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Right there by the gate, there’s a man wearing no splash of color on his entire body aside from the old blood in his single visible eye.
At the time the final bell rings, there is no gym teacher assigned to keep an eye on the gates to ensure that there’s no latecomer rushing in. Not that any teacher could stop this man from skulking there like a giant wraith, cold aura wrapped around his shoulders that seem to solidify into the oversized black overcoat that flows from him like a cape. Even the students who gossip and gasp about the man’s looks instinctively keep at a safe distance away, nobody daring to breach the invisible force field around him.
Nobody, aside from a red-haired student with red permanently lining the tips of his shoes, from directly crushing the skull of whoever’s unfortunate enough to meet his ire.
If there’s someone that he really wants to crush skull of, it’s this shitty Dazai who’s terrorizing the footsteps of his high school. It’s such a shame that they’re locked in a tango that’s probably a shade too sadistic than it has any right to be.
As soon as he’s within kicking distance, “The fuck are you hanging around here for?” He clicks his tongue. “Didn’t you mention that you shouldn’t have any jobs for me for the next six weeks?”
The pay is lucrative—even if it’s all on credit.
Dazai Osamu’s a dark comet shooting up the ranks in Port Mafia, unable to be stifled by the Executives and sub-Executives above who think that teenage brats should be holing themselves up in classrooms instead of putting holes into the heads of their enemies. Said higher-ups do everything in their power to crush him, ranging from the almost-polite withholding of resources and subordinates, to multiple assassins queued up his way.
They’re all aware that he’s a twig that can be splintered easily if they just apply the slightest of forces. More than that, they’re also keenly aware that his strategic mind is worse than fifty convulsed steel traps snaked into each other. Experience tells them that Dazai is going to be a formidable force, and that he’s someone with a darkness so profound that not only does he spell bad news to everyone’s lives, he also is most likely going to be the harbinger of doom for the organization. A tacit understanding spreads out between the top brass like an oil spill over the ocean of the Port Mafia hierarchy—Dazai Osamu must never be allowed to continue to rise up the ranks.
If there’s one thing that Chuuya has learned over the past few months about this person that he somehow has ended up in an intricate, inseparable, insidiously irritating partnership with—it’s that Dazai really enjoys overturning everyone’s expectations. No, a simple reversal doesn’t cut it. He always will make sure that he takes the worst expectation and then dials it up further.
And so, the low-level grunt Dazai Osamu who has joined just for kicks, in hopes of getting hit by a stray bullet, is now on his way to becoming part of the Five Executives. Lack of resources, lack of bodyguards, lack of trustworthy subordinates: none of them impede his rise.
It’s all because of Chuuya’s help, so in his mind, he definitely has the right to kick this person’s skull several times over.
“I also would rather not have to spend so much time looking at the ground if I could help it.” In contrast to the coldness that he’s been exuding like an exhaust with a carbon footprint that deserves to be banned from the planet, lest he pollute the entire atmosphere, Dazai’s words now are colored with childishness. “So, obviously, I’m only doing this because it’s an emergency.”
“I could see you yawning while playing some games on your phone, asshole.” After all, Chuuya’s last class just so happens to have a clear view of the school gates. Dazai’s bird’s nest of a hair is visible even from afar.
“Mm, you should be paying more attention to class instead of staring longingly at the school gates.”
“From someone who’s not even in the school system at sixteen?”
“Someone who’s still this small at sixteen shouldn’t be casting aspersions about a tall person’s character.”
The two of them are excellent multi-taskers. Each step of their bickering is compounded by two steps forward, together, as they fall into the same walking rhythm. Chuuya’s schoolbag over his right shoulder as he stands by the bastard’s right, literally acting as the right-hand man to someone who thinks it’s cool to keep his right eye bandaged. It’s shit aesthetics, in Chuuya’s opinion. He has many opinions about the other, none of them remotely complimentary.
It’s such a shame that Dazai is never affected or shamed by any of them.
The height jokes reach their apex, before tapering down to other matters such as, “The sub-Executive that you crushed last time apparently had a secret heir tucked away.”
Chuuya clicks his tongue and clicks the handle of the dagger that he hides in his sleeves against the idiot’s liver. “If you’re gearing up to blame me for this, I’m just telling you ahead of time, it’s your fucking fault if you can’t do your share properly, okay?”
“I did tell you to torture him fully, didn’t I?”
“And I did tell you that the guy was someone who didn’t fear pain and therefore wouldn’t crack under that kind of torture.”
While other kids their age equate the word ‘torture’ with exam worksheets and seeing their crush date someone else, for the two of them, it’s something that’s part of everyday life.
It probably shouldn’t be part of Chuuya’s life, given that he’s a rather ordinary high school student. At least, he was, until that unfortunate, fated meeting with this asshole who then looked at him, whistled, and said, “Ah. An Ability User. Gravity manipulation is quite the thing, huh?”
Chuuya’s spent all of his remembered lifetime—additional qualifier of ‘remembered’ added, since he’s woken up with no memories in his brain and no clothes over his back, in the middle of smoking rubble when he’s eight—tempering down on his strength. Keeping the flares of his strange Ability at bay. Pretending that he’s completely normal, that he’s not someone who has to be tracked down by a Special Task Force in the government, that he doesn’t possess something so strong and dangerous. He doesn’t even understand his Ability himself, but he could feel it instinctively, a power that’s clawing out of him, scratching at his insides one layer at a time.
So, for someone to take one look at him while he’s finishing up beating some bullies who tried to steal an underclassman’s lunch, and then accurately read the secrets that he’s been keeping tightly locked up—
Of course, he’s tried to beat that person up too.
But then, the moment that his fist met the other’s skin, a world of peaceful quiet has been introduced to him. The dark voices of the Ability inside him silenced at the other’s touch. Eventually, he learns it’s because this bastard has the nullification Ability.
And so, a strange partnership is born.
One person who needs someone strong to do his bidding. One person who needs this weak person to weaken him.
“Eh, but my strategies are never wrong, Chuuya.”
“They clearly were wrong in this case!”
They bicker a bit more, but it’s done with such tacit understanding of each other’s sore points that it’s almost impressive.
They’re still bickering by the time they reach the spot where the secret heir that they have to purge is hiding. Port Mafia hierarchy is something that Chuuya has zero interest in trying to fully understand. Still, he thinks it’s not really worth throwing one’s life away for the sake of revenge. There are better things to do in life, in the city of Yokohama alone.
He kicks the door open to the warehouse where a not-small faction has assembled itself. A group fully intent on avenging the death of a sub-Executive by squashing Dazai to the ground—while also gathering information on just how he’s making magic happen. After all, he’s also diligently erasing any traces of Chuuya from the databases. So, it’s almost as if he’s employed a ghost—or a godly assassin—that cannot be captured by any surveillance.
“Oi, prepare to die, shitheads,” is today’s opening line from him. It’s pretty badass, if he says so himself. He ignores Dazai rolling his eyes and making gagging noises beside him.
It’s such a shame that the faction in front of them is more preoccupied with roaring back in response, a totally uncreative battlecry of, “Die, Dazai!”
How dare they ignore him? Just because he’s wearing a school uniform still? Just because he didn’t change into a more delinquent-like outfit prior to issuing a beatdown? Or are they also like Dazai, incurably attached to height jokes, and are pretending that he’s too short to be allotted attention?
That gets his blood going. His desire to give them a talk to remind them that revenge never achieves anything—at least, according to all the manga that he’s read from Dazai’s messy bookshelf that really is just a bookshop that has vomited over his bedroom floor—fades. And then, it evaporates entirely when their battlecry turns into a battle as to who can stab Dazai.
Oh, that’s so not on!
Dazai promised him that in exchange for all of his help, he’s the one who gets to stab him in the end! And if Dazai dies now, then who would touch Chuuya with a nullification Ability on nights that he can’t focus on homework because of the voices from his Ability?! Worse, Dazai has also promised him that once he’s Boss, he’d use his influence to investigate the explosion that he found himself waking up from!
Worst thing is that! If Dazai dies now, he’d definitely turn into a vicious ghost who’d keep on yapping at Chuuya’s ear, complaining about how Chuuya’s failed to hold up his end of the bargain! While that’s good in that it means a dead mackerel, it’s going to be extremely difficult to punch an incorporeal ghost! Dazai staying in his beanpole body is still the best-case scenario for him now!
…He really is too powerful and badass, huh.
“Too boorish, too violent,” Dazai complains in the aftermath.
Both of them are seated side-by-side on the ground, surrounded by the fallen bodies of their enemies. Chuuya doesn’t even want to know why this asshole is seated down like he’s exhausted, slumping heavily against his side. He’s the one who did all the work, so why is this mackerel acting like he also has the right to be tired, when he did nothing but watch?! And offer side-comments like some lousy backseat driver that deserves to be kicked out of a moving car and then run over.
“Should have let them punch you several times over,” he mutters in distaste. He licks his lips, looking at the setting sun in the distance. His punches and kicks have altered the surroundings to the point that several boulders have been crushed. It gives them a clear view to Yokohama Bay and the horizon in the distance.
Dazai mutters complaints in turn, but their months of tacit understanding means that he’s reaching into his coat pocket to take out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Chuuya’s school conducts inspections regularly and so he doesn’t bring cigarettes with him.
“You could punch a dragon into submission and you’re scared of these checks?”
“A student does student things.” He rolls his eyes as Dazai takes a cigarette for his own and lights it up first. Asshole.
“A tiny, violent student,” Dazai says.
Before he can flare up at that, the fish reaches out and hooks one hand over his neck, while another brush against his lips, before shoving a cigarette there. He raises an eyebrow and doesn’t sputter at the obvious, low-level harassment. And then, Dazai leans in closer and proves his stinginess by touching the tips of their cigarettes together, skimping on the use of lighter.
“Shut the fuck up, soon-to-be-Executive bastard.” He blows smoke right into the other’s face.
Of course, this means Dazai returns his actions. “Fufufu, thanks for your congratulations, they make me feel very disgusted.”
“I know, that’s why I said it.”
“Fufufu, you do know me so well, huh. Even though you’re just a B+ in Maths.”
“Geh. Stop stalking my grades, damn it!”
—a peaceful moment between the two who’d eventually shake the Yokohama underworld for years to come.
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end