Chapter Text
Little children view the world through rose tinted glasses. Through their eyes, the world seems so pure and clean. Everyone is loving. Everyone is innocent. People smile at them and the children only see the grin and not the tired eyes. Perhaps that is why children are always so happy, with bouncy giggles and endless reserves of energy. But eventually, either after they hit a certain age or something happens, those glasses get too small for their growing faces or someone shattered the lenses, because now suddenly the children are also tired and weary. They suddenly find faults in other people and the mothers and fathers that raised them suddenly have flaws.
I suppose that I used to wear those rose tinted glasses, because when they broke it was a drastic change that I wasn’t ready for.
My parents either died or abandoned me at birth, but my childhood self liked to think they died. It wasn’t their fault if they died, so I always went with that idea. I spent the first few years of my life in a sheltered orphanage with nice children, good food, and warm beds. It was good. Then Dazai came by and the orphanage caretakers pushed me out the door and gave me a stuffed animal and said goodbye. At the time, I thought Dazai was just another caretaker who was taking me on a field trip, but then we didn’t return to the orphanage for several weeks, so I adopted him as my father.
He was a good father. He lived in an apartment, so my bedroom was in the closet of his room. I was small, and it was more than enough space for a four year old boy. He gave me a nice bed with a yellow blanket and some toys. To an outsider, it might have looked like Dazai locked me in the closet and didn’t let me out until I behaved. And maybe Child Services would have arrested him for not providing me a better sleeping place, but I don’t blame him. His own room was as big as the tiny kitchen. And I appreciate how he didn’t make me sleep in the living room and that he gave me my own privacy. It was cool during the summer and warm during the winter, the paint was nice and there were hardly any bugs; what more could I ask for?
I don’t know why Dazai never moved out of the tiny apartment. His job paid well, I thought. Working at the Armed Detective Agency utilizes his time and ability fantastically and always paid good money. Despite the steady income however, we still resided in the small apartment and more often than not he came home with take-out boxes containing either Mexican or Chinese food. I don’t remember the last time Dazai cooked for me. Some days he wouldn’t go to work because he wasn’t called in, and some days he’d be gone until midnight. Sometimes he’d be gone for days at a time.
He seemed to trust me more than the parents of my classmates trusted them. He trusted me to wake up on time, eat a good meal, go to school, return home safely, do my homework, and then go to sleep. I don't think he was neglecting me, not at all. I used to think he was when I listened to my classmates complain about their own parents and thought that if I wasn’t experiencing these things with my own father I was being neglected. But now that I think about it, he was most likely teaching me responsibility. I appreciate him for that.
Dazai was a good father, and I assumed he was a good man as well. Sometimes his co-workers would visit us and sometimes they’d try to guess at his previous occupation. They guessed every single profession I could think of and other obscure jobs that I didn’t even know existed. Each time, Dazai would lean back on the sofa and chuckle and shake his head. And then they’d turn to me with a teasing smile and wide eyes and ask me if I knew and would promise me cake or candy if I told them. I would just shake my head and bashfully say that I don’t know. Because I didn’t.
But then my rose tinted glasses broke and everything seemed twisted.
It was one of those weeks when Dazai’s job required him to travel to a different part of Japan, so I was in charge of the apartment room and of my own living. He instructed me to never open the door for anyone. So when the person came knocking on the door, I didn’t answer, of course. I was obedient like that. After no response, they waited, and I thought they’d go away. They knocked again, however, this time more forcefully.
By now, my childish self was nervous. They kept pounding on the door and wouldn’t let up. I thought maybe I should hide, or grab a lamp and fend them off, but I was just frozen. And then the door flew off and sailed across the room and crashed into the wall. Standing in the doorway was a man wearing a fedora, and he put his leg down. He stomped into the room, shouting Dazai’s name angrily and threatening to kill him.
I was shrieking. I probably looked stupid to that man with the fedora, but I didn’t care. He looked at me with angry and confused eyes and said. “The heck are you?”
I looked around me, behind me, because maybe he was looking at someone else, but no, he wasn’t.
“A-Atsushi,”
“Are you his kid? He has a kid? Since when did he think he was decent enough to adopt a kid?”
I had never seen this man before in my life. He wasn’t from the Armed Detective Agency, and he wasn’t a nice guy either.
The man in the fedora seemed to give up and he groaned loudly and shouted at nothing.
“Who are you?” I whimpered.
“I was Dazai’s co-worker when he was in the Port Mafia.”
“Port Mafia?”
“Didn’t he tell you? Your father used to kill people for a living.”
When Dazai came home that week, I didn’t leave my closet to greet him like I normally did. I let him deal with the broken door and the bashed up wall. I let him deal with that while I deal with the broken lenses of my rose tinted glasses and the fact my father is a murderer.