Work Text:
There were many buildings in the city of Yokohama, so much so that architects were never out of work. The urban area teemed with life, thousands, maybe even millions went about their day each with a beating heart. A broken clock was always right twice a day, and at last two people's hearts beat at the same time once a minute. Even during the shroud of night, figures move about. The darkness protected them in a way, obscuring their identity and reinforcing the unknown. As there was life throughout the city, it was also a city of death.
Atop the tallest building of Yokohama stood a man, one who was captivated by the contingency of death. Not even freshly twenty, he stared down from his place near the edge. Unlike anyone in the world, much less the city, he didn't belong among the living. He had been cursed with the gift of life, and since the moment he had been borne to breathe the stagnant air that had been tainted with the breath of others he had attempted time and time again to return the gift he did not want nor ask for.
He had done everything. He had spent time in a laughable facade of normalcy, which indubitably had not lasted long. He had spent a considerable time in the darkness like a majority of others, yet though he ruled the darkness and thrived like he hadn't belonged among the demons either, despite being a demon himself.
Demon. A demon prodigy, that is what he had been called back then. A title that made children weep and women and men alike shriek in terror. Not a man, but a boy with no remorse or human emotion. A boy who knew nothing but to cause destruction wherever he went.
Yet somehow, though he deserved nothing but to be consumed by the shadow that loomed over his mind, threatening day by day to choke him until there was no air left to fill his lungs, he found himself in another environment. Partially, it wasn't of his own will, it was of the wishes of a dead man. Perhaps the only man he would ever follow orders forever again. An environment of light, he had never seen anything like it before.
The light was blinding, and it takes time to adjust to such a degree of radiance that he wasn't accustomed to. He had left the darkness, yes, two years ago. However, in leaving the darkness he was burned by the light, leaving him vulnerable.
Dazai had acquired employment at an agency. A detective agency, a true irony in comparison to what he had done before. He had walked in on the first day after his initiation exam, bandages bound tight around his arms and neck- not his eye- with expectations. An expectation to be scorned and shunned for his peculiar behaviour, for his disturbing appearance. He had walked through those doors intending to be an outcast, in work as much as to humanity.
What he had not predicted was that his coworkers would have been nice. When he walked through the door, instead of fearful greetings or a loaded silence, he was instead met with eupeptic atmospheres and his new partner scolding him for being late on the first day. He wasn't accustomed to such blatant kindness, and he was unsure how to react in response.
It confused him, why he was being treated as such. He had done nothing to deserve it, yet they had given it to him anyway. Things he thought others would commonly ignore they commented on. If he fell behind on work Kunikida would ask for the reason after giving him a long-winded lecture. If he arrived late with an extra layer of bandages adorning his body, Yosano would pull him into her office to offer her services. He never complied, though he gave her props for trying.
Ranpo never asked, he just knew.
Despite their kindness, the darkness that seemed to follow him had yet to yield to the light. It felt as if no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much good he could do, he would never be as good as the man who gave him this life wanted him to be. No matter how many cases he solved, and how many lives he saved, would never compare nor outweigh the number of deaths he had caused. He could never truly wash the black blood that tainted his hands.
Dazai Osamu took another step towards the edge of the building, before sitting on the ledge. He could push himself off at any moment, and he'd be free. One wrong slip and he would be gone, though he knew it wouldn't be that easy. It never was easy, like everything else death seemed to hold a vendetta against him, constantly out of his reach.
Looking down, he saw the illuminated city below. It was the dead of night, yet from the towering height of the building where he sat, he could still hear the incessant noise of traffic as people worked throughout the night. He knew all too well that the night wasn't one of peace, it held those who did not wish to be found. Though beautiful, the darkness was not one to be touched but admired from a distance. Should it ever make contact, it would spread like a disease, tainting one being till one become one with the darkness itself.
The lights, instead of yellow, flashed a bright green. The neon glowed incandescently on the waters of the port. The people below reminded him of ants. Picayune and insignificant in a realm as large as this. With his lack of human nature, he should have felt like a god. Yet watching the people below, he instead felt a sense of emptiness, nothing relating himself to that of the ants that worked their entire lives to be crushed under a larger predator's heel.
Seeing enough, Dazai stood and took several steps back. From the top of the building and the distance of his jump, he should be able to fall right down, the impact doing its job instantly if done right.
He turned his back to the view of the city, not wishing for the last thing his eyes lay on to be of the ants down below. He thought of the resignation letter he had sent to the president that afternoon, he almost felt ashamed, he had only worked two months before breaking his promise.
A bang was heard, and his eyes darted to the door, he'd sworn he had locked it. There through the door, he saw his partner rush through with a pen in hand, the glint of a butterfly clip following closely behind. They neared him, shouting and yelling things he couldn't be bothered to hear. He locked eyes with a figure behind the two, a man in a brown hat with a pair of cheap glasses sliding from the bridge of his nose. At the moment it was silent, he saw the man shake his head.
He took a deep breath and jumped.
The fall was supposed to be fast, he expected it to be fast when taking into account his weight and the height of the building. Yet as he fell it felt excruciatingly sustained. His tan coat whipped around him, the tails that tied it together flailing up and down like a second pair of arms. He realised his eyes were closed, and in the darkness, the one he knew well, he felt at peace. He held his breath.
Dazai made the mistake of opening his eyes and saw a head peeking out from over the ledge.
He let the breath go, and sighed, before feeling his head collide with a rigid surface. He was suspended in the air, and for a brief moment, he believed he had done it, that he had been freed.
The darkness that greeted him was welcoming.
Dazai was hit with the cold reality that he couldn't trust anything in this life, not even the darkness.
He was welcomed with the crude sound of beeping, a monitor that kept track of the organ that reminded him that he lived. A deep sorrow washed over him for a moment, immediately followed by indifference. He had expected it to happen, death never welcomed him with open arms, and it would be foolish to believe that it ever would.
He could remember bits and pieces before he fell into darkness. He had slipped in and out. He remembered something tugging at his body before hitting the floor, but not stopping it completely, and he remembered a familiar voice yelling, "I've got a pulse!" in what sounded strangely like a relief after a long moment of what must have been a flatline.
The room he was in was unbearably silent, nothing filling the void but the monitor placed beside him. He breathed in, then out, and the action alone despaired him. He almost believed he was alone, and a glance around told him that he was once again in Yosano's office. In the short time, he had worked in the agency, she had dragged him there a multitude of times. He had seen where she put her tools and her supplies. If he were able to get out of the bed that had been placed there then maybe he could-
"Don't even think about it,"
His train of thought was disrupted, and Dazai's head whipped towards the voice. The same man who had shaken his head in warning when he had gone on his way down now watched him intently, his feet pushing the swivel chair side to side.
Dazai kept his expression neutral, feeling a tinge of disappointment.
"Think about what?"
"You know what I mean." Ranpo tilted his head, "Do you think I'm that stupid? It's annoying, someone as smart as you think you could fool me."
"Why are you here then, if I annoy you so much?" Dazai didn't bother asking how did he end up there, or how they found him. He assumed the man before him had some hand in the latter.
Ranpo didn't respond right away, pulling out another candy from Yosano's candy jar. It was only then that Dazai noticed that he was organising them by colour. "Why do you think? To make sure you don't die after I used my special ability just to find you. Besides, Yosano would kill me and bring me back just to kill me again if I left you alone and you died."
"Why?"
Dazai didn't follow up on the question, he had too many. Why did they waste their time looking for him? Why did they save him? Why did they care about him that much to go through the trouble of being nice to him? Why did Kunikida use his ability to save him? why did Yosano revive him? Why was Ranpo sitting in the dark watching him keep him from the dangers of his undoing when he could have been home?
Why won't they just let him die?
Ranpo gave him a long look. Neither said anything for a long while, and Dazai knew Ranpo wanted him to figure out the answer to his question. Dazai gave no response, and Ranpo turned his chair to face the neatly organised sections of colour-coded candy. Dazai shifted his head to gaze at the rhythmic ups and downs of the heart monitor when he heard the answer.
"Why else?"
There was no follow-up answer, but Dazai was smart, and he knew Ranpo knew that. He didn't need further elaboration to understand what he had meant.
Because we care about you .
Not knowing how to respond to that answer, not even knowing how to respond to the unnatural action of someone caring about him, Dazai simply hummed in response. And to the sound of his taunting heartbeat, he envisioned himself falling off the tops of buildings, while in his mind the port's water glittered below.