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Even the world’s most incompetent detective would be able to solve the mystery in front of Dazai. As someone whose major strength lies in his mental acuity, this doesn’t even suffice to be considered as a ‘mystery’.
A package sits atop his low table. A crème box that’s elegant in its simplicity, tied with a blood-red silk ribbon. The brand name embossed on the box assures that the contents are more expensive than his six-month salary. This kind of package arrives in front of his dorm room like clockwork. Every Friday afternoon, it awaits his presence, as if eager to taint his upcoming weekend.
There’s no message on the blank card attached to the package, no outright declaration of identity or intent. Not that it’s necessary. The identity behind the sender is loud and clear.
“This week’s clothes are surprisingly not as tacky as I expected.” He prods and pokes at the soft material of the packaged outfits, like he’s dealing with something that’s liable to explode at any moment.
A pale yellow ultra-soft cotton sundress, one that teases the line of his knees. Under that dress, a handsome charcoal double-breasted coat that comes with a belt to cinch his waist. There are two pairs of socks included in the package: one black and buttery to the touch; one white and stretchy with clasps for a garter.
The sender isn’t brazen enough to include underwear. Or rather, Chuuya doesn’t seem to have any desires or interests that run in that vein; as someone who doesn’t want to show his insides to Dazai, he also extends a similar—unnecessary—courtesy, in return.
Not that Dazai would show it to him, at least without sufficient payment in exchange. His bandages serve their purpose too well, and he’s not fond of changing things that don’t require change.
Like every week that this had happened, Dazai plucks the clothes out of the box, and hangs them in his closet that’s beginning to bloom with a myriad of colors. After leaving everything behind in the mafia, growing a new wardrobe hasn’t been high on his list of priorities. He wouldn’t have minded persisting in wearing nothing but his bandages and perhaps that beige coat to add some modesty.
But before he could implement his plan to terrorize his new coworkers with his fashion choices, these boxes start to appear with startling regularity.
…Well, maybe not that startling. Chuuya’s the sort of person to doggedly do what he has decided on doing, regardless of how lacking in brains that action may be. Due to his pitiful size, his brain is also cursed to never grow beyond his tiny skull, which means that’s such a simpleton that he could only remain loyal to certain concepts, regardless of betrayal.
Chuuya still talks of Sheep fondly, even after the literal backstabbing. These talks don’t even need to happen when Chuuya has been tricked to ingesting alcohol in his presence. He’s just that open about his affection for a bunch of weakling brats who are selfish enough to shackle their king and still expect him to protect them under his wing.
In the same vein, Chuuya’s probably never going to stop thinking of him as someone that he’s partnered with, someone that he’s worked in his oh-so-beloved Port Mafia with. That means that he’d always be a busybody when it comes to his affairs. He’d continue to be able to hound Dazai’s new residence down while scuttling around like a cockroach—black, tiny, fond of climbing on walls and ceilings, buzzing around with an unmistakable presence and carrier of so many things that could make one’s body ill.
“Let me guess,” he says to the air conversationally, as he folds the box into an origami of his own design, imagining that it’s the little man’s face that he’s scrunching bit by bit. “Chuuya’s thinking that even if I’ve left the mafia, I must wear fashionable clothes in order to not tarnish the organization’s reputation, or some other nonsense.”
Not all of the clothes end up inside the closet. Given that this is a dorm for Agency staff, this place isn’t meant to be a glamorous living space with plenty of room for décor and furniture. Because it’s sometimes too boring to simply lie down on a cheap, thin futon, Dazai recycles some of the uglier ‘gifts’ and uses them as extra padding for his mattress. Some become blankets, towels, and duvets.
They’re repurposed into many things, but never curtains. Dazai may be a menace, but he doesn’t want to inflict the sight of Chuuya’s fashion taste on his neighbors. At the moment, the sole window in his dorm looks out to an empty plot of land, but one couldn’t be too sure. What if some lady wants to gaze into his window in hopes of catching a glimpse of him, while deciding if she wants to accept his invitation to a double suicide? It’d be too pitiful if that hypothetical lady ends up seeing the frilly doll-like dress from three weeks ago, or the bright orange pants from last week.
Once he has torn the box into unrecognizable pieces, he taps his fingers over the table, contemplating.
A part of him wishes to see Chuuya. Not because he’s grown insane enough to want to see a shorty’s face, no. It’s because he wishes to inquire whether Chuuya has reached some dubious enlightenment, sending him two sets of outfits each time, with one of them being more traditionally feminine.
Dazai isn’t picky about his outfits, especially since he knows that he’d look dashing regardless of what he wears. If it means getting to prank Chuuya into doing something that would make him yell his heart out, Dazai wouldn’t mind parading all over the city in just a pink bikini.
“Is it because you’ve realized that I’m really too beautiful for this world?” He laughs at that thought. It’d be quite the delicious point, if Chuuya really did end up realizing that he’d been blind for so long in not realizing that his owner is very good-looking. “Or is this your way of childishly harassing me, thinking that I’d be flustered by these things?”
That sounds a lot like Chuuya. He’s full of bluster, like a volcano waiting to be uncorked. He’d spout threats about tenfold paybacks, but he’s always kept a long tab open for Dazai’s transgressions against him. It’s almost indulgent, almost affectionate. If it were anyone else, Dazai would suspect that the other party is welcoming others to bully him; since this is Chuuya, it’s more likely that he simply thinks nothing of it, that the pranks merely inconvenience him like mosquito bites that swell for a moment and disappear into nothingness quickly.
Tonight, Dazai resolves to wear the striped long sleeve shirt from seven weeks ago. That shirt and nothing else, because the weather has been steadily growing warmer with each passing day. That shirt must cost at least fifty thousand yen, but it’s going to end up as his version of pajamas anyway.
He wears it, then pauses.
It’s quite oversized on him. Not to the point that he’d think that Chuuya’s actually buying these clothes for someone else and just keeps on mistakenly sending them his way. But the fit is a lot looser than he’d like.
He hasn’t intently looked at himself at the mirror in quite some time. Before, he practiced his facial expressions in front of one. Nowadays, his control over his body is already approaching perfection, that he hasn’t found the need to deliberately examine his face.
This time, he looks over himself critically. He adjusts his posture, straightening his shoulders a bit, instead of his favored slouch whenever he doesn’t feel like dealing with things. He watches the mirror image of him do the same, gaze lingering on the blueness of the stripes. It’s as if they’re imbued with the heat of Chuuya’s gaze—but only a portion of it, given that they’re not the exact same blue.
He continues to adjust his posture, not reaching satisfaction, no matter how many times he has glared at the mirror.
In fact, it’s not just about the posture.
He runs his fingers over the line of his shoulderblades. If the flesh there is a little thicker, the fabric would hang over his shoulder better. His palms slide down, smoothing the lines of the shirt that’s a little too loose around his waist. A layer of fat would make the fabric look less like it’s hugging nothing but air.
…Tsk, is this the slug’s way of saying that he doesn’t have money to buy a lot of food?
Why should he focus on such a thing? Getting an appetite is rare for him, given that he can’t even muster an appetite to continue living, most of the time. But he’s always been competitive when it comes to Chuuya. Call it the pride of a dog’s owner. He can’t bear to let the little shorty think that he has the advantage over him.
Instead of slowly wasting away, Dazai resolves to eat a little more now that he’s on the side of light. So what if he doesn’t have as big of a revenue stream as before? He could always cajole a few more people into feeding him. So what if he doesn’t feel like eating a lot of the time? He could always muster the willpower to gain more weight so he could walk around Yokohama, showing off his nice clothes and nice figure.
…In fact, there’s a better way to go about this.
Tonight, as he prepares to sleep, he wears the striped blue shirt as his pajamas. The pale yellow sundress is atop his pillow, and the charcoal coat is his blanket. They bear the unmistakable smell of a stupid small sheepdog. Because Dazai’s funds are limited now, he can’t afford to send them for laundry and dry cleaning yet, which is why they must stay in the state of smelling a little like a little man.
Surrounded by these attempts at harassing him to have a quickened heartbeat, Dazai makes himself comfortable atop his futon. He even hums along a song, as he scrolls on his phone so he could order the frilliest apron known to mankind, and have it sent to Chuuya’s office, timed just-right for a meeting with his squad members.
After all, if it’s an issue of Dazai eating well, there’s no better solution than to have Chuuya take care of the cooking, in the same way that he always manages to whet Dazai’s appetite for more.
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end