Work Text:
The dorm is quiet. Quiet enough to sleep. Quiet enough that she can hear Atsushi snoring not too far away. She tries to keep from waking him, even when she can’t catch a second of rest herself. He has his own difficulties with it. Nightmares, the residual claw marks of his orphanage’s insistence that he not “waste time” sleeping night after night, wide-eyed staring-at-the-ceiling anxiety. So when Kyouka lies awake in bed, she does so silently, just in case he’s sleeping lightly enough to hear her moving across the flat.
It doesn’t make sense.
If it were always the memory of her parents, it would make sense. Or her time under Akutagawa in the Mafia. In her fourteen years, she’s racked up enough fodder for paranoid flashbacks and anxious spirals to fuel a lifetime of sleepless nights. But it isn’t those things tonight, hasn’t been for the past week.
She remembers how it had felt to win that stuffed bunny.
Demon Snow wasn’t any comfort to her back in the Mafia. She was a prisoner under it, only held there because it was powerful enough to make her useful. Her phone was a memento of her parents, but that little light was overshadowed by Akutagawa’s voice through the speaker adding another one, two, ten lives to her body count. By the time Atsushi found her, nothing belonged to her anymore.
But then he gave her food. And time to see the places she had always wanted to. And the chance to win something for herself.
The synthetic fur was soft, though a little plasticky if she focused her attention on it too long. When it first came out of the claw machine, it smelled chemical, straight from the factory. But after a few hours of holding it, eating dessert and walking in the sun, it smelled like something completely different. Herself, maybe. Or a happier version of herself.
She remembers how she gripped it a little tighter every time she thought about turning herself in at the end of the day. Its tiny stuffed body and subtle powdered sugar scent answered every pang of fear; she was able to pull the wool over Atsushi’s eyes for hours without him ever noticing she was preparing to die.
It had been that bunny.
Now, when she lies awake late into the night, she thinks about it splattered in blood. Atsushi’s blood, not even her own. She thinks about it lying on the ground, abandoned in the chaos.
She wonders where it is now. Wishes it was here.
Maybe she would be asleep by now.
~
The Agency office bustles with life all around her, and she tries to keep from nodding off onto the pile of paperwork Kunikida sat down in front of her half an hour ago.
She doesn’t actually have to fill anything out, write reports or correspond with government officials. They found soon after she started working here that she isn’t good with public-facing work or anything that requires speaking the schmoozy corporate language some of the others have had the time to learn. When Kunikida gives her papers like this, she is supposed to sort through them to find what he’s looking for and put a sticky tab in the corner. The color doesn’t matter, but she always uses the pretty lilac ones the president bought shortly after she joined the Agency.
The work isn’t hard. It’s the easiest thing they can give her around the office. They’re reluctant to say around her what she knows is true: she’s mostly useful when someone has to get their hands dirty. She isn’t used to office work; they found her as something like a street animal, and she knows it better than they do. When they need an animal, they find her (or Atsushi, even though he doesn’t have the stomach for it).
Despite the ease of the work, she can barely do it. Her eyelids are heavy, and her brain is sluggish. She got less than two hours of sleep last night, and the night before was even worse. She knows Atsushi’s aware of it. He usually wakes up after her and eats something simple for breakfast before they have to leave, but the past four mornings, she’s heard him moving around the flat before her alarm has gone off. She’s left her room and found their little kitchen table set with two plates of real food, the type she always tries to make for herself. He isn’t very good at cooking, but the gesture is nice.
It means he knows what’s going on, though.
She thumbs through the massive stack (probably years’ worth of case records) and fights to stay awake. Focuses her eyes on the specific line of each sheet she needs to investigate and tries to put every ounce of attention she can on it, but her eyes burn. Her vision blurs, and suddenly the corners of her eyes feel wet, and she tries to subtly wipe the tears away so she can see again.
Quietly, Atsushi’s voice. Somewhere out in the hall. She can only hear snippets of it.
“Sorry, Kunikida… not sleeping… working on it.”
She hopes he isn’t talking about her. Tries to work faster, just in case.
The only other people in the office at the moment are Ranpo and Kenji. Ranpo certainly already knows and is doing the good thing and keeping it quiet for her.
She glances over at Kenji at his desk. He’s diligently typing on his computer, taking care of some of the work she can’t do. Probably not listening, so it’s okay. Even if Atsushi tells Kunikida about her restlessness, asking for help from someone who probably doesn’t have any more relevant experience than he does, the issue won’t migrate far beyond the flat they share. At the office, Kyouka can keep pretending things are fine.
At night, she can think about her bunny. Wherever it is.
~
“Oh, good morning!”
Atsushi stands by the sink, hands covered in soap suds. He smiles brightly, but there are dark circles under his eyes.
“Good morning,” she nods.
Another morning following two hours of sleep, and those only won after most of the night spent staring at the ceiling and stroking the edge of her blanket where it’s threadbare, soft like shiny plastic fur. Another morning of Atsushi beating her to the kitchen and making something for the two of them to eat, pretending Kyouka isn’t robbing him of sleep too when she inevitably starts pacing the room to exhaust herself.
“Kunikida said something to me yesterday about lunch today,” he says, drying his hands and setting a bowl in front of Kyouka at the table. “He’s going to treat us at Uzumaki.”
Kunikida is a good employee of the Agency. And a good man too, always kinder to Kyouka than she has ever felt she deserved. He treats her with respect, like an equal. Still, she doesn’t believe he’d buy their lunch without a reason.
He must know, then.
“I don’t like any of the food at Uzumaki.”
He smiles again, tired, and waits another moment before shoveling egg into his mouth to say, “You can get cake or something. You like the sweets, right?”
She does. And if she’s hungry around lunch, she’ll probably be happy to have a slice of cake instead of any of the real meals they sell. But she’d much rather not warrant any special treatment in Kunikida’s eyes. What if he’s decided she really is more trouble than she’s worth? What if he’s convinced the president to let her go? There aren’t any stuffed bunnies in the flat she shares with Atsushi, but she’s sure the police station is even worse.
It’s probably a better place for them to put her, though, and she doesn’t want to make more trouble than she does already. “Okay.”
And she goes through the morning the same as always, nearly falling asleep at her desk and bowing to the president when he floats through the office and listening to Kenji talk about someone he met on the train (which helps keep her awake more than anything else has), and she waits for lunch. For some sort of news, or an off look from Kunikida.
It doesn’t come, though. She’s dragging herself back through the door to the office after a quick errand for Ranpo just across the street when Kunikida smiles at her (a little stiff, but a nice gesture) and asks, “Are you ready to eat?”
She glances over to Atsushi, who’s resting his hand on his stomach and groaning like it’s minutes away from digesting itself. “Thanks for treating us,” he says for the both of them.
“Can I come too?”
They all turn back to Kenji at his desk, eyes and smile wide. Kyouka catches Kunikida biting the inside of his cheek for a moment, gripping his notebook a little tighter, but then he nods and says, “Of course. We’re going to Uzumaki.”
Kunikida walks a few paces ahead of the rest of them; his strides are long enough that only Dazai can keep up with him without making an effort of it. Atsushi bites the bullet and does a little skip to catch up, though, and the two of them talk in hushed tones down the stairs and into the café.
Kyouka’s legs feel heavy. She’s fine bringing up the rear, fine just following along at the Agency in any way they’ll have her.
“Are you feeling okay?”
His voice is sunny. It always is, so much brighter than anything she had heard in years before coming here. Kenji is different from everything before, different enough that sometimes he doesn’t seem real.
He looks down at her with kind eyes, something like genuine interest behind them. Tightens his fingers around the straps of the bag he has slung over his shoulder and cocks his head to the side.
“Oh. I’m fine.” And even though it’s technically a lie, talking to Kenji makes it feel a little truer.
“I’m hungry! Didn’t have a big enough breakfast, so I’m excited to eat.”
“I think you surprised Kunikida asking to come with us.”
“Oh, really?” His eyes widen in surprise, though Kyouka knows he wouldn’t take it back. Kenji doesn’t worry about imposing like she does. “Well, I’m glad he said yes anyway. I like the bread at Uzumaki.”
The four of them file into one of the Agency’s usual booths (good visibility, but still far enough away from prying ears), and Kunikida orders for the table. If anyone else had attempted it, there might be some dissatisfaction with the lunches, but Kyouka learned recently that he has a meticulously kept and continuously updated list of the favorite menu items of each member. He rarely uses them, and still they’re there. She often doesn’t understand the way he organizes his life around his notebook as if it’ll keep him safe from the chaos of his life, but she appreciates it now.
“They just recently started serving tofu,” he explains once the waitress has left, looking down at her across the table with his typical formal air. “I assumed you might like it, even though you’ve never had it here before.”
“Thank you.” Under the table, she runs her palms over the silk of her kimono. The tops of her thighs down to her knees, one, two, three times. It’s soft, familiar. Feels natural and grounding, so comforting and still so different from—
“Thank you for getting our lunch today, Kunikida,” Atsushi repeats. “We appreciate it.”
“Of course,” he nods. Waits for the waitress to set their food down and disappear to the kitchen, for Kenji and Atsushi to take their first bites, before he adds, “I’m sorry to do this over lunch, especially without prior warning, but I have a concern I’d like to discuss.” He looks at Atsushi when he says it, and out of the corner of her eye, Kyouka catches Atsushi watching her.
This isn’t surprising. She just wishes she had been strong enough to hide it until she had fixed everything.
“No one has done anything wrong.”
Kenji nods along across the table. Maybe Kunikida told him about this beforehand? Maybe everyone at the office already knows how she’s been slacking off, incapable of being useful to the organization—
“I just noticed, Kyouka, that you seem to be having some trouble with focus.”
“I apologize.”
Quickly, starting with a half-strangled noise in the back of his mouth, Kunikida corrects, “No, there’s nothing to apologize for. It’s simply a matter of getting to the bottom of it and adapting.” He waits until she meets his eyes across the table, though it’s a little painful to do so.
Atsushi rushes to his aid, maybe just to cut the odd silence. “Um, Kunikida was telling me earlier that the ADA may be able to pay for something to help. A sleep study, or therapy—”
“We have done so for employees in the past,” he nods solemnly.
At this point, the weight of their gazes together is dragging her wrist down toward her bowl, feels like it could bow her whole body. She stops eating, lets her eyes settle on the edge of the table.
“If you think it may help, you won’t have to divulge any specific information to me here,” Kunikida continues, “just let me know if you’re interested, and I can talk to the president.”
“I think it could help,” Atsushi adds, and even though he sits next to her at the booth floating somewhere just above her sunken field of vision, she can picture his face clearly. He’s wearing the expression he always does as he navigates the space around her lately. Gentle, a little scared. Concerned. She doesn’t like making him feel concerned.
“Maybe,” she mutters.
She can’t tell them the real reason. Of course they would assume it’s the trauma of the Mafia, of leaving everything she knew and coming to live and work with a rival organization. Of course they would assume that her sleep had turned on a dime because of the nebulous tides of grief or fear or anxiety, that something had surged up in her memory too awful to name and had manifested as sleepless nights and listless working days.
Maybe it had, and that’s what she’s feeling. Maybe hiding behind what she knows is the key really is all of that baggage. But everything behind that heavy curtain isn’t what keeps her up at night or prevents her from properly completing her mundane office tasks.
That’s the bunny. Or its absence, really.
“I’m in touch with a former employee of the Agency who benefited greatly from counseling paid for through the organization—”
“Um, I…” she sighs, wishing Kunikida would look away for a moment. She appreciates how he cares (in his own strictly ordered way), but she wants to be able to breathe and eat and exist without the appraisal this lunch is predicated on. She doesn’t want a sleep study or counseling, even if they may help.
She wants to eat her tofu in comfortable silence.
She wants to file paperwork correctly without anyone’s help.
She wants to feel safe (anywhere, even if just in the flat she shares with Atsushi).
She wants her stuffed rabbit back.
“I can try.”
“Excellent,” he smiles, and Atsushi sighs with relief. “I’ll arrange it with the president.”
Kenji keeps eating directly across the table, sends her a smile when he notices her looking. A real one. Not rehearsed beforehand or as a result of her giving in.
The table falls silent for a few moments. Maybe Kunikida thought it would take longer to convince her. Slowly, the sounds of eating drown everything else out, and they all finish well before they have to go back to work. Kyouka pushes the last few blocks of tofu around the bottom of her bowl for a minute or so before eating them, just because she knows Atsushi’s been done for at least five minutes now and has spent every single one uncomfortably glancing around the café. She can at least create some pretense for the four of them staying here.
The second she finishes her last bite, Kunikida clears his throat and announces, “I believe I’ll go back to the office early. Enjoy the rest of your break.” He bows slightly to the table and disappears into the stairwell after double-checking the waitress put the food on his tab. Atsushi seems to think disappearing is a good idea too, based on the way he stares at the door after Kunikida’s left.
“Do you have any work left on the case Dazai completed yesterday?” Kenji asks him amicably, never one to let an awkward silence hang.
“A lot,” he nods, grimacing. “He never does his own paperwork, and I think he finds it easy to push it all onto me…”
“I used to do his too,” Kenji beams, seemingly unbothered by Dazai’s laziness. “His incidence reports are something else!”
Atsushi crumples to the table and rests his head on his arms, groans, “Yeah, I can’t believe what he gets up to when it’s just Kunikida watching him.”
Kyouka pulls out her phone to check the time, and they still have another fifteen minutes or so for lunch. Knowing Atsushi, he could very well spend the rest of the break lying here at the table and wishing he didn’t have to go back and look at Dazai’s name at the top of a stack of papers half his height. He may appreciate a little privacy during his moping…
“Kyouka,” Kenji starts, “I’m going to take a walk before going back upstairs. Wanna come?”
She likes Atsushi, but she likes avoiding talk of her shortcomings in the office even more. And Kenji is one of her best.
“Sure.”
She lets him set the route, wandering alongside and grounding herself in identifying the buildings they pass. The bag he brought down to Uzumaki bounces at his hip as he practically skips through the city.
“Hey, Kyouka?”
“Yes?” she answers, meeting his bright-eyed smile. Feeling the warmth of it right there in the middle of the street.
“I have a gift for you.”
“Oh, hmm?”
Kenji stops for a moment and starts digging through his bag, and Kyouka’s mind runs away with thoughts of snacks, plants, beaded necklaces and thrift store teacups. This isn’t the first time Kenji’s given her something out of the blue (she has a slowly growing collection of pressed flowers stored between the pages of the rice maker owner’s manual back at home). Still, sometimes he surprises her.
“Hold out your hands. And close your eyes.”
She does what he says, though it makes the back of her neck prickle to leave herself vulnerable. But she trusts Kenji.
Whatever it is, it’s soft. Soft like an animal, but lighter than even the kittens she found in an alley once after completing a job for the Mafia. She thought then that they were the smallest, most fragile things in the world. She didn’t dare take any back with her.
“You can open your eyes.”
It’s lopsided, lumpy and misshapen, or maybe that’s just the distorting effect of the tears that instantly flood her waterline. She blinks them away, ducks her head so Kenji won’t see, and reaches for one of the long, floppy ears. Rolls the fabric between her fingertips and looks down at the amateurishly sewn button eyes.
It looks nothing like the one she lost when she and Atsushi were abducted.
It’s the best gift she’s ever received.
“Thank you, Kenji.”
He smiles down at her and explains, “I made a cat for one of the other kids in my village once because he couldn’t sleep after his barn cat died. I know you like bunnies, so I tried to make one, even though they aren’t shaped the same as cats…” he trails off, reaching out to grab the other ear. “The ears don’t stand up very well.”
“I like the floppy ones,” she tells him, worried that even with all her practice in the Mafia, she won’t be able to keep her voice from wavering. The exhaustion has weakened her control, made things she used to do every single day impossible.
Now, it might end. It’s possible that in her hands she holds untold hours of real rest. Comfort. A chance to feel safe.
“The belly is a different color fur because I used scraps from a friend’s shop around the corner,” he shrugs, still sunny even as he seems a little unsure about his handiwork. “The Agency solved a case for the owner a few months ago, and I’ve made four different bandanas and this bunny with the things she gives me for free!”
It’s been so long since she’s been given a gift like this. “It’s perfect. I like the belly.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
She doesn’t hug people. Didn’t even really like doing it before her parents died. But there’s some need in her now to do it, to dive into the comfort she’s been given. Instead of Kenji, she wraps her arms around the hand-sewn rabbit and squeezes, rests her chin on its head to feel the caramel-colored fur.
They walk back to the Agency together, and Kyouka stows the bunny under her desk until it’s time to head home for the day. She tucks it into a bag with its little fuzzy head peeking out for the walk with Atsushi, and when he asks where she got it, she doesn’t even get to say before he guesses.
Much of the time, when Kyouka feels good, Kenji’s behind it.
~
She lays in bed in utter silence, just having turned off the light. She can still hear Atsushi shuffling around the flat, though his footsteps fall heavier now than they did this morning. It was a tiring day for him, full of work delegated both to himself and to his coworker.
She worries about the therapy. Kunikida had sounded confident in its success, but Kyouka has never been easy. She knows she hasn’t. In the time she’s existed since she lost her parents, she’s been very difficult for everyone.
But it clearly isn’t all bad. She must not be beyond saving.
Even like this, she was able to find a friend like Kenji.
When she rolls to her side to try to sleep, she shifts the bunny so it lays just below her face. It’s completely different from the one she won from the machine, lies more like a ragdoll in her arms than the other. And it smells like sunshine.
Her heartbeat slows, breaths even out.
She sleeps through the night, even through the sounds of Atsushi moving about his morning routine; he has to come wake her up to eat.
Better than the rest itself, she has a good dream. Rabbits and the smell of coffee and familiar hands pinching needle and thread.