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“Why do you even bother killing yourself? With the number of enemies we have made, you could always just wait around for one of them to off you.”
Kunikida has no idea. Dazai smiles lazily, thinking of the armies of Mafiosi who would gladly take up arms and murder him with no more than a snap of anyone’s fingers. “If I die, Kunikida-kun,” he says mildly, enjoying the wind in the rooftops and looking down at the solid, dependably capable-of-killing-him concrete below, “I want it to be on my own terms. And with a beautiful muse beside me. My death will be so grandiose and glorious that everyone across the ages will know me as the man who committed the most evocative suicide the world has ever seen.”
Which was true. Partly.
(Mostly it’s just the high.)
His partner snorts inelegantly. “I assume it is a pointless endeavour to ask how you came about this mania.”
Dazai gives it a careful thought. “No,” he says slowly, “no, it certainly is not. Do you want me to tell you?” The surprised look on Kunikida’s face seems like a yes, so Dazai does.
Honestly, he doesn’t remember how he started his suicidal streak. Life in the Mafia was never truly devoid of good fun. Chuuya was good for taunting practice and sparring, Onee-san was the perfect verbal jousting partner, and Akutagawa was always a great source of anthropological and psychological studies. Ougai-san was a fearsome chess player and Dazai almost always lost, though his admiration is frequently tempered by the oddness of their Boss's obsession with that child he calls his daughter. Black Lizard people were always cute and rowdy. The pay was extraodinarily good. Granted, the jobs were often a bit too easy, but once in a while a good mission comes along and works him hard enough that he feels it the day after— in the burning of his muscles, in the creaking of his bones, in the blessed blankness of his thoughts.
Perhaps it started somewhere between all the killing and lying and… well... just the general insouciance of his work in the Port Mafia. Perhaps it started with the fact that he saw too much death and never truly had a glimpse of it himself. Perhaps he was haunted by his actions. (Funny thought, but unlikely).
Perhaps it was boredom. (Also a funny thought, only very likely.)
He tells Kunikida this, without mentioning anything of his former job of course, and Kunikida just scoffs. “You’ve always been incredibly dumb,” he tells Dazai bluntly, running through his notes one more time before they had to intercept Akutagawa, who is reportedly receiving a fragile shipment coming in from Russia. “I am a strong advocate of the notion that it is only your idiocy that keeps you alive at this point.” He stops, looks up, and sees Dazai staring at him thoughtfully. Kunikida grunts. “It keeps things interesting for you, I suppose.”
Dazai smiles and hums his assent. He crouches on the rooftop of the warehouse they’re using as vantage point, and watches Akutagawa and his new pet, a woman named Kisumi, approach the cargo trailer a few feet to their left. (Really, the Mafia recruited such a beauty—again! How dare they! How could they do this to him? Must they torment him so? Dazai would bet Chuuya’s life Chuuya was behind it all.)
“You know,” he begins telling Kunikida, abandoning all pretence and toying with the possibility of revealing his old profession to his partner, “I almost died once. For real. It wasn’t a double suicide like I had hoped, but I came really, really close.”
(He doesn’t bother telling Kunikida how it was the only moment in his life where he felt truly at peace.)
(He did not need to know that.)
Kunikida snaps his notebook shut – signalling the end of their little conversation – and adjusts his eyeglasses, eyeing the Mafiosi with unnerving precision, calculating all that needs calculation. Dazai follows his lead and shuts up, instead watching Akutagawa and Kisumi (such a waste) speak to the carriers. Akutagawa, if Dazai still knows him as much as he used to, looks pained. Surprisingly enough. That particular expression took him years to get out of the kid.
(Emotions look good on Akutagawa’s face; it reminds Dazai of the earlier days.)
The cargo right behind them is tiny, no larger than a foot on all sides, and Dazai catches a glimpse of the box when Kisumi bows. She completes the negotiations and shakes hands with the carriers, who immediately leave them with the package.
Unbelievable.
Kunikida pokes Dazai’s rib with the end of his pointy leather shoes and motions for them to get going, and Dazai sighs, deeply – very, very deeply – because Dazai thinks he knows what this is about, and if he’s right he will have to rein himself in. And that is never an easy job. It's starting to look like hell for his self-control; Dazai is exasperated and royally pissed off.
Well, if worse comes to worst, he could always ask Kunikida to tie him to the Agency’s interrogation room and stop him from killing Chuuya. (And outing himself to the rest of the detectives as an ex-Mafioso in the process. Though Ranpo-san... Certainly looks at him strangely.) It would be god-awful if he turns out right, however, and so while he and Kunikida busy themselves with running through rooftops in pursuit of Akutagawa and Kisumi, Dazai also hopes he’s very much mistaken and that this whole mission wasn’t put together for the stupid purpose of drawing him out and making fun of him.
Dazai and Kunikida jump down from the top of a five-storey building, right behind their two targets, and Dazai is so, so annoyed—
A flash of red darts across the corner of Dazai’s eyes, and instinct immediately takes over: he grasps the back of Kunikida’s coat and pulls hard, hard enough that Kunikida balks and coughs as he slams into a wall. Dazai doesn’t care if Kunikida beats him half to death for it later; all he sees is the blood red limb of Rashomon, lingering where Kunikida would have been stabbed to death.
(It is quite insulting that he wasn’t chosen as the first target. Really, even his former apprentice doesn’t think twice about not killing him. Maybe he should reconsider Kunikida’s sentiments about his suicidal tendencies...?)
They hit the ground – Kunikida catching his breath, Dazai lissom, steady on his two feet – and straight ahead are Akutagawa, Rashomon out and baring fangs, and Kisumi, whose gun is raised and cocked. “Kunikida-kun,” Dazai tells his colleague, who is still on the ground doubled over and heaving, “please return to the agency. We will probably need reinforcement.”
Kunikida flashes him an angry glare (really, Kunikida has so many kinds of glares, Dazai should learn them all someday and make a chart) but says nothing. Instead he gets up, dusts off his waistcoat, and then runs back to the Agency to do just as Dazai asked.
Akutagawa clicks his tongue and Kisumi’s eyes narrow in distaste. “Akutagawa-san,” she says, wary, and Dazai is impressed. Usually people dismissed him as easy prey. She must have good senses... Probably.
(Or can she tell he wants her as his suicide partner...? Dazai will never know.)
“Hello, Akutagawa-kun!” Dazai cheerily greets his grumpy ex-subordinate, whose eyes blaze at the casual welcome. He hasn’t changed one bit. “Tell me, should I kill Chuuya for this, or should I let you?”
He can feel the jagged spike of anger fill his head. Kunikida could have died.
“I do not know what you mean by that,” Akutagawa tells him frostily. Kisumi fires without warning. Dazai steps aside and lets the bullet pass harmlessly by the side of his head. Good aim, but Dazai is infinitely better than a well-aimed gun.
“Hey, now, that isn’t very nice, Kisumi-chan!” Kisumi looks dazed at his casual avoidance of her bullet and the use of her name. Dazai makes a show of looking hurt, but he usually never gets it right. He'd always just come off as arrogant; watching Akutagawa twitch and battle with his own sense of self-preservation (cruelly enough, it was Dazai who put it there) doesn't help either, as it is simply the most amusing thing in the world. “I was hoping we’d get to talk about a double suicide, too...”
Kisumi's eyes glaze over with confusion. “Double... suicide?”
“Don’t mind him,” Akutagawa growls, stepping in front of her and pulling out what looks like the beginnings of Rashomon Jaws.
Too easy. Akutagawa had always been too easy to read; Rashomon had always been too slow to start; Dazai had always been too quick to blinding anger (though very few realise it).
Dazai loses his smile as he walks toward Akutagawa and the box. His skin bristles with terrible energy, the likes of which he hasn't had to deal with since he left the Mafia; it’s exhilarating, to say the least, to feel so much rage pounding through his body, fuelling him with adrenaline that tasted all too familiar and all too intoxicating. His gaze falls on the box: that stupid box, with its stupid logo, the stupid dimensions, the stupid, stupid Mafia executive who orders fucking hats and then lays a false fucking trail of information and makes fucking Akutagawa get the goddamn thing, like it matters, like anything fucking matters—
Rashomon pounces, but it had always been an incredibly useless ability. Dazai spares Akutagawa the minutest of scoffs (disappointing, so very disappointing) and Kisumi gasps as the fiery jaws fade to dark red soot that crumble at Dazai’s feet and die.
Pathetic, useless, easy.
“Tell me,” Dazai says again to Akutagawa, who understands too well that he and his little assistant stand no chance, not against Dazai, and not against Dazai like this, “tell me, Akutagawa-kun, should I let you kill Chuuya for this joke, or should I just go to headquarters and do it myself?”
Dazai is so close he breathes down Akutagawa’s face. Kisumi tries to reload her gun, but even before she gets to her holster Dazai’s hands are already iron clamps around her wrists—Dazai doesn't give her time to think about anything else before he throws her into the air and on her back, bones breaking, gun falling to the ground and firing at the wall next to them. The heat of the moment seeps into his skull, inundating him and his senses; it astonishes him how he had forgotten this part, this calm but chaotic energy that possesses him whenever rage starts its rampage and the kill becomes all that matters.
Amidst the roaring of blood in his veins, a part of him vaguely remembers: this is how he is when he kills. This is how he is all the time with the Port Mafia, member or not. Chuuya certainly knows how to push his buttons right.
(Kunikida could have died.)
Akutagawa tries to sneak in an attack from behind, but nothing touches Dazai unless he lets it. Rashomon falls away again, powdery and glimmering like bloody snow; the ground is covered in its dust. Dazai regards his old protégé coolly; was that fear in Akutagawa’s strange, empty eyes? It looks like fear, but Dazai doesn't really know. He has never known fear quite like Akutagawa’s fear of him.
(But Dazai has known worse fears.)
(Kunikida could have died.)
“Tell Nakahara-kun that the next time he wants to waste my time scouring the town for a delivery of one of his ugly, old-fashioned hats, I will personally deliver it to him, and that all he needs to do is ask.”
Akutagawa stares at him, bewildered. “What do you mean? This is an ammo delivery. Such was what we were told.” The child takes one step back, trying his hardest to seem large and intimidating and resolute - bless him - before inevitably looking away. Figures. He never did manage to hold Dazai’s gaze for very long.
“Open the box.”
His stupid ex-underling makes no move. “We were given no such orders. The order from Nakahara-san was to simply retrieve the package. Your words hold no sway over me. I no longer do as I am told by you.”
Dazai sighs, and takes one last look at the damage he's done so far: Akutagawa, blood in his mouth, coughing relentless; Kisumi on the ground weeping quietly, breathing shallow and bleeding wrists limply resting against the concrete at an ugly angle. At this point, all Dazai needs to do to finish the job is step over Kisumi’s neck, twist his foot just so, hear it carefully crack and creak and break; move to Akutagawa, put his fist through Akutagawa’s chest, slam him into the concrete slab behind them and choke him—it would be so, so easy to watch the life fade from their eyes, see death come to get them and lay them to rest.
(Oh, the envy, to be thus freed.)
He takes a step forward; he should probably just do it, get it over with already. (This is how he is. In or out of the Mafia, it doesn't seem to make a difference all, does it?)
“Dazai! What do you think you’re doing, you clobber-headed degenerate?”
Dazai snaps out of his trance and stares at the new arrivals: Kunikida, striding toward him, all purpose and business, crisp and stern like the pleats in his perfectly-ironed khaki pants, with Ranpo and Kenji in tow, smiling serenely, looking for all the world like they’re simply having a walk in the park. His fellow detectives look both dumb and striking.
In a trice, Dazai feels the animal in him quickly shut down. A different kind of calm befalls him: warm, serene, quiet but for Kunikida's occasional admonishments; this calm leaves him with just the fundamentals, gives him a gift he doesn't quite know how to name, silences the violent demon that lives quite opulently in his head. “Oh! Kunikida-kun! Ranpo-san! Kenji-kun!”
(This whiplash, this breakneck speed at which his composure changes and his mood lifts to heights he once thought could never exist for himself, this is probably the greatest feeling Dazai has ever known. Perhaps second to the feeling of being one step closer to drowning and finally dying.)
(He still feels laughter welling up in his chest, even as he had long since come to terms with the unlikely fact that looking at his colleagues – friends, Yosano once corrected him, we’re your friends, you dipshit – was one of the finer things in life.)
Akutagawa coughs; Dazai turns to look back at him but he and Kisumi are gone. On the ground, innocent-looking and still incredibly stupid - though not half as infuriating - lies the package. “Oy, Dazai,” Ranpo asks him as they both stare at the abandoned thing. “What's all this about?”
Dazai knows better; Ranpo probably already knows everything there is to know about his little situation. Oh, well. Farewell, five hundred thousand Yen. He smiles at Ranpo and waves his hand in dismissal. “Oh, nothing, nothing, it was just a small altercation. It’s fine now! They left us the package! Although I don’t think you’ll like what you find in there.”
He reaches for the box but Kunikida grabs him by the scruff of his neck and says, “Leave it. It matters not. Let us head home. It is almost time for lunch, and the President says he is serving us a hearty meal today.” His partner swiftly does an about-face (really, an about-face, for Kunikida is certainly the most ridiculous of them, this Dazai says so himself) and walks back in the direction whence they came.
“Okay!” Dazai brushes himself off, careful to put his hands in his pockets as innocently as he could. Ranpo sees it anyway, of course; he raises an eyebrow at Dazai, clearly asking about his bandages, tinged with blood. “Not mine,” Dazai cheerfully responds, loud enough so only his inquiring friend could hear it. It was by and large the truth; most of it had come from his fracturing Kisumi’s wrists. Her bones did jut out. Maybe he was too harsh on her?
Ranpo is unimpressed by the almost-lie, but Dazai maintains his smile and walks alongside Kunikida instead. “Just a note, though, Kunikida-kun, being too severe could cause premature rigor mortis to settle in your bones and make them all creaky and inflexible.”
“I am not falling for that again,” Kunikida sharply replies.
“It’s true though,” says Kenji as he stares ahead and hums in assent. Dazai is sure he catches the faintest shadow of a sly smile on Kenji's face. “At the village we used to hold dance fairs to keep bones limber and supple!”
Kunikida misses a step and turns to face the three of them. Dazai practically hears the gears in Kunikida’s head reconsidering everything. “Is... is that so...”
Dazai smiles, bright and wide and true. “Of course not!” He carefully doesn’t dodge Kunikida's furious kick; it rarely did him considerable damage anyway.
They saunter vaguely towards the main road that led to the Agency while Kunikida mumbles under his breath and Kenji and Ranpo animatedly discuss the feast that awaits them. A light breeze blows through the alley and Dazai allows himself a moment to savour its blessed coolness, a gentle reminder to him of who and where and what and how he is now.
He opens his eyes and stares up at the rooftops stretching into the heavens, far above him. Perhaps grateful, perhaps relieved, perhaps still a little fearful that he remains undeserving of the kindness bestowed upon him by the winds. And perhaps a little hesitant about jumping from a rooftop to commit suicide. Even with a beauty. It certainly looks too messy.
(However: as much as he is no longer the mindless rampaging monster that he is -- was -- Dazai still thinks he’ll still ask people to lock his doors from the outside tonight.)
(Kunikida still could have died.)