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“Undercover into the Decay of Angels?” Atsushi read aloud, eyes wide, the folder trembling slightly in his grip.
The Armed Detective Agency had gathered at Café Uzumaki—a modest, tucked-away spot nestled in one of Yokohama’s quieter alleys. Sunlight filtered lazily through the lace curtains, the scent of strong coffee and syrup-drenched pancakes floating through the air. It was Dazai’s favorite haunt, a place too quaint to attract attention, and yet, today, even the comforting clink of utensils couldn’t soften the tension in the air.
“Correct,” he said, adjusting his glasses with an edge sharp enough to draw blood. “Intelligence confirms an imminent operation involving the Decay of Angels. We’re to infiltrate, observe, and extract data. No casualties. No chaos. Minimal contact.”
“Minimal,” Ranpo echoed, voice thick with boredom as he flicked donut glaze off his sleeve. “Because Nikolai and minimal belong in the same sentence.”
Yosano raised an eyebrow, glancing sideways. “And who, exactly, thought we were the right team for this?”
Dazai, smiling serenely behind his coffee cup, gave a shrug that was equal parts indifference and mischief. “Apparently, someone high up thinks we’re the best expendable assets for the job.”
“I, for one, find it thrilling,” he added.
“Of course you do,” Kunikida muttered, already scribbling furious notes into his mission log.
Ranpo yawned theatrically. “Wake me when someone sets the building on fire.”
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The mission fell apart the moment Nikolai stepped into view.
It was supposed to be quiet—discreet recon in an abandoned shipping yard along Yokohama’s southern docks. Fog hung low over rusted containers, and the creak of metal and distant gulls echoed through the mist like ghosts. The Agency had split into teams. Atsushi and Dazai took the north, while Kunikida and Yosano scanned from the east. Everything was proceeding according to plan—until a manic cackle split the air like a siren.
“BEHOLD!” he shouted, tossing a toaster with suspicious glee. “RAINING CATASTROPHE!”
A toaster came first, spinning through the air with ominous speed. Then came a flurry of random objects: mannequin limbs, rusted metal signs, half of a lawn chair, a ceramic garden gnome, and finally, a beach ball that bounced off Atsushi’s head with tragic whimsy.
“This is WAR PERFORMANCE ART, my darlings!” Nikolai declared, pirouetting as he hurled a bucket of paint down like a grenade. “And you’re all invited!”
“Of course it’s performance art,” Ranpo muttered, narrowly dodging a flying ironing board. “I hate modern theater.”
“Is that a—? Is that a washing machine?!” Atsushi shouted, He and kyouka, ducking just in time to avoid a flying ironing board.
The calm precision of the mission collapsed into absurd chaos.
Kunikida barked orders from behind a container. “Fall back! Scatter and regroup! We’ll flank from—Yosano, incoming left!”
Yosano barely dodged a flung television set. “Tell me again why we didn’t bring a tranquilizer gun?”
Dazai tried to push forward, stumbling as a shattered desk drawer bounced off his shoulder.
“Dazai!” Kunikida barked. “Get it together!”
Dazai Osamu, who had until now been cool-headed, elegant, maddeningly unreadable—was not taking it well.
“What is this?! A dump day parade?! Why is there a washing machine coming down?!” he screamed as he ducked and rolled past a flying ironing board. “Atsushi! Get your head down! Yosano, do something! Ugh, I swear—this is why I left the DOA,” Dazai muttered. “WHAT?” Atsushi blinked. “I mean!” Dazai quickly waved a hand. “Left the… the dorm of—oh, look, it’s raining soup cans!” Suddenly, a crash behind them. Tanizaki cried out and dove out of the way as an old vending machine plummeted. It exploded in a shower of rust and rotten soda. “Someone get him DOWN!” Kunikida barked.
And then, for reasons known only to whatever eldritch force controlled Dazai’s impulse control, he shouted:
“So what if I DATED Fyodor?! So what if we have a KID?!”
A silence fell like an anvil. Yosano’s scalpel stilled in her hand. Ranpo looked up from the candy he was unwrapping. Even Nikolai paused mid-throw, one gloved hand frozen around a rotary phone.
Dazai blinked.
“Oh, damn.”
Then—he laughed.
A raw, wheezing kind of laugh that curled into a sound dangerously close to a sob. He bent over, clutching his sides, laughter pouring from him like a dam broken too late.
“I—Hah—pfft—I can’t—” he choked. “I can’t believe I said that—!”
The laughter cracked into sobs. Ugly, real, breaking-down-on-the-field sobs. And just as he staggered backward—
And then, from above—
CLANG.
A metal pipe, sent flying either by mischief or mistake, slammed down onto Dazai’s head with horrifying precision. The laughter cut off instantly. He crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, Before Coughing up blood
“Dazai!” Kunikida shouted, rushing forward.
“Dazai-san!” cried Atsushi, catching him just before he hit the concrete. His hair was matted with blood, his body limp. His smile—gone.
Fyodor, hidden in the shadows until that moment, had frozen where he stood. His pale eyes widened as he registered the scene—the sudden collapse, the secret exposed, the stunned expressions.
He did not move to help.
He did not speak.
But something in him flinched.
“...Pathetic,” Fyodor muttered at last, almost to himself.
And with that, He walked away
Kunikida tore off his coat to press it against Dazai’s wound. “He’s bleeding out fast—Yosano!”
Yosano was already moving, hands steady but jaw tight. Ranpo snapped his candy in half and tossed it aside, already on his communicator.
“Someone call a damn ambulance!”
Fukuzawa’s voice barked through the comms. “Now!”
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Later, in the hospital, silence reigned again.
Yosano worked quietly, hands steady but jaw clenched. Atsushi sat by the window, a single flyer still caught in his sleeve. Kunikida hadn’t written a word in his notebook since the moment Dazai fell.
“Fyodor,” Ranpo muttered at last. “That bastard left him.”
Yosano didn’t answer.
Outside the hospital window, the sun was rising again. Somewhere far from there, maybe in a crumbling cathedral or beneath a shattered chandelier, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was trying to convince himself he had done the right thing.
But the truth was heavier than even the pipe that struck Dazai:
He hadn’t.
He simply Hadn’t.