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The hall of the church was drowned in silence. Through the paint glass window shone the moon brightly in, colouring Dazai in soft blue tones and making his eyebags look more deeper. The red rose in his suit pocket almost looked black in the light.
He was pacing back and forth with his hands at his back, at the altar in front of rows of empty chairs. As if he was waiting for someone. He stopped in the middle of his pacing, turning to the rows of empty chairs. In the middle of the aisle was a red carpet. He took the steps down, took the basket with chrysanthemum petals in it. In silence he walked to the end of the aisle and started to spread them on the carpet to the way to the altar. His steps were echoing in the hall, as he threw the petals on the ground. And as he returned to the first row, did he place the basket to the seat on his right side and headed the steps up. He slowly turned around to face the chairs. He could almost imagine people sitting there, waiting for the bride. There will never be a bride nor a groom.
Silence was engulfing him again. Dazai sighed. Before he began, he took a deep breath and took a paper out of his jackets pocket.
“Welcome!”, he started, smiling at the empty chairs, pretending to have an audience sitting there. “And thank you for appearing for this grand event!”
“Surely you must all be wondering why we are gathered here. The reason is simple. To celebrate one special guy.” He pointed to the big picture standing at the side. “Chuuya Nakahara.” For a while Dazai didn’t say anything. His smile on his face faltering. “He- He’s currently occupied unavailable for now forever… So, tonight I, Dazai Osamu, will be your host.” Dazai swallowed. Slowly the emptiness inside him was getting lager, his throat itching. Yet he was trying to fight it. He doesn’t want to lay down his sword just yet. He still needs to say his words.
“I met Chuuya with 15. We… hadn’t exactly a good start. Neither were we friends. We were bickering and fighting everyday like cats and dogs. Yet there was… some bonding. As in with me calling him names and getting under his skin with every opportunity.”, he chuckled to himself. “Since the beginning there was something special to it. To our connection between us.” Dazai ruffled his hair. He started to pace again.
The silence was waiting for him to continue.
“We… essentially grew apart. With me changing jobs I- … we fell out of touch. Chuuya was probably butthurt about it back then. The punches he gave me when we met again certainly felt like revenge.” He slowly touched his cheek and smiled to the floor.
He looked up, his sight staying on the big wooden door, almost seeing a figure standing there.
“Until we would meet again, years passed. We both were in our twenties. And when I saw him again it felt like only months passed. We bickered as if there wasn’t a gap of years where I was gone. It felt like the bond between us could reconnect. But that didn’t seem to be on his mind. Sure, he did jump and reacted on my teasing’s like back then. Yet it didn’t felt like the same.”
He paced back and forth again, steps echoing. Holding onto the paper.
“So, I tried to somehow befriend him.”
He stopped his pacing again as he stood in front of the pedestal. The silence was waiting for Dazai to say his next words.
“Chuuya is a rather… loud fella. He is like fire, bright, red, and impulsive. Tyring to tame it can take a while, but once you have it under control, he stays loyal. SO loyal that his first name that I gave him was ‘my dog’”
Dazai chuckled, waiting if anyone else would laugh.
He was the only one laughing. The silence couldn’t laugh.
“Before I changed jobs before I ran away we were a team. We had each other’s backs. I was watching over him, and he was watching over me. We worked good together. Had our cards up our sleeves, our tricks we knew we could play if situations were rather… dire.”
“Years may have passed of our team not working together. And still after these years we have each other’s back. We were so good that even the demon couldn’t tell.”
Dazai was waiting again, fidgeting with the paper in his hands.
“The way I tried to befriend him was infuriating. I would figure out his code to his apartment and would sit in his living room. Of course, my colleagues would say that it is dangerous. But I didn’t mind I didn’t care”
“And I would do that often. Maybe one or three times a week. Of course, at first, he was angry, screaming I shouldn’t be there, that he would capture me, beat the shit out of me. But he didn’t.”
The Figure standing at the door in the darkness slowly takes form in Dazai’s mind. It’s as if the silence took pity on him and made itself into a form to witness this point of Dazai Osamu. He feels like the silence is waiting for him to say his true feelings.
“Our meetings in his big apartment slowly transformed into getting groceries, cooking and eating together, taking walks in the park. It almost felt like a domestic life. After dinner we would sometimes drink together. Chuuya always tried to convince me to drink some kind of French wine. I never really budged and stayed with sake. The wine tasted sweeter on his lips.”
Dazai could feel the silence staring at him. Waiting to finally hear the actual truth, whispering
Say it, fool.
Dazai’s throat itched uncomfortably. Just like the silence, sending him a reminder.
“I…with our meetings growing in frequency, my feelings started to grow for him. I started to develop romantic feelings for the slug. A nickname I started to call him with how he snaked his way into my heart. He made it beat again, ate away at it like it was a cabbage.
For the first time he looked down at the paper, with the speech written on it. Most of the sentences written on it were scratched out. And yet Dazai knew he needs to say them.
Tell me everything, fool. The silence is ready to hear you.
“One night we were drinking after dinner like always. But something felt different like the times before. We were talking, I was teasing him and the next moment… We kissed. In that night we did more than kissing. His touch, his skin, his gaze… everything was burning into my skin. I could have sworn he would burn me. He burned my heart to ashes later on.”
“You might think that was the moment we were in a relationship and were living happily ever after.”, he laughed. Dry and humourless. His hand raising and pointing to the picture. “But as you can see, we didn’t really reached it. He never reached it with me”
“Some may can call it being friends with benefits. I wanted to address it. Wanted to change it to something with meaning. But… I was scared…Scared of rejection and losing the bond. Scared of losing his touch.
The beginning of your suffering, fool.
Dazai’s hand began to sweat even with the coldness he feels at the tip of his fingers. “Nonetheless, Istill tried to make remarks here and there. But it seems to never really gotten across to him. He is rather thick headed. The red blush on the tip of his ears and cheeks were the cutest.”, he chuckled.
“Months passed with that arrangement of us being intimate with each other. And they turned to a year.”
“It was white day when I wanted to ask him to be… more than just sleeping with each other. On Valentine’s Day we didn’t went out but we did cook a 3-course menu. I don’t know if he ever saw it as a date.”
Dazai exhaled slowly.
“I noticed since Valentine’s Day that he was slowly distancing himself. Sometimes he would shoo me out giving me a half assed excuse. Saying he was tired. I saw the pain, slowly appearing in his eyes. Almost consuming him. Swallowing him whole, as if he was repressing something he couldn’t say. Something he wouldn’t say.”
“And I started to start planning. I collected the courage. I grabbed my finest coat. I prepared. I knew Chuuya would have wanted something romantic. I asked him that he should take a day off on this day. That we would spend it together. He said that he took it off anyway. My heart skipped a beat at that.”
“My plan was as followed: Start out at his apartment where we would cook something, I would throw in teasing remarks. Then we would take a walk in the Negishi Park while the Cherry Blossom were blooming. And under all the pink Cherry Blossoms, I would pretend to pick one petal of it off his head. I would have given him a red tulip, at first dramatically falling on one knee, saying ‘I humbly ask thee Slug, known as Chuuya Nakahara to be my boyfriend forevermore!’ and when he would be red and stuttering I should stop joking I would get up and hold his hands. Asking him if I looked like I am joking. He would have spluttered and I would have kissed him to silence him. Conveying the feelings.”
The father down on the paper gets, the more stains does Dazai see on it.
“The day went according to plan. The Day should have went smoothly. I was excited. Chuuya on the other hand couldn’t look into my eyes. As if he was avoiding me. It put dread into my stomach. I didn’t think much about it. I should have given it more thought.”
“We were in the park. I was about to pretend to take of a Cherry blossom petal off his head when… he grabbed my hand. And he whispered the worst words to me.”
Dazai’s chest hurts. He feels like thorns are poking his heart, his chest feeling stuffy.
“Stop this.”, whispered Dazai to himself.
He cleared his throat. “Chuuya said ‘We should stop this’ My heart was shattered. I asked him what should we stop? He just pointed to me and himself. ‘The arrangement. We should stop sleeping with each other. We should stop seeing each other.’ I saw the hurt in his eyes. Saw the agony in them. He never gave me a chance to confess. I wanted to confess say ‘I like you I wanted to scream I love you I have romantic feelings for you.’ He said ‘I am currently seeing someone. And they are the one for me.’ He said that I only viewed him as a means pass time. I viewed him as so much more.
“He ran. That fool ran and left me there. Standing dumbfounded and broken. But who am I to call him a fool when I didn’t chase after him.”
The silence was thick. Dazai saw the figure shaking its head in the dark.
I am so disappointed
The silence felt disapproving of his actions. Dazai raised his hands in defeat.
“I know that was the stage I should have chased him. I know I should have explained, confessed, said something. But I didn’t. I should have chased him on the same day. Not a week later. I shouldn’t have sneaked into the apartment where I caught him with another.”
“This guy…he… he looked nice he had brown hair and brown eyes; he looked like a cheap copy of me. I should have punched him for kissing Chuuya. The moment Chuuya saw me standing at the door he-“
He hated you.
“He was furious. He screamed. His eyes were filled with rage. Saying things like ‘I never want to see you again.’, that I should vanish from his life. Tears were forming in his eyes. I can still hear the echoes of his voice when he said… I never meant anything to him. It was a lie. A lie that dug too deep.”
“It was the moment…that I just gave up. I know I could have fought for it. But I didn’t. My heart was burned to ashes.”
Your heart is no phoenix who can raise from the ashes
“So, I smiled at him. Smiled, at the person I wanted to spend my future with. I placed my hand on his shoulder. I smiled and said, ‘Be happy with him.’ And I vanished. I stepped out of his life. Stepped out of his business.
You lost the fight without trying and ran away a second time, fool.
Dazai sniffled. He looked to the row of chairs again. Still, no one was there.
“With each day my life felt more like torture. It hurt me to mean nothing to Chuuya.”
“3 Years later, did I saw Chuuya and that guy again. They looked… happy. Contend to be in each other’s arm. I hoped Chuuya would break up with him. I saw how that guy had his arm around Chuuya, looking at him disgustingly in love. I would have only found it disgusting if I hadn’t seen something shiny on his hand.”
Dazai pressed his lips together. The words being stuck in his throat. But the silence forced it out of him, demanding to carry on.
Finish what you have begun, fool.
“It…it was a wedding ring. It felt like Chuuya chose his fate. At first, I didn’t want to believe it. I did a little digging. And… I found out that they were going to marry.”
Dazai looked up. He looked around in the church. He marvelled at the pillars with their intricate design on them, looked to the windows which were high up in the gothic church.
Continue, fool.
He faced the shadowy figure at the door.
“At last, they got married in Spring. In March to be precise. It’s also a part of the reason for today’s gathering. To celebrate this lucky day that they shared. The day that he should have shared with me.”
Dazai turned to the pedestal. There he had prepared a bottle of French wine the same brand Chuuya drank and a glass. He poured some of that wine inside.
“The first reason we gathered her was to make a toast to Chuuyas wedding. To him who had found love. To him who met someone that he wanted to marry. To him who found someone that meant the world to him. He is my world.”
He raised the glass with shaky hands. Waiting for anybody else to raise their glass.
“To Chuuya Nakahara. The guy who I should have been engaged to. Cheers!” He downed the drink in one go. The wine burned down his throat unpleasantly. He never was and never will be a fan of wine. If Chuuya would ask him now he would agree to drink with him
“From what I could hear from other people their life seemed to be happy. Chuuya and his husband married in this very same church. For what reason, I don’t know. I wasn’t invited.”
Dazai laughed bitterly
“I saw him standing in front of the church. Chuuya didn’t notice me. He looked happy. Absolutely dashing in the white suit and the white tulip in his chest pocket, half of his hair was slicked back. His smile was radiant. He was beautiful.”
Dazai let the silence settle over him. He looked at the empty glass in his hand. He slowly turned around and placed it on the pedestal. The emptiness inside him transformed into a deep, grieving bitterness. It should have been him, why wasn’t it him that got married to Chuuya? Why didn’t he do better in the past?
You can’t change anything, fool
“I didn’t saw him for months. I thought he was happy, living the dream. But he wasn’t. He was decaying from the inside. He was actively dying while this cheap, good for nothing guy was by his side!”, he threw the glass on the pedestal. Shattering in tiny pieces. Depicting, how he feels inside.
He slowly turned around bracing himself. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he continued.
“Last week I met a close friend of Chuuya. Over our talk she had that sad, pitying look in her eyes. As if something happened. She started to talk about Chuuya. How- How he got sick. How he looks like he is one breath away from death.”
He swallowed around the knot forming in his throat. Releasing a shaky exhale. “Hanahaki. She- She told me that Chuuya had Hanahaki. An Illness where slowly flowers are forming in your lungs. Suffocatingly. It’s something what you get from unrequited love.” Dazai laughed.
“Did they never said ‘I love you to each other? Apparently, that is one of the ways to cure it. Confess to the one you love. The other one was to get surgery to get rid of those wretched flowers that were suffocating him. She- “
A sob left Dazai as he looked down on the floor. Tears slowly falling down onto the floor.
“She said that he refused surgery to get better. She said that it- it was the same as choosing death. Explained that if he would have had the surgery he would have lost every feeling of that person and memory.”
The paper that Dazai was clutching onto fell on the floor. His hands shakier pulled another paper out. A more run down paper. As if he prepared the speech since long ago.
Do it, fool.
“Today, we have gathered here to- to mourn the passing of Nakahara Chuuya. The guy who I should have been engaged to, the guy where I layed my sword of fate down way too early, to mourn and grief the man who held my affection in his calloused hands.”
“He died last week at 19:06 in the morning. The flowers swallowed his lungs, formed their way around his heart piercing it with thorns, squeezing his life out of him. Leaving his friends, family, colleagues, his husband and…. me in shambles behind.”
Dazai broke down, falling down to his knees, pressing his palms into his eyes, hoping the tears would stop. Chuuya wasn’t happy enough to leave his heart in ashes, he also had to shatter Dazai’s soul into millions of pieces with no chance to repair. Only flowers holding his inside together.
The only thing you could hear in the church was Dazai crying.
Grieving.
Mourning.
Imagining what if scenarios, taking the blame for everything that went wrong.
.
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.
The shadowy figure was still standing at the door.
Not moving.
Just watching the scene unfold.
Dazai tried to collect himself. He still had two more things to say.
“As a parting gift to Chuuya”, Dazai began as he slowly stood up again and dusted his pants off, “I will be reading the wedding vows I would have said to you if you… if you would have chosen me.”
“Chuuya Nakahara. I promise to make your blood boil. I promise to be by your side, even when we are in different agencies. I promise to- I promise to cherish you, tease you and keep crawling under your skin so that every fibre of your body will remember me. I promise to take you back into reality if you ever feel like you are not yourself. I will carry your heart with me everywhere I go. I will give you my heart so that you can carry it around with you anywhere you go. You know Chuuya, when somebody would ask me what I wanted my first impulse was to answer ‘Nothing’. I thought that it wouldn’t make any difference because nothing was going to make me happy. But I was- no I am wrong. You, Chuuya Nakahara would have what I wanted. You would have made me happy. You would have made me….human.”
“I love you Chuuya Nakahara. I will continue to love you even, if it makes me feel like I am no longer human.”
The figure at the door was still standing still. Dazai’s throat felt itchy.
Congratulations. You did it fool.
Dazai began to cough violently. The cough didn’t stop. The air in his lungs decreasing, flowers increasing. He fell down to his knees. He was spitting bloodied flowers, petals were laying in front of him. He saw the petals of white chrysanthemum and red roses lying around. His mouth filling with the taste of copper.
Dazai felt weak. For the last couple of days- no week he didn’t eat anything. Every episode where he spit out the flowers left his throat raw. Making it difficult to swallow.
With no energy left, Dazai collapsed on the floor, looking to the door. Blood slowly pooled out of his mouth.
The shadowy figure was still there.
Heavy steps suddenly started to sound in the church. The figure slowly moved up to Dazai.
Are you ready to part?
Dazai chuckled, his voice sounding scratchy. “Never knew I would get a service from death itself to get me out of this world.”
Are you ready to part from this world, Dazai Osamu?
Dazai smiled slowly vanished. Tiredness taking over him.
He was silent.
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.
“Yes. Take me with you. To Chuuya.”
Very Well.
Dazai’s sight slowly drowned in darkness. His body felt light. He felt like he was being lifted off the ground. Dying felt oddly calming. He wished he could hear Chuuyas voice for a last time.
Deafening darkness surrounded him. Dazai felt the coldness embracing him. Like ashes that cooled down.
Maybe being dead means to live on in silence. He was ready to embrace it.
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He felt like a voice far, far away was calling out to him.
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”Oi, Mackerel!”
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“Oi, Mackerel!”
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“Oi, Mackerel!”
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“OI, DAZAI!”