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There wasn’t a day that went by that Kunikida didn’t write down his schedule in his prized notebook. Every little thing was planned out—not a single second of the day could be wasted. There was only one thing that could beat out his need for a schedule: his ideals.
It had started with a walk Kunikida penciled into his itinerary after his previous week had been spent entirely indoors studying for finals. It was nice to feel the salty ocean air rippling through his hair, and Kunikida breathed deeply as he leaned against the metal railing.
He knew that he had five minutes left before he would need to start home, but he tried to push the thought away and enjoy the moment like his parents were always telling him to do. Closing his eyes, Kunikida attempted to quiet the thoughts bouncing around his skull, but it only seemed to make the noise louder.
Suddenly, a scream rang out from behind him, and Kunikida’s eyes snapped open. His gaze darted around quickly, trying to find the origin of the noise. Another scream, and Kunikida pinpointed the location to be an alley towards the end of the street. Without a moment of hesitation, he took off running towards it.
“Doppo Poet.” He whispered as he approached, and a small flash grenade appeared in his hand. It was a design he’d seen in a book he’d borrowed from the library detailing different types of weapons. Peering around the corner of the alley, Kunikida finally saw the source of the noise.
A girl stood surrounded by a group of men who looked to be nineteen or twenty. They all wore dark hoodies and pants, and one of the men held the girl’s left arm in a vise grip.
“Stop it, you’re hurting me!” The girl tried in vain to twist away, but the man just dragged her in closer.
“Shut up.” The man slurred his words slightly. “I saw you with that other guy earlier…don’t try and play dumb wit’ me.”
“Hey, someone help me! Help-mmmrf!” Her voice was cut off as the man shoved his hand over her mouth.
“One of you help me drag her out. Keep watch fo’ the police though.”
“HEY!”
Before any of the men could move, Kunikida stormed into the alley and pushed into the group to stand in front of the leader. Startled, the man flinched back, but he quickly realized that it wasn’t a police officer facing him but a boy in a school uniform.
“What d’we have here?” The man sneered, “A kid trying to play hero, is that it? Well, ya best learn to keep ya nose out of where it doesn’t belong.” A glint of metal caught Kunikida’s eye before the man charged forward. “HAAAH!”
Swiftly, Kunikida followed the motion of the knife and led the man forward, sending him off balance. The man fell face-forward on the ground, and Kunikida pulled his arm behind his back, securing the weapon and pinning the man in the same move. Kneeling on the man’s back, Kunikida glanced at the girl behind him and saw that she was relatively unharmed.
Sighing, Kunikida calculated the amount of time lost on this endeavor. Maybe if he finished up in the next minute, he could sprint home and make it in time to have his after-school smoothie and start on his homework.
The men around Kunikida gasped at the move, clearly surprised that their leader was taken down so quickly. Looking up, Kunikida gave them all a hard glare. “Anyone else feel like attacking me?”
Only one guy took up Kunikida’s challenge, and he clenched his fist, his brass knuckles flying straight for Kunikida’s face.
What an amateur move.
Kunikida tilted his head to the side and dodged easily. He swung the arm not currently pinning the leader and landed a clean punch across the other man’s face. The man flipped with the force of the punch and cracked his head against the far wall, collapsing unconscious with a crunch.
Kunikida winced. He hadn’t been trying to hit the guy that hard, but sometimes he forgot how strong his body really was.
Shaking out his hand, Kunikida turned back to the rest of the group, only to find that one guy was missing. Realizing his mistake, Kunikida whipped his head back around to the girl, only to see the missing man holding a gun to the girl’s head.
“Now, listen here, kid.” The man grinned evilly. “You made a mistake when you messed with our gang. We’re gonna take down the Port Mafia someday; a kid like you is nothing. Now, if you don’t want the girl to get hurt, put your hands up and get off the boss.”
Kunikida did as he was told, slowly raising his hands and easing himself off the man on the floor. His brain flew at a mile a minute, trying to find a way out of the situation. If only he were a worse person, he could’ve ignored the scream and followed his schedule like normal. But alas, he was Doppo Kunikida, the guy who would throw away his own life to help a stranger.
The man kept his gun trained on Kunikida, his hand shaking slightly. For a gang claiming to be the ones to take down the Port Mafia, they sure weren’t too keen on killing a kid.
Kunikida walked backward slowly until he bumped the alley wall. The rest of the gang quickly converged on their leader, lifting him and checking the extent of his injuries. While they were all distracted, Kunikida slowly lowered one of his hands to his pocket, trying to reach the flash grenade he made earlier. Unfortunately, one of the men looked up right then and saw Kunikida’s hand disappearing into his pocket.
“HE’S REACHING FOR A GUN!”
BANG!
A flash of pain seared itself into Kunikida’s torso, and he gasped. Mind going numb, he barely registered his face hitting the ground as he clutched his side in pain. The panicked shouts of the men around him faded in and out until a loud crash silenced most of them.
Opening his eyes slowly, Kunikida lifted his head to see two blurry figures standing in front of him. They seemed to be boys around Kunikida’s age, but something was off. One was encased in a glowing red light, and that same light spread so that it covered the entire gang.
Before Kunikida could even blink, the men all crashed into the ground, their bodies convulsing as if a giant weight had been placed on top of them. The girl was also covered in the red light, but she was floating in the air peacefully, seemingly passed out after the trauma of the recent events. All of a sudden, the men stopped, and deep within Kunikida, he knew that they were dead. Within seconds, this one boy killed ten men without a moment of hesitation.
A hot flash of pain seared its way across Kunikida’s skull, and he groaned, pushing his forehead into the pavement. He felt the two figures kneel beside him, and he heard their voices attempt to talk, but both were drowned out by the roaring in Kunikida’s ears.
One of the boys tapped him lightly, and he felt himself grow weightless. The last thing he remembered was strong arms wrapping themselves around his body before the pain became too much and he drifted into unconsciousness.
—————
Slowly, Kunikida awoke to the sound of voices, but not gentle ones.
“Hey, idiot! Keep your dirty fingers off my snacks!”
“My fingers aren’t dirty! And Chuuya’s being greedy, those are my snacks too!”
The voices continued to bicker until Kunikida decided he couldn’t take it anymore.
With a low groan, Kunikida pried his eyes open and found himself looking at the two figures from earlier.
One was a boy with striking hair and mismatched eyes. He wore a waistcoat and vest, and an overcoat hung over the backside of his chair. He also sported a fancy hat that looked European in nature. He smirked, his gaze sweeping over Kunikida, and Kunikida remembered that this was the boy who had killed all the men earlier, the one covered in the glowing red light. His gaze didn’t seem predatory, though. Instead, the boy seemed to be checking him for injuries like a worried parent after watching their kid fall off their bike.
The other boy had a mop of dark brown hair that fell messily on his head. He wore a black suit that seemed off-putting on a boy like him. The strangest thing about him, though, was the bandages—they were wrapped around any open skin, including the boy’s right eye. Kunikida eyed the boy warily, not knowing what to expect from someone like him.
“How are ya feeling?” Kunikida noted that Fancy Hat Boy rolled his r’s slightly when he spoke, a little quirk that usually lent itself to delinquents.
“Fine,” Kunikida answered curtly. The bandaged boy raised his eyebrow.
“That’s it? Fine?” He turned to Fancy Hat Boy. “Can you believe this, Chuuya? The kid gets shot, goes through surgery, and the only thing he says is he’s ‘fine’?”
Surgery?
Kunikida glanced around the room. It looked more like a bedroom than a hospital room, so where exactly did he get surgery?
“Sorry about him. He can be an annoying prick sometimes.” Fancy Hat Boy—Chuuya—rolled his eyes. “Dazai is a real pain, but he’s the one who heard the scream in the first place.”
Dazai grinned proudly. “Chuuya was in the bathroom, so he didn’t believe me at first. I told him I heard something though, and we found you fighting those guys off single-handedly!”
Kunikida blinked slowly. These two had also heard the scream, so why didn’t they help him fight? As he opened his mouth to ask the question, Chuuya cut in.
“We thought ya had it handled, which is why we just watched. Honestly, ya could’ve taken all those guys down in a fair fight, I’m impressed.”
Kunikida felt a slight blush rise to his cheeks. No one had ever really praised him for his fighting skills before. The closest thing he had ever gotten before was a nod of approval from his martial arts teacher, Fukuzawa.
Suddenly, Kunikida jolted up in bed and frantically patted down his pockets. He barely registered he was wearing a thin hospital gown with no pockets, which meant that he had actually gone through some type of surgery. He patted down the material anyway, but it was empty.
“Where is it?” He flipped the covers off him, wincing as it sent a flash of pain through his side.
“Wha—?” Chuuya confusedly trailed off.
“My notebook! Where did you put it?” Kunikida’s breathing became erratic as he scrambled. Without the notebook, his ability was basically useless. He was useless without it, worth less than nothing.
“Ahem, this notebook?” Dazai pulled the small book from inside his coat, and all the tension left Kunikida’s shoulders. He grabbed towards it, but Dazai pulled it back tauntingly.
“Hey!”
Dazai opened it and began flipping through the pages. “I took it upon myself to investigate the notebook while you were out, just to make sure this wasn’t an intricate assassination plot. Let’s just say…I found something a little more interesting.”
For the second time today, Kunikida’s face flushed, but this time it was from pure embarrassment. The page Dazai stopped on was marked by a pink Post-it note, and written in cursive at the top was The Ideal Woman.
Dazai laughed as he tossed the notebook to a confused Chuuya, and Kunikida watched in despair as the boy skimmed the page. Chuuya’s mouth dropped open the farther he read, and he looked up to Kunikida, appalled.
“You know this kind of woman doesn’t exist, right?”
Kunikida groaned and buried his face into his arms. Katai had told him the same thing when he saw the page. Kunikida didn’t think it was bad to have standards, but if Katai had told him that—the same Katai that physically couldn’t talk to any females—maybe he was setting the bar too high.
Chuuya flipped through the rest of the book, scanning Kunikida’s many journal entries and daily schedules. “You’re a little…”
“Intense? A perfectionist?” Dazai rattled off, his smile teasing.
“Shut up,” Kunikida growled. These two may have saved him, but they were rifling through his personal belongings without consent. It was really starting to piss him off.
“Say, Doppo Kunikida,” Dazai’s voice grew sober as he turned to face him. “The strangest thing happened when I searched your pockets.” From a nearby table, Dazai picked up a piece of paper. Squinting at it, Kunikida realized it was a piece of his notebook paper with a messily scrawled “stun grenade” in the middle of it.
Dazai handed the paper to Kunikida, and Kunikida furrowed his brow at the page. He had never seen the objects he created revert back to the paper it came from. It’s why he had so many copies of the same notebook; each page could only be used once. As he marveled at the page, Dazai continued speaking.
“I found this stun grenade—one with a design commonly used by law enforcement—sitting in your pocket. And when I picked it up, it turned into a piece of paper, almost like magic!” Dazai’s eyes widened comically. Chuuya just rolled his eyes at the dramatics.
“I’ve never seen that before,” Kunikida muttered to himself, zoning the other two out. Was this a new part of his ability? Or did it have something to do with Dazai? The latter seemed more likely; Kunikida had a bad feeling about the bandaged-wrapped kid.
“So, Kunikida,” Dazai smiled eerily, “you wouldn’t happen to be an ability user, would you?”
Kunikida sucked in a short breath of air. Ability users were well-known to the public as myths—a scary story to keep children in bed at night. But to Kunikida, his ability was very real, and he couldn’t imagine living in a world without Doppo Poet.
Glancing between the boys, Kunikida gently plucked his notebook out of Dazai’s hands and grabbed the pen still stuck in the spine. Quickly, he wrote out a word and whispered, “Doppo Poet.” A pair of glasses appeared in Kunikida’s lap, identical to the ones he wore earlier, and he put them on his face.
“Woah!” Dazai clapped his hands together like a little kid. “That’s so cool! Can you create anything with that notebook?”
Kunikida shrugged. He didn’t feel like revealing all the limitations of his ability to these random strangers. For all he knew, they were government employees trying to find and capture ability users to experiment on.
“So, you’re an ability user, huh?” Chuuya mused, watching him closely. “Guess we know why the grenade disappeared when the Mackerel touched it earlier.”
Dazai—the apparent Mackerel—stuck out his tongue. “I won the bet, Chuuya! Now you have to go to the arcade with me tomorrow instead of hanging out with the Flags!”
Chuuya shot something back, but Kunikida tuned them out. With the way both boys were talking, it seemed that they knew previously that ability users existed. Kunikida remembered the glowing red light that surrounded Chuuya when he fought those boys. Could that have been…?
“What’re your abilities?” Kunikida didn’t mean to blurt it out so bluntly, but he couldn’t think of a more polite way to phrase it.
Surprise flitted across Dazai’s face before it was quickly masked. Chuuya wasn’t so good at hiding his reaction, his brows lifted into his bangs.
“What gave ya the impression we’re ability users?”
“For starters, neither of you were phased by the prospect of being in a room with an ability user. Most normal people would be either delighted or frightened to learn that abilities exist. Second,” he pointed to Chuuya, “you obviously have an ability, one you used to defeat that gang earlier. I’m guessing it’s something like levitation based on what I felt when you used it on me.”
It was silent for a moment, and then Dazai burst out laughing. “This one’s smart, Chuuya! Probably even smarter than you!”
Chuuya growled, but he remained focused on Kunikida. “Ya got all that right except for the levitation part, it’s a little more complex. My ability’s gravity manipulation, name’s For the Tainted Sorrow.” The boy puffed proudly at his ability’s name.
“Chuuya’s ability is not as cool as mine!” Dazai cried out, not wanting to be ignored. “Mine’s called No Longer Human, can you guess what it does?”
Kunikida thought for a moment. His first thought was his ability had something to do with the bandages—no sane person could enjoy wearing that many. But he remembered the odd phenomenon with Doppo Poet from earlier, and the pieces snapped into place.
“It’s a canceling ability, right?”
“Ding ding ding!” Dazai said, “We have a winner! My ability nullifies all other abilities, making me the ultimate anti-gifted!”
That was…incredibly useful. It meant that any ability user, no matter how strong, was just a normal civilian when facing Dazai.
“Now, Kunikida, I have a proposition for you.” Dazai leaned in. “Would you be interested in joining the Port Mafia?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate. Kunikida’s ideals were against everything the Port Mafia stood for: death, disloyalty, and dishonesty. To even entertain the notion would be foolish.
Dazai narrowed his eyes, but he seemed unsurprised. “Are you sure? That ability of yours would be amazing for forgery and counterfeiting. You’d rise through the ranks pretty fast, and—,”
“I said no.” Kunikida was firm in his response. One of his ideals was never to let anyone die on his watch, and that would be almost impossible to follow in the Port Mafia.
“Fine, fine, I won’t push it.” Dazai leaned back, seemingly giving up, but his eyes glinted with challenge.
Chuuya blew out a breath and stood. “I need to go. I got a mission to complete. Don’t be late, Dazai.” He gave Kunikida one long glance, then turned to go. “See you around, Glasses.”
After he left, a silence settled around Kunikida and Dazai. Dazai appeared lost in thought, his one visible eye staring at the wall in front of him. Kunikida couldn’t believe that these two kids were a part of the Port Mafia, but the more he thought about it, the more it made sense.
Chuuya was a fighter, and his ability allowed him to control the battle with a single touch. Everyone was subject to gravity, except for Chuuya himself. He also had no qualms about killing—that much was evident from the fight earlier. And Dazai…
Kunikida studied Dazai closely, and his hands itched to take notes. Dazai was cunning—that much was obvious. But beyond that, Kunikida couldn’t figure anything else about Dazai. They say that the eyes are the window to the soul, and Dazai effectively cut that by covering his right eye.
Dazai felt the stare and turned. His brown eye peered into Kunikida’s soul, seeing more beyond the visible realm. Kunikida held the stare, trying to look past the emptiness, but found he just couldn’t. They stared at one another, each unwilling to back down, until Dazai’s phone rang. Dazai broke contact to glance down at his phone and scowl at the caller ID.
“Hello!” Dazai’s voice was cheery when answering, even if he looked angry a moment ago. “Yes, he’s awake now and doing fine.” He listened for a moment. “Chuuya already needs my help? Can’t you send someone else?” A pause, “Fiiine. I’ll do it, Boss! Bye.”
Dazai hung up and grabbed his coat from the back of the chair. “Chuuya can’t seem to do anything without me,” he sighed out, “You’ll have to find your own way home, Kunikida.”
Thrown by the sudden change in events, Kunikida gave a dazed nod. Dazai grinned at him. “Try not to get into any more fights for a while, it would be a shame to lose an ability like yours. Bye bye!” With a wave, Dazai sauntered out of the room, leaving Kunikida to stare stupidly at the door.
Had that really been the Port Mafia Boss calling Dazai? Why would the Boss care about a fifteen-year-old kid? This whole ordeal was starting to give Kunikida a headache.
Gingerly, Kunikida stood, swaying a bit from the movement. He collected his things from the bedside table, flipped his phone open, and groaned at the many notifications from both his parents and Katai. Kunikida tried to think of a decent cover story—he didn’t want his parents worrying about him over such a little thing as being shot. He also found his school uniform folded neatly in a nearby closet, stitched up and clean like nothing had ever happened.
Kunikida quickly changed and made his way out of the building. He realized it was a little house close to where he was shot earlier. He must’ve been brought to a mafia safe house.
Suddenly aware of his surroundings, Kunikida set off at a brisk pace, not wanting to risk anything in mafia territory. As he headed home, he thought about what Dazai said.
That ability of yours would be amazing for forgery and counterfeiting.
It had never occurred to Kunikida to use his ability for illegal gain, but a dark little voice that sounded suspiciously like Dazai had started to whisper in his ear.
“Think how helpful you could be, how many people you could save with your ability. They would love you, and you could become powerful and make them follow your ideals.”
Kunikida shook his head furiously, trying to get rid of Dazai’s voice. As much as he loved his ideals, he would never force them on anyone, and doing a bad thing for a good reason was still bad. But that little voice followed him home, then to school the next day. It whispered softly, invading his thoughts and journal, a dark little seed that seemed to grow louder every day. And as he lay awake at night, Kunikida wondered,
Could I help more people in the Port Mafia?
——
Dazai smirked as the screen in front of him lit up in victory.
“Agh! You cheater!” Chuuya screeched from the other side, banging his head down into the console.
Dazai laughed and shook his pockets, but the jingle of coins was missing. “Aww, I’m out of coins now.”
Chuuya quickly came to the same conclusion after checking his pockets, and they left the arcade, bickering with each other about the last game.
“So,” Chuuya started, “What’d you think of that Kunikida kid yesterday?”
Dazai hummed, “He’s an interesting one. His list of ideals is quite hefty, but the idealistic person is always the easiest to manipulate.”
Chuuya scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. “Hah?”
“Stupid Slug, idealists will always follow what they feel is right, their own moral code. Now, what happens if they start to doubt themselves? That moral code crumbles, and they desperately latch onto the closest form of stability. All Kunikida needs is just one push and…” he clapped his hands together, “he falls apart.”
Chuuya pondered that. It was different from the manipulation tactic used in his own recruiting. Whereas he was recruited by isolation and suspicion, Kunikida would be recruited through slow needling until he wavered in his morals. The longer he thought about it, the more against the plan Chuuya became.
“Ya know what, Dazai? You can do whatever, but I’m not helping you.” Chuuya kicked a rock on the ground, sending it flying. “Kunikida lives in the light. It would be cruel to drag an upright person like him into the darkness with us.”
“Ane-san’s been filling your head with the talk of the light, huh?” Dazai’s tone was condescending, and it set Chuuya off.
“Don’t talk about Kouyou that way! She understands what it’s like to have people in the light, normal people! And maybe I…maybe I want a friend on the other side.” Chuuya trailed off quietly.
Dazai dropped the matter—something quite unlike him—which meant that Chuuya’s words had hit a little too close to home.
They split ways and walked home, each lost in their own thoughts. Chuuya let himself fantasize about having a friend his age (since Dazai did not count), and he made small talk with Albatross when they met in front of their apartment building. And Dazai made plans, plans to entrap Kunikida in a web of ideals until he no longer had any qualms about joining the mafia.
Kunikida’s recruitment may have been a direct order from Mori—one even Chuuya didn’t know about—but Dazai now had a personal stake in the matter. He would get Kunikida to join the mafia, even if it took months.
Dazai closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He hadn’t felt this excited since he manipulated the Sheep. A spark of life blazed in his chest, and he began the first part of his mission: befriend Kunikida and show him that the mafia wasn’t as bad as he thought it was.
Operation Recruit the Idealist was a go.