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Ironically enough, Dazai encounters Chuuya two years after his defection from the mafia in their joint safehouse. Although safehouse is too generous of a term, when in reality it’s but a humble stone cottage tucked in a forest deep in Yokohama’s outskirts. It was purchased on a drunken haze back when they were still sixteen and they would hide away here, their little safe corner, when they’re allowed to have a pocket of time to themselves.
Not a single soul knows about this place, not even Chuuya’s beloved Ane-san. Dazai has also gone to great lengths just to ensure Mori’s claws won’t catch wind of this place either.
So as plain as it is, it is a safehouse - their safehouse, in more ways than one.
Dazai came here a year in his hiding and it’s obvious that Chuuya hasn’t visited in a long time. The thick layer of dust covering each surface is telling enough. The beds are untouched, there’s not a single bottle missing from their alcohol cabinet, and the atmosphere is stale and heavy as if it hadn’t been aired out in a long time. Like an abandoned home left to nature’s devices, lost in time.
And he knows Chuuya won’t be coming here any time soon either. He will avoid this place as much as he can, probably fueled by hate for his traitor of a partner, probably won’t even bother investigating this place thinking Dazai would never step back here again. And Dazai knows that with the title of Executive pushed upon him, he would be too busy and prideful to take breaks for himself.
That works well-enough for Dazai.
Because out here, he can’t hear the perpetual noise of the city. Out here, he can’t see the imposing buildings of the Port Mafia.
Ah - but as with many things that relate to Chuuya, this particular prediction fails.
It happens deep in the night.
Dazai startles awake to the sound of the door violently opening and then closing. The windows and walls shake as if there was a violent thunderstorm and Dazai is quick to rise from the bed. The sound of something heavy falling to the wooden floors follows next. At first he thinks that Mori has finally found him and it’s a raid to drag him back, or maybe kill him, but he eventually relaxes - the mafia is not stupid enough to be so embarrassingly careless. And Mori would definitely have something more elaborate than this.
Still, Dazai tries to be as quiet as he could when he goes out to investigate.
And what a sight to behold. Upon his feet is Port Mafia Executive Nakahara Chuuya, passed out face first on the floor. Orange hair spilling in a messy cascade, clothes unkempt, looking less like the feared fighter than what his reputation entails.
The first idea that Dazai entertains is that his idiot of a partner might be embarrassingly drunk but he quickly realizes he’s wrong - again - when he sees the growing puddle of blood underneath him.
A part of him wishes him death. This is Chuuya: lapdog to the boss, an accomplice to countless murders, a willing villain, and among the many stains Dazai needs to wash away and forget.
Above all, it would simply be satisfying to have an upper Executive shrivel and die under his watch. A twisted form of revenge, cruel and tasteless, to take a piece from Mori’s chess board and dismantle his empire. He doesn’t care much for Chuuya and the idea of leaving him here to bleed out pathetically on the floor is so entertaining that the beginnings of a smile touches Dazai’s lips.
How beautiful, the two of them coming into full circle like this.
But then his heart comes to a violent stutter when he hears Chuuya choking on his own blood. Defeated and desperate - a sound so foreign coming from him. Chuuya’s whole body convulses violently on the floor and his breaths come in shallow waves.
Liar, liar, liar, his brain mocks, and Dazai abandons all pretenses and gets on his knees, turning Chuuya over as carefully as he could. He tilts his body and blood spills from Chuuya’s lips, his shirt turning scarlet. His face is a canvas of bruises and from this angle Dazai can see the horrific stab wound on his abdomen. He presses against it to try and stop the blood from spilling over, and with all the strength he has in him, Dazai lifts and deposits him on the table.
Chuuya is limp and almost lifeless. His skin is quickly turning ashen, and when he forces his lids open, Dazai sees dull stone rather than the familiar electric blue. “Wake up,” Dazai commands him. It’s an order, yet Chuuya does not heed.
Fury burns under Dazai’s skin and he can’t stop the storm inside his chest. Who dared to lay a hand on Chuuya? Who is responsible for this? Emotions and instincts he’s fought so hard to bury and forget come rising to his chest, his throat becoming constricted with rage. A familiar warsong thrums in his veins and Dazai - Dazai swears vengeance.
Chuuya wheezes, his lungs desperate for air, and Dazai snaps out of his thoughts. In quick succession he gathers all the medical tools and supplies they have stashed in all the years they’ve made this place their own. Morphine, bandages, antiseptics, a suture kit, the stupid AED Chuuya insisted on buying, gods — and for all his misgivings, he now finds great favor at Mori’s foresight for teaching him the backbones of general surgery.
“Don’t die, do you hear me?” Dazai demands again as he slices through Chuuya’s blood-stained clothes.
With trembling fingers, he stitches the wound. But Dazai’s hands have never been made for healing — he ends up stabbing the needle a little too deeply, and his suture work is mediocre at best. At least, he thinks, the bleeding has stopped.
This will definitely leave an ugly scar.
The air is a pungent mix of sweat, iron, and alcohol when he finishes. The room looks wrecked and the puddle of blood by the door is starting to stain the floorboards. Beneath his feet are the medical scissors and a mess of surgical sponges, and disgustingly enough, the scene reminds him of a particularly gruesome room in the very belly of the mafia’s headquarters.
In front of him is not a torture victim nor a captive spy but Chuuya might as well be, with how he looks.
Pale as moonlight from blood loss, his chest barely rising and falling with shallow inhales and unsteady exhales.
Death, Dazai thinks, does not look good on him. Chuuya is supposed to be bright and cosmic, taking up space, demanding attention, explosive and present. Now he just lays still and unmoving like a storm subdued, a flame reduced to flickering embers.
When he gathers enough strength to walk again, he dutifully cleans Chuuya from the blood and dirt on his skin, and then carries him to the room that was once his, carefully tucking him under warm blankets.
He’s taken back to the times where the both of them would be sitting side by side on this very same bed, playing some stupid RPG they’re hooked on. To moments where he’d be too lazy to drag himself back to his own room so he lays claim on his side of Chuuya’s bed — the left side, nearest to the door. To waking up too early, just lying there and feeling dust specks of jealousy at how easily sleep comes for Chuuya. He’d be buried in the blankets and his orange hair looked like sunset streaks on the pillows.
So no, the sight before him isn’t technically unfamiliar.
It just is a little different — the first thing he actually notices it that Chuuya’s hair has grown exceptionally longer. He has bangs framing his face now, and he's lost even more of his boyish features, replaced by sharper cheekbones.
It’s been two years. He’s grown so different in such a short amount of time.
Dazai pulls a chair to the bedside and this close, he now notices the silver earring on Chuuya’s left ear, a modest little stud glittering under the light. It makes Dazai smile, if only for a little. Did he get that from the tattoo and piercing boutique near that bar they frequented downtown?
Does Chuuya still drink there after a taxing assignment?
Has he finally finished watching the entirety of the Star Wars saga like he said he would?
How did he celebrate his birthday this year?
He taps his finger on Chuuya’s forehead. “What else have you been up to, my little lamb?”
No answer.
Dazai tips his head back. In the emptiness, he sighs. “Silent treatment, huh? You’re so ungrateful, Chuuya. Well, I’m doing okay, thanks for asking. I finally finished all the poetry books you recommended. I liked some of them…”
And then Dazai tells him about what he had been up to for the past two years. About finally figuring out how to properly cook rice, his newfound interest in charcoal arts, the meteor shower he watched eight months ago, learning French - well, attempting to, anyway.
It’s a pity that Chuuya doesn’t stir once. He thinks he would have laughed at his butchered bonsoir.
“I was the one who bombed your car, you know.” He tries an attempt to get a rise from his companion. Still, nothing. Not even a twitch to his eyebrow. “Then I burned my coat. I threw my gun in the river.”
An exhale. It didn’t occur to him until then how much he wanted to talk about this, how much he needed someone to simply listen to him, to just let out the thoughts that were chewing him up from the inside. So the words overflow, and Dazai tells him about his last visit to Bar Lupin, about Ango, about Mimic…
Chuuya probably knows about this already. Mori has undoubtedly supplied the missing story - but now, Dazai can’t help but wonder what would his partner think if he actually hears this unabridged version of the same tale?
His voice lowers to a whisper and he looks out the window. It’s still dark, and he can’t see past the trees. The sun isn’t going to rise soon. “Chuuya, did you know that Odasaku died in my arms?”
Chuuya continues with his slumber. Dazai thinks he wants to hear his voice now, very much so. Anything. Anything but the silence.
Grief is a funny thing. It comes and goes, like ocean tides. Dazai doesn’t always feel the weight of guilt and the sorrow of Odasaku’s death, but then there are days when the pain unexpectedly slams into him and grief invades his chest like a flash flood, reminding him of what he’s lost. On those days, he remembers how Odasaku’s blood smeared his cheek and the horrifying feeling of warmth slipping away and the cold finally seeping in Odasaku’s skin.
Funnily enough, grief and fear also come together like some ‘two for the price of one’ cosmic joke by the universe. A terror that swoops in from the shadows of death - fear of the future, fear of the now, fear of the inevitable loss.
He suddenly feels the phantom sensation of Chuuya’s blood trickling down his skin, the icy coldness of his fingertips. And it’s another nauseating wave of emotions constricting his chest, scabbed wounds reopening, and his eyes sting with hot tears that don’t come. They never do, these days.
He takes Chuuya’s hand in his. He squeezes it tight and then he traces his finger over the artery on his wrist. “Don’t go too soon,” he whispers.
He lays his head on the bed, exhaustion finally catching up to him and Dazai falls asleep with his fingers on Chuuya’s pulse point, his fluttering heart beats a comfort that gets him through the night.
—
Dazai continues to watch over him, boring as it may be. He eats all his meals on the bedside and reads him books out loud, the way he used to do. When his throat feels dry and his voice turn hoarse, Dazai passes the time playing video games with the console on maximum level.
Chuuya still sleeps through all the noise, though.
“Are you some kind of Sleeping Beauty now?” he kicks the bed frame but only the furniture rattles in protest.
At the eighth hour, it rains.
A thin layer of fog descends upon the forest and the raindrops pitter against the windows in rhythmic patterns. The sky is an ominous gray and the shadows come back even taller than last night. Chuuya shivers from the cold, and Dazai hitches the blanket up to his chin. When he doesn’t stop shaking, he climbs on the bed and envelops Chuuya in a loose embrace, “I got you, little lamb.”
And with nothing else to do, Dazai falls asleep again.
He doesn’t often dream but when he does it’s in the form of vivid memories interspersed with what he can only describe as his own childish wants. The first scene opens to a panoramic view of Yokohama. Sunlight warms his skin, and the strong winds tousle his hair in all directions. He’s alone at the helicopter pad of the Port Mafia’s main building, and for all its vile architecture, Dazai can at least appreciate its height, as it allows him to watch the entirety of the city minus the crowd and the deafening noise of traffic.
From here, the Cosmo Clock is a dwarven circle. Dazai brings his thumb and forefinger close to his eye, squinting to make the mirage of the ferris wheel fit between his fingers. He pinches his digits together, pretending to crush the structure. Dazai thinks he really could destroy it, if only he had good enough reason to. “Hm…”
He steps closer to the edge and jumps.
When the dream materializes again, Dazai finds himself sitting at one of the fancy teahouses Kouyou owns east of the city. Steam rises from the two cups of untouched tea in front of him, its waters as still as an undisturbed pond. Beside him is a younger version of Chuuya, his hair still in that awkward chin-length that he likes to sometimes tie in a messy ponytail. They’re both boys in this dream. Chuuya is writing brush strokes of calligraphy, quite miserably so that he can’t even tell what character he’s supposed to be practicing. Dazai’s dreamself laughs at the boy’s poor attempts.
Chuuya glares and pushes a blank parchment in his direction. “Just do your part so we can go already.” The paper rustles against the table and the pot of ink and cups of tea wobbles dangerously, almost tipping.
Calligraphy - a punishment from Kouyou-san for when she caught Dazai trying to take absinthe from the storage room. All in good fun of course, but Kouyou-san has never been appreciative of his stunts, dreams or otherwise. Chuuya was laughing at him when she was delivering her sermon, but he slips and admits that he was the one who told Dazai about the alcohol in the first place. She said, “Sit, reflect, and write.”
How is it supposed to be effective? The lesson is lost in Dazai, yet here they are.
Dazai’s dreamself reaches for a cup. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t tell Kouyou-san, you know.” Because Chuuya hates getting punished, and he’s very careful about avoiding mistakes. His slip of the tongue, he’s sure, is deliberate.
“Well, what the fuck did you expect me to do?”
His dreamself puts his fingers to his tea, lifts the cup to his lips. Earthy tones envelop his senses.
This apparition levels him with a look. “You looked like you needed the company,” he says. He dips his brush again on the inkwell. Chuuya’s voice turns uncharacteristically gentle when he says, “And Dazai… I know you don’t like being left alone.”
Dazai’s hand slips from the cup, stunned, and the tea spills, tepid water soaking his skin.
Dazai does not move, but the dream morphs to place him back on the streets of Yokohama. The city air is dry. Smoke is rising to the clouds. There’s a crowd of people gathered up front near the yellow police tape, and standing among them is Odasaku.
“What happened here?” asks his dreamself, and Dazai is starting to slip in and out the dream. He knows what happened, remembers the subsequent torment of this last interaction between the both of them.
“Where are you going?” he asks when Odasaku begins to walk away.
Odasaku regards him for a moment, his mouth curling to a frown. The afternoon light catches on his red hair and it casts dark shadows on his face. He stands rigid, hands in fists. He’s never seen Odasaku so anguished before. “They burned my world, Dazai. Where else is there to go?”
Dazai could only watch as Odasaku walked away. This isn’t new. He’s seen this over and over, again and again. The desperation is almost a familiar friend.
Behind him is a bus set on fire. Cinder falls around him, and his skin singes from the heat.
Dazai jerks awake.
He inhales deeply to try and gain focus as the dream starts to slip away into grainy vignettes. Dazai seeks for Chuuya in the dark, grabbing his hand under the blanket, but instead of gaining comfort his senses flood with even more trepidation when he feels fire curling under Chuuya’s skin.
He fumbles for the light, knocking his books over to the floor, with his heart as loud as the thunderstorm raging outside. He sees that Chuuya is flushed red from the tips of his ears down to his chest, deeper than the shade of camellia blooms. His breaths come in violent stutters, and when Dazai presses a hand to his cheek, he nearly flinches from how hot his fever is running.
Suddenly,
“—zai? Dazai...”
Unfocused eyes blink up at him, and Chuuya’s weak fingers try to push him away. “Where… you… today…”
He stays conscious long enough for Dazai to give him anti-fever medicine, tipping his head forward to make sure he doesn’t choke on water. “What…”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dazai says in a voice near whisper. He cradles Chuuya’s head carefully, as if he himself is scared that this is just an apparition that will slip away if he startles it too much. “I’m here. You don’t like being left alone too, right?”
But a captive to his illness, Chuuya passes out again without so much as another word, in a matter of minutes.
Dazai brushes his bangs away, and wipes the cold sweat that broke over Chuuya’s forehead. The redness to his cheeks is starting to turn to a muted pink - the medicine must be working. “What happened? Who did this to you, my little lamb?”
A rival organization? Or perhaps someone with a personal grudge?
They burned my world, Dazai.
It doesn't matter. Whoever it is, Dazai knows what he has to do. Because—
Where else is there to go?
Accessing Chuuya’s phone doesn’t give him any more details aside from the location of his last mission. It’s 10.2 kilometers away from here - and the thought baffles him because how the hell did Chuuya make it here without passing out along the way? Did he use his Ability to escape? Where was his squad? Why didn’t he call for back-up?
Did he really think some house in the middle of a damn forest is the best solution? The absolute absurdity—!
And then Dazai catches himself laughing, because ah - would you look at that? Even two years apart, they still operated on the same basic level of synchronization. Who is he to question Chuuya for crawling back to this place at his moment of vulnerability and weakness when that was the exact same thing he did last year?
He didn’t even have any second thoughts about hiding back in the heart of this forest, when logic obviously dictates that this should have been the last place to consider safe.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it?
Safe is the only word he can associate with this place. This small, stone cottage that is theirs - four walls that hide them from the world, their enemies, their masters, and the cruelties that lie in wait for them.
Still, the night stretches on and Chuuya’s fever does not abate. Dazai grows restless. He won’t let Chuuya become a wounded prey for anyone to steal. Not Chuuya. Anyone but Chuuya.
136 counts of murder suddenly sounds utterly insignificant in his head. Surely Ango wouldn’t mind if he had to cover for a few more bodies…?
He rummages through Chuuya’s belongings and takes the gun. It feels weightless and its shape is a welcoming sight between his fingers. It’s been over two years since he last held a weapon like this. Dazai expects it to feel foreign, but he won’t lie to himself — his chest actually floods with cool relief, with absolute power and control, and the desire to burn down the world in ashes comes rushing in like a tidal wave.
It’s a familiar motion of getting dressed and strapping on a gun holster. Dazai barely even has to think which button goes through which hole on his dress shirt, as if his body has this whole routine memorized like muscle memory.
And when he looks at himself in the mirror, it feels as if the very first time he actually recognizes himself again. There might not be a black coat hanging over his shoulders, but Dazai can feel it over his body all the same, like a cloak that’s always there at the corners of his eyes.
“I’ll be back soon,” he says out loud. He steps closer to feel for Chuuya’s temperature, but his foot catches on the books that have fallen in his wake earlier. With deft fingers, he picks them up and replaces them back to the nightstand, his actions almost a hurried mess so he can finally leave, but then he stops when he comes upon a leather-bound notebook, red and old. Embossed on its cover, it reads: Oda Sakunosuke.
Dazai does not open the journal this time, but he has read it far too many times to know what the first page contains. I do not wish to become a murderer written in beautiful, hypnotizing script, its ink almost faded from the many times Dazai has traced it with his fingers over and over, over and over, over and over in muted anger, in quiet contemplation, in maddening desperation that the words, too, would become true for himself, that they would wash away his own sins and make him a better man like his friend is.
Was.
Choose to become a good person — it’s a curse if ever he’s heard one. Dazai wants to scream.
He doesn’t.
He simply slumps down to the floor and lets the gun drop from his hand. It falls heavy, gone is its weightlessness. “Sorry Chuuya,” he says out loud. In the emptiness of the room, he can only hear his own voice echoing back at him. “I don’t think I can do this anymore after all.”
Silence.
Outside, the rain finally stops. Dazai stays awake long enough to watch the sun rise from the horizon.
—
Chuuya continues to slip in and out of his haze of sleep, only ever aware enough to drink his myriad of medications, and only ever conscious enough to babble Dazai’s name like a baby trying to grasp phonetics for the first time. On the bright side, his temperature plateaus at a low fever, and his wound hasn’t reopened - so Dazai counts all his medical ventures a success.
With the worst of it all gone with the night, Dazai slips back to his room and keeps a steady distance between them, only checking on him every few hours, and only when he’s sure Chuuya is asleep or partly lucid, to make sure that his vital signs are stable. He stays long enough just to make sure Chuuya won’t die in his sleep for the hour, and leaves without so much as another look at the bed.
Dazai, too, spends most of his time sleeping. If he’s awake enough, he revisits Odasaku’s journal. I do not wish to become a murderer, I do not wish to become a murderer —
He whispers the words to himself again and again like a mantra. He sees it at the back of his lids, in the corners of his dreams, and Dazai feels like he’s falling, falling, falling.
Chuuya’s fever breaks the next morning. There’s a healthy pink flush on his cheeks, the grayness of skin gone like a forgotten spell. Dazai knows he’s going to wake up any time soon, and what a nice thought it is, reuniting with Chuuya. It would be so easy to simply go back to what they used to be. Something about Chuuya has always comforted him. Being with him feels like walking into a room where no one is a stranger. He’s a warm cup of tea on a spring day, on a rainy afternoon. Everything about him is a heartfelt embrace, and this must be what coming home feels like.
Partners fighting side by side, conquering their enemies without a care in the world. His veins sing a familiar warsong and inside his chest thrums a longing to stay — here with Chuuya, with the Port Mafia.
But the night has long passed, the veil is gone, and the sunlight reminds him of tall shadows, three whiskey glasses, and a dead man in his arms.
The sight of Chuuya himself mocks Dazai from the bed. Executive Nakahara Chuuya - he reminds himself and Dazai knows well enough what the position entails. Is he considered an enemy now? He is everything Dazai is supposed to stand against, after all.
Partner, the word rings in his skull. He called him his partner again. Like he still belongs to the mafia. And what does that say about him, huh? That he’s blanketed in so much darkness that he can easily shrug on his black coat without so much as another thought?
Choose to become a good person —
He feels as if he’s standing at a crossroads.
He was swearing vengeance. He was plotting murder. He was holding a gun.
“I’ll see you again, won’t I?”
Perhaps it will be like this: at different sides of a battle. As enemies, fighting for different things. They would renounce and curse each other. Partnership long forgotten, eyes never to meet each other in fondness ever again.
And finally, “Chuuya. You’ll forgive me, right?”
He starts to stir awake, blinking, reaching out for a hand that isn’t there, his voice trembling when he sighs out Dazai’s name.
Dazai steals one last look at him before he finally turns around and leaves the room, the cottage, and finally — the woods, the tall trees, and all its shadows behind.
—
Five days later, just as Dazai finishes making himself a cup of coffee, he receives a text message.
It reads: Thanks.
Straightforward and dull, toneless yet full of masked intention.
He never replies but he never deletes the message either. In Dazai’s drafts: I’m glad you’re okay now.
He opens the windows to the new apartment complex he’s using as his hiding place. The traffic is loud below him. The city breathes and continues its affairs without so much as wink at his direction. He imagines Chuuya looking up at the same cloudless sky, his black coat hanging over his shoulders. Across his seat, Dazai feels for the fabric of his new tan coat he bought just yesterday.
They’re growing, the both of them.
Growing apart, maybe, but not for the first time and definitely not the last, he wonders when they’ll cross paths again.