Chapter Text
A young boy with silver hair opens his drawer. There’s a bright yellow sticky note that reads, “Come to (—) diner with me after work!!” With a silly smiley face. The person who wrote the note signed it, the name says, “Dazai.”
The boy smiles, placing the note on his desk. Dazai is his co-worker, friend, and mentor. Whenever he sees Dazai, he can’t help but always feel grateful to him. Even though he knows Dazai’s history and relations with the Port Mafia, the elite crime organization, he will always be thankful to Dazai for saving him that day on the riverbank.
Though, he will admit, the diner location was strange. The Armed Detective Agency normally always went to the cafe below them. It was their favorite because there were good options, an amazing atmosphere, and the regular guests never judged them. Sure, they probably thought they were weird, but it was the norm.
Choosing to go to a diner across town was unusual, but then again, Dazai is an unusual person. Even if the boy decided not to go, Dazai would probably use manipulation tactics to convince him.
The boy with silver hair sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. Guess he wasn’t gonna get out of this one, was he? This boy’s name is Atsushi Nakajima, and he works alongside Dazai (as mentioned earlier). He wouldn’t say that being a detective was hard, but he strongly believes that the only reason why they bother to keep him around was because of his ability; to turn into a white beast, a tiger. He isn’t intelligent enough to solve major cases, he normally always has to ask for help from his fellow coworkers.
Atsushi purses his lips, sighing and shaking his head. It’s not good to think about those kinds of things at work. He shakes his head again and grabs a ballpoint pen, writing whatever detective-ey work that’s on the document he’s working on now.
He starts to space out, working through each of his documents one by one. He doesn’t even realize the setting sun outside the nearby window, the shadows increasing in the room.
“At-su-shiiii? You there?” He blinks, once, twice, and glances up at whoever's calling him. It’s Dazai. Dazai has his usual, cheerful smile on his face that makes it hard to decipher what he’s actually thinking.
Atsushi returns the smile, nodding. “Ah, sorry Dazai. I was working on some documents…”
Expectedly, Dazai groans, exaggeratedly rolling his eyes, “Atsushi, you’re such a buzzkill… Maybe it’s time to start comparing you to Kunikida.”
Atsushi rolls his eyes at that yet still keeps a fond grin on his face. “Whatever.”
Dazai chuckles, grabbing Atsushi’s arm and practically dragging him out of his chair. Atsushi lets out a surprised “Hey!” before he feels the cool, dusk air.
Time passes fast. Atsushi doesn’t know how he got to the part where he’s in a diner chair, with Dazai across from him. Dazai’s just talking, and talking, so much to the point Atsushi starts to find it a bit annoying, yet he continues to let Dazai talk about whatever. After Dazai’s talking about a certain topic— likely about suicide methods; Atsushi doesn’t know since he’s just been nodding absentmindedly, with the occasional “Yes,” and chuckle, Atsushi excuses himself to go to the restroom.
Atsushi walks rather quickly to the restroom. He doesn’t actually have business there, just needs to collect himself. He turns his head in both directions, confirming that there’s no one there. Slowly, he pulls up his sleeve, revealing recent self-inflicted cuts on his wrist.
It’s been two days since he last self-harmed. Suddenly, he can hear voices inside of his head telling him to do it again. You’re useless, you should just die. No one even cares about you; they wouldn’t care about your unhealthy coping mechanism. He turns the restroom faucet on, to cold, then splashes some of the frigid water on his face, trying to keep him anchored in the moment.
It doesn’t help, nor work. With trembling hands, he reaches into his pocket to grab his pocketknife. He turns around, hurriedly going into one of the stalls, locking the door behind him.
Breathing heavily, with shaky hands, puts the knife to his skin. Slowly, he starts to make cuts on his arm. Blood starts to drip down his arm. Once he’s finished, he feel’s wetness on his face, even though the water from earlier has already dried. Bringing his fingers to his face, he feels… tears?
He closes his eyes, just feeling empty as he tilts his head to the ceiling. Suddenly, he hears someone enter the restroom, which makes his eyes snap open.
“Atsushiiiii~? You in here?” Atsushi recognizes the voice. It’s Dazai. It’s weird though, his tone is uncharacteristically soft.
Swallowing hard, he nods, “Uh, yes, Dazai,” he lets out an ahem, “I’m having stomach problems, probably from the food I ate while you were talking.”
With that, a silence follows, before Dazai finally speaks up, albeit quietly, “Oh, well come out when you’re finished,” Atsushi can tell Dazai’s trying to make his tone sound cheerful, like normal, but he’s failing, “You can talk to me about anything.” With that, he walks out.
Atsushi lets out a small exhale, grabbing toilet paper to clean up any blood that’s not dry and reluctantly walks out of the stall, going to the sink to run his cuts under some warm water.
It stings, but he doesn’t even care about that. He turns off the faucet and rolls up his sleeves, hoping that Dazai won’t notice the cuts.
Atsushi absentmindedly plops down back in the diner chair. Dazai looks as cheerful as ever, but… something seems off.
“Sorry for taking so long, my stomach was hurting a lot.”
“It’s alright.”
They both fall back into conversation. They both continue talking, normally, as if nothing ever happened. Though, when Dazai continues ranting about whatever, Atsushi takes drinks of his water.
The taste of the water is rather strange, but he doesn’t question it. But it starts to get weird as he can feel himself getting strangely lightheaded, his thoughts becoming disorganized.
As he continues talking with Dazai, his vision blurs and then black.
He doesn’t know what happened after that. It’s just… silence.