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When Haruno calls Atsushi to the Agency lobby, telling him that someone’s here to see him, he’s expecting he’ll have to sign for a package, or perhaps screen a potential client. What he isn’t expecting, on a unremarkable Tuesday in late March, is to encounter the ghost of his past made flesh.
“Headmaster…” Atsushi’s voice comes out hardly above a whisper. He scrambles back, trying to return to the safety of the warm, well-lit office. Regardless of the topsy-turvy nightmare world he’s stepped into, he’s certain reality waits for him on the other side of the door. His hands flail blindly, groping for the doorknob. He just has to get out.
“Atsushi.”
With just one word, Atsushi freezes. Panic, at once both ice-cold and white-hot, floods through his chest and down all of his limbs. He lowers his hand from the doorknob behind him. There’s no escape, not really. Not where the headmaster is concerned. Atushi knows this. Like a mouse with its tail pinned, he can run with all his might and go nowhere.
“I saw your photograph in the newspaper,” the headmaster continues. “You saved lives up on that airship.”
Atsushi hesitates. He wouldn’t dare contradict the headmaster, but he’s been punished for arrogance enough times to know better than to outright agree with that sort of praise.
“I did what anyone would do,” Atsushi says at last.
“Nonsense. It took courage and grit, fighting like you did. It couldn’t have been easy.”
Atsushi bites down on the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. Back at the orphanage, fighting back would only ever get him beaten twice as hard. Now, however, the headmaster wants to act like it was some sort of heroism.
“This detective agency is doing you good, isn’t it?”
A wave of nausea crests in Atsushi’s stomach.
So that's what this is about.
The headmaster is here to take him away from the Agency; he can hear the threat beneath his words . Atsushi is safe here. He’s fed. He’s warm. These sorts of things can’t be allowed; they never have been. So he’s going to be dragged back to the orphanage by the hair, screaming and begging, and put through such unrelenting hell that the Detective Agency will seem like nothing more than a distant, half-forgotten dream.
“Please.”
It’s a quiet, broken thing, but at least Atsushi manages to get it out.
“Please?” the headmaster echoes.
“I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ll give you everything I have saved. If there’s some sort of debt I owe, I’ll have the Agency send you my paychecks in full until it’s paid off. Whatever you came here for, I’ll find a way to give it to you.”
The headmaster scrutinizes Atsushi carefully, confusion furrowing his brow.
“I don’t think I follow. I didn’t come here to collect a debt.”
“I know,” Atsushi says, his voice breaking with a ragged, desperate sound. “I know you don’t want money from me, not really. And I know begging isn’t allowed, but still. Maybe we can strike a deal, at least. You can have whatever you want from me. Anything at all. Just please don’t make me leave the Agency.”
“Atsushi,” the headmaster says sternly, and it’s all Atsushi can do not to turn and run at that familiar tone, the one that promised pain soon to follow. “You aren’t listening to me.”
But Atsushi is beyond listening. He’s beyond reason or rationality. While a small, determined part of him insists that the headmaster can’t force him to do anything anymore, not now that he has the tiger to protect him, a larger part says otherwise. This part of him is possessed of the unwavering certainty of frightened children, the ones who know that monsters are not only real, but unconquerable.
So Atsushi does the only thing he can. He all but throws himself onto the floor, bowing in perfect dogeza.
“Atsushi! You’re being ridiculous. Get up.”
But Atsushi refuses to so much as raise his head.
“It’s like I said,” he says to the ground. “I know I’m not allowed to beg. But I’m begging anyway. Please . I’d give anything to stay with the Detective Agency. There’s nothing in the world more important to me.”
The headmaster grabs Atsushi by the collar and wrenches him to his feet.
“I should cut off your ears if you’re not going to use them to listen,” he snarls. “Shut your mouth for just one second and—”
“Well, it certainly looks like we’ve got a bit of excitement out here.”
Atsushi knows that voice.
His first instinct is to tell Dazai to run. To explain that he’s never faced an opponent as powerful and as cruel as the one standing before him. Even Dazai — cunning, self-assured, ever-unshakable Dazai — doesn’t stand a chance against him.
But before Atsushi can get the words out, Dazai has gently removed the headmaster’s hand from Atsushi’s shirt and separated the two of them. Atsushi doesn’t miss the way Dazai places his body just a half-step in front of Atsushi’s own, a subtle but unwavering shield.
“Sorry,” Dazai says, a hint of iron clear beneath his ostensibly pleasant tone. “But Atsushi is fairly new around here. If you have any inquiries or questions, you can address them to me. I’m his direct superior.”
The headmaster’s jaw tightens.
“I don’t have any inquiries,” he all but spits. “I merely came to try to congratulate Atsushi for his heroism on that airship. But he’s clearly in no mood to hear it.”
Dazai opens his mouth to answer, but Kunikida bustles into the lobby before he can get the words out.
“Dazai!” he scolds. “What’s taking you so long out here? You said it wouldn’t even be a minute.”
Dazai merely shoots Kunikida a quick but meaningful look, and Kunikida’s gaze travels from Atsushi to the headmaster and back again, and realization dawns on his face.
“That isn’t… ?”
Dazai nods, and color flushes Kunikida’s cheeks.
“You’ve got some nerve showing your face around here,” Kunikida growls, drawing himself up to his full height.
For the first time Atsushi has seen, the headmaster is speechless. And is that a flicker of apprehension that crosses his face as he takes in Kunikida’s stormy expression?
But the uncertainty passes as soon as it had come, replaced by cold fury as the headmaster rounds on Atsushi.
“This is absurd,” he hisses. “Is this your organization’s idea of hospitality?”
Dazai steps fully in front of Atsushi, blocking him from the headmaster’s view.
“Like I said, you’re best off addressing your questions to me, what with Atsushi’s relative inexperience.”
Dazai’s pleasant tone doesn’t waver for even a moment, not even as he says, “And to answer you, Kunikida is displaying remarkable restraint in not hauling off and punching you right now. Considering the full context, I’d say that’s some damn good hospitality.”
Atsushi can’t see the headmaster’s expression, nor Dazai’s, but they’re both quiet for several long moments before the headmaster lets out an indignant huff.
“Well, don’t say I didn’t try, Atsushi,” he snarls, before turning to go.
“Bye!” Dazai sing-songs. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!”
And with that, the headmaster is gone. Atsushi lets out a long, shaky breath. He manages to keep his knees from buckling, but it’s a close thing.
When Dazai turns to face Atsushi, his expression is unreadable.
“Listen,” he begins.
But Kunikida cuts in before he can get any farther.
“Why didn’t you call for backup?” he demands. “When you’re out of your depth, you need to get another Agency member. That’s protocol!”
Atsushi blinks, dumbfounded.
“I’ve never had backup before,” he says at last.
Kunikida frowns.
“You’ve run too many missions with us to still pull the rookie card. You absolutely know how requesting backup works.”
Atsushi hesitates. He isn’t quite sure how to explain it. There’s backup in a scuffle with the Port Mafia, certainly, but the headmaster is a different situation entirely. No one had ever intervened on Atsushi’s behalf when it came to the headmaster, no matter how much he screamed and begged for help. Before today, Atsushi had thought of rescue the same as he thought of sprouting wings and taking flight. A sort of liberation that could only exist in fantasy.
“Don’t listen to Mister Grumpy,” Dazai chides. “He’s just in a bad mood because he didn’t get a chance to punch your headmaster.”
For a long moment, Atsushi stands in stunned silence.
“ What ?”
“What do you mean ‘what?’ I said as much earlier, didn’t I?”
“But I thought that was just a bluff,” Atsushi says, with slowly dawning comprehension. “How do you even know who the headmaster is? Or what he looks like?”
Dazai smiles grimly.
“We’ve all got personnel files with the Agency. Kunikida and I have both seen yours; it covers your background, Ability, the works. Your headmaster’s picture was included in one of the sections, along with details regarding your upbringing. It was mostly in broad strokes, but there was enough in the file to get a sense of what he did to you.”
Suddenly it all makes sense. Dazai’s shielding of Atsushi. His refusal to let the headmaster so much as talk to him directly. Kunikida’s cold fury.
“You two were protecting me…” Atsushi murmurs, awestruck. “I’ve never—”
But Dazai cuts him off before he can finish.
“Well, you do now. So you gotta call for backup.”
“Right,” Atsushi agrees. “Backup.”