Chapter Text
From exactly 5 pm to 8 pm on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and from 4 pm to 7 pm on Saturday afternoons after class, Kunikida Doppo studies at a certain table in a coffee shop several train stops from his high school. As a third-year student preparing for entrance exams, he is mindful of this time, knowing every moment he spends in books will likely improve his future.
Mondays are impossible. He has martial arts club or student council meetings.
Sundays are for fishing with his grandfather, a hobby he enjoys far more than most people his age. He just finds something endearing about eating what he caught, something peaceful about standing on the banks with a rod in his hand while the cicadas sing or the faint scent of whatever is blooming drifts by with the current. In the afternoon, he cultivates his domestic skills, which, even at eighteen, he has no desire to burden his future partner with.
And Wednesdays? Well, they are for cram school, which he only half sees the purpose of considering he is second in his class.
He remembers that fact with more bitterness than the black coffee he sips between practice questions.
Until the end of last year he was resoundingly first in all the subjects that mattered to him, but just as the school year drew to an end, something in the wind shifted. He approached the board ranking students and looked to where his name had always been at the top.
But it wasn’t his name there. It was… someone else’s.
“Surely, there must be some mistake, Kawakami-sensei,” he insisted when he visited the staff room after eating his lunch twelve minutes faster than his ideal.
“Hmm… I’m afraid there’s no mistake, Kunikida-kun.” She smiled at him as she set the grade book down. “Still, second in the class is nothing to scoff at. You should be proud of yourself.”
Kunikida knows he shouldn’t be wasting time thinking about that now, but he’s still in shock. Because where his name should still be, there’s a name he knows well. Dazai Osamu.
I completely underestimated him, Kunikida tells himself, sighing into his textbook. He spends most of his time outside of class joking about suicide and hanging out with students who graduated the year he started high school. He’s a member of the literary arts club. Hell, he could be Class President, but he has so little motivation for anything… He sits up. Don’t let this one hiccup in your plans derail your whole ideal.
For a while, he’s able to focus, but the coffee shop is busier than usual tonight. Every table fills. He slips his headphones in, listening to the tune until he catches someone standing right in front of his table. He looks up to find the very same student he was just thinking about. After pausing his music and removing one earbud, he waits for Dazai to say something.
The brunet finally does. “This seat taken, president?”
Kunikida searches the cafe for another open seat. Finding none, he grumbles, “No,” and removes his earbuds.
“Ah, don’t let me interrupt your studying Kunikida-kun. I just want somewhere to sit while I drink my coffee.”
Why the sudden change in how he’s addressing me? More importantly, why is he calling that coffee? He throws a long look at the frappuccino in Dazai’s hand.
“Oh? Are you interested in trying a drink?”
“Not hardly,” he answers, lowering his eyes to his textbook again. He knows without looking up that Dazai is sitting there sipping his latte.
“Do you come here often?”
Kunikida’s pencil led snaps, and he throws Dazai a glare.
“Oh, did I make you mad, Kunikida-kun?” A careless smile spreads over Dazai’s face. “Maybe we haven’t really talked much in the two years we’ve been in the same class, but everyone says I’m the observant type.” He takes another sip of his drink. “You like math. You have a quick temper. You speak of your family fondly, which tells me you’re close. Or maybe…” He smirks. “You’re not as close as you let on.”
Dazai lists those facts as if he read them right out of Kunikida’s mind. As if having him at the table didn’t feel like enough of an invasion, Kunikida now finds himself stirring uncomfortably since he’s in the presence of someone who knows way too much. “Are you stalking me or something?”
“What fun would that be?” Dazai sing-songs.
“If not, why are you here?”
“Trying a new suicide method,” he states, shaking the cup. “I want to see if I can stay awake so long, it kills me. It’s a painful way to go, but maybe I’ll see something interesting on the way out.”
“Why would you do that?”
Dazai shrugs. “What makes life worth living?”
Kunikida starts scrawling numbers again. “Fishing,” he murmurs.
“Fishing?” Dazai laughs. “Is that another one of your interests? Are you really eighteen, Kunikida-kun? Or are you secretly a grandpa in disguise?”
Kunikida swallows the urge to flip the table over and instead grits out, “Why are you here, Dazai?”
“Coincidence, of course!” Beaming, Dazai continues, “I was hoping to find a beautiful woman to commit suicide with, but I found you instead. I’m not willing to call it fate. That’s too strong a word for anything in this world in my opinion.”
Kunikida hums and goes back to solving his equation.
“And,” he hears Dazai say. “It’s especially coincidental I would run into you of all people.”
For a moment, Kunikida worries that Dazai is some kind of mind reader. Not that he believes in such things, but it’s uncanny the way Dazai says that.
“After all,” he continues. “You’ve been a special interest of mine since halfway through our first year.”
Kunikida’s lead snaps again, and he squeezes his pencil so tightly, he’s surprised the barrel doesn’t cave in.
“Say,” Dazai says, taking another lazy sip of his drink, then stirring the whipped cream into what’s left. “Why don’t we go out sometime? If you agree, maybe it’ll give me a new view on life. You know, a reason to live, even if it’s just for one more night.”
I can’t do something like that, Kunikida tells himself. My ideal…
He recites it all in under a minute: get married to a beautiful woman at age twenty-seven, have two kids, live in a financially stable, financially secure, and most importantly loving household…
Dazai’s chuckle draws him out of his thoughts. “Kunikida-kun, so serious. I already know your answer is no. Still…” He shrugs and continues to smile. “I had to try. To be honest, it’s the most alive I’ve felt in a long time, even if the end result is disappointment.”
I can’t, he tells himself again, but the more he studies Dazai, the more he notices the change in the brunet’s smile. Dazai grows quiet. Almost concerningly so. The only time he’s quiet is during lectures. To see him quiet now… I can’t, he thinks, reaching for his own coffee cup and tipping it. I can’t… But it’s empty.
“You don’t need to feel bad, Kunikida-kun. Your rejection hurts, but you’re not expressing it hurtfully.”
“I…” He stops, spends a long moment staring into his empty cup.
Aside from being outside of his ideal, he wonders what going out with Dazai in the sense he’s asking would say about him. Would people talk? How badly would his parents react? Or, more importantly, his grandfather? Would he lose his position as student president?
Would that be worth it to figure out how Dazai overtook him?
Is that why he even wants to say yes?
The tell-tale sound of a straw reaching the bottom of the cup breaks into his thoughts. “Well, thanks for letting me sit here. See you in class Monda—”
“Alright.”
Dazai freezes halfway up, then slowly lowers himself back into his chair. “What?”
“I said alright. I’ll go out with you.”
After a long stare, Dazai smiles in a way Kunikida is only accustomed to seeing when he’s facing down his bullies. “You can’t be serious.”
“What gave you the impression I wasn’t?”
“Your ideal—”
“It’s something I’m working towards over the course of my life,” Kunikida states. “Nowhere in it does it say I can’t date another man.”
“I’m just a step on the way, then.”
“Possibly,” Kunikida states. “Still, I’d like to go out with you. As part of that ideal.” He tells himself it’s a small and insignificant part. He’s not supposed to date until he’s twenty-two, but for Dazai, for this, he’s willing to make a small concession.
They exchange Line addresses before Dazai leaves so they can work out the details, presumably after Dazai’s initial shock wears off. Kunikida watches him slip the cup into the trash before leaving. As he passes by the window outside, Kunikida catches his serious expression.
He closes his textbook and decides to leave. Glancing at his phone, he sees it’s 8:07.