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He hoped it would be as gentle as smoke dissipating after a final drag. It didn’t need to be beautiful, nor epic, he wasn’t made of anything special. His friend had once said he’d wanted to go beautifully, and Oda knew he truly would, when it was his time.
His friend.
He had one now. One, alone in this world.
He hoped he’d be forgiven for this.
*
The other man looked like a mirror image, the sun behind him stretching through tall windows and expanding the space into a portrait of a palace ballroom. His expression was set, as resolute as Oda’s conviction.
It was strange. He’d seen his death play out so frequently that avoiding it had become second nature. He’d once read that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and so he likened his ability to two similar poles rejecting the other — the face of death would always be met and matched by the instinct to live. Oda knew it by heart, had rehearsed it like a dance, the irony being that he’d come to reverse that pattern… here. In this heavenly ballroom.
Stranger still was that even as he stared into the face of death, the face that mimicked his own across the room, his mind was consumed with images of other things. He didn’t see his impending doom, no matter how much he knew to expect it, didn’t feel it as the warning it should have been. Perhaps because it wasn’t. By nature a warning is only useful when there’s a chance to change course, to avoid catastrophe or harm. Would a warning exist without a desire to avoid? Did Flawless know?
Instead, it was the kids he saw. Toothless grins, their sleeping faces. Untied shoelaces, masterpieces in crayon adorning the walls, the dreams they’d dreamt the night before. All gone but… here, now — with him at the very end. It brought peace to his heart, and steadied his hands.
He smiled, and so did his mirror image, as they both raised their guns.
Identical bullets rang out like church bells. They passed each other as the final great gasps of the sun began to sink below the horizon, his opponent’s hair rippling by the force, like wings of startled birds.
And Oda felt nothing but peace. A long drag, smoke dissipating gently on the quiet air.
Too… gentle.
He’d felt thin, momentarily, as feeble as a flicker. Perhaps it had been anticipation.
He’d also closed his eyes.
Why?
He was on the floor. No pain except a throb in his hip where he’d fallen. Left side. And even in his confusion Oda knew such an arc would have been impossible. The force should have had him on his back, a few stumbled steps from where he’d stood, waiting. He should have continued as a reflection of the man opposite — their feet, a line of symmetry.
He’d expected to feel numb, perhaps a burning sensation in the absence of excruciating agony, adrenaline working its magic to ensure the end had been a soft landing.
But even that evaded him. Like everything else.
It wasn’t right, it wasn’t wrong, it just wasn’t.
It wasn’t…
A small gasp behind him made his heart stop.
He’d been prepared for a bullet, that had been his choice; if there was one thing he’d given permission to stop his heart, it had been that. Not something so delicate, so gentle as a gasp. And yet his world, still turning, collapsed in on itself — even as he turned his head to confirm what he’d already deduced, in one brief moment of nauseating clarity.
It wasn’t his death.
His one friend smiled back as his own expression turned to stone, petrified by the gaze that came from just a single eye crinkled in triumph, a lone buoy in an ocean of black linen and bandages.
A kid who’d stalked the edges of life, who’d clung to its bitter rind until his hands had stung. A kid who’d observed, always, from behind a glass — fingers pressed right up, too close to see it all for what it was, his breath fogging out the parts that he could.
A kid who’d nullified the remains of the future that Oda had carved for himself, and in so doing had willingly nullified his own.
A friend.
A fool.
“Your shoulder,” the fool said. “It felt bony, smaller than I expected.”
And yet he’d never felt it. The idea made him want to break into pieces upon the cold, hard ground. A game of chess he hadn’t realised he’d been playing against two people, all this time.
And nobody had won, despite what the boy’s expression implied.
Oda found his knees soaked in blood as he crawled to his side, checking the wound despite already knowing that the hit had been fatal.
The boy winced as Oda put an arm around his shoulders, pulling him up so that he was being actively held. “It’s funny, I always looked up to you, and even when I saw you just now, you were standing taller than usual,” the boy continued, staring curiously at the body of the other man opposite them, the one who’d remained still and silent since the gunshot, “but your shoulder felt small, it was like you were already shrinking from the world – why was that?”
Dazai turned his head just slightly, gazing up to look at him directly, single eye narrowing in search of answers to a question that was clearly bothering him.
“Maybe it knew you were about to do something stupid.”
Or maybe that’s what happens to a man who chooses to die, righteous or not, selfless or not. A premature decay of mind and spirit, one foot in an afterlife they would have only ever dreamt of.
The boy scoffed. “Not stupid, genius, the world will thank me, you know.”
The world?
The world was cruel. Oda no longer held any gratitude to this world, and wanted none from the world in return.
He felt himself frown in frustration, felt his hand squeeze the boy’s far colder ones quite aggressively, as if he were trying to exchange something — though what that something was, he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t think he’d ever be sure of anything again. For all Flawless had always provided clarity, it had failed him when he’d needed it most.
The boy seemed to interpret something in any case.
“Don’t,” he said, and he actually pouted, “you were about to do the same.”
He was. But that had been his choice, his burden to bear. Had he not marched on alone, had he not pushed forward in what had always intended to be his final apology — then maybe he’d have seen the other boy running to keep up. His one friend, his equal in a world of hierarchy and imbalance.
Maybe then he’d have turned around. Felt the hand on his shoulder.
Saved a life.
The boy felt incredibly light in his arms.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Oda admitted, selfishly. He knew there were no words he could say to comfort the boy, though he desperately wanted them. “Where to go from here.”
It was only after speaking that Oda realised his lip was trembling, the body in his arms shaking, not from his own pain, but from the pain of the man who held him. He hoped his face was cast by shadow, the sun still bright behind them, so that the other boy couldn’t make out his expression.
By the look in the boy’s eyes, he could see it clear as day.
“You’re a writer aren’t you? So… write it.”
They held each other’s gaze, two friends, soon to be one alone. There was a calmness, and a shine to his friend’s visible pupil that Oda had never seen before, yet the smile looked forced. At least he was doing better at the attempt than Oda was.
Anger and grief consumed him, and the evidence remained woefully unburied.
“Why, Dazai?”
If he’d known he’d have stayed away. This was his fault. And yet…
“I’m a fool,” he explained, shrugging whilst suppressing another wince. Oda shifted to give the boy a little more support, hovering his hand gingerly over the blossoming of red over his white shirt. “I’ve only ever known how to do foolish things, and have done them again and again.”
He guided Oda’s hand down onto the wound, shuddering at the effort of raising his arm, but the pressure Oda now had permission to apply seemed to bring him some comfort at least. “You were about to do something foolish. It wouldn’t have been possible to talk you out of it with words alone, I should know.”
Oda knew the situation was beyond asking the boy to save his strength with silence. Words were beautiful. Words were necessary. As he cradled Dazai’s shoulders, he held onto each and every one like the gift that they were.
“But, more than that,” he added, the smile genuine once more, “I did it because you’re my friend.”
Breaking eye contact was all Oda could do to save the kid from more pain.
After a few deep breaths, he returned his gaze.
“You know you sound just like a writer too.”
The boy merely laughed, as he always did.
“What a strange world that would be.”
A wonderful world.
The evening light was minutes away from cracking into darkness and, strangely, the boy felt lighter than he had before. It was clear, now more than ever, that time was coming for him, despite how tightly Oda held him close.
The one he’d always wanted to save. The one who’d deserved it but had always denied it.
“You’re an odd man, Odasaku.” A cold hand was suddenly on his cheek, Oda grasped it with his own to warm it, lowering them both back to the wound in an attempt to make the pain a little more bearable for them both. “You know, I’d always found myself drawn to people who don’t look for respect. And usually those people didn’t want anything to do with someone like me, but you…”
The smile slipped for a moment, and Dazai closed his eyes in what seemed like a great effort to steal himself.
“The world will thank me,” he repeated, “there’s lost kids out there who need you. People who need to read your words to learn something about living. Give them what they need.”
He was speaking of Oda’s future with a clarity he’d never seemed to have for his own. And out of the two, his would have certainly made a more interesting story.
A famous writer had once said that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. But life is art. Dazai was proof. Besides, what use are writers without real people? Real stories?
“And you? What do you need?”
He seemed to consider it, his body now shuddering on its own, Oda’s grip miraculously steady in response.
“Just… tell him I’m sorry.”
There were no more words, after that.
The boy died as Oda had always hoped that he would… peacefully. And as the sun painted his paling flesh into something warm and radiant, like the colours of the sky just before it falls behind the curtain of night, Dazai went just as he himself had once hoped.
Beautifully.