Chapter Text
Chuuya has Dazai pinned to the ground.
His fist is raised.
Dazai smiles.
It is, under the circumstances, probably the wrong thing to do.
His cheek still burns where Chuuya slapped him a moment ago, a hot, spreading ache beneath the skin. There is moisture gathered at the corners of his eyes, blurring the fluorescent lights overhead slightly.
He never quite lets the tears fall.
He doesn’t know if they're from laughing or because Chuuya's punches hurt more than Dazai would care to admit. There is no particular advantage in determining which.
Besides, Chuuya is close.
So close that Dazai can feel the erratic rhythm of his breathing, the warmth coming off him that envelops him worse than cigarette smoke. If Dazai were inclined toward particularly strange observations, he might even be able to count the seconds between each breath.
He isn't.
Obviously.
A few strands have escaped Chuuya's bun and fallen across his forehead. He smells like sweat, which is disgusting, and underneath it there's the stubbornly sweet scent of his lotion—papaya, of all things.
Dazai has never understood why Chuuya insists on smelling like a tropical fruit while trying to beat him into the floor.
Something cool touches Dazai's chest.
The rosary.
The little silver cross has slipped free of Chuuya's collar and landed directly over Dazai's heart.
How appropriate.
Around them, voices have dropped into whispers.
Someone is filming.
Several someones, judging by the little rectangles held discreetly at waist level.
Dazai's gaze drifts past Chuuya's shoulder.
There they are.
The girls.
One of them—the one who had practically drowned herself in perfume the last time Dazai saw her—looks at him with an expression of such concentrated contempt that he admires the commitment. Beside her, the other girl looks worried.
She always did look worried.
Too soft for him.
Dazai gives them a pleasant little smile.
The worried one looks away.
Chuuya grabs his jaw.
Hard.
Dazai's head jerks back against the floor.
“Are you seriously just gonna keep smiling?” Chuuya mutters. His voice is rough from breathing so hard. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Dazai's smile widens.
Chuuya's fingers tighten.
“You're not even gonna fight back? After all that shit?”
Instead of replying, he tilts his head, just to watch Chuuya hesitate.
He leans closer.
“I'd rather eat glass.”
Chuuya stares at him.
Dazai's eyes are still wet.
“Actually,” he adds, thoughtfully, “I'd rather eat broken glass out of a public restroom sink.”
The fist comes down.
Dazai closes his eyes.
_____
THREE MONTHS EARLIER…
Dazai meets this particular cutie at the Church.
Well, not inside the Church. He has standards, occasionally, and there are limits to how much religious architecture one should have to tolerate before lunch.
He is passing by on his way to the convenience store, preparing—if the generous term may be applied—to spend the weekend in bed doing absolutely nothing of academic consequence before returning to university life. A noble tradition. One should preserve one's mental health by occasionally refusing to contribute to society.
The trains speed overhead, sleek and silent; it makes the old streets beneath them seem embarrassed by their age. Digital billboards stutter through advertisements in immaculate color. A pharmaceutical company promises clarity. A university advertises excellence. Some politician smiles beneath the slogan A Brighter Tomorrow, which is particularly ambitious considering tomorrow has not agreed to anything.
Incense drifts over from the temple on the next street.
Dazai sneezes.
He stops anyway.
Across the street stands a redhead.
Well.
That is inconvenient.
The can of root beer is already fizzing in his hand, cold condensation running over his fingers. Dazai had been looking forward to drinking it with the kind of anticipation normally reserved for far more consequential pleasures. Now he forgets about it entirely.
The boy is only a few metres away.
His hair is the particular shade of orange and red found in old films just before somebody presses the button and the horizon turns white. It is offensively bright against the pale stone of the Church behind him.
His eyes are blue.
But not the synthetic blue displayed along the polished casings of AI machines, either. Those eyes have none of that sterile, manufactured brilliance. They're closer to the color of lakes before someone decided industrial runoff was an acceptable contribution to aquatic ecosystems.
Or the ocean.
Before plastics.
Before men started pissing into it.
Dazai takes a sip of root beer.
Still staring.
The boy wears the standard attire of the Church of the First Light: a high-collared white tunic of heavy cotton, fitted neatly through the shoulders and falling to just below the knees, its sleeves buttoned at the wrists. A narrow silver clasp fastens the collar. Beneath it, white trousers disappear into dark shoes, it could reflect the pavement. There is nothing particularly extravagant about the clothing.
That is, presumably, the point.
Purity rendered wearable.
The Church does love making ideology into a dress code.
He's speaking to an older man beside him, whose own uniform is patterned black and white, geometric lines crossing the fabric in alternating bands. His light hair reaches his chin, framing a face that looks permanently unimpressed with the existence of other people.
Behind them stands another man, lighting a cigarette.
Dark, short hair. Scar along the jaw.
He has the unmistakable air of somebody who listens to jazz voluntarily and considers Bohemian Rhapsody an acceptable contribution to civilization.
Interesting.
A fourth man looks ill.
There are dark hollows beneath his eyes, his skin carries the grayness of somebody who has been sleeping badly for several consecutive years, and even from across the street Dazai can tell that he has the general constitution of a Victorian child who has just been informed that the family can no longer afford coal.
Beside him, a younger man spins a set of keys around one finger.
Four people.
One redhead.
A peculiar combination.
Dazai takes another drink.
His gaze returns to the redhead shamelessly.
Oh, dear.
The boy turns his head slightly as he listens to the older man, exposing his neck.
The sunlight catches there.
Something glints.
Dazai's smile falters.
Around the boy's neck are several fine strands, somewhat invisible beneath the white collar. More emerge around his wrists, pale filaments catching the afternoon light whenever he moves.
Dazai watches.
One strand.
Two.
Three.
All of them taut.
None are loose or resting against the skin
Taut, as though something somewhere has pulled every line to its limit and decided that whatever happens next is somebody else's administrative problem.
The root beer stops fizzing.
Dazai's fingers tighten around the can.
He wants to grimace.
Instead, he takes another sip; it tastes exactly the same as it did thirty seconds ago.
The others are easier to read.
Their Threads hang in loose, lazy lines between them, balanced enough to suggest that nobody is currently demanding anything catastrophic from anybody else. Friendship, perhaps. Familiarity. Mutual tolerance, which is often the more durable arrangement.
The sickly-looking man has a few taut ones.
Dazai's sympathy lasts approximately three seconds.
Poor bastard.
The group eventually begins to disperse. There are murmured goodbyes, a few gestures, the ordinary choreography of people who have spent enough time together to stop making departures ceremonial. The younger man with the keys unlocks his bicycle and swings onto it.
He says something to the redhead.
The redhead shakes his head.
Whatever the question is, apparently the answer is no.
They part.
Dazai remains across the street.
This is getting suspicious.
He should leave.
He finds a bench beneath a tree and sits down, fishing his phone from his pocket. The screen lights his face with the sterile glow of notifications: three university messages, two advertisements, one reminder about an assignment he has no intention of beginning tonight.
His thumb hovers over the camera.
A photograph would be useful.
Not for any particularly sinister reason. It would be nice to remember the face later, when the details inevitably become contaminated by time and Dazai's own unreliable memory. Hair. Eyes. The exact shape of his mouth.
He could take one from here.
Nobody would even notice.
Probably.
Dazai lowers the phone.
No.
What a strangely sentimental impulse.
He is not keeping photographs of random pretty boys like some nineteenth-century widow preserving a lock of hair after her husband dies at sea. He has dignity.
Somewhere, buried beneath several layers of bad decisions, there remains a little.
Besides, he's really cute.
Objectively.
Academically.
If the redhead sat in Dazai's lap, Dazai could probably wrap both arms around him without much difficulty. A pleasingly compact arrangement. Efficient, even.
There are worse ways to spend a weekend.
The redhead is waiting for a taxi now, head bent over his phone.
Dazai takes another sip of root beer.
Something about the Threads bothers him.
Nothing about the existence of them. Those have been around longer than Dazai has been alive, and considerably longer than his patience with university lectures.
They're everywhere once you know how to look: impossibly thin filaments resembling silk, spiderweb strands, translucent wire. Most people can't distinguish them from reflections or dust unless the light catches them properly. Specialized equipment makes them obvious; certain sensors can map them in three dimensions.
Dazai doesn't need any of that.
He has always been unusually good at seeing them.
String Theory, in the city's charmingly simplified interpretation of the scientific discipline, proposes that microscopic threads connect matter and consciousness. The government took the discovery and did what governments do best with inconvenient scientific findings: turned it into a philosophy.
Nothing exists independently.
Therefore, no person exists outside society.
A remarkably efficient way to make metaphysics sound like a parking regulation.
Every person has Threads extending toward other people, institutions, places, responsibilities, identities. A professor might have dozens trailing toward students, colleagues, departments, publications, funding boards, and whatever unfortunate graduate assistant has been assigned to answer emails at two in the morning.
A mother might have Threads binding her to her children.
A government building can have thousands.
Thousands.
Every policy office, courthouse, ministry, school, hospital—each one bristling with connections to people who depend on it, obey it, resent it, work for it, worship it, fear it.
And the Church?
The Church has networks so enormous that calling them networks is insulting to the word.
The official language calls this interdependence.
Dazai calls it having an impressive number of people attached to your ankles.
The Threads themselves aren't uniform.
Loose means choice. Friendship. Affection. Community. Something willingly maintained.
Taut means obligation. Someone expects something from you.
Knotted means the expectations have begun contradicting one another.
Frayed means something is coming apart.
Tangled means you've accumulated so many incompatible roles that even the Threads can't decide which version of you they're supposed to connect.
Severed is self-explanatory.
Except it isn't.
A severed Thread doesn't necessarily mean freedom.
Sometimes it means exile. Isolation. Freedom.
Usually, if Dazai has learned anything worth keeping, it means several of those things at once.
He has quite a few severed Threads himself.
Quite a few frayed ones.
Several tangled to qualify as an engineering hazard.
But the redhead—
Dazai's gaze returns to him.
Every visible Thread around his neck and wrists is taut.
All of them.
His friends should count as loose, at least. The younger one. The others. Whatever relationship they have with him ought to involve some degree of choice.
Unless Dazai is misunderstanding what he's seeing.
Possible.
Annoying.
Is the boy really that important? Important enough that this many people, institutions, expectations, obligations—whatever the hell they're attached to—are pulling on him at once?
The thought sits unpleasantly in his mind.
Dazai takes another drink.
Whatever.
None of his business.
He finishes the root beer and tosses the empty can toward the bin across the pavement. It hits the rim, bounces once, and drops inside.
Good enough.
Doesn't matter.
He couldn't give a shit.
A yawn pulls at his jaw.
Time to go home. Bedrotting awaits.
Dazai puts on his headphones, turns up the volume, and starts walking.
He gets several steps before glancing back.
The redhead is still waiting for his taxi, still staring at his phone, surrounded by those impossibly taut Threads.
Dazai turns away again.
Probably an innocent, straight religious boy.
The rosary is fairly conclusive evidence.
So.
No fucking way.
____
“I know it's difficult for me to leave you, but I can't keep doing this. I just—”
She wipes beneath one eye with the heel of her hand and immediately starts crying harder. “You're never really there, Dazai. Even when you're with me, you're somewhere else, and sometimes it feels like you only want me when it's convenient for you.”
Well.
This is awkward.
They are standing beside the east courtyard of Tsukishiro University, where the stone walkways split between the humanities building and the student union. A vending machine beside the benches. Students pass them with laptops tucked beneath their arms, talking about an upcoming seminar, complaining about tuition, arguing over something on a phone. Behind the library, a maintenance cart beeps while reversing.
Civilization continues.
Dazai flicks the cap of his lighter open.
Click.
Closed.
Click.
Open.
The little metal noise is significantly more interesting than the conversation.
The girl watches him, waiting.
Her eyes are red. Her mascara has begun doing that unfortunate thing where it migrates south in thin black tributaries.
“I did like you,” she says quietly. “I really did.”
Click.
Dazai stops playing with the lighter.
There are, he supposes, several socially appropriate responses available to him. An apology would be conventional. An explanation might be kinder. He could even lie convincingly and tell her that she deserves better.
But he puts a hand on her shoulder and smiles.
“Don't worry.”
She blinks.
“I was mostly interested in you because I needed a boost in Comparative Political Theory.”
Silence.
Dazai gives her shoulder a reassuring little pat.
“I was doing terribly on the participation component, and you actually understand Professor Kuroda's lectures. You were useful.”
Her expression changes.
Ah.
Perhaps useful was not the optimal word.
“You're a really good kisser, though,” Dazai adds, cheerfully, as though this might rescue the situation. “So you'll probably find somebody else quickly.”
She stares at him.
Dazai stares back.
Then she slaps him.
His head turns with the force of it.
He doesn't wince.
It hurts pretty good, though.
The courtyard goes on being a courtyard. A bicycle rattles over the pavement. Two students glance over and then very deliberately decide they have suddenly become fascinated by their phones.
The girl wipes her face.
“I hope you find someone better,” she mutters.
That lands somewhere it shouldn't.
Dazai's smile remains in place.
She leaves.
He watches her go until the crowd swallows her.
A sigh escapes him.
Annoying.
His hand goes into his coat pocket and comes back with a cigarette packet.
He taps one free.
The lighter clicks again. This time, he doesn't find the sound amusing.
The cigarette settles between his lips.
Dazai leans back against the railing as though the university has been constructed specifically to provide him with somewhere to be idle. He lights it, the flame shivering in the wind before catching properly, and immediately decides that his lighter is defective.
Or perhaps he is using it incorrectly.
Either way, a replacement is required.
He takes a drag and lets the smoke drift away over the courtyard.
Across the lawn, an introductory lecture is taking place behind the glass walls of the engineering building. An AI instructor stands at the front of the room, humanoid and unnervingly symmetrical, delivering a lecture to a collection of students who appear to have collectively decided that consciousness is optional before noon.
The professor watches from beside the podium.
Sternly.
The machine continues speaking.
One student sleeps with his forehead against his desk.
Another has his laptop open to what appears to be an online shopping page.
A third is very obviously watching a video beneath the desk.
Dazai snorts.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs to nobody. “We've finally achieved the educational utopia where even the teachers can teach themselves.”
He laughs.
Alone.
A reasonable audience would have laughed too, maybe.
The wind cuts through the courtyard, along with the smell of wet pavement and the distant, metallic scent that usually precedes a storm. Late autumn has made the city indecisive: cold for coats in the morning, mild by afternoon to make everyone regret bringing them. The trees along the faculty buildings have begun shedding their leaves, which scrape noisily across the pavement whenever another gust arrives.
The sky is a flat sheet of gray.
Rain later.
Dazai watches a plastic wrapper tumble along the path.
A rustle behind him.
He ignores it.
There are approximately eight thousand people at this university. The probability that any one of them requires Dazai's attention is statistically negligible.
A voice carries through the wind.
Low.
It's not particularly deep, but rough around the edges, with a slight rasp that becomes more pronounced when the speaker is amused or tired. His vowels are clean without being polished, his consonants clipped, like impatience even when the words themselves are perfectly ordinary.
Dazai has heard that voice before.
His brain recognizes it before he turns around.
“Yeah, I know. I'll see you later.”
A girl's voice answers.
Something about meeting friends.
A complaint about being late.
The boy laughs quietly.
“Yeah, okay. Go. They're gonna kill you.”
There is the sound of footsteps approaching.
Dazai doesn't look back.
The footsteps pass him.
He continues staring at the courtyard.
Mind your own business.
Another step.
Then—
“Smoking?”
He sighs.
Dazai grants him a glance.
His eyes widen barely.
Oh.
It's him.
The redhead from the Church.
The same blue eyes. The same irritatingly vivid hair, though today it's pulled back more casually, leaving a few strands loose around his face.
And apparently he has decided to dress like the physical manifestation of an ethics professor's favorite student.
Burgundy jacket. High collar. White shirt underneath.
Very respectable, very wholesome.
Probably rescues elderly women from traffic in his spare time.
Dazai is already forming several objections to this presentation when his gaze drops lower.
Cargo pants.
Cargo pants should not look good on anyone.
This is a matter of principle.
Yet somehow they do.
Then Dazai sees the piercings.
One in particular.
A small piece of metal at the lower lip, catching the weak daylight whenever he moves. Dazai hadn't noticed it from across the street that day.
He had, apparently, missed several things.
So disappointing.
White sneakers, too. Perfectly tied. Not a single loose lace.
Dazai's own shoes are a disgrace by comparison, the high ankles of his sneakers half-hidden beneath his pants, and one lace perpetually threatening to become a public hazard.
And then there is the rosary.
It rests against the white shirt, the little silver cross visible beneath the burgundy collar.
The combination is absurd.
The piercing.
The rosary.
The painfully respectable clothes.
Dazai's brain, having exhausted all reasonable observations, arrives at the conclusion that the boy looks like a Sunday-school poster somebody vandalized five minutes before printing.
He takes another drag.
Instead of saying hello like a normal human being, he looks directly at the rosary.
“So you really do wear that thing everywhere.”
For a moment, the redhead just stares at him.
His expression goes through several small adjustments: recognition, then suspicion, followed by the particular restraint of deciding whether the person in front of him is worth the trouble of arguing with.
Dazai finds it adorable.
It's impressive, the effort it takes him not to react.
He has recognized Dazai, too. The strange man from outside the Church, presumably. The one who had spent an entirely unreasonable amount of time staring at him from across the street before disappearing without so much as a greeting.
What a charming first impression.
The redhead gives him a long look.
“It's a rosary.”
“I know.” Dazai turns the cigarette between his fingers. “I was wondering whether it came with the outfit or if they issue one separately.”
A tiny twitch beside the redhead's mouth.
Dazai nearly smiles wider.
The other man's gaze drops briefly to the cigarette.
“Smoking isn't permitted on campus.”
Dazai glances around.
Students. Benches. Trees. A bicycle rack. Three enormous signs attached to the railing, each bearing some variation of NO SMOKING in sufficiently large lettering to accommodate people with catastrophic eyesight.
“Really?” He looks back at him. “I hadn't noticed.”
“You're standing under a sign.”
Dazai follows his gaze upward.
“Oh.”
The wind moves through the trees.
“That's embarrassing.”
He does not put it out.
The redhead stares at him.
“You should probably—”
Dazai takes another drag.
The redhead's eyebrows draw together.
“I mean, seriously. You can't smoke here.”
“Mm.”
“You're not listening.”
“I am. I just disagree.”
“With the rule?”
“With your assessment of my listening abilities.”
The redhead exhales through his nose.
Dazai watches him for a second.
Because apparently peace has become intolerable, he decides to poke a bit.
“Does the Church actually believe all Threads are sacred?”
The question catches him slightly off guard.
“That's not what it teaches.”
“No?”
Dazai rolls the cigarette between his fingers.
“I thought the whole point was that we're all connected.”
“It is.”
“Then what's the theological position on lying?”
The redhead's eyes narrow.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing.” Dazai smiles. “I was curious.”
The other's hands remain at his sides, but one fist curls briefly before relaxing. Not quite anger, but more like the physical rehearsal of an idea: Could I punch this sleep-deprived asshole and still make it to wherever I'm going?
Dazai's smile turns sweeter.
A loose wave of hair falls over one eye.
He doesn't bother moving it.
Smoke leaves his mouth in a thin stream, immediately shredded by the wind.
The redhead frowns.
“Seriously. Put it out.”
Dazai looks at the cigarette, then back at him.
“No.”
It comes out pleasantly, polite.
The redhead's expression suggests he has just discovered a previously undocumented species of idiot.
Dazai considers offering his condolences, taking another drag.
“Want one?” he holds up the cigarette packet. “You should loosen up a little.”
The redhead gives him a look.
He lets his gaze travel over him anyway, slowly just to be irritating, taking in the exposed hollow of his collarbone, the perfectly arranged shirt, the general air of someone who has never once considered leaving the house with an untucked hem.
Painfully respectable.
He brings the cigarette back between his teeth and bites down on it for effect.
“I could help, if you want.”
The words come with a low, lazy lilt.
The redhead's expression doesn't change.
Then the cigarette disappears.
Dazai blinks.
The other man has plucked it straight from his mouth.
For half a second, he simply stares at him.
The cigarette is extinguished against the cuff of Dazai's hoodie—not particularly gently—and dropped into the nearby bin.
In Dazai's head is a very satisfying little clicking sound, the mental equivalent of a lock turning.
That's new.
“You're done.”
Dazai barks out a laugh.
“You people really do have an answer for everything, don't you?”
The words are already out.
“You people?”
Oops.
A smile falls over his face.
“Religious people,” he adds.
The redhead's eyebrows pull together.
“What's wrong with religious people?”
“Nothing.”
Dazai lifts both hands in surrender, though there is considerably less sincerity in the gesture than the posture suggests.
“I just find it interesting that you're supposed to believe everyone is connected, yet you spend half your time telling people how they're supposed to live.”
The redhead goes quiet.
A small tightening around the eyes, a pause long enough for Dazai to recognize that he has finally managed to hit something beneath the uniform.
He probably has been taught composure.
It shows.
A sort of composure cultivated by people who consider losing one's temper a moral failure and public embarrassment a minor theological crisis.
“You don't actually know what we believe,” the redhead says.
His voice is still even.
Mostly.
Dazai tips his head.
“Then tell me.”
“You don't want to know.”
“Probably not.”
That earns him a frustrated breath.
The redhead looks away for a moment, toward the students crossing the courtyard, then back.
“The point isn't that everyone gets to control everyone else. It's that what you do affects other people. That's all.”
Dazai's smile thins.
“That's all?”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds suspiciously like the beginning of a lecture.”
“I'm not lecturing you.”
“You're standing there explaining the moral architecture of society while wearing a rosary.”
“I wear it because I want to.”
“Wonderful.”
Dazai waves a hand.
“Then we're both free citizens exercising our personal choices. You chose to throw away my cigarette. I chose to be offended. Everybody wins.”
The redhead stares at him.
Dazai shrugs, leaning down to meet him eye to eye.
“Anyway, go back to your precious Father in Heaven and tell him to put me in hell.”
A pause.
“I'm sure I'll be very comfortable there.”
He winks.
Then he turns and walks away.
Three steps.
Four.
The wind catches his hoodie.
Behind him, the redhead says something, but Dazai doesn't bother turning around.
He has already decided the conversation is over.
What irritates him isn't the lecture.
It isn't even the cigarette.
It's the assumption.
The casual, infuriating certainty with which that man reaches for something belonging to Dazai and just takes it, as though he will permit it.
He hates that.
People are supposed to ask first. Even idiots should understand that much.
Tch. He should've known pretty guys had a fucking attitude.
______
The professor drones on.
And on.
And, apparently, on.
Dazai has long suspected that certain university departments measure academic rigor by how effectively they can induce unconsciousness without the assistance of medication.
This isn't even his major. Computer science is his actual field, which at least has the decency to occasionally produce something useful. This is a history elective—one of the required minor courses he needs for the additional credits attached to his degree—and he has already decided that whoever designed the curriculum deserves to spend eternity explaining footnotes to people who don't care.
At the front of the lecture hall, Professor Kuroda continues reading from his slides.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE VALERIAN CROWN IN AMAHARA.
The Valerians arrived generations ago.
According to the lecture, they came bearing medicine, education, modern infrastructure, scientific knowledge, civilization, and religious enlightenment.
A generous shopping list.
And, irritatingly, some of it is true.
The Valerian Crown did build hospitals. Universities. Railways. Printing presses. Communication networks. They introduced technologies that genuinely improved the lives of ordinary people, and pretending otherwise would be intellectually dishonest.
But history becomes less flattering once one asks why those technologies were built where they were, who controlled them, and where the money went.
The railway carried people across Amahara.
It also carried soldiers.
The printing press made education cheaper.
It also made propaganda easier to distribute.
Communication networks connected cities.
They also allowed information to be monitored, restricted, and—when necessary—quietly erased.
Universities produced scholars.
They also produced generations of obedient administrators who understood which questions were profitable to ask and which ones were liable to interfere with a comfortable career.
Modernization and colonization had become so thoroughly intertwined that separating them now required the historical equivalent of dismantling a functioning machine while it was still running.
It's fucked up.
Dazai would rather not think about it.
He isn't unaware of the interesting events happening around him. That's different from being concerned.
Concern is terribly time-consuming.
The professor has spent the last forty minutes explaining the subject without once inviting anyone to question the material. Students copy notes. The slides advance. Nobody interrupts.
One student raises his hand.
Kuroda looks at him.
The student lowers it.
Excellent.
Dazai yawns behind his hand.
The lecture finally ends.
“Your assignment,” Kuroda says, already turning toward the next slide, “will be a short research paper examining the contributions of the Valerian Crown to the development and modernization of Amahara.”
A few students begin packing.
“Focus on the historical benefits of Valerian administration and the Crown's continuing contribution to national progress.”
Ah yes, the beloved government; Messiahs with railways.
Dazai writes down the assignment anyway. Forgetting it would require more effort later.
By the time he leaves the lecture hall, the corridor outside is crowded. Students cluster near the stairwell, some passing sheets of paper between them, others standing beneath the university's digital noticeboard.
Flyers.
Dazai almost walks past.
A boy steps into his path.
“Hey. Sorry—do you have a second?”
“No.”
The boy blinks.
Dazai continues walking.
“Wait, seriously, just—”
“That's generally what no means.”
The boy catches up.
“There's a student gathering tomorrow. We're trying to get more people to come.”
“What for?”
He says it mostly to be difficult.
Another student, a girl with a stack of flyers tucked beneath one arm, answers before the first boy can.
“Student reform.”
“Ah.”
Dazai glances at the paper.
The title reads:
STUDENT REFORM COLLECTIVE — OPEN ASSEMBLY
Underneath it, in smaller text:
Education should teach people how to think, not merely what to think.
He tries not to laugh.
The boy is still talking.
“We're trying to organize something student-led, not just another committee that sends complaints to the administration and gets ignored. We want actual representation.”
“Representation.”
“Yeah. Students on university councils. Academic freedom. Curriculum changes.”
Dazai scans the flyer.
Critical thinking.
Science.
Philosophy.
Arts.
Social sciences.
Local history.
Equal access to higher education.
A remarkably optimistic collection of nouns.
The boy continues, warming to the subject now.
“We're not saying everything has to change overnight. It's just that students should have a say in what we're taught and how we're taught. We should be able to question professors without getting penalized for it, and women and marginalized students should have the same access to higher education as everyone else—”
“Equal?”
The word slips out before Dazai can stop it.
The boy pauses.
Dazai looks at the flyer again.
“That's ambitious.”
“We think it's necessary.”
“Of course you do.”
The girl frowns.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Dazai folds the flyer once and hands it back.
“Equality is a lovely word. Very economical. You can put it on a banner, print it on government stationery, announce it at a press conference, and everyone gets to feel morally superior for approximately six minutes.”
The boy's expression tightens.
“That isn't what we're doing.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then good luck.”
Dazai steps around them.
Someone behind him mutters, “What a jerk.”
He keeps walking.
There are already enough people in the world trying to save it and he sees no reason to compete.
The next corridor is devoted to Network Infrastructure, which sounds more impressive than the diagrams currently projected onto the classroom wall.
Biometrics. Identity verification. Artificial intelligence.
There are little bullet points beneath it.
Education. Government administration. Policing. Search engines. Content moderation. Thread technology.
Dazai slows for approximately half a second.
So this is what everyone calls progress.
A machine recognizes your face before you've introduced yourself, records where you go, who you speak to, what institutions claim you, and presumably whether you've committed the administrative sin of having too many friends with inconvenient opinions. How marvelous. Humanity has finally invented a way to turn paranoia into infrastructure.
It's not that he cares.
Certainly not.
It's merely difficult to admire a system designed by people who believe the answer to human complexity is a sufficiently large database.
If the machine is rotten, why bother repairing it?
He keeps walking.
Plus, nobody is ever going to be free while those ridiculous strings remain attached to their necks. They can call them social bonds, obligations, networks, relationships, civic affiliations—give them whatever elegant little name makes the brochures easier to print. A leash is still a leash if someone puts a philosophical definition beside it.
Dazai doesn't want to think about it.
He takes the stairs.
The dormitory floor is quieter than the academic buildings, though somebody has left a vending-machine coffee balanced on the windowsill beside a dead plant. Outside, the late afternoon sky has turned the color of wet concrete. Tsukishiro has decided that weather should share the city's temperament.
Room 314.
New keys.
A brief struggle with the lock.
Then the door gives.
It's already open.
Right.
A roommate.
The room is divided cleanly down the middle: two beds, two desks, two narrow wardrobes, two small shelves, and exactly one bathroom tucked into the far corner like the university has conducted a rigorous study of human irritation and decided this is optimal.
Dazai claims the bed nearest the window.
The other side has already been occupied.
A suitcase sits beneath the desk. Clothes have been folded with irritating competence and stacked inside an open drawer. There is a guitar bag shoved partly beneath the bed, the black case peeking out just enough to reveal the shape of an electric guitar underneath.
Interesting.
Also, potentially loud.
The walls are mercifully bare.
No posters or inspirational quotations or enormous photographs of women wearing approximately three square centimeters of fabric.
Dazai has suffered through that particular roommate before. He still remembers waking up at three in the morning to find a half-naked model staring at him from six feet away.
A deeply unnecessary way to begin a Tuesday.
There is, however, one framed photograph on the other desk.
Dazai pauses.
A suspiciously familiar redhead stands in the center, younger by several years, holding the hand of an older man. His father, presumably. Beside them stands a woman smiling for the camera.
The smile doesn't reach her eyes.
Well.
That's cheerful.
Dazai drops his bag onto his bed and sets his headphones beside it. He starts unpacking, reaches into his luggage for a clean shirt—
The bathroom door opens.
His attention snaps over before he can stop it.
The redhead stands there.
For a moment, neither of them moves.
Damp hair has been pushed away from his face, and a towel hangs loosely around his neck. He wears only a pair of shorts, leaving his upper body bare; without fabric concealing the shape of him, the strength in his build is harder to ignore and his eyes keep wandering back to the waistband.
There is a dog tag at his throat.
And a small cross beneath it.
Not the rosary.
Interesting.
The redhead's expression hardens instantly.
Apparently recognition is mutual.
Dazai's mouth curves.
Well, well.
Of all the people assigned to Room 314, the university has somehow selected the one person from whom he would most enjoy being separated by several kilometers of concrete.
The redhead scowls.
He smiles wider.
And so Dazai Osamu becomes roommates with the human equivalent of a strongly worded religious pamphlet.
He looks at the guitar bag.
At the photograph.
At the redhead.
One bathroom.
A storm outside.
This is going to be a disaster.
...He's not going to last long.