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The streets are practically devoid of the normal hustle and bustle of people, Yokohama’s more life-preserving citizens eager to stay out of the cold and ensconced carefully within the loving warmth of their families. What few figures that do choose to brave the freezing temperatures outside, they refuse to meet his eyes; give him a wide berth as they shrink into their own meagre space, only to shoot furtive glances at his back as they sigh in relief at his passing. He doesn’t spare them a single iota of his attention.
He doesn’t blame them, after all, he has seen his own reflection in the mirror – a shadow...a wraith-like figure moving through the world. A blank space now resides where once something that could have resembled a human had stood. Now...now there are only the dark circles of exhaustion - ringing eyes that are darker still and missing any spark of light – and the contrasting stark red of fresh blood seeping through the bandages at his wrists to confirm that he is indeed still alive, his heart is in fact, still beating.
His face is gaunt and pale, his body thin and sickly as he slowly deprives it of both nutrients and rest, small tremors run through him on occasion, clashing with dizzying episodes of double vision that have him struggling to maintain his balance – the indicative signs of overuse of various drugs, circuiting through his system, just to keep him standing.
In his hand, hanging limply at his side, a stunning bouquet of red camellias in full bloom – they almost compliment the macabre hue of stained cotton. The fleeting thought is absurdly funny and just a little sharply poignant as he trudges on through a world of sludgy brown slush where once something beautiful and pristine white had fallen, untouched by the greedy clutching fingers of man.
Loneliness dogs his footsteps like an old friend. The black coat draped across his shoulders is a little too small, feels a little like he’s being slowly squeezed, crushing the air from his lungs with every leaden exhale. Still, it’s fitting, the black has always been a part of him, no matter how hard he had struggled to leave it behind - to don other colours, to put on the pretence of something ‘good’ - still the black seeps through, bleeds and crawls its way through flesh and bone and fabric, marring and destroying everything it touches.
The graveyard is covered in a blanket of ethereal and mostly untouched snow, mixing the reality of exquisite and eerie into something painfully bleak. He can almost see the spirits of those who reside here, footsteps invisible as they roam the rows upon rows of headstones, standing in eternal silence, yet imbued with a sense of peace and acceptance which he seeks to emulate but never manages to find.
He knows the path, walks it silently with a familiarity that lodges in his chest, something heavy and unwanted. The steps become slower the closer he gets to his destination; there have been a few times when he’s turned back altogether, a few more where the undeniable truth has crashed into him so hard he’s stopped in his tracks completely, out of breath and adrift with no hope of return.
Today is not one of those days.
He crouches next to the headstone, mutters out an, “I’m home.” as the flowers are placed on the snow at its feet. The red is almost blinding in the otherwise ceaseless white, an effortless reminder.
He never knows what to say when he’s here: apologies stick like ash to his throat, cloying and bitter and useless; what-if’s are a whirlwind that whip his thoughts into a frenzy of broken images, the ghost of a smile, the graceful beauty, the brilliant wildfire anger. Lost to the grey nothingness, a once vibrant pallette now stitched together in unfitting monochrome of colourless memories.
Mostly he just stands - like a wilting shrub in winter’s grip, yearning for a sun that will never rise again - staring without seeing; lets the memories take him where they will; lets the if-onlys play in tortured reels on loop through his head. It’s not healthy, but when has he ever had a healthy way of dealing with emotions which have been buried so deep and rejected for so long they’ve created a chaotic mess that can no longer be unravelled; cannot be touched or acknowledged for the fear of a deluge that will surely pull him under and wreck him upon the sharp rocks and cut glass of his own shattered masks which had once offered him such fragile security.
Perhaps it’s already too late. He can feel the threads of his own ever-tentative sanity slipping through his fingers with every waking hour.
It will all be over soon. He doesn’t dare speak the words aloud, knows that if he were listening, he wouldn’t approve at all. Neither of them would. They would tell him to let go, to live his life to the fullest or some such nonsense that someone who has never lost that which is most important to them would say – full of beautiful concepts that are practically impossible to fulfil. He has no desire to live, save for the one thing that continues to drive him forward, that one last deed before, finally, finally, he will grant himself the finality of death, and this time it will not fail.
Mori will die under his hands for the crime of taking away the only people he has ever cared about. He had tried to be the good person, had tried to protect the orphans and raise them to be something better than himself. Looking back now, all he can see is how he’s corrupted everything he’s ever touched. No Longer Human – it’s frightening how hollowly true those words ring.
He has pushed them away, disappeared into the night and the dirty alleyways of a life he knows intimately in a way that’s too much like a repeat of days gone by. He knows they search for him - both sides of the same coin, the Mafia, and the Detective Agency - always a few hundred steps behind, never in quite the right place at quite the right time. He would be thankful, if thankful were an emotion he was capable of feeling, that Ranpo apparently has little interest in his current activities, or perhaps (and infinitely more likely as far as Ranpo is concerned) he already knows how this scene will play out, and can see the benefits of leaving him to his own devices.
Mori will die and this hellish continuation of his existence will be over – its only remaining purpose dredged in vengeance and pain.
Enough.
He doesn’t want to dirty the sanctity of this place with the dark turns his thoughts so often take, doesn’t want to burden him with the guilt of future blood spilt in his name. Still, he wishes he had something more to say, some tale to tell, some reassurance that he no longer has the right or will to give.
I’m sorry.
Yet another fleeting thought that will never pass his lips. He doesn’t regret, Dazai Osamu does not regret his actions, does not regret the paths his life has taken, does not regret the people he’s failed along the way, does not know what regret is.
(Regret is an old friend.)
(Regret is a knife at his back.)
(Regret is the all-devouring black pit at the centre of his being.)
The cold stone feels wrong beneath his fingers, the carved meaningless words still as fresh as the open wound rent across his soul, leaking something worse than blood: the last vestiges of his humanity.
“Merry Christmas, Chuuya...”
His fingers find the familiar worn strip of leather, rubbing along the smooth edge as he turns to leave. Snowflakes drift like tears from the sky, to mingle with the sharp tang of salt poised delicately on his lashes.
“I miss you—“