” they said, forcing out a smile. “While we’re out can we go get some more brown sugar candies?”

“Those things rot your teeth,” Tane frowned, but her answer was already written on her face. “Dr. Lovecraft said one more cavity and you have to start wearing braces,”

“Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaseeeeeee?” Q pouted, bottom lip sticking out for good measure. Their hands came together in an unmistakable pose of humble, childlike appeal which no Mother -- or any living creature, really -- could resist.

Tane didn’t stand a chance. With a soft laugh she gave in. “All right. Not too much though. You might get sick,”

Q threw their hands up in pure glee. Their smile was less forced now. “Yaaaaay!” they cheered, clapping excitedly.

“I’ll meet you at the car, I just have to grab my purse,” Tane said, handing Q the keys. (Here the author would like to note how Tane naturally trusted her youngest with the car keys -- the same, however, could not be said for her eldest, whom she’s tried to teach to drive when he came of age but has since given up after he went behind the wheel one time at eighteen and cackled, “HAHAHAHA!!! I AM THE WIND!!!” right before crashing the car into an old woman’s vegetable and fruit stand at the local Aomori farmer’s market).

Yumeno didn’t immediately go to the car after Tane left. Instead, they stood and watched their Mother walk away for a little while longer, as if any movement at all was impossible until she’d turned the hall corner.

When she’d disappeared into the house completely, Q turned to their brother and Chuuya, who were still in their original spots near the not-so-broken coffee machine.

Their face was unreadable, but when Yumeno’s eyes caught Chuuya’s they gave a surprisingly reassuring grin and winked conspiratorially. “Family Rule Number One: It’s not what overbearing parental behavior does to you, it’s what it does for you,” they explained breezily before making their way to the mudroom to put on some outdoor shoes. “That’s why I don’t feel bad about asking for the candies.”

“No fair,” Dazai carped from the back. “I was going to ask the parents if I could buy a new book after finals. There’s no way they’ll say yes now that you’ve cashed in your turn and asked them to buy you something.”

Q stuck their tongue out, unbothered. “Deal with it. It’s not my fault we ran out of brown sugar candies,”

“Yes it is,” Dazai frowned. “It literally is.”

Yumeno ignored him, instead opting to turn to Chuuya. “If you want my advice, I’d say please break up with my brother -- not because of our dysfunctional parents, or that we’re poor, but because he’s kind of ugly. And gross.”

“Hey!”

Chuuya, having absolutely no intention of ever going on in this world without Dazai by his side anymore, didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded stupidly. Satisfied, Q let out a teasing, cheerful giggle, put on a pair of bright yellow galoshes and a light jacket, and hopped out the door, keys in hand. A minute later Tane came back and bid the boys goodbye.

“Your Mom’s . . . A lot,” Chuuya couldn’t help saying once the door had shut behind her. (He’d also noticed that, along with her purse, she was carrying some disfigured-looking doll wrapped in old bandages under her arm. He thinks he remembers seeing it yesterday when Q came and made their legendary entrance, but he wasn’t sure. He’d have to ask about it later. But then again, he was fine with never knowing).

“To my parents’ credit,” Dazai shrugged good-naturedly, rolling down his long sleeves and poking his glasses into place. “They’ve given us kids the best insecurities we’ve ever had.”

“Most parents do.”

“Really? What about Mr. Rimbaud and Verlaine?”

Chuuya snorted. “Yes, the frail, poetry-obsessed college dropout who gets sick and moody at even the slightest drop in temperature despite France having the mildest winters so he should be used to it by now, coupled with the once-drug dealer husband who was homeless for over a year because he was swimming in so much med school student debt after he ran away from his Bible-thumping stellar knowledge of fine parenting raise two Japanese orphans that were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs by miraculously cheating the complicated adoption system in two unwelcoming and suppressive countries. Surely nothing will go wrong and the kids’ll turn out perfect.” His throat suddenly felt swollen.

Shit.

(He said it out loud, even): “Shit.”

Chuuya had meant it when he told Dazai that he made it a point to be proud of his dads and what they’d done for him and Kouyou. He had also meant it when he said he was more than happy to tell people about them -- even total strangers or nosy literary prodigies sniffing around for some tale-of-woe backstory -- but, like Q said, there was a difference between what parents did for their children and what they did to them. There is love in sacrifice, but there was also an unspoken loss that the next generation inherits without a choice.

So, take it from me, dear Reader: at some point in every human being’s life they must come to realize that everybody else has just as many self esteem issues as they do. And, most times, they get it from their parents. (Glad I don’t have those. I was raised by domesticated capybaras in the outbacks of the great Canadian wilderness.

If you believed that -- even for just a second -- it’s your fault, not mine. Honestly if you even believe half the shit I say at this point you either need to get your head checked by a not-uterus-hating doctor, or you’ve just got trust issues, which is probably a fair guess considering you watched Bungou Stray Dogs and are currently reading a crackfic about it right now).

Anyway! I invite you all to refer back to the title of this chapter -- which I will happily repeat here, just ’cos I’m nice -- ahem: The title is presented as follows: Filler Nonsense And A Gratuitous Fluff Sequence To Foreshadow Better Days (Yes, The Narrator Is Gagging Profusely).

Now that you’ve (re)read that, I humbly ask you to add this modest epithet onto it:

-- Haha JK You Didn’t Think I’d Actually Spare Chuuya A Bit Of Character-Related Backstory Angst, Did You? Who Do You Think I Am? BONES Studios When They Were Animating Fifteen?

(Bit long, but it gets the point across, right? Like, try saying that ten times fast).

“Hey,” Dazai’s voice called from behind him. Awkward long arms wrapped around Chuuya’s waist, Dazai’s hands intertwining right above his hips and locking the other boy in place. Chuuya felt the genius’ chin plop onto his head. He sighed, sinking into the embrace and feeling like thawing snow. Dazai’s body began to relax a little too. Without a word, he began to gently rock both of them side to side, almost like a dance, but not quite. Birds chirped outside. A chilly breeze entered through the kitchen window and made Chuuya shiver, but Dazai just hugged him tighter.

“What’re you doing?” he asked after a beat, placing his own arms on top of Dazai’s, a small smile coming to his face. Since they’d started dating, it had almost always been Chuuya who’d initiated any sort of touch between them. That’s why the kisses last night had been such a surprise -- a good one, but still: After hearing what Dazai said last night, he felt so much more grateful and so, so lucky to be exactly where he was right now. (Even if the bastard was so tall and lanky that he practically enveloped Chuuya to the point where it would most probably get mildly uncomfortable soon, but right now it wasn’t -- right now it was actually really wonderful).

“I miss you,” Dazai admitted after a while, leaning down to bury his cheek into Chuuya’s neck. They were still dancing. Or not-dancing. Whatever you called the in-between of things.

“But I’m right here,” Chuuya said. They were both speaking quietly, as if even the atoms around them were eavesdropping on this simple exchange of nothings and unspoken eternities.

“I know,” Dazai bit his lip for a second, a flash of hesitant fear entering his mind, but he let it go. “. . . I still miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“But I’m right here,” Dazai repeated teasingly, laughing a little into Chuuya’s hot skin. Without thinking much of it, he placed a chaste kiss on his neck briefly, but Chuuya didn’t notice. That was okay. There would be many more -- kisses and sweet promises and most definitely a lot of bickering -- so what was the harm in keeping this one thing for himself for now?

Chuuya couldn’t take it anymore. With one fluid movement (he seems to be rather good at them: maybe in another life he’s the most skilled martial artist in a certain organization that may or may not be the mafia), he swiveled around so he was looking up at Dazai. Cupping both his cheeks, Chuuya brought him down to meet his lips. They were both thinking the same set of words -- the same sentence -- in perfect, identical tandem (proper grammar and everything).

They were both also thinking something else, which Chuuya’s stomach made all too evident after it grumbled loudly and interrupted their kiss.

Dazai snorted, stealing one last peck from his boyfriend before standing fully straight again and grabbing Chuuya’s hand in his. They walked to the dining room, where three plates of bacon, eggs, and rice had been set up on the table, cold and a little crumbly from waiting so long, but it was alright. The food was still good. (They split Q’s share, figuring it was apt payment for being bamboozled so smoothly by the little monster so early in the morning).

And, when Yumeno, Dazai’s Mom, and eventually his Dad came home, and our two protagonists had spent a blissful day alone together watching through Dazai’s childhood DVD collection (mostly movies based on books), playing board games (mostly Monopoly because the gays have appropriated capitalism), and raiding the pantry for snacks (if canned crab qualifies as a snack), Chuuya came to realize that he missed his own family.

As was typical of someone so blessed, -- he saw them practically every day -- he hadn’t missed them in a long time. But you never really find home until you’re far from it.

When he got back to Yokohama he’d give both his fathers a big hug. Agatha and Baki too. Maybe not Ane-san though. (Like Dazai, she only appreciated physical touch via her significant other and anybody else who tried would probably get a sharp glare akin to a golden demon brandishing a very, very sharp sword). A filial, well-intentioned high-five would have to do, though if Chuuya asked he was sure she’d comply and even pretend to welcome it with literal open arms -- but that’s not what really mattered, dear Reader, because he loved her, just as she was, so he didn’t mind, and, after the weekend was over and he’d earnestly promised Dazai’s parents that he’d come to visit again soon (he actually meant it, strangely enough) before boarding the train back to the city, he found himself looking forward to it. The high-five.

That everyday, ordinary, reluctant high-five.

Chapter Text

Dear Reader, finals passed, the winds still blew, and they were still in love.

Well, most of their finals passed. There was still one more to go -- Crime and Detective Fiction, funnily enough (how narratively serendipitous!) -- and Chuuya was determined to keep studying for it (even though he’d been studying for it nonstop on top of all his Engineering exams and assignments already, whereas our infamous literary prodigy had already forgotten half the titles of the works they’d studied, and as a result had stayed up until 4 AM fucking around on his computer before he realized oh shit he needs to actually memorize this crap if he was gonna pass lol).

Chuuya had been insistent on meeting up at the library eight hours before the final. He made it a point to be very accommodating and patient when he drove up to Dazai’s apartment for said rendezvous. Of course, he’d taken into account the fact that he was picking Dazai up at an early time -- an hour in the modest AMs that he must have since forgotten existed since “adult time” couldn’t possibly start happening until at least 2 PM -- and, because of that, Chuuya had two coffees ready for both of them. Very smart.

When Dazai’d gotten into the car, blustering tantrum prepared and undoubtedly well-rehearsed beforehand, his boyfriend didn’t even give him time to start squawking like those velociraptors in Jurassic Park that effortlessly bamboozled, hoodwinked, and befuddled the dinosaur rangers trying to protect Laura Dern but ended up with “clever girl” as their last dying words because they wanted to go out sounding like one of those easy video games you play where the characters complement and give you words of approval that your parents and authorial figures never gave you in childhood.

Thrusting the coffee close to Dazai’s blotchy, sleepyhead face before turning on the car, Chuuya had the audacity to smile and cheerfully say, “Good morning!”

(It must be noted that he did not do so with fully wholesome intentions. In fact he didn’t even try to hide the sweet, sweet sarcasm in his voice when he delivered the greeting because he knew it would annoy Dazai more to know that the happy-go-lucky attitude wasn’t even real, it was just there to fuck with him. Such is love and how you should definitely treat your significant other forevermore and always. Trust me: I am a lover myself at heart, dear Reader).

Grumpily accepting the (free) drink, Dazai settled into the passenger seat and looked out the car’s front window. “There were cans of empty crab on my desk when I woke up so that means Dazai last night ate all of that and didn't even have the decency to throw them away when he was done. Little shit.”

“Little shit,” Chuuya agreed. “Did you clean it up?”

“Yes, but it was very taxing on my mental well-being,” Dazai nodded, very serious. “So have pity on me when I am extra, extra, extra tired today because someone wanted to study for a test that’s gonna be half bullshitting the answers anyway.”

Chuuya rolled his eyes. “Studying is important,”

“You sound like Kunikida.”

“I think I sound like a lot of rationally studious people, actually.”

Dazai ignored him and went on with his bitching. “When I ran into him at the kitchen earlier he almost dropped the piece of avocado toast he was eating because he couldn’t believe I was awake this early. He was like, ‘Should I get my glasses checked? Is this real? Did you lace my kombucha with weird mushrooms again?’ and ‘You look productive. Like you’re actually gonna get things done today :0 I haven’t seen you like this since we were seventeen and you tried really, really hard to get the principal fired but ended up actually getting suspended for three days because you complained about the principal to the principal like the imbecile you are.’ He thinks he’s so funny.”

Chuuya laughed. “I think he’s funny.”

“I think he’s a big dummy.”

“This coming from the idiot who tried to make a man fire himself,”

“There are higher-ups in the school board that would have fired him!”

“Okay but you wouldn’t go that far,”

“Yes I would! Don’t underestimate how petty I can be! I’m pretty sure he was targeting me specifically all throughout junior year because I didn’t submit my final projects in on time.”

“Why didn’t you submit your final projects in on time?”

“Because I find the term ‘here is my submission’ really suspicious when you're submitting something because, like, I may be handing in my paper but am I doing it like a good little slut? Hm? You never know, professor. You never know.”

“Dazai no.”

“Okay I lied. The freshmen I paid off to do the work for me were late for our secret meetup so I just went home.”

“I have a hard time believing they were the ones who were late,” Chuuya mused. Dazai’s prompt grunt of halfhearted denial took his bait. “Some things never change, I guess. Hey, what’s that thing white people say? The early bird gets the worm or something?”

“When have I ever cared about what white people have to say?”

“You read their books.”

“Shut up, that’s a good point.”

Chuuya knew that once he got some caffeine into him Dazai would be more relatively well-behaved. That was what he kept telling himself when his boyfriend spent the entire drive to the library rubbing his eyes tiredly and yawning, “I wanna go hoooooaaaaaameee!” and manically switching the radio on and off just to keep his hands busy so Chuuya’s ears were on a constantly irked edge.

By the time he’d parked at the Global Arts and Science building, he, for one, was personally ready for more coffee. Dazai jumped out of the stopped car then, too neurodivergent to politely wait any longer, and tottered off to the main floor’s Starbucks to get in line, his groggy morning persona now replaced with his regular crackheadedness at the promise of more coffee. Chuuya followed behind him after locking his car and grabbing the backpack Dazai had carelessly left in the passenger seat in his excited scurrying. (Honestly, this boy).

“I want a frappuccino this time,” Dazai announced once Chuuya got to him. “You pay for it, okay chibi?”

“You know, our deal is technically over today.” Chuuya frowned, walking up to him with his arms crossed and sassily handing him the backpack. “I don’t have to buy you coffee anymore after our class is over.”

Dazai tilted his head, smiling knowingly. “Whaaaat? Yes you do!”

“Come again?”

“It’s tradition! We go way back!”

“We met almost a year ago,”

“Exactly! So, as an early anniversary gift, you pay for all my coffees for life!”

“Bitch.”

Chuuya paid for the coffee.

It took a bit of elevator hopping for them to find a secluded area at the library’s second floor, and then it was another twenty minutes of them camping out in said area until Dazai boredly finish his drink, ergo ending up with nothing else to do that could distract him from his elaborately bastard thoughts. (You’d think he’d actually study on this study date, but no that was too predictable, too mainstream, too something a person who has their shit together would do). Instead, he got out of his chair and dexterously seated himself onto Chuuya’s lap, wrapping his arms and legs around his torso like some kind of gangly koala that was in an affectionate state of rigor mortis. Chuuya, taken by surprise, protested because, “I’m trying to study, shithead,” but such disapproval was only met with a quiet yet effectively dismissive “You’ll barely notice I’m here,” muffled against his neck.

Dazai didn’t say anything else, just held onto him tighter. Chuuya sighed, giving in. Gently, he brought his legs up from under the table so he could sit comfortably on his chair while also supporting Dazai’s weight. With one arm encircled around his boyfriend’s waist, unconsciously rubbing the small of his back, Chuuya then used his other hand to occasionally flip through his textbook and notes, all the while holding Dazai firmly, thinking his goal was to fall asleep and nap the rest of their day away until they had to take their test. (Payback for having to wake up so early).

This cutesy fluffy shit lasted about another twenty minutes before Chuuya eventually set down his highlighter and let out a tired sigh -- the one all college students end up masterfully developing against their will after being at least halfway through one semester, along with a very high painkiller tolerance, a penchant for 3-hour long naps, and crippling social anxiety. Holding Dazai close was nice -- thankfully nobody came by and saw them in their nest of books, jackets, scarves, and discourteous PDA -- but the honey warmth of a literary genius’ body snugly wrapped around yours can only solve so many of life’s endless quandaries. Before he’d realized it, Chuuya had spiraled into a proportionately bad headspace of nervousness.

Please don’t misunderstand him, dear Reader. Our poor engineering major was usually good at studying (or, at least, he was better at it than Dazai), but, for exams like this one -- which were as unpredictable as they were subjectively arbitrary with their multitude of essay and short answer questions -- the pressure and utterly daunting task of it all had slowly crept up on him and had now pounced unexpectedly.

Chuuya was used to balancing equations, analyzing charts, solving word problems: Find the meaning of x. If A is B, then B is A. Even though he had gotten through Crime and Detective Fiction relatively fine, took notes, and had Dazai’s help, it was still all so overwhelmingly uncertain. (Which is not exactly the best feeling to have when you’re hours away from taking the final). There was nothing to memorize or keep chipping at until the formulas made sense. There weren’t graphs or data boxes. This wasn’t coding or physics. This was . . . pretty much the exact opposite. Essays. Arguments with no right answer. Baseless, frenzied claims until proven otherwise, with evidence, and transitory words like ‘Furthermore’ and ‘Thus.’ ‘Why does it matter?’ instead of ‘What’s the solution?’ How did Humanities majors manage this? How did they accept the fact that there were no facts to depend on, that everything was undetermined -- all you had were your words and unreliable prompts for introspection? How did Dazai do all of this so effortlessly? And how did he put all his thoughts so neatly on intimidatingly blank paper? How did he always know what to say, how to say it, and be sure enough that it was good to hand it in -- to be read, to be criticized, to be marked? Chuuya had barely gotten through one of these types of nerve-wracking classes; he couldn’t imagine anyone doing this for their entire academic career.

And Dazai did it well. He was a prodigy.

It suddenly occurred to Chuuya just how miraculous that was again.

And, because he was human, he also came to the conclusion that holy shit how the fuck am I even gonna pass this exam? I’m nothing like Dazai!

His vision swam. His brain became muddled. The highlighter he’d put down now looked like a blurry neon yellow glow-stick on the cluttered table. None of the letters on his lined notes were legible. He felt like his heart was suddenly beating faster, but at the same time it was also like all the oxygen had left his body.

He was nothing like Dazai. He was just a STEM major completely out of his element.

“You’re going to be fine,” a voice uttered then, breaking the tense silence that Chuuya had surrounded himself in so unknowingly.

“. . . Yeah?” he responded, uncertain. He thought Dazai would pull back and look at him -- say something to support his outlandish thesis -- but he stayed wrapped around him stubbornly, as if being really clingy was his new life calling and he was absolutely determined to stick with it.

“Well, I don’t feel like I’ll do very fine right now,” Chuuya self-deprecated once he realized Dazai didn’t have anything to add, a wobbly smile crossing his face.

“Hey, I didn’t wake up before noon to tutor a quitter.”

“You literally went back to sleep the second we got here,”

“Untrue. I watched you stress out from the other side of the room for a good bit before I gave up and cashed in my due cuddles.”

“We’re in public.”

“I don’t care. I’ll hug my dumb boyfriend if I want to.”

“You just called me dumb,”

“Oh, did I? Sorry. I was probably supposed to say something inspiring, huh?”

“You suck at pep talks.” Chuuya reached across the table for his coffee, which he had forgotten about during the throes of his not-exactly-mental-breakdown-but-most-definitely-an-uncomfortable-episode-of-pure-educational-dread-episode.

“I know,” Dazai agreed. “One time in high school Atsushi confessed to me that he had been extremely constipated for weeks before summer vacation and the only way he could get his shit out was to take off all his clothes and concentrate really, really hard on his asshole.”

“I see . . . And what did you tell him?”

“I told him his butt pussy -- bussy, if you will -- must’ve been bubblegum levels of poppin after that, so when he’d inevitably get a boyfriend in university he’d be all set in the anal department. Although,” Dazai paused. “I don’t think Atsushi even knew he was gay back then,”

“And you did?”

“Well yeah, he cried watching Yuri on Ice and made sad lo-fi music during his free time. Queer as a three dollar bill, I would say.”

Chuuya couldn’t argue with that.

“You’ll be fine,” Dazai repeated again, sounding very sure of himself.

“Fine?” Chuuya scoffed. “I still don’t understand half of what happened in The Phantom of the Opera and you said it was one of the easiest pieces of literature to get.”

“It is!”

“Then how the fuck am I supposed to just accept that he managed to build all those elaborate traps and borderline labyrinthian shit all by himself?”

“Okay, well, we’re not studying Gaston Leroux in this class, so you don’t even have to worry. And besides,” Dazai shrugged. “Who cares if the Phantom’s underground hideout slash evil lair slash fever dream wasteland of tortured musical genius couldn’t possibly be all under the Paris Opera House? It’s camp.”

“You can’t just say every illogical plot point in classic literature is camp.”

Dazai hummed, cheek scrunching up against Chuuya’s warm skin. “Mmm, that’s what you think. Your dumb illiterate bimbo vibes’re making me incredibly hard right now, by the way. Shame on you.”

Chuuya choked on his drink. “What?! How --?! How is that my fault?!”

“Because ever since you started dating me you have made yourself responsible for my dick’s behavior and mannerisms!” Dazai stated matter-of-factly, bobbing his head to emphasize his plausible argument.

“I’M NOT YOUR DICK’S GOVERNESS!”

“Oh, would you rather be my maid then? A butler, maybe?”

“I DON’T INTEND TO SERVE AS ANY OTHER ROLE IN YOUR LIFE APART FROM YOUR BOYFRIEND!”

“Then bless your misguided heart.”

And so the bickering continued.

Oh, I’m sure you’re ad infinitum intrigued over how Dazai was a top-class partner who comforted his worn-out boyfriend during his time of critical need with a never-ending supply of pious assistance and worldly compassion for the earth’s most miserable of STEM majors, but, to save you from more paragraphs and paragraphs of Chuuya contemplating over the fuckery that are Humanities programs (which you can probably relate to, my dearest Reader. Nobody gets out of formalized school’s reign of terror without it giving you at least one panic attack over having to write a graded literary essay. I bet for a lot of you it was To Kill a Mockingbird that ruined any precious childhood memories you had of reading books that not even a young Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in the 1962 movie could ever salvage. If it makes you feel any better, though, dear Reader, Harper Lee is widely overrated, and everything in that novel could’ve been fixed so much faster if Boo Radley had been given a gun), we shall fast forward to when finals season, which, since the dawn of time, has always been a hellshow, was over, so that I don’t have to say more technical school words and drag this scene out for another dozen pages -- I-I mean, so we can skip to the good part. Yes, we are doing this for maximum good good happy time. Not because the author herself has not yet recuperated from her last round of finals and wants to avoid remembering their cursed existence for as long as possible until she has to do it all again when the upcoming semester starts so someone please just assassinate her.

Anyway, a week’s since passed, and our protagonists were now enjoying the afterglow of exam season (with, quite understandably, the next semester’s inevitable stresses and academic-related mental breakdowns also looming over them like the ghost of Hamlet Senior -- except instead of spirit daddy asking you to avenge his most foul and wretched murder, you’re just fucking dead ’cause thaaaaaaat’s the education systeeeeeem~~ *jazz hands*).

Ranpo and Edgar had invited our bumbling cast of characters to a celebratory party commemorating yet another life-ruining semester at the latter’s lavish and pretentiously decorated apartment, where every room (yes, every room) had a writing setup complete with blank sheets of parchment, prepped quills and ink (Edgar never used pens), and bottles of white-out (because white-out is totally fine but pens “would ruin the Gothic aesthetic” and “just because someone prefers to use antique stationery that doesn’t mean it’s any less sexy. It’s just a little inconvenient, and besides, it helps small businesses that haven’t moved on from the year 1809 yet: they deserve love too, don’t let those corporate bloodsuckers fool you; minimalism is a prison completely void of humanity’s primal instinct to just be really fucking extra sometimes”). The mystery boyfriends themselves were seated on an ornately carpeted floor: Ranpo resting his head on a cushion atop Edgar’s lap and occasionally pausing in his chattering with the others to ask for a piece of candy, which Edgar was all too happy to pick up from one of the enormous snack bowl hordes scattered around them all. Gin was on one of the couches, playing a card game with Junichirou and Naomi, who had the shittiest poker faces in the world. As usual, Tachihara was near them watching it all go down, half-thinking he’ll play in the next round but also perfectly content with just sitting next to Gin while they kicked the Tanizaki siblings’ asses with one well-placed ace of diamonds at a time. Agatha and Kouyou had driven out to grab more food. Lucy and Higuchi were scrolling through social media together and showing each other dumb memes, the guilt of laughing over them instead of getting off your phone for work dissipated for the time being. Atsushi, Ryuunosuke, Dazai, Chuuya, Kunikida, and Yosano were huddled together around one of the living room ottomans, drinks in hand and infinitely vibrant.

It was the liveliest of soirées, with everyone gathered together oh-so-happily. The knowledge that, for the moment, they were free of all external responsibilities and had just recently survived their tyrannical classes once again, had reminded them that they were young and therefore supposed to enjoy life. I can honestly report that not a smidgeon of gloom or traces of demoralizing burnout was in the air. And, rarest of rarities and most appreciated instances of all, everyone was there, simply to just be friends, and it was all very delightful, seeing all of them in one room. (This scene was originally just supposed to be Soukoku meeting up at a café by themselves and reflecting on all the entertaining crap and cliché rom-com tropes I had put them through, but the author decided to end everything on a tipsy note because she definitely was not mostly sober while writing this entire thing).

It’s almost as if this was the last chapter and, at the pain of having to navigate and keep track of so many people at once again, the author wanted to give you, our dearest Reader, one final glimpse of our all-gay cast of characters who, at the beginning of this tale, were very much hoping that Chuuya’d get laid for the sake of more sober weekends, and had now since had their wishes fulfilled with his finally ending up with Dazai -- although, absolutely none of them were any less drunk on a regular basis (least of all Chuuya, whose love for alcohol trumped his ability to recall the dumb mistakes he did when under its influence: a messy habit that reappeared particularly during the weekends, for Mondays to Fridays were always very exhausting, and if one is old enough to worry about taxes and be considered an adult by their national government then they should also be able to just get unapologetically wasted sometimes). Notably, though, to recall Chapter 3’s iconic title (one of many in this fic, if I do say so myself), Chuuya also hadn’t gotten laid yet. Or maybe he did. I could probably find out, but, in truth, I don’t really care. I am sure that our asexual literary genius and I share in the same sentiment that, yeah, sex is great, but MLA format should always be at the top of one’s mind over anything else. You’re in his DMs? Well, I’m in his works cited list. Baby I’m footnoting primary sources like you ain’t ever seen before eha.

So yes, go ye forth and make your own headcanons about what Chuuya and Dazai’s adventures in the boudoir are like. (Feel free to tell me about them as well, I occasionally enjoy horny nonsense).

You will also be pleased to discover that nobody failed their finals! (Higuchi had even burst into Edgar’s apartment at the start of the party with flushed cheeks and the biggest grin on her face because, “I got a 59% on my Economics exam!!! That means I passed!!! Yahoo!!!” Everyone respectfully clapped, as you should too, because we’ve all been there, dear Reader, don’t lie. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter: I’ve retaken my driver’s exam three times and I still don’t have my fucking license).

Nevertheless, debauched drinking ensued over Higuchi’s impressive university-level accomplishment, for the best cure to forgetting that passing a class doesn’t automatically mean you’re not still in a hopeless cesspool of student debt that not even a worldwide pandemic and the inevitable collapse of late-stage capitalism can cancel apparently (college is a scam) was cheap liquor. (Also, everybody’s Asian parents would not be happy if they ever knew that their adult children were now engaging in dissolutely wanton reverie over below-average grades. So cheers to that).

By the time Agatha and Kouyou had returned with pizzas, french fries, brioche buns, cakes, smoothies, sodas, onion rings, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, and various other junk foods galore that everyone will regret having eaten next time they go to the gym (Just kidding, these fuckers never went to the gym), Edgar’s apartment had already become a den of witless inebriation and Orwellian lawlessness, which was only ever too heightened by the fact that this group of friends was just inherently insane.

“Dazai-san, you’re spilling everywhere,” Atsushi, my little meow meow, pointed out sloppily from his spot on the floor. Half his silver hair was up in random pigtails and the other half was soaking wet with booze because Dazai had, indeed, thrown all care for his motor functions to the wind and was senselessly spilling his drink everywhere. Oblivious to his boyfriend’s drenched circumstances (Atsushi was always in various states of wet anyway. And I do mean that in a naughty way), Ryuunosuke sat nearby and played with his silver hair using some of Naomi’s glittery hair clips.

“Oopsie!” Dazai giggled. “Lemme get that.” He yanked Kunikida, who was slouched beside him on the ottoman, by the sleeve and proceeded to wipe down the spilled saké with his roommate’s shirt.

“DON’T DO THAT!! I’M NOT A FUCKING HAND TOWEL!!!” Kunikida screeched, yet it was in vain, for he was far too pissed drunk to really make sense of what was even happening; he just knew Dazai was somehow disrupting the universe’s delicate peace once again. “IF YOU KEEP USING MY CLOTHES TO WIPE SHIT UP I’LL ONLY HAVE MY UNDERWEAR TO PUT ON!”

“Would that really be so bad?” Yosano rolled her eyes from her place tucked in a beanbag a few meters away, spinning the wine bottle that she held by the neck with a lazy flick of her wrist. “I think men should be sluttier in public. You’d look good in a G-string.”

“I CAN’T GO TO CLASS LOOKING LIKE A MALE STRIPPER!”

“Why not? Dazai already does,” Yosano pointed out. “Everybody sees him in the wire-rimmed glasses, soft sweater vests, vintage Oxfords, and thinks, ‘Yes, what a raging whore.’”

Dazai, who was not as worse for wear as the others in terms of his level of intoxication (he held his alcohol quite well, like a proper Literature major), smiled over this comment, honored. “No one is immune to the edgy dark academia fashion sense. Tragic that I’m devastatingly handsome as well.”

“You are very pretty, yes, but,” Chuuya patronized good-naturedly, leaning onto his boyfriend’s shoulder. “You also look like a man who’d give someone a prostate orgasm and food poisoning in one night,”

“I ate expired leftover steak once.” Atsushi piped up. “I didn’t want the pork to go to waste, but I ended up vomiting it all three hours after I ate it.” He shuddered. “It was almost enough to make me turn vegetarian,”

Dazai connected the dots: “Except for the pesky fact that you’re so committed to Akutagawa’s meat?”

“I can be invested in other things besides Ryuu’s cock!” Atsushi squeaked, most of his words slurred and sleepy. Ryuu just kept playing with his hair. (Don’t think he wasn’t drunk too, dear Reader. Mans was balls off the walls in another dimension with how much shit he drank that night, but the only evidence of it was the light shrimpy pink bloom that had gradually settled on his normally ghost-pale cheeks).

Suddenly, the violent and loud cawing of a raven filled the room, making everyone jump and ornithologically confused until Edgar reached into his cloak and opened his phone, promptly stopping the vociferous cawing.

“Figures that’s his ringtone,” Tachihara mumbled. Gin smiled behind their mask.

“H-Hello?” Edgar answered. “O-Oh, really? That’s e-early, I thought Dr. Mori was more incompetent than that. Okay. Thanks, Lucy.” Hanging up, he turned to Dazai and Chuuya. “Your final grades should be up in the system by now for Crime and Detective Fiction. I didn’t mark them, but it’s probably a good sign that the results came out so quickly. Usually when somebody does really badly on one of Mori-san’s finals the university has to get in contact with a lawyer because of the psychological damage that man just bequeaths on principle unto his students.”

Dazai merely nodded, making a note to check his final transcript later and to forward it to his Mother, who asked for all his grades to be sent over to her even when he’d transferred degrees, but Chuuya, remembering his tiny breakdown prior to the exam all too well (Taylor’s Version) (10 minutes), grabbed his boyfriend by the shirt collar just then and started to drag him away into an adjacent hall.

“Wha --? Chuuyaaaaa! What’s going on?” Dazai spluttered, spilling his drink again onto Atsushi’s head and temporarily making Ryuunosuke pause in the middle of braiding his hair (Hopefully Atsushi has the foresight to take a shower when he gets home after the party, but we all know he won’t. RIP to his scalp. Bed, Bath, and Beyond can’t help him now).

Everyone noticed Chuuya’s spiriting away of the literary prodigy from the night’s otherwise merrier festivities, but they were all too simply inebriated and already well-accustomed to the two’s strange mating rituals that they elected to ignore Dazai’s probably-not-a-point-of-concern abduction even when he called out for “Help! Chuuya’s choking meeeeeee!”

They ended up in a long, narrow corridor that had full sets of medieval armor, marble busts of classical figures, and baroque watercolor paintings and portraits suspended in exquisitely gilded frames lined along the papered walls (Edgar had too much money for his apartment; gays should never be allowed to indulge in their Gothic propensities this carelessly that’s how you end up with overpriced haunted houses). Dazai caught his breath and was about to poke at one of the armored mannequins’ gaudy shields and swords (is that real platinum???????), but the flash of Chuuya’s cellphone light made him turn around to see him biting his lip in worried anticipation. His eyes reflected the loading icon on the screen, pupils following the empty blank circles as they filled in one by one.

Finally, Chuuya got to the tab displaying his final marks, but he’d slammed his phone against his chest too quickly for Dazai to see what he’d gotten for Crime and Detective Fiction.

Chuuya was silent for a long time, staring wide-eyed at the wall before him and not meeting Dazai’s eyes. Before the genius could decidedly panic in solidarity, Chuuya thrust his phone up into the air and yelled, “Fuck yes! Fuck yes!”

He was jumping excitedly now, grinning all the while, and Dazai barely saw the A on his boyfriend’s transcript page before he felt Chuuya pull him in for an ecstatic kiss. All his well-earned triumph and awe poured into Dazai’s mouth like golden confetti. Both of them gleamed -- Chuuya in relief and Dazai with pride, as if they’d just scored a point of one while the rest of the world was only at zero.

Dazai was about to tell Chuuya that he knew he could do it -- “I told you you’d be fine, we could’ve just kept snuggling” -- but the other boy had pulled away just then and breathlessly said, “Holy shit,”

“Yeah. Holy shit.”

“Holy shit!”

“Congratulations, nerd.”

“Wait. Holy shit, what did you get?”

“Probably an A too.”

“Can you check? Can I see?”

“It’s not that big a deal, Chuuya.”

“I don’t care.”

“I probably did well. I know I did well,”

“I know, but I don’t care. I want to see it. I want to see how amazing you did.”

It occurred to Dazai then that no one had ever said that to him about his Literature grades. He had no words.

Dazed, he reached out to cup Chuuya’s cheek and ran his thumb over it, letting his hand fall down to grip Chuuya’s and squeeze it once, twice, thrice before he finally opened his phone to check his own marks.

Never had another A in Dazai’s academic record been so anticipated, and never so welcomed.

When Chuuya saw the fantastic mark, he gasped excitedly.

Like it was special.

Like Dazai had done something worth being proud of. Just by being himself.

This mutual gratification, however, was short-lived, for that was when the genius received a preposterously fated email in his inbox that made him immediately frown in obvious abhorrence after reading it.

Chuuya knitted his eyebrows. “What? What’s wrong?”

“They just changed the degree requirements. I have to take a Biology class if I want to graduate on time,”

Chuuya couldn’t have kept in his laughter if the Devil himself had held him at gunpoint and told him joy was never an option, we die like Odasaku in canon. “HA!!! HAHA!!! Have fun with that!”

Dazai, however, had promptly crashed-coursed through the five stages of grief during the few seconds that had elapsed since he’d received the email, and had therefore accepted this unavoidable teasing from Chuuya. It was, after all, rather poetic that the literary prodigy now had to swallow his own bitter, anti-STEM medicine.

Yet, though he’d never admit it, he still wouldn’t have had it any other way.

(Well, he would have had it so that he didn’t have to take the Biology class tbh. Fuck it being a symbolic parallel or whatever. He will most definitely complain about it the entire time and maybe even read during lectures as a bratty statement of defiance declaring, ‘I DON’T BELONG HERE!!! I’M BETTER THAN THIS!!! I HATE SCHOOL!!! ALSO WHY AM I FRIENDS WITH STEM MAJORS NOW!?!?!! HOW AM I ALSO DATING ONE?!?!? AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!,’ but he -- as well as Dr. Oda, to be sure -- was shrewdly telling himself that it was a small price to pay for making the author think basically writing an entire novel about him and his undoubtedly very beautiful yet laughably illiterate boyfriend without getting monetarily paid for any of it was a good idea).

Dazai nevertheless allowed himself to briefly grieve over his predicament, because -- as our wise men would have called it -- this sucked. It sucked like a [inappropriate simile that I should probably censor because saying ‘like a vacuum-mouthed whore with a gorilla grip throat pussy’ isn’t very sentimental so I should yes, yes, absolutely not put it down here because it’s the last chapter and it must be as memorably poignant and heart-wrenching as possible, since this fic is so famous for its eloquence and beautiful prose]. “When my Mom finds out she won’t shut up about me possibly being a doctor again now that I have to relearn Mitosis.”

“Wait ’till you remind her that you really hate math.”

“I don’t plan to,” Dazai raised his head assuredly. “’Cause you’re going to help me.”

Chuuya snorted, hands on his hips. “And why would I do that?”

“You actually expect me to do science? The thing that killed Victor Frankenstein?” Dazai whined, this time being the one to pull Chuuya in so he could wrap his arms around his waist and look down at him fondly, seeing the rest of his life in those ocean blue eyes and infuriatingly stupid hat.

“Technically it was his monomaniacal god complex and refusal to pay child support that really killed him,” Chuuya retorted, happily -- blissfully -- letting himself be pulled in.

Dazai pouted. “I don’t know if I find you knowing the basic plots of literary classics well enough that you can make references to them like that lowkey disconcerting or very, very, very hot . . .”

“Nice try. Flattery will get you nowhere. So. Are you planning to pay me back for the coffees if I help you, then?”

“No, I was planning to repay my debts with some other method.” (This delivered with a coquettish wink).

“And what’s that?” (This also delivered with a suggestively sinful smile that would make a Puritan fearfully clutch their Bible in the middle of their laborious butter churning idk did Puritans even have butter were they even allowed that simple luxury of earthly decadence: so smooth in its design yet phenomenally ethereal when melted down and used to sautée mushrooms with garlic?).

“Giving you the wonderful privilege of going to a bookstore with me and buying me more books later!” Dazai chirruped. “And, as a treat I am also letting you assist me in my time of need.”

“Oh, you’re letting me assist you?”

“Yes, but only if you ask nicely!”

“Okay. Can I help you,” Chuuya grinned, eyes lidding in perfect contentment. “use me and my STEM-related Engineering major to pass this Biology class you have to take in order to graduate?”

“Yes, that’d actually be quite gentlemanly of you, Chuuya.” Dazai nodded, satisfied. “I humbly accept your offer.”

“You don’t have a humble bone in your body.”

“What’re you talking about? I’m world-famous for my top-class humility.”

“Dazai, whatever planet you’re on, come home.”

“I already am,”

“We’re in our TA’s apartment?”

“No, like -- Uh, like . . . like, I’m home ’cause, like, you’re here,”

“That’s so cheesy I could punch you in the crotch.”

“Then why can’t you stop smiling?”

“You’re smiling too.”

“Yeah but I’m not over here threatening innocent people’s ballsacks.”

“What, you want me to threaten your dick instead?”

“Like Shakespeare?”

“What the fuck?”

“If Shakespeare is ever building up to a joke or a comically aggressive threat, I can promise you that 70% of the time the punchline will always be penis.”

“Hmm. I seem to recall you saying something along the lines of -- what was it? -- ‘Straight people don’t deserve to study Shakespeare.’”

“So true bestie! Glad you’re learning,” Dazai beamed. “So very nice of you to finally pay attention to life’s most essential core lessons.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t nice because I liked that poem you thought was really stupid.”

“I forgave you because you liked that last book I recommended you read.”

“It was a love story. Of course I loved it.” Chuuya said, gently leaning up for another kiss. “Just like I love this one.”

Dazai smiled into his lips, witless butterflies in his stomach. “Our story’s kind of hilariously ironic, don’t you think?”

“I like to think of it as yet an accidentally romantic tale.”

“What kind of shitty title would that be for a story?”

“I dunno, I think it’s fitting,” Chuuya mused. “Stories are what we are.”

Stories are what we are.

And Dazai may have read a lot of them -- and shall certainly never stop -- no, never ever -- but this one -- the one that was still happening and will hopefully keep on happening for an endless amount of anticipated eternities -- was his favorite.

“We should probably head back,” Chuuya murmured softly, meeting Dazai’s warm eyes.

“Yeah,” he whispered back. “We should also tell everyone how great you did.”

“You too,”

“Yeah. Me too.”

They both laughed, finally on the same page.

Stories are what we are.

Chuuya made it a good one.

Chuuya made it the best.

Chapter Text

Just like your average sad bitch with abandonment issues, I hate endings (they make me feel things. Like the tapeworm family currently growing in my foot), but this fic has quite frankly gone on for long enough and it is objectively -- unanimously -- for the best that it is now over. Like Attack on Titan, except I’m not overtly pushing a Japanese imperialist agenda onto my audiences, I’m just typing silly little words with my silly little keyboard on my silly little computer.

However! I will admit that I shall miss you, dear Reader. We go back a long way. Over twenty chapters! I haven’t the faintest notion where you could be in the world -- heck, maybe you might even be in hell or Catholic Purgatory (if you are, kick Ronald Reagan in the balls for me, would you?), -- but I am delighted that we could be here, together, at a brief point in seamless time, to witness just how far someone so sleep-deprived, unhinged, and in need of an antidepressant dosage increase can take the idea of Literature major Dazai and Engineer Chuuya. It was never supposed to have been this long, but, unfortunately, just like Rick Riordan with his four (?) Percy Jackson series, we just kept beating this dead horse until it stopped rolling out kudos.

I would also like to take this extremely emotional moment to not address what I have taken the bastard liberty of calling ‘unanswered questions’ instead of ‘plot holes due to laziness.’ Is Tane just never gonna know her children are both ragingly queer? Why didn’t Dazai’s Dad get any dialogue? Why did the author just project so many of their incumbent Mommy and Daddy issues onto this fic that only came to light in the last quarter and then never did more with it? Was it just supposed to show how familial dynamics and trauma are complicated and sometimes not all problems can be fixed so neatly and you don’t ever need to have a big confrontation with your relatives or reconnect with an old loved one to determine whether you have value or not because you already do by default?

Also, WHERE DID DAZAI’S BLUE HOODIE COME FROM IN THE AKUTAGAWA POOL PARTY SCENE ?!?! WILL NO ONE GIVE ME AN EXPLANATION --

Ahem. Apologies, dear Reader, I have, again, lost my composure. Do forgive me, I haven’t gotten my shots yet.

Where was I? Ah, yes, the memories we made. Me, nonsensically narrating. You, temporarily abandoning your opposition to the death penalty if only so that it could fortwith be applied to me to silence my deranged yet horrifyingly attractive musings forever. Remember a few chapters ago when you thought I had finished this frenzied narrative with that walloping crescendo of a first kiss between our two haughty protagonists, only to unnecessarily add on to what would’ve been an otherwise satisfactory ending just to cause more problems in the next preceding chapters that won’t ever really get resolved now because I just decided to abruptly end this fic on the half-assed takeaway that sometimes we must accept that our burnt-out roommates in Pharmacy suck at communication, and that some furries do find love with rich goth boys and proceed to flaunt said love to everyone else who’s just trying to do their math homework with the reckless abandon of those dipshits in Lord of the Flies who thought a conch shell would bring about democracy when really it only led to military escalation, and sometimes our exes who now live in England will always be down for an inconvenient booty call right when you’re about to come to terms with the fact that you have fallen helplessly, marvelously, shamefully in love with the one guy you swore was the embodiment of all known mortal irritation, and -- of course -- sometimes our parents will never quite truly know who we are in the end, despite our best efforts to show them that we can be ourselves and yet still deserve to be accepted, just as we are, and not as how they would like us to be. That does not mean there is no love. That does not mean your life is over. It simply means -- and, congratulations, -- that you are finding your own way, and nothing can change that. Not your family. Not your disbeliefs. Not even yourself.

*dabbing eyes with handkerchief because I can’t afford to cry rn my mascara was $60* Anyway. Looking back to this story’s earliest beginnings, much has changed, hasn’t it, dear Reader? For example, as Chapter 1 was being written, our gracious author had been drunk, half naked, and cheating on her take-home final exams. Now, a year later with Chapter 20 + this Epilogue, she is still drunk, half naked, and had cheated on her take-home final exams, but she will also be accepting her undergraduate diploma that she did not at all work hard enough for this coming spring. My, how time flies.

Also, we actually know what Verlaine looks like now that the Stormbringer light novel has been released! He looks positively French, gay, and dehydrated, I should say. (The author and I did not know that the whole being-Chuuya’s-sort-of-brother-thing was going to come about because, frankly, we could not fathom two people birthing such a redheaded, hat-loving boy and consciously deciding, “Ah yes! We must breed another!” so, in hindsight, it’s rather disturbing that in this AU he’s one of Chuuya’s very married and very homosexual dads, but have mercy, dear Reader, for there are literally no accessible parental figures in BSD that one can write a reasonably feel-good, rom-com-on-acid story like this one).

(Except Fukuzawa. Fukuzawa is daddy).

Finally, I assume that you will exit out of this tab, thereby concluding our intimate conference thereafter (at least, until you seek out your bookmarks again to reread this crackshow of a fanfic as a sort of messed-up summoning circle hoping for either basic comfort or a brief reprieve from life’s paralytic loneliness that can only be sated by opening Ao3 and reading the same idiots falling in love over and over again), thinking the lesson you should learn from all this is that we are all equally fascinating human creatures -- whether we study literature or physics -- and that one should not judge people by their appearances, potently gay energy, or painful adherence to all the known (and supposedly quite accurate, as we’ve seen) stereotypes of STEM majors’ lunacy.

But no, the moral of the story is not that. Rather, it is to exploit STEM majors by making them fall in love with you so pitifully that they pay for everything so that you can just read your sad little books and go to therapy all day.

And, if you yourself are already one, that quite admittedly very much sucks, and we can discuss it over iced coffee that you will kindly buy for the both of us. I won’t even bring up my very reasonable, very inarguably fair consultation fee. I shall just sit back, suck on my straw like an ambitious virgin on her wedding night, and help you come to terms with the fact that you just made one of the biggest mistakes of your life.

Free of charge.