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Dazai feels dazed, almost catatonic, on the way to the shipping container. His bandages were soaked, red, clinging to his skin like smoke. There's a faint drip-drip-drip of blood running from his fingertips to the floor, like it too wants to escape.
It was cold, he knew that much. The January chill seeps into his bones, goosebumps prickling his skin telling him to go home, to get warm, as if that was a possibility anymore.
Odasaku. Gods, Odasaku.
He couldn't even think straight.
He thinks this is the part where he’s supposed to burst into tears, to yell, to curse Mori with everything he has, or where a well-adjusted person would do all three. But all he can do is float through the streets like a ghost. Untethered, untouchable, and insurmountably empty.
If this is what love feels like, Dazai isn't particularly sure he wants it. Within the thick fog of melancholy, he thinks, however briefly, of Chuuya.
Chuuya, with his unusual yet fascinating features. Kouyou had once offhandedly remarked that she had never seen someone with such a mix of them, and Dazai was inclined to agree. That's not even to mention his spirit. Chuuya, always so loyal, yet not docile. Not anymore. Chuuya, who..
Dazai stops walking.
Chuuya, who was in Europe. Who would not be back by the time Dazai had removed himself from.. all this.
Yeah, he thinks. Love doesn't feel as good as I thought it would.
He places a bomb under Chuuya's car. Perhaps it was a last ditch effort to remember what made him so content in a place like this.
It doesn't work.
✿
Hiding has always made Dazai feel listless. Like a sitting duck, or like he was about to vibrate out of his own skin. The monotony is new, fresh in a way, but it loses appeal when he wonders one day whether Odasaku found beauty in this, too.
And yet, he gets up every morning. He takes a moment to sit, hunched over himself in a way that would probably put Kouyou in a coma were she to see him. He stands, slouching, and walks to his suitcase anyway. He stands under the lukewarm stream of water in a dingy bathroom and pretends, for just a moment, that maybe he’d hear Chuuya telling him to stop wasting the hot water even though he has the money to afford showers thrice as long and twice as hot.
Every day, he hears nothing, and gets dressed.
For the first few days after defecting, Dazai survived solely off of the skin around his nailbeds and the singular bottle of sake he had stowed away. The bottle inevitably runs dry on day three, and he wonders if anyone alive would care to see him give up.
He doesn't, but it would be so simple.
He rips flyers for odd jobs off the notice board down the hall, and never ends up showing up to the interviews. It brings him a perverse sense of joy, watching the paper rip under his hands.
He pauses. Maybe he isn't as distant from the Mafia as he’d hoped. Maybe he's doomed to return to his post, like a dog on a leash, like a carcass returning to the soil despite its-
He stops ripping down the flyers. They pile up on the notice board, untouched.
Until one day, he finds an ad for a local daycare requesting volunteers. He’s just about ready to ignore it, turning away from the light like a typical moonflower would, until a voice, pained and weak, rings through his head like a church bell.
‘You might not see a great difference between right and wrong, but... saving others is something just a bit wonderful.’
He stares at the flyer for a little longer than he ever did the rest. Then, like clockwork, he returns to his apartment, forsaking dinner for sleep. In the morning, he does it all again.
On the day listed on the ad, he’s ten minutes late, but he shows up, despite the lethargy. An aged woman up front greets him with a bright smile, welcoming him in with a clap on the middle of his back. For the first time in years, Dazai misses his mother.
✿
The woman introduces herself as Chai Zhi the next day. She’s vivacious, and brash, and she outright laughs at Dazai when he refers to her as Miss Chai, telling him to simply call her Auntie Zhi. In short, she's his complete opposite in every sense of the word.
Needless to say, he's growing rather fond of her. Kouyou would love her, he knows. Chuuya, too. She has the elegance of a refined woman, something Kouyou would appreciate, but she doesn't take slack from anyone.
It's calming, in a way, to know someone who will give him grace when his eyes are especially dark, his movements more exhausted than usual. That will, in turn, tell him to get his ass out of bed before she kicks his door down.
She is a very strange woman indeed. Dazai starts calling her Auntie Zhi, and everything is quiet, steady in a way he almost doesn't recognize. It’s a nice change of pace.
✿
Dazai’s 19th birthday passes without much fanfare, merely a Lupin match hastily blown out. He doesn't have the time to celebrate something so tragic. He doesn't think about what he’ll do when he's out of matches.
“Hey, Mr. Dazai, why is Eiji so small?” a loud voice asks, cutting through the haze. A small pair of hands tugging at his sleeve makes him turn his head, putting on a strained smile. Grabbing his clothing with paint-stained hands is, of course, Haru. A boisterous little boy with hair like honey and eyes so blue that Dazai feels minorly seasick looking into them.
Admittedly, Dazai has a soft spot for him. He tilts his head, canine, and the toddler’s eyes track the movement like it was something important.
“Well, Haru, Eiji is only a baby, see. How old are you?” The little boy seems to think about it, before he raises four fingers. Dazai claps in congratulation, even though the boy is three. Gentle, he thinks, he’s a child. “Right! And Eiji here is only-” he tucks three of Haru’s fingers in to leave one remaining, “-one, see?”
Haru looks like he has never heard something so preposterous before. His face is screwed up and his fists are clenched, though in confusion more than anger. Dazai refuses to think about Chuuya, which means he thinks about Chuuya anyway. He hopes— no, he knows that he’s beyond livid about his car. It makes him laugh a little internally.
Before he can feel himself think more, Haru groans. “But that means he's a little kid. I’m a big kid now. That's lame.” He turns his nose up, arms crossed, huffing melodramatically. Dazai feels a migraine coming on, but he laughs anyway. Eiji, resting on his back in front of Dazai, babbles incoherently as he latches onto the teen’s finger. “You know, mister, you were a little kid once too. So was I. Everyone was. It's not a bad thing.” he sighs, and yet, he feels a little less like a ghost with every word he says. Tangible, grounded. Though, human was still a stretch.
The three year old looks at him askance, almost judgmental in the eyebrow he raises. Dazai fakes offense at the doubt, placing a hand on his forehead and sighing loudly. “Ah, Haru doubts me? So mean!” He feels remarkably foolish, like a clown or a caricature. But Haru laughs, bright and unabashed, and even Eiji lets out a little gurgle. So perhaps it wasn't so bad.
There's a distinct warmth unfurling in his chest, not replacing the chill but growing slow, steady alongside it. He believes, hopes, for a fleeting moment, that it’ll stave off the lack of anything that he’s bound to feel in January. It's hopeless, but so was he.
Though, Odasaku was always one to bet on a lost cause. Maybe he passed that onto Dazai.
It’s something to consider, if nothing else.
✿
The sudden influx of affection, despite its best efforts, does not make the bad days any easier. As the December breeze seeps in through the cracks in his front door, he asks himself if they’ll ever stop.
It’s days like these that make Dazai wonder if he is truly making any progress at all. The days in which he's halfway to the self-checkout with a bundle of rope under his minimal foodstuffs, or in which he doesn’t even make it to the store at all.
When it comes to bad days, Dazai thinks he knows them better than he does himself. The chill is familiar in a grim, yet comforting way as it whooshes through his blanket and makes a home for itself between his lungs. The organs are deformed from years of this, now.
It reminds him of his mother. A wonderful, though unstable woman. Thinking about her almost makes him laugh. Perhaps this was the thing that doomed him from the beginning. The blood of his mother, running through his father's veins.
It brings a bad taste to his mouth. Acrid, acerbic, not dissimilar from bile.
His father's face is hazy in his memories. He recalls a pair of worn geta in the genkan, lined up precisely beside Dazai’s own little blue rain boots. A pair of sturdy hands, the left slightly more calloused than the right. A faint pair of wire-rimmed frames ensconcing coke bottle lenses.
That's just about it. If he thinks harder, the only thing that comes up is Odasaku’s face, his eccentricities, his children.
His children never got mourned, he notes. Did they end up getting headstones?
He can't bring himself to question it farther. So, he turns in his futon, facing away from the door and curling in on himself. Perhaps this way he won't have to check one day, to return to the plot of land he bought for Odasaku’s own headstone.
Perhaps, and this one is a stretch, he won't have to see the Black Wraith the next time he dares to look into a mirror. Perhaps he would waste away with time, fading into nothingness in this cheap fucking futon that’s falling apart at the seams. Perhaps the only meaningful change he will ever make is finally quitting the act.
As he wallows, he concludes he was right.
Days like this never really do get any easier.
✿
Before he went into hiding, Dazai visited Odasaku’s house. It was decidedly empty without him in it.
A glance was spared to the stove, to the memories tethered to the kitchen floor. He would’ve smiled if it were any other day, but the whistle of an abandoned tea kettle on said stove made it hard to pretend otherwise.
There, on the counter, was a thick stack of papers tied together with twine. The pages were dog eared, coffee-stained, and smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. Well-loved. He picked them up before he left, without checking what they were. It was only a few months later, when Dazai digs to the very bottom of his suitcase to unearth his memorabilia, that he realised.
It was a manuscript.
It would never be finished the way Odasaku had intended. The characters would never find an ending, whether happy, or sad, or some miserable in-between. This would hurt him more than it would help, he tries to reason to himself, desperate.
He needs to hear Odasaku’s voice again, if only in writing. And with that, there's no debate.
He picks up the papers, taking a moment to trace the title with shaking fingers before he starts reading. He looks at the handwritten notes in the margin with eyes that ache, but don’t well up. He reads, and reads, forsaking food for reminiscence. But, all books end. Dazai reads the last sentence, the leftover paper covered in ideas for the continuation. And all Dazai could really think was that Odasaku was a brilliant writer.
Fate was cruel, but Mori was markedly crueler, Dazai thinks, for ripping such a talent from the world. Out of spite, he buys a cheap, glittery notebook and fills the pages with everything Odasaku didn't have time to put into writing. An ode to the normalcy that Dazai never quite understood.
He was probably the least qualified being on the planet to finish a book so terribly, beautifully human, but gods be damned, he was going to try. Whether simply to carry out Odasaku’s wishes, or to find some whispers of him in the way he wove the world in writing, he wasn't particularly sure.
Dazai throws himself into a world of words, forgoing sleep and sustenance in order to watch someone's dearest vision bloom under his marred hands. He wonders one night, hunched over his kotatsu, if he's doing the right thing. He wonders if Odasaku would hate the things he’d written. Or, if perhaps, he'd find himself in the interwoven comedy and tragedy, as Dazai did.
The thought is comforting, but mildly morbid. So, he pushes it aside, along with the ache in his wrist. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes and continues writing.
A few months later, Stories of Osaka Life hits local bookstores. They don't fly off the shelves, but stock is dented. They’ll eventually end up in someone’s hands. That's enough for the both of them, Dazai hopes.
✿
There's a warmth that wraps itself around Dazai’s ankle when he steps out of his apartment complex. A slinking mass of black, quivering slightly from the cold, making figure eights around his legs. Almost immediately, he squats down to inspect it. He looks into the mass, finding two amber eyes staring into his own.
An outsider would note that both man and cat wear very similar expressions. Metaphorical hackles raised, curious, surprised eyes peering at one other. Their muscles are tense under their respective coats. It's, in a way, endearing.
Hesitantly, the man extends a bandaged hand to the animal, hovering below a pink nose. The animal in turn sniffs, before apparently deeming him acceptable and butting its head into said hand. Dazai’s head tilts. The cat, from below his hand, copies the motion. A small, content smile grows on the human’s face.
“You got a name?” he asks, quiet in the morning dew, moving his hand to check for a collar. The cat watches him, tail swaying confusedly. There is no collar around its neck, and Dazai wilts a little.
It’s a stray. Not a stray dog, but a stray. He thinks about it on the way to the store, absentmindedly buying a can of tuna alongside his imitation crab. Looking through the store windows, he watches snow drift to the floor. The cashier tells him his total and he forks over the money, but his eyes never leave the window.
On his way home, he checks his burner phone. There's nothing to check, obviously, but it’s routine. The closer he gets to home, the lonelier he feels. It's a vicious cycle, wanting for human interaction and yet pushing it away when he gets it. Self-destructive, poetic comedy.
He’s brought out of his musings as he approaches the pedestrian crossing, a familiar black cat darting forward to walk alongside him. Strolling leisurely, he rifles through his shopping bag and grabs the tuna.
Maybe some non-human interaction wouldn’t be so bad.
✿
He ends up naming the cat Yuki. He gets her neutered, and buys a black collar. She meows at him in the morning, and lays next to him at night. She claws at the crappy futon until it falls apart and looks up at him innocently.
He buys her a scratching post, and buys himself a new, slightly better futon. She purrs at him, content. Despite himself, he smiles at her, leaning down to scritch her between the ears.
Auntie Zhi gets introduced to her, and of course, she takes to her like a duck to water. Dazai has the sense that he's being ganged up on behind his back, but he doesn't mind as much as he probably should.
One night, Yuki curls up on his chest as it rises and falls with his breathing. Softly, gently in a way Dazai had never really been, he kisses her on the head.
She blinks slowly at the pressure before continuing to purr. He doesn't say thank you out loud, but he was sure she understood regardless.
✿
It is the middle of March when Dazai comes back into contact with an old acquaintance.
He had long since noticed the unease of being out of the loop that he never really felt in the mafia. That clawing, frantic need to know everything happening to help him plan around it.
It was, to put it plainly, really annoying. He was meant to be a changed man, and yet finds himself missing underground intel, of all the things to miss. He was sure this was the opposite of what Odasaku wanted for him, but old habits die hard, he supposed.
One long night, with Yuki asleep a few feet away, Dazai shucks on a coat and slips out of his apartment, jittery and exhausted. He goes on walking for a while, stopping at a payphone decently far from his apartment complex. With cold hands, he punches a number in, fishes a ten yen coin out of his pocket, and waits.
And then, a click. “Hello, this is Hirotsu?” Dazai’s breath gets caught in his throat, before he lets it out in one shaky exhale. He clutches the receiver in clammy hands.
“Hirotsu, sir.” he mumbles, trying to seem like he isn't kicking himself for calling in the first place.
“...” There's shuffling on the other end, like the old man is abruptly sitting up. “Dazai. It's been a while, lad.” He says, voice still that comfortable shade of gruff that comes with his vice. Despite the anxiety gnawing at his stomach, Dazai smiles, if only slightly.
“That it has, sir. That it has.”
“..There is no need to call me sir, young’un. Not anymore.” Hirotsu pauses here, a swallow audible from the other side of the line. “Why are you calling? I’d have thought you more cautious.”
Resting his temple on the telephone pole, Dazai slots another couple ten yen coins into the payphone. He has a feeling this call is going to last a little while. The metal is still wet from earlier rain, soaking into his skin, dripping slowly down his cheek. Putting a hand back in his pocket, he answers. “Well, you know me. Ever the unpredictable one.” He maintains an air of calm, though he knows the old man isn't buying it. He never had.
“Of course, Dazai.” he says, almost fondly, before he shifts again. There's a flick, and then an inhale. He’s taking a smoke break, Dazai notes, smothering a smile at the mundanity of it all. “Anything interesting going on back home?” the younger asks, gently probing for any hint of something interesting.
Huffing out a laugh, Hirotsu lets out a puff of smoke. “Officially? No.” he says, and that's all Dazai needs to hear. He laughs, gently, letting the noise get swept away in the late winter wind. “Ah, I see. And, unofficially?” he asks in response. Hirotsu rights his coat and flicks the ash from his cigarette.
“Well, isn't that the question of the hour?”
✿
This correspondence of sorts continues through weeks and weeks. Despite himself, Dazai checks hourly for a hint of surveillance. For a trail of cigarette ash, for the swishing of coattails, for anything that gives him reason to cut it off.
Every day, he checks, and every day, the other shoe does not drop. He wonders sometimes, in the late of damp spring nights, whether there is another shoe at all.
And yet, against his better judgement (and glaring lack of evidence), he will continue to believe there is one. To believe the laces are waiting to tie themselves into a noose for him, to punish him for even considering trusting someone as loyal to the mafia as Hirotsu.
Of course, he doesn’t let any of his worries get back to the man in question.
He simply charms his way through short calls, laughing off concern that goes unspoken into a burner phone, and ignoring the vulnerability crawling from his throat into the receiver of an old payphone.
Like clockwork. A ring going once, going twice, before the old man answers the phone like he always does. Then, it's up to Dazai to evade questioning, to dance around concern as if he’d ever danced in his life. He’d fail, and they wouldn't talk about it, and the call would end.
A routine. The thought is pleasant.
✿
As spring draws to a close, heat creeps in and seeps into everything. The children at the daycare groan and mope about being too warm, despite the air conditioning whirring above them. Despicably, disarmingly human. It's comforting.
Dazai himself is no stranger to summers, having lived through so many (nineteen too many, in his opinion), and yet.
And yet.
And yet every single summer, he wakes up overheated and groggy. Every single summer his bandages sink into his skin, trapping heat in like his own personal greenhouse.
Every single summer he considers just ditching the bandages, and every single summer he doesn't. He says it's an obscure suicide method when prodded, skimming on the details, but he knows himself better than that.
He’s not happy, but resigned to dealing with the consequences of his actions if it means he doesn't spook the children. After all, minds so pure shouldn't be exposed to a mind, a canvas like his own.
Despite his faux nonchalance when asked by fellow adults, he has no answer when the kids start asking.
“Hey, Mr. Dazai?” Haru asks one day, as he always does. Dazai spares a moment to wonder if Haru is as fond of routine as he is, before shaking his head. What an odd thought.
“What’s up, kiddo?” he replies, placing a hand on the boy’s head to ruffle his hair the way he knows Haru hates. Expectedly, the kid squawks and tries to wrestle Dazai, making the latter laugh enough to let him go.
Letting out a loud ‘humph!’ as he fixes his hair, Haru glares at him. It's endearing. “Why do you wear those bandy things anyway? It's hot!” And with the whine, Dazai’s hands go still on his lap.
There's a beat of silence as Dazai tries to piece together an explanation, looking genuinely lost for the first time. “Uh, well…”
At his hesitation, the boy just looks at him with a single eyebrow raised, his blue eyes wide and curious. Dazai aches momentarily before he schools his expression, smiling genially.
“Well, little Haru,” and at this, there's another indignant yelp, “You see how you have this little scar right here from bumping into the bookshelf last month?” he asks, pointing to a faint pink mark on Haru’s left arm. At the resulting nod, he continues. “Well, I have scars too. But a lot more than you, you see? I don't think-”
Before Dazai can finish explaining, Haru rolls his eyes dismissively. “So what?” he remarks, tapping his little sneaker on the concrete. “Jus’ means you..” He pauses here, trying to scrounge up the words. His little fists clench with the effort, and Dazai finds himself endeared, if only a little. “Means you're jus’ matching.. with me!” The boy finishes, looking mighty proud of himself at the words.
Dazai looks genuinely taken aback, shock clear in his widened eyes and raised eyebrows. He huffs a laugh despite himself, patting Haru gingerly on the shoulder. “If you say so, little one. If you say so.”
Haru seems to accept this, though growling at the nickname, and nothing more is said on the matter. But later, after work, Dazai will look down at his arms. They’ll still be tightly wrapped in the cheap bandages he buys, but he'll consider once again removing them. If only for a while.
It’ll be something to sleep on, he’ll decide.
✿
The next day, Dazai wakes up with his bandages having unraveled in the night. Perhaps his tossing and turning disturbed the safety pins, or perhaps fate just wanted to spare him from heatstroke.
Whatever the case, he doesn't end up putting them back on for the rest of the day. With Yuki as his witness, he goes through the motions with his skin bared to the sun glaring through his windows.
The heat is still absolutely unbearable (because really, when is it not?), but the lack of gauze, the shedded layer, makes him appreciate the breeze just that little bit more. He decides then, feeling Yuki headbutt his shins, that it isn't so bad.
✿
June swells, and with the passage of time and the sweltering heat comes Dazai’s birthday.
He’s twenty now. Legal drinking age. Only three years to catch up. The thought aches like nothing before.
He skips off work and carefully waves off Auntie Zhi’s concern from outside his apartment door. Slinking down the stairs, he asks her to feed Yuki for him with a cheerful wave. He stares at the payphone almost longingly as he passes it on his way, wondering if it's worth it to wish for a happy birthday from Hirotsu. He keeps walking, and never hears the ringing coming from the old machine. Hirotsu will keep calling, and it won’t get picked up.
Eventually, he stumbles into a dingy bar. It’s not Lupin, far from it. But in the drunken stupor he's bound to find himself in come evening, he figures it won't really matter. The bartender barely looks up as the door closes behind him, simply continuing to clean an already spotless whiskey glass.
He slips his ID onto the counter, and asks for whiskey on the rocks. The ID is picked up and inspected for a brief moment, and before he even realises time has passed, there's a glass in front of him.
“Can I start a tab, please?” he asks, voice tired and raspy from disuse. Looking at him pityingly, the bartender nods. He scowls at the look.
It's still light outside when Dazai finishes his first drink, ordering another. It’ll be light out for a while yet, and so he rests his head on the bar to block it out. It has no right to be light. Not today.
✿
A few hours after the first drink, Dazai is cut off by a concerned bartender. The first had already clocked out.
He murmurs at them in discontent, and they place a cup of water in front of him.
His eyes slip shut against the now artificial light illuminating the room, face twisted into something bitter and ugly and sad. It's so noisy, and yet he can hear himself think so clearly. He hates it more than anything.
He wants to sink into the faux leather of the barstool, let himself dissipate and melt into nothing. He doesn't think it’d feel much different than he normally does. He wants to watch the old guys play pool and get pissy over lost bets, just praying he never grows into one of them.
Dazai wants a lot of things, he realises. And yet whenever he wants with his entire being, feeling so needy that he blushes abashed, he does not receive. Whenever he wishes upon a star, it falls from the sky.
The bartender breaks him out of his spiral with a gentle tap to the forearm. “Hello, sir. I’m about to close up, so I’m afraid it's time to go. Do you have a way home? Do you need me to call anyone?” they say, and it’s so sweet to Dazai’s unflinching bitter that he feels ill.
“Mmmnah, I’ll b-” he pauses to hiccup, “I’ll b’kay. Thanks.” The bartender shoots him a disbelieving look, before nodding hesitantly and tapping at the screen in front of him. Hastily, he pulls his card out of his pocket and hands it over. The bartender nods in thanks, closing out his tab for him before sliding the card back over the counter.
Dazai knows he's being kicked out, and so he takes the card and stumbles out into the street. He wobbles, nearly toppling over before deciding it’d be safer if he just sat on the curb.
And so he sits there, intoxicated and slumped over like a child with his knees to his chest, watching a few cars drive past. It's indomitably lonely, but there's a solace in the sight of Kawasaki Ward at its most vulnerable. At its most quiet.
He can hear a few teenagers laughing and staggering up the street together, punctuated by hiccups and barks of raucous laughter. It reminds him momentarily of the Flags, despite how little he knew them. And in turn, he thinks of Chuuya. He doesn't dwell for long, but his heart pangs all the same.
He sees a pair of circular glasses shining in the headlight of a semi, but he won't dwell on that— on him— either.
Slipping a hand into his pocket, he pulls out his phone and squints against the blue light. Somehow, he navigates to his contacts, bleary eyed. He picks one at random (not that there are many to choose from in the first place) and hits the call button.
Despite himself, his eyes well up. It's embarrassing and shameful, but he listens to the ringing in his ear and his heart breaks a little. Gods, he’s alone.
Click.
“You better have a good reason to be wakin’ me up at two in the damn mornin’, you little brat.” Yuki mrows in the background, as if agreeing.
Sniffling lightly, Dazai laughs. It’s croaky and tearful, but it's genuine for the first time in a long while.
Auntie Zhi sighs knowingly on the other end. “Where are you?”
✿
When Auntie Zhi arrives at the bar, she sees Dazai curled in on himself on the sidewalk despite looking visibly warm. His eyes are shiny, cheeks a little damp. She sighs, leaning over to open the passenger door and calling his name with a little less vigor than normal.
He looks up, and he looks a mess. She smiles gingerly, patting the passenger seat. “Get in, kiddo. I ain't got all day, ya hear?” He somehow brings himself to his feet, tottering into her shoddy old car. He determinedly avoids her gaze, looking straight ahead.
She purses her lips and tells him to put his seatbelt on. He does, but still doesn't look at her.
She decides not to press. The boy looks even closer to tears than she anticipated.
The radio hums sleepily between them as she drives him home, before she smothers it with her own voice. “You don't have’ta tell me if you're not ready.” she starts, voice gentle but firm. “But fuck’s sake, kid.” No more words are spoken for the rest of the ride, but a few tears roll down Dazai’s cheeks all the same.
And as always, Auntie Zhi will say nothing, because that’s what she does. She’ll watch from the top of the stairs as Dazai hobbles into his apartment. She’ll watch Yuki crowd around him, watch her urge him inside. She’ll watch the door close, and she'll drive herself home.
That's her job as an auntie, she thinks.
✿
Stepping into his apartment, keys jangling as they’re thrown onto the hook, Dazai immediately feels, knows, that something wrong.
Something happens, and something doesn't, both of which set off a cacophony of alarm bells in his head. Count one, Yuki isn't pawing at him for attention immediately. Matter of fact, she doesn't come to the door at all. His blood runs cold. Please, he thinks, please not her.
Yet, despite her absence, a hiss sounds through the air. Loud, louder than normal. Count two.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realise its two hisses, and not just one. Sparing an assessing glance over his shoulder, one hand on the doorknob, he spots, as expected, Yuki. But with her hackles raised, ready to pounce on another cat.
A strikingly familiar cat.
Looking rather perplexed, Dazai stares at the calico blankly. His hands drop from the doorknob in sheer confusion.
“... Sir?”
✿
After glaring at the cat suspiciously for a completely normal and reasonable amount of time, Dazai makes the executive decision to ignore how the old cat found him. If only for his own sake.
He closes the window (which he could've sworn he locked on his way out this morning), gently nudging the calico out of the way to get to it. Said calico just watches, blinking too-intelligent eyes at him before turning his head to the calendar on the fridge, sniffling noncommittally.
Dazai’s gaze follows the cat’s as Yuki moves cautiously towards the both of them. The human’s eyes widen slightly at the date scratched onto the paper.
It’s the tenth of January. Two years today. How on earth did he forget?
A loud, charismatic ‘mrrrow!’ cuts through his thoughts. Mister looks at him almost knowingly, ignoring Yuki trying to sus him out. She yowls protectively (and very gratingly) in his ear. His dark eyes dart to Dazai’s left pocket, before coming back up to meet the man’s glance head-on.
It's funny, Dazai thinks. His phone is normally in his right pocket, but he accidentally slipped it into the left one on his way home today.
Staunchly refusing to wonder why and how the cat knew any of this, he pulls it out and checks the time. Late noon, still office hours for most. He wonders if Taneda is working today.
Mister stretches leisurely, nodding faintly before finally sparing Yuki a mischievous glance.
He sighs, taking his chances. Soon, the call goes through.
“Hello there, Chief. It’s been a while, no?”
✿
February sees Dazai quietly resigning from his position at the daycare, smiling gentle goodbyes to the children. They send him off, tearful, with a handmade card, filled to the brim with the messy scrawl of youth. Even Haru, as brash as he is, wrote a small ‘good luck!’ and even signed off with a stick figure adorned in bandages. He thinks he can make out a little black cat next to it, colored in crayon.
Dazai frames it and keeps it above his near-empty desk, huffing a small laugh when it catches the light. He’d never thought himself a sentimental person, but he thinks his tenure at the daycare taught him quite a lot.
The love he holds for the place and the people in it, though not unwelcome, is relatively new. He never expected to grow so fond of humans, what with the gap between them.
He supposes it's not dissimilar from the way cats and dogs will fight and coexist all at once. Two different species— though that distinction, in terms of Dazai and humanity, grows muddier by the day— both animals, both domesticated. Both will live, and both will die.
He wonders momentarily if there is truly any bridge to gap between them, any difference at all. The thought causes him to jolt, and it passes quickly. How unusually idealistic of him.
Despite the uncharacteristic thought pattern, a hopeful smile rests on his face like it’s not so far-fetched.
✿
Taneda ends up getting in touch with that detective agency he had mentioned, and puts a word in for Dazai. When he arrives, dressed in clothing that seems at least semi-professional enough for an interview, he's greeted by rusted street lamps and weathered red bricks. It would be depressing if there wasn't warmth seeping from every single nook and cranny of the building, rushing out like a river without a dam, like it's overflowing.
He is asked why he’s there, and he lies.
Eventually, he is put into the ‘care’ (read: strict supervision) of one Kunikida Doppo. He's an interesting man, straight-laced with more rules than Dazai had bandages. An idealist, perfectionist. Someone who Dazai riles up whether he tries or not, based on how the man looks at him.
He laughs mentally. This will be really, really fun, he thinks.
✿
The Azure Apostle debacle settles down eventually, and with it comes Dazai’s dorm move-in date. Kunikida helps heft a couple boxes up the steps, cardboard slamming onto blue iron ringing out a harsh note into an otherwise quiet morning.
Dazai himself gingerly carries a pet carrier that purrs at the warming breeze of spring, Yuki sprawled out as much as possible in the thing. Kunikida scowls at him as he coos at her theatrically, voice hitching as he tries his darndest to not laugh.
Reaching his assigned dorm, he opens the door and sets the carrier down. His work partner huffs as he sets the boxes next to it. “Why couldn't you carry the boxes, you slacker?” he groans, wiping his forehead with a mean glare.
Cowering comically, Dazai yelps, “I’m exhausted, Kunikida! You see, loading allll of my furniture into the car was really hard. I ache like I’ve never ached before!” he collapses onto the floor, hand on his forehead like a damsel in distress. He forgets to mention that it was, infact, not him that loaded the car. It was Auntie Zhi, who sent him off with a proud grin and a reminder to ‘call every once in a while, or else!’.
Yuki just blinks, not quite used to the dramatics yet, while Kunikida grits his teeth despite a glint of mirth in his eyes. “Oh, you’re exhausted are you?” he starts, laying in on Dazai like a chiding mother.
The brown-haired man smothers a fond little smile in his arm, watching the blond grow more and more irate by the second.
He thinks that maybe, finally, he understands what Odasaku meant back then. Being on this side of things is a little bit wonderful.
Yuki yawns, pawing at him from inside the carrier. He places a finger through the door to scratch her lightly under the chin. Kunikida simply watches from behind the boxes, having run out of steam a couple minutes ago. He feels oddly out of place, like he's intruding.
The affection between man and cat is casual, tender. The idealist wonders briefly who taught the man to love, and whether the man will choose to teach anyone the same.