Chapter Text
Would death even end his pain? Or would it send him to an inescapable pity for himself, scratching incessantly at his strangely fragile skin, prepared for eternity to pierce the veil of death and for resurrection to occur. Or, simply, would he wish to come back after death, missing the hopelessness he'd had instead of this relentless heaven?
He'd thought about it, perpetually so, meaning to be as endlessly recurring as the clock hung so magnificently upon a wall. Continuously, he'd find himself staring so obsessively at them it was almost frightening to all but himself, the ticking it's only sign of life, a mist of death with a figure behind the veil, it's form the quiet tick. Mist of death being the appearance of being utterly unanimous, dead, even, whereas that outline - or figure, as you may see a more personally fitting description - , distortion casing itself, lacks beauty, being life itself. It makes the clock appear to be mobile in some shape.
Dazai longed to be such. A ticking, useful corpse. People would stare, they would, but it'd be entirely futile. Baseless gazes, as pitying as they may present, would do nothing to rectify his humanoid presence, to raise a limp disfigurement from the grave whom does not threaten to be saved.
"Would anyone ever attempt with me?"
"Would anyone care, though, if I were to cut myself out into litter and disintegrate into tiny stars?" He'd ask himself, wallowing in shame each drastic, theatrical day he'd spend masking all but lies.
"Or would I be a meteor? Swirling endlessly around some other thing - which could very nearly be like me if you close an eye - until I cause some other destruction." He offered to his conversation, one only shared and separated between his dull voice and his void soul, both mustering and voicing each side of the interrogation of the brain, rotting with mentality as it does.
"Do I even care for such questions? What good would they be, anyway, after death, to question?" He mutters to himself, one familiar evening, the stars oblivious to the contradicting diminished light beneath in the same silhouette you'd see on a being, resting in a futon meant only for humans.
_________________________________Timeskip______
Deciding once and for all enough was enough, he rolled unceremoniously out of his container, briskly decorated (as not to raise suspicion of his devastated manifestation you could in all honesty name himself), if it were even given much time at all, really. Perhaps he needed such an unlawful space for his heart, thumping against his putrid, feeling chest. Irritating was the word, describing the stripping wallpaper, motioning like tape he would rather use to tie a noose if it were durable. Durability lacked in his head in these times, times like these when a hangover previous would begin to force him to lament, to swallow his guilt, to choke at the utmost highest agony on blank air.
"To whichever, or even whoever is up there where I could never place, please declare myself dead, unconscious even..." He endlessly hopes each bleak morning, not a soul to give the paper to, not a sane head that would wordlessly take the pen and take accountability for the monotone sky, drifting along as if mocking the fact he can't. With a solemn gaze lifting from the grime that blankets his ground, he catches his temples as they lull, gravity striking him clean off his well-earned footing and diagonal to the matching dirt of his pale skin.
He never really understood people's attraction to him. After all, he was just some bandage waster who'd lie in his dump day in or out inescapably, though by his own notion. Who wants a being so utterly useless even in the topic of self-esteem or value, commonly hygiene, too. He struggled, to say it simply, to raise awareness to himself he needed to do various tasks in order to meet 'standards'. What trivial necessities.
He walks mindlessly out with yellowed teeth before pausing, as if his heart shattered then and there, and trampling over distasteful alcohol once more.
Great Dazai, former Port Mafia executive and one of few geniuses, collapsed upon clinking sake bottles, the glass unsupportive of even his worrying weight, imploding on themselves under pressure and bursting as his eyes do. He struggles against fluid, fluid as liquid distress, distress in liquid form, his piled "revolution" tearing through the loathsome bags drooping from his eyes. Well, perhaps drooping would be unfair to abuse here. The word would be familiar to a certain statement in his head, or rather, just state. Mental, of course. And- oh. He's crying. Crying. Something so inexplicable must be just a falter, as Dazai knew all about himself, right? Obviously, he had since some unreasonable birth, followed by some irregular birthdays, stalked by the intermittent joy of others seeing you in the same state, only for their expression to stale if they gained knowledge of your mental businesses. Maybe if illness was a business he'd be named a businessman. How thrilling a thought, really.
"What monstrosity would ever let this happen if not any ordinary cherishable human?" He weeped, his tone a tomb for optimism he may never have had even in the earliest infantry dates of his. Looking back, he was petrified of himself. That ceaseless, false pit of himself. He quivered, but not from the cold seeping in.
It's getting progressively later, and he needs to work. Previously, he'd numbly shoved his shoes on to leave and restored himself almost instantly to his living space, or survival space. Numb felt right. Numb felt natural.
He'd thought and wondered, thought and wondered, and for quite too much time now. It, as mentioned, was getting later as time progresses. It was sickly, the feeling of time moving. But clocks move, don't they? And they're inanimate, so why shouldn't time? Perhaps it's because the clocks begin to scream first when time tries to whisper. It's plainly the more important thing that you can read, unlike our lonely Dazai here. Lonely is too much a complicated word to use when trying to describe him, as it oversimplifies it, and you'd have to elaborate over and over, stating why it's the perfect word, which it barely is.
... He'd remembered hygiene for once today.
Remembered? Yes. Because the trivial actions everyone calls necessities is lost to him, and he feels he doesn't need to follow through with these unless to impress. It was quite easy to forget something that gnaws at you each time you don't forget, and tempting as it was to always forget, he knew (just as most things) that he couldn't. Couldn't lay there where many could find him, whether it be him rotting or decomposing, starved and on the brink of death. He couldn't.
That's what told him to pity later when he stormed across the same alcohol glasses, not allowing himself verbal lament.
Pity himself, of course, because what good is other's pity if they do nothing to salvage what's left of his fleeting hope? In other words, why should they care if they choose to do all but nothing to help?
"Nothing," he'd thought, mind simplifying to one plain word. Maybe if there were a change in wording, he'd have a different answer. Perhaps if the question was, "What does other's pity do?" No. He'd still be left with 'nothing' and he knows it, again, just as he knows - as explained briefly - everything about himself and many more things, especially things he'd rather not know.
He'd gone back. To brush his teeth, of course. Oh, right, he was supposed to look socially appealing all over again.
"Why do I deal with this bullshit every day?" A mutter rang out in his ears, shooting to his head. He thought about that question incessantly after that as he brushed his teeth and hair, though lazily and without much effort.
Drawing a smile from the depths of his small, delicate container of smiles, he bursts through the front door. 'The' only because his house is never just right, never quite a home, or a place he can rest at last. Plainly, he would never let himself die here, even if you dragged all of his senses away, sobbing and weeping at their extinction, he would inevitably be left, still, with the same opinion. Perhaps even with a woman, pretty as she might be, who begged him to die with him at his apartment, he still, as always, would never. This place was too quickly a dump for his emotions he needed to drain before he showed them.
-- (Bear with me people, we're getting to the actual plot here, I promise...) --
He walks seemingly endlessly to work, teeth still moderately yellow yet not enough to be immediately noticeable (he hopes, anyway). He really did need to fix it; each day it happens again, and after hurtling over everything to fix it each of these days, it becomes draining, so he doesn't do it in full each time. Although, it was becoming a nuisance.
'Whatever,' he declared in his head, mustering up the courage to drag his feet a little higher in an attempt to seem even a little composed. It never worked, of course, but they all assume he's just being dramatic and brush it off. He nearly prays to whoever is out there that it happens for just one more day.
Today was bitter, nipping at his skin even with his coat on. He almost winced at stepping outside earlier, but here he was halfway, and he'd only just remembered he hadn't locked the door.
'Whatever,' he repeated in his head. Surely there was nothing in there to take, anyway, that he values. Sure, it would be disheartening to find he'd been robbed, if he does, but he would move on the very next second and it would be fine.
Arriving at work, he sighed a meaningless sigh. It wouldn't benefit him, so it was meaningless, right?
Luckily enough, there were no cameras out here to see him do so, glaring with black eyes much like his own, a reflection almost of who he was, if you could even call him one with someone to be.
He's fundamentally different, you could say. Much like a camera, yes, yet more like that clock... both are inanimate, both are useful, yet only one loses its value when a better version comes out (being the clock to the digital). He can relate to this one. Dazai ticks, too, annoyingly so for everyone else around him. Maybe that's why they all leave.