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It’s strangely freeing to drown. Dazai muses to himself as bubbles surround him in a shimmering cloud of blue and white.
The world slows and unfocuses. Words like; “Dazai, no!”, “I’m too tired to deal with your shit today.”, and “Congratulations, you’re finally doing it.” collect into neat piles of gibberish that echo the ways sounds tend to do underwater.
He’d been feeling his mask slip for days now. The dregs of empathy he manages to scrounge up every morning, slipping through his fingers like the sand at the bottom of this lovely river he’s decided to sink in.
And it’s always gratifying to let himself sink.
Watching the glimmers of light slowly dim as he tumbles deeper into murky depths, struggling to take just one breath, but there’s no air to breathe.
His limbs feel like they’re moving through a suffocatingly slow motion scene, one that only amplifies his shaking.
He might be crying, laughing, or screaming, but with the water clogging his ears, and vision slowly becoming muted and grey, it’s hard to tell.
The funny thing about lungs, is that they start to malfunction only a few minutes in, as one’s frantic attempts at reaching the surface slow.
You’re too far down at this point. You might as well drown. The voices whisper, crystal clear as they tempt the bandaged man into an easy death.
Drown as every sound scrapes against Dazai’s ears.
Drown after spending years in the dark, the tiniest glimmer of light blinds him.
Drown when the softest brush of fabric on skin bare of bandages makes him want to scratch it off.
Drown as the overwhelming urge to disappear until everything goes away; weighs down every step, pulls at the edges of every smile, and places a far too heavy wright on his shoulders.
Maybe in death, he can finally breathe in silence.
But once he hits the bottom, the idea of going back to the surface loses its appeal.
It might be dark, cold, and painfully devoid of oxygen, but it’s better than a world too bright, unbearably warm, and filled to the brim with futile optimism.
“Dazai, come on!” A voice once as familiar as his own calls, as the brunette registers gloved hands around his waist, urging him to; “Swim dammit!”
“Why?” Dazai wants to ask. But the only thing that escapes him is heaving coughs as his lungs dispel the foreign substance residing in them.
What’s the point of swimming back to the surface, when all he’ll do is drown again? He thinks, miserably watching the sky with empty, brown eyes.
His lungs may ache, and eyes once filled with light have fallen back into the darker undertones of his younger years, but this is far more tolerable than trudging through the circus act humans call living.
For Dazai Osamu is no longer human, and he wishes nothing more than for death to take him.
