Work Text:
It starts with a note, ‘e4’, left on his desk at the office.
Dazai has no doubts about who the pretentious, swirling handwriting belongs to, though he does wonder how exactly the messenger entered the ADA’s building unapprehended.
No matter, what’s another secret anyway?
He pens a reply on some nearby scrap of paper, folds it neatly, then launches the airplane straight out of the window with a smile.
‘e5’.
It takes a few weeks to get a response, carved delicately into the flesh of a lead gone dry. That is annoying and throws a spanner in the work the Detective Agency is contracted to do.
Still, Dazai sends his retaliation by intercepting a radio transmission (he wills the morse code beeps to convey his feelings).
Months and months and months of this.
Words whispered into a receiver before the line runs dead.
Red on the wall of a bathroom stall.
He keeps his apartment a mess as the time stretches, adds another feature to the least cluttered corner one day in winter.
A physical chess board keeping track of their progress. Not that he needs it, but he’d dare say it’s nice to have a visual of the whole affair to cast a gaze over every once in a while. Sometimes he’ll sit by that table, imagine his partner sitting across as he twirls a taken pawn in his fingers.
Dazai hopes that the match won’t end soon, because who knows what will happen when it does, but also because he finds some strange sense of enjoyment in waiting for the next play. It’s made his days more interesting, having something worth waiting for. Convoluted, perhaps.
Unavoidable any way he thinks about it.
Would it be foolish to have another hope that next time, he’ll have the first move?