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Chuuya isn’t dead. He can’t be. He’s just being such a tiny slug that it’s hard to see him, that’s all.
He wouldn’t even die when he’s just a tiny child who knows nothing about the battle between humans and gods, even as he’s in the epicenter of that explosion in Suribachi Island. He wouldn’t even die when Arahabaki exhausts his entire body, overdrawing from a human vessel in order to wage calamity as a god of destruction. He wouldn’t even die when he’s become a temporary vampire puppet under Dostoevsky’s hands.
A sudden heart failure?
Chuuya has survived through all of those battles, only for him to fall prey to such a mundane, human illness?
“It’s because you liked to smoke too much,” he blames the tiny man, partly in hopes of summoning his ire from wherever he’s hiding.
Any other time that he’s mentioned his complaints about the other’s smoking, it’s always been accompanied by Chuuya raising an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. A disdainful, “You like to smoke more than me, what the hell are you even talking about?”
He doesn’t actually like smoking, even if he indulges in it occasionally. Those occasions are whenever he could annoy a slug by stealing his pack of cigarettes. Things that are free are always more pleasing to the eye.
Now, he picks the other’s lighter, cold to the touch since it hasn’t been held by the tiny sun in a very long time.
Come to think of it, it’s been rather cold recently.
“Don’t you agree?” He asks the person in the middle of the room, encased in a clear glass coffin. “It’s as if the winter has gone on forever.”
He doesn’t own a lot of clothes; just the right amount that they’d fit inside the small closet in the Agency’s dorms, while leaving enough space for his bandages and random implements he could try for a cheerful suicide.
Since Chuuya’s his dog, he doesn’t require permission to rummage through the other’s walk-in closet. A black overcoat that would be oversized on a slug, but fits just-right over the stretch of his shoulders, if a bit shorter than his usual. A soft gray vest that isn’t as cinched in the waist compared to the others in the chibi’s collection. A hat to keep the top of his head shielded from the frosty atmosphere.
Black gloves over his bandaged fingers, as he drums against the glass coffin. Fingertips trace the familiar lines of the other’s face. A little fairy who’s like a sleeping beauty in a bed of roses.
“I made sure to not cut off the thorns,” he murmurs as he leans close, cheek pressed against the surface, as if to listen intently to the other’s absent breathing. “It’s uncomfortable, right? You’re getting pricked by all of those thorns, so you should have a fretful sleep.”
Experience tells him that Chuuya’s the sort to sleep with great determination, the type that couldn’t be shaken even by a blazing fire alarm. That’s how he lives: with all of his emotions, overflowing with vitality. He hates, he forgives, he fights, he breathes, he lives with such a hurricane of a presence that it’s impossible to ignore him.
Three years of working together as soukoku simultaneously feels like an entire lifetime and not-enough.
Life had felt tedious back then, but there’d been several punctuations of the other’s yells and punches, spiking through the monotony.
“Remember, you liked to sleep with your mouth open, drooling like an idiot.”
He recalls the sight that has burned his eyes multiple times. Chuuya likes to sleep like a starfish, limbs all splayed out like he’s just that addicted to being eye-catching even when unconscious. Alternately, he’s just that dedicated to trying to encompass so many things even when asleep, like a protective little fairy who’d place everyone under his tiny wingspan. It takes several attempts to press him down so he’d stay curled near him, whenever he’s sleeping off the aftermaths of Corruption.
“You’ve ruined my pants so many times because of your drool,” he recounts these transgressions with a dreamy voice. He doesn’t even need to close his eyes to bring up these accounts, the memories playing back crystal-clear in his mind. “So, while you’re not here, I’ll take my revenge on your clothes.”
Wearing them, layering them in order to not feel the seeping cold that keenly.
Too cold, that his entire body shivers, shakes in its midst.
Something like a mist fogs his eyesight, clumping his lashes together. Swollen eyes, but that’s probably just the coldness speaking. The alternative explanation would be that he’s spent days dehydrating himself through his eyes, knocking on the glass terrarium that he has set up for his slug who’s too sluggish in moving that his chest doesn’t even rise and fall.
No, no, Chuuya is finally dead. This should be a cause for celebration, and he’s simply tearing up from laughing so hard at this situation, that’s all.
He has thought about this scenario every single day since the moment that he’s been kicked by this violent force for the first time. He has made so many simulations of the other’s death, that he should have been numbed to its reality. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, with how much he’s planned and thought about this situation.
His years of insomnia have utilized the boredom he acquires from making these mental simulations, to the point that thinking about Chuuya before he succumbs to sleep has become a reliable way of catching some shut-eye. As if simply thinking about anything related to the energetic dog could tire him out by association, as if the little fairy’s talents include siphoning life force from him in order to sustain his own vitality.
“It would have been fine if you asked,” he tells the ice-cold glass coffin. “It would have been a painless way for me to die, and I could have disgusted you by giving you my life.”
Instead, Chuuya resolutely carries on being a naughty dog who doesn’t follow his master’s will. He goes ahead and dies in the most mundane way possible, and leaves the entire world covered in an everlasting winter.
“I should be very happy now.”
Unwillingness is too tame a word to describe the grievances piled up high in his chest. This should be a culmination of some sorts. Chuuya has once mentioned opening a bottle of Petrus to celebrate his defection; he should be doing something more celebratory now. He should be dancing on the streets, parading around the city while blasting the contents of the notebooks he’s amassed on Chuuya’s inadequacies. He should be happily insulting the tiny man who couldn’t fight back anymore, who couldn’t jump up and down and attract his gaze.
It’s because he hates him so much, that he couldn’t accept losing to him, even in the form of being the one who looks away first.
Even in the time that Dazai has left the mafia and gone underground while his records were whitewashed, it’s not as if he’s completely broken off ties. He still has his informants, he still has fingers on the pulse of the city’s information network. He has never managed to look away first, not in the years of their partnership, and certainly not now.
“I should be very happy now,” he repeats like a wind-up puppet stuck on a certain motion. “So tell me, Chuuya. How did you curse me to feel even more hollow than ever?”
Legends say that fairies could own a person’s soul by knowing their name.
Is that how this happened?
Did Chuuya whisk his soul away with him, and he’s only feeling its loss now that the other man has gone on to the other side?
“What a naughty fairy you are,” he says, and stands up gingerly, hands pressed against the glass for support. “I really ought to punish you.”
But that comes later. Even as the little fairy sleeps, life continues to go on for everyone else.
Dazai huddles into himself, crossing his arms over his chest, cold despite all of his layers. The path around him is in colorless grayscale, but he still knows the twists and turns that will lead him to the Agency’s office. After all, it’s a path that he’s taken in reverse many times before—slipping out of overtime and sneaking into Chuuya’s apartment while he’s out on a mission, so he could replace wines with vinegar, conditioners with mayonnaise, pure hatred with something undefinable.
A world suspended in endless winter, and even opening the door to the Agency barely adds a touch of color to his eyesight.
Atsushi looks at him in worry. He’s fanning himself like it’s summer and the Agency’s airconditioner is overtaxed. But that’s impossible. Summer would mean having the blazing sun overhead, but Chuuya’s still playing at becoming sleeping beauty nestled in a patch of handpicked briar roses.
“A little black cockroach bit me,” he offers the explanation for his swollen eyes, smiling. But because it’s cold, he’s sure that his lips are stiff. “I’m alright, don’t worry. But, if you’d like to help me escape from Kunikida-kun today, I’ll appreciate it, Atsushi-kun.”
As if he’s also weighed down by the cold atmosphere, Kunikida doesn’t actually hit him with a rolled-up paper. “The mafia has an important commission for us.” There’s a terseness in his jaw, his ideals warring with themselves, most likely. “The body of the d… gravity manipulator is missing.”
Of course, he’s missing.
He’s sleeping soundly inside that glass terrarium, after all.
“Have they tried using a microscope to look for him?” His smile remains. “He’s really so tiny, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they don’t see him.”
Kunikida shoots him a look. He looks like he’s willing to believe his answer, no matter how outrageous, “You didn’t take him away?”
He shakes his head. “That dog has never been obedient, so he’d never allow me to just whisk him away.” If he’s that sort of character, then Dazai would have tricked him into following him to the Agency too, just so he’d have an elbow-rest with him.
“But he’s dea—“
“—Kunikida-kun,” he slices through the other’s words. “We hate each other so much, so I have no reason to spend more time than necessary with him.”
They hate each other so much.
That’s why, Chuuya, won’t you wake up already?
You shouldn’t be satisfied in that tiny, cramped place full of thorns, stuck with nobody else but your enemy by your side.
That’s why, Chuuya, won’t you wake up and stop this endless winter already?
But as expected of a naughty dog, Chuuya doesn’t heed his words today either.
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end