Chapter Text
Dazai leaves the Port Mafia after the incident with Mimic and the death of Oda Sakunosuke, the events after entail the bombing of a certain car and a proposition from none other than our friend Jouno Saigiku.
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Osamu Dazai
‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’
That was how the saying goes, wasn’t it? To be played twice was to be the fool. Despite his intelligence, Dazai Osamu had been the fool multiple times in his life. His past before the mafia, trusting Mori, joining the mafia in the first place, getting close to Odasaku and Ango. No matter what he had done in prevention of tragedy it had still knocked on his door like an officer with a warrant. Yet he still would often find himself in situations that he could have avoided entirely if he hadn’t opened his heart. This was how it had always been for him.
Was it worth it to be happy if it only ever came to an end in blazing brutality?
He was exceptionally clever, scary and had a reputation that preceded even the darkest of those in the mafia. The youngest Executive in their history and Mori’s right hand. He was never proud of any of his achievements or status that he had earned in the darkness and blood of his work. However no matter what perspective he carved into his mind about it, it was his life to lead and his trail to blaze.
He had hated it but it was the truth; the painful and disgusting truth. However it all came crumbling down in a single week, and Dazai was the fool again.
Let’s review;
One of his only friends was a traitor to him and the mafia, Ango Sakaguchi worked for the government. Ango most likely allowed himself to become friends with Dazai, an up and coming in the mafia leadership, in order to learn more about the enemy. He most likely learned to perceive him as a friend over time but that did not erase his initial intention. Despite what Dazai said about not being upset, he was enraged. Sure, he was not surprised his friendship with Ango ended in tragedy but his blood boiled to think about how the beginning of their time together, their foundation, was all built on a lie.
In a twenty four hour period not only had Mori-san succeeded in legalising the Port Mafia’s endeavours but he had driven Dazai out of the mafia and ripped the entirety of his life away. In contrast to the beginning of their arrangement when Dazai blindly trusted Mori as a child, over the years he had been slowly developing disgust and hatred. Every conversation with him was a game and their overall relationship was a chess match. A chess match in which, despite the disadvantages he had, Dazai was slowly itching towards finding what Mori’s strategy consisted of. Or, in lack of a better term, the monster the man was. This did not change the fact that Mori was supposed to be his mentor and still betrayed him.
Now his true friend, his true mentor, his only true family was dead because of this. If Ango had never betrayed the mafia, Mori would not have an excuse to send Odasaku after Mimic. Without an excuse to send Odasaku after Mimic, he and their leader would have never crossed paths. Had Mori not leaked the location of Odasaku’s orphans then Odasaku would have thrown the towel and would have never come face to face with his death.
Dazai could have easily used his ability to counteract future-sight but the prospect of chasing him out of the mafia was too good. Dazai knew this, he was a direct threat to Mori. Chances are if he had stayed within the mafia with Odasaku’s influence he would have taken the reins and extended the mafia further than it could have ever been before. The light to Dazai’s life within their organisation was not only a direct contradiction and a slap in the face to Mori’s training but would lead to his untimely demise.
For once, Dazai had no problem accepting his role in Mori’s plan. He would gladly leave the mafia. It was Odasaku’s dying wish and personal ambition, to join the side of light and write his own story. Dazai would live so Odasaku’s memory could be extended vicariously through him. It had been the least he could do for his deceased friend.
Dazai had not known this at the time, but both he and Mori had succeeded that day. Mori drove Dazai out of the mafia, weeded out a traitor, killed an enemy and obtained a gifted organisation certificate all within the same day. Despite his initial losses, Dazai had found the path to good, his eventual family, a life away from Mori and finally a story of his own. It was the beginning of a new era for the mafia that the former Demon Prodigy was more than obliged to not be a part of. At the time he could not register the emotions in his mind when he held the burning leather and bandages but now he knew what he felt that night clearly;
Anger, Despair, Remorse, Embarrassment but also the itching sensation he would never forget feeling for the first time in his life – Freedom.
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Chuuya Nakahara
Shiraz had mentioned him, the Demon Prodigy. Before Chuuya came along he had offered the other member of Double Black a position in the sheep. Chuuya did not know the details apart from the obvious fact that the mafioso countered the notion in a way that left Shiraz so embarrassed he refused to discuss it.
That was before Chuuya had the displeasure of knowing him and when he had written him off as nothing more than an emo low life. Chuuya had been right of course, Dazai was an emo low life, but in addition he was also so much more than that in the most terrible ways. These ways made the gravity manipulator’s skin crawl with rage in every way possible. He was arrogant, cocky, unserious, rude, manipulative and just fucking insane. He had done everything in his power to make Chuuya’s life miserable since the day they met. Yet the shorter executive could not bring himself to hate him regardless of the misery and anger he had brought out of him.
Today, however, was a much different story. When Chuuya had gotten the call at first he didn’t know what to say. To be honest he did not even think a situation like this would ever happen; Dazai left the mafia officially. He even handed in a resignation and everything. The resignation wasn’t exactly a two week’s notice, being a dead crow that was secured onto the surface of Mori’s desk by a scalpel stabbed through its eye and the table. The damn bird had a note attached to its leg tied with a pink ribbon saying ‘I quit :)’ in sparkly ink. The kind exit was indubitably something incredibly in character for Dazai.
With a growl he stood up abruptly, hanging up on the informant who called to report the matter to him. He snagged his car keys and stormed out of the building without even bothering to grab his jacket. How dare he?
How dare Dazai abandon the mafia and brand himself a traitor? The idiot so easily got the sheep to betray him in order to push Chuuya to desperation with a flawless plan from the start. He intended to order Chuuya like a dog and probably would have if the shorter mafioso hadn’t been taken under Kouyou’s wing. That damned bastard spent every day of their partnership making his life into a joke and now he was calling it quits? After years of hard work? After everything they had been through together?
He would hook the mackerel in the fucking mouth and drag him back by the teeth. During his walk to the elevator and the descent down his office tower all he could think of was the locations he would punch the idiot in order to make him bruised and bloody. Dazai always had some kind of stupid injury anyways so he might as well make this beating a good one.
He held back a growl when the doors to the elevator opened to the parking garage, the guards in the door barely even had to spare him a second glance in order to let him walk through.
Typically Chuuya would hear, ‘Have a good evening, Nakahara-san’ or ‘Sir, have a safe drive home’ but none of the guards even dared try that when they saw him in such a mood. Because his blood was electric and the building shook with every step. He was pissed to imagine that the asshole even thought he could get away with this. The fob to his car was clenched tightly in his hand when he approached his Mercedes. The door unlocked with a click and well–
BOOM
He wasn’t expecting that.
He ended up stumbling into his apartment a few hours later, what a shitty fucking day. The door to his wine cellar opened with a crash that left a knob shaped hole in the wall that he wasn’t bothered to notice. He was beyond sore and pissed at the events of today he really didn’t give a fuck about that kind of stuff.
He gruffly grabbed the bottle of Petrus he was saving for a special occasion. He had spent a small fortune on the bottle and this seemed like the time to open it. He plopped down on the couch and melted into the comfortable leather, pouring himself a generous glass of the red nectar.
He didn’t know how to sort through the mixed emotions he was feeling so he focused on the positives. The negative was that Dazai was gone but wasn’t that also the positive? The raging pain in his ass was gone forever and knew how to disappear better than anybody else. There would be no way anybody else could find him. A bitter laugh bubbled out of his lips and he held the glass to the air, to nobody in particular. This was a night of celebration.
“Here’s to your freedom and my sanity, lord knows I’ll lose it if I focus on anything else.” He nearly snorted and he downed it like he was lost in the desert for weeks and it was the first glass of water he’d seen in awhile.
Cheers to the end of Double Black, the best and worst years of Chuuya Nakahara’s life.
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Osamu Dazai
His body was by no means a temple, he had sliced it, pierced it, tattooed it, drank himself silly, overdosed more times than he could count and smoked at least a pack a day. With the amount he put himself through and the injuries he sustained you would think that he would be so crippled he could hardly stand but that was simply not the case. Even if his liver wouldn’t live past thirty and his lungs were essentially tar, the bastard could *run*.
Even with a flawless internal clock, by the time the sharp pain overtook his lungs and he was heaving for air over the railing that protected the road from the sea, he had no idea how long he was running for. All he knew was that it was dusk when he left after Odasaku died in his arms and the sun was beginning to rise now. He could roughly guess the hours but by this point the minutes were a mystery to him. It had been a long time since he was disoriented to the point where he lost track of his internal clock.
He burned the jacket Mori gave him before he started running by tying it to one of the pillars in the abandoned mansion with the bandages he had around his face. He then soaked it in gasoline and took a match to it, watching it, along with everything he ever came to call home engulfed in flames. His inner turmoil was screaming in agony at the prospect of his friend’s body being less than 100 metres away but also with joy and delight as the flames overtook the leather like Mori overtook his childhood.
Most people cried when the people close to them died, Dazai tried to make the tears fall but he genuinely couldn’t. He knew that meant he wasn’t human but right now he didn’t focus on that. At the moment he didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing he couldn’t cry, at the moment he didn’t care. He just figured for Odasaku’s sake he should at least try and he failed, simple as that. He leaned against the railing, his legs outstretched along the sidewalk. His chest heaved while he caught his breath and closed his eyes, soaking up the feeling of the morning wind on his face.
He needed to forget the grief and come up with a plan, he had a promise to fulfil and if he stayed there much longer being public enemy number one he would die for sure. If he hadn’t made that promise to his friend maybe he would just turn himself in and plead guilty just to receive the death penalty quickly, but alas he had to save people. Before he could stand he snapped his eyes open when a sensation shot up his spine like a sixth sense.
“There’s not many who can sneak up on me, but I’m sure you know that,” he slowly turned his head to meet the person in question being Jouno Saigiku.
One of the infamous Hunting Dogs founded by the war hero Ouchi Fukuchi. The blond man had bright red tips at the end of his hair and a warm smile on his face. He was blind and had his head tilted slightly to the right only by a millimetre, a hair even, that a regular man wouldn’t notice. Dazai was no regular man, and he put together that Saigiku had turned his head like that to hear Dazai’s movements. He wasn’t in his work clothes, but he didn’t need to be wearing them for the former Demon Prodigy himself to recognize him. Instead he wore a simple jacket and jeans with white shoes.
Dazai himself was a sight for sore eyes compared to him. His hair was frazzled, lips chapped, bagged and bloodshot eyes. His current features matched his bloodstained and dirty clothes, recently polished shoes that he scuffed when he lost his footing in his frenzy and fell first down a hill. His left pupil was incredibly dilated compared to his right as it hadn’t seen the light in years.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” To most it would seem like the right question to ask, because honestly what did he want with him? But Dazai was mocking him because obviously, Saigiku was blind. Still he had wanted to know what he had wanted since it was obvious he wasn’t here to arrest him. If he was, Dazai wasn’t sure he could honestly resist the temptation to be dragged away in cuffs to the death penalty that would be waiting for him, skipping the entire way to the noose.
The blond’s smile never wavered and it was honestly kind of creepy, “To be entirely honest I stumbled upon you by accident. It was hard not to notice a mafioso fall down a hill and collapse on a railing.”
“Ex-mafioso,” Dazai corrected.
The other man clicked his tongue, “Ah- a new development, pardon my outdated information,” there was a clanking motion as he presented a pair of cuffs, “Even if I am off duty, it is my active role in society to pursue justice. Naturally I have to arrest you and bring you into custody, I’m sure you understand.”
It was his job so he shouldn’t blame him really, but Dazai tended to be petty even when he shouldn’t be, “I would rather we go about our day and you mind your business. I have things I need to do,” he pushed himself upwards and faced him while he ignored the way his body protested and screamed with every movement.
“This is frustrating I’m sure, I would have rather we didn’t run into each other,” he sucked in a breath through his teeth as if he was sorry for inconveniencing him, he wasn’t, Dazai knew this. Saigiku took a step towards him, “I know you’re angry and you see right through me, in fact I can hear your bodily functions screaming at me in rage while you fight shutting down from physical exhaustion.”
Dazai responded to Saigiku’s advance by taking a step back, but his eyes widened at the revelation. Not only was he a Hunting Dog but his blindness hadn’t impaired him at all, his perception acted as an extension of his lost sight making him able to read people on a deeper level. It was a type of advantage Dazai could only dream of having.
A manic smile spread across his face, because truly, as important as the promise was to him he had nothing to lose. There was no position in the mafia waiting for him, his home was a shipping container for fucks sake, he didn’t have friends and betrayed the only partner that ever meant anything to him.
“What if I killed you here and now instead?” He giggled, it wasn’t cute, in fact it sent a chill down Saigiku’s core.
Saigiku matched Dazai’s own grin, “We wouldn’t want that now would we?”
They were at a stalemate and both were beginning to realise their opponent was a lot more like the other than they initially anticipated. Saigiku was committed to his role in the Hunting Dogs and would not back down on his attempt to bring Dazai into custody, and Dazai was not coming with him without a fight.
Saigiku had the physical advantage, he was alert, rested and of course had the augmentation necessary to win a physical altercation. However Dazai was smarter, his brain was a labyrinth of plans and contingency ideas that would span the entirety of Japan if you wrote them down in 12 size font. If there was any way to outsmart Saigiku in this situation, Dazai would find it.
Both were geniuses, both were highly trained killers, it was like looking in a terrifying funhouse mirror. Regardless, they needed to compromise otherwise this was going to get messy.
“You recently left the mafia and given your reduced heart rate and increased respiration, along with the tenseness of your muscles beyond how physically exhausted you are; you’re simply heartbroken,” Saikigu stated calmly like he didn’t just read the entirety of Dazai’s body and muscle language with his hearing alone.
Dazai clenched his fists, his emotions were guarded behind a steel wall wrapped in barbed wire. He faked emotions while concealing his true ones. His true emotions were his weakness, they allowed people to know his intentions and bend him to their will. All of his practice and care he spent in hiding his true self was useless here, at this very moment he was an open book, pried open with his heart forced onto his sleeve.
Saikigu continued, “You recently suffered a loss, you were betrayed,” he concluded.
Dazai nearly scoffed, “Well that was a fancy and elaborate way of telling me that I’m pissed off and sad. How about you tell me something I don’t know?”
The blond folded his hands behind his back, the cuffs jingling as he did so, “How about *you* tell me something *I* don’t know. Why did you leave the mafia? If your story warms my heart enough I might be compelled to let you go.”
The former mafioso gritted his teeth, he was trapped between a rock and a hard place. Saikigu was essentially a walking lie detector, he could tell based off of his muscles and brain functions alone whether or not Dazai was lying. But if Dazai refused to tell him anything, then a fight would break out between them which Dazai would certainly lose given his current condition.
Again, he was the fucking fool here for the second time in the last twenty four hours, and he was beginning to really hate this feeling. Now it was between giving up and dying, which would happen if he was captured, or simply telling Saigiku about his situation and crossing his fingers he would let him go.
“Fine,” he seethed. Contrary to popular belief, Dazai wasn’t a violent man. He could be a fan of torture and seeing people suffer most certainly and he loved the battlefield, but he was far from a mindless brute. But honest to god’s truth (Dazai was an atheist for crying out loud), he wanted nothing more than to punch Saigiku in his self righteous mouth. Is this the sensation Chuuya felt constantly? No wonder the ginger was always cranky.
He crossed his arms, his half chewed off nails digging into his skin past his bloodstained dress shirt, “I lost a friend, my boss killed him for political advantage and to drive me out of the mafia. I was a threat to him and he wanted me gone. I would’ve already jumped off a bridge and to the sweet release of death if I didn’t promise him I would try to become a good man.”
His lip almost curled up in disgust, Dazai hated feeling small and helpless and there was a lot of that going around lately, “Happy?”
Saigiku seemed to be genuinely thinking, not like he was pretending to be in thought but as if he actually was pondering something. Dazai didn’t really give a shit what exactly, he just wanted to know if he intended to let him go.
“Legally, I cannot let you leave, I’m sure you understand.” You’ve gotta be kidding.
“However,” he went on to add, like anything would make this better. To be honest Dazai would probably fight him instead of going quietly just to get a few hits in for the satisfaction. Saigiku smiled again, an ugly smile really, “This doesn’t have to end so bad now does it?”
“You want to live a life as a good man in the memory of your friend, I want to end your life as a criminal. I’m sure if I make your resume sound more appealing and use a little convincing and charm, I could convince my boss to hire you.”
He blinked, because honestly, he was not expecting that. Not only had Saigiku managed to sneak up on him, trap him, and expose him, but he had also managed to shock him too. All within one conversation. As much as Dazai already hated him he was deeply intrigued, and it wasn’t like he was in the position to say no.
“Ironically enough,” Dazai said drily, “I’m in the job market right now.”
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