Chapter Text
It’s easy to tell someone that they were born for something. People crave knowing that their existence has meaning, that the universe conspired against all odds to allow their presence. That they’re destined for a greater purpose beyond their understanding. Engaging in the mortifying ordeal of being alive becomes more bearable knowing that one is allowed to, and can, influence how the world operates.
Chuuya has been on the receiving end of such prophecy since Arahabaki made its power known. Fate tied him to responsibility even if he was just a boy no more than ten. And no matter how destructive his birth was, they did not see it as divine punishment but as salvation for the street orphans instead.
A king among children. He who has risen from the crater of Suribachi City to save them from hunger and ruin.
Then the world tells him: No, you were made for greater things.
Nevermind the wandering flock. Chuuya was blessed with immense power to protect and to safeguard the entire city. He is a god that walks among men.
But what they don’t tell you is this: what you were born for, you were also destined to die for.
Chuuya forces himself to stand from where he’s fallen. Around him the ground is wet with splatters of rain and blood. Mostly his. Fukuchi looks nearly unscathed, standing a few feet in front of him. How long have they been trying to tear each other apart, anyway? For all Chuuya knows it could be between minutes or hours. He’s exhausted; that damn space-time sword or whatever Fukuchi calls his precious weapon has allowed the man to evade death and defeat over and over again. Gravity can only do so much against fucking time travel.
He’s definitely going to complain about the lack of intel when all this is over.
And with all comms dead, Chuuya has no idea when backup is arriving. If they’re arriving at all. Akutagawa and Atsushi were supposed to aid him. Even Dazai was supposed to come, but the seconds tick by and he still stands alone in the battlefield.
Did something happen back at the base? Did Dostoevsky really outwit them again?
What a tenacious bastard.
Maybe this is better, he thinks in the end. Less casualties.
Fukuchi gets into position. He grips the sword with purpose, promising death. Another slice to the fabric of time and space, time is overwritten, and Chuuya takes a second too late to call on Tainted to whisk him to safety, a second too late to roll and dodge Fukuchi’s sword that reappears out of fucking nowhere again, and suddenly the drawn-out battle ends just like that.
Pain shoots up his chest from where he’s pierced. The blade tears through his muscles, and Chuuya hears his bones crack from how forcefully Fukuchi is thrusting the sword in his flesh. It hurts to breathe, to blink, to even think, and his body feels so heavy.
There is nothing else to do, nothing else he can do, but collapse on the ground.
Tainted flares and then dies in an instant. He’s too weak to even call on gravity to plug his wound and to gather his bearings. I can still fight, he thinks stubbornly, but when his hand limps by his side he knows better than to hope.
Defeat is just as bitter as the blood that pools inside his mouth.
Fukuchi, still unsatisfied with his victory, plunges his blade deeper. He twists it harshly, drunk on power, and Chuuya wheezes one last time.
Pain, there and then gone in the next instant because when he closes his eyes he becomes nothing.
Chuuya, too. Here and then gone.
There laid on the ground a king, a god. A corpse.
Chuuya doesn’t know how it happened but somehow he’s sixteen again. When he looks at the bathroom mirror, he sees hair that doesn’t reach past his shoulders just yet. A boyish face that hasn’t stared back at him in so long. He looks young, is young, and where there should be scars, he finds flawless skin. And has he always been this thin? He thought he was already muscular when he hit this age.
“There’s the man of the hour!”
The door creaks open to reveal a friend.
Albatross is looking at him with a mischievous spark in his eyes. He’s smiling, he always is, when he takes Chuuya by the elbows to maneuver him to sit on a couch. His old couch, Chuuya now remembers vaguely, from his first apartment. He never really got the appeal of fine quality leather back then but after living most of his life in the streets, he only thought it appropriate to splurge once given the opportunity. His apartment unit is just as he remembered it: messy in that organized manner with books strewn across the floor and other questionable surfaces, water stains on his coffee table, and on one corner three pots of succulents Albatross gifted him for his housewarming. It felt like stepping inside a faded photograph only for the memories to jump out in vivid colors.
This was home, once.
Chuuya hears more voices filtering inside the room and when he turns to look he’s stunned to see even more familiar faces.
There by the doorway stands Doc, Lippmann, Ice Man, and Piano Man. Chatting and laughing, as if they’ve just come here to gather for snacks and drinks.
“Ready when you are,” says Albatross while playing with a set of keys. Chuuya very suddenly feels the unexplainable desire to weep, because a part of him thought he had long forgotten what Albatross’ voice sounded like. Silky yet boyish, like you know he’s already grinning at you without having to actually look at his face.
Chuuya studies Albatross more carefully this time and another wave of sadness comes to occupy the spaces in his lungs. There’s no blood, no ashes, not this time , and an image, fast as lighting, appears in his head but—why?
Why would Albatross be injured, why would he think that, are they in danger, is Doc alright, did something happen? Chuuya feels as if he’s forgetting something or that he isn’t allowing himself to remember. There is guilt and fear tempting to crack his chest open.
Albatross extends his hand and Chuuya almost takes it, but there are questions on his tongue, heavy and present. Questions he cannot ignore.
A moment of brief hesitation.
“Ready for what?”
“To go, of course.”
Perhaps a mission he forgot about? For lunch? Billiards and drinking? Go where, exactly? Chuuya can’t even remember how he got here, can’t begin to understand where here is actually supposed to be.
Chuuya retracts his hand and looks around. The apartment is fading in silver light. Outside, he sees smoke. What’s happening? Has it been like that since he got here?
“Not yet,” Chuuya answers maybe too quickly, but Albatross only smiles. It’s gentle, warm, full of tacit understanding even without further explanation.
There’s no hint of annoyance or disappointment, almost like he expected the answer.
Chuuya places his hand against the glass.
He tries a few tentative taps to wake the sleeping boy inside. Harder, when the figure doesn’t stir.
How long has he been there?
There are wires running up and down the boy’s arms. Electrodes are taped on his head and whatever information needed from the boy gets transmitted on the screen beside the tube: oxygen levels, spikes of brain activity, his heart rate. At least, Chuuya thinks, you’re alive.
The boy, he calls him in his head, because even the silver mantle plastered on his glass case doesn’t even indicate a name. Whoever put him inside only designated a string of numbers for his identity. A label just to make sure laboratory specimens in this facility don’t get mixed up.
He won’t be Nakahara Chuuya just yet in a few years. That’ll come later when he wakes up and reclaims this bony body for himself. It will be the first thing he will remember and very little else.
But he hasn’t woken up yet. He doesn’t even dream, and so he’s just a boy trapped in a glass, floating pathetically.
Even in his sleep, he already looks like he’s in pain.
“You will be okay,” says Chuuya. A small comfort for what’s to come. The boy will be okay because he has no choice but to be, so he could survive the streets. He will be okay even if he really isn’t. “I’m sorry,” he says and aligns his hand against the glass, pretending that he is cradling the boy’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he says again, this time to his own face reflected on the glass.
Chuuya feels like mourning. Bile and ash rises to his throat. There is anger, too. At himself, for failing this child. At the world, for failing him. “You’ll be alone for a long while. Hungry for even longer. Just… if it smells bad, don’t eat it no matter how desperate you get. Okay?” Unwanted images flash in his head: vomiting at back alleys, shivering uselessly against the cold, fever so high he hallucinates.
Death would have meant mercy.
Chuuya says another apology. Then the boy inside the glass chamber opens his eyes and it’s blue on blue on blue on blue on blue on blue on blue.
Chuuya looks at Chuuya looks at Chuuya looks at Chuuya.
“Fight hard for both our sakes,” he says one last time.
He doesn’t think the child hears him.
“Rimbaud,” Chuuya calls out to the silhouette in front of him.
The man turns almost reluctantly. He’s still wearing winter wear here, wherever here is, and Chuuya almost laughs at the absurdity of it. The coat looks thick and heavy, like they’re wearing him down, but he doesn’t look bothered in the slightest.
Rimbaud looks at him contemplatively before speaking. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
Chuuya didn’t know just yet what that meant either.
“Sorry I lost your hat,” Chuuya says instead. He’d been meaning to return it, even re-stitched Rimbaud's name neatly as he could for when he gets the chance.
Rimbaud dismisses him with a shrug. He gestures for Chuuya so they could sit together by the fireplace. “Are you sure you looked everywhere? I was actually very fond of it, you know.”
Chuuya shakes his head and tries to avoid looking at Rimbaud’s frown.
“Well, why don’t you try a little harder and come back after you’ve found it?”
There is a woman sitting across from him, slim and tall, her hair a river spilling over her shoulders. She’s looking at Chuuya with a sad, watery smile but the way she caresses his cheeks is reassuring and kind. It feels like sunlight over a grassfield, like a warm blanket, like tea on a cold winter day.
Chuuya doesn’t recognize her, doesn’t even know her name. They haven’t met before but the word falls from his lips, unprompted.
“Okaa-san.”
She pulls him close to press a tender kiss on his forehead, crying so hard her entire body shakes from the tremors of her emotions. Love, Chuuya recognizes the harrowing desperation in her sobs. All-encompassing and infinite, the only way mothers know how to feel for their children. Her fingers comb through his hair, skirts through his face like she’s memorizing what he looks like with her eyes that are as blue as his, depth so unreal Chuuya feels like he’s drowning in affection.
Her voice is musical despite the tears. Scratchy but still gentle. “I shouldn’t be happy to see you but I am. I am, my darling. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I have been waiting for you for so long.”
Chuuya melts in his mother’s gentle embrace and finds that he likes being held like this. It’s a reminder that he was once a child, nothing more than a little boy who needed his mother to shield him from the world.
No kings, no gods, no monsters.
He missed her even if he never had the chance to actually know her, much less her name. He will have to ask her about her husband, the fragmented memories of a childhood home, what makes her laugh and cry, the books she loved to read when she was...
(Chuuya stops. When she was…? Ah—that’s right.)
When she was still alive.
And only then does he truly feel the coldness in his mother’s hands, the absence of a rise and fall of her chest. She is luminous and pale like moonlight. Inhuman.
Sorrow fills him like a cup.
His mother is dead and so is he.
From the corner of this room he sees a shadowed figure who is watching Chuuya with fierce eyes. It smiles at him, and then it turns before finally disappearing. Chuuya follows and he promises his mother to return when the time comes.
She presses a kiss on his forehead. Soft, sad, yet understanding. The gentle wind carries her promise, “I can wait for a little longer.”
She lets him go again.
Before him stands calamity in a towering form, shadows for a body, eyes red like tainted rubies. Arahabaki. The god is taller than any man Chuuya has ever met. It is covered in a blanket of darkness, like skin but not quite, just curtains and curtains of black that allows it to take shape.
They are so close that Chuuya could smell the god: iron, copper, and wood laced with fire and seawater.
After a moment, the god speaks in its forgotten language. One that Chuuya has learned and mastered over the stretch of years they shared space. Your death will finally grant me freedom, child.
He’s long given up convincing the god to address him as anything but. After all, what is a mortal to a god. Chuuya is but a fleeting speck, incomparable to Arahabaki’s centuries of omnipotence.
“It will,” he acknowledges the fact and dares to step closer.
Arahabaki called him a prison, once. It was the first word the god taught him. I will escape you one day, it promised him. It longed to reign over the heavens, punish sinners, sing the song of chaos, and then drink up the spoils of the earth. It thirsted for the offerings in its shrines. Smokes of incense, luminous stones, sweet fruits, chalices of blood.
People used to sacrifice humans to appease the god.
Arahabaki longed for that, too.
“You are going to give me something in return.”
Distaste ripples the god’s face. You are a fool for bargaining with me.
Chuuya laughs out loud. Perhaps he is. He is a fool, and he is dead but Fukuchi is not. If Chuuya is to die, he might as well fulfill his mission to save Yokohama and protect those he will be leaving behind.
Akutagawa, Gin, Tachihara.
Kouyou.
Dazai.
Chuuya offers his soul with both palms up. Surrendering not for the first, but definitely the last time. “Please.”
Shadows surge forward and they begin encircling Chuuya. Extensions of Arahabaki, ghosts—but also not quite. They dance around and look at him, past him, singing a haunting song without opening their mouths. When they stop to take his hands the touch is simultaneously hot and cold, burning and freezing in every point of contact. Chuuya can feel the shadows overtake his veins and arteries, and they fill up the wounds from Fukuchi’s sword, until the cuts begin to close and he is no longer bleeding.
When he looks forward, he sees muted astonishment on the god’s face. Amusement too, because Arahabaki has never received any kind of offerings from Chuuya no matter how much he taunted and tempted. Not a drop of prayer or a smoke of incense.
Yet now, it receives his soul and body.
Foolish, Arahabaki says again. A smile stretches across the god’s face to reveal rows of sharpened teeth. It’s frightening, more maddening than Chuuya would like to admit.
Then the god steps closer as if he is going to devour Chuuya. Its mouth opens yet instead of tearing out his neck, Arahabaki merely bends down to breathe smoke on Chuuya’s face.
It says, A week.
The god taps on Chuuya’s cheek. A playful gesture. Your desperation afforded you seven days, child.
The shadows surrounding him suddenly dissipate to return to the god. Arahabaki finally takes the offering, placing its hands atop Chuuya’s. The god chants a binding incantation and the voices of the shadows become a chorus of wailing children. In their olden tongue they say Seven suns and seven moons, over and over, until their voices start to sound like rocks grating against each other.
Thirteen elongated fingers wrap around each of Chuuya’s wrist. Red tendrils begin to envelop his hands, arms, and then up to his chest and down his legs until he’s completely covered in them.
Here stands a boy, a god, and a deal.
Chuuya doesn’t even have to say the words this time.
It’s painful—but then again, when was it ever not?
Chuuya, gone and then here again in the next instant.
He embraces Arahabaki’s raw power. Physics bends to his will and gravity falls apart with seven furious swipes to slaughter Fukuchi. An eighth strike to his chest with his own sword just to make sure he stays dead.
When the deed is finished, Arahabaki slithers back to dormancy without a nullifier. Resting, waiting for its freedom. It curls back in between Chuuya’s ribs, and then the tendrils begin to fade. There are no marks this time. No pain or bleeding either.
He wants to sneer or make a joke about the god’s inconvenient generosity in death, if only he weren’t so bewildered and explicitly infuriated. If Arahabaki apparently had the benevolence to spare him from suffering, it really should have said something from the very beginning. Maybe then they could have worked out some sort of agreement and he didn’t have to act as a prison to the god. Maybe then he wouldn't have been so reluctant about using Corruption in the first place.
Chuuya can’t believe it took dying for it to extend such mercies to its vessel. What a fucking ass.
Arahabaki only laughs mockingly at the accusations. You are nothing but a stupid human.
There is nothing to gain arguing with the god, so he just sits on the ground and waits for the extraction team. “Seven days,” Chuuya says to himself and wonders what he should do when the first sun comes.