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There is no funeral.
There is just Dazai Osamu, standing silently by a tree as the two grunts dig a hole in the ground. Their shovels are loud; perhaps a bit too loud, but the steady skshhh, skshhh is better than the deafening silence that follows.
Silence means that Dazai can hear his own thoughts, and he is not ready for that.
They bury him at sunset, watching the sky bleed from purple to red and darker. It is fitting, Dazai thinks, the way the colors drip into each other, graceful as they fade to darkness. The sun is golden as it disappears over the horizon, the same gold as the jacket draped across the body that is carefully lowered into the ground.
Dazai closes his eyes and lets the noise of the shovels wash over him as they begin again. At first they are like ocean waves gently lapping at his feet, and then they are louder, stronger, a tsunami crashing and he is drowning —
He opens his eyes.
There is no sign of the man he once called a friend. The hole in the ground— the grave— has been covered, and as he watches the grunts smooth it over with their shovels. He will pay them extra, later, in exchange for them not speaking of this ever again.
The final piece of this tragic puzzle arrives silently, a large gravestone that Dazai considers for a moment before nodding once in approval. It burns in the back of his throat to read the letters etched into it, a simple S. Oda because he could not bring himself to have them write Odasaku.
The stone is set in place, and as he dismisses the grunts he finds himself crouched by it, eyes wandering across the surface. The final rays of light from the sun make the leaves of the nearby tree glimmer, and the wind whispers softly in his ears as he unfolds his legs and seats himself against the gravestone.
He does not speak, but takes a small comfort in the weight against his back. With eyes drifting closed, he lets his heart wish for just a second that it was a warm chest against his back rather than cold, hard rock.
—-
He tries not to think about it, but there is not much else to think about.
Time and time again his mind reaches inside itself and produces images of that grave marker, of the mafia workers and the shovels and the setting sun. How fitting, he thinks each time, the setting sun. An end and a beginning, the start of a long and cold night. The loss of comfortable warmth, of a soft happiness found in unusual spaces with unusual people.
Time and time again his mind dreams up images of a man with a hole in his heart, fingers grasping for Dazai’s face as he chokes out broken words.
Dazai had made a promise, in that moment, and so he disappears as Chuuya battles the leader of some gang that was causing chaos in the city. He will be fine on his own: the gang are nothing more than ants compared to some of what the Double Black have faced.
The bomb under Chuuya’s car was just for fun, because he felt like it.
(It was not particularly fun, if he is to be honest. But Dazai is never honest and there is no one to call his bluff.)
He finds himself walking down a crowded street in a popular shopping district, his thoughts briefly hidden by the noise that rumbles all around him. He peers in the windows of a bakery, considering the pastries before shaking his head and moving on. He passes a jewelry store, a restaurant, a clothing store, another restaurant. There are people everywhere, so many people, and yet he feels strangely detached, as if his ears are not working quite right. The loud voices echo through his foggy mind, the words blurring together incoherently as he walks.
Suddenly his breath catches in his throat as he sees a familiar patch of yellow out of the corner of his eye, and his hands shake because there right there he just saw—
—of course, it is not Odasaku. It is a mannequin, mocking him, draped in a coat that is slightly too long and slightly too tan as it perches in the window of a clothing shop. Dazai stares for an instant that seems like an eternity, and then a woman walks into him with an exclaimed “Sorry!” Dazai nods slightly, scarcely processing the words as he finds himself entering the shop.
He approaches the traitorous mannequin, looking at the way the belt ribbon hangs down and the way it fits across plastic shoulders. It is not so similar, not really, but the shape and the color are close enough to fool an intelligent mind for a split second. Dazai studies the jacket and he curses it, this tan coat and his weak heart.
Stupid jacket, he thinks, and then he picks up one of the identical ones that lay stacked beside it. What a stupid jacket, he repeats to himself as he pays for it.
——
He wears the tan coat as he burns the old one.
It needed to be done. First of all, Mori-san has a terrible taste in clothing and Dazai is sick of wearing his old, scrappy jacket with sleeves that he cannot bear to put his arms through and a color scheme that is better suited to an high schooler going through an emo phase.
Second of all, Mori-san is the easiest to blame.
So burn the black coat he does, in the fireplace of the new apartment that he bought the day after he left the mafia for good. Crouched in front of said fireplace, he lights a single match and drops it to watch as flames envelope the horrible sleeves and the horrible fabric and the horrible front that never stayed buttoned. It is deeply therapeutic, and Dazai considers purchasing something else solely for the purpose of burning it before realizing that it is Mori-san’s coat that he enjoys burning, not just any random objects.
He leaves the charred scraps of fabric in the fireplace once it is burned beyond recognition, and quietly moves to the couch. From there he stares blankly at the dwindling fire, fiddling with the sleeves of the tan coat that he is not yet used to.
My jacket smells like smoke now, he realizes suddenly, and it may be coat-burning smoke rather than cigarette smoke but it is still a haunting taste in his mouth because someone else used to smell like smoke. Someone who wore yellow.
(If, on dark nights when the world is empty and his heart feels hollow, he presses the folded tan coat to his chest and breathes in the scent of not-quite-the-same smoke, well, no one has to know.)
——
“You were a Port Mafia executive,” the gray-haired man comments, looking up from the file that he holds open above his massive desk.
“Yes,” Dazai replies, because that is the truth.
Fukuzawa Yukichi considers him for a long moment, his sharp eyes seeming to pierce through Dazai’s soul. “How do I know my agents can trust you?”
Dazai is silent for a long moment, watching as the president of the Armed Detective Agency continues skimming his file. Much of it is faked, as both of them know, but Fukuzawa regards him with politeness and an ounce more of trust than he deserves.
“I made a promise to a friend,” Dazai admits, and passes the admission test with flying colors.
——
“Was it someone you loved?” Atsushi asks, his tone light and curious. The gentle wind blows his uneven bangs across his face as he peers down at Dazai, wondering about his graveyard-visiting habits.
Dazai keeps his face perfectly neutral the way he learned to years ago. He even manages to smile, ever so slightly, as he spews some bullshit about women and double suicide. He pinches the sleeve of his coat between two fingers, studies the fabric that is not quite yellow enough but that carries the weight of his lead heart all the same.
Yes. No.
Maybe he could have. Maybe he would have, had there been more time. Maybe he already did.
He tilts his head back to lean against the stone. It is far more comfortable than a grave marker should be, a solid presence against his back.
He closes his eyes and wishes it were Odasaku’s chest instead.