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i. like a sheep
“Why’d you guys pick the name sheep?”
(Eight years old, scared, alone, memory hazy around the edges. Before this point, you did not know gentleness. You did not know anything, really.)
“To throw people off!” One of the older boys laughs. He will be dead in six months, skull smashed in with a baseball bat after attempting to steal food. “No one expects a sheep to be able to hold its ground or fend off an attack.”
You blink. Tilt your head. Try to picture yourself as a sheep instead of whatever it is you are. Thick fur to protect you from the bitter winter wind, a flock similar to the one you have found yourself in now. You would like that, you think.
No one expects a sheep to be able to hold its ground.
No one expects your small bruised and battered form could have great power hidden within it.
ii. like a ram
A ram’s horns grow with it, until the animal dies. Unlike deer and moose who shed their antlers annually, a ram’s innate forces of defense are lifelong companions.
When the King of the Sheep dies, poisoned and stabbed and betrayed, its horns are shorn from its head. They are left discarded in the sea, a forgotten grave marker. The Sheep King’s corpse breathes new life, and takes on a new form. It begrudgingly accepts the hand extended towards it. And it walks away.
iii. like a dog
“How cute~” Dazai coos. “You got a collar for yourself!”
“Go to hell.”
“My puppy is so well trained.” He sighs happily, then leans in closer, reaching out to poke the choker, though his hand is smacked away before he can make contact. His grin instantly melts into a pout. Chuuya hates him. “Hmph. Guess I still have more work to do. A dog shouldn’t attack its owner, you know.”
“I am not your fucking dog!”
Dazai cackles. It’s infuriating. Sheep, ram, dog, but not human. Alive and breathing, but not human.
Never human.
iv. like a god
“According to Dazai-kun’s report, you have a god living inside of you,” Kouyou tells Chuuya. She says it bluntly, matter-of-fact, as if it’s not a particularly big deal. “However, he has been known to both embellish details and outright lie.” She raises an eyebrow, leaving an unspoken question hanging in the air between them.
Is he telling the truth?
Chuuya doesn’t respond, unsure what to say. Could a god be subdued with just one touch? Is every ability its own minor deity?
“I am skeptical,” Kouyou continues when she is met with silence. “I find it difficult to believe any god would make a child its vessel, and then allow that child to maintain control over it.”
“I…”
(Chuuya doesn’t have an answer.)
v. like a line of code
You are not human.
You are nothing but 2,383 lines of code some researchers wrote off the top of their heads.
You are—
Which line will be corrupted first? The one for your heart or the one for your brain or the one for your lungs? Where will your destruction be born, where will the unraveling begin? If any one line goes bad, will it bring your death? Or can it be repaired, mended like flesh and bone?
You are not human, you are—
vi. like you, and you, and you, and—
a. like a doll
Chuuya stares at Q through the bars of their cell. They stare back, the ghost of a dangerous smile staining their lips. They clutch their doll tightly in one hand, fingers wrapped tightly around its neck. Chuuya shouldn’t be here. He doesn’t know why he’s wasting his time.
“Have you finally come to play with me?” Q asks. Their grin stretches wider, slicing their face in half, and Chuuya suppresses a shiver. He shouldn’t be here.
(He remembers:
A promise, from the mouth of a child called THING: I will hurt everyone you’ve ever cared about. Everyone you’ve ever loved.
Dazai laughed, then spun a lie about how he’s incapable of experiencing such an emotion as he slammed the cell door shut, but Q’s gaze was glued to Chuuya as if sealed there with blood.)
Chuuya’s voice fails him. He shouldn’t be here, but he knows why he stopped walking before reaching his true destination. The question dances on the tip of his tongue, and he opens his mouth to voice it, but then he remembers why he’s down here in the first place.
The dungeons are a place for THINGS. Non-human, de-human, like insects pinned to a display board and shielded behind glass. THINGS like a sheep, a ram without horns, a dog, a god who isn’t holy, a single line of code amongst thousands—
Chuuya wants to ask:
Why do you let Dazai call you THING?
Why do you laugh when he strips away your humanity?
But then Chuuya remembers, three cells down, is another so-called THING who also goes by brother, and if the dungeon is the only place where THINGS can exist, Chuuya doesn’t want to exhaust his energy condemning himself. He is a THING that has been granted the gift of humanity and he will not let that gift go to waste. He does not wish to rot his life away between past torture and a promise for more.
“It’s so boring down here, Chuuya-san.” Q’s voice startles him from his thoughts. “We could play dolls together. I’ll be the owner, and you can be the puppet. Doesn’t that sound fun?” They giggle.
Puppet, Chuuya thinks numbly. Doll. Thing.
Chuuya is not a THING like a puppet or a doll, except maybe he is. Just a little bit. A puppet whose strings are pulled by the being inside of it. A doll in the hands of the mafia boss, pairing it up with others just to see how it’ll get along with them. Dazai, Koyou, the Flags—
Chuuya is a THING in the same way a concept is a THING. Death, love, loss, betrayal, control, or lack thereof. Chuuya is a conceptual THING wearing the skin of a human. But maybe that’s just what it means to have an ability.
“I’m not allowed to play with you,” he hears himself reply. Q’s pleasant expression falters, mirth filling their eyes. Chuuya averts his gaze from their face to their doll, still strangled in their hold. It doesn’t seem upset with its current circumstances. If anything, it appears compliant and ready to accept whatever fate Q decides for it.
Ah, but dolls don’t have thoughts or feelings.
Chuuya shakes his head.
He didn’t come down here to talk to this THING or the THING in its hand; he came here to talk to the other THING that hides in the darkness, perpetually sinking into its grief.
b. like a stuffed animal
Elise hums to herself as she scribbles in a coloring book. Her table is set up for a tea party, with stuffed animals as occupants of the three other chairs. Each one has a ribbon tied around its neck, and the bear has a flower hair clip on its ear. A porcelain pink teapot sits in the center of the table, and each guest has a matching teacup set before it.
“Rintarouuuuuuu,” Elise whines. “I want someone else at my party!”
Mori stops speaking abruptly, and Chuuya refocuses on him, having accidentally tuned out whatever it was he was going on about. It didn’t seem particularly important.
Mori sighs. “Give me just a moment, Elise-chan. Once I finish, I’ll find you someone to play with.”
“NO!” Elise throws a crayon across the room. It falls several meters short of where Chuuya is standing. She smacks the table with both hands, jolting the entire setup. The stuffed rabbit falls over in its seat. “I want THEM!” She points sharply at Chuuya and Dazai.
Chuuya looks at Dazai. Dazai rolls his eye.
“Elise-chan…”
“You never let me play with them!” she exclaims. “That’s so not fair!”
“I don’t like playing with you,” Dazai spits out. He marches over, raising a hand threateningly. “In fact, why don’t I just put all of us out of our misery right now—”
“Dazai-kun!” Mori snaps.
Dazai freezes. Elise’s eyes are wide with fear. Chuuya wonders if he’s witnessing something he shouldn’t be. Dazai knew Mori before joining the mafia, so it stands to reason he knew Elise too. There’s a friction between them Chuuya doesn’t want to touch.
“You’re super annoying,” Elise tells Dazai, with a slight waver in her voice. “I want to play with just Chuuya-san instead. I bet he’d be nice to me.”
“Chuuya’s a suck-up.”
“Chuuya is right here,” he interrupts.
Mori sighs deeply. “If I leave them here with you and return in an hour, will that be enough time?”
Elise grins. Dazai groans.
“Very well.” Mori stands up, collecting the papers spread out on his desk. As he walks towards the door, he says, “I will return in an hour. Dazai-kun, you know the rules. Chuuya-kun, keep an eye on them.”
Chuuya tilts his head. “Rules?”
Mori pauses. He looks over his shoulder, eyes boring into Chuuya. “Dazai-kun and Elise-chan may not touch one another.”
And then he’s gone.
“Eh?” Chuuya turns to find Dazai and Elise glaring daggers at each other. “No touching? The hell sort of rule is that?”
Dazai blinks. His expression smooths over into something too-pleasant, and he strides over to Chuuya, pulling him in close with a hand on his arm. He whispers, “Why do you think it’s a rule?”
His breath is warm against Chuuya’s ear. Goosebumps prick against the back of his neck.
Elise is rearranging the table in order to allow room for two extra guests. Chuuya watches her movements. Her light hair bouncing cinematically with each movement, her vibrant skin without a single flaw to be seen. Dazai can touch someone without hurting them, but not if that person is sustained by an ability.
Dazai can touch someone without hurting them, but—
“I’ll give you a hint.” His grip on Chuuya’s arm tightens. Elise is humming to herself, a song that was popular six years ago, back when Chuuya was still living in the slums with the Sheep and trying to survive each day and only ever caught snatches of music when someone with a bit more fortune than him had a radio on. Back when he was a lamb running from its inevitable slaughter. “It smiles and laughs like an innocent little girl, but it melts away as soon as I make contact. What is it?”
Chuuya’s tongue sits heavy in his mouth. He knows the answer to the riddle, knows why Elise looks the exact same as she did the day Chuuya joined the mafia a year and a half ago. She is a THING disguised as a human.
Like Chuuya.
“Oh,” he mumbles.
“Don’t feel sorry for it.” Dazai disentangles himself from Chuuya. “I’m not sure it can really feel anything at all. It’s no different than these stuffed animals.” He prances back over to the table and plucks the bunny from its chair, looking it up and down with a judgmental frown. “Elise-chan, I thought you had a blue rabbit. Why is this one yellow?”
“HEY!” She exclaims. “Give that back!” She lunges for the toy, but Dazai dances out of reach.
“Ah-ah-ah, you know the rule~”
“I SAID GIVE IT BAAAAACKK!!!” She takes off running towards him. Dazai yelps and darts away, and it devolves into a full-on game of chase around Mori’s office.
Chuuya remains frozen in the middle of it. Watching Dazai run from an ability. An ability he called THING, because an ability is a THING except for when it takes on the form of a little girl.
Or a little boy.
(Boy? Is that even an appropriate descriptor for Chuuya? Is he boy—
—or is he THING?)
c. like a bandage
Wrapped up in blankets in a hotel bed, staring at the ceiling, Dazai tells Chuuya, “I don’t feel human.”
From the other bed, Chuuya replies, “Me neither.”
“What does that make us, then?”
“Dunno.” Chuuya’s feet hit the floor. He crosses over to Dazai’s bed and perches on the edge. “If you don’t feel human, what do you feel like?”
“An open wound.” He turns to look at Chuuya. “What about you?”
Chuuya blinks. Tilts its head. Opens its mouth and finally admits:
“I think I’m just a THING.”
vii. —like me.
Chuuya finds Q exactly where Mori said they were, back in their cell, now with cuffs around each ankle chaining them to the wall. They sit with their knees hugged tight against their chest, rocking back and forth, mumbling to themself as they scratch at their face. The exposed skin between the hem of their shorts and the tops of their socks is raw and bleeding.
Chuuya huffs out a sigh.
Q’s eyes snap up to it instantly, and a low growl escapes their throat.
“You should have killed me.”
Chuuya purses its lips. From behind its back, it procures a stuffed dog. Dark brown with a red ribbon tied around its neck, soft to the touch, much too kind of a gift for a child who wrought so much destruction a mere week ago. Still, Chuuya tosses the toy into the cell.
“My orders were to bring you back alive,” it says.
“You were going to let Dazai-san kill me,” Q argues.
Chuuya hesitates. “You were awake for that?”
Q tilts their head, a too-wide smile spreading across their face. “Chuuuuuya-san…” they sing, “I know the truth.” They dig their fingers into the flesh of their legs. “It’s only a matter of time before you wind up down here too. I heard Dazai-san call you THING like he does to me.”
“Dazai calls me THING because that’s what I am,” Chuuya replies easily. Using its ability, it scoots the stuffed toy closer to Q, nudging it against their side. “Dazai calls me that because I asked him to. And if you were listening, you would have heard that he doesn’t call you that anymore.”
Q snarls, “He wants to pretend he’s good, but he’s NOT!” They lunge towards Chuuya, though the chains stop them from even getting close to the bars of their cell. “He’s NOT. You know that. You know him. He’s not good, he’s not good, he’s NOT. HE LOCKED ME UP!! IT’S ALL HIS FAULT!”
“If it’s all his fault, why are you still down here even though he’s gone?” Chuuya counters. “You’re not a THING, but you are a monster.”
“SO ARE YOU!” Q screams. They yank and tug on the chains holding them back, tears welling up in their eyes. “This isn’t fair, this isn’t fair. He’s not good. Why does he get to see the sunlight!? That’s not FAIR!”
“It’s not,” Chuuya agrees. It turns away, not interested in having this argument with Q. It’s unfair that they’re locked up down here, but it’s too dangerous to let them out. It’s unfair that Dazai gets to walk in the light, but Chuuya wouldn’t drag him back into the darkness even if its life depended on it. It didn’t come down here to argue anyway; it only came to deliver the gift.
“We can’t get your doll back,” it calls over its shoulder, “but I figured you’d like an alternative to keep you company.”
“I HATE YOU,” Q shrieks.
Chuuya pauses.
“I know,” it replies softly. It thinks of being sixteen years old, unsure who it was and what it wanted and hearing Q called the name it wanted for itself. But Q was THING because they were hated.
Now, Chuuya is THING because it is loved.
“You’re welcome,” it says. “And thank you.”
Q shouts and screams and wails, but Chuuya ignores them. They’ll tire themself out eventually, and it has done the only thing it can do to help them. It has offered them its long-overdue thanks for being the first THING it met—for being the one to help it realize being called THING was an option at all.
—
“You’re taking me shopping.”
Chuuya blinks. It can still feel the blood crusting on its knuckles and jaw, can still hear the echoing screams of the hundreds of characters it mauled through in that goddamn book, is still unsteady on its feet adjusting to being in the real world again after a month away.
And already, Elise is demanding something of it.
“Rintarou said so,” she tells it, which might be a lie, but Mori isn’t around to ask, so Chuuya huffs out a sigh and runs a hand through its hair. It needs to shower. It wants to sleep. It hasn’t slept soundly since before the boss fell ill.
“Get someone else to take you.”
“Nope!” Elise grabs onto Chuuya’s sleeve, tugging. “It has to be you. Everyone else is busy.”
Chuuya scoffs. “I’m busy. I’m a month behind on all my work!”
Elise shakes her head. “Kouyou-san and Aku-san and the others have been filling in for you while you were gone. The only thing you need to do today is buy me candy!”
Chuuya grits its teeth. It remembers: Ranpo’s smug grin, lollipop in their hand, offering Chuuya its own sucker from their pocket because apparently their fuckass author boyfriend decided to provide them with candy alongside the five hundred murder attempts. It remembers the taste of the candy on its tongue, sweet enough to believe it was real. It remembers the sticky wrapper in its hands, remembers balling it up and throwing it directly at Ranpo’s face.
Before Chuuya can argue any more, Mori steps into the room. His face lights up when his gaze lands on Chuuya. “Oh, perfect, you’re already here! I need you to take Elise-chan to the store to grab a few things.” He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and passes it over.
A shopping list.
Chuuya’s grip tightens, the paper crumpling in its hand. Its ability buzzes beneath its skin, wired and begging for use after a month suppressed and unreachable while bound by the rules of Poe’s novel.
“Fine,” it bites out. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
The shopping list is composed of four items, the last of which is ‘Whatever candy Elise-chan wants’. They get the other items first, and then Elise eagerly drags Chuuya to a candy shop which is instantly too bright and colorful and headache-inducing. Elise fits right in, with her bright hair bright eyes bright smile, too vivid to be real.
Briefly, Chuuya wonders if she can even eat the candy she makes Mori buy for her.
Straight away, she’s grabbing things off of the shelf and shoving them into Chuuya’s arms. It follows her around the store dutifully, and if it has to use its ability to keep the growing mountain of candy from toppling onto the floor, no one has to know. It deserves to cheat a bit after everything its had to deal with recently.
“Hey, Chuuya-san,” Elise chirps as she throws a packet of strawberry-shaped marshmallows in its direction. It hums in response. “Did they tell you what happened with Dazai-san?”
Chuuya freezes. It doesn’t mean to, but—
The last it heard of Dazai was—
“Rintarou told me not to bring it up, but,” Elise shrugs, “he sucks and I hate doing what he tells me to. You knew he got shot, right?”
“…Yes.”
At the time it got transported into Poe’s book, all that was known about Dazai’s condition was that Dostoyevsky took him out of commission. And it had about a thousand other things to worry about, so it vowed to push thoughts of Dazai out of its mind until after it was certain the Boss and the Mafia as a whole were both safe.
In the book, Ranpo told it that Dazai was in surgery and expected to make a full recovery. Chuuya had scoffed and marched away, perturbed that it had taken even half a second to be worried, because of course Dazai is too crafty to die. Even at the hands of a demon like Dostoyevsky.
“Well, he’s fine!” Elise skips down the aisle, then stops to examine a package of gummies. “It kinda sucks. I was hoping he might’ve finally met his match.” She sighs, hanging her head. “Oh, well. Maybe next time.”
“Uhh…” Chuuya blinks. It has a strange feeling that saying anything at all will somehow incriminate it. “Right.”
“Don’t you want that too?” Elise asks innocently. “You two hate each other.”
“Of course,” Chuuya agrees, the lie painfully obvious even to its own ears. “That bastard has been nothing but a pain in my ass since the day I met him.”
Elise snorts. “Oh, I’m sure.”
“You little b—!”
The package of gummies previously in her hands smacks Chuuya in its face. It’s only thanks to its ability that the candy doesn’t fall to the ground. It grumbles under its breath. “You are a fucking menace.”
Elise cackles, then promptly dashes away.
When Chuuya finally catches back up to her, after scouring the entire store only to find her one aisle over from where it lost her, she asks, “Does he still hate me?”
Chuuya groans. “How the hell would I know?!”
“You’ve talked with him.”
“Yeah, like twice!”
Elise raises an eyebrow. Chuuya rolls its eyes.
“You two were never going to get along,” it says, in lieu of an actual answer. “You’re the Boss’ ability, and he was the prodigy child who could make you disappear with a single touch. You were like the world’s worst pair of siblings.”
Elise sighs dramatically. She deposits yet another package of gummies onto the pile of candy, which Chuuya can barely see over at this point. “He always called me THING when he thought I couldn’t hear. Everyone else calls me ‘she’, but it was like he couldn’t even entertain the idea that I’d want to be a ‘she’ even if I’m not human. You get it, don’t you?”
Chuuya purses its lips. It remembers being sixteen, listening to Dazai call Elise what she was instead of what everyone treated her as, wishing the opposite for itself. Elise is a THING who happily masquerades as a human. Chuuya was proven human, yet it could only ever feel the burning mark of THING crawling beneath its skin.
“Yeah,” it admits. “I do.”
Elise grins. “This is why I’ve always liked you better.” She turns her back and begins marching away. “Okay, I’m done now. Let’s buy everything and go back.”
Chuuya’s shoulders drop in relief. Its arms are starting to ache, and while it occasionally doesn’t mind spending time with Elise, it would like to get home so it can shower and then sleep.
As the cashier rings everything up and Chuuya watches the number on the register climb impossibly high, Elise rocks back and forth on her feet, hands clasped behind her back. “Last time I saw Dazai-san, I also saw one of my old friends,” she says casually. “And I heard them talking about me. D’you wanna know what they called me?”
THING? Chuuya thinks tiredly.
“She,” Elise answers.
Chuuya blinks, surprised. Then it smiles. “That’s nice.”
Elise was THING because she wasn’t human. Chuuya is THING because that’s the only way it can comfortably exist within humanity.
“Yeah,” Elise agrees. She picks up an individually wrapped caramel and tosses it up onto the counter with everything else. “It is nice. Even though I still think Dazai-san sucks.”
And, well— Chuuya can’t really argue with that.
—
Dazai’s lips are warm against Chuuya’s skin, tracing the lightning bolt-shaped scars that twist around its arms. Chuuya shudders beneath his touch, unsure when he learned to be gentle. Unsure when gentleness became something either of them were capable of experiencing.
“Chuuya,” Dazai murmurs. His teeth graze its flesh, threatening to bite.
Chuuya hums in response, winding its fingers through Dazai’s hair. It tugs, just hard enough to guide Dazai’s face up so their lips can meet. He moves willingly, pliant under Chuuya’s touch.
It’s nearly two in the morning and Chuuya only got home an hour ago. It meant to take a quick shower and then make dinner, but as soon as it emerged from the bathroom, Dazai pulled it into his arms, whining about not getting to see it all day before tugging it into bed and kissing it breathless.
Chuuya dips one hand beneath the hem of Dazai’s shirt, fingers brushing against the bare skin of his torso. He shivers, and Chuuya smiles into the kiss, grabbing hold and pressing harder into his waist. Not quite hard enough to bruise, though it wishes they had time for that.
Its other hand settles on Dazai’s arm, unbandaged, and its fingers brush over the bumps from old scars.
Dazai hums, content.
Chuuya remembers being seventeen, in a hotel room with a kid just as unsure of his humanity as it was—a kid who said he felt like a perpetually bleeding wound. Something that would never heal. Dazai was THING because he used it as a punishment for himself, but when Chuuya wanted to be called THING, he started to realize that bandages are an ‘it’ just as much as the blood they staunch.
Dazai was THING because he hated himself.
Chuuya is THING because it loves itself.
“Chuuya,” Dazai whispers again, soft against its lips. “Chuuya, Chuuya.” Repeated like a prayer, like it’s the only thing he knows, like he can’t imagine any other word sullying his tongue.
“Dazai,” it replies. It pushes him over, reversing their positions so it hovers above him. His pupils are blown wide, but Chuuya presses a finger against his lips before he can drag it into another kiss.
“You should sleep.”
He pouts. “But doesn’t Chuuya know how unfair it is to expect me to sleep when it only just got home?”
(When Dazai called himself THING, he did so with blood on his teeth and a knife for a tongue.
When he calls Chuuya THING, he does so as a declaration of love.)
“Life isn’t fair.”
Dazai sighs, melodramatic. “Will it at least stay with me?”
Despite itself, Chuuya feels a fond smile tugging at the corners of its mouth. It places a soft kiss to Dazai’s forehead, then rolls off of him, though it doesn’t move any further away. “I think that could be arranged.”
At eight, Chuuya was THING because it didn’t know it had another option.
At fifteen, Chuuya was THING because it was given a crown it didn’t want.
At sixteen, Chuuya feared being called THING was equivalent to damnation.
Now, at twenty-three, Chuuya is THING simply because it wants to be.
Kouyou calls it THING like her favorite kimono; Elise calls it THING like a new pack of crayons; Akutagawa calls it THING like blood on concrete; Gin calls it THING like the blade of a knife; Tachihara calls it THING like a pistol; Kajii calls it THING like cold lemonade on a hot summer day; Mori calls it THING like a pair of leather gloves; Hirotsu calls it THING like cigarette smoke wafting through the still evening air; and Dazai—
Dazai calls it THING like LOVE.