Chapter Text
By all means, there isn’t any reason for some new guy to be catching Dazai’s attention like this. New recruits come and go all the time. Most barely last more than a few weeks. Very few manage to handle themselves well enough to actually get anywhere. And he has already learned his lesson about getting close to weirdly useful people.
But there is just something about this one that rubs him in a strange way.
He wonders a bit if it’s just him that sees it, since no one else seems to find him worth looking into.
Technically, this isn’t even any of Dazai’s business, it’s Pianoman’s, and he will likely have not learned about it for a little more while, if Yosano wasn’t out on a mission for a few weeks. But she is, which means Pianoman doesn’t have her at hand to be going on and on about in regards to this guy he finds oh so interesting, which means that Dazai ends up being burdened with the knowledge of it all. And he really wasn’t listening at first, but the odd name of this person ended up making him pay attention.
Nakanari. He’s sure he has heard that before, somewhere.
It’s not a common name, he should remember where he heard it, but his mind does end up coming up empty in the end. He does remember that it was a night where he was out drinking with someone, and that narrows it down to a few people he could have heard it from, but one of them seems very unlikely and the other two are… not people he can talk to right now. But he’ll figure it out.
When has he not figured it out? And it’ll be a good thing to keep him interested, life has been extra dull ever since Mimic.
He ends up fleeing halfway through Pianoman’s rambling by telling the man that maybe he should just call Yosano. He’s only replied to with an eyeroll and a wave of the man’s hands at the jab, because neither of them can do that of course. The mission she’s been sent on is a very delicate one, as Mori would put it, requiring her to be completely cut off from them, communication-wise, until she is done.
Dazai was surprised to learn that Mori was even willing to send her on something like that, since it always feels like she’s on such a tight leash. The man seems so strangely sure sometimes that she wouldn’t try to pull anything.
He ends up catching sight of this Nakanari just a few days later, when some assignment requiring way more people than he would like comes up. The blue eye is what catches his sight first, then the black hair long enough to be in a braid behind him.
Then, the way he holds himself. Chin held up, his back straight, his eyes wandering everywhere like he’s searching for something.
He’d expect a new recruit to be less confident and curious, more wary and on edge. Though Pianoman did say something about him being involved in a gang of sorts before this.
Dazai is sure it won’t take long for him to find the truth.
In two weeks, Chuuya is going to be somewhere completely different and scrambling to find a way to the outcome he dreams of. Right now though, he’s too busy to worry about what this meeting they’ve all been called for is about, seeing as the captain isn’t even here yet and already Teruko has started acting like herself.
If only there wasn’t an explicit rule against using their abilities in the meetings room due to a few… incidents. A rule that apparently doesn’t apply to Teruko, seeing as the moment Chuuya almost grabs the back of her uniform, she shrinks down and ducks under the table.
She pokes her head back out on the other side, where Tecchou is sitting, grinning from ear to ear as she waves the stolen hair tie in the air like a taunt. Chuuya is about to jump on the table to get over faster, when Tecchou looks between them and then grabs Teruko’s arm to keep her from running away again.
Chuuya decides against climbing furniture and instead runs around it to get to the other side and teach that girl a lesson and— And Teruko is no longer there. Tecchou is staring straight ahead into the air and doesn’t even look over at him. She’s back on the opposite side of the table again.
This is exactly why none of these people are his friends.
Jouno, having laid his head on the desk once Teruko started acting up, suddenly shoots up straight, smiling from what almost looks like relief. “He’s coming.” And oh, he looks so happy about this situation being over with.
The result is instant and satisfactory. Teruko immediately rushes over to her seat, yet another trip under the table, and grows back into her normal height. Chuuya reluctantly pushes back his loose hair and goes back to his own seat right next to hers. He feels his hair tie hit his face the moment he sits down, and looks to the side just in time to see Teruko sticking her tongue out. He rolls his eyes and pulls his long hair back, twisting it into the usual bun in the back.
A few seconds later, the door opens and Captain Fukuchi steps inside. He takes a good look all around the room, and in the end looks almost surprised that nothing seems amiss between any of them.
Oh well, he can stay surprised, no one is going to tell him about how he was about to consider stabbing Teruko a few times just a minute ago.
The captain stares at them a bit longer, before he finally walks up to his own place at the table.
He doesn’t sit down though. There’s a folder and a few other important-seeming papers that he looks through without saying a word. It makes Chuuya straighten up a bit more, the last time the man was acting like this, it was when they were assigned the werewolf situation. And that one… certainly left its marks.
“A few years ago, the government sent in a spy to the Port Mafia. Some time last year, he got found out and was pulled out as a result.” That’s how he finally starts.
An uneasy start, that makes Chuuya glance around at the others. No greetings or check-ins is usually not a great sign. The captain finally sits down with a sigh, closes the folder and puts it on the table.
He seems to contemplate what to say for a bit more, tapping his finger on the table and then finally looking up when he makes up his mind.
He finally says it. “They want one of us to go undercover. The objective of it has gone further than just keeping an eye on the mafia, so they’ve decided it would be a better course of action to send someone more trained.”
“More trained?” Teruko leans forward in her seat to have a better view of all the papers. “Oh— An assassination?”
“Infiltration and assassination, and it needs to be done carefully so as to not trace it back and cause trouble.” The captain confirms, taking a look at everyone looking back at him with varying degrees of interest. “I’ve suggested Jouno for the task, considering his background would make it easier to blend it, but I’ve also been asked to share the details and make sure that no one else is interested in doing this.”
None of this explains why the man is acting so strange about it. It confuses Chuuya. It’s a tough one for sure, but they’ve succeeded through harder tasks before and Jouno should be more than capable of pulling off something like that with a bit of self control.
A bit more silence, and then: “Right. The target for this is one we’ve all heard of here and there.”
Captain Fukuchi briefly mumbles something incoherent, and then pushes a few photos out of the folder. None have the best quality, but there is one thing in common between them when Chuuya looks at them. A girl, or a woman, with dark shoulder-length hair pulled back into a ponytail and all black clothing. Even if the photos had a high enough quality that her face was visible, she doesn’t seem to have any features recognizable enough to stand out too much.
There’s this bad feeling crawling up the back of his neck and a familiar pain swirling in his stomach. He’s come to learn that it’s like a bad omen every time.
The last time he felt it so strongly, it was with the werewolf incident. And that one ended well, despite how insistent he tends to be not to think about it, but he has also come to learn after so long that something ending well doesn’t mean the same as it not being bad overall.
“—more commonly known as the angel of death. It’s been ruled that she could be too much of a threat—”
Chuuya doesn’t let himself register any words that may have come before or any words that would have been coming after. The pain twists together and threatens to come out through his throat and crawl out through his skin and he slams his hands on the desk and stands before he can think anything through.
“I’ll do it.”
“Hm?” Captain looks at him with a frown and a small pause. “That’s… unexpected.”
“I’ll do it.” He insists. “I’ll do the mission. I will.”
The room goes silent. Chuuya doesn’t dare to look at anyone but the captain, but if he is to guess, he would say that Teruko is staring at him with her eyes as wide as they can go. He would say that maybe he’s acting too obvious, maybe it’s clear that something about him is off. He would say that maybe Jouno is noting down every one of his breaths and heartbeats and realises that something is wrong with him, and well that’s not a maybe, Jouno is always doing that.
But even with that, he just stares ahead at the captain and repeats it again. “I’ll do it.”
His thoughts are finally catching up to his actions and it makes him almost sit back down. Almost. He can’t actually do that, this feels important. The next thought catches up with the sickening realisation that the reason it feels important is because he’s volunteering to be the killer of a friend he has been missing for so long.
He feels a tug on his arm, and he must be truly and fully out of it, because Teruko easily drags him behind herself towards the door. “Private talk! We’ll be right back!” She calls out, pushes open the door and before she can be told not to leave, shuts them again behind herself.
She stands with her back against the door for a few long moments. Then, she continues to drag him away, down corridors and hallways until they arrive at what Chuuya is assuming a point far away enough for Jouno to also not be present in the conversation.
And then, she finally starts to speak. “What are you planning?”
“What…?” He blinks for a few moments, and he feels stupid doing so, because the reason she’s asking is right in front of him and yet he can’t perceive it.
“The mission, Chuuya. What are you planning? You’ve never been like this about any of them. Really…” Teruko looks at him from head to toe and scrunches her nose. “I want to say passionate, but frenzied might be more fitting.”
And that’s when the third important thought finally filters through and makes him aware of what he’s actually trying to do.
He’s not going to be the killer of his friend, because before he even realised it, he had decided that the mission was never going to be finished as intended at all.
Jouno would finish it. He would finish it flawlessly. Chuuya would not. And that’s why he needs to badly to be the one that goes to that mafia.
It might be the stupidest decision he has made in recent memory, but it’s too late to back out from it.
He likes to think that he’s at least somewhat good at lying.
“I… I’ve seen her before, you know that. In person. Back during… you know.” He starts, pausing every few moments to gather his thoughts and find what to say next. “I guess… I need some sort of closure about it all. You can’t say you don’t understand.”
He remembers the last time they had a conversation kind of like this— It feels so long ago, and, well, nearly ten years is a long time ago. He remembers Teruko told him that the angel must’ve gotten into his head, when he called Akiko his friend and the way he got shut down immediately. And he wants to feel somewhat bad about sending Teruko’s words from when they were kids right back at her, but a bigger part of him points out that he’s just parroting the same things she told him, and he’s in no place to be trying to reason about this anyway.
The last thought that finally arrives at the scene, maybe a bit too late, if he’s not going to kill his old friend, then what is he going to do?
“I have to be the one to do it, Teruko. If she’d really gotten into my head back then…” Had she? Throughout the years, he’s never really stopped to consider that possibility. Why is he suddenly doing it now? They were so young, even the thought of her having done something like that feels laughable, and yet everyone always sounds so sure that it’s true. “...Then I can’t just let that go, can I? Killing her…” He swallows down… something. “Killing her would be the surefire way of getting over it, no?”
Teruko continues to stare at him for a little bit more.
And by some miracle, she accepts what she’s being told. “...I’ll be sure to tell Captain to consider it a bit more.”
Chuuya feels his shoulders sag in relief and lets out a big breath. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Don’t mess it up.” Teruko pauses, then adds on. “And you only get a week in my book to do the elimination part. If it takes any longer, you owe me a favour for every extra week.”
He nods vigorously. “Deal. We can go anywhere you say. Only one for every week though, and you can’t try to extend it any more than that.”
“And you have to give me a piggyback every time.”
“Every time?!”
“That’s how the deal goes!” He pretends to back out and reconsider the situation for a little bit, but then with a forlorn sigh he holds out his hand. “It’s a deal.”
One handshake later, the two are walking back to the meeting room with matching smiles on their faces. Teruko knocks on the door a few times, before letting herself in. They go back to their seats, and next to him, Teruko leans over to the captain to whisper a few things, quietly enough that Chuuya can’t catch anything. He would try to figure out what’s being said based on Jouno, but the man is unfortunately incredible at not showing much of a reaction to what they’re talking about.
So he instead opts for staring down at the table and hoping whatever Teruko is saying ends up convincing the captain that he won’t absolutely mess this up and ruin everything.
Their little discussion takes a few minutes, but eventually, Captain sighs and looks over at Chuuya. “You can have the mission.” And before Chuuya can say anything, he adds on. “But it will be changed to fit your capabilities better. The original plan required Jouno to stay there for as long as possible even after the elimination is done, but for you, I’ll convince them to change it so that you’ll be out immediately after that part is over with.”
For a moment, Chuuya struggles to find what to say. His eyes drift over to all the papers in front of the captain and something inside of him stings. He tries to keep anything that might give him away out of his voice.
“Yes, Captain. Of course.”
Inside of him, there’s a feeling of dread that he can’t quite understand why it exists.
Captain raises a brow. “Isn’t there anything else you want to ask?”
Anything else? He isn’t sure if he can even think about anything else, let alone ask about it. But it would be suspicious not to. “The only real goal is to get rid of her, right? Everything else is optional?”
The old man nods. “For now, yes. That’s the only true end goal. Collecting information would be nice, but it’s not the priority right now.”
Chuuya looks at the photo closest to him on the table and pulls it in front of himself.
It’s hard to make out a lot of details in the photo, even with the enhancements done to it, it’s still taken from quite far away in a dark night, but he can vaguely make out the girl in question walking with someone else, both fully clad in black clothes that makes them look faintly like a pair of phantoms wandering the night.
“It won’t be a problem.” Chuuya confirms, even though it will be, it already is, and it won’t be becoming any less of a problem for as far as he can see. So he repeats it. “It won’t be a problem. Nothing a Hunting Dog can’t accomplish, yeah? Easy work.”
Captain Fukuchi stares at him for a good few moments, and then nods. “Of course. Easy work.”
“And when am I going to start, exactly?”
“In a week. You’ll be sent right after you recover from this month’s surgery, so you’ll have the maximum amount of time possible before you have to come back.”
“Great.” Chuuya nods, and the folder with all of the papers accompanying it is slid over to him.
“I suggest you don’t miss anything in there.” The old man says, still watching Chuuya very closely. “Make some sort of plan for it in advance. If you need any help, you can ask. And—” Reminders he has heard a billion times already, he mostly blocks it all out until it’s over.
“You are dismissed.”
With that, he picks up the folder and leaves immediately, before anyone else even stands up.
Chuuya now might be realising, with a bit of delay, that what is going through his head will most likely be classified as betrayal.
Maybe it’s concerning that it has taken him a few times of reading all the information and a whole day for that to occur to him, but it’s not like he can just back out.
Well, actually, somewhere between colouring the papers with those highlighters Teruko keeps putting on his desk and shuffling through all the photos for the umpteenth time, he does have to push down the urge to change his mind and go confess to all of the situation just a few times.
He can’t back out, no matter how much it might hurt in the future, letting his old friend down like that would likely hurt more.
Sifting through all the information has taught him a few things: First that this mission will definitely take way more than a week. Her status is marked as an executive in the mafia, so getting close to her has to be hard. Second, she’s no longer wearing her hair ornament, which would only be notable and not a problem, except Chuuya doesn’t remember her face and there aren’t any photos of that from up close, which would make it harder to spot her.
He would call this a problem with his face blindness, but even if he did remember that part of her, it’s surely changed a lot by now.
Would she not recognise him either? His hair is very recognisable, but for that exact reason he’s going to have to dye it before he goes.
A bit more wondering, a good few minutes of pacing around his room, two cookies stolen out of Jouno’s snacks cabinet in the kitchen and a whole lot more pacing later, his eyes land on something else in the photos.
Or rather, someone. Someone a bit easier to spot in a group.
It’s hard to spot this person with most of the photos being low quality and focused on Akiko, but once he does spot them in a few, the rest prove to be a lot easier. It’s the same person he spotted walking next to her in the other photo, a few minutes of examining both of them proves that. They’re not in all of the photos, but they’re in enough of them to imply some sort of close connection. They’re also clad in all black, but there are bits of white trailing down their arms that they keep revealed by rolling up their sleeves. Rolled up sleeves and possible injuries aren’t the most distinctive features one might have, but they narrow things down at least a little bit.
Which brings him to opening the only source of information that he had yet to turn to.
A flash drive from the previous spy, with more personal logs and thoughts that were deemed not relevant enough to the current mission to be included in writing.
The drive is mostly filled with audio files, with the occasional photos scattered about. And it helps Chuuya reach the conclusion that the person who put this folder together had to have been a bit stupid, because there’s a good number of photos of the exact person he’s looking for right there, with all the information that he might need, and really, it’s such a big oversight to not be including any of this in the original folder—
Whatever, whatever.
Dazai Osamu, also an executive, just about the same age as him, and very spottable with all those bandages. Cross-referencing with the more low quality photos prove him to be exactly the same guy, and from what Chuuya can see, he’s a lot more of the publicly active type compared to the rest of the higherups. Everything Chuuya can see about him, makes him come off as the weirdly sociable type, though he’s assuming there would be a lot more than that going on.
And that’s just about where the useful information ends.
The end of the information is so abrupt that it makes him pull out the flash drive and insert it again a few times just to make sure it’s really all that there is. Captain did say that the previous spy was caught and had to be pulled out unceremoniously, but it still feels too sudden, and Chuuya swears that if this is more information omitted for no reason, he’ll either his hair out or go and find whoever this previous guy was and shake him until he gets some answers, or just—
Whatever! Whatever! He has more important things to be pulling his hair out about, anyway! Namely, what he’s actually going to do once he manages to get in contact with Akiko, because none of the options in front of him seem exactly good.
If this was sometime maybe a decade or some years less than that ago, maybe he would have considered bringing her in and convincing a few government people connected to this to sit down with the hopes of getting them to talk to her for a bit and realise that she’s not really all that bad, but by now, he’s actually met enough of those types of people to know that with them, talks like that goes into one ear and out the other and barely makes a single effect on the outcome. So that option goes out of the window without any consideration.
What other option does he have?
Lying about it…?
Any other options? None that he can be confident in. He could try sharing what’s actually going on with someone, but he’s not entirely sure that it won’t just lead to him being replaced with Jouno for this.
It’s a long shot, but a faked assassination wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibilities. He’ll figure it out eventually, she can spend some time or maybe forever in some other country under a different name, and by the time they do DNA tests and realise whoever the body actually is, Chuuya will have come up with some excuse as to why it could have happened, and might be reprimanded just a bit for costing the Hunting Dogs their first failure, but ultimately it would be resolved and he can go back to his normal life.
Probably. It’s not impossible.
It’s not as if Chuuya likes betraying everyone he knows well so easily, but he’s been taught that sometimes there has to be tough decisions made. Though he’s not sure if he was taught that with the expectation of him doing something like this or not.
He pushes that all aside for now. He’ll have enough time to agonise about all that later on.
He does have something else he has to figure out. A name for himself.
While he’s not known to the public, using his own name during this could cause all sorts of problems, especially if the Port Mafia ends up wanting to play smart and drops their own little spy into the government.
He spends way longer than he should going through names and what he can pick for himself. There’s a bit too many options presented to him.
So eventually, he gives up on that.
He can ask Tecchou to come up with one later.
…Or how about a Nakanari?
At least one thing today is easy to settle on. Chuuya’s lips pull up into a grin and his brain runs wild with all the possibilities of what could happen, as he pulls out the flash drive.
Welcome back, Nakanari.
It’s been a long while since that has been his name, about as long as he has been a Hunting Dog.
But he finds that he doesn’t mind it too much.