Chapter Text
First came two straight months of 9-5 paper-pushing.
Next, a fire in a Yakitori joint ten minutes from the agency. Family-run. With a customer base of men aged 50 to 70 years, interested in Mah Jong and the construction industry. No fancy Abilities. No country-ending terrorist schemes. Just two jailed brothers who refused to reconcile and a solitary widow, 30 million yen richer. A textbook insurance fraud case. Cover to cover.
The last straw was an actual my-wife-is-cheating gig that Dazai dragged out by playing Statue at his desk. Hands folded over the keyboard of his laptop. Cheeks wet with tears forced from his unblinking eyes.
The tally was 21600 seconds. Six hours of breathing so shallowly, the flies believed him dead and parted from the communal fruit bowl to pick dry skin off his shredded fingertips. By the seventh hour, the succulents arranged along the windowsill began communicating telepathically. Interesting political opinions, but they didn’t give a shit that Dazai’s ass was fusing with his office chair.
And there were other factors too.
Subtler symptoms.
Such as Fukuzawa’s sudden interest in shift predictability, leading to the installation of punch time software on the company laptops.
Arbitrary administrative tasks were also multiplying. Upon logging in at nine A.M., Dazai discovered, in horror, that “build a client intake Excel sheet” and “audit archived files” had been added to his Outlook To-Do. Luckily, Atsushi was in the mood for some Microsoft practice…
Now, it was evening. Friday.
Dazai squinted.
As usual, the setting sun violated his eyes.
Busted blinds. He was the office’s sole victim, due to the positioning of his desk. He tried to address the matter during the last team meeting. But Kunikida, of all people, shut him down— as if he couldn’t handle the issue with a quick scribble in his notebook. No. Dazai needed to call the property managers if he wanted his ergonomic workstation restored. And that was worth three voicemails, each one more threatening than the last. No call backs. Fuck you too.
“Karaoke? Karaoke?” From the safe, shadowy portion of the office, Yosano flexed her new blood-red blazer and matching pencil skirt. Her hair was slicked back and freshly cut. “How do we feel, gang? Karaoke?” To a zoned-out Kenji: “Come on, kid. You ever do karaoke before?”
Dazai planted his hands on the nicked surface of his desk for support.
Karaoke?
With his work colleagues?
The idea provoked a similar feeling to the harrowing clarity that preceded explosive diarrhea.
Behind his eyelids flashed a horrifying fantasy that had haunted him since he was a child.
It was the fantasy of being good. At karaoke.
Not just good, but great. The best. The best at impressions, too. And dancing. Dazai had innumerable mental choreographies planned for a variety of songs. Mostly city pop beats. Funky. Nostalgic. Taeko Onuki. Rajie. Miki Matsubara. He entertained these fantasies every other day when he was transiting with his headphones on. Oh, they were detailed. Vivid. They occasionally featured a serendipitously synchronized duet with a fated partner. A double suicide at the end of the night.
The issue was that many practical obstacles stood in the way of pulling off a satisfying performance. He lacked data. A concrete reference point for his veritable skill level. If he misjudged his capabilities, there would be no disguising it until the song was done. And once everyone watched him glitch, he’d be forced to stick around and potentially participate again.
Still, that assumed being good was the expected result. If the average person was bad, and Dazai was too prepared, the exposure would be just as damning. There was no easy way around it. Attending and refusing to participate would signal insecurity. Ditching was inevitable. But if the “gang” had fun, they’d desire to go again. And Dazai would be pushed into denying a second invitation. Possibly a third.
Then, it’d be painfully obvious that he was avoiding karaoke specifically.
Dazai rose in a non-hurry, masking the creak of his knees with an elegant hip against his file cabinet. He plucked his coat off his rack. Hesitated.
This time of the year, the weather was bipolar as shit. Crisp mornings. Sweltering afternoons. Humid air making his hair frizzy. Dazai despised carrying his coat around when he got unexpectedly sweaty. He hung it back up. Then grabbed the cable-knit sweater “borrowed” off a sleeping old man in the downstairs café.
“Someone’s in a rush,” remarked Yosano, impossible to avoid. “You down, Dazai? Karaoke?”
Dazai pretended to check his phone as he shimmied between the other desks. Mentally long gone.
“Cannot. My cheating wife turned up.” A smile. A good-natured shrug. “Catch you next time! So many double-suicide-ready bachelorettes at karaoke. Wouldn’t miss it for shit.” He side-stepped Atsushi, who emerged from the kitchen with tea and a plate of egg tarts.
Damn, the kid smelled of cigarettes. Now that was an idea Dazai could get behind.
“Dazai, about the Excel—”
“Believe me, Atsushi, it can wait,” Dazai silenced him before he could distract Kunikida from his phone call, back turned, talking low into the receiver. "Write me an email! I’ll get back to you on Monday!”
“Oh. Okay,” Atsushi frowned.
Dazai shoved through the empty waiting room and attacked the stairs two steps at a time. He rolled his ankle as he exploded onto the sidewalk and collapsed against a streetlamp, enduring a sour wave of nausea. Then he extended his arms towards the endless blue.
Wow! Where had all these Real Estate billboards come from?
Scammer smiles loomed from every other balcony as Dazai soared two— three blocks from the Agency. They mocked him for misjudging the weather. Again. In the middle of a crosswalk, he ripped off his sweater and launched it beneath the wheels of a swerving taxi. His bandages were damp with sweat and yanked at his body hair. He wanted to rip into his skin, but his fucking nails were chewed to the bone.
This commercial artery of Yokohama was packed with coffee shops, clothing stores and canteens. High schoolers in uniform shoved at each other with sweet drinks in their grubby hands. They laughed at idiocy on their phones and disturbed young moms in leggings and baseball caps, toting around their strollers and gross toddlers.
The old farts weren’t any better. They coagulated in wrinkly heaps on terraces. Loudly arguing about newspaper stories they’d never live to see the consequences of.
Dazai considered this while standing on a park bench.
He had never gone to high school. Nor did he have friends to clown around with, despite his propensity for clowning. And although he was aging—actually aging—he could not, for the life of him, conceptualize existence alongside a child. Nor with a body and mind so withered past its prime. The idea of looking into a mirror and seeing leathery skin and sunspots seemed improbable. Fake. Fake news.
Dazai leapt off his perch.
The 7/11 at the corner of the street beckoned with a heavenly glow.
Inside, he swapped a handful of fraudulent bills for a pack of Marlboro Golds and a bottle of Soju. He played Hey, look at that! with the stoned cashier, swiped a bag of chips and a random magazine off the rack, then slipped out the back door to join the dumpsters and the rats of the alleyway.
He lowered his ass onto a cool stone staircase and spread the goods on the ground. The white noise of the A.C. units buzzed inside and outside his head.
“You knew,” he ripped off the plastic wrapping of his cigarette pack with his teeth. “You knew this bullshit was leading to Microsoft Teams, didn’t you?”
Unfortunately, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was too dead to respond.
But he’d known.
That rat had definitely known.
Dazai sparked a cigarette and washed down the bile in his throat with a greedy gulp of Soju.
As the law of bullshit commanded, the breeze became frigid in the absence of sunlight, chilling Dazai’s damp bandages. He shivered as water droplets scattered from the clothing lines above. The air was a pungent mix of trash and fresh flowers. From this angle, Dazai could only glimpse the storefront at the mouth of the alley. Bonsai were arranged at the entrance along with a pot of pre-made bouquets. On sale.
Why did that irritate him?
On a whim, he flipped his magazine to a random page. But his eyes were unseeing.
He considered his body from the gutters above.
Stiff posture.
Unchanged haircut.
Evidence of wear along the cuff of his pants. Loose seams.
Employed.
Cigarette in hand.
This was it.
The crystallization of the self.
Also known as chronic lower back pain.
Dazai's hands migrated to his pockets, extracting the extra roll of bandages he carried as backup. They wrapped a band around his head. Twice. Snugly covering his right eye, containing his migraine at the source.
There was a bird’s stunned croon.
In a flurry of beating wings, the pigeons of the fire escape erupted into flight.
That is when Dazai heard a low, sarcastic whistle.
“Would you look at this,” said a familiar voice. “Someone’s lookin’ downtrodden.”
The white noise dampened along with Dazai’s affect. Ash scattered between his feet, rolling over his magazine as if dragged towards the interrupting presence. To see the man, he’d have to raise and turn his head. He did not. He measured his approach by the ripples in the puddle of a spilled Sapporo.
“I should snap a picture of this and have it made into a postcard,” Chuuya continued. His arrogant tone and grating voice were redundant, but the chunky leather sneakers that appeared before Dazai’s loafers were not. Look at those platforms… decked in gaudy silver buckles. Compensating much?
Chuuya kicked Dazai in the shin. Every bone in Dazai’s lower body felt rearranged by the impact. And that wasn’t hard enough for Chuuya, if his frown had anything to say about it. He lingered on one foot, toe pressed against Dazai’s leg before drawing back and recentring his weight. His arm twitched, telegraphing a punch that never arrived.
“What’s up, fish brain? The absolute last thing I wanted to encounter today was your poisonous vibe.”
Dazai continued to pretend to sleep.
“Yo, I’m talking to you.”
He ceased when Chuuya feigned a kick at his balls. Heart rate spiking, Dazai’s arms flew to a defensive stance as he collided with the brick wall behind him. A grin split his face wide open. Pain sucked, but Dazai couldn’t deny it made quick work of his brain fog.
“Hi Chuuya,” he chimed, prepared for a second wind that never came.
He faltered at the view.
Chuuya was wearing neither hat, nor choker, nor coat, nor gloves. He wore saggy jeans and a dark biker coat, zipped halfway over a red top. His hair was tied in a ponytail, and his bangs were pinned along the sides of his head. He was carrying a potted bonsai in his arms. A pink bow was tied around its trunk.
“Absolutely horrendous to see you here,” Dazai recovered, dizzy.
Must have been the nausea-inducing perspective of looking up at Chuuya from here on the ground.
Chuuya said nothing. He shifted his grip on the pot, easily hoisting it into a one-handed press above his shoulder. His free hand landed on his hip.
Dazai tugged on his tie, miming a leash. “Finally trained enough to walk without the collar, huh?”
Come to think of it, it had been years since he last saw Chuuya without his choker. Dazai searched his memory. Was the last time… when they were teenagers? Almost ten years ago? That couldn’t be.
Dazai stretched his arms over the steps behind him, sprawled nice and lazy. He flicked a pebble into a tear in Chuuya’s jeans. Imagine blowing money on pants with holes in them. Just senseless.
“And you’re wearing that dumb bandage over your eye,” Chuuya remarked, caustic as ever. But the timing was odd, his head was tilted, and his gaze was not so livid. “Since when you rocking that shitty look again?”
Right.
The bandage.
How had Dazai forgotten about the bandage over his eye?
He forced his body to remain still, despite the overwhelming urge to touch his face. These days, Dazai only wrapped his eye when he was alone. Chuuya was not supposed to be present when Dazai was alone.
“Since I began contemplating the merits of returning to my old ways and popping Mori,” Dazai shrugged. “Seems like the right time, don’t you think? Relieve him of the burden of that midlife crisis. So cringy.”
“The hell do you know about what’s cringy?” Chuuya pushed the bonsai aside and did not spare it a second glance as it drifted to the ground, soft as a leaf. Dazai allowed the intrusive thought of lunging and nullifying it—to watch the pretty white-and-blue pot shatter into a million pieces—come and go. Not that it wouldn’t be entertaining. The urge to act on it wasn’t that strong, somehow.
It was probably because encountering Chuuya in Yokohama on this particular day was a surprise on multiple levels. And that was stimulating on its own. As far as Dazai knew, the guy was meant to be in Madrid, tipping his hat for socialites at the opening of some Opera Mori invested in. Maybe he returned early and was allowed time off?
Funny joke. Time off was not something Chuuya was known for. Nor was it something Mori typically granted.
And yet.
“What are you…” Dazai realized what he was about to ask halfway through the sentence. He aborted with an exaggerated gag at Chuuya’s footwear, fluidly plucking another cigarette from his pack. “Nice shoes. Don’t think I didn’t notice the height of those platforms.”
Chuuya extended his hand, palm up. It was as if he expected it to grow a mouth and do the talking.
God, his blank stares were always so pervasive.
Why were his eyes so freakishly blue?
Dazai refused to look away first. But his gaze snapped back to the hand when Chuuya snapped his fingers,
Dazai wrinkled his nose.
“Hand me a cigarette, dumbass.”
“Oh yeah? And what is Chuuya gonna offer in return?” Dazai’s voice sounded distant. He watched himself hand Chuuya a cigarette, then the lighter. Chuuya shuffled to the side and sat next to Dazai. As far away as he could manage. But on the same stairs, nonetheless.
Dazai drank a moderate-to-long sip of Soju.
The hatless hatrack inspected the magazine splayed across the asphalt.
In the distance echoed the siren of an ambulance.
“Words cannot possibly express how not down I am to see you right now,” Dazai idled. He regretted the words the moment they exited his mouth. Now there was even more silence. And it felt awkward. “Did you gain weight? You probably shouldn’t have eaten so many churros and cheesecakes.”
“Didn’t end up going to Spain, finally,” hand waved Chuuya, engrossed in an article about office Feng Shui. He read with his index pressed under every word, mouthing them silently. The sticky habits of an illiterate street brat. “Mori changed his mind at the last minute.” He lifted the magazine and carelessly tore out the page. “I didn’t really give a fuck either way. But I’m happy to be in the city. This time of the year is Yokohama’s best biome.”
“This is a terrible biome. It’s cold in the mornings and evenings and disproportionately hot in the afternoons. It’s humid all the time, and it rains randomly. Shit’s out of whack.”
Chuuya finally looked over. No smile, but an abnormal gleam in his eyes suggested levity. His eyebrows rose as he scoffed. “Yeah. And that’s what makes it fuckin’ great.”
“Ugh,” said Dazai, intelligently.
He knocked the toes of his loafers together.
An insult about Chuuya’s shitty taste lingered on his tongue. He swallowed it along with a glob of spit.
Honestly, he wasn’t sure how to act.
In the years following Meursault, their relationship consisted of spaced-out collisions of various thematic flavours. Collaborations here and there. Confrontations. A shared smoke on a sidewalk. When Chuuya turned twenty-five, Dazai wished him nothing. It was the same the other way around. Clean. Ideal.
Dazai kept tabs, of course. In the corner of his mind hung a frequently updated portrait of Chuuya’s overall situation, though the corner was far less frequented than when they were teenagers. At this point, Chuuya’s business was Chuuya’s business. Dazai didn’t give a shit if the guy was now taking leisure walks and pruning bonsais, or whatever. These menial details were of zero importance to him, so long as Soukoku remained strategically relevant.
Dazai studied Chuuya’s profile. The shadows of the alley softened his features. He noticed a permanent fold in his skin where his dimples were. That was new.
Children’s laughter bubbled from the street.
A motorcycle was revved.
Suddenly, Dazai recalled the squish of Chuuya’s cheek beneath his fingers. His heart rate spiked, his guts flipped—as if suspended in midair— and the hairs on the back of his neck rose, affected by the unwelcome memory of Chuuya’s singularity still ripping through the air where the Dragon had been.
He regressed.
Limbs sluggish from the poison.
Cheekbone blooming with pain from Chuuya’s fist.
Lungs strained with racking breaths of life.
The cigarette slipped from Dazai’s grip. Luckily, it was already down to the filter. He played off his disorientation by crushing it beneath his heel.
The turbulent weather was getting to him.
“So, what’s got you all fucked up?”
Dazai nearly choked on spit. His face didn’t show it. “Huh?”
“I asked, what has got you all fucked up,” Chuuya jabbed him on the forehead over his head bandage. The sting lingered. “Crouching here like a damn gargoyle.”
“Gargoyles typically crouch at the top of buildings. Not below them.”
Chuuya ashed his cigarette. His gaze was unmoving. And knowing.
Again, Dazai resisted the urge to fiddle with the bandage over his eye. It didn’t feel as necessary anymore, but the thought of removing it before Chuuya made his skin crawl.
“Karaoke,” he said after a moment. “Should be clarified.”
A line appeared between Chuuya’s brows. “Clarified? The fuck do you mean?”
“The expected results should be clearer.”
“Results? What results? Karaoke is an aimless activity. There is no need to consider results unless it is a fucking competition or something.” Chuuya’s eyes bugged. “Don’t tell me you’re participating in a karaoke competition? Fuck, I need to see that.”
Dazai’s knee bounced. Once.
“No.”
“I fuck with karaoke,” Chuuya scratched his chin. It pulled Dazai’s attention to a scar there. He did not know what had caused it. “It’s fun. So that’s what you were doing? Getting drunk to do karaoke?”
It was Dazai’s turn to commit to silence.
He imagined Chuuya dragging him to karaoke.
He did not like how that made him feel.
“I’m not doing karaoke.”
“Then why mention karaoke?”
Dazai pinched his nose bridge. “My colleagues wanted to go. I skipped. And stop saying karaoke, the word means nothing to me anymore.”
“Loser.”
“Your opinion is irrelevant to me.”
“Oh, that’s no opinion. It is a fact.” Chuuya flicked his cigarette filter and stood, swiftly brushing off his pants. He stuck his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m getting the fuck out of here. Thanks for the smoke.” Dazai wanted to rag on him for the shitty small talk, but the words caught in his throat when Chuuya bent to collect his bonsai— and his sleeves rode up to reveal bandages.
Dazai’s hand tightened around nothing.
With a glimpse so brief, another might have believed they were hallucinating. But not Dazai. Dazai had seen what he had seen. Chuuya’s arms were bandaged, from his wrists to at least an inch above them, probably more. Dazai reviewed the memory to confirm. Then he reviewed it again.
Chuuya was bandaged.
And silently watching Dazai. He shifted his grip on the pot. His bare hands, which Dazai did not have the habit of seeing, were pale and bruised.
Something passed between them. Dazai was not confident that they received the same message.
His mouth opened, but he was too slow to think of something clever to say. Chuuya’s back was already turned. He flipped his left hand in the air in farewell.
“Stay salty, misfit,” he said, shocking the birds a second time as he strolled away. Sunlight caught in his fiery hair. Even distracted by their phones, pedestrians automatically paused mid-stride to let him pass.
Dazai tried to resist. He really did. He even began smoking another cigarette. But the itch persisted.
He climbed onto achy legs, wobbled to the mouth of the alley and scanned the street. Tires squealed. Store bells chimed. There was the scent of approaching rain, the distant crying of a baby…
It was no good.
Chuuya was too fucking short to track through the crowd.