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He lit the match which flared to life with a hiss, its dim light taking over a part of the dark room, scaring the shadows and causing then to recede to the corners. With a shaking hand that was normally steadier than a dead man in his grave, he brought it up to the cigarette resting between his lips. He lit the cigarette and shook away the flame, dissolving the light from the room once again. With footsteps soaked in heaviness the silent figure made his way onto the balcony, paying no heed to the goose bumps rising on his arms in the cool night air.
Kunikida Doppo didn't want to pay heed to anything right now. He wished to stop thinking entirely but felt too exhausted to sleep. So he stared down at the city lights and cars passing. The night sounds in a city tended to blend into a din so inexplicable it could only be described as an abstract urban quiet. There was noise yes, but it was a noise one could never quite understand. He closed his eyes.
Blood.
He inhaled sharply and opened his eyes, the smoke choking his lungs. He let out a gasping cough, the fresh air replacing the cancerous smoke and the cigarette fell from his lips to the streets below. It wasn't a habit he regularly practiced, something he had picked up in university. When things got bad he'd often find himself reaching into his pocket for a pack that wasn't there. This time things were so far beyond bad that he had gone out and bought the first pack he'd seen and gone home. He didn't even have a lighter anymore which was why he'd scrambled through his darkened apartment looking for a matchbox. He didn't have the energy to turn on any lights. The white, sterile lights of the hospital still burned behind his eyes.
Maybe this was how Dazai felt. Heavy limbs and a twisting in your gut. A not-quite-headache sending a dull throb through your skull with every beat of your heart? No wonder he wanted to stop his heart, who knew it could be this loud?
Dazai.
That brought him to the root of the problem.
Rewind
To Dazai lying in a hospital bed that made the larger than life presence shy away to reveal who was beneath the disguise, a young man of twenty-two, tired of a life he still hadn’t learned to live.
Rewind
To the look in Yosano's eyes as she stared at him intensely, but he couldn't quite meet her gaze in the same way because he
knew
that she couldn’t help him
.
His ability wasn’t one he could control.
Rewind
To Atsushi hoisting the unconscious, bleeding man up over his shoulder, borrowing the strength of the tiger while he, Kunikida, stood there in silence, hands shaking, staring dumbly, because things like this didn't happen to Dazai Osamu. Fates like this were reserved for people like him who had betrayed their ideals, and Dazai had no ideals to betray.
Fast forward to the darker night of the present that no longer seemed like much of a gift.
Sirens wailed in the distance, friends below on the street called out drunken slurs to each other. Pulling another match from his pocket Kunikida struck it against the stone of his apartment. It flashed to life, warming his finger tips. Instead of lighting another cigarette he dropped it right from the balcony with a sigh watching the small light drop down to the dark streets below. Its fiery glow was consumed by the black streets. That was what it felt like he realized dimly. He was the match falling into the shadows, slipping without his partner or teacher to pull him back. He would either burn himself out before ever reaching the bottom or he would burn down the world and take it all with him if he didn’t stop thinking of himself.
He was so perfectly selfish. He wanted Dazai’s hand to grab onto, the solid heat radiating from under those rough bandages. He wanted to have someone who could look him in the eye and tell him to stop. He wanted to have the man with no impulse control be his own again instead of a silent boy, pale, dark, and bursting with light; a whole universe of contradictions held within those lonely hospital walls.
His chest ached with something hollow. He knew what this emotion was but felt he couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Not now. He didn’t have the strength to stop it from consuming him. He couldn’t feel like this now. Kunikida brought a hand up to his chest and sat down on the balcony, legs folded in front of him. He slowly curled inward, fist tightening on the fabric over his heart. Kunikida’s forehead touched against the metal bars of the rusting structure and stayed there.
It was loud.
It was quiet.
He heard a little boy’s voice calling out.
The little boy sounded lost, like he had gone adrift from where he was going and planning for and couldn’t see the future ahead in the pitch black of the streets below.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that the boy’s voice was his.