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It’s that time of night again.
Dazai sighs, shutting the door softly behind him as he kicks his shoes off in the entryway.
It’s been a long day. Recently, the days have always seemed to stretch out longer and longer, an endless drone of something unbearably boring. Monotonous.
Empty.
Nothing seems to have a purpose anymore, except for this time of night. The one thing that keeps him going, the one thing that keeps him dragging himself back to their apartment every night.
“I’m home, Chuuya,” Dazai calls out quietly.
There’s no answer.
It’s as silent as always; it’s been like this for the past few months.
But Dazai is used to the silence.
He hates silence, though.
Months ago, he used to fill long silences with his voice. His loud laugh, his snarky remarks...
Recently, he’s found it a bit harder to force a laugh, though. His throat always feels much too constricted.
Now, he prefers to fill silence with the sound of music. He can lose himself in a good song, close his eyes and let the soft harmonies carry him to a better place. He can forget every one of his sorrows, every one of his regrets, his mistakes, and just… live.
Live, like the way he did before—
Dazai shakes that thought away as he sighs, letting his forehead rest on the closed door.
He’s so tired.
So, so fucking tired.
Tired of living like this. Tired of having such an empty life. Because the thing is, if he were fourteen again, he would have been able to tolerate this emptiness. This loneliness. He didn’t know what it was like to live a full life, one with people you cared about and something alike to… joy.
But now, he…
He’s twenty-three years old now. He knows what it’s like to live a full life.
And he had taken it all for granted.
Because the things that he once had… he didn’t even realize he had them.
It was like air. You only wanted it when it was gone.
Because air is natural; it’s always there, always a part of you. You always breathe it in… out… it surrounds you all the time, so you don’t even notice it’s there.
But in the absence of air, your lungs burn and burn until you suffocate on your own woes. You regret, and regret, and regret ever daring to take air for granted in the first place, because you need it to live.
Dazai knows what it’s like to suffocate.
Of course he does. He’s suffocating every day.
But this time of night… he doesn’t have to. He can breathe again, take in a shuddering gasp after holding his breath for every burning moment of his empty day, and let the music carry air into his lungs.
He walks over to the record player in the corner, bends down, and sets the needle on the record. It starts spinning, and he closes his eyes, ready to breathe again but—
It doesn’t play.
He stills. The only sound coming from the record player is an ugly, distorted song—no, not even a song. It’s just noise. Loud, irritable noise, and he has to open his eyes and take the needle off of the vinyl record.
His hands tremble as he does it.
Dazai bites the inside of his cheek. The record may be dirty, or maybe he’s just so tired that it all sounds wrong…
He delicately picks up the vinyl, blows off any dust or debris that may be on it, then sets it back on the record player. He resets the needle, and it starts spinning again, but—
It’s the same. It’s not playing any music, and the sound it emits sends an unpleasant shiver down Dazai’s spine and causes goosebumps to rise on his skin, like nails on a chalkboard.
No...
This time, his hands tremble more violently as he takes the needle off. He bends down and inspects the needle; he’s not exactly an expert, though, so he can’t really tell if anything’s wrong with it.
In his eyes, though, there’s no signs that show the needle itself is broken.
He looks back down at the record player; it’s worn-down, sure, but it’s not broken— it can’t be broken, he… he can’t…
Third times the charm, right?
He rubs at his tired eyes vigorously, then places the needle over the record and—
The noise is even louder this time, screeching, making Dazai’s heart stop in his chest and sending the breath out of his lungs as if he’s just been kicked in the gut—
“No,” Dazai whispers, his voice hoarse. “No, no, no—”
He immediately takes the needle off of the record. The noise stops playing, thankfully, but the silence is just as loud, and he can’t… he can’t…
With shaky hands, he pulls the record off and rubs it against his shirt, trying to get off any fingerprints or smudging on it that could be creating the dissonance. After vigorously rubbing it, he replaces it on the record player.
“Please play… please…” Dazai whispers, waiting with trembling hands as he places the needle down, but…
It’s futile.
“No— please play,” He begs the record player as it spins, a cacophony of distressing sounds which make tears well up in his eyes. He shakes his head vigorously as his vision turns blurry, his heart stuttering painfully in his chest. “Chuuya, I—fuck—w-where—”
And that’s when Dazai realizes that he can’t breathe.
He takes in a shuddering gasp and takes the needle off the record player. Covering his mouth with one hand, he lets out a muffled sob.
Physically and emotionally, he doesn’t have his air, all he can do is desperately clutch at the record player and pray that it starts, but—
It doesn’t, and Dazai is suffocating all over again.
Tears threaten to slip out as he tries again.
One last time, maybe it’ll start, just one last time…
But the noise doesn’t come back. Dazai is a bit grateful for that, but then he realizes—
It’s completely silent.
The record is spinning without any noise, just a deafening silence that surrounds Dazai.
This day… perhaps this day was inevitable. The day the music stopped playing, the day the silence returned, but the thing is...
Dazai isn’t ready.
He’s not ready to face the silence all on his own again. He doesn’t want to go back to this, doesn’t want this empty and lonely life, doesn’t want to feel like this again.
But the silence is stretching out for so long, the only sound being his heavy, ragged breathing and small sobs, and he—
“You have to let go.”
“No, C-Chuuya, no, I don’t w-want to—” he gasps out, fumbling with the record player. He slaps its side, forces the needle down, tries to do whatever he can, but it’s not playing anymore, and—
He’s not fucking ready.
He doesn’t want to face the music. An ironic phrase that makes his stomach turn and his blood run cold, but it’s true, he’s not ready to face the music, and… the music is…
The sound of silence.
The world that doesn’t have Chuuya.
That world isn’t something that can exist comfortably in Dazai’s mind. It’s a world he never thought would exist, a world that never should exist.
But it was a world that he was quickly realizing did exist, with the unbearable silence.
In this apartment, their apartment, it used to be filled with bickering, and laughter, and shitty punk music that Dazai didn’t understand, but he… he loved it. And he misses it.
He misses it so much that he’s desperate enough to do whatever it takes, whatever he can do to bring that world back, so he closes his eyes, trying to conjure up Chuuya’s image, but—
He can’t even remember Chuuya’s face.
“C-Chuuya,” Dazai whispers desperately. Brokenly. But there’s no answer, as always, and all he can see is the darkness behind his closed eyelids. There’s no music, no laughter, no…
No Chuuya.
“Chuuya, p-please,” Dazai begs through a shuddering sob, but Chuuya isn’t here.
And if Dazai can’t get the record player to work, then Chuuya will not be here anymore.
So he tries again.
And again, and again, and again to get the record player to work, but nothing works. And each time he fails, each time the silence grows longer, it feels like another piece of his heart is being ripped away until there’s nothing left.
There’s nothing left of his heart, there’s nothing left of the music, there’s nothing left of Chuuya.
“I-I’m so fucking sorry—” Dazai sobs. He doesn’t know if he’s saying sorry to Chuuya, or to the record player he’s abused, but all he knows is that he’s sorry, desperately begging for forgiveness, if only that could make the pain stop for a moment.
And now, there’s nothing left to try. He’s done everything he can, but there was only so many times he could try, and now all he could do was kneel in front of the record player and weep. “I’m s-sorry, Chuuya, I-I’m sorry—”
Now he knows he’s apologizing to Chuuya, because the thing is—
It was his fault. He was too late. Chuuya trusted him, and—and—
He didn’t even get to say goodbye.
For the rest of the night, Dazai doesn’t move. He stays in front of the broken record player, struggling to breathe and trembling everywhere until he doesn’t have any more tears to cry.
Dazai breaks his routine tonight. And for the first time in many months, the apartment remains silent.
And the next day, he gets a new record player.
He takes it back to their— his apartment, wrenches open the door, and delicately places the needle over the same old record. It plays, but—
The song didn’t sound the same anymore.
And that was even worse than the sound of silence.