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Dazai is fourteen, and he has never felt more alone. Yokohama is quiet, but his head never is. There’s never been any escape from the knowledge that he isn’t enough. That something like him never could be.
He stares at the bandages wrapping his arms, barely visible under the light of the moon. The blood seeping through them is red, but in this dark, it looks black.
When Chuuya barges in and cleans him up and they return to their usual bickering, it feels like the hole in his heart is patched up— held by weak stitches, maybe— but better all the same.
The emptiness returns as soon as Dazai steps into the shower. He can’t even turn the lights on (not that they’d work anyway) for fear of seeing himself in the mirror, bleeding and bruised and—
Dazai chokes down the lump in his throat as he turns to the side, force of habit, inspecting how the curve of his ribs isn’t quite prominent enough; how there’s still just a little too much fat on his stomach. He keeps staring into the mirror as he unravels his bandages, trying to check if there’s any difference from a few days prior. There isn’t, of course, because he just lacks so much fucking self control that he can’t just stop himself from piling more and more and more fat onto his body.
When he steps into the shower, he makes sure to turn the water up until it’s scalding.
From the sofa, the look Chuuya gives Dazai after he walks into the living room, skin red from the heat and no bandages covering his arms, is worth it. He’s practically laid himself bare.
Revelling in the sickening joy that now Chuuya has seen this pathetic side of him, knowing that Chuuya will never come back after this— and then Dazai will be alone like he’s always deserved. He tries to walk back out of the room too, just to prove his point, but that plan is cut short when he nearly collapses into Chuuya’s side. He tries to push himself up, but his arms feel like jelly, and he falls back onto the couch.
Honestly he shouldn’t care about this, about Chuuya, but the humiliation of nearly fainting in front of his new partner (who definitely already hates him) stings. Either way, it doesn’t really matter, because in the morning, he is gone.
—————
Nothing good lasts forever, of course— not that anything particularly good has ever really happened to Dazai before, for that matter. But the mafia wasn’t as awful when he had Chuuya and Odasaku to shoulder the burden with him.
But the Agency is okay. The two years he’d spent in hiding were arguably the worst he’d experienced. The ‘safe house’ he stayed at could barely even be classed as a house; rather a glorified single room that was barely even wide enough to lay down in. At night, the cold was near unbearable, too, and the whole situation reminded Dazai of that damn shipping container from when he was sixteen, so he’s more than happy to be out now.
The Agency is okay. He's fallen into a routine again, and it feels good to be useful. Fukuzawa has already praised Dazai’s intellect, and his strategising skills, and the thirteen year old in him is overjoyed. It feels good to be useful. The thing is though, if he’s of no help to the agency anymore, they’ll kick him out, and he’ll be on the streets— or worse— in the mafia again.
So he starts coming into work early, stops slacking off or handing over his reports onto the Tanizakis. He pays attention in meetings, and reads textbooks in his free time, and talks strategy with Ranpo. It feels good to be useful.
There’s really no downside to these changes, either, because when Dazai looks in the mirror every day, he starts to like what he sees. His watch doesn’t stay on his wrist anymore, and he’s had to buy new slacks because the old ones were practically falling off him, and he’s had to punch at least four holes into his belt. There’s no time for eating, when he has to be useful. If No Longer Human doesn’t help anymore, and he’s not supposed to hurt people anymore, and nobody is supposed to use him like that anymore, he can just be useful in other ways. It feels good to be useful.
After a while, it’s obvious that nobody at the Agency has caught on, and it’s exhilarating in some sick way; a game of sorts, to see how far he can take his health before somebody says something. It’s undeniably exciting, the emptiness of his stomach, the lightheadedness, the tremors. The way he can push himself for days, on water and the sharp edges of a razor, only succumbing to the hunger when he’s on the verge of passing out.
Sometimes, Ranpo eyes him suspiciously when Dazai walks in, trying not to let the dizziness permeate his gait after a few days of not eating or sleeping. But he is nothing if not an actor.
And it’s not like he’s doing anything wrong, anyway.
It feels good to be useful.
———————
One day, Ranpo offers Dazai a granola bar, muttering with feigned annoyance that the President had gotten the wrong flavour and that he “only likes the strawberry one with the chocolate chips in it”.
He accepts it with a porcelain smile, not wanting to raise any suspicions.
Ranpo is smart, but so is Dazai; refusing food too often is just going to raise eyebrows. Plus, it’s only one granola bar.
Still, the weight of it bores a hole in his pocket as he walks back to his desk.
When Ranpo’s back is turned, determinedly focusing on braiding Atsushi’s hair, he scans the packet for the calories and— fuck.
The trash can next to his table is looking a little too empty, anyway.
——————
The sun sets, the moon rises, and Dazai can’t get back to sleep. Actually, his insomnia only worsened when he left the mafia— and so did the nightmares. Sleeping is arguably worse than being awake, especially when he’s haunted by scalpels and cold metal tables and blood that will always be mafia black. This isn’t the first time he’s woken up sweat-soaked and panting, and it definitely won’t be the last. But it’s too late to try and get back to sleep now anyway; the sun is starting to creep out from the horizon, shrouded by clouds and fog. A new day, and the cycle repeats.
Like clockwork.
He gets up, ignoring the way his legs protest when he almost falls out of bed, and makes his way to the bathroom. The scale in the corner and the mirror at his side bore holes into his body. He tries to ignore them. Really, he should step on the scales, face the consequences of the night he spent at Lupin yesterday. More than anything, he wants someone to grab him by the chin, to jerk his head towards the mirror— cracks and all— and force him to look at what he’s done to himself. It’s disgusting. There’s still coatings of fat on his body, eclipsing his bones— his beauty. He can only be perfect when he is thin. And so he must enjoy the process; the sickening glee that thrums in his veins when he skips another meal, when he puts off eating for another day, when his head spins and his stomach churns. He must endure— it’s for the greater good.
Undoubtedly, the Agency thinks he’s more useful now too— not eating means more time to file paperwork, more time to practise fighting, more time to read, to study, to be better. None of them can call him a deadbeat anymore, or a pity hire, because he’s arguably working more than all of them combined.
And it feels so good to be useful.
——————
Sometimes, Dazai feels like he’s betraying Odasaku. He made a promise, that day— no more killing.
As he chugs down yet another mug of salt water, curled up in the corner of his bedroom, he wonders if he ever really stopped.
”Just to kill the appetite” has become his new mantra, and how laughably veracious is it?
Because that’s exactly what it feels like: choking down a feeble creature with blood marred hands and an empty core. Crushing its exposed neck, digging his fingers into its soft flesh and tearing it apart. Tearing him apart. He supposes he never really grew out of being a murderer— just switched the target to his own soul.
—————