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In Yokohama, the nights never truly slept.
Neon lights flickered against rain-slicked asphalt, alleyways breathed out rot and secrets, and somewhere beneath the city’s endless motion, something quieter—far more dangerous—stirred. It was not the familiar tension between the Port Mafia and the Armed Detective Agency, not the predictable cycle of violence and fragile truces. This was subtler. Quieter. More insidious.
It was the tension between two men who understood each other far too well.
Dazai Osamu walked the streets with his hands in his coat pockets, humming tunelessly as if the world were nothing more than a stage for his own amusement. To anyone watching, he looked the same as always—flippant, careless, untouchable. The man who joked about suicide with a smile sharp enough to cut glass. The man who neutralised legends with a brush of his skin.
But the night knew better.
In the hollow spaces of his mind, where humour could not reach and sarcasm rotted into silence, Dazai harboured a fear so corrosive it made his breath catch when he allowed himself to think of it.
What if he had Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ability?
The thought alone felt obscene.
“Crime and Punishment” was not like other abilities. It did not demand creativity, sacrifice, or clever manipulation. It did not reward planning or psychological warfare. It was a conclusion, not a process. One touch, and life ceased—clean, absolute, irreversible.
Dazai despised absolutes.
His own ability, No Longer Human, was elegant in its cruelty. It forced him to engage, to think. It demanded proximity, timing, risk. It turned battles into games of wit and endurance, into puzzles begging to be solved. With it, Dazai could dance along the edge of death without falling in—could flirt, tease, mock fate itself.
Fyodor’s ability would not let him dance.
It would push him.
Hard.
Dazai knew himself too well to pretend otherwise. If death became that easy—if it lived in his fingertips—he would stop resisting it. There would be no need for elaborate plans, no need for ropes, rivers, or pills hidden behind jokes. No need for the long, exhausting performance of trying to die without succeeding.
He would simply… end things.
Others. Himself. The world, if the thought ever crossed his mind on a particularly dark night.
And that terrified him more than any enemy ever had.
He imagined it sometimes, unbidden. The weightlessness of knowing that every problem could be solved with a single touch. No moral calculus. No guilt that lingered long enough to hurt. Just finality. Silence.
Would he still be Dazai Osamu then?
Or would he become something hollow—something closer to the death he already chased?
The idea made his stomach twist. If he possessed Fyodor’s power, he would lose the last thing anchoring him to life: struggle. Challenge was the only thing that made existence tolerable. Remove that, and there would be nothing left but the void yawning patiently inside him.
On the other side of the city, in a cathedral of shadows and candlelight, Fyodor Dostoevsky sat perfectly still, fingers laced together as if in prayer.
Where Dazai feared power, Fyodor coveted it.
Where Dazai clung to uncertainty as proof of life, Fyodor despised it as a flaw in creation.
Fyodor’s ability was lethal, yes—but it was not perfect. It required proximity. Timing. Vulnerability. His touch could kill, but only if he survived long enough to deliver it. He had learned, through blood and near-misses, just how fragile the human body truly was—including his own.
Mortality disgusted him.
And Dazai Osamu embodied the one thing Fyodor lacked: immunity.
“No Longer Human” was not merely an ability—it was negation incarnate. A quiet erasure of the extraordinary. With it, Fyodor imagined a world stripped bare of chaos, of divine accidents masquerading as gifts. No more unpredictable miracles. No more gods hiding inside human flesh.
Only control.
Only order.
With Dazai’s ability, Fyodor would no longer need to fear betrayal or ambush. Bullets would become meaningless. Abilities would collapse into dust at his feet. Even death itself would hesitate before him, uncertain whether it still had jurisdiction.
He would not simply rule—he would endure.
To Fyodor, immortality was not living forever. It was the absence of vulnerability. And Nullification promised exactly that.
In his quieter moments—rare, dangerous moments—Fyodor allowed himself to imagine it. A world where he no longer needed layers of contingency plans. Where survival was guaranteed. Where his vision could unfold uninterrupted, unchallenged, untainted by chance.
A world where Dazai Osamu no longer existed as an obstacle—but as a tool.
Or better yet, a relic.
Their inevitable meeting came, as it always did, without ceremony.
A narrow alley. Brick walls damp with rain. The distant hum of traffic like the echo of a dying heartbeat. They faced each other under a flickering streetlamp, two figures carved from shadow and intent.
Dazai’s smile was absent.
Fyodor noticed immediately.
“I wonder,” Dazai said softly, eyes unreadable, “how many nights you’ve spent imagining it.”
Fyodor tilted his head. “Imagining what?”
“My ability,” Dazai continued. “Stripping the world bare. Turning legends into nothing.”
A thin smile curved Fyodor’s lips. “And I wonder how often you’ve imagined my touch. How peaceful it would be to end everything without effort.”
The words hung between them, heavy with confession.
“I’d rather die,” Dazai said at last, voice cold and stripped of humor, “than have your power.”
Fyodor’s eyes gleamed. “And I would kill for yours.”
They stood there, reflections fractured through opposite mirrors—one man afraid of becoming death, the other desperate to escape it.
Neither could steal what the other possessed.
Neither could escape what they already were.
As they turned away, footsteps retreating in opposite directions, both carried the same understanding like a wound pressed beneath the skin:
The greatest enemy was never the man across from them.
It was the version of themselves they might become if their deepest fear—or desire—was ever fulfilled.
And so Yokohama breathed on, unaware that the most dangerous battle in the city was not being fought with blood or bullets but in the silent, merciless corridors of two brilliant, broken minds.