Chapter Text
I – once
This was not how Oda’s anniversary was meant to go.
His awareness of this fact, overt.
Every year, the day had been meticulously planned. Each happening mapped out with pristine delicacy of a magnum opus.
And then, this year happened.
Things, changed.
First year: he sat in his closet.
Drank from the minute he woke, until vomiting and passing out who knows how much later.
Exactly as planned.
Well, almost.
He was planning to commit suicide, and had he not been so incapacitated, he might have succeeded.
Perhaps he drank in imminence, tending to this very agenda. Drinking himself to death.
Except, the unending longing for death could not compare to the anxiety surrounding the anniversary. To sully Oda’s memory, Oda’s day with slattern disgrace, the thought overwhelmed him with violent repulsion. Perhaps this repulsion was a subconscious trigger for the blackout drunkenness that took the place of a could-be suicide attempt. A warped, unconventional suicide-watch.
Perhaps staying alive, saving him from himself, was the agenda behind the agenda.
Second year: idyllic planning and ideology were thrown out the window, downing 3 bottles of painkillers with as much whisky as he could swallow before collapsing into a convulsive spasm.
A valiant attempt that, if it weren’t for the occurrence of a gas leak that triggered a building-wide evacuation, would have yielded a certain success.
Dazai’s incidental avoidance of gas inhalation resulted in his (unfortunate) continued existence.
Sheet white and pressed upon cold soulless tiles, the man on the brink of death was found by a more-than-baffled, young firefighter.
Saved, or condemned, one could only speculate.
Third year: Dazai was faced with the arduous task of evading his brand-new Agency coworkers.
Naturally, the only viable solution consisted of a week-long, wordless disappearance.
Silent, quick, and unnoticed.
Though to be expected, Ranpo pieced together a mosaic of potentials. Yet, ineffable concealment surpassed ultra-deduction.
The Book came about during conversations upon mafia days. Curiosity and desperation coated an acid-lined throat, insurmountable hours of hyper-fixated dedication towards accumulating intel.
A plan took shape, precipitous.
All the ADA was privy to included their newest colleague back to work bright and early a week later. An overbearing smile decorating jaunt cheekbones, deep bags under piercingly dull amber eyes.
No one asked. Maybe they knew better.
maybe they didn’t care
maybe they couldn’t care, he never let them
maybe they cared so much, that the only way such compassion could be actualized was through the art of boundaries and giving space
maybe it just wasn’t a big deal
for them.
Not for Dazai though
it would always be a big deal for Dazai.
Year four: elaborate to a fault.
Dazai was good now.
Though his insides contradicted more often than not, convoluted with sycophantic yearning and desperation.
Obsequious servitude, to be all that Oda asked of him, tasked him to be.
To be good.
That picturesque land of light Odasaku promised him, where did it go? How did he end up breaking every single “rule” of playing good.
Partnering with vile demons dressed in human’s suit, enacting a nationwide suicide crisis—these actions, inherent in sin, proved he was no more human than those monsters dressed as man.
Vile.
Thrillingly vile.
Incomparable vile.
Enticing vile.
How tantalizing, a rush of frantic.
Transgressions, ecstasy-derived and explicit eagerness triggered a nauseating sense of self.
Sense of self, sense of self-loathing. Antipathy.
But bad was easy.
To hurt came natural as breathing.
Inhales of torture, exhales of scream.
Inhales of exhilaration, exhales of epitomal success.
What would Oda think of his best friend— rather, the pre-supposed?
Of this monster playing dress-up.
Ends justified the means, Machiavelli told him.
Power can be bargained, Schelling echoed.
Every political event demands response elsewhere in the world, Kissinger promised.
Promised the need for Yokohama to respond harder, louder, bolder. Premeditated or not, the conflict was inevitable, Dazai himself was purely a catalyst.
That’s what he called himself. A “catalyst”.
Fifth year: a puzzle, perfectly placed.
A temporary alliance with a disconcerting rat, two years of hiding, and detainment of information and informants alike, and Dazai formed an impossible world.
For the briefest of moments, in the only existing timeline offered by the universe, Oda lived.
Dazai committed suicide.
Oda lived.
Exactly as he begged and dreamed and imagined in his wildest wishes. A series of labored intricacies, a parallel world, the singularity he was solely responsible for creating.
Despite his infinite amour and everlasting infatuation with the world he manipulated into existence, a bittersweet sacrifice was paid. Or rather, a choice. A bittersweet, sacrificial, active choice.
Insufferable
scratching
sweltering pain tacit in his inability to befriend Odasaku during the only timeline in which he survives.
His last, only chance.
But he got what he wanted in the end, and each flavor of hurt proved its worth, as the man who no longer held the name “Odasaku” wrote, and saved, and lived and lived and lived.
He lived.
Sixth year.
Now.
Not quite 24, but too old to feel 23.
Unlike all others, no longer alone, but with the least likely of companions.
Though, it began alone. Alone at a bar.
The bar, hunched shoulders and an air of desperate depression.
Fiddling with a whisky ice cube that dances in boorish boredom, mingling with other contents among its residential liquid.
A second glass sits to the right on the bar, accompanied by a single flower, a crumpled book worn from use, misuse, and unuse.
He could speak to the ghost. Assume the identity of one not quite in tune with the world around them, one that babbles nonsensically to voices unheard by everyone else. Join unknown entities in alcoholic commiseration.
He could tell all the weird, the fun, the exciting occurring in his life.
He could talk about dying, the days he wants to, the ways he wants to, the shame of failure and the eroticism of deceptive, deceiving distant daydreams.
The “fun” things.
Though he could, he would not.
Did not.
Empty despair wallowed, an unwelcome yet warmly greeted resident deep within the tightness of a constricted chest.
“I thought I would find you here,” a warm voice of soothing honey. Not the sickeningly sweet kind, but one of natural nectar, soft velvet hues and glittering niceness, kindness, lovingness.
The unprecedented appearance of Yosano Akiko ripped Dazai from ideative restraints.
She looked, violet eyes circumventing the room that smelled of bourbon and cigarettes. That ached of nostalgia nostalgia nostalgia
deep-seeded nostalgia
beautiful, tender, wonting nostalgia.
Silence rang between the two, oblivious to the lull of art deco jazz.
“You mean Ranpo-san thought you would find me here?” he questioned in the rhetoric.
“Caught like a deer in headlights,” Yosano sighed with a little chuckle. The sound trinkled, reminding him of soft cashmere
soft sunrise glows
soft blue eyes once hard, since melted.
Like butter microwaved in increments of five and ten seconds, he wondered if that’s how Odasaku did it.
Did he choose kindness, for five, ten seconds at a time?
Intervals of heating and reheating over and over and
“Mind if I join?”
A shrug.
She moves forward.
He stops her.
“Uh—” he points vaguely to the empty, empty beside him.
“Not here. Please.”
She nods, internalizing and analyzing his potent somber.
The void of nothing, on display for Yosano et al to see.
To internalize, analyze.
“Of course.”
She takes a seat to the left, orders a martini, and settles in.
Her companion, layered in Bar Lupin’s vintage-coated scarlets and flickering warm umbers.
The nostalgic echo of what once was once was once was once was
once,
and last.
A familiar box of fidget-sized matches crept into her thoughts, as minds wondered and wandered.
“Do you want to talk about him?”
It was a question he had no interest in hearing. Even if it was gentle, but not too much.
Even if it was lithe, but not delicate.
Even if it respected his implicit aversion to inert overbearingness.
“Not sure.”
The earnest he exudes, shocking to both parties.
Thin, pale fingers extended from a thin, bandaged wrist. Playing with fraying ends of tan jackets and entwined ephemerae.
“Okay, if you decide, I’m right here.”
Ugly in its enticement.
He did not
could not want
could not imagine
to open to share to remove to
Her drink arrived as he sat in falsities of stoic silence.
“If it weren’t for Ranpo, I’d never have found you.”
“Yeah, that was sort of the point,” his reply was dull, an ill-executed half-quip.
“You always disappeared on us this time of year,” her contemplative expression gazed to the ceiling, pining after secrets it so obviously, painstakingly would not reveal. “But I know it’s not my business. I tried not to speculate more than necessary.”
“Necessary…” he questioned in the form of a statement.
She locked eyes, an eyebrow quirking up as if to summarize the pointlessness of questions to which you already know the answer.
He nods.
“Atsushi was…is worried,” she continued. She treads carefully in times like these, through the precarious waters that overlayed Dazai’s conversational laws, “Ranpo assured him you were physically safe.”
Her eyes narrowed, catching his own in prolonged contact, “For the most part.”
“Relax Sensei,” he exhaled for the first time in a while. For the first time in much longer than he realized.
“I’m fine. Injury free~”
The attempt at playful read as sad, earning an eyeroll.
“Yeah, yeah,” taking a sip, “there’s no use arguing with you. I know that now.”
Silence snuck back into the space between. But not uncomfortable and suffocating, as it was mere seconds before. No longer sterile aggression, but an affirming exhale.
A simple silence.
A friendly one.
Is that what this is?
Yosano wondered.
Though she feared mis-categorizing the unusual acquaintanceship, held like a baby bird always on the verge of leaving the nest. It was a common occurrence, feeling as though she were grasping at strings when spending time with the ingrained aloofness that clung to Dazai like a child to their blanket.
Even so, things had changed. Progressed in ways that were mostly good. It took quite a while for Dazai to settle into a comfortable cadence at the ADA, but he managed. It was funny, how bad he was at fitting in.
The perfectionist, demon, incapable of failure, overachieving to a fault, youngest-ever Port Mafia executive couldn’t do it. Couldn’t get the hang of something as inane, as benign as fitting in.
Yosano understood that feeling that racked up memories she chose to forget.
He began to understand just how much she too, understands.
Conversations shifted from brief niceties to full-on philosophical discussions, debates and deliberations, evolving into pranks, drunken escapades laughing until 2 AM, and fleeting moments of traumatic connection. Strangers that were infinitesimally close with or without intention. Each held an uncanny understanding of the other’s pain.
Slowly, slowly, he transitioned from insufferable colleague, to one with shared pain arduous in nature.
An irksome that had bickered in the back of her mind had been this scent of discomfort radiating off her colleague. This irksome revealed itself in time, a quirk derived from men like Mori and childhoods of malice. Colossal responsibilities thrust upon young bodies with shoulders smaller than the boulders that weighed them down. Shadowed in bleakness—they shared this endless past, this shattered idea of once was, what could have been, and what now is.
Beyond the reparations of their unyielding bond, Yosano struggled. Doubt was ever-present and Dazai’s knack for ruining all good things sent his way fueled such insecurities.
And so, Yosano wondered, yet again, is this what friendship with Dazai Osamu looks like?
“Sensei?” the quiet query jolted her from the Fibonacci sequence spiraling thoughts.
“Yes?”
“I…” he started, trailing off. He sipped his whisky, breathing sharply, “Do you think—” the struggle persisted, his inability to articulate the words dazing his prodigy mind, “Am I—” He stopped again. Yosano’s patience remained quietly intact.
“Am I a good mentor?”
Violet eyes widened.
“Where is this coming from?” she asked. A slight frown morphed upon her face.
“That’s not an answer.”
His response was black coffee bitter.
“Dazai,” she sighed. Choosing her words carefully, “Atsushi loves you as if you were his big brother, a fatherly figure even.”
Truth rang clear, the doe-eyed silver-haired boy with slanted bangs and a no longer hurting heart held nothing but admiration for his mentor.
Well, admiration and concern.
“Okay, but does—”
She cut him off, “I think it takes a special kind of person and trust to create a bond like that.”
“But that’s not—”
“Can you let me finish?”
Her snap was frustrated, not harsh.
Dazai’s mouth clamped shut. He averted his blackhole eyes.
“What I’m saying is that there is no way a bad mentor could have such a significant impact on a boy like Atsushi. He’s become one of the greatest assets to the Agency and I don’t think anyone else could have done a better job guiding him there.”
He was silent, face numb, a slight tremor in his finger that shook his drink imperceptibly.
The ice cube clanked, exposing the cracks of his mask, the tears in his thinly-veiled vulnerability.
Raw.
What would he look like, if he were raw?
“Dazai—” he shook his head, an attempt at nonverbal communication.
An attempt to convey how desperately he needed a minute.
An attempt that conveyed the struggle of disbelief, self-acceptance, and distrust.
Silence hung, no longer natural.
Unspoken tension, a dense fog impaling the rising sun.
“You should go.”
When he spoke, it was soft.
His face, though, was hard. Crafted from stone, cinders and all.
“I’m not going to force you to let me in,” Yosano began, “but I don’t think pushing people away is what you need right now.”
Silence, tension, silence tension silence silence
then—
“How the hell would you know what I need?”
Face flushed pink with instant regret, shame flooded through his veins. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” a melancholy wash drifted her features, dusting each eyelash and every pore. Her reply was disturbed, preemptively cut off by a light vibration sounding much louder than it was. “Well, aren’t you lucky, I have to take this. I’ll be right back.”
Dazai took another sip of his drink.
He stared at the bar.
Staring at things that weren’t there.
Friends and laughter and holiday cards.
Knives and death and pills and death and sharp and sharp and sharp
he was craving something sharp
perpetuated by the emptiness that clawed inside
Was it the hole that took up permanent residence inside?
But he can’t recall the last time he ingested something that wasn’t alcohol
it could be that.
He wasn’t hungry for food these days.
He was hungry, very hungry, but not for food.
For friendship and smiles and laughs and an ability that didn’t quite work on him, but worked on the world around him.
For more nights of 4 AM whisky and laughing until crying and crying until laughing.
He was hungry for the feeling of missing something.
For longing.
Because all he felt was empty.
Empty, and wanting to miss and feel more than the void.
There wasn’t anything he could do but vacantly gaze at pale bandaged hands he supposed were his, cusping the whisky, admiring it preciously.
A harsh tone disturbed his reverie, the forlorn air and all.
“Mackerel, what the fuck?”