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It’s dark when Kunikida meets him.
It’s barely six o’clock, but the sun is hidden behind the roiling storm clouds sitting ominously in the sky. The air is thick and heavy, and the turbulent winds carry with them the metallic scent of rain. In short: it is not a good day.
Kunikida fishes through his bag for his umbrella.
His apartment is close enough to the Armed Detective Agency that he can walk home after work instead of taking the bus, and he regrets it now. But if he wanted to take the bus home, it would have meant waiting another half an hour, and Kunikida has places to be; a schedule that must be adhered to. Though he has a sneaking suspicion Katai will cancel on him, given the oncoming rain. The forecast hadn’t predicted a storm—it was supposed to be partly cloudy, clear by evening.
Kunikida looks up at the sky. It is certainly not partly cloudy.
It feels like a cold winter’s day instead of late spring. The wind cuts easily through his clothes, leaving him shivering. He sees the rain before he feels it—tiny splashes on the sidewalk, light and sparse, but Kunikida knows how these things go, so he opens his umbrella before the storm truly begins.
Sure enough, the light shower quickly evolves into a veritable downpour, falling in torrents of fat, heavy drops. Passersby pull up the collars of their jackets and duck under storefront ledges, desperate to escape the rain. Kunikida frowns. Only a fool would forget an umbrella, no matter the forecast.
It’s only a short walk home, but the buffeting winds are against him, and his umbrella wavers in the squall, fighting against the gale. It might be easier to let himself get soaked than fight with it—it feels inevitable when the wretched thing turns itself inside out.
Kunikida ducks into an alleyway to escape the rain while he attempts to fix it, though it feels somewhat pointless when venturing back out into the rain will surely end with the same outcome: his umbrella useless, and Kunikida soaked.
“Hey, stranger,” someone says. Kunikida does not jump, but it’s a close thing. “Beautiful weather, isn’t it?”
In the darkness of the alleyway, sheltered by the shadow of the brick wall behind him, there stands a man: tall and dark-haired, wearing a tan trench coat. Bandages cover his throat and wrists. There isn’t enough light to discern much of his face, but Kunikida makes out dark eyes and a wide, closed-mouth smile.
“I wouldn’t call it beautiful,” Kunikida replies, still wrestling with his umbrella. For reasons he can’t pinpoint, something about the man puts him on edge, and he has long since learned to trust his instincts.
“You don’t like the rain?” the man asks, voice dripping with feigned sincerity. He speaks like there’s some joke that Kunikida isn’t in on. Kunikida’s jaw tics.
“I don’t.”
“A shame,” the man sighs. He takes a step closer to Kunikida, hands clasped behind his back. “It would be fitting to die on a day like today. Don’t you agree?”
“To—what? Of course not.” Is this guy suicidal? Or just crazy? Kunikida steps back as the man steps closer, squinting at the man’s face. The light from the street reaches him now, and Kunikida freezes—his eyes, which Kunikida thought were a dark brown, are really a deep, piercing red. A vampire. The hair on the back of Kunikida’s neck rises.
Before he can react, the man raises his hands in immediate surrender. He still appears strangely cheery, but now his jovial grin shows teeth—fangs.
“I know you’re from the ADA. You hunt things like me,” the man says. “So I’m turning myself in. Ta-da!” He lowers his arms and presents his hands pressed together at the wrist and palms-up, as if he expects Kunikida to handcuff him.
“You followed me?” Kunikida asks, ignoring the latter part of his statement.
“Of course not. That would be creepy of me. I just knew you’d be here.” Impossibly, the man smiles wider. “So? What do you say?”
Slowly, Kunikida reaches for the dagger hidden in his coat. The man watches his movements eagerly.
“Just make it quick, please. Painless.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Kunikida informs him, frowning.
“You’re not?”
The man is a vampire, but it doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer. It wouldn’t be right to kill someone based on their species alone, and if the man was as familiar with the ADA as he claimed, he’d know that—but how much does he know about the Agency?
“How did you know I’d be here?” he tries again.
“A magician never reveals his secrets,” the man teases, and then adds: “You walk this way every night and your umbrella is pretty cheap. I figured you’d stop somewhere around here once it inevitably fell apart.”
Maybe Kunikida will kill him after all—not for his vampirism, but because he’s so goddamned annoying. “You thought that would make you come off as less creepy?” He shakes his head. That can be addressed later. “Why do you want me to kill you?”
“Because it’s a dream of mine to die at the hands of a beautiful, blond man,” the man says like he’s confessing a secret. “Also, I’ve killed more people than you could possibly count. So I deserve it, right?” His voice doesn’t change as he says it; he’s still as affable as before. But his words send a chill through Kunikida.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Kunikida repeats slowly. The man could be lying; he’s clearly suicidal. He might say anything to get Kunikida to do what he wants. He might not be in his right mind. “Come back to the ADA with me,” Kunikida offers, because he can’t just leave the man, even if he won’t kill him outright.
“Ah, no dice. I was hoping to go quickly. No paperwork, you know?” The man sighs and drops his hands to his side. “And look—the rain has stopped, so I have to get going. Burning alive in the sunlight is not how I’d like to go. I’ll see you around, Kunikida—let me know if you change your mind!”
Kunikida looks up, and sure enough, the rain has stopped. A ray of sun peeks out from between the clouds. When he returns his gaze to the alleyway, the man is gone.
He checks the time on his phone. He’s late—not that he expected Katai to show anyway.
No one at the ADA has ever met a tall, bandaged vampire, and certainly not a suicidal one.
“And he knew your name?” Atsushi asks, brows furrowed.
Kunikida nods. “He was familiar with the organization, too.”
“That isn’t unusual,” Tanizaki points out reasonably.
It isn’t. But something about his familiarity with Kunikida and the ADA puts Kunikida on edge anyway—instinct, or intuition. The bandaged vampire isn’t some harmless nobody. He’s dangerous, and his true intentions are a mystery. Even if he was telling the truth about wanting to die, he must have ulterior motives.
“Do you think he’s involved with the Port Mafia?” Atsushi wonders.
After a pause, Kunikida replies, “I doubt things would have gone so peacefully if he were.”
The sky is clear when Kunikida meets him again, just outside his apartment building. One side of his face is illuminated by the silvery moonlight; the eye engulfed in darkness seems to reflect light, like an animal’s. He stands by the front door, leaning back on the brick wall and smoking.
“No smoking within ten feet of the building,” Kunikida says, scowling. He’s never seen a vampire smoke before.
The man takes another drag before dropping it to the ground and stamping it out with his heel. Again, he raises his hands in surrender, and Kunikida notices that they’re shaking, just barely. “Punish me, officer.”
Kunikida glances around, but no one on the street is paying attention to them. “I won’t kill you for smoking.”
“What a shame.” The man lets his hands fall. His shaggy hair falls over his face, but he makes no move to push it away. “That was my last cigarette, you know. Won’t you buy me another pack?”
Kunikida scoffs. “Absolutely not.”
The man stares for a moment. His eyes really are unsettling, entirely unrelated to their dark red hue or inhuman glint. Kunikida feels drawn in, like if he looks away for even a second he’ll miss something.
Soon, it becomes clear that the man doesn’t plan on responding, and Kunikida wonders why the man is here, or what he should do. Something tells him that if things got physical, he’d be at a disadvantage, and besides: starting an altercation in the street wouldn’t be wise.
“What do you want?” he asks finally.
Unsurprisingly, the man replies, “You know what I want.”
“Who are you?”
“How rude of me.” The man bows at the waist in apology and Kunikida jumps back, alarmed at the proximity. When he stands upright again, he’s smiling that same cheshire grin. “Dazai Osamu, at your service. If you aren’t going to buy me cigarettes, will you at least invite me in?”
It’s a myth that vampires can’t enter places uninvited, but Dazai’s request suddenly makes Kunikida starkly aware of the fact that Dazai knows where he lives, somehow, and knows his habits well enough to predict what alleyway he’d duck into during a storm.
“I am not inviting you into my home,” Kunikida bites out, “are you insane? Don’t answer that. Just tell me what you want or leave me alone.”
“I already told you,” Dazai says, looking irritated in the way a stage actor does: with overexaggerated facial expressions and broad movements, mouth twisted into a scowl and brows furrowed. But the expression melts into his signature fanged smile when he goes on, “my dream is to die at the hands of a beautiful, blond man.”
“I know that’s bullshit. You wouldn’t go through the trouble of stalking me if all you wanted was to die.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Dazai sounds thoughtful. “I’m sure you know how hard it is to kill us. Do you think I want to drive a stake through my own heart? Burn myself alive? I would prefer to die while looking at something beautiful.” He raises a hand to his heart and lets his head fall forward before snapping back upright. “And I’m offended, Kunikida. I’m not stalking you. I’m courting you! Do you not feed wooed?”
“Something is very wrong with you,” Kunikida says gravely, clenching his hands into fists at his sides to calm himself. “If you know anything about the ADA, you know that I won’t kill you for no reason. So stop with these foolish games and tell me why you’re really here.”
“Ah, yes. Atsushi, right? The little fledgeling. Your boss took him in, even after everything he did.”
Young vampires lack the kind of control that comes with age but have double the bloodlust; at first, Atsushi wreaked havoc akin to a natural disaster. But he was young, and scared, and not in control of himself. Kunikida feels the need to defend his junior, hesitant though he was to take him on in the first place. “No one was there to watch over him. He was turned and left to fend for himself.”
“Poor thing,” Dazai pouts, but his thoughts seem to be elsewhere. “Hey, Kunikida, do you think I can call myself a vegetarian since I don’t eat meat?”
The sudden change in subject sends Kunikida reeling. “What?”
“I asked, do you think I can call myself a vegetarian since—”
“I heard you the first time,” Kunikida interrupts. “Do you want anything, or can I go home?”
Dazai sighs. “I suppose I’ll get out of your hair. But you owe me cigarettes.”
Kunikida doesn’t have time to waste thinking about Dazai. He has a schedule to uphold; a job to do; a fledgeling vampire to keep in line.
“Kunikida,” Atsushi says nervously as they walk down the street, “you seem distracted.”
“I am not distracted,” Kunikida all but spits. Everything has gone well today: Ranpo has been surprisingly cooperative, Kenji finished a job sooner than expected, and he and Atsushi are about to be five minutes early. But Kunikida feels off-kilter.
Atsushi seems to flinch at his tone, but quickly gathers himself. “I understand. I mean, I would be pretty freaked out too if someone was—was stalking me!”
“I am not freaked out,” Kunikida mutters. “Focus on why we’re here.”
“Of course,” Atsushi agrees. “The body was drained, right?”
And left on the roof of a veterinary clinic, flayed open. Exsanguinated corpses are usually handed off to the ADA instead of being dealt with by the police, and this case seems particularly gruesome. He and Atsushi are first investigating the area where the body was found, and then interviewing persons of interest.
Like he’d said to Dazai, the ADA don’t kill vampires for no reason; they hunt down the particularly bloodthirsty ones that no one else has the skills to deal with. Not all vampires kill—in fact, finding a dry husk of a corpse like this one is rare. The vast majority of the nightwalker population live peacefully, or at the very least, don’t draw attention to themselves; a corpse, especially one so brutally ended, is anything but subtle.
The receptionist directs them to the fire escape, the only way up to the roof. The victim had been a vet tech at the clinic, apparently, and was well-liked by her coworkers. No one had a grudge against her, and she wasn’t involved in anything dangerous, at least, not anything anyone could find.
The fire escape creaks as they scale it; Atsushi is ahead of Kunikida, but he stops just before reaching the top.
“Kunikida,” Atsushi says cautiously, “I thought we were the only ones investigating? And… I thought they removed the body?”
“What are you talking about?” Kunikida asks, but when he emerges onto the rooftop, the meaning of Atsushi’s words becomes immediately clear. There stands Dazai, looming over a bloodied corpse.
“I brought you a gift,” Dazai coos.
“If you know half as much about me as you pretend to, you’d know I won’t tolerate you interfering with my job,” Kunikida hisses. “Did you think this would endear you to me? Presenting me with a corpse?”
Dazai deflates, shoulders drooping and head dropping. “I guess I misjudged. Next time, I’ll bring you flowers.”
“Um,” Atsushi says.
“You must be Atsushi! I’m sure Kunikida has told you all about me. Dazai.” Dazai seems to volley back and forth between despondence and alarming cheer; which one is the truth? Or is all of it a facade Dazai is putting on?
“Dazai?” Atsushi echoes.
“Call Yosano,” Kunikida instructs him. “I’ll deal with this.”
Atsushi nods hesitantly and takes out his phone. Kunikida glares at Dazai, who squints up at the cloudy sky. It’s at that moment Kunikida remembers—“What are you doing out during the daytime?”
“Ae you worried about me? It’s cloudy. I’ll survive.”
Kunikida supposes that Dazai wouldn’t mind much if he didn’t survive, anyway. He shakes his head to clear it. “Why did you kill him?”
“He did it,” Dazai says, like it’s obvious. “I solved the mystery for you. It was Plum, in the study, with the candlestick.” He looks down at the blood pooling at his feet. “Or maybe Scarlet.”
“You can’t just—” Kunikida cuts himself off, frustrated. He needs to bring Dazai into the ADA. He needs to get a straight answer out of him. He needs to—
“Have I made you speechless?” Dazai asks, batting his eyelashes.
“Ugh!”
Dazai follows Kunikida back to the ADA willingly, but they have no reason to keep him when—
“He was right!” Ranpo announces, sounding a little off-put. “On all counts.” Somehow, Kunikida expected it, but it grates on him all the same—to know that Dazai figured it out so quickly, that Dazai is doing his job for him.
Since there is no way to justify holding him, Dazai walks out of the ADA with an obnoxious little wave and a smile.
Kunikida does not follow him.
Somehow, Kunikida runs into him everywhere: on the way home from work, in the middle of jobs, and this time, even at the grocery store.
“I miss eating,” Dazai laments when he appears suddenly at Kunikida’s shoulder, like a particularly annoying ghoul. This time, Kunikida doesn’t jump.
“I miss when you didn’t bother me constantly,” Kunikida replies easily, plucking a bottle of soy sauce off the shelf and dropping it into his basket.
“Blood all tastes the same, you know?” Dazai goes on like he hadn’t heard Kunikida at all. He leans his head onto Kunikida’s shoulder, awkwardly keeping it there even as Kunikida keeps walking. “I used to love candy. And hitsumabushi. And cigarettes.”
“Cigarettes aren’t food. Don’t you still smoke?”
Dazai huffs. “It doesn’t taste like it used to, and it’s not like I’ll die from it.”
“Which is the goal, obviously,” Kunikida mutters.
Dazai smiles brightly. “You’re finally getting it!”
Kunikida ignores him. Dazai continues to make a nuisance of himself—dropping random items into Kunikida’s basket, criticizing the food he picks, and standing in his way.
For some reason, when Kunikida is checking out, he doesn’t put the pack of cigarettes he finds beneath the soba noodles back. He buys them, even if it puts him a little over his allotted budget.
“Kunikida,” Naomi says, brows furrowed, “someone’s asking for you.”
This is unusual. It’s not that no one enlists the ADA’s services—it’s just that usually, by the time they’re phoned in, it’s the police or the coroner making the call. It’s even less common for people to know the staff by name, well enough to ask for someone in specific.
So Kunikida shouldn’t be surprised when it’s Dazai that saunters over to his desk, hands shoved into the pockets of his trenchcoat. He looks uncharacteristically morose; his mouth is pressed into a thin line and his shoulders droop. The bandages around his wrist are frayed, like he’s been worrying at them.
If Kunikida wasn’t Kunikida, and Dazai wasn’t Dazai, Kunikida might almost be concerned.
“What do you want?” Kunikida asks. Atsushi looks on curiously, and Dazai flashes him a smile alarming in its insincerity before turning back to Kunikida.
“I want to go for a walk,” Dazai says plainly. “I even brought an umbrella.” He demonstrates this by opening his coat to show an umbrella tucked into an inside pocket.
Kunikida glances out the window at the bright sky peppered with fluffy, unthreatening clouds; how had Dazai gotten here? His jaw tics; his fingers twitch. “It’s not going to rain. And I have work.”
“Oh, but this is work. See, I have the location of someone you’ll want to take in.” Dazai shivers, an overexaggerated expression of fear. “He’s a killer.”
Kunikida has paperwork. He has a case to work on. He has Atsushi to watch over. He has a schedule. He has morals. Dazai is probably lying through his teeth, dragging Kunikida along for his annoying and inscrutable agenda.
He stands anyway, unable to put Dazai’s frayed bandages to the back of his mind, and follows him outside. It wasn’t supposed to rain—Kunikida knows. He checked. But Dazai must have a sixth sense for these things, because the sky empties itself onto them, and Dazai sweeps Kunikida under his umbrella. Their shoulders brush with each step.
“I haven’t heard anything about a killer,” Kunikida says when it becomes clear Dazai doesn’t plan on speaking. “You’re too cryptic.”
Dazai, bizarrely, preens under Kunikida’s words, though his meaning was closer to an insult than a compliment. “Ah, you know all about him,” Dazai replies, no less vague than before.
“Why don’t you just ask him to kill you?” Kunikida asks. “Since you want to die so badly.”
“How many times have I told you? I want to die painlessly, at the—”
“At the hands of a beautiful, blond man, I’ve heard,” Kunikida interrupts, irritated. “So he’s violent?”
Dazai nods. “Very,” he says, lowering his voice. “He’s like the boogeyman. A very dangerous man.”
Kunikida often feels like he and Dazai are having two different conversations despite speaking directly to each other, and this time is no different. He must be missing some key piece of whatever puzzle Dazai has decided he needs to solve—but what?
Things only become more confusing when Dazai leads him to a restaurant; a lunch spot popular at the Agency for its proximity. He follows Dazai to a table tucked into the back, and notices the right side of his coat is wet, like he’d let the rain hit him. Kunikida is still dry, head to toe.
“You took me out to lunch,” Kunikida says flatly, standing by the table. “I’m leaving. You’re wasting my time.”
“Ah, you work too much, Kunikida. You need a break! Besides, I wasn’t lying.”
Kunikida pauses. Squints. Crosses his arms. “You weren’t?”
“I’m a killer,” he explains. “A violent one. A boogeyman. A dangerous man. And I’m laying myself at your feet.” He puts on an angelic smile. “What do you say?”
Kunikida still doesn’t sit. Raising his voice, he hisses, “For the last time, I am not going to kill you, so stop asking.”
The waitress, whose presence Kunikida had not noticed, says in a small, frightened voice, “Um… can I get you anything to drink?”
Kunikida needs coffee. He doesn’t need to look at the menu; he orders the same thing every time. When Dazai doesn’t ask for anything, it occurs to Kunikida that Dazai can’t eat, and has no reason to be at a restaurant at all.
“Maybe I came here to drink your blood,” Dazai says when Kunikida points this out. “That would be delicious. You smell really good, you know.”
“You won’t drink my blood,” Kunikida accuses.
Dazai’s eyebrows climb up near his hairline. “Wouldn’t I? You’re too trusting, Kunikida.”
“I’m not naive. You’re just an idiot. And harmless.” It occurs to him that Dazai isn’t harmless. Though he hasn’t seen Dazai do anything particularly violent, something dark hangs over him like a shadow. But Kunikida doesn’t feel unsafe; his hackles no longer rise when Dazai walks into the room. The strange, bandaged vampire has gone from an unknown variable and genuine threat to tall, creepy nuisance.
“You’d be the first to say that,” Dazai replies, delighted. He leans closer to Kunikida across the table and starts stage-whispering, like he’s telling a secret. “Do you have a death wish, too? Hiring Atsushi, hanging out with me… it makes one wonder!”
“I do not. Don’t talk about Atsushi like that, and if you really intended to hurt me, you’d have done something by now.” Kunikida takes a sip of his coffee. “You’re just annoying.”
“I’m hurt! My heart, it’s breaking! Kunikida!” Dazai goes boneless, letting his head drop onto the table and his arms to his sides. Muffled, he goes on, “Does Atsushi know you’ve adopted him?”
Kunikida slams his coffee onto the table, jostling Dazai. “I haven’t done anything of the sort. I don’t even like him that much. I just don’t think he deserves to die because of his past mistakes. Is that so hard for you to believe in your messed-up brain?”
Dazai doesn’t lift his head. “I need a cigarette.”
“You’re not leaving without paying.”
“I’m paying?”
“You brought me here and wanted me to pay?!”
A rhythmic knock sounds at Kunikida’s front door. He was about to go to sleep; he’d gotten home late and didn’t have time to cook, but truthfully, he doesn’t have the energy, and he’d choose a full night’s sleep over dinner. He wants to go to bed—but hardly anyone knows his address, and on the off chance it’s someone from the Agency, he looks through the peephole—
To find Dazai. In his hands is a messy bouquet of flowers—bougainvilleas, bright magenta.
“Go away,” Kunikida says when he opens the door.
“But I wanted to see you,” Dazai replies. Kunikida only stares. When there comes no reply, Dazai starts to whine: “Kunikida, let me in, Kunikidaaaaaa—”
“Fine. Just be quiet.”
A second glance reveals that the bouquet in Dazai’s hands is barely a bouquet at all—the roots are still attached, caked with earth, like Dazai had picked them straight out of someone’s garden. He must have, because his fingernails have dirt underneath them, and the knees of his pants are scuffed like he was kneeling.
“Who did you steal these from,” Kunikida demands, trying very hard to keep his voice even.
“I’m offended that you would even—”
“Dazai.”
“Your neighbour.” He’s not even ashamed. He’s smiling his terrible, smug, fanged smile. He holds the flowers out; dirt falls onto the floor.
“I can’t believe you,” Kunikida mutters. He should throw the flowers out. He should apologize to his neighbour. He should—he should find the scissors, the ones he doesn’t use for food, so that he can cut the roots off of the bougainvilleas.
He doesn’t have a vase to put them in. No one’s ever given him flowers before.
He settles for filling a tall glass with water and putting them there. When he turns back to Dazai, he notices that Dazai looks… wilted, a contrast to the bright, lively pink flowers now sitting on the table.
“Is something wrong?” He knows what the answer will be, but asks it anyway.
“Everything is beautiful,” Dazai replies, but his hands, covered in dirt, are shaking, and his bottom lip, dry and pale, is bleeding where his fangs dig into it.
“You’re thirsty,” Kunikida infers. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I don’t eat, Kunikida, I devour. Consume. Destroy. Et cetera.” Dazai makes himself at home at the table, slumping into the chair like he’s suddenly deflated, and plucks off a bougainvillea petal with great concentration.
“Stop whining. Starving yourself helps no one.” With some reluctance, Kunikida sits beside him and steals the petal from his hands. “You’ve desecrated these flowers enough. Now—are you thirsty?”
“Are you afraid I’ll drink your blood? That I’ll lose control, like your little Atsushi? That I’ll—”
“I am not afraid of you drinking my blood. I am offering it,” Kunikida interrupts. “You’re hungry.”
Dazai doesn’t miss a beat. “Kunikida, I’m flattered. Truly! But I have to reject your advances. In fact, it’s getting late. I need to get going. Places to be, innocents to disembowel, the like.” He stands unsteadily. “See you around!”
When Dazai disappears for a week, and then two, Kunikida realizes that while Dazai seems to know everything about him, he doesn’t know the first thing about Dazai. It unsettles him that their relationship, shaky and nascent as it may be, is so unbalanced.
So he searches.
Only after work, and only when he has time, but he looks, and he only snaps a little when Atsushi asks about Dazai.
He finds him leaving the cemetery. It isn’t intentional. He meant to scout the neighbourhood Dazai once mentioned living in, but on the way there, a familiar tan coat nestled amongst the headstones caught his eye.
He waits until Dazai is finished to corner him, not wanting to interrupt; instead, he waits near the gates. Dazai seems to notice him immediately, somehow, which shouldn’t surprise Kunikida anymore: he looks over his shoulder and gives Kunikida a funny two-fingered salute before turning back to whoever he’s visiting for a few minutes more.
When Dazai joins him, he doesn’t look any better than the last time they spoke. His bandages are still frayed, and while his face betrays no emotion, Kunikida gets the sense that something is wrong.
“Kunikida missed me, I see,” Dazai says. “What are you doing in my neighbourhood?” He starts walking without warning, and Kunikida follows, bewildered at Dazai’s strange mood. He walks quickly, like he has somewhere to be, or like he’s trying to get away from Kunikida, which doesn’t make any sense.
“I was looking for you,” Kunikida says sharply, grabbing Dazai’s arm. “You left so suddenly, and you didn’t look well. You need to take care of yourself. And be a better guest.”
Dazai doesn’t react to Kunikida’s touch; for some reason, Kunikida thought he would, that Dazai might freeze up, or lean into it and tease Kunikida. But if he notices it, he doesn’t make any acknowledgement. “Kunikida was worried about me?” Dazai asks.
“You’re an idiot,” Kunikida replies, for a lack of anything nicer to say. Because he was worried, for some godforsaken reason. Dazai is… strange. Unpredictable. Annoying. Kind of creepy. But Kunikida has come to enjoy his presence, somehow, as long as he ignores Dazai when he begs for Kunikida to end his life, and Dazai’s smoking, and the way he always seems to know exactly where Kunikida will be.
“I’m the biggest idiot there is,” Dazai agrees. He hasn’t slowed his pace, and Kunikida hasn’t let go of him, so Kunikida is awkwardly speed-walking just behind him while Dazai keeps talking like nothing odd is going on. “Do you know who I was visiting back there?”
“Who?”
Dazai stops to think for a moment. “Maybe I was visiting one of my victims. Do you know how many people I’ve killed? Do you know how many cemeteries I’ve filled with my own hands?” He turns back to look at Kunikida for a moment, and his expression is as bright as ever. But now Kunikida doesn’t have to push past the fear; all he feels is sympathy, and confusion, and a little fondness.
“You can’t goad me into killing you. I won’t indulge you.” Why won’t Dazai let this go? Why won’t he take Kunikida’s words to heart? He can’t understand why Dazai keeps trying, or what he stands to gain from the fucked-up game he insists on dragging out.
“But you indulge me all the time,” Dazai points out. Suddenly, he shakes Kunikida’s hand off of his arm and does the unthinkable—he takes it in his. His hand is cold and corpselike and still a little shaky, and he seems to be leading Kunikida somewhere with intent.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you back to my evil lair, where I’m going to exsanguinate you.”
“Don’t you take anything seriously? Tell me where we’re going.” They’re drawing attention to themselves now, with Dazai half-running and leading Kunikida by the hand. It feels silly; childlike.
Dazai doesn’t tell him where they’re going. Normally, Kunikida would keep pushing. He likes to have an itinerary, a schedule, or at least an idea of what’s about to happen to him, and maybe he’s a little anxious to find out where Dazai’s taking him—but he finds that, for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t care.
Dazai doesn’t have a phone. Or, he claims that he doesn’t. Kunikida thinks he’s probably lying. At the very least, Dazai won’t admit to having a phone, so when Kunikida wants to get in contact with him, he can’t. It’s like when he disappeared for two weeks, except this time, Kunikida isn’t worried about him, he just…
Well.
Kunikida doesn’t want to think about that.
But much like his ability to predict the rain, Dazai must have a sixth sense for these things, because he shows up at Kunikida’s door just when Kunikida starts to wonder if he should check the cemetery.
“Kunikida,” Dazai says when Kunikida opens the door, “I have something to tell you.”
He’s just as Dazai as always: he looks pleased with himself, and he’s filled with a frenetic kind of energy that has him bouncing on his heels.
Kunikida lets him inside. “What is it? I was just about to make dinner.” Which is not quite true; he was just about to go looking for Dazai.
“Ah, it can wait,” Dazai replies. “What are you making?”
“Hitsumabushi,” Kunikida replies, looking away.
Dazai makes himself comfortable at Kunikida’s kitchen table and chatters on about nothing. He doesn’t talk much about himself; instead, he talks about the dog that chased him down the street, and the time he jumped off a bridge and got fished out by a stranger, and how someone broke into his apartment and got so frightened they left without taking anything.
“So what were you going to tell me?” Kunikida asks once dinner is finished and Dazai has mellowed out. It felt kind of weird to eat in front of Dazai when Dazai himself can’t eat, but it’s not the first time he’s done it, and Dazai hardly seems like the type to care for social conventions.
“Oh, right,” Dazai says. He sighs. “Kunikida, I used to be an executive in the Port Mafia. And I’ve been stalking you. And I want to drink your blood. And I want to eat your hitsumabushi. And I—”
“Please stop talking,” Kunikida interrupts empathetically. “You’re the most annoying bastard I’ve ever met.” Dazai worked for the Port Mafia? Was an executive in the Port Mafia?
But he’s clearly repentant, to the point of suicidality. And he refused to drink Kunikida’s blood even when he offered it. He seems horribly, terribly human for a self-professed mass murderer.
For the first time, Dazai listens to Kunikida, miming zipping his mouth shut.
“I want you to come work at the Agency,” Kunikida announces.
Dazai frowns.
“And I want you to drink my blood.”
Dazai’s lips stay firmly closed.
“You can talk now.”
“You smell so good,” Dazai says. “I can’t drink your blood.”
“You should take the things you want, Dazai.”
Dazai blinks. His eyes trail down to Kunikida’s throat. “What I want is to die at the hands of a beautiful, blond man.”
“I’m not going to kill you, but—”
Dazai’s fangs are sharp at Kunikida’s throat. It hurts, but in a faraway sort of way, like it’s happening to someone else. The pain fades in comparison to Dazai’s calloused hands, one wrapped around his shoulder and one pressed against the other side of his throat.
Kunikida thinks he should probably be disturbed by the sight of his blood on Dazai’s lips, but he isn’t. Dazai kisses him, brief and chaste, and Kunikida raises a hand to his lips. His fingers come away red.
“I suppose that wasn’t so bad,” Dazai admits. “If I come to work at the Agency, will you be my boss? We could have an illicit, unadvisable, passionate affair.”
“Nevermind,” Kunikida hisses. “I don’t even know why I asked.”
“Too late,” Dazai teases. “I suppose if you won’t kill me, this is second best.”