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There was something 'bout you that now I can't remember, it's the same damn thing that made my heart surrender. And I'll miss you on the train, I'll miss you in the morning. I never know what to think about, I think about you.
— About You, 1975
✶
"Let's go for a coffee," Dazai says.
It isn’t initially a startling proposition until Dazai says that he’ll pay for it, and it’s here when Kunikida faces Dazai with blown eyes and a face bewitched in disbelief. Like clockwork, Kunikida narrows his eyes in scepticism, flitting across every inch of Dazai’s face like chopsticks searching for a singular piece of rice within a dish. Yes! Kunikida reasons. Yes, Dazai must have orchestrated a loophole where the earth will miraculously orbit the correct tilt to milk ¥1000 from his pockets.
But—but. Kunikida adjusts, because it's inevitable with Dazai, to accept him like how the earth so readily accepts the rain. Inevitability is swift and powerful enough to make him sigh, pack up his work with infuriated acceptance, and remedy his unsteady heart by rifling at Dazai his routine reprimands because this is what they're used to.
Dazai acts accordingly, too perfectly, with this routine. He almost whines, then composes himself and trills. "Come on, Kunikida-kun~ I mean it! I will pay."
There's a misplaced stone beside Kunikida's desk, toppled from the shared pot plant in the middle. An amused yet daring thought passes by Kunikida's head at Dazai's reassurance.
It is the end of February, and half of the agency still writes “2011” not “2012.” March will come in like a command, roaring in like a lion and stumbling into April like a lamb. Somewhere in there, Dazai merges across the months like a daydream.
With a prayer and some deity's blessing, Dazai Osamu does end up paying for both of their coffees and it's off-script.
Kunikida frowns at the air bubbles in his coffee. He can already feel it, the expectations he had scaffolded in his notebook dedicated to his precedent predictions for his colleagues going askew.
Because Dazai always manages to see every shift of light on Kunikida’s face no matter the room, he of course calls Kunikida out on this.
“Is Kunikida-kun not appreciative of the coffee I bought him?” Dazai pouts.
Kunikida brushes the velvet stars from his cheeks with a firm shake. “No, it's just—” He doesn't finish that sentence. “Are you sure you don't have some third-party?”
“How rude!”
The waitress, accustomed to their antics, is not fazed by this and scolds the two of them. Begrudgingly and not-so begrudgingly, they sluice their banter, but they still jab at each other. Kunikida sinks in this familiarity: This is what they're used to.
After a few minutes, Kunikida remembers the mechanics of reality and shirks terrible possibilities in his head, the kind that he blows into his pillows at night. "No, seriously. You sure there's no loophole to this? It's all from your own bank account, not mine or some poor man?”
Like rain to a lily, the corners of Dazai's lips upturned immediately from the comment. The light splits as an inoffensive shadow overcasts the room—it must be noon. "Don't be so sceptical, Kunikida-kun, you poor, poor man. You'll grow tenfold the wrinkles than you already have right now."
"Why, you—!"
Dazai ducks like his instinct is adjusted by divine timing to just-miss a perfect suckerpunch delivered by Kunikida.
When Kunikida first met Dazai, it would be a lie if he had said that Dazai did not have a recklessly beautiful face. It was Tuesday as normal as Tuesday gets when Dazai had swept in from the backdoor upon the undeniable referral of Mr Taneda. Beige-clad and soaked in rain, Dazai storms into Kunikida’s life with little regard for Kunikida’s perfect, symmetrical ideals, such as coffee coasters or coat racks—all of which Dazai discards.
But despite his alarmingly listless work ethic, haunting formicide of a smile, and devastating charm, hollowed humanity paled Dazai like vellum paper. Somedays when sunset is a shade away from a scorching scarlet, Dazai will fall eerily silent. Kunikida can conjure this image like a preserved relic: Dazai's suddenly honey-milk eyes looking over an aching Yokohama, searching for something in that setting sun that isn't quite there.
And somehow, it's these messy, mismatched layers that make up Dazai is what makes him mould mud out of Kunikida's world and mark a fort into it—blanket, flag, and everything.
It's funny, the thing going on between them. It's childish, he believes, the way Dazai so wrecks into his life the way he did.
Many of the things just so happen, like Dazai paying for both their coffees out of the blue, or when they return to where they began. But it's far too erratic. So erratic, Kunikida has to press his hand over his ribcage to keep everything in him in place. The earth is shaky beneath Kunikida's feet, uneven and always spinning, and he's at the edge of the sea where things end as they begin.
If Kunikida takes his glasses off and squint his eyes enough at the distance where everything is blue, there's an empty space shaped in the body of a man.
"When I go, I'd like to go out just as beautifully."
The coffee is fine and slips down his throat too well. Dazai doesn't ask anything about how the coffee tastes, because Kunikida isn't saying anything and that must mean something within the margins of good. More than good, Kunikida is content. And it's this oasis that is adjacent to a bad dream because this comfort must mean something, too.
The sun is setting, and Dazai stretches this dying light further by an arm's length. "Let's take a walk," he says.
In actuality, there's a stack of ten more paperwork to complete waiting at the bottom of Kunikida's desk. But tonight, the trees swoon and the mountains are melancholic. There's a misty melody of an erhu, spinning marshlands of memories. Time thickens. Underneath the flowering moon, he collects all the dislodged pieces of what they share between them, and acts accordingly. Not perfectly.
Because today, Kunikida is brave, they chance at an evening walk together. The sky is scarlet, bruised like a bad memory.
And yet, despite, despite, despite, Kunikida will think when the world is wide, and that endless light possesses the carcass of what he calls his body: You're—
The best partner I've ever had.
"You're so predictable, Kunikida."
Today, Kunikida challenges Dazai’s puerilism because they're at the end of the world. All teeth, exasperated, with too much to lose, he asks facing the sunset: "Oh yeah?"
They’re by the riverside, back to where they had initially found the good for something boy, Atsushi. He grew well, growing well; made the most of the dust he receives in his monthly paycheck and people who believe in him.
There's ants crawling across that expanse of twilight, white and pearly like beads of salt. Around them, banana milk spills the concrete and it's sickly sweet. Lamp posts bracket the promenade, and the ocean rocks the world to sleep. Dazai swigs this atmosphere and tilts his chin towards the moon like he's feigning a wish.
It's deathly, this position of theirs. Questions cluster at the tide of Kunikida's tongue, enough to make his heart hail. The thoughts thunder. If you were to make a wish—what would it be? If you had the chance, would you stay? Will you try and stay? Will you try and stay? Not very daring, Kunikida keeps his kempt hands folded over his lap as he watches for Venus. His lips stay stitched.
Dazai exhales, quiet and quick. "Yeah."
"How so?”
Dazai leans back from his pool of ponders and taps the notebook wedged in Kunikida's pants pocket. His fingers are nimble and light. A trying grin gleams his face, and Kunikida finally understands.
✶
Two boys shaped by moonlight sit beside the river, where the water flows once but never twice. In this imperfect world, where it's been ashed more than reborn, where the crows cry and mother's mourn, one of them plants a promise with their lips like it's a prayer. The earth wavers.