Chapter Text
Atsushi feels like he is going to die for the second time.
Aside from the gunshots reverberating from the stained glass windows of the orphanage and the fact that his lungs suck at being lungs, Atsushi pegged himself to be killed comically by an angry soldier with his buff hands or scalded to death by his caretaker with a kettle if he happened to cough to loud. However, with much thought, Atsushi never expected himself to be killed in a less sordid manner in the form of stares inside a stuffy classroom that reeked of illness and dried blood.
He stands in front with another man's hand on his shoulder and as he swallows the lump forming in his throat, he feels the gazes of every eye in the room on him, piercing his soul and burning his skin like he's a witch about to be executed at a stake. His legs are shaking too much that he half thinks his bones are being liquefied from whatever horrible thing he has to make him end up in the situation he is now. He scans the room and the sight of splintered wooden floorboards and raised brows from whoever is in front of him did not dissolve the nervousness eating him whole that his palms continue sweating; enough for him wipe them on his shirt.
The man beside him notices the act and as if he knew what was coming, he lands his ice cold hand on his shoulder once again in an audible tap and Atsushi's melting bones are solidified and straightened and his heart stops when he freezes, all of which contributed to him being the current deer in headlights in the room.
“Okay everyone, his name is Nakajima Atsushi. He’ll be staying with us starting today.” The head master --- Mori Ougai as he recalls --- says in front with a smile plastered to his face and Atsushi has seen this expression on him from the moment he picked him up on the streets (and has never stopped since) that right now the grin stitched on his lips is becoming awfully stiff under his caring facade.
Mori stares at him and nods like it's a signal and Atsushi does take it that way when he bows in front of the students; all looking as sickly and pale as him. His mouth suddenly seals itself and he can't even bring himself to part his lips just to confirm his name. His ears then pick up the whispers that start to linger in the air and he catches the words 'he looks too sick' accompanied by a chuckle. He couldn't agree more.
He hated and continues to hate self introductions. He curses the scenario to death when he assumed that his introduction in the orphanage could never get any worse.
And just as he expected, it does get worse.
Apparently, being introduced to a batch of sick students in a faraway land away from the majority of civilization to get better and probably die by the new drugs is considered worse than just stuttering his age and forgetting his name in the orphanage.
“M-My name is Nakajima Atsushi.” He manages to say when Mori starts to eye him curiously, probably wondering why he's so nervous when this place is obviously better than gutters he was found in.
Mori points at the first seat near the window and Atsushi sits immediately, not wanting to let his legs give in or embarrass himself any further. He wipes the sweat on his palms on his pants under the desk while suppressing the urge to give an audible sigh of relief.
The whispers grow louder and the words entangle themselves that Atsushi can no longer differentiate them from the noise of static in the television when it rains too hard in magical summer nights. He drowns them all in his ears but the students are still looking and he doesn't know if he is just that weird in front that he might have actually wet himself during introduction without noticing.
Atsushi doesn't care anymore. What matters is that him being introduced to class is over and he doesn't need to speak up in front ever again. Hopefully.
The sound of chalk bounces around the walls accompanied by Mori’s voice and coughs from different mouths here and and there. Compared to the place he once lived in where he could hear the bombs landing on the earth while cracking up the ground and bullets carving holes on flesh as well as glass being broken to pieces everyday, coughs and the sound of chalk on the board are considered peaceful.
Outside the window, Atsushi sees a never ending sea of trees over the field below the building. From his seat, he silently remembers the glimpses of smoke coming out from distant houses, the glowing glints of fire and ash from his bedside unlike the place he is in. Back then, he could never imagine a place where strife couldn't reach them. He thought that wherever he ends up in, may it be an abandoned school or a ditch down the knapsacks of soldiers, the claws of war would always follow him. This is another thing that Atsushi thought wrong of. This place has no war, no bombs, no threats and no countries ripping each others’ throats. Where he's currently in, there are only birds chirping in the air, the sound of books being flipped and drugs being drunk and coughs from ill students.
It's different from home --- if, and only if, that certain building was considered a home --- and he can’t be thankful enough to Mori who took him into the Guild when the caretakers kicked him out. They couldn’t handle sick teenagers like Atsushi gripping onto their backs. To them, one sick teenager means giving half of their medicine and attention to one person rather than the rest. Atsushi can’t blame them. In a battlefield, the sick are left to die but for him to be given another chance to live away from it was a miracle he couldn’t refuse.
So when Mori came up to him offering a pristine handkerchief wearing his pitch black clothes in the pitch black of night in the background, Atsushi felt like a rat in a dirty sewer with a chance to become a white rabbit. He took the man's hand no matter how frightening Mori looked despite his smile.
The Guild is a place where people from all over the country send the sick in order to get better and to learn the same way as normal people do in the midst of war. It is an institution run by a foreign organization that treasures both the privilege of health and education. Mister Fitzgerald, as Mori told him with practiced ease, is a caring man under the many layers of wealth and has actually spent a lot of his fortune in making the establishment to help those afflicted of illness take a breather from the crisis of warfare. So like how Mori took him in when he was dying out of starvation in the streets where all bullets, bombs and hell broke loose; coughing out blood like God knows what, the people surrounding Atsushi in the small classroom had the same stories.
The institution's goal is simple, give the sick medicine while being educated on common knowledge and when they pass the tests and erase the sickly frail definition on their bodies then they may return to their homes or receive custody from another orphanage.
"The Guild and Fitzgerald-sama give their word for it." Mori said to him over a cup of chamomile tea before he asks a nurse to bring Atsushi's uniforms in his room and gives the silver-haired boy --- surprisingly --- a smartphone before he steered himself to lead him to the classroom.
Pass the tests. Get better.
It's harder than it sounds. Atsushi can't even imagine himself not coughing blood in twenty minutes so how could an image of him having healthy skin and being free without a handkerchief soaked in red be possible?
“Don’t worry, no one has ever left the Guild unhealed and uneducated.” Mori reassured him in the office. “There are a lot of people like you here and they’re getting better every day and some are returning to their homes with their illnesses erased. I’m sure you will too.”
Mori, at first glance, is an intimidating person that he would never want to talk to but the words from his mouth lifted the huge ball of unease that was crushing up Atsushi's chest and in a flash, Mori had indirectly given him hope in that small office that he could somehow live for himself without the fear of dying by his own body. Along with the headmaster's assurance, he already began to converse with some nurses and prescribe some drugs for Atsushi to intake and IVs to be taken like his life depended on them.
Atsushi scans the room once again when he could no longer feel the prickling heat of gazes on his skin. There are students who look worse than him, some having masks over their lips or deep dark circles under their eyes and as he could see, the ages inside the room aren’t even consistent like what he thought. Well, perhaps that was the effect of squadrons burning down schools and blowing up buildings. Some inside the room may have been home schooled and are pretty advanced while some look late in education. Children as young as twelve who already know how to do algebra and adults as old as twenty who continue to stare blankly at the numbers with boredom in their eyes are currently scattered around him. Atsushi avoids thinking about how the institution manages to handle the haphazard arrangement of their ages in a class or how they manage to prepare lessons that are suitable for all of them.
The moment Mori asks for someone to solve the problem on the board, (quadratic formulas and all the x’s and y’s mixed with coefficients.) Atsushi feels that burning sensation back on his throat. He coughs. Hard. He could feel the heads turning around him again and as the feeling of his whole esophagus being ripped subsides, he takes the handkerchief off his lips and observes how the blood seeps into the cloth like watercolor spreading on paper.
“Nakajima-kun,” Mori walks to where he is, abandoning his chalk on his table and he leans down to take a peek on Atsushi's face. The silver-haired boy looks up and he sees the headmaster's eyes showing some kind of vague expression that he couldn’t identify. “Are you okay?”
He feels the need to catch his breath and he is once again reminded of how shitty his lungs are at being lungs. There's ringing in his ears and the chalk dust on the board forming into numbers and letters begin to mix in with the signs and Mori’s sloppy handwriting.
“Yes, I’m okay.” He replies, his voice muffled by the handkerchief he put back over his mouth, suddenly feeling the urge to run away and vomit the stale bread that was offered to him this morning.
The whispers are overlapping the ringing in his ears. This isn't a good impression. Soon, people would start to stand five meters away from him thinking his illness is contagious enough to make their own conditions worse.
Stop staring. Atsushi thinks as he closes his eyes shut. Stop staring. His mind screams and he doesn't know if the somersaults by his stomach are from the whole illness thing or are from the nervousness that starts pitting inside him again.
Oh, how he wants Mori to just go away and teach whatever he's supposed to teach in front. He's making the attention much worse and Atsushi doesn't need that.
Pass the tests. Get better.
The Guild’s goals suddenly appear in his mind in bold capital letters and red ink for a sense of urgency.
In that case, I’ll be in here forever. Then poof. The indirect feeling of hope that Mori chose to build up in that office starts to crumble and Atsushi realizes that he's in for nothing but dread in this institution knowing that he'll never be able to get out of it with such circumstances no matter how much the noble acts of the Guild reform his system.
When class ends, he immediately runs for the door just to get the prickling heat that was screaming at him to get away the moment class started off his skin. Mori misses the chance to chase him or grab his sleeve when a bunch of students go in front with their books asking all questions about the lesson. “Mori-san, what’s the formula for this? Mori-san, what do you do with this?” Atsushi didn’t even listen throughout the class. He was and is a blood coughing mess, no one should expect that he would.
“Umm, Nakajima-san…?” He flinches at his name and his head turns around on impulse. A boy who looks just his age is staring back at him with dark circles under his eyes. His brown hair is disheveled and a mask is covering half of his face. There's a girl behind him, a beauty mark under her eye and her long black hair is tangled up at the ends.
“Yes?” He replies after seconds, wondering if he did something wrong.
“Ah, I’m Tanizaki Juunichirou.” The boy says and even under the mask, Atsushi could feel his smile. “This is my sister, Naomi.”
The girl --- Naomi, he tries to remember, her name is Naomi --- offers a somewhat awkward but welcoming grin to him accompanied by a wave of her hand in greeting so Atsushi smiles back in the same awkward fashion and says a short hello.
“Mori-san’s quite busy so he asked me to show you around the places he couldn’t bring you when you came in. You might want to look at your room too.” Tanizaki continues with a shy voice.
Unlike Mori, Tanizaki looks like a nice guy but that’s probably because Mori's older than him. As a matter of fact, Mori’s an adult and adults are considered scary. Perhaps the years they spent with the world screwed them up so bad that it has become like an obligation for them to scare children away like their lives depended on it. Well, unless they’re parents. Parents would have to take care of the children, it’s in the job description but Atsushi wouldn’t really know how that feels if his parents just left him in front of the orphanage gates when bombs were making the asphalt roads explode into tiny little chunks.
Tanizaki leads him to the dining room first with Naomi clinging onto his arm like a newt. The room is bigger than what he had expected, a chandelier is hanging from the ceiling, gems embedded on it shining like sunlight through raindrops and below it is a long oak table extending from the front door to the opposite wall, chairs circling around it as if they are arranged for some sort of ritual. The wallpaper's peeling off, revealing cracked wooden walls littered with holes bore by termites underneath. Atsushi could smell the dust, the smell tapping his nose and urging him to sneeze.
“We all eat together here with Mori-san except for breakfast, lunch and snack breaks. Dinner’s at seven and you need to be on time or your food won’t be served.” Tanizaki says when Atsushi covers his nose with his handkerchief. "Well, the workers are still going to clean it. No one's allowed to really enter the room until we're called over for meals or snacks so expect it to be cleaner at dinner."
“All of us?” Atsushi asks.
“Yeah. All of us. Mori has a thing or something with us being family of some sort.” Tanizaki nods in confirmation. “This place might be big but we aren’t all that many actually and some of the students are sometimes picked up by their parents.”
Putting the pieces together, Atsushi finally has a list on how to exit the Guild,
1.) Pass tests and get well
2.) Get picked up by parents
He sighs at this. The second option was already crossed out when he had that coughing fit in the classroom and once again, he is reminded of the impossible reality of him getting well.
Naomi is humming a song each time she skipped on the way to the library and unlike the dining room, the library is exactly as Atsushi pictured to be --- big shelves, spine colored books and walls decorated in maps and charts with ripped sides and corners. Apparently, the place is only used for self studies and seniors are the majority of the people occupying the place though Tanizaki says that the ‘self study’ is only a label and seniors along with every student alike use the library for a quick nap or a place to skip class if they’re lazy or bored thus, it's not really kept in a state where dust bunnies wouldn't live in.
There's a woman in one of the wooden tables, her hair dark and cut short to her neck and decorated with a golden butterfly hairpin. Her lab coat is wrinkled and the book on her hands has a cover of a human skeleton. Anatomy, Atsushi guesses. In front of her is a student with a lollipop on his lips and a plaid beret covering half of his messy hair.
“We didn’t know you were visiting, Yosano-sensei.” Tanizaki says after a greeting and the woman looks up and smiles.
“Well, it’s a surprise inspection.” She replies with a chuckle. “And apparently, I had to accompany this class skipping senior right here.” Yosano points at the student in front of her, feigning deafness.
“It’s nice to see you too, Ranpo-san.” Tanizaki says with a bow, though the senior just nods his head and grins back.
“You’re new aren’t you?” The student, Ranpo, chuckles as he removes the sweet from his mouth.
“How did you---” Atsushi tries to question. He isn't really wearing a uniform (Mori really didn't give him any time to change into it)
“Besides the fact that you’re not wearing a school uniform, I think it’s pretty obvious.” He points out, cutting Atsushi off.
“Really? I thought he was part of the new staff.” Yosano closes the book and scans Atsushi from head to toe and then nods at Ranpo's observation.
“Seriously? Someone that young to be part of the staff?” Ranpo replies, his voice a little higher and loud enough to echo through the walls. "Last time we had someone close to that was when Oda volunteered to do some handiwork of basically everyone."
“Look who’s talking. You’re too old to be a student.” Yosano snorts with a flick of her eyebrow in a somewhat mocking tone. She shakes her head and brings her attention back on a chapter discussing the structure of muscles in the human body.
Ranpo doesn’t reply and instead, he just gives off a sharp glare towards the female doctor.
“So umm…” Yosano starts again.
“Nakajima Atsushi” Atsushi shyly says beforehand.
“So Atsushi-kun, did you get your first dose?” Yosano asks with a tilt of her head.
Atsushi doesn't really know what she's talking about but when he remembers Mori talking on the phone to ask for some specific drugs, he sort of gets the idea. This is a school and at the same time, a facility for the sick to get better and he's sure that all of the students have their scheduled dose of drugs even though he doesn’t know his.
“Not yet.” Atsushi replies. "I just... well --- got here."
She blinks once and then twice. "Ah!" She literally brightens in realization. "The boy Fitzgerald-sama told me about when Mori was returning from the town!"
Ranpo scoffs at this, as if Atsushi's presence is enough to prove her statement about fifteen minutes ago but Yosano brushes him off and hums, breaking eye contact. Her index finger brings its way up to her chin as if she's curious about something; a detective in the middle of a crime scene juicing out answers in the most unsuspecting and least threatening way she could do while closing her book once again and this time, Atsushi's starting to doubt if she has been reading that book at all.
He doesn’t ask about it and instead, just bows at both the doctor and his senior before trudging to Tanizaki’s direction.
They move outside to a path connecting to another building. The greenery surrounding the straight trail is much organized than the stormy arrangement of trees behind the windows in the classroom. There were flower bushes and hydrangeas blooming at the side, overlapping with straight growing irises in the middle of them forming a soft yet contrasting color palette.
"They look pretty, don't they?" Naomi comments, kneeling in front of the irises and caressing the purple petals with the pad of her thumb. "It's small but you gotta do your duties if you get assigned in the garden for a day. The flowers need a lot of care."
And just then, Atsushi notices a blotch of yellow behind the bushes and as he steps closer to observe what kind of flower it is given its size, the blotch moves and suddenly rises like a daisy popping up from the soil with much speed that Atsushi lets out a loud yelp before falling down on his bottom and Tanizaki explodes in almost manic laughter.
Atsushi looks up and the blotch looks less blotchy --- technically, it isn't a blotch at all.
"Look, you scared the new kid, Kenji-kun." Tanizaki says in between wheeze-chuckles.
The boy known as the yellow blotch --- that's now magically turned into strands of blonde hair --- looks at Atsushi with his freckled face and clear blue eyes and smiles. "Whoops, didn't see you there." Atsushi then notices the hose in his hand watering the flowerbeds and the light blue of his jumper nicely blending with the dewy green of the leaves. "So you're the one I've heard about in the chat."
"It's not like you to check the chat." Naomi notes.
"Yeah but then I'd be wasting Sakaguchi-san's efforts to get me in there if I didn't visit it." Kenji says and scratches the surface of the straw hat loosely hanging at the back of his neck. He looks at Atsushi again and offers his hand to help him up and Atsushi accepts it. "I'm Miyazawa Kenji. I'm the one assigned to the gardens today."
"Nakajima Atsushi." Atsushi shakes his hand and offers a smile.
Kenji doesn't look sick. It's what Atsushi notices first. From his golden skin tone, freckled face to his sunny personality, Kenji would look like anything but sick.
That is, until he coughs in a way that sounds like his two lungs are rubbing onto each other and the hose he's holding drops to the grass, spilling too much water on the ground.
"Woah," Tanizaki's laughs fade and he stands next to Kenji with his hand rubbing circles on the boy's back as he hurls forward with a hand on his mouth. "You okay?"
Kenji doesn't stop hacking up his insides but manages an "Okay," in between coughs and Naomi starts hovering over him.
"Just some side effects." Kenji wheezes and Tanizaki's eyebrows knit. "I'm on new meds."
"Man, after that huge jump on PE? That sucks." Tanizaki's face sags. "Are you sure you should even be taking care of the garden right now?"
And when the coughing stops, the healthy Kenji is suddenly back with his sunniest expression and shining blue eyes. He moves to get the hose and stands firmly when he gives them a cheerful nod. "Yeah of course!" He laughs. "It's no big deal. It doesn't happen that much."
Naomi asks if he's sure but Kenji pretends the fit never even happened then Tanizaki's hand stops rubbing circles and they're already waving their hands goodbye to the boy before moving forward on the trail to the building it connects to.
"Immune system problem. He has had that all his life from what I've heard." Tanizaki says when they leave the gardens and Kenji starts turning the hose off in the background. "Used to be so much worse."
Atsushi tilts his head in curiosity. "Much worse in what way?"
"From what I remember, I would never even see him during meals because he was too unfit to step outside the hospital wing." Naomi frowns, hands crumpling the ends of her skirt. "Compared to how he is now, I'm amazed by how Mori-san can just turn him into someone who handles the gardens."
His room is upstairs which Tanizaki comments as unlikely. The sun is shining through the windows more than it did downstairs giving off a light warm aura around him and a somewhat unusual chill on his spine at the sight of rotting wood and creaking floorboards mixed with it. The next building is quieter compared to the rooms he passed by which is probably because classes ended earlier for the seniors and most of them are probably roaming around the campus or in the infirmary taking up their IV drips into their system.
“Most people who stay in here are seniors.” Tanizaki coughs. “I guess Mori-san has his reasons. What was your room number again?”
“207” Atsushi replies and Tanizaki and Naomi just turn around to look at his face with confusion obviously lurking in their eyes.
“Are you sure?” Tanizaki raises a brow.
Atsushi begins to remember what Mori had said in his orientation and he's sure he said the right room.
Tanizaki doesn't say a word in reply and just continues walking on the squeaking floorboards until they finally reach a room with a small sign nailed to the door with the 207 painted in black.
“Atsushi-kun, if you’re umm… Uncomfortable in this room, you could always talk to Mori-san.” Tanizaki scratches the back of his head as they stood in front of the door. Atsushi nods at this, wondering what’s so wrong with the room that he would feel uncomfortable. The whole ‘being sick during wartime and being sent to boarding school to not die’ subject is already uncomfortable enough.
That or the room's haunted with ghost and ghouls seeping through the cracks and invisible guts splattered on the floor.
“What’s the matter?” Atsushi swallows the lump in his throat at the thought. Now, he just needs to ask.
Tanizaki and Naomi look at each other before facing Atsushi as if they're having this non verbal sibling conversation with signs that Atsushi couldn’t read. Perhaps they are blinking in Morse but that seems unlikely with the way Naomi has been blinking when Tanizaki does.
“Well,” Naomi starts, her voice in a low whisper. “Your room mate, Dazai-san…He’s kind of weird.”
“Weird how?” He asks, brows furrowing. First he has to identify what weird is in the facility.
“Ah, Tanizaki-kun, Naomi-chan!” A cheerful voice calls, cutting Naomi’s words off the moment she opens her mouth for another reply.
There's a man heading towards their direction, his head wrapped in bandages including his arms which are visible with the rolled uniform sleeves. He waves a mummified arm at them with a goofy grin from ear to ear stitched on his face.
“Hello, Dazai-san.” Tanizaki says when the man stands beside them.
Dazai spots him, his brown eyes somehow greeting him without words.
“Well, what brings you three to my room?” He asks, his smile still not fading.
“First of all Dazai-san, what happened to your head?” Tanizaki points at the bandages wrapped around the man’s skull, almost covering his right eye.
“I hurt myself with hard tofu. I read about it in the library and I just had to know if it would work.” He says, somehow proud of himself and chuckles but afterwards, that pride sinks and is replaced with slight disappointment when his face crumples up in a pout. “Didn’t work though.”
“Where did you get the tofu?” Naomi asks and judging by her expression, she regrets asking.
“I stole some from the kitchen.” Dazai cheers.
Atsushi is lost. He doesn't know what should be the first thing to ask; the subject they’re talking about or the fact that one can even hurt himself with tofu.
“Mori-san’s going to kill you, you know?” Tanizaki sighs.
“I’m not gonna let him though.” Dazai replies in a sing song voice. “Death wouldn’t be fun if it was delivered by him.”
Dazai’s eyes suddenly meet his again and this time, the look on his face is enough for Atsushi to conclude that he isn't going to ignore him this time.
“New room mate?” Dazai asks and Tanizaki nods.
“This is Nakajima Atsushi. He just got admitted.” Tanizaki continues while Atsushi greets the man.
“Oh, that explains the luggage inside then.” Dazai says, sighing. “I thought Mori-san actually bought me some stuff to stop me from killing myself and tarnishing the Guild’s name. That’s a shame.”
There's some kind of aura surrounding Dazai that he couldn’t really identify. His face looks bright and happy enough to call it goofy but the feeling being around the man isn't like that at all. His presence isn't intimidating nor spine tingling and Naomi commented on how Dazai was ‘weird’; sure, Dazai is, by how he observed, a little eccentric but that isn't the feeling that described the man as a whole and that alone is enough to puzzle Atsushi, the fact that he couldn’t even identify nor make a definite impression towards him.
“Killing yourself?” Atsushi asks after seconds of word rewinding.
The ends of Dazai’s lips slide up into a grin. He looks back at him again, the light warm energy in his eyes just melts away and gives off something that pierces through Atsushi’s soul like a sharp knife.
“Well suicide, of course.” Dazai says like it's no big deal.
Dazai is, as Atsushi would describe, quite eccentric for a man in his early twenties.
Tanizaki and Naomi left him a few minutes ago for him to unpack his things and now Dazai is currently rolling over his bed with a smartphone in hand and Atsushi doesn't know if the man is cheering in joy, humming or wailing like dying dog. He tries to be quiet of course, he has had it with clammy feeling building up in him since introductions. He unpacks his worn out bag with as little noise as he can and he folds up what's left of his clothes. His uniform is neatly placed on the side of his bed and all he could do was scoff softly at it seeing that the things he's folding right now would might as well be rags.
His room isn't spacious but it's enough to squeeze in two beds and some small drawers in between as well as a closet. The floorboards below his feet surely creak with each step he takes but what doesn't in this place, really? There's a moderately large window in the middle of their beds and its flowing white curtains are pushed on one side to let the sunshine in and when Dazai didn't stand up to close the door at one side of the room then he wouldn't have noticed the small private (in this case maybe semi-private since he's sharing a room?) bathroom.
In the middle of him fixing his things, he flinches when Dazai starts laughing at whatever is on his phone.
"You're not in yet." It's not a question and Dazai smiles at him with his eyes when Atsushi finally notices that he was staring.
"Specifically, in what...?" He asks sheepishly.
Dazai blinks at him. "Atsushi-kun, was it?"
"Uh, ye--- hey!" Dazai nonchalantly throws his phone at him and it bounces at Atsushi's fingertips before they land dangerously on his palms that the silver-haired boy actually sighs in relief when it doesn't hit the floor. "Careful."
Dazai hums and just points a bandaged hand downwards, signaling Atsushi to look at the screen.
And he does.
Shirayuki : theres a new kid in class
Higuchi : or so i've heard.
rashomon : he looks fucking contagious
Petrus1982 : i don't want to hear that from YOU of all people
Petrus1982 : you cough and suddenly an earthquake rocks up the place no kidding
Naomi : i second the motion on @rashomon's sEnTiEnT gOdLy CoUgHiNg AbIlItIes lvl 999999
rashomon : fuck off
GIN-A : someone's emo -,-
sherlockian : was abt to comment a superpower name for it until you beat me to it lmao sentient godly coughing ability is SUPER EFFECTIVE !!!
Neon shaded balloons pop up and color the solid black of Dazai's screen and Atsushi could hardly keep up with the messages coming one after another in the chatroom. That, or he's just too hung up on another person calling him contagious when he's really not. His lungs just genuinely hate him with a deep passion.
"Wow, they're all mean." Dazai pouts, already leaning onto his shoulder while he peaks as he prolongs the word. "Don't mind them Atsushi-kun, they're being hotheaded, lazy and bored all at the same time."
The man snatches the phone away from his hands and flops himself face down on the mattress with an audible thump.
"That chatroom, you said I wasn't well, in yet." Atsushi starts after closing and opening his mouth like a fish. "What did you mean?"
Dazai limply extends his arm and Atsushi literally voices out a vowel in confusion. "Uh, Dazai-san?"
The man straightens his hand once again and replies with a muffled voice on his pillow. "Give me your phone."
"My phone?"
"Yeah, Mori-san gave you one and I'm guessing it's in your back pocket."
Atsushi isn't even going to ask how he Dazai knew that but he does reach out for his phone and places it on Dazai's bandaged palm.
"A senior made it; the chatroom." He tilts his head away from the pillow and observes Atsushi's phone. "You probably would understand it being the product from the crisis of getting bored off your ass once you spend I don't know, two or three weeks here?"
"What?"
"Maybe one." Dazai hums. "But anyway, I'll get Ango to bring you into the chat so I'll be giving this," He waves the phone. "to you after dinner is over."
Atsushi isn't really against being in the chat. After all, if it's considered culture in here then he might as well succumb to it. Fitting in is better than being the oddball in the crowd. However, the only thing bugging him would be... maybe validity? Mori mentioned something about getting announcements and rearranged schedules through the phone but he never mentioned a chatroom.
"Does Mori-san know about this?" Atsushi asks.
Dazai smirks at him mischievously. "What do you think?"
No. No he doesn't.
"If a student ends up going home or graduating, Ango removes their name from the system before Mori-san could get his hands on the phone." Dazai shrugs. "But Mori-san should already know by now and he's just pretending to be stupid about it." It's here that Dazai sighs dramatically. "What would Mori-san know about boredom?"
"Well, boredom's better than being blown up by a grenade where I come from." Atsushi chuckles.
And Dazai just flinches at the sentence and turns his head slowly to him before swiftly sitting up and just looking at him with such gleaming, curious eyes.
"Blown up!? You get blown up!?" Dazai's voice is covered up in cheer and he jumps up with his hands heavily landing on Atsushi's shoulder as the man proceeds to shake him excitedly.
"Not really?"
"How far do you go? If I were there would I get blown up? Would I end up actually in the air if I do? Hey!" Dazai seems way too interested in flying in the middle of an explosion.
"D-Dazai-san --" He stutters. "Why do you even want to get blown up?"
"What?" Dazai laughs. "Wouldn't it be interesting if you die in the sky with a bunch of pyrotechnics behind you?"
Atsushi shakes his head. "No, it would be painful."
"Then I take it back, it's not fun."
They have dinner like they are one big family sharing the same long table. Mori is the one seated at the front as expected, asking about what happened in students’ daily lives like he's this interested father hovering around his children.
"Ah, yes, I also remember Elise-chan being so happy when she received that frilly dress I bought her in Fitzgerald-sama's homeland though she stubbornly denies it by not wearing it or actually anything at all." Elise is Mori's daughter or so Atsushi recalls in one of Tanizaki's stories in a snack break. Mori laughs nostalgically and continues to slice up the meat on his plate. "I'm sure you will get to wear that dress sent to you by your parents soon, Higuchi-kun."
The dining room is cleaner than the time he first saw it like how Tanizaki said it would be. The sheets of dust were wiped off, the table cloth is now white and pristine and the food look awfully delicious that it makes Atsushi drool at the sight. After all, he had nothing but a bowl of bland soup and bread rations back in the orphanage that anything different that is served on the table in front of him looks like a feast. Tanizaki doesn’t bother to point out the change and that’s probably because Tanizaki notices this everyday. Instead, he looks fondly at Atsushi's expression towards the food. Tanizaki's mask is gone and his face is even more pleasant than how Atsushi saw it earlier and he's kind enough to let Atsushi sit beside him and a quiet girl named Kyouka.
The seat in front of him is empty and Tanizaki leans in to whisper on Atsushi's ear that a student named Tachihara usually sits there and unfortunately, his illness was getting worse and he spent the whole week in the hospital wing.
“Atsushi-kun, are you sure that Dazai-san hasn’t done anything funny to you?” Tanizaki asks before taking a bite of his loaf of bread and just let Mori’s stories of his childhood pass through his ears.
“Are you sure you should be asking this while Mori-san is telling us his wonderful days as a child?” Atsushi asks back with a mouthful of potage, glancing at Mori to see if he had spotted both of them not putting food in their mouths and not listening.
Tanizaki rolls his eyes, putting back the loaf of bread on the porcelain plate, suddenly uninterested.
“There is nothing wonderful about them, Atsushi-kun.” He whispers after a sigh. “He still runs his mouth about how his father burned his bike in front of him like a corpse and how his daughter ---” Tanizaki quotes the word with his fingers and says it with much emphasis that Atsushi swears the seniors in front of him heard. “was so cute and looks good in old English dresses and if we have a bet on what story he would probably tell then I’d win if I say those two.”
Atsushi could tell that Tanizaki's tired of hearing Mori’s cheesy past and as he finally sets aside his silver spoon and fork, he brings up the question once again about his suicidal room mate named Dazai Osamu.
He spent some time with Dazai after their meeting in room 207 just before Atsushi’s first dose. Dazai was loud, making speeches about clean suicides and asked more questions about Atsushi more than he talked about himself. He really didn’t see how Naomi would comment on him being terrifyingly weird when the man is just too cheerful. If Dazai wasn’t talking, however, he would be in front of his phone; the one Mori gives to all the students to track them or give announcements. He learned more about the chatroom in some small talks. A senior --- Ango, as Dazai said --- tampered with the computers in the library and made a super secret chatting application to circulate rumors around to kill boredom because apparently, they would rather construct conspiracy theories as to how a teacher named Fukuzawa could talk to cats or how Hirotsu helps Ranpo in his candy trafficking business than to hear Mori squealing about Elise.
“No, he just told me about the chatting app on the phones.” Atsushi says, putting a spoonful of hot soup in his mouth when a senior took a glimpse at him behind his rounded specs. “Why are you so worried about it though?”
Tanizaki doesn't reply for a while. He takes an obvious glance at Dazai, who looks uninterested in eating the food and also tired of hearing Mori’s stories like everyone else, before he looks back at Atsushi with a hesitant face. He opens his mouth and closes it again in a few seconds, unsure on how to construct sentences on the ideas inside his head. Tanizaki then starts to tap on the table and to be honest his actions are making Atsushi feel a little nervous on what he's going to say that the urge of stopping the guy from talking suddenly emerges.
“There was a rumor you see,” Tanizaki finally starts, his voice lower than the whispers he usually sent.
“About what?” Atsushi tilts his head, lowering his voice more to match Tanizaki’s.
“That Dazai-san killed his room mate before.” He could see the layer of sweat on Tanizaki’s face getting thicker. He takes a deep breath, his eyes terrified and nervous at the same time.
Atsushi shudders and He hears Mori say something sweet about Elise but it fails to pass to his ears when Tanizaki audibly swallows and forces the voice out of his lips.
“That he killed Oda Sakunosuke.”
The way Tanizaki told him the rumor about Dazai was like a ghost story now haunting Atsushi’s head and the very thought of it makes his skin cold and his spine shiver.
Dazai-san killed his room mate before.
He stops his steps to shake his head. It's just a rumor, there's no proof. When he came in the facility, he was sure that Mori told him that not one student died which was already complete evidence to contradict the sentence itself. Tanizaki and the others are just paranoid. They've been in this place for years so some screws were loosened in the process and Atsushi would rather believe that because there was no way Dazai, someone as cheerful and friendly, would be able to kill others and not succeed to kill himself in his suicide attempts.
“Atsushi-kun,” Yosano is in front of him, her hair a mess and her face pale forming into an expression of exhaustion. “You’re out here late. It’s almost curfew.”
Yosano displayed her phone for Atsushi to see; an hour before curfew, actually and he just noticed that there was no one but him in the hall.
“I’m just going back to my room, Yosano-sensei.” He says, scratching the back of his neck. “What about you?”
Yosano sighs and yawns then after, before tapping the metal clipboard in her hands to the nape of her neck.
“Supposed to be a surprise inspection. Just see how the students are doing, getting worse or getting better but then, I saw Tachihara.” Yosano lets her head fall exhaustingly on her side, her eyes on the infirmary’s door. Atsushi could see the faint image of a body on one of the beds through the smudge infested window. “I'm waiting for Mori to give me a list on what drugs he's on. He always gives them to me late." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "Well, considering the students are under lots of drugs here, I could see why it’s difficult to keep track of each one.”
He coughs on his handkerchief, red flowers dancing on the cloth.
“Well, you better go back.” Yosano says with a weak smile. “Can’t have that getting worse. Go get some rest.”
He nods at Yosano’s words, offers a small thank you and before she could even leave, she whispered:
“Please be careful.”
Mori knocks on their door thirty minutes before curfew, his eyes somehow dark and more sunless than ever.
“Are you comfortable in your room, Nakajima-kun?” Mori asks, his smile not matching the expression in his eyes.
Atsushi nods at this, his voice stuck on his throat. Mori doesn't seem that scary from afar but whenever the headmaster ever talked to him, he always feels cold like a newly found corpse; like Mori’s gaze is enough to cut up his flesh and see through his soul.
“Good.” He comments. “Then I hope you stop your schemes, Dazai-kun.” He eyes Dazai who is busy rolling himself into a blanket sushi and gives him a look that says he knew what he was up to.
“Not gonna stop, Mori-san.” Dazai says with the same cheerful face. "Though if you teach me how to mix your medicine bottles to create some sort of suicide pill then I might as well take it as a negotiation."
Mori sighs in defeat at this, disappointment washing over his face.
“I know you are going through rough times, Dazai-kun but please don’t result to cutting up your own flesh. Many people would want you alive, including me.” Mori says before saying his good nights.
When Mori exits the room, Atsushi sees how glassy Dazai’s eyes really are --- like a doll’s; shiny and beautiful and at the same time, devoid of emotion. The rumor is there on Atsushi’s head again, Dazai-san killed his room mate, over and over like a broken record.
“Dazai-san,” He calls and he takes his eyes off the screen of his phone and waits for some words to come out of Atsushi’s mouth. But Atsushi couldn’t find them. He bites his lip after each sentence he formed gets thrown away to the dark abyss of his head much like how Tanizaki did when he told him about Dazai.
“Don’t worry.” Dazai says, his eyes back to his phone. “I won’t commit suicide that would be much of a burden to others. You won’t clean up my body in the morning, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
That isn't really what Atsushi had in mind. It's much more of him lying dead on the ground by Dazai’s hands but he throws the thought away.
“Here,” Dazai reaches out for Atsushi to give his phone back. “The app’s there. Ango almost got caught putting it in so better be careful with it.”
Atsushi mutters a small thank you before turning it on and automatically, his finger taps the small icon at the corner of the screen and everything turns black, colored balloons labeled in names he doesn't know popping up like wildfire, littering the blackened screen.
“Neat, huh?” Dazai says like he's the genius behind the application and he throws himself beside Atsushi to peek at his phone. “Ango and I set your user to @weretiger, welcome to the Guild’s chatroom, Atsushi-kun!”
The balloons just keep on coming, random thoughts and conversations as well as different rumors and some impressions on him were there too which, he thanks every god for it, aren't at all bad. There are some balloons from Dazai as well with an obvious user name at the top --- suicide.advocate ---, mostly emojis and random facts.
And as the random scrolling of colored messages passes, a single orange balloon pops up with words that make Atsushi’s blood go cold.
Petrus1982 : I heard Tachihara’s dead.
He didn’t know who the student was but the balloons just stopped for a second and exploded one after another below it.
decadence : Nice ghost story. No one has ever died in this facility despite us being on the edge everyday.
Naomi : Mori-san’s not a necromancer. I doubt he can prevent all of us from dying
decadence : Try telling that to the alumni
rashomon : Tachihara’s not dead, idiots.
Shirayuki : I saw Yosano-sensei panicking to revive him earlier.
sherlockian : L I E S . Yosano-sensei was with me in the library.
Petrus1982 : Hey, you’ll never know, Mori’s maybe hoarding the dead bodies or something.
Higuchi : Mori- “ san ”
Petrus1982 : Shut up. Too tired to type.
suicide.advocate : all of you are being too paranoid ~~~
decadence : I agree with you for once.
Atsushi logs out after that and flops himself on his bed with the urge of getting out of the place stronger than ever and as he closes his eyes, he could feel Dazai’s burning gaze at him.
The assembly hall has been filled with fleeting whispers.
“Tachihara-kun has been picked up by his parents earlier this morning and he asked of me to send his good byes to all of you.” Mori says it with much formality and at the same time, with a smile on his face. Atsushi feels like there's something wrong with how he chose to announce it. Tachihara, though he never met him, went away with his parents without due warning and now, the guy is nowhere to be seen and Mori announces it like it's a change in their lunch menu.
One could get out of the Guild if they were to pass the tests and get better or they were to be picked up by their parents. This is supposed to be normal but the people around him seem shaken, the seniors even. Afterwards, they turn their backs and drag their feet to the dining hall for breakfast with cheery looks on their faces and stories exchanging from their lips like nothing ever happened.
Dazai is beside him, the joke he was telling fades into nothingness and his cheerful face chills down to an empty slate. his eyes on Mori with an unfamiliar emotion lingering inside of them.
Tachihara went home. It's a simple reason and the others seem to believe it too but Dazai doesn't look convinced with it. Dazai doesn’t look like Dazai at all.
“Isn’t this supposed to be normal, Dazai-san?” Atsushi asks, swallowing the lump in his throat.
The messages in the chatroom are in his head again along with Mori’s words on the first day of orientation, chasing each other in a nonsense caucus race inside his mind.
I heard Tachihara’s dead.
No one has ever died in this facility, Nakajima-kun
“You know where the students really go when they get sent home, Atsushi-kun?” Dazai asks, his lips forming into a smirk.
His stomach is flipping, his heart is in his ears and there's this burning feeling spreading onto his skin; something that urges him to just run away and leave. Dazai doesn't look like the person he saw yesterday. His smirk seems off, there is this light aura surrounding him but his eyes are dark, lightless mixed with the glassiness of a doll’s. Dazai looks dead and the way he turns his head and looks at Atsushi feels like Mori’s terrifying gaze.
Atsushi shakes his head.
“They go six feet below the ground.”
And he freezes then feels the shiver from his spine to the shudder in his lungs that make him stop breathing for two seconds. His lips start to shake and the words are stuck in his throat. He feels dark cold claws squeezing through his chest and this time, it's not the laziness of his lungs but the fear gripping his heart.
His skin starts to itch and suddenly, his mind screams.
Get out. It commands him and it penetrates the surface of his skull with an ache. Get. Out.
And as the dreadful feeling bring him spiraling down to all the rumors, he hears Dazai crack a chuckle and he hesitantly looks up to see his face.
"Why are you getting all pale for?" He says after a laugh. "It's a joke, Atsushi-kun!"
Dazai then ruffles up Atsushi's silver hair through his fingers and moves away from him with a lazy wave.
"...W-Where are you going, Dazai-san?" His voice is reduced to a mere whisper but Dazai hears him. "The dining room is the other way around."
Dazai turns around and his pleasant expression pulls a string in Atsushi that screams danger.
"Oh, Atsushi-kun." He clicks his tongue and groans in disgust. "The breakfast menu tastes horrible! Who knows who let Mori-san cook it so I'm going back to bed."
Atsushi just stands there and he watches Dazai's back disappearing to the end of the hall. He stays in what seems like minutes and breathes whatever air he could take in before taking his time to stop his shaking.
"Hey, aren't you going to eat?" Tanizaki is already beside him with Naomi and Kyouka trailing behind, snapping a hand at him like he's waking Atsushi up from a trance.
It's a joke, Atsushi-kun!
Dazai's voice is stuck in his ears.
"Yeah, a joke." He mutters to himself. "A joke."