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The case was grueling, and exhaustion pulls at Kunikida’s bones, like gravity has been turned up in his desk chair. He pulls his glasses off and rubs his eyes.
“Did you even hear me, Kunikida?” the president asks. Wait, no. With that voice he’s not the president, he’s Fukuzawa. Concerned.
Kunikida blinks and looks up at him, slipping his glasses back on. There’s no use lying. “No,” he says with a sigh. “I apologize.”
Fukuzawa cocks his head and purses his lips. “When did you last sleep?”
Kunikida rolls his shoulders and stands. “It’s fine. I’m fine. What do you need?” Sleep can wait. Putting the agency first usually allows sleep to come easier anyway.
“I need you to go home,” Fukuzawa says with a small smile. “You’re exhausted. You solved the case, and the perpetrator is in police custody. Cleanup at the site is finished. You even wrote the report. Go home. What I said first was ‘why are you here’?”
After a beat, all he can answer is, “I didn’t proofread the report.”
“Dazai!” Fukuzawa calls while staring at Kunikida.
A crash sounds from the corner of the office, but a moment later Dazai strolls up to Kunikida’s desk, brushing dust from his hair.
“Dazai. Are you busy?” Fukuzawa asks.
Kunikida can’t help his snort.
Dazai glares at him as Fukuzawa says, “Walk Kunikida home, please. He’s leaving, but I don’t trust him to not stop at a café and do some more work. He needs rest.”
“What?” Kunikida asks.
Fukuzawa reaches over and takes the report out of Kunikida’s hands. He hands it to Naomi as she walks past. “Proofread this, please, and then put it on my desk, if you would?”
Naomi takes it with hardly a glance. “Sure!” she replies without looking back at any of them.
Kunikida blinks. Shakes his head and glances at his watch. “It’s not even five.”
Dazai somehow already has Kunikida’s coat and is pulling him up out of his chair. He gives in to it with a tired shake of his head. “Fine, fine,” he says.
Dazai wraps his coat around him and gives him that lopsided grin of his. They head out with a wave to the others.
Atsushi calls out, “Goodnight! Get some rest!”
“He’s too chipper,” Kunikida grumbles as they shut the agency door behind them.
“He just came on duty two hours ago,” Dazai says. “Also, Ranpo gave him chocolate.”
They emerge into the soft sunlight of the December afternoon and Kunikida pulls his coat a little tighter. The street is crowded, and someone bumps into him abruptly. His limbs are clumsy when he’s tired, and he stumbles before Dazai takes him by the elbow and holds him up.
“You’re a bit of a mess tonight, Kunikida,” he says, and doesn’t let go once Kunikida is upright again. “Let’s get you home.”
“Stop for a meal?” Kunikida offers instead. He’s exhausted, yes, but he’s hungry and Dazai is holding onto his arm and maybe in his tiredness he’s stupidly allowing himself to wish. Wishing isn’t really true to his ideal, to the fact that the world does not, as a rule, grant wishes. It’s why he’s usually better than this at pushing away his wishes and focusing on what’s in front of him in reality. Now, though, Dazai is walking him home. That’s real and Kunikida doesn’t really want it to end.
“You’re buying,” Dazai says like he always does, but he doesn’t let go of Kunikida’s arm.
They find a table at the small restaurant near Kunikida’s apartment and Dazai orders a pot of tea to share. He fiddles with his arm bandage and glances around the dim, shadowy restaurant. He’s got a black eye from their run-in with Rashouman yesterday, and his skin is paler than usual. He’d stopped Akutagawa and had to deal with Mori as well, so it’s no surprise he’s exhausted, too.
“Does it still bother you to run into Mori when we tangle with the Port Mafia?” Kunikida asks, and immediately mentally slaps himself. Exhaustion has removed his filter. “Wait, never mind. Forget I asked that. It was rude,” he adds quickly and takes a desperate sip of tea.
Dazai shakes his head. “It’s okay. It does bother me sometimes, but not this time. He was wrong and he knew it. That one was easy. He won’t admit it, but he knows he was wrong. That definitely makes it easier to deal with him.”
There’s a dull edge to Dazai’s voice whenever he talks about Mori, and now is no different. Over the years, Dazai has become more willing to talk about his time in the Mafia, sharing insights and strategy, and sometimes letting small details from his past life slip. For some reason, Kunikida gathers those details like little pieces of gold he can hoard possessively, but it’s clear that talking about Mori is not something he enjoys doing. However, “Atsushi did well yesterday,” Kunikida says, and Dazai’s eyes light up. Atsushi is a topic Dazai loves.
“Did you see the leap he took from the rafters about midway through?” Dazai asks, shaking his head. “Incredible.”
“He’s getting better at timing his leaps and knowing when to join,” Kunikida said.
Dazai nods and begins to say something, but the young waitress approaches and asks for their order. They each stick with a simple ramen, and the waitress leaves them with a smile. Dazai doesn’t even say a word to her outside their order.
“Are you feeling all right tonight?” Kunikida asks.
After a sip of his tea, Dazai raises an eyebrow. “Yes, why?”
“You didn’t offer to take her out after work,” Kunikida says with a shrug. “It’s unlike you.”
Dazai smiles. “It didn’t even occur to me today,” he says. “I’ll do better next time.”
Kunikida shrugs and leans back on his hands. “Did you watch the last BayStars game?” he asks.
They strike up a familiar conversation about the local baseball team, and Kunikida’s tension from the last two days seeps out of his body. Their food comes and the conversation shifts to a new restaurant down near the city center, and Kunikida laughs at Dazai’s bizarre review. They eat quietly, and Kunikida regards his friend in veiled glances. He can’t help but think of his ‘ideal partner’ list as Dazai brushes his hair out of his eyes and takes a bite of noodles. Dazai fits about three of those things, well, maybe more if he’s being generous, but there’s something about him that makes Kunikida want to tear the list out of his notebook and never look at it again.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Dazai says as he wipes his mouth and sets his chopsticks down on the table. “How has Atsushi been doing with his reports?”
The question startles Kunikida. Not because it’s about Atsushi, but because it’s about paperwork. Dazai walked right into this one: “Better than you?” Kunikida offers with a grin.
When Dazai frowns and looks away, Kunikida cocks his head. He’s missing something. “He’s fine, Dazai. Why do you ask?”
Dazai sighes and stares at his bowl. “I didn’t know how well the orphanage prepared him for some things, now that we know a bit more about how he was raised.”
Kunikida frowns, too. Talking about Atsushi’s upbringing makes his own blood boil, and he’s not even as close to the boy as Dazai is.
“I was thinking about his writing. Does he manage?” Dazai asks.
Kunikida blinks and sets his own chopsticks down. “He struggled at first,” he admits. “We came up with a system, though, and it seems to be working.”
“A system? What are you doing with him?”
“Well, he does his own reports when things are slow – he manages if he can take time. When we’re busy and he has a time restriction, he does a voice recording and I transcribe it in the evening or when I have time.” He smiles at a memory of Atsushi’s voice filling his apartment and offering his own little explanations for what he’s putting in the reports, apologizing to Kunikida in the recording for some little mistake he made.
Dazai starts to chuckle, his eyes crinkling in amusement. “Wait. Wait. You’re telling me that you’ll do Atsushi’s reports for him, but you hound me for mine every other minute?”
A smile pulls at Kunikida’s mouth. “I don’t do his reports for him, Dazai.”
“You just admitted that you do his reports at night at your apartment.”
“I transcribe them for him! I do not write them.”
Dazai is quiet for a moment and then he shakes his head with a grin. “Fair enough, Kuni. That’s nice of you to do.”
The nickname rolled off his tongue like water, but it hits Kunikida’s body with the shock of electricity. He swallows around the sensation and tucks the compliment away carefully before going on. “He’s a good kid and those people were monsters to him. I’ve been working with him when we have a moment and he’s a quick study.” Atsushi knew how to read at a basic level, but writing was not even up to basics. He was like a child when it came to writing. Kunikida took him aside when things were slow, into the conference room where no one would interrupt them, and taught him as best he could, starting with common words related to their work.
“You’re tutoring him, too, aren’t you?” Dazai asks. “Gonna teach him math, too?”
Kunikida ducks his head with a smile and shrugs. “Might as well, right?” He had actually given Atsushi a short lesson last week just to see what he already knew.
“I should take your lessons, too,” Dazai says, and then he frowns.
“What do you mean?”
Dazai takes a drink of his tea and swirls the remnants of the liquid in his cup slowly, staring into the cup. “I didn’t go to school past the age of ten.” He shrugs and offers a small smile. “Mori tutored me a bit, but it was sporadic.”
The ramen Kunikida had eaten turns a little in his stomach. Ten. And then ‘tutored’ by a madman. “You’ve never seemed to need help,” Kunikida says. He doesn’t want to brush Dazai off if it’s not some joke of his, but it’s odd to think of him needing help with reports. Although maybe, “Dazai, is that why you don’t do your paperwork?”
“Eh, I don’t do it because it’s boorrring, Kunikida. I can read and write enough.”
Kunikida could feel the denial rolling off of Dazai, so he let it go. They were both exhausted. If this was a real problem, Kunikida would have to deal with it later. He tucked this information away as well, promising himself he’d come back to it.
“Do you like to read?” he asked, steering the conversation like a little motorboat back into safer waters.
Except now Dazai gets a faraway look in his eyes that is filled with melancholy. “There was a time I read a lot. A friend of mine would hand me a new book each week, it seemed. I read some of the classics. He insisted when he found out that I’d quit school.” Embarrassment crept into his voice.
“I quit school, too,” Kunikida says with a sad smile.
Dazai’s jaw drops. “What? Wait. You were a math tutor.”
“A friend of my father’s got me a teaching position, but it was later, and it was kind of a special case. He knew how good I was at it, and I might have begged a bit for it. I quit college, though. Only went a year.” He can’t help the resentful tone of his voice. He didn’t want to quit or anything.
Dazai is silent for a moment, clearly reading the mood.
“I’m just saying,” Kunikida says, “It doesn’t matter if you quit school. Doesn’t mean you can’t do school things. I bet you’re good at reading and talking about the books with your analytical brain.”
Dazai blinks and smiles. “Well, Oda used to say that I said the strangest things about the books he gave me. He seemed pleased.”
“He’s your friend who gave you books?”
Dazai nods and looks away. He bites his lip and frowns.
Well, it seems like Kunikida keeps stumbling into landmines in this damned conversation. He rubs his face and closes his eyes. It’s the exhaustion. He’s usually more careful, and Dazai is usually more closed off. They usually stay in safe, bland conversation when they eat together. It’s always nice, and less intense. “I’m sorry if I said something I shouldn’t have, Osamu.”
Dazai snaps his eyes over.
Kunikida freezes. He never uses Dazai’s given name. He kind of wants to crawl under the table, but instead he yawns. He covers his mouth at the last second. He needs to go home.
Dazai chuckles and reaches out and ruffles Kunikida’s hair like he’s six years old or something. Kunikida tries not to lean into the touch. “It’s all right, Doppo. My friend Oda died a few years ago and I miss him terribly, but you didn’t do anything wrong.”
The soft tone of Dazai’s voice as he says Kunikida’s name sends more electricity through his body, and he wonders if he’s going to survive this meal. He looks up and around at the restaurant. It’s starting to fill up now that they’ve been there a while.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Kunikida says quietly.
Dazai nods and shrugs. He puts his chin in his hand and stares intently at Kunikida. “Thank you. I actually think the two of you would have gotten along well. I exasperated him, too.” He smiles.
Kunikida’s own smile shows up in response. He yawns again.
“We should get you home,” Dazai says with a clap. “I promised the president.”
“I can make it on my own, you know. You’re tired, too.”
“No, no. I will escort you home. Regardless of my promise, I just want to. It’s been a most pleasant evening!” He stands and stretches like an alley cat as Kunikda stands and shrugs on his coat. They pay for their meals and duck back out into the street. The streetlights are on now, bleeding pale orange light everywhere, and the temperature dropped a little while they were inside. They walk shoulder-to-shoulder in silence, and it’s not long before they’re standing in front of Kunikida’s apartment. He yawns again.
“I’m glad we ate together,” Dazai says.
“Would you like to come up for a bit?” Kunikida asks. He is definitely exhausted, but there’s something about tonight that he doesn’t want to end.
“Wait, are you on the second floor?”
“Yes, why?”
Dazai sighs dramatically and grabs Kunikida by the elbow. “Come on. You’ll probably stumble to your death if I don’t walk you up.”
Kunikida grins and shrugs. “If you insist.”
He does stumble about halfway up the stairs, and when Dazai pulls him up, he has to take a few deep breaths.
“Doppo?” Dazai asks, and Kunikida has to close his eyes for a moment against the worry in his voice.
“I’m all right. Just tired.”
“I know. Come on,” Dazai says, pulling him up the stairs. They reach the landing and Dazai stares down the hallway. “Which one?”
Kunikida leads him to the third door down, and fumbles in his pants pocket to fish out his key, and then he can’t get it to go into the lock right and he growls in frustration.
“Here,” Dazai says gently, and pries the key out of his hand. He opens the door on the first try and pulls them into the apartment, handing the key back to Kunikida.
“Do you want some tea?” Kunikida asks. “I’m making some for myself before bed.” He heads for the kitchen to turn the kettle on. Dazai is quiet behind him. “Dazai?” he asks, turning back to see what’s wrong.
Dazai is turning slowly, like he’s drinking in the sight of the place, and a small smile appears.
“What?” Kunikida asks.
“Your apartment,” Dazai answers as he keeps turning. “It’s beautiful.”
Kuniida smiles. “It’s not much.”
“It’s . . . warm.”
Kunikida had gone to great lengths for that exact effect, spending a couple of weekends painting the walls a warm, deep yellow the color of rich sunflowers, searching thrift stores for a comfortable forest-green couch and armchair, and finding several cheap canvases of autumn fields and deep green forests to hang on the walls. He had several hard-to-kill plants hanging and sitting on his cherry wood coffee table. He had rigged an oil diffuser to a timer, too, so the place had a hint of lavender smell when he got home. It was nice that Dazai liked it.
“Tea?” Kunikida asks again.
“Sure.”
He moves to his small kitchen at the edge of the room and fills his electric kettle and turns it on. The apartment was only one room and a bathroom, but he’d grown to love it over the last couple of years. He goes to a cupboard and decides on an orange herbal because they both need sleep, and putters about getting the teapot ready and pulling down his matching wildflower painted teacups. He turns to find Dazai watching him with a small smile on his face.
“I didn’t think you’d be domestic,” he says, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
Kunikida considers the statement carefully and weighs what to say. He’d constructed this place as a sort of sanctuary, and he’d tried to fill it with calm things because he was so high strung most of the day. He couldn’t help that part of him, but he could counter it a bit with his surroundings. His own childhood home had been chaotic and simply a place to sleep, so he’d tried to make this place more than that. “Our work is hard,” he says as he pulls his sugar jar from a cupboard. “And this is my first place that I could afford to fix up a little. I like coming home to it.”
“It’s an oasis,” Dazai says quietly, looking around again.
Kunikida grins and nods. The kettle boils and he fixes their tea in silence, letting the atmosphere settle into both of them. He hands Dazai his cup and they make their way to the couch.
Dazai leans back and closes his eyes. He’s pale and there are dark circles under his eyes. He rests for a moment and Kunikida takes the chance to stare a bit. His hair is shaggy and the bandages he always wears around his neck are frayed at the edge under his chin, worn away a bit like he’s been worrying them with his fingers. Why he wears them Kunikida still doesn’t know. Bandages around his neck – he doesn’t know how far down they go – and around his arms, maybe under his pants? He’s worn them for years and Kunikida knows enough about secrets to know not to ask. But right now, they’re frayed and worn, a little like Kunikida feels. He sips his tea and closes his eyes, too.
A moment later and his cup is being pulled from his hands. He blinks, but he’s so tired. He hears a quiet chuckle and then Dazai’s hand is in his hair, brushing it from his face. He settles back against the couch.
“Wake up for a moment, Doppo,” Dazai says. “Just for a moment.”
Kunikida opens his eyes and blinks. His partly full teacup and Dazai’s empty one sit on the coffee table, and Dazai has pulled the futon from the closet near the door and laid it out near the couch. His blankets are tucked around the edges and pulled back neatly. He can’t get his brain to kick back on, though, so he sits staring at the futon in a bit of a daze.
“You need to sleep, come on,” Dazai says, and he pulls Kunikida to his feet. His tie has been removed and the top buttons of his shirt undone. He sways when he stands, but Dazai guides him to the futon and presses him down. He can’t help but go, and when he’s under the covers, Dazai tucks them around him and smiles softly. “Sleep. I set your alarm for you and I’ll see you at the office, okay?”
“Thank you, Dazai,” he manages to mumble, and he wants to stay awake to keep Dazai here, but his eyes slip shut, and he doesn’t even hear the door shut when Dazai leaves.
He wakes to sunlight coming in through the one window of the apartment and he feels rested and heavy. The two teacups are still on the coffee table, and the thought of passing out on the couch in front of Dazai makes his face warm a bit. He glances over at the clock and his heart nearly beats out of his chest. It’s ten in the morning. He’s supposed to start his day at seven. Dazai said he’d set his alarm! He sits up and scrambles to his feet. That’s when he sees the note on the coffee table.
Doppo,
You need rest and I know you won’t get it if left to your own devices. I spoke to the president and told him you would be late today. He approved wholeheartedly and said that if you show up at the office before noon you’re fired. Thank you for the tea.
Yours, Osamu.
Kunikida closes his eyes and heaves a deep breath. Dazai. He wants to be angry, especially when he opens his phone and finds a voicemail from the president repeating that he’ll be fired if he comes in before noon. There’s another message from Atsushi telling him he’d be able to stay after work today to learn more math if Kunikida wanted to teach him. And finally, there’s a third message. It’s from Dazai, and he simply says, “There will be lunch on your desk today, and thanks again for the tea. I really like your apartment.”
When Kunikida shows up to the office at one-minute past noon, there’s a carton of soup sitting on his desk, and a little post-it note with a smiley face on it. Kunikida pulls it off, folds it carefully, and slips it into his wallet with a shake of his head.