Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The job was, on paper, fairly simple; an apartment put on the market for the nth time, and every time someone showed up to view it, there’d be a rustling and bustling like no one’s business, and the would-be apartment owners would swear it was haunted or at least had an infestation problem of some kind despite what all the reports said. Somehow, somewhere, the real estate agent had gotten into contact with someone that knew someone that could hook them up with another contact that had contacted Chuuya’s boss.

Their business ran through mouth to mouth recommendations, usually in hushed corners, or confusing but specific business cards left at random bookstores that specialized in the occult. It wasn’t specifically lucrative seeing as most people, even those identifying as witches nowadays, didn’t truly believe in ghosts and thus obviously didn’t trust in self-proclaimed necromancers. But there always came a time when reason gave way to desperation, and those who needed their house to stop making noises at 2 AM at night would usually find their way to the agency to request their services. Usually they’d come in with a hint of embarrassment at even asking, but this real estate agent had come in with hair sticking in all directions and harrowed eyes, begging for help through any means possible.

When Chuuya had sneaked a look at Mori and seen his smile, he was sure the possible means were going to be a very hefty sum of money.

“It’s an easy haunting, Chuuya-kun,” Mori had said with a smile, attention already brought back to the little ghost girl beside him who was doing her very best to get his boss’ attention back on her fifth drawing for the day. Just as wonderfully hideous as the last four of her childish masterpieces. “You’ve worked here for two years, you’ve exorcised a number of spirits, even malicious ones. You won’t need any supervision for this.”

Chuuya took a deep breath.

“Boss, this specific apartment has been on the market since the sixties. It might not be a malicious spirit according to any of the countless witnesses through the years, but it’s powerful and it’s got its hooks firmly in that apartment. Getting it to leave willingly is gonna be an impossible task.”

It’s not that Chuuya didn’t have any trust in his capabilities to exorcize spirits, he was a natural, he’d been told since he started. Having unknowingly shared a body with a ghost had made his sensory capabilities higher than anyone else’s at the agency, combined with a natural affinity for sensing the supernatural. He was practically made to be a necromancer, Mori had told him once.

“Impossible task?” Mori tutted, chair swirling around to face Elise so he could properly inspect the newest Picasso. As far as Chuuya could see, it was a painting of either Chuuya or Kouyou getting decapitated. He’d put his money on it being him. That child had a way too bright imagination, or, well, dark. Incredibly dark. “I seem to recall you saying the existence of ghosts was impossible just three years back, and look at you now. Ghost-free body and masterful skills at making both bodies and apartments just as ghost-free.”

Apartments being haunted for a decade or two after a murder was normal, ghosts didn’t just disappear after having been murdered or died through complications with unfinished business remaining. Apartments being haunted for sixty years when there were no documented deaths, not even an elderly man dying in his sleep, was not normal.

“Boss, this apartment has already been exorcized once to no avail. The spirit doesn’t want to leave.”

“Chuuya-kun, go take a look, get a feel of the situation. If the ghost is incorporative, force it out using your ring. Try your best to negotiate and accommodate, and then when the spirit’s at its most satisfied, exorcize it,” Mori placated him, then threw a hand up, “and if you still can’t do that, despite your talent and very impressive resume, then you can call for backup.”

And so Chuuya was now living in a haunted apartment, the agency having bought it to avoid any unwanted scrutiny. Curious noses were inevitable, after all, it’d have been the first time the apartment was being lived in most of the tenants’ residency, but that could purely be put down to Chuuya looking like an extremely desperate student looking for accommodation.

In this part of town, students were lucky if they’d gotten a reasonably priced cupboard.

The first night, nothing had happened. It’d been quiet and extremely boring because even though the agency had made sure he had the necessary furniture to actually live there, they were also cheap skates and obviously they’d spared the expenses of a TV or basically any kind of entertainment.

The second night had gone just as badly, on paper, and Chuuya had ended up running down to the nearest 24/7 kiosk to buy himself a card game. The instagram feed had been scrolled through at least seven times, and all research he’d pulled up to entertain himself had just made him more irritated at the no-show ghost.

The next few days had gone… better in a sense. He’d been waking up to his curtains being open, waking him up at 8 AM in the morning to the blaring morning sun; the water getting cold midway through his shower; his kettle getting turned on at random times; his cards being spread far and wide as he was playing solitaire.

At the end of the first week, he was simply at his wits’ end.

“I know you’re here,” he commented lightly as his kettle was once more turned on. He really should get up and turn it off quickly, there wasn’t enough water for the minimum, and if any of the furniture was damaged upon return, he knew he’d be getting a talk. “It’s rude to not introduce yourself to your guest, you know. I’d reckon that was also true back in the sixties.”

All he got in return for his trouble was a gust of cold wind and his card moving an inch out of his reach as he moved to pick it up. He sighed.

Throughout the week, he’d been trying to look into what kind of ghost he was dealing with here. The small pranks could point to a poltergeist, but the usual banging or even knocking things over were missing from the equation. Poltergeists, though harmless, usually had a meanspirited side to their personality, particularly over longer periods of exposure to them. Chuuya had been invading the ghost’s space, their last tether to this world, for a week. A poltergeist would have never allowed its pranks to be of such banal nature for so long when it became obvious that they didn’t make him leave it alone or vacate the premises. Ectoplasms and orbs were out of the question immediately, there was no mist to be seen anywhere in the apartment nor did he ever catch a glimpse of a glowing orb in the middle of the night. The apartment did have a heating problem, but that he put down to the ghost’s pranks with the thermostat rather than a funnel ghost that was signified through cold spots; usually where the ghost had died.

No one had died in this apartment.

It truly seemed like the ghost was just that, a ghost. A ghost still tethered to this world despite having been departed from it for over half a century, unfinished business that’s not allowed it to move on and find peace.

In normal circumstances, Chuuya would feel nothing but sympathy for the lost soul.

However.

This ghost had been playing tricks on him for a week, and he knew for a fact that the ghost was taking absolute delight in watching him get more frustrated the longer the ghost was a no-show.

After sixty years, he would be damned if it hadn’t found a way to control its, albeit weak, powers. The efficiency with which it played its pranks spoke to a high level of control of its interference with the physical world, so if it wanted to, it could have shown itself days ago.

The ghost was a bastard and was delighting in that fact.

He shook his head. The ghost would probably get bored of him ignoring it soon enough and resort to more intrusive tricks soon enough. He just had to wait it out, starting with ignoring the cards being moved out of his reach and just focusing on his game.

His last straw came the eve of the second week.

He’d been trying to focus on reading a new book he’d found forgotten in one of the cupboards, and the ghost had resorted to turning his pages every time he got comfortable.

It was after the tenth time a small blow of air turned a couple of pages that he slammed the book down, snapped his fingers, one of which was wearing a black ring, and resolutely said, “reveal!”

From one moment to the other the outline of a thin man appeared next to his book, mouth already pursed as if to blow again.

Chuuya looked at him for a few seconds.

He was beautiful and… morbid.

Brown locks, eyes full of mischief, high cheekbones; see-through and yet so present. He was wearing a black coat that was stretched out behind him as he crouched beside Chuuya’s chair, and his hands, folded over the chair’s arm, were, for some reason, covered in bandages.

Maybe he’d died from burn wounds? That they had tried to treat but in vain?

As Chuuya stared at him, it looked like his hair was imperceptibly floating. Like it couldn’t decide whether it obeyed by gravity or not, each movement the ghost made was delayed in his hair by a moment. He was alive but not, dead but not, and the dichotomy couldn’t be shown any clearer than in his hair that moved as if it was underwater. Subjected to gravity, tethered to this world, but not. The brown locks looked very soft as they were moving slowly around him.

The point was that this ghost was stunning, gorgeous, and exactly someone Chuuya would have approached during his clubbing days. Hell, he’d probably even have approached him if he’d met him at the uni library.

Unfortunately, this was not a meeting in his early 20’s.

This was a ghost.

And he needed to focus on finding out how to exorcize it. Not- well, not focus on how he could date it.

He felt like slapping himself. He was a professional, not a teen or even a 23 year old with a little crush. He was a necromancer. He could help this ghost move into the afterlife, peacefully with no leftover unresolved resolutions, without any complications like telling him he was handsome.

The ghost- the man had been intently staring at the book and instead of looking up or acknowledging Chuuya, he just started blowing. The pages moved with no reaction from Chuuya to which he squinted suspiciously at.

And then he looked up at Chuuya. Chuuya looked back.

The man jumped back startled, somehow twisting himself in his jacket, leaving him sprawled out on the ground.

“So you’re the ghost.”

The man fumbled while sitting up, trying to move his jacket away from his legs, looking at him shocked and almost, he observed amusedly, betrayed. He pointed an accusing finger at him, “that was rude!”

Somehow seeing the man so animated, so alive, made a stone settle deep within Chuuya’s stomach, washing away all thoughts of how handsome the ghost was. He looked to be the same age as Chuuya, but instead of having started a new career and exploring his abilities, he was dead. He’d lived through childhood, teen years, and the beginning of his life, probably thinking he’d been in the clear, and then he’d died.

Usually the ghosts he was helping move on were elderly folks. Those who had lost contact with their children and hadn’t been able to make peace with not seeing them again for one last time, those who’d hurt someone and hadn’t had the courage to make amends until it was too late. They’d be wandering the corridors of the hospitals they’d died at, muttering about when their eldest son was gonna visit them, that hadn’t it been long enough now? He must have gotten the message about their soon-to-be demise.

Most people passed on in peace, but the few that didn’t, deserved to be helped to take the last step.

This ghost had been in this apartment for 60 years or so with no one who had been able to help him properly.

Idly, Chuuya wondered if he even knew how long he’d been in this apartment.

The ghost shook his finger. “That expression right there! Are you pitying me? You better not be pitying me!”

Chuuya kept on studying him.

His affronted expression was as obvious as it would be on anyone still alive. The ghost folded his legs under him, sitting up further, and crossed his arms, face turning to the side and- was that a pout? Was the 60 year old ghost actually pouting because Chuuya had seemed a bit sad?

Ridiculous.

“You’re not very nice, you know? Forcing me to be visible, and then won’t even talk to me when I so graciously decide to talk to you. Are you this rude to all your ghosts?”

Chuuya raised his brows. “All my ghosts?”

The ghost waved a hand in the air, like he wasn’t even gonna entertain Chuuya’s incredulity. “You reek of death like the other people who’ve come here recently.”

Recently? As far as he could tell from the research he’d been doing, there hadn’t been an attempted exorcism for at least ten years.

“You needn’t even bother trying your little tricks, I can tell you all you need to know,” the ghost said sagely, “you’re, of course, gonna try to tell me that life isn’t worth living if you’re only living it half, and that whatever is beyond this apartment would be much better for me. I’ll then, of course, ask you whatever is beyond this apartment, and you’ll tell me that you won’t know until you go yourself, and that when you do, it’ll be as pleasant as it’ll be for me. That death is just an old friend and the beyond, a new home.”

Chuuya nodded, that did sound like something that’d suit the agency’s MO.

“And I’ll tell you to shove the beyond up where the sun doesn’t shine.”

Chuuya laughed. “You’re only delaying the inevitable. Or, if you refuse to go, you’ll eventually be nothing more than a cold spot in someone’s apartment with no means for anyone to help you move on.”

“That doesn’t sound like anything I’d do.”

“Well, you won’t have a choice.”

The ghost seemed to light up at this.

“Actually, I do!” A beat. “And you’re gonna help me with that.”

Chuuya rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t know what you think a necromancer does, but we don’t help ghosts stay ghosts. We talk to you, and then help you move on and we leave.”

"You're a very hostile necromancer, you know that?", the ghost prattled on, acting as if Chuuya hadn't said a thing, "your job's so very straightforward as well. I'm the one who has died a horrible and unfair death. Such a tragedy, they were all so torn up. Especially Atsushi-kun, such a hard working kid, very responsible and eager to fulfill his duties. You could learn something from Atsushi-kun, Chuuya."

The ghost knew his name?

The bastard had probably listened to all the phone calls he’d made the past few days, feeling smug about how he was annoying Chuuya and pressing all his buttons.

"Why are you here?", he sighed, already feeling like a headache was coming on.

The ghost leaned forward, once more placing his hands on the chair’s arms. He was so close that if he were alive, Chuuya would be able to feel his breath. As he was, he could only feel the faint chill emanating from his spiritual form.

"My name is Dazai Osamu," the ghost said. His pale eyes seemed to gleam in the sunshine, and if Chuuya focused, he could see the city skyline in the window, through him. "And I want you to bring me back to life, of course."

“Absolutely not.”

“Oh, come on!,” Dazai whined from the floor.

Currently, he was laying flat on his back, limbs spread out across the carpet. A pitiful sight really.

Chuuya’s headache hadn’t gotten better in the ten minutes it’d been since Dazai’s ludicrous request.

“I already told you,” Chuuya said, letting his head fall into his hands, “I’m not trained nearly enough to be able to bring you back to life. I’m here to help you move on.”

“But necromancy!”, Dazai complained, “bringing people back is literally your job description, what have they even been teaching you?”

Necromancy, Mori had explained, was a ladder. Currently Chuuya was near the bottom, climbing up the middle of it. Helping ghosts, in whatever form they needed help, required energy, required experience. Trying to bring someone back before you knew how to relocate the supernatural energies meant you could accidentally draw on your own life force to bring someone back; thus killing yourself, and probably also leaving the ghost in the same position as before as without a necromancer to complete the ritual, they’d gradually lose their energy and return to being a specter once more.

It also didn’t help doubting yourself, it would unbalance your energies; and Chuuya more than doubted himself when it came to bringing someone back.

He’d tried it once. Never again.

“You are such a whiny brat, you know that?” Chuuya whined, “just tell me what you want your loved ones to know and go to the light.”

Dazai kicked out his foot which, of course, went through Chuuya’s shin instead of hitting as he was obviously trying to do.

“How are you seriously calling yourself a necromancer without doing the necromancer bit?”

“Necromancy doesn’t have to do with just raising the dead, idiot,” Chuuya bit back, “talking with them is also part of the description.”

Dazai shot up like hit by lightning. “Aha! So, you agree. Raising the dead is on your to-do list!”

Chuuya rolled his eyes, leaning back into the chair. “The process is complicated. It requires immense power and a high level of technical skills. Which I don’t have. It also requires you to believe in your ability to do it. Which I also don’t have.”

“So you’re a shit necromancer.”

He could have left it at that. He probably should. What would Dazai ever know of necromancy, of what it took to bring someone back? Dazai was a ghost. An incredibly stubborn, infuriating ghost that somehow had wriggled information out of Chuuya’s predecessors and found out that there indeed was a way to bring someone back.

“Listen,” Chuuya said irritably, “the skills of the necromancer are crucial to the success of the resurrection. I wouldn’t just be putting myself in danger, I’d put you in danger as well, no more beyond for both of us in the worst case scenario. And even if I did have the skills, and the confidence to pull this off, I’d need to find you an anchor strong enough to drag you back through the gates of death to this world.”

Dazai clapped his hands delightedly, the sound echoing in the small apartment. “An anchor? Do tell me more.”

An anchor was hard to define. It was a person, people, that bound you to this Earth. A person’s tie to their anchor, if successful, could be enough to sustain a soul’s integrity going from life after to death back to death and step back over into life again. It was an incredible journey that was based on the trust and care a person’s anchor had for the deceased.

“An anchor is someone who knows you deeply, knows your good and bad sides,” he said, wetting his lips, “it’s someone that loves you for you, not for a fake image put up nor for memories from long, long before your death. Someone that has a snapshot of the person you were and loves you. Someone whose love could guide your soul through the darkness of death and back to the light. Not the light of the beyond, which is still an option of course, but the light of this world.”

“Love?” Dazai said with a confused tone. “I wasn’t in love with anyone though, don’t think anyone was in love with me either.”

Chuuya blinked.

“Ah,” Dazai laughed, “you should have just led with that, why waste time trying to convince me your skills were the only hurdle? A bit brutal, though, to only allow those in love to come back.”

Chuuya rushed forward, the sudden movement making Dazai jump from where he’d sat on the ground.

“It’s not! It’s not,” he exclaimed, “it’s all love. The love you have for your family, the love you have for your friends, your partner, your children. Love and life are undeniably tied together, and there are as many versions of love as there are paths of life. Love can bind you to this world, love can bring you back, it is the only force we know of that can oppose death.”

“My, my, Chuuya, so inspirational you are. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Chuuya just rolls his eyes and leans back in his chair, closing his eyes. “Whatever. I’m still not helping you.”

“How about a bet then?” Dazai said suddenly.

Chuuya opened one eye, looking down at the other. Deadpan, he asked, “a bet?”

Dazai had sat up completely, legs folded under him, and his hands spread out like he was gonna lay out the plan of a master tactician.

“Yes, a bet,” he confirmed, “you don’t think you can bring me back, I disagree. If I win, you’ll bring me back, of course, and if I lose, you’ll get to send me to the great beyond, and you’ll happily have finished your job.”

Chuuya leaned forward a bit. “And you’d go? Willingly?”

Dazai nodded solemnly. Chuuya felt a bit mocked at that. Probably intentional.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” A smile spread across his face, and Chuuya had to look away for a second, the other was very pretty. “Again.”

He rested his elbows on his legs, leaning his head on the backs of his hands, looking for all intents and purposes like a perfect angel.

He was probably already planning the next contingency plan after Chuuya, as warned, would fail. On some level, Dazai’s dedication to coming back to life couldn’t be anything but admired.

Chuuya swallowed harshly. If anyone else had been sent out here, they’d have known what to do, most likely. They all had more experience than him, despite him being 29, he was still their last hire. The job wasn’t really lucrative and didn’t have the easiest application process, but somehow they’d all found their way to the agency. The others could have guided Dazai.

Speaking of. The ghost had jumped from where he was sitting on the ground to standing like he weighed nothing. Which he didn’t.

Physics and ghosts were a weird combo that, by all means, should not work.

“You’re thinking awfully loud,” Dazai teased, tucking his hands inside his pockets as he leaned forwards, “are you so scared of taking a little bet?”

Chuuya made an affronted noise, crossing his arms across his chest. “I already told you, it’s not a simple process. It requires training and concentration, it requires a very strong connection between this world and you, not to mention - which I haven’t so far - it requires time. It can’t be done on just any other day, it requires a full moon, it requires a set up. And it requires me to have, well, it requires me to have faith in being able to do it.”

Chest heaving slightly, he focused back on Dazai who, to his dread, was leaning oh so close. He could map out all the freckles and small imperfections on Dazai’s skin, he could see each fold in his lips clearly, he could-

He blinked, dragging himself back to reality. He could see straight through him. Because he was a ghost.

An infuriating ghost, mind you.

Dazai grinned at him.

“Feisty, inspirational, passionate, just erring on the side of insecure, hilariously short-”

“Oi, fuck off.”

A whispered conclusion in his ear.

“-you are just a man after my heart, Chuuya.”

Deep breath. He was not gonna be seduced into risking his life just because a ghost was hitting on him.

“Are you just throwing every tactic out there to get me to agree?,” he asked, more composed than he felt, “gambling, seduction, you’re really going for all the deadly sins, no?”

Dazai leaned back, studied his face for a second, before cracking a smile.

“Well, all’s fair in love and war, isn’t it?”

“You’re at war now?”

A shrug. “War for my life, I’d say. You not gonna go to war to defend your skills?”

He’d live to regret this. If he lived through it, that was. There were a thousand reasons why he shouldn’t agree to this, most of them beginning and ending with “he was not prepared for this, he could die”.

But someone had already died. And he had been dead for sixty years. Chances were there wasn’t even an anchor that could help him, and then he’d won the bet fair and square. Dazai could go to the beyond at peace, knowing someone had tried what they could to bring him back.

And Chuuya wanted to do this.

Which was probably the stupidest thing about this entire thing.

He wanted this stupid ghost that was way too fond of pranks and pushing his buttons, to get a new chance at the life he’d lost far too soon.

“If we do this,” he said, raising a finger, “you’re gonna have to put in work. This is gonna require a ton of research and preparation on my side, and it’s gonna require a hell of a lot of honesty on yours. I’ll need as much information as possible on your anchors to even be able to reach your connection to them.”

Dazai nodded and turned around, hands still firmly tucked in his pockets. His shoulders seemed a bit stiffer than earlier.

“Dazai, have you ever been out of this apartment?”

Surprised, he turned back around. The slightly washed out colors and the transparency of his form didn’t give an accurate image of him, but it did look like his eyes were a slightly redder hue than before.

Chuuya almost felt bad for not giving him his moment, but time was racing towards them. The next full moon was in a week, they’d have to do everything they could to be ready.

“I-” he wetted his lips, hesitating, “I think so, well, obviously I did before my death, but I- I didn’t wake up here, I know that, but once I got back here, there wasn’t really any reason to leave.”

Chuuya smiled slightly. “Do you want to go outside?”

A beat.

“Oh, Chuuya, if you wanted to ask me on a date-”

Chuuya threw a pencil. It went straight threw him, and Dazai cackled like a mad man all the way to the front door.

Dazai looked curiously around as they strolled through the city. As Chuuya looked back, just to make sure the ghost didn’t wander off, he felt his breath catching a bit. The sun was shining through Dazai, making him look as if he was glowing. He clenched his hands inside his jacket’s pockets. Stupid bet ,and stupid Dazai’s stupid optimism and faith in his abilities aside, there was no way Chuuya would be able to bring him back to life.

The sunlight making his eyes glow was the closest he’d ever see Dazai alive.

Because he wasn’t strong enough.

Chuuya grit his teeth and turned his attention back to where they were headed, eyes drifting down to the pavement. The blurring lines helped his thoughts wander for a bit.

Even entertaining this stupid plan was foolish, and he should have shut him down immediately. Well, he should have continued to shut him down. Instead of folding just because the dumb ghost issued a challenge and told him, he had faith in him.

Stupid.

“You’re always so serious, Chuuya,” Dazai drawled in his ear, and he instinctively jumped a bit at the closeness of his voice.

He moved his shoulder up to get Dazai to step away as he looked around a bit paranoid, normal people didn’t just jump at absolutely nothing. But as he looked at the disinterested crowd moving alongside him and against him, he took a deep breath.

People move in their own world, with their own agenda, move through their own life, very rarely catching other people’s mistakes or slip ups. It’d be like if his foot had hid a rocky stone in the pavement and almost tripped; the embarrassment causes paranoia, but no one’s paying attention to you.

And even if they did, he soothed himself, they’d just think it was a random chill. Not surprise at a ghost talking in his ear.

“It’s a serious business I’m in,” he bit out the side of his mouth, angling his face down, so hopefully people wouldn’t catch him speaking to himself.

When they got to the café, he’d have to pull out his headphones, at least attempt to make it look like he wasn’t a crazy person and was just having a very… weird phone call. Discussing ghosts. As you do in public.

Dazai walked up ahead of him, stretching his arms above his head. The coat’s sleeves being pulled down, revealing even more bandages down his arms. Split between his continuous fascination at how gravity still affected the immaterial ghosts and the question of how Dazai died, if the bandages had anything to do with it, he instead dragged his eyes down to his phone.

The café that Kouyou had recommended was a couple streets ahead. Apparently, it was full of people who were into all kinds of nerdy stuff, and thus hopefully Dazai and his conversation surrounding ghosts and reincarnation would blend right in between all the other conversations about vampires, werewolves, and various other types of media that involved the supernatural.

“All work and no fun makes Chuuya a dull boy~” Dazai hummed, and Chuuya rolled his eyes.

“Trying to kill you would be funny to me,” he muttered back.

Dazai let out a startled laugh, turned around, and stood directly in front of Chuuya. He came to a, probably, suspicious halt to not pass through Dazai - something about that just seemed wrong, disrespectful. Even if Dazai was the most disrespectful man he’d ever met.

“What-?,” he started to hiss, but Dazai’s smile caught him off guards, making him halt his sentence.

“You are a funny necromancer, Chuuya!,” he exclaimed, “but I must warn you. I did kill myself once, and it wasn’t as fun as I thought it’d be.”

Stumped, Chuuya once more halts in his step and just stares at Dazai who smiles back. But- but not the smile from the apartment when Chuuya agreed to the bet, not the smile he had when looking around at the new world he was in, and not even the smile he wore as usual when teasing Chuuya.

It was bright in all the wrong ways.

“Dazai-”

An annoyed huff sounded from behind him and a man shoulder checked him as he went by. “Idiot. Keep it moving”

Chuuya swallowed.

“Yeah, sorry-” breaking off his sentence as he sidestepped Dazai. A random man wouldn’t care about his apology, he just wanted Chuuya to stop blocking the middle of the pavement for, seemingly, no reason.

Dazai rushed after him. “Oh, no, did I make you sad?”

He shook his head a bit before just shrugging. “I just- just didn’t know that was how you went.”

Dazai nodded solemnly. “I made you sad.”

Chuuya didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. It did make him sad. Death in the cases he’d usually seen hadn’t been a scary affair. It had been people with lived lives. Full of regrets sure, but the list of those regrets spoke to a long life lived, and their frail voices and the knowledge in their eyes told the same story.

Dazai looked his age. And he’d chosen death, had chosen to not see the next tomorrow, never see the sun again. Had his ghost, had his spirit and heart, not decided he wasn’t finished here, then he’d never be walking around the city, translucent and yet one of the most lively people Chuuya could see, in awe of everything he didn’t recognise. From the most luxurious car speeding past them to smaller technological wonders like phones.

When Chuuya had shown him the Google Maps app on his phone, showed how it calculated and showed the best route to the specific restaurant they were going to, Dazai hadn’t done anything but stare, mouth wide open, in shock at it.

He never would have done that.

Not with Chuuya, not with anyone.

“Just a bit,” he told him softly, “but it’s not your fault.”

Dazai couldn’t commit suicide twice now that he was actually dead, but he still hated to have brought up the memory of his death, even if it was unknowingly.

Jokes were funny until they weren’t. Saying you’d kill someone was not only funny within the agency, but also very topical. Especially seeing as there was the extra layer of the person that did the murdering would be able to see the ghost. Can’t get rid of them even in death.

But this wasn’t funny.

“Sorry,” he said.

Dazai frowned then waved his concerns away, like they were nothing but an annoying bug in the wind.

“Twas only a joke, right, my dear necromancer?” Dazai said with a saccharine smile.

Chuuya just heaved a sigh, nodding to the side.

“We’re here,” he said, turning around to walk inside the café.

When Kouyou had said that it was a meet-up for nerds, she hadn’t lied. The café had practically been turned into a graveyard, with picnic tables amidst all the gravestones.

There probably wasn’t a better place for them to have an absolutely not conspicuous conversation about raising someone from the dead than right here.

Beside him, Dazai whistled a low tune. “Wow, even as a ghost, I’ve never seen so much death.”

Chuuya shot him a look before turning towards the hostess, a young girl with a very practiced customer service smile and dressed as a- a funeral director. Well, he supposed that would make sense. With the theme they had going on here.

“Just a table for one,” he said with a smile, and she nodded and gestured for him to follow her.

The filled tables around them had various card games going on, and the atmosphere was jovial and, thankfully, very loud. Not a lot of chances of anyone overhearing them, if any at all.

The hostess escorted them to a table in the far corner, which couldn’t have been more perfect. As she turned to leave, Chuuya asked whether he could order a cup of coffee from her or had to wait for a waiter. She shook her head with a smile, told him she’d take his order with no problem.

“And a piece of that pumpkin cake,” Dazai whispered eagerly beside him.

Chuuya turned to follow his pointing finger. The cake was decorated to look like a jack-o-lantern and would probably cost a fortune.

“And one of those pumpkin cakes,” he amended his order, and the hostess nodded, scribbling the two items down quickly.

Dazai folded his hands, and held them up to his face, leaning into Chuuya’s side. “Are you this gentlemanly to all the ghosts that ask you to resurrect them, or am I just special?”

Flirting again. If Dazai knew him outside of the necromancer that could resurrect him, he doubted that he’d think Chuuya a gentleman. He knew he had a short temper and hadn’t really felt like he’d been that well liked when he’d been socializing with normal people (everyone at the office seemed to like him, and that counted for absolutely nothing because they were all supernatural-knowing freaks) outside of the lecture notes he’d provided to the “Sheeps” groupchat.

Kouyou had given him a lecture on how they’d probably liked him well enough, and it’d only been his own issues that had stopped him from realizing it at the time.

He also had a sailor’s mouth and sometimes liked wine more than people. More than that, though, if Dazai knew of his fleeting, inappropriate thoughts about handsome ghosts with a devastating smirk, he’d tease him for sure, but see him as a gentleman? Never.

“I’ve decided. I’m just that special,” Dazai broke through Chuuya’s thoughts. Hands now firmly planted in his sides, smile looking self-assured and confident.

Chuuya subtly wet his lips and just nodded mutely. Then froze for a second as he realized what nodding meant, what he agreed to, and he looked a bit frantically over at Dazai. He didn’t seem to have noticed, eyes peering over at the cooler where the cakes were. Chuuya reached up a hand to get his attention, stomach feeling a bit heavy as his hand slid through Dazai’s as though it wasn’t there.

Taking out his headphones, pretending to hook them up to his phone in order to take a phone call, he gestured vaguely for Dazai to sit down. With an excessive show, Dazai plopped down on the chair opposite him, coat flipped back, legs crossed, and hands folded on his knees.

“So,” he said, fluttering his eyelashes, “have you gotten any ideas?”

Chuuya pulled out his notebook and pen, clicking it once. “Well, let’s start with, what’s keeping you here?”

Dazai cocked his head, answering quietly, “I don’t know, actually. I don’t remember… anymore.”

Chuuya waved his hand, gesturing for him to continue, as he wrote down notes. Not that there was a lot to comment on yet.

“My death wasn’t suicide,” a pause, “well, it was, but it wasn’t… as I was floating in the water, it was winter, it wasn’t like all the other times before. I got tired, my muscles weren’t working, and it was dark, and I couldn’t kick my feet, swim properly. So I died.”

Chuuya nodded, sneaking a look at Dazai. He looked lost in thought, like he was truly back that day about sixty years ago. It took a second or two before he realized Chuuya was staring, grumbling something about ‘you better not be pitying me again’.

“Whatever, bastard,” he muttered back, “anyway. How did you go back to the apartment?”

Dazai put a finger in front of his mouth, looking thoughtful. “I don’t know that either, if I’m honest. I remember being there when Atsushi-kun and Akutagawa, people I worked with, came, and they kinda searched the rooms and talked about me being dead. Well, Akutagawa did, Atsushi-kun said he was sure I was alive, sweet kid.”

Chuuya scribbled everything down.

Attempted suicide, regretted while in the act (maybe never wanted to? Hadn’t researched how freezing water affected the body)
Scattered memories post mortem
Clear memories when it comes to his friends (possible anchors)
Apartment as a comfort zone. Provides a tether

“Things were fuzzy, and then someone tried to sell my apartment, and,” Dazai clapped, “and then I scared them away. I think I was really just floating around, I don’t know. No one really came except to sell my apartment, and I just know I didn’t want that to happen.”

The notes kept going.

Unstable manifestation
No sense of time

“And then someone turned up and started talking to me, just like you did.” Chuuya shot Dazai a quick look from where he was focused on his notebook, and Dazai winked at him. “Don’t worry, he wasn’t near as handsome as you.”

Chuuya groaned. “You have a serious flirting problem, you know that?”

Dazai stretched his arms as if exhausted. “I know, it really is a burden. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, well he kept asking me about how I could move on and blablabla, obviously wasn’t interested in that once I found out what he meant. It’s just been a lot of that, floating and people barging in to either sell my apartment or try to get me to leave.”

It wasn’t a huge surprise, really, to have it confirmed that time didn’t seem to matter to ghosts. What need did ghosts have for time? They didn’t have anywhere to be that hinged upon it being day or night, they didn’t get hungry, they didn’t need anything to drink, they didn’t need to sleep. They existed each day as it was the last, and each day as if it was tomorrow. Life was an endless cycle, but death just was.

“How old do you feel?”

Dazai blinked.

“As… old as I am?” The question came out unsure, nothing like how Dazai usually was.

Chuuya made a circling motion with his hand to make Dazai specify.

“30?”

Chuuya nodded. He wouldn’t say anything more here in public, so far away from the place that had helped Dazai be tethered to the real world, but once they’d gone back, he’d have to figure out how to tell him that sixty years had passed. He’d have to have known some time had passed due to the electronic leaps that’d been made since the last time he’d been outside - Chuuya bit his lip, last time he’d been out, he’d died - but humans had always had a habit of predicting the future as being a lot more futuristic than it was actually was.

And who would immediately jump to having been dead for over half a century?

Chuuya folded his hands, looking from the, admittedly sparse, notes to Dazai. “Okay, so, as I said, the act of rebirth is not one I’m good at.”

“Will you tell me about that?” Dazai asked, leaning forward as well, mirroring the placement of his hands.

Chuuya hesitated. “Maybe… but nor right now. Now it’s time for me to be confident, and for you to tell me about your anchors.”

Dazai did just that.

As Dazai told his stories of his friends; of the scrawny teen he’d taken in when he had just been starting his business - construction worker, he was trying to convince Chuuya. Chuuya called bullshit.

“You’re so thin, I bet you couldn’t even lift a brick.”

“You’re so mean to me. Maybe death has just slimmed me down?”

He did admit, after some prodding, that no, construction work hadn’t been his job; well, not the only one. He’d been a journalist, investigative one at that, and had a multiple jobs on the side for when he needed to get closer to a source. It was, however, during his stint as a construction worker that he’d come into contact with Akutagawa. The kid had had a sister and had begged for a job, anything. Dazai had gotten him hired to run for spare parts and lunch. He had been hardworking, almost too hardworking in that he never took his breaks and never listened to his lungs; apparently he had a bad case of asthma. But he never complained, and he was good at his job. After Dazai had finished his undercover stint, after he’d published his article and revealed the truth about unstable building materials, he’d offered Akutagawa a job as his assistant back at his office.

A job he’d share with another teenager a couple of years later, Atsushi.

“Did you have a sign out front saying ‘homeless teenagers welcome’?” Chuuya wondered as he was noting everything down.

Akutagawa and Atsushi had been Dazai’s little proteges, and them being so much younger meant there was still a possibility of them being alive.

It felt weird thinking about the lively, bickering teens in Dazai’s stories as elderly men that could likely already be dead. Leaving Dazai with no anchor to lead the way back.

He resolutely stopped thinking about it.

“And you think your relationship to them, and more importantly, their relationship to you would be enough to lead you back?”

Dazai bopped his head from side to side. “They’re probably the best shot. Both got a bit of problems with idolisation, you could say, but we spent years together, so I feel our relationship gained depth beyond me being a guide to them.”

“I’m sure,” Chuuya agreed, “and now they get to be a guide for you.”

Dazai smiled. “Yeah, would be about time those little shits paid me back.”

The week up until the full moon was spent with lots of research. On Chuuya’s behalf at least. He’d tried giving Mori a call, inquiring about the ritual of rebirth, covertly so he wouldn’t be caught in doing something he was definitely not ready for which they both knew. Mori had laughed at him, told him the instructions were on their shared Cloud - dusty old books in a dimly lit library was great for the aesthetic, horrible for how they worked, which was usually on the road - and warned him that a rebirthing ritual wasn’t anything he’d tried for the past two years. That the ghost had remained in the apartment for near a century, would he even have a chance at a normal life?

Chuuya hadn’t answered. Had just thanked Mori for the help and hung up.

It had been something he’d thought about. Dazai would basically have to relearn everything in order to reintegrate with society. But Dazai wanted to be alive. He hadn’t once, and maybe he still had days he didn’t want to - he couldn’t even imagine how untreated depression for sixty years, despite being a ghost, affected him - but right now, in these weeks, he wanted to be alive.

And Chuuya wanted that for him too.

Life always had its ups and downs, and Dazai had wanted to give up once, but not anymore. He had lived thirty years, and he had gone another sixty, so full of the wish to be alive that his spirit had not departed this world. Hadn’t sought out peace on its own. He’d had so much will to live again that he’d found ways to interact with the living world, even if it was mostly put to use to annoy Chuuya.

He couldn’t guarantee that he’d succeed. But Dazai had faith in him, and they had that stupid bet. He’d at least give it a try.

They had two anchors. Two tries.

He’d make it work.

Necromancy, up until now, had only been about making peace with death. He thought he was ready to start defying it too.

It was the eve before the full moon that Dazai approached him to ask the question.

“Why do you think you can’t do the ritual?”

Chuuya blinked, looking up from where he’d been memorising every detail of the circle needed for the ritual.

“I am gonna try,” Chuuya started to placate him, but Dazai held up a bandage-covered hand.

“I know,” he nodded, “but why did you think you couldn’t do it? You didn’t agree until the bet.”

Chuuya flushed a bit at that. The insinuation that he wouldn’t have tried to save Dazai’s life until he’d insulted his abilities wasn’t necessarily false, but it didn’t make him feel great.

“Well,” he started, scratching his neck and making a little face, “it’s not just what I said, that I was only two years into learning necromancy. It’s true, but the biggest factor was that I’d tried it before, and I almost lost control completely.”

“Which would have banished both you and the ghost’s souls?” Dazai recalled from their conversation with a frown.

Chuuya nodded. He wasn’t really proud of what happened. He didn’t have the excuse of having been a dumb kid because it happened when he was 27, all he could say was that he’d been grieving and desperate. Desperate people did desperate things.

“There’d been an accident a year or so prior where my brother was involved,” Chuuya started, “and he didn’t survive. Afterwards, I felt dragged down, tired all the time, like I couldn’t get out of bed-tired even after sleeping for half the day. I was doing my PHD in folklore at the time, and at first my professor was really understanding, but because I didn’t have energy for anything, I didn’t have energy to answer his emails and update him on how my thesis was going.”

Dazai walked away from the circle and sat beside him, crossing his legs. He couldn’t feel the other’s presence beside him as such, no comforting warmth, but he still shot him a weak smile. The effort, at least, was appreciated and closeness, even with a ghost, was nice.

“Eventually he came to my apartment and knocked. I didn’t know it was him, and maybe I wouldn’t have answered the door if I did, but I opened the door, and he just walked straight in. Told me to sit down and explain what was going on. So I did, and he-” Chuuya wet his lips, “he told me to prepare for being told something big. Didn’t really understand what he meant, but then he lifted his hand, and-”

Chuuya played with the ring on his finger, lifting the hand to demonstrate, “and he did what I did to you. Cast the reveal charm, and as I looked down, I could see a second body outline in my arm. And attached to that was my brother, or well, my brother’s ghost.”

He gestured to the apartment they were in. “You know how your apartment has been tethering you to this world? Well, my brother and I didn’t really have a stable life, not a home nor a family, growing up, so we always said that we were each other’s homes. So when he died suddenly, he couldn’t let go, and instead of latching onto an apartment, he latched onto me. His home.”

“I’m sorry, Chuuya,” Dazai whispered and reached out his hand. His hand slid through Chuuya’s as if it was nothing. Chuuya immediately fought the lump in his throat threatening to form. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” he said and coughed. “Well, my professor, eh- his name is Mori, revealed that he was also the head of an agency dealing with cases just like this. Dealing with ghosts. He tried to coax Verlaine out, that was his name - my brother, but he refused. So Mori asked me to accompany him to the agency, and he started introducing me to necromancy, how to attune to my sense for the supernatural, and how to speak with the dead.”

The candlelight flickered in the darkness, and Chuuya couldn’t stop himself from staring into the light, letting the memories wash over him. It reminded him of that night in the library where he thought he’d finally figured out how to help Verlaine and how to get rid of the cloying grief.

“We eventually got Verlaine to respond after a bit, but he refused to… do anything really. All we got out of him was that he was waiting for a storm. And I wasn’t really doing well, I had my brother back in some form, but also not. He wasn’t even a ghost of himself really, he was just a shell,” Chuuya took a deep breath, “and I began looking in the library for how I could help him. I found this book on rebirthing rituals, and I thought that maybe that was the storm he was waiting for. So, I tried to do it. But I didn’t have near enough control, and I was just so desperate, and instead of using myself as anchor, keeping focus on the Verlaine I knew, I was focusing on how much I wanted to not be what he was right now. And instead of letting his soul be guided by his anchor to me, I was pushing my energy towards him, wanting to save him.”

For a few seconds back then, he’d been dying. He’d been somewhat aware of it, but he’d also been looking at the see-through face of his brother, of the disinterest on his face, and thought, that wasn’t him. His brother had been so bright in life, had loved him, taken care of him, had laughed with and at him, and he had cared so much for so much. He hadn’t met the world with apathy.

He wanted his brother back.

So in that moment, he hadn’t cared that he was messing the entire ritual up, that he was dying, that the consequences for failing would be devastating.

“I don’t know what he did, his face didn’t change, I didn’t see a single emotion on it, but he did something. He cut the link,” Chuuya tightened his grip on the ring, “and when Mori came storming in, he didn’t have to do anything but catch me as I fainted. I don’t really know what happened afterwards, but when I woke up, I’d been moved to my room, and my brother had passed on peacefully.”

He knew some of it. Mori had given him a brief walkthrough before scolding him and, hilariously - in hindsight, grounding him from performing any acts of necromancy for a month, or however long it took for him to get better. However long it took for him to work through his grief.

You can’t help the dead part with this world if you can’t part with the dead, Chuuya, he’d told him. Your brother held onto you because he wanted to see you safe. I told him I’d keep you safe, don’t make a liar of me.

He didn’t know what to say after that. It wasn’t as hard to talk about any longer as it once had been. The pain of his brother’s death would always sit deep within him, a wound that would probably never heal right and it had barely begun the scarring process, but knowing that his brother had tried to stick around him, even after death, just to see that he was safe always brought a smile to his face.

Sometimes love really did transcend even the strongest barriers.

And he prayed it’d work for Dazai as well, that his loved ones had survived and thrived until old age, and could bring him back.

“What did you study?”
“Hm?”

Dazai nudged his leg as best he could - which was putting his hand through his knee. “What did you study?”

“Folklore,” then thought about it, “well, I studied literature, began focusing on Western literature, and then for my PhD, I was focusing on European folklore. The full title - I didn’t actually get to finish - was something about folklore, fantasy, and fiction, and how supernatural folklore intersected with traditional British media.”

He sneaked a glance at Dazai and then laughed. “It probably wasn’t that interesting, really, but I loved it at the time. After my brother’s death, I kind of… lost sense of myself and my purpose, but Mori and the agency gave me a new one.”

Dazai immediately sat up, waving his hands as if to negate what Chuuya had just said. “No, no, it does sound interesting. It was just- we didn’t really have that opportunity? I’m glad you had. I always wanted to go to university.”

Chuuya felt his smile get more relaxed. “Yeah? What for?”

Dazai leaned back, folding his hands behind his neck, as he let himself fall to the ground like a ragged doll. Chuuya supposed you didn’t feel any pain as a ghost, so gravity’s punishments weren’t really of any consequence.

“I don’t know,” he muttered thoughtfully, “I loved the writing part of my job, but as interesting as literature and your project sound, it probably wouldn’t pay the bills. It’d still have been fun, I think.”

“I had a lot of fun.”

Dazai cracked a smile. “I’m sure you did. Reading twice a year and spending all your time in a bar, smoking away.”

Chuuya snorted. “Well, I didn’t smoke.”

Dazai just laughed.

And as he looked at the delighted ghost, he made another promise to himself. I’ll bring you back, and you’ll go to university, and you can do whatever stupid, useless major you want to.

The ritual circle was drawn up, the white painting in stark contrast to the otherwise darker carpet covering the entire living room floor. The candles were lit. And the full moon was shining brightly through the window.

Dazai smiled wistfully at the sight of it. “You know, the people trying to sell my apartment only really came at day, so until you showed up, I wasn’t really aware of anything going on at night. It’s my first full moon.”

Chuuya looked up from where he’d been sitting, reciting the charm over and over again.

“As a drop-out folklore major, I could tell you all sorts of facts about which creatures show up at full moon,” he said, “and hey, since you’re a ghost, maybe all those myths about werewolves are actually true?”

“You trying to scare me, Chuuya? Telling me all about the big, bad beasts beneath the moonlight to make you stop bringing me back to life?” He raised a reprimanding finger with a wink. “You’re gonna win our bet with such low tactics.”

Chuuya shook his head. No ghost should ever be so annoying and charming.

Said ghost quickly hopped down to kneel above him where he sat with the book. “What, are you blushing right now, Chuuya?”

“Absolutely not, I’m trying to work through your stupidity here.”

Dazai put his hands on both sides of his cheeks. “Aw, Chuuya, you should have told me you found me so charming. I’d compliment you right back, you know?”

Chuuya just hummed, hoping to shut down the conversation. He was not going to flirt with a ghost. Inappropriate and unbelievably stupid for his very much alive and not ghost-like heart.

“But as I recall, you don’t take compliments that well,” Dazai hummed to himself, “no matter. You don’t need to return them for me to give them.”

“Could you shut up and let me focus?”

A beat.

“No,” Dazai said with a grin, “you know, your hair is fascinating to me. Red hair, that in the sunset looks like fire. ‘S very pretty. I wonder what it’d feel like for me to run my fingers through it? Do you think you’d enjoy that?”

Screw his hair being red, right now he was sure his cheeks were flaming red. He pulled the book even closer to himself. “Are you trying to make me so flustered I fail?”

“Of course not, building up your confidence really, since you said it was key,” Dazai tapped his lips, pondering, “I could also compliment your eyes. Brown like the earth from where all life comes, and dirt that matches how dirty you’d be in the-”

Chuuya slammed the book down and looked up at the babbling ghost, turning his lips into a devilish smile, which halted the other in his words. “Dazai, you are the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met, alive and dead. Now, will you please shut up and let me concentrate on the ritual?”

Dazai spluttered at that, and with satisfaction brewing in his stomach, Chuuya was sure that if he could, the ghost would be blushing. With widened eyes and an incomprehensible mutter, the ghost turned around to stand in the circle.

Could dish it out, but couldn’t take it himself? Chuuya smirked.

“Now,” Chuuya said, standing up and holding the book with both hands, “I need you to focus on your chosen anchor.”

Dazai shuffled a bit in the circle, shot Chuuya a pout, before visibly steeling himself, shaking out all the nervousness. And maybe embarrassment too.

“Close your eyes, imagine that person, recall a strong memory of that person,” he guided, “and when you’re ready; we’ll begin.”

It didn’t take long for Dazai to open his eyes and give Chuuya a resolute nod. Chuuya gave him another nod and raised his hand with the ring. The black gleamed in the sparse lighting. Chuuya breathed deeply, closed his eyes briefly, and then gave a nod.

He could do this. He would do this.

“Concentrate on that memory.”

Looking down one last time at the book, he began reciting the spell. The air around them seemed to shake in tune with the cadence of his words, vibrating, and as he neared the peak of incantation, the flames rose higher and a white energy seemed to emanate from Dazai. Like a glowing angel, Chuuya thought breathlessly.

Then as quickly as the light came, it disappeared, and the vibrating air gave away with a gasp that blew out the candles.

Chuuya stood, breathlessly, in the darkness for a second before he whispered, “Dazai?”

“I’m- I’m here.”

Chuuya stumbled forwards, hand still outstretched, the other clutching the book tightly to his chest. The full moon gave a little light, but it didn’t illuminate the room, and Chuuya’s eyes had trouble readjusting from the bright light from just moments before. “Dazai?”

When Dazai answered, his voice was hollow. “It didn’t work.”

Dazai had stared off into space for a few minutes after the ritual had failed, and then stood up. Had looked determinedly at Chuuya before he with hastened pace had walked right up to him, raised his arm, and taken a deep breath. Hand shaking, he’d reached towards Chuuya. Chuuya had almost been tempted to meet his hand halfway, but something told him that this was something Dazai needed to do on his own. He’d have to touch Chuuya in his own time and realize the devastating truth that the ritual hadn’t worked, that Chuuya had been truthful when he said he couldn’t do it, and the even harsher truths of reality; that one, his hand would still phase through Chuuya, and two, that the anchor Dazai had chosen, the teen he’d took in and helped raise and prepare for life, hadn’t survived till old age.

Or maybe he had, but he’d still be too late to ever reunite with him.

When they finally made contact, Dazai had stared for a good while at where his hand was phasing through Chuuya’s, his fingers sticking out of the back of Chuuya’s hand.

He’d nodded resolutely, and then withdrew. The air shook a bit around him, like a small almost unnoticeable gust of wind, and for the first time in a week, Dazai made himself invisible.

Chuuya hadn’t done the spell to make him reappear.

He didn’t feel a decrease in the spiritual energy, so Dazai wasn’t in trouble, wasn’t losing touch with reality, or fading away slowly.

Dazai was grieving.

That had been two days ago, and Chuuya was doing everything he could to not wring his hands like a house wife waiting for her husband to come home. Dazai deserved his privacy, Dazai deserved space to process the loss of someone he’d only ever remember as a young man, someone that wasn’t anywhere near death.

Knowing on some level that it’d been sixty years since he’d been alive was one thing, but hard to conceptualize when time was a flowing fog and consciousness was fleeting. Another thing was to be confronted with the realities of what sixty years passing meant; death.

Death was complicated to get through even in its most natural state; you living and someone dying. He couldn’t really fathom how Dazai felt. Not even if he tried. And yet, he wanted to. He wanted to be there for Dazai, to listen to him talk about the life and person he’d known, to talk about grief and death and how life kept going.

Then he wanted to slap himself. How life kept going. Dazai was a ghost. Unless Chuuya succeeded, life would never keep going for Dazai. Not really, not in any way that mattered.

He huffed.

It’d been stupid of him to stay cooped up in the apartment waiting for Dazai to reappear, it only made him melancholic, and the apartment was way too small for two depressed people.

It was almost dark outside, but a walk would do wonders for his mental state.

He was here to resurrect someone, find the link for him in life, and guide him through the lands of death back towards the light. Resurrection was all about life, the wonders of life, the love that bound people across time and space, through death and back again.

He couldn’t do that if he allowed himself to be consumed by death. Dazai deserved to be properly alone with his thoughts as well, maybe that was why he hadn’t materialized again since the failed ritual.

Gathering his jacket and keys, he made sure to call out to Dazai that he was going for a walk. No use in the ghost thinking that he was a one and done who’d give up just because one ritual failed. They’d try again, and they’d succeed.

They had to.

The night sky was as clear as it could be in a big city like this, and as he was walking silently to the park, looking upwards, he told himself that he could see the stars. That maybe he’d even catch the sight of a shooting one, and wish upon it that he could bring Dazai back to life, and it would be granted.

A childish urge, but so had believing in ghosts seemed, once. Not anymore. Certainly not anymore.

It was as he was entering the park, eyes focused on a group of children playing basketball in the lit up court, smiling fondly, at the reminder of life and its brightness, the reminder that though this day had been slightly hollow it had held brightness and laughter for so many others, that he sensed it.

Spiritual energy.

He stiffened slightly, looked around in the dimly lit park, and once more looked at the kids. Completely absorbed in their game.

If he needed to help someone pass over, they wouldn’t see a single thing.

Taking a deep breath, he readied himself to perform the revealing spell, only- only he didn’t have to. With his eyes closed and senses heightened, he was able to recognise the spiritual energy for who it was.

Who he was.

He smiled once more.

“Hello Dazai.”

The ghost revealed himself in front of him, mouth pouting slightly at him. Chuuya laughed softly at him.

“What are you looking at me like that for, you ghoul?”

The ghost threw his hands up. “Days you’ve been sulking for now, and the first chance I get at having fun and scaring you, you somehow figure out I’m here anyway. You’re such an annoying necromancer, you know that, right?”

Chuuya’s smile brightened. He didn’t realize Dazai had noticed he’d been sulking, even if it was probably the most appropriate description. Maybe he hadn’t, maybe Chuuya going for a walk had just woken him up from whatever slum Dazai had been in himself. And focusing on Chuuya was a way for him to move past it, move on from the grips of grief without having to go into depth about it.

It wasn’t the most healthy solution, but if that was what he needed right now, pretending that Chuuya had been the one with the problem the last few days, then that was what he needed.

Somewhere inside himself, somewhere very quiet, he could admit to himself, and just him, that he was just happy that Dazai had shown himself again. That Dazai had followed him of his own volition.

Maybe to avoid being alone, but Chuuya would allow himself this one selfish thought of Dazai choosing to do it because of him.

“I am very sorry, your highness,” he smirked, “a truly poor performer as your jester.”

Dazai rolled his eyes, stretching his arms above his head, “yeah, yeah. Don’t let it happen again.”

Chuuya laughed, taking one more look over at the kids - still completely absorbed in their game, then started his walk through the park. As he felt Dazai hurry back to stroll by his side, he could pretend for a moment, in this dimly lit park, that the ritual hadn’t been a failure, and that they were two alive people taking a stroll beneath the night sky.

A single second trying to focus on whether he could hear Dazai’s footsteps beside him was all it’d take to shatter that dumb illusion.

He’d had a lot of indulgent thoughts tonight. Maybe the walk would help him shake them off him. The goal of the ritual wouldn’t be to bring Dazai back to be his boyfriend or whatever, it was to bring Dazai back to experience life for himself again. To do all he’d wanted to do.

“You know,” Dazai mused. Chuuya looked over to him, seeing that the other had his eyes fixed on the fogged night sky. “When I walked here last time, I was able to see the stars.”

At that Chuuya’s smile turned a bit sad. “Yeah, it’s been a while since we were able to really see the stars here.”

They walked in silence for a bit before he noticed that there wasn’t a presence at his side any longer. He stopped, looking back at the ghost whose head was still raised upwards.

Ah.

The sky. Stars.

Heaven. Past souls.

“What memory did I have to pick for the ritual to have succeeded?”

Chuuya took a deep breath. So they weren’t just gonna skirt around the ritual and its outcome, the implications for what had happened to Akutagawa, Dazai’s chosen anchor.

“Which one did you pick?”

Dazai’s hands curled tightly into a fist, his eyes never leaving the tiny stars that could be seen past the smog.

“The day I made him my apprentice,” he said, “gave him one of my jackets, one to keep him warm when he would be running errands, and a hard helmet to keep him safe when he was at the construction site.” A deprecating laugh. “Should probably have given it to him way earlier, but got it in my head that a proper hard helmet given one his first official day would be significant. Would make him less skittish, and make him believe that he had a place with me. Him and his sister.”

It sounded lovely, it sounded exactly like the memory they’d instruct anyone to pick to make the ritual successful.

“Was he happy?”

Dazai looked down and locked eyes with him. “Akutagawa wasn’t ever happy at that time, but…” Dazai smiled hesitantly. “I hope it made him happier.”

Chuuya nodded. “Then it should have worked.”

Dazai bit his lips, eyes skirting to the side, a pensive look falling over him. “Any strong connection would work, right? Any connection with strong emotions?”

He blinked at the question being asked so suddenly. Then mulled it over a bit. A strong connection was important, but it was the image of the dead person that was the most important. The anchor had to remember the dead person as they were, as they had been while still alive.

“Why do you ask?”

The pensive look didn’t leave Dazai’s face as the quiet stretched out between them. There could be a million reasons why Dazai had posed the question, maybe he had begun to doubt his connection to his other anchor, the Atsushi boy? Maybe he had an old nemesis he thought would work just as well.

And maybe it could. People didn’t have to dislike each other because they only had a distorted view of the other, some hated each other simply because of who they were, flaws and qualities combined.

He’d never heard of a negative connection being used as an anchor, but he supposed in a world of the possible impossible, it wouldn’t be too unbelievable if it had happened and that ritual had been successful.

“I wasn’t always the kindest, I guess,” he admitted quietly, and Chuuya hesitantly stepped towards him, “journalism isn’t really that tough, on paper, but I wasn’t just ready to rely on someone growing a conscience during under the table negotiations and come to me with knowledge all on their own. I wanted to blow people’s cover while they thought, no one had realized the exploitation, embezzling, stealing, you name it, that they were doing. I wanted to catch them in the act.”

Chuuya nodded along, still walking slowly closer.

“Akutagawa had weak lungs, probably some disease we didn’t have money to get evaluated by a good doctor. Only had the shady one down the street from us.” Dazai took a pause. He had a strange look on his face, not quite guilt but something close. Regret? “And hard work and bad lungs weren’t a good combo, not always. He worked hard, but sometimes he made mistakes, and I- well, it was a tough business, I didn’t handle it well.”

“What did you do?”

Dazai shrugged and Chuuya frowned. “Well, human psychology isn’t that hard to figure out once you’ve spent some years looking for the darkest parts of society. Men, who think they’re strong, tend to overlook those they think are weak; a teenager, scrawny and with bad lungs, is hardly competition, so I’d use him as my spy, snap up conversations and rumors that could lead to our next big bust, and I guess, I wasn’t very attentive to his complaints, would yell at him to dig deeper. It wasn’t- it seemed right, both of us putting ourselves on the line for the story.”

“Not an excuse,” Chuuya butted in.”

Dazai blinked. “No… no, it wasn’t.”

Chuuya gave him a tight smile, then looked around to locate a bench. It’d probably be a long talk, and though Dazai’s ghost legs could stand up as much as he wanted, Chuuya wanted to sit down. He’d also look more natural, sitting on a bench, instead of standing in the middle of a park lane, if someone happened to come across them.

“How long was Akutagawa with your company?”, he asked as they walked to the nearest bench, conveniently beneath a street light as well.

“Five years, I think?”

“Right, and did he have any financial security in that time?”

Dazai was quiet for a bit, and when Chuuya shot him a look, he saw him nodding slowly. “Yeah, a year or two into him working for me, we’d been lucky and got the leads on a couple of big businessmen and exposed them for exploiting city laws for money. Not enough for the fancy doctors, but enough so he could take of his sister and himself comfortably.”

Chuuya nodded in assent. “So if he wanted to, would he have been able to leave? He’d gotten enough qualifications to leave if he wanted to?”

“Yeah… I guess so?” It was posed more as a question than agreement, so Chuuya decided to carry on. He knew times had been different back then, a lot differently, but it hadn’t just been a hostile work environment; it’d been exploitation, it’d been putting Akutagawa, and Atsushi’s, security at risk for leads on stories. Stories that in the end would bring crimes to light and better society, but still stories that succeeded due to vulnerable teenagers not having any other choice and being used as cannon fodder. Ideally, they’d only be moles, but if it’d gone wrong, if those, they were investigating, had become suspicious? Then the teenagers wouldn’t have had any protection.

“Yelling and screaming at your employees today would be called verbally assaulting them, and considered a hostile work environment,” he explained, “and actively putting your employees in danger would be a crime, even more so seeing as they were teenagers. So I guess my question is, do you believe he stayed because he had no other options or because he wanted to?”

“It’d be called what?”, Dazai’s voice came out sounding strained, like he was torn between making a joke and taking it seriously.

“Fuck off,” Chuuya shot back, “Hostile work environment, it’s what they call it nowadays, in their workers’ manuals. I’m not fucking HR, I haven’t really dealt with a boss putting his workers in life threatening situations for a news story before.”

“Right,” Dazai agreed, face looking a bit like a lemon like he really struggled with keeping his composure, “well, lay the lawsuit on me then.”

Chuuya felt like he was developing a migraine. He’d not had a migraine since his brother’s passing. Stupid ghosts and their stupid backstories and their stupid “probably appropriate for the time, but definitely not anymore because what the fuck” work ethic.

“It still happens, the bad boss treating his workers badly, but it’s actively being combatted because it creates a hostile environment, and it’s just not right to do. There’s laws in place to protect minors from being exploited in the way you did,” he said, “Everyone fancies themselves a hero, I’m sure Akutagawa and Atsushi did too, but nowadays there’s mechanisms in place to ensure they can’t be put in danger like then. So, did he want to work for you?”

Dazai nodded, a contemplating look in his eyes. “He wanted to, I’m sure of it. It- he learned to avoid accidents when he had flare ups, he was a good worker, a good kid. I- he always wanted to please, and I did take advantage of that when putting him on assignments. We got more popular, though, after the first couple of stories, and we could afford to ease up on the dangerous stakeouts. But he wanted to stay, though I don’t think it had to do with me or even his misguided sense of responsibility to fix society. Mostly Atsushi.”

A small smile flickered across Dazai’s face, eyes lighting up in a way he hadn’t quite seen before. “Ha… remember when I said Akutagawa wasn’t ever happy?”

Chuuya nodded.

“Atsushi made him happy.”

“Maybe that’s why he stayed,” Chuuya mused, and Dazai nodded his head from side to side, obviously contemplating the statement.

“Maybe, probably. I was better with Atsushi, as a master,” he said, “or rather, I’d become better, and was the master, the teacher, that Akutagawa had deserved in the first place. It was good for a while there. Very good…”

He trailed off after that, eyes lost somewhere in the past. Chuuya bit his lip, thinking of how they could move past this.

No one was perfect, everyone was a product of their environment, but the fact that Dazai had bettered himself long before he died. Years at least. It meant a lot. Maybe not enough for Akutagawa, but enough that Chuuya still felt comfortable and willing to let Dazai have his second chance at life. If he’d already bettered himself in a time where it was socially acceptable, probably encouraged, to ream out subordinates for slight mistakes, that meant he’d be able to do even better alive today now. If he got the chance to get the proper help.

“I can’t tell you if a negative connection could bring you back. The you Akutagawa remembered was still you, though if he remembered that one the most, it sounds like it was a you of the past? And that wouldn’t work.”

“It wouldn’t?”, Dazai interrupted, eyes big, with a spark of something… maybe hope?

Oh.

Maybe he thought that meant Akutagawa was still alive.

That he’d maybe have a chance to apologize.

“I don’t know. The anchor needs to be someone who knew the person while they were still alive, while you were still alive. If you weren’t the verbally abusive boss anymore, and he still remembered you as such, it might have failed because of that.” He weighed his options, and then pulled out his phone. “We can look it up if you want?”

Dazai looked at him confusedly. “Look what up? And look it up where, a book?”

An unexpected laugh slipped past his lips, and a little weight got lifted from his shoulders. Entirely inappropriate for what he was about to suggest, and he quickly sombered.

“Kinda in a book, I can search on my phone, and it’ll show me results as if I was flipping through an encyclopedia, and-”

He stopped as Dazai immediately leaned down from where he was standing in front of him, almost bent in a perfect 90 degree angle. It was hard to keep a straight face, but he had to. He couldn’t let the mood get too jovial, it’d be too big of a whiplash if the worst came to be reality.

“In there?”, Dazai asked, nose almost touching the dark screen.

Chuuya clicked the on button, and the screen lit up, blinding Dazai a little, and the man immediately whipped backwards at the affronting light, arms in front of him as if to protect him. He looked entirely ridiculous, gangly man wiggling his arms like that.

“In there,” Chuuya agreed. “But, listen, Dazai, what it can look up is just not encyclopedic facts.”

Dazai noticed the seriousness of his tone and lowered his arms slowly.

“It can also look up obituaries,” he informed him quietly, “if you want to, we can look up and see if we can find one for Akutagawa.”

Dazai stayed silent for a bit, and Chuuya just stared at him quietly. The other man’s eyes were slightly hidden by his hair that had fallen into his eyes after his erratic movement before. After a bit, he nodded. Didn’t say anything, just nodded once.

“Okay,” Chuuya agreed, “okay.”

“Ryunosuke Akutagawa,” Dazai told him, voice low, “that’s his name. For the… search. His sister’s name is Gin.”

Chuuya nodded, fingers pressing on the keyboard.

It didn’t take long. Full name, obituary, and Gin’s name to narrow the search down.

There it was.

“Ryunosuke Akutagawa passed away at age 76 on November 6th 2017. He leaves behind his daughter whom he raised with friend, Nakajima Atsushi. He is now reunited with his dearly beloved sister, Ryunosuke Gin.”

The only sounds Chuuya could hear after that was the children playing in the background, their voices muted, and even more quietly, the few cars that passed on the streets at this time of night.

The thing with ghosts is that they don’t make sounds unless they create them by interacting with objects. Usually to be a nuisance, crashing glasses on the floor, sweeping books off of the shelves. But never do the sounds originate from the ghosts themselves unless they talk. No breathing, no rustling of their clothes, no sound of footsteps.

Chuuya wished he could hear anything at all from Dazai as the man stood in front of him, stockstill, eyes once more raised towards the sky.

For a moment Chuuya was afraid he'd go invisible once more.

And then he smiled.

“Friend, Nakajima Atsushi, and a daughter, huh?” Dazai nodded to himself as if he was reaching an important conclusion, “good for you, Akutagawa.”

Chuuya shut his phone off and turned it between his hands a few times, not knowing quite what else to do.

“Do you want to buy a flower?”

Dazai looked down at him, head tilted, a smile on his lips and raised eyebrows. “Are you flirting with me right after announcing my protege’s death?”

Chuuya almost jumped in his seat, cheeks immediately feeling hot. “What?! No! No, I meant, for him!”

Dazai shrugged.

“I wouldn’t have been imposed,” he said, the smile still on his face, “very different approach from the usual condolences.”

Chuuya covered his eye with his hand, trying to force the humiliation to leave his body. “You’re such an idiot. No, a flower to remember your friend. We can’t lay it on any grave, obviously, but we can place it somewhere at home where you’ll be able to remember him.”

He dared to look up at Dazai again, almost frowning at the new smile on his face. It was strange. Not bad at all, made him look quite handsome, but it was full of things he didn’t know how to decipher.

“Yeah, let’s buy a flower,” Dazai agreed quietly, “for home.”

They bought a white tulip and put it in a little vase by the window where it would be illuminated by the pale light of the moon.

In the days leading up to their second attempt, Dazai had pestered him to help keep the tulip alive. It was their third attempt at keeping a tulip alive. The other times they’d made a classic mistake - picking one of the ones that had already bloomed a little because it had been prettier than the ones still just buds - and though it’d meant they’d been able to appreciate the flower’s full beauty almost from the moment, it’d been placed in a vase; it also meant that it had a shorter life span. This time they’d done it right, so it maybe even stood a chance at surviving till the ritual.

It also meant that Dazai had been more desperate in keeping it alive and had put on his best impression of an old, whiny cat that couldn’t understand yes and no.

“Chuuya, Chuuya, Chuuya, Chuuya.” he’d started each morning with, and Chuuya, who always felt a bit like an eldritch being without his morning coffee, had with gritted teeth changed the water each day.

Apparently that helped keep the flower alive.

Chuuya wouldn’t know. The only flowers he ever bought were left in a vase at the cemetery, and had always been removed when he came back with a new bouquet.

Maybe Dazai had been right about his flora tips, but despite Chuuya following all the advice given in a whiny voice, the flower did as all flowers do; wither.

As Dazai dramatically spread across the kitchen table, pleading with the flower to stay alive until Dazai was resurrected and could “save it from the necromancer reeking of death”, Chuuya almost bit out that maybe the flower had been affected by being near a dead person for so long and felt inspired.

That would have been cruel though, and Chuuya wasn’t going to harp on a ghost’s grieving process a few hours before they attempted to bring him back.

Who knew, the dying flower might even inspire Dazai to follow in its footsteps as well if Chuuya didn’t keep him happy.

So, for the last time, Chuuya changed the water and poured in the fertilizer powder. It was a complete waste as it’d been meant for a whole bouquet, and maybe it’d even kill the flower faster for all he knew, but Dazai was mesmerized by the powder and kept telling him to pour more and more until the small bag had been emptied completely.

As night fell, Dazai gave a final salutation to the flower and with a deep bow told it that “he’d return in a bit to save it”.

Chuuya, as the polite man he was, didn’t say anything about the obvious brown parts of the petals and what it meant for the flower’s survival chances.

They’d done their research this time; there were no obituaries online to be found for a Nakajima Atsushi. There shouldn’t have been any problems, they’d made sure of it. The moon was full and shone beautifully, the ritual site was set up properly, and Chuuya had enunciated the ritual mantra perfectly.

The ritual should have gone off without a hinge. And yet, when it’d come down to it, the light that was supposed to represent Dazai’s anchoring to Atsushi, his anchor to the living world; the light that was supposed to guide him through the world of the dead and back had flickered, had been there, and then it’d disappeared, leaving Dazai and Chuuya to stand alone in the obviousness of their failure.

The ritual should have worked, it had worked, for a bit, and yet… it hadn’t succeeded.

Staring at the ritual site, uncomprehending of what had happened, he pulled out his phone, almost blindly choosing Kouyou’s contact.

He couldn’t call Mori. His boss definitely knew what he was up to, but a stone settled in his stomach at the thought of calling him. Actually admitting to disobeying his orders and, even worse, admitting to not even being able to achieve the goal he’d broken rules to reach.

The dial tone seemed to go on forever, and he bit his lip in a sudden rush of anxiety. Dazai stared at him from within the circle of candles, face passive.

A click.

“Chuuya?”

“Ane-san,” he breathed, “I need help.”

A pause.

“That’s unexpected,” she told him with the hint of a smirk, “not that you need it, but that you’d admit it. It’s not like you to see reason.”

He didn’t even have energy to rise to her bait, the silence stretching between them, before she sighed. “Alright, what do you need?”

He took a moment to collect his thoughts, collect the memories of what he’d seen, what he’d yet again failed to do.

“We did the ritual again tonight-”

“Again? Ah, I recognize you again. Of course you wouldn’t call after failing for the first time.”

“Shut up,” he said half-heartedly, “last time was a normal mistake. Anchor had passed on. This time the connection was there, and then it wasn’t, and then it flickered, and then it was gone, and- I’ve never seen that described in any of the text books, was the anchor tampered with? Has he been cursed? Or-”

Kouyou shushed him. “How long has the subject been a ghost?”

He breathed in, breathed out. She didn’t seem concerned for some reason, but why not? The Atsushi, Chuuya was trying to reach, could be in trouble with some kind of supernatural element, in dire trouble that could need immediate attention, and she was shushing him before he could get all his observations out.

“Sixty”.

“Sixty years,” she repeated, sounding sad. “We work with the supernatural which can be the solution to many things we’ve never seen before, but sometimes, Chuuya, age and humanity is even crueler.”

“What?”

“The anchor connection didn’t happen because there’s not a proper foundation,” she explained, “the connection is there but it’s not sustainable, it’s not constant. That could be a curse, but sixty years down the line, people grow old-”

He interrupted her, biting her down in frustration, “what are you talking about?”

“Your anchor isn’t in trouble, they most likely have dementia.”

Oh.

The supernatural have its curses and spirits, but as Kouyou said, humanity had its own cruelties, completely removed from anything of a higher power.

Sicknesses could take anyone and tear them down to the bare essentials, strip them of anything that made them them. An unfair, cruel way to end life.

Chuuya locked eyes with Dazai again and suddenly he couldn’t stand it. The thought of having to break the news that no, he hadn’t lost another friend, but yes, he had. In all the ways that mattered except for scattered moments.

“Thank you, ane-san,” he said in a hollow tone and hung up without waiting for her reply.

He’d be hearing for that back at the office, once he returned at some point, he knew it perfectly well. He’d head about manners and respecting your elders and how he wasn’t a little punk anymore, so why did he think he could get away with acting like one? He had her script down to the tee, he didn’t fear the dressing down.

What he did fear was how Dazai would take the news. That there, definitively, was no way he could bring him back to life unless he remembered any other anchor Chuuya could possibly call upon.

He fiddled with the phone in his hand, feeling even more out of his depth than he had after reading Akutagawa’s obituary. There was a hollowness in his stomach, in his very essence, that he didn’t know how to combat.

This had been it. Their last chance, their last thread. There was no one else Dazai had left that could still be alive today and function as his anchor.

There’d been one shot, and life, cruel and fleeting life, had taken it away, had taken Atsushi away, but not in the definitive way that Akutagawa had been taken away. Taken away just enough that he couldn’t be an anchor anymore. Taken away just enough that Dazai was stuck as a ghost unless they found another anchor, somehow, or Dazai… or Dazai passed on.

Just the thought made him want to vomit.

The words weighed on him like a thousand bricks, laid right there at the tip of his tongue like a taunt, and seemed impossible to even think about saying out loud.

Dazai had trusted him, believed in him, even when Chuuya himself hadn’t even thought about being able to accomplish it. And wasn’t that just the cruelest thing?

Chuuya had been able to do it, just as Dazai said, but he had still failed in reviving him.

Chuuya had won that stupid fucking bet, and there was no more painful victory than that.

“Dazai,” he croaked, desperately wetting his lips, teeth biting and pulling his lips, as he tried to gather the courage to tell the truth.

“There’s still moonlight, you know?”, Dazai said in a strange tone, but Chuuya didn’t even register it.

There was still moonlight. He let the phone hit the ground and buried his face in his hands. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t say this. There was still moonlight, there was still time for another ritual. It was like the world’s worst joke.

There’s still time to do everything you want. You have the whole world at your fingertips, everything you want. And yet you can’t because you’re missing one single thing.

Like a card house that crumbles because one single card wobbles.

“Yeah,” he whispered, “there’s still moonlight.”

He took a deep breath and finally looked up at Dazai. The man stood in the circle, unmoving, as transparent and ghostlike as ever, and Chuuya couldn’t think of a more haunting sight. Without a word, he grabbed the lighter from his pocket, and went around to light the candles in the circle that had gone out.

One. Two. Three. Four.

There was still moonlight.

He took his book, raised his hand, flickers of candlelight mirrored in his ring, and spoke the encantation once more.

A light burst from within Dazai, and Chuuya almost broke off the rhymes in a breathless laughter. There was light, the ritual was working. His ring pulsed on his finger, and he could feel his power from within reach out, the memory Dazai had chosen him fueling the light.

He met Dazai’s eyes, and the smile on the other man’s face almost made the hollow feeling inside him disappear.

They’d failed, but this was it. Atsushi, wherever he was, was having a lucid moment of remembrance, and they would succeed.

They would bring-

The light cut out, and this time it cut out like a vortex, pulling the candle flames inwards before leaving the entire room in the dark.

Chuuya couldn’t move, Chuuya couldn’t breathe.

It hadn’t worked, it hadn’t been enough. The dementia had taken the memories from Atsushi just as quickly as it’d given them back.

He screamed in frustration, in anger, in grief.

“I’m sorry, Dazai, I’m so, so sorry.” He couldn’t get anything but those words out, the sobs that had been threatening to burst out, wracking his entire body frame.

“What happened?”, Dazai’s tone was monotone, as if he didn’t have anything more to give.

Chuuya shook his head. “I can’t- I’m sorry, Dazai.”

For a moment, he couldn’t hear or feel anything but his own body shaking. And then, a spiritual presence directly in front of him. Chuuya looked up. Red eyes filled with tears meeting transparent, soulless ones.

“Is he dead?”

Chuuya tried to get his breathing under control, tried to stop the sobs from coming out. “No, he’s- he’s not dead. Kouyou thinks he’s got dementia. He forgets, remembers in bursts, but forgets it again.”

Dazai nodded. “So, the light-”

“-appeared because he remembered you.”

“And then he forgot.”

Chuuya nodded silently. Dazai stared at him for a while, still with those soulless eyes - he missed the mischief they were usually laced with, and then nodded. More to himself than to Chuuya, he was pretty sure.

“Alright,” he said, and then he laughed.

Dazai fell directly on his back, and Chuuya reached out reflexively to catch him in his deadweight fall. But Dazai didn’t even flinch as his back hit the ground, why would he? He was a ghost, a ghost, a ghost, a ghost, and just kept laughing.

“Sixty years,” he said in between giggles, “sixty years I waited, and they’re all gone. They’re gone while I want to live. How fucking precious is that?”

“Dazai, we can still do it, if you have any other person you think might remember you-”

The laughter intensified. “There’s no one, Chuuya! No one! I’m dead!”

No, no, no, no, no-

“no, no, no, no, we can figure it out, we can-”

Dazai sat up, mechanically as if he were a robot. “There’s no one, Chuuya. You won.”

Chuuya felt like he was cradling the world in his hands, but it was made of sand, and it was all sifting through his fingers. Like any moment catastrophe would strike.

It was such an absurdly dramatic sentiment for someone sitting on the living room floor of a small, cheap apartment. Another day, in another time, he might have laughed at it.

“I can-” what could he do? There was still one thing left to do, the only thing left. “I can help you pass over if you want? Fully. You’d be able to reunite with them, not all of them but most, and- and-”

He stood up, swaying as if he were in a daze. Chuuya automatically stood up to catch him, this time he would catch him, protect him from the fall, brain working in overdrive and no logical thoughts catching on. He’d protect him, he’d revive him. Fuck passing over, fuck peace, fuck reuniting with loved ones. He’d do it.

“It’s your victory, Chuuya.”

What a cruel man with cruel words. Chuuya wanted to scream at him.

Dazai stepped forward, arms raised, meeting Chuuya’s halfway, arms phasing through arms. Dazai’s hand came up to touch his cheek, but there wasn’t even a faint, cold brush of death as there usually would be, and then he leaned in.

Chuuya closed his eyes on instinct, as one would when bracing for a kiss.

No kiss ever came, no touch.

When Chuuya dared to open his eyes again, there was nothing but darkness, and as he looked down at the candles, their burned wicks, only visible due to the moonlight, seemed to mock him for his failure.

Dazai still hadn’t reappeared.

After sitting almost catatonic in front of the ritual circle, he’d rushed into the kitchen to grab a bag, and thrown all the candles in it.

Then thrown it across the room in a fit of rage.

As he was panting from the yell he’d let out, he looked around the living room. No one else was there, it’d even seemed darker than before, and he looked out to see a cloud moving across the full moon.

No one was there, and everything was darkening. He was thinking like a bad movie script.

He massaged his temples, trying to calm himself down. He’d failed through no fault of his own, he kept telling himself. It’d worked, it’d actually worked, for a second there. He’d believed in it. It’d been an actual light, he could feel the spell working.

And it hadn’t been enough.

He stepped slowly towards the back where it was laying crumbled by the wall. Looking inside, he almost wanted to cry again. All the candles had been broken. Even if he wanted to attempt another ritual, even if Dazai was there with him to try, he wouldn’t even be able to.

Broken candles, broken anchors, broken rituals. Broken necromancer.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered angrily, “get a grip, Chuuya.”

Dazai had been dead for sixty years. It’d been a pipe dream to even think that he could bring him back. It wasn’t really something he’d thought about back then; the fact that people age, grow old, get diseases, die - they could do that in a couple of years, even more so when it was sixty of them. He’d been focused on his own lack of skills, on his own botched attempt with Verlaine, that he hadn’t even thought about the actual logistics of it.

Maybe he’d also been a bit too smitten by an infuriating ghost to even want to think logically about it.

Checking his phone for any new messages - finding some from Kouyou he didn’t have the energy to respond to - he pocketed it, threw on his jacket, and went out the door.

The night air hit him as a brick to the face, and though he’d already been sober, it had that same feeling of feeling instantly sober, of being thrown into an ice bath. Like coming out of a fever haze.

He took a moment to just breathe the air in before he started walking.

At first he didn’t really have a direction, a purpose, to his walk. He was just walking, eyes listlessly panning over the shops shutting down, and the people rushing to get home. It was far past dinner time, and he could feel the slight depressive state he’d fallen into since Dazai’s disappearance made its mark through his stomach growling.

As he was headed for a kiosk to get something to eat, his eyes caught the sign of the park he and Dazai had walked in not that long ago.

Without even thinking, his feet immediately changed direction.

This time there were no kids playing at the basket court, and this time he didn’t need to disguise him speaking to a ghost.

He was alone.

The pathways in the limited light seemed haunted as he strolled along them slowly. Eerie, haunted. He fisted his hand in his pocket, biting his lip. He wasn’t really sure if he was angry or trying to avoid crying, maybe a combination if he was honest.

Haunted.

But not in the way he wanted it to be.

The sparse streetlights meant every turn of the pathways were dark, capable of hiding all the world’s horrors within them, and the lamp above the bench next to him was flickering in and out. The light wind made the leaves rustle slightly.

It was like a spirit was near.

But not the spirit he wanted. There would be no teasings in his ear, no annoying ghost blowing air in his face, and no stupid flirting.

The park could be the most haunted place in the world, and it still wouldn’t be the right kind of haunting.

Maybe the anger came from the fact that even though Dazai hadn’t been alive for any of the time they’d known each other, he was still creeping into every facet of the life Chuuya was currently leading. And how he still couldn’t let go of the hope that they’d succeed.

And that was probably where the sadness was coming from.

The hope he still couldn’t squash in his heart, burning hotly like embers deep within him, and how everywhere he turned, he was reminded of how stupid it was for that hope to even exist.

Bitterly, he shook his head and had to fight to keep his laughter in.

The park was haunted, not by a ghost but by the absence of one.

As he was walking home, he found the kiosk, and stupidly, annoyingly, he noticed the flower automat in the corner. Rows of pre-made bouquets, and he felt like throwing a fit.

The park, and now flowers.

As if this whole day was a stupid copycat of Groundhog Day; everything was the same as the evening he and Dazai took a walk, with the exception that Dazai wasn’t here and maybe never would be again.

Dazai could have moved on to the other side, to where Akutagawa and his sister were, where he could look for forgiveness and where he could find peace.

And Chuuya was stuck reliving the moments they’d spent together.

It felt like a cruel joke.

The ghost, that had been stuck in place for 60 years, could have found peace, and the necromancer would take over his role of being stuck in place, in a loop of being reminded of everything he’d lost.

“Thinking of how to smooth things over with the missus?”

Chuuya startled as the voice rang out in the silence, and immediately turned around to look at the cashier.

Oh. He’d probably been standing there looking uselessly at the bouquets for far too long.

He smiled slightly because that was the polite thing to do. “Something like that.”

The young cashier wiggled his brows and nodded with a smirk. “I get it, the second missus, then?”

Chuuya blinked and almost shouted in rage. If he hadn’t been so emotionally drained, he was certain he would have done it as well.

“Absolutely nothing like that,” he said through gritted teeth, turning back to the flowers, hoping it would send the signal to the cashier that this conversation was over.

Of course, it didn’t.

“Whatever you say, man,” the cashier laughed. “If you buy two, I swear I won’t tell.”

He was not a violent person, he reminded himself, he would not deck an annoying cashier in a store with countless cameras filming every angle and get himself arrested.

Mori wouldn’t be happy to bail him out. And would probably also ask him to come back immediately.

He didn’t really know what to make of the fact that the last argument was the most compelling one, and the one that made him tune out the cashier for good.

He pulled out his phone and with a little twinge in his heart - which also annoyed him - he typed in “flowers symbolizing revival” on Google.

Looking up at the rows of flowers, none of them really matched any of his search results. The top result was white calla lilies.

Beautiful flowers. Not in any of the bouquets.

Sighing, he just selected one that looked like it had normal lilies in it.

It was stupid, to try and recreate their evening but put a twist on it with the hopeful outcome of Dazai returning to him, and their plan eventually succeeding. But as he thought about it, it was really all he could do to not break down.

Give himself something to fuel the stubborn hope inside him.

When he eventually accepted the reality, it would hurt that much more, but that was his future self’s problem to deal with.

And probably Kouyou’s as well. He should probably shoot her a text, asking her to stock up on red wine - of the good kind - for his return. He’d need it. And aspirin for the morning after.

Grabbing the flowers and a pathetic looking sandwich from the cooling area, he made his way to the cashier and paid. He didn’t even deign to give the other man a single look, sure that he’d find some stupid smirk on his lips again and not be able to resist punching the look off his face.

As he made his way home, he thought briefly about the cashier’s words. Trouble with the missus. One could say he had some trouble with the mister.

In another universe, maybe he had bought the flowers to apologize for something stupid and to make Dazai happy. In another universe, maybe he’d come home to a lit up apartment, filled with warmth and love. In another universe, he’d hand the bouquet to Dazai and without ever admitting defeat, ask him to forgive him, because they were both stubborn and kinda stupid but also stupidly, stubbornly in love.

He scoffed at himself.

That train of thought was nothing but fool’s gold.

The thought came to him as he lay in bed, unable to fall asleep and unable to really look away from the flowers. He’d put them in a vase and originally had wanted to leave it in the living room, the place he’d first met Dazai, by that damn armchair where the idiot had delighted in annoying him frequently both before and after Chuuya revealed him. Then he’d stared into the dark bedroom, a place that had gone mostly uninhabited because they’d spent so much time elsewhere, and the room had seemed cold and lonely.

The flowers hadn’t been company, but still, placing them on the dresser made the room feel more lively, like it was a connection to the lively ghost.

Going to bed had been a struggle; he wasn’t tired, it was far past midnight and the clock was ticking ever closer to the early morning hours, and still he couldn’t sleep. So he laid there in bed, silently, just staring at the flowers while the clock on the wall ticked along until the thought struck him.

He hadn’t thought about it when he was in the kiosk, but here, in the darkness, with nothing but his own regrets and ghosts of the past, he was reminded of the last bouquet he’d bought.

That one had had lilies too. It’d been so expensive and he’d had to hold himself back from cringing as he swiped his card. Such a stupid thing, to spend so much money on ephemeral beauty to gift to the dead, and that really only functioned to make the living feel better about the ugliness of death. If you can make it beautiful for a couple of days, maybe the ugliness will fade.

It’d been raining the day he’d placed the flowers at his brother’s grave. He hadn’t thought about anything as sentimental as flower meanings when he’d bought that one, he’d just looked at something that made the grave feel a bit more bright.

Nothing about the small plot with the stone spoke of it being his brother’s resting place, but he’d been bright when he’d been alive, and the flowers were the only way Chuuya had of bringing that brightness back.

He sighed and turned around to grasp for his phone at the bedside table.

He’d been doing better at this, but sometimes he couldn’t stop himself, so he opened his messaging app and scrolled till he got to the right conversation.

It wasn’t the healthiest of coping mechanisms, he was sure, to be texting and calling his dead brother as if he was alive and able to read them, on a number that was only still in service because Chuuya paid the bills for it.

He refused to no longer be able to call the number and hear his brother’s voice.

It was a stupid voicemail, one they’d created together, and if he listened intently, he’d be able to hear his own laughter in the background.

“Hello, it’s Paul. Wanna hear a joke? Knock, knock. Who’s there? Not me, leave a message.”

It was such a stupid joke, and it was even stupider still how he felt his eyes prickling with tears.

He quickly hung up and began typing. Texting his brother all that had happened, how he’d found a ghost, how he’d found someone who could be saved in the way he’d always hoped and wanted to save Verlaine, and how he’d failed yet again, and he was just so sorry; it didn’t feel like a weight was being taken off of his shoulders, but it did allow him to cry. Tears pooling on the pillow beneath him as he stopped trying to hold them back.

He told his brother about how the ghost had been so bright, and how he was annoying, and how he’d probably have cuffed him over the head if he’d actually been alive, and how the ghost would just have laughed at him and made a joke about how incredible it was he could even reach that high, and how the ghost made him smile and had made him enjoy the sun rises again.

He told his brother his name had been Dazai.

He told his brother if he found a bandaged man appear on the other side, to please help him find his friends.

He stared at the last message for a short while, feeling like there was a tiny black hole inside him, threatening and wanting to swallow him hole.

He typed one last message.

I love you. If you see Dazai, tell him to come back. I love him too

Dazai disappearing wasn’t him dying, he told himself, he hadn’t failed to such a degree that he had killed a man. He was already dead.

He could move on.

He could leave the entire world and Chuuya behind, move on to the beyond and whatever happiness and comfort awaited him there.

Chuuya tried to tell himself that it was good. It was good if Dazai had found enough peace to be able to shed his ties to a world he, technically, had already left behind. It was good if he had been prepared to move to the new forever. From one embrace to another was how Mori had explained the process of helping spirits move along. Let them feel so comfortable and at peace that going to the beyond feels like moving from one warm embrace to another.

It was good.

He had finished his job. He should be happy. Dazai had found peace. He should be happy.

Chuuya just cried.

A week passed without any sign from Dazai, and Chuuya had almost given up that there would be anything.

He’d rung Mori, told him he needed a few days away from work. That the situation had been taken care of, but he wanted some time to himself. Mori hadn’t inquired beyond asking for him to bring back a souvenir for Elise.

His boss was a mysterious man, sometimes a bit cruel in the callous ways he interacted with ghosts’ loved ones, but he wasn’t ever needlessly cruel, and he knew when to back off. Which Chuuya appreciated.

Every day he’d gone around different places, trying to cast the reveal charm once more, hoping to catch a glint of Dazai. The apartment had stayed as empty and suffocating as it had been before.

He’d gone to the store to buy some liquor to facilitate the beginnings of healing his unjustifiably broken heart when it happened.

His glass was pushed to the floor, shattering, glass shards flying all over the kitchen floor.

For a moment, Chuuya just stood staring at it without comprehending what had happened, a way too expensive red wine flask in his hand.

Glass.

Fell.

The glass fell without him even being near it.

He immediately put the flask down, didn’t even notice it wobbling dangerously, as he scanned the room for any other sign.

“Dazai?” he whispered, his breath catching on the name, “is it- are you there?”

There was no voice answering him.

“Dazai?” he asked again, walking around the apartment as if in a haze.

He stopped in the living room, the first place he’d seen Dazai. Staring at the chair he’d spent so much time reading in before he’d revealed the ghost, he felt a lump growing in his throat.

One last time.

He’d try one last time and if it didn’t work, then he’d probably put the wine glass too close to the table’s edge and it’d knocked itself over slowly. He’d been too hopeful for any sign that he’d deluded himself into thinking otherwise.

“Reveal,” he whispered hoarsely, holding out his hand.

The black ring lit up, and Chuuya closed his eyes.

It hadn’t lit up any of the other times, but he couldn’t be sure. What if some other ghost had just wandered close? What if he’d just made himself see the light without it ever even being there.

He’d done stupid things in grief before. He could have done it again.

One last time, he’d promised himself. He’d use the reveal charm one last time and believe that it’d worked.

He’d done the first step. Now he needed to do the second.

He opened his eyes.

And there, sitting in the chair, was Dazai. He was there, but only barely. As if his tether to this world had grown so faint he was only barely able to keep himself there.

Chuuya couldn’t do anything but fall to his knees in front of him. “You’re here. You’re still here.”

A sad smile and a nod. Dazai opened his mouth, lips forming words, but no sound came out.

No, no, no, no. He was still here. He wasn’t going to let this happen. He’d do the fucking ritual, he’d succeed, he’d pull Dazai back through any means possible. There must be some stupid worker that had known him that was still alive somewhere.

But first he needed to re-establish Dazai’s connection to the living world.

“You’re Dazai, I know you,” he whispered, “you’re an incessant flirt, even though you can’t take a compliment yourself, and an annoying prankster. You wear bandages for no apparent reason which is both freaky and scary because I thought you’d died from horrific burns. You make inappropriate jokes about your death, and you care so much about the people you’ve left behind that you stayed here for sixty years attempting to go back to them. You-you gave a home to three lost teenagers, taught them skills to survive, and one of them is still alive and probably misses you like crazy.”

He took a deep breath, trying to stop the lump in his throat from becoming full-on sobs. He couldn’t stop the tears in his eyes, though.

“And you’ve been so strong for sixty years, you never gave up on wanting to live again, and you shouldn’t do it now. You should have the opportunity to see the world as it is now, grow old just like your friends, and it’s so scary, but you can’t give up. You like watching the sun rise in the morning, and you couldn’t ever look away from the full moon, and there’s so much beauty out there you haven’t seen yet. Sunsets at the beach and how it looks when you fly, how all the buildings look like small LEGO pieces- and you don’t know what lego is, but it’s these small cubes you put together, and you can make incredible things out of it. And I can introduce you to that, if you just don’t give up.”

When the sob finally broke loose, he couldn’t do anything but hide his face in his hands and let it all out.

“You attempted suicide, but you regretted it, and you deserve a second chance. You deserve the second chance you wanted. You’re not meant for death, you’re meant for life, and you’ve proved that by staying so long. Your apartment is your safe space, and you’ve defended it at every turn. You want to go to university, you want to travel, you want to-” his voice broke once more, and he just curled his hands up into fists, pressing them into his eyes.

This was so unfair.

He didn’t even know for how long he’d sat there sobbing, how long he’d sat there trying to describe Dazai in all the details he knew. How he always had something to say about how Chuuya made tea, how it was lazy to just pop in a teabag and call it a day, and how Dazai had known how to make the perfect matcha tea when he was alive. How his pranks annoyed Chuuya to an unhealthy degree, but they’d also turned into a way to reassure him that Dazai was here. How he might not have Akutagawa anymore, and he didn’t know what state Atsushi was in, but he had Chuuya, and Chuuya would help him for all he needed help for if he’d allow it.

Finally, he just let out, “you’ve been stubborn for sixty years, are you really gonna let me win our bet?”

He didn’t want to win the bet. He’d wanted Dazai to be right, that he could bring him back. It was a full moon tomorrow, he just had to hold on. Chuuya would find a way to bring him back. He would, he would.

After that, there was nothing but Chuuya’s sobs to break the silence.

And then.

A hand in his hair. For just a second.

Chuuya looked up, tears still streaming down his cheeks, and he opened his mouth but words stopped in his throat at what he saw.

Dazai, colorful once more, more colorful than usual. Almost like he was flickering in and out of existence. No, not just that, almost like he was flickering in and out of life.

“Chuuya,” Dazai said softly, breathlessly, but not like he was gonna disappear, like he was in awe. Then he looked down at his hand, still situated on top of Chuuya’s head. If he focused, he could feel a shift of pressure every other second. “what’s happening?”

Chuuya slowly put his hand forward to touch Dazai’s thigh. His hand was stopped. For just a second, he was touching Dazai, actually touching, and then his hand went through him once more. He retracted his hand a bit immediately.

“Dazai…” he breathed, then his eyes widened. “Dazai, you’re- I’m- you’ve found a new anchor!”

He was- he had… To revive a soul you needed an anchor for that soul to hang onto. You needed someone that knew the deceased, that had a connection strong enough to lead them back through the gates of death, all the way to the gates of life.

You needed someone that knew the deceased, as they had been in life.

He laughed, a breathless laugh that tore at his sore throat. “We can- we can try the ritual tomorrow, it’ll work this time. It’ll actually work this time, I know it if- if you still want that?”

He wouldn’t fault him if he didn’t. Sixty years and the people he cared about were dead, or gone enough in a sense that they weren’t able to recall Dazai well enough to bring him back. The world was scary for Chuuya himself, even more so for Dazai probably, who didn’t even know a tenth of all the advancements that had been made.

He looked up at Dazai with fear coiling in his stomach.

“But I don’t have anyone else?”

“You have me,” Chuuya said assuredly, then looked down where his hand was hovering above Dazai’s knee.

He focused, black ring pulsing, and then put his hand down gently once more. Hand met thigh, and a pulse ran through Dazai’s body. It felt like warmth spreading. Just for a second.

“I didn’t- I didn’t think you could come back,” he whispered, then looked up at Dazai again, “but you have a new anchor. You have another person who knows you, you have me.”

Dazai opened and closed his mouth, then let out a laugh. “I have you.”

“We’ll try the ritual again,” Chuuya said, “and then you’ll win that bet.”

Pre-revival date night had been Dazai’s idea. Chuuya hadn’t been on a date in years, and he’d certainly not had one with a ghost, so the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind; however, Dazai had made him sit down at the dinner table one night, stared seriously at him and almost made Chuuya squirm in nervousness, and pointedly told him, “if you’re gonna bring me back to life through the power of love, you damn well better wine and dine me first.”

Chuuya had blinked at him, unimpressed. “This relationship is pretty one-sided, you know. I’m the one doing all the romance and bringing you back to life, taking care of your flowers, and showing you how to use Google.”

Dazai leaned down on his hand with a smirk, “relationship before the first date. My, aren’t you a presumptuous one, necromancer?”

Chuuya tried his best to tamper his instinct to blush. “You-”

“Besides,” Dazai said and threw the other hand in the air, “I have been so very generous to you. You wouldn’t have been taking care of those flowers so well without my loving hand-”

Even if he had to put all his savings on it, Chuuya would have bet, he could have taken care of those tulips just as well as Dazai.

“-and since I’m so much older and knowledgeable about the world, I could teach you anything you’d want. Address me as senpai, and I’ll show you the world, my little kouhai~”

Chuuya leveled him with a deadpan stare. “You’ve been living in a fog in your apartment, and only just realized 60 years had passed a few months ago.”

Dazai waved his hands around, letting the accusation roll off his back like nothing, “it’s all details in the end, and once you’ve brought me back to life, I’ll return the favor and cook you something delicious.”

“Can you even cook?”

Dazai’s hand stopped waving around as he seemed to genuinely ponder the question. “I did get some good tips from Atsushi on how to cook some mean ochazuke-” he brightened, “so if I remember those tips, I’ll cook that for you.”

Chuuya pressed his lips together to not smile indulgently at the thought of Dazai in a kitchen, trying to remember some cooking tips he’d gotten in passing in another life. He didn’t really succeed, and Dazai’s smile widened when he noticed.

Dazai cooking would be a good show, if nothing else, so he agreed, and Dazai clapped his hands together, still smiling. “Then it’s settled, you’ll cook a lovely three course meal for us-”

“That you can’t eat.”

“-and I’ll be waiting with some wine-”

“That you can’t drink”

“-like a good trophy wife.”

Chuuya lifted an eyebrow at him, lifting his full wine glass. “Seeing as I’m the one who’s actually drinking wine, maybe I’ll be the trophy wife.”

“I could get used to the idea of you walking around barefoot with your wine, I’ll take that deal.”

Chuuya cuffed him over the head over that statement. His hand, of course, went straight through, but it was the sentiment of it, and walked off to begin cooking. Dazai followed him, cackling.

He didn’t end up making that three course dinner.

First of all, Dazai had been too much of a nuisance, bothering him for explanations of everything he did, demanding attention no complicated meal could give him. When Chuuya asked him why he was so curious, Dazai innocently informed him that he’d need all the cooking skills necessary to pamper Chuuya, like the trophy wife he wanted to be. Chuuya denied with all his might the blush, Dazai was adamant had crept over his cheeks.

He would admit, though, that the thought of Dazai wanting to cook for him had made a warm feeling curl in his chest.

In the past, he’d rather have died than admit something so soft, so romantic, but this was their pre-revival date where Chuuya’s love for a dead man would be enough to bring him back to life. Like Orpheus had gone to the underworld to bring his love back, Chuuya would let his love steer Dazai towards life.

So he’d indulged him, told him about how they could buy more cooking supplies, and learn to be good chefs together. Make each other feel like a proper spoiled trophy wife.

“You’d make a gorgeous trophy husband,” Dazai commented as he sprawled across the kitchen table, effectively obstructing Chuuya from accessing his ingredients. He could, technically, reach through Dazai to get them, but he thought cutting onions in and through your boyfriend's arm was probably a violation of some dating code out there.

He didn’t dare to dwell on his subconscious use of the word boyfriend. It’d felt right, though, thinking it, naming Dazai as such.

“You’d make a gorgeous husband in general,” Chuuya said back, and Dazai went- well, as beet red as a ghost could become, he supposed.

With a satisfied smile, he waved Dazai away, so he could finish their meal. Right now only Chuuya could eat it, but, with the same warm feeling curling in his chest as before, in a few hours; Dazai could eat the leftovers. In a few hours, Dazai would be alive, and Chuuya would finally be able to hug him.

Finishing their meal shouldn’t have taken long, but Dazai kept distracting him, kept making him laugh, and that in turn kept making him think of a future where this date would be everyday life. Where it’d be normal to cook alongside Dazai, where it’d be normal to distract the other, where it’d be normal to live and laugh with Dazai at his side.

His chest felt like it was going to burst,and though cooking had always felt a bit tedious; this time he couldn’t stop smiling, even when Dazai had left the room to “fix himself up”.

They’d eaten meals together before, but nothing that had felt so domestic as this one. Dazai had joined him for meals before, but it’d always felt like he was just joining Chuuya for dinner, always separate; tonight they were eating together, even if Dazai couldn’t touch or taste even a grain of salt. Dazai was a warm presence at his side, despite how his arm clearly felt the coldness emanate from his spiritual form. He felt heavy and there and warm, despite Chuuya not being able to touch him, to feel his skin.

“So,” Chuuya asked as he was finishing the last of his food, “what are your plans for tomorrow?”

It was a loaded question. For the past months, their plans had been preparing for the next ritual, whether that be actually planning, researching, or helping Dazai through his grief. But tomorrow, if everything went well, was a brand new day, a brand new start.

A brand new life.

Dazai smiled up at him where he’d been laying across the table with his head on his arm, his eyes sparkling as he sat up.

“Well,” he said softly, “first I’ll wake up, next to you, drink coffee and watch as you make breakfast for us, and then-”

Chuuya’s eyes followed him as Dazai stood up from his chair, mouth feeling a little dry. “And then?”

Dazai stepped around him, and Chuuya felt his neck hair suddenly stand to attention, as the cold energy from the spirit suddenly closed in on him. Dazai’s arm stretched across his chest, and Chuuya felt like his heart was going to give out.

“And then,” Dazai whispered as he settled his head on Chuuya’s shoulder, “I’m going to drag you back to bed and get well acquainted with those muscles you tried to keep hidden from me.”

Chuuya sputtered a bit at that. “What-”

Dazai only shushed him, “no need to be humble. I was a construction worker once, you know, I know a good build when I see one.”

Dazai’s hand dragged across his chest as if to prove his point, and Chuuya’s hands hardened into fists. He couldn’t do anything indecent to the other even if he wanted to, but his body really didn’t seem to get the memo.

Dazai laughed softly near his ear, and Chuuya turned his head to look at him. He was so close, lips almost touching, and Chuuya, for a moment, lost focus and started to lean into the other’s body. When his brain caught up to his actions, and he realized he was passing through the other, he opened his mouth to apologize, and Dazai once more made him quiet down, this time with a finger across his lips.

“You know, my favorite thing about you might be your eyebrows,” he said, “they give you all away. Right now, you’re thinking, ‘Dazai, you’re insane’, ‘Dazai, you’re driving me fucking crazy and I’m about to drag you on to the next available surface’, and I would like to dispel all those thoughts. I’m gonna take my time making sure you really feel how alive I am. How committed I’m gonna be to pamper you as my trophy husband.”

Chuuya licked his lips. “My, Dazai, are you this gentlemanly to all the necromancers you ask to resurrect you, or am I just special?”

Dazai looked at him for a moment before his eyes crinkled in joy at the callback to that café, to what should really constitute as their first date.

“You’re the most special there is, Chuuya,” he whispered, and for a moment his spiritual energy flared, and it felt like Chuuya could feel the arm around his chest. Comforting, warm, and steady; alive.

“Lets bring you back to life, so you can prove that, yeah?”

Dazai leaned in, and Chuuya knew, with his entire being, that they couldn’t physically kiss in this state.

(He’d still remember this as their first kiss in the years to come.)

Chuuya led Dazai into the white circle for a fourth and final time.

Blew him a kiss as he left him there.

Read the incantation aloud and prayed with everything within him that it’d work this time. He could feel the energy pulse around them, could feel something within him glow whitehot, and it almost left him too breathless to finish. It felt like a string was pulling at him, at his heart.

This time the light wasn’t just bright, it was blinding, and he had to close his eyes.

When it was done, he didn’t dare open his eyes, he didn’t dare face the possibility that he’d given Dazai false hope.

And then a warm, bandaged hand cupped his where it was outstretched towards the circle.

“Chuuya,” Dazai said, and he felt a kiss pressed to his knuckles. “Chuuya~ open your eyes.”

He did.

It worked.

Dazai was grinning at him, alive, warm, glowing. He was the most beautiful sight Chuuya had ever seen.

“Looks like I won the bet.”