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Is the meaning of life simply the desire to survive? The rabbit will flee from the fox because instincts drive them to protect themselves from danger.
Fear is the result of a broken and distorted will to live; it is irrational and a barrier to achieving great things. Or merely simple things.
In the presence of humans, Dazai was frequently overcome by fear. Their smiles and kindness instilled in him an irrational fear that made him feel less human than them.
He used to believe that what was terrifying him was the ocean called 'society,' before realizing that the ocean was made of the individual.
And he who lived in fear of the ocean learned to swim shamelessly in it, gradually losing his humanity to become an abstract being that resembled a human being but lacked emotions and worries.
But the terror returned when he locked his gaze with someone who appeared to be masterfully woven into society. Sudden and intense. And all of a sudden he was no longer abstract, but filled with very human emotion. Fear.
This individual, whom he feared as it smiled upon him every morning to wish him a good day, raised what he had hoped to cut off of him utterly and completely. A strange sensation, like a tug on a string, made him want to shift just a little closer to them and savor their sent for just a little longer. And a strange desire to learn and comprehend.
He never believed that humans could truly understand one another and would only relate to the false image they had created of the other. However, this person appeared to understand how he thought and the fear that he drowned in alcohol and shameless attempts to demonstrate to society how meaningless life truly is.
As he edged closer to them as they went about sorting through stacks of unattended files, or their scent engulfed him like the comfort of a warm coat on a cold winter night, he wished for immense happiness through them, even if he would later be befallen by great misfortune.
He was unconcerned about the agony that would befall him, instead tilting his head slightly as your voice echoed gently through the office. A sinner was fated to be more and more unhappy, but he allowed himself to be consumed by curiosity, the need to be close, and fear.
Never would he understand why he wanted to learn to lose the fear of the individual and the fear of being human until you would explain to him. For he had mistaken your smile for bravery as it was only the same fear that had choked him once. The fear of the ocean of society.
Dazai was perplexed the first time he saw the storming fear calm to a gentle drizzle. It was a dark winter night, cold but calm, as Yokohama slept under a soft white blanket. You stare at the flakes as they fall from the heavens with an unreadable expression that even Dazai couldn't read, silently waiting for a trigger to move.
Dazai is the trigger as you finally turn your head, but the shadow of fear is still far away from your eyes. Is it because of his inhumanity that you didn't have fear in your eyes? Or was it trust fostered by his deceit?
"You know, Dazai, I might want to take you up on that drink offer right now," you say, your gaze settled on the falling snow. He's surprised, and yet his heart isn't filled with the same terror it would be if you smiled at him through that mask of yours.
"And I thought you'd never take me up on my offer and would make me wait forever," he exclaims, acting the fool, wondering why it felt so real this time.
He leads you to a bar as he had once done so with a human that he had considered close enough to a 'friend'.
Again he wonders as you ordered the strongest drink on the menu, never having taken you to be a heavy drinker. Was the absence of fear caused by the removal of a mask that you had worn for similar reasons as him? Was it the individual who terrified him, or was it the masks they wore to please society?
"Why are you staring at me like that?" You inquire, your face obscured by an unusual solemnity.
"Somehow I don't find myself fearing you," he says, expecting you to frown at his attempt to explain what has been going on in his heart and mind.
"Is it strange that I like that?"
He frowns.
"You're probably the first," you say, taking a swig from your drink.
"The first, you say?" He frowned even more. Not as an act, but as a result of sincere and genuine confusion.
You nod and shrug, gripping the glass a little tighter, revealing, knowingly or unknowingly — he didn't know— freshly bandaged arms that mirror his own.
And he suddenly seems to understand a little more.
You're playing the same game he did once. Pretending with a role as fictitious as many superstitions. The mask with which you danced in the waves terrified him, but never what lay beneath it. You understood him because you are the same as him.
A stranger, torn from its humanity.
"Tell me, Dazai, what it's like not to be afraid?"
"I do not know," he answers, never having not been afraid but instead learning to overcome the fear. By acting and deceiving.
"Yet you dance to a different tune than others."
"Do I?"
You glance at him with an expression so full of wonder and questions and eyes filled by years of pain. With your mask removed, you displayed your pain so clearly that Dazai thought it was the closest thing to beauty he'd ever seen.
Beautiful pain, so pure and real, he was curious just how it came to be.
"Why is it that you wish to die?" You inquire.
"Because only humans see a purpose in life."
"I see. So you aren't human?"
You study him intently, and he feels himself leaning toward you so you can study him more thoroughly. Or maybe it was to see if the string he felt pulling him to you was connected to you or the mask.
"I guess I'm not human either," you say casually with a smile. Not the mask-connected smile, the role you play for society, but yourself.
"No, you are human," he declares with a haughty huff.
"Why is that?"
"You're kind. Only humans are capable of kindness." He saw kindness in so many people but never in himself. There was something good in every human, but not in him for he was not a human.
"That doesn't make sense."
"Yes, it does."
"So, if you're not human, why do you sing about committing double suicide?"
"What are you trying to ask me?"
"Isn't it loneliness that strives to avoid being alone as we die? So, if you're afraid of everyone but me, you can't be afraid of something that you are not — In other words, loneliness is either inhuman or both of us are human."
You slam the glass down on the counter after finishing the last of your drink. Or was it your third?
"Forget it. It's probably just me being drunk," you say, and Dazai momentarily feels fear wind around his throat as you are once again hidden behind a mask. "Should we go?"
"I suppose."
Dazai follows you, trailing after your footprints as he avoids walking beside you for the churning in his stomach.
"Do you really believe I'm human?" He murmurs to himself, but you hear him.
"I do. And perhaps I am a fool and only wish to find someone who is just as a stranger among humans as I."
And the coil is no longer there.
"Tell me, is it me who wears my pain on my sleeves that you don't fear?"
He gives a nod. And perhaps why you so strongly believe he was human is because humans that suffer are so much more sensitive to those suffering as well. Maybe what you're seeing is pain that he doesn't recognize.
"Is it painful to feel strange among humans?" He asks, and you pause for a moment before nodding.
"It's lonely, and I consider loneliness as the worst pain."
"Why?"
You come to a halt as Dazai approaches your side and smile at him, that smile that left him with an unfamiliar warm and longing feeling rather than the cold of terror.
"Well, because not even physical pain seems to sate it. And I began to doubt if death would."
"Suicide is a sin, my dear."
"Doesn't that make you a great sinner then, Dazai?" you joke.
"I suppose, and sinners are doomed to be unhappy is what I like to think."
"Weird."
"What is?"
"I find another very human thing is to sin and if sinners are doomed to be unhappy, should then not everyone be unhappy? And yet I feel myself being filled with a strange joy right now."
"You do?" He wonders, stunned. You nod.
Was it strange that he could feel something like a smile pulling on his lips that he couldn't control? Was it strange that the warm sensation grew stronger and more intense as it shook his being with its strangeness?
"I know!" you exclaim, "we are both humans but unworthy of the title due to our sins." You burst out laughing, and in his throat bubbles a laugh of his own, which turns into a hysterical cry that only doubles until both your eyes are filled with tears, and passersby eye you with caution, avoiding being near any of you.
"You are correct; we must be such terrible sinners!" Dazai laughs into your ear with a childish delight he has never experienced for himself.
"Oh, God, the old man up above must despise us both!" You sneer, pointing your tongue out towards the dark veil, which is said to be God's residence.
Dazai grabs your hand as he loses his balance from laughing, dragging you to the ground with him. The cold of the snow seemed to welcome you. Another God's or whoever's punishment for your sins, and yet the cold made you both laugh even harder.
With an ecstatic howl, you point your middle fingers to the sky before flopping back down next to Dazai in the snow, unbothered about the strange stares. Or did the middle-aged man who called the cops because two drunks were laying, hollering, and yelling insults at the sky.
It was a drunken bliss, neither of you remembering how many drinks you had consumed, but Dazai had never felt more alive. Never before had the pain of his sins, brokenness, and destructiveness felt so good, and you were right there beside him, feeling the same rush of life as you both decided to cheat on God by never stopping to sin and still stealing happiness despite them.
Never had Kunikida's harsh smack on the head as he collected you two in the police station with an irritated crease between his eyebrows, yelling curse after curse, felt so pleasant because he remembered everything despite his intoxication.
He laughed again as Kunikida dragged you for the first time, the blonde being extremely disappointed in you. You were also laughing, at the same time whining about the pain caused by the hand dragging your collar until you thought you were going to suffocate.
You gripped Dazai's hand, allowing the warm sensation to warm your heart, grinning as you imagined how angry the one above would be if you stole another piece of happiness that you were not deserving of.
Two sinners who found joy in stealing what they were not deserving of. And perhaps your greatest sin yet would be standing together on a bridge on a warm summer night and feeling the happiest you've ever felt, laughing in delight as the river swallowed you.