Chapter Text
“Thank you for calling Havenline Mental Health Support. My name is Akiko. How may I help you tonight?”
Yosano lifted the coffee she'd forgotten beside her keyboard and discovered, from the bitter film left on her tongue, that it had been cold for at least an hour.
She swallowed.
“Hi,” said the caller. “Good evening.”
Her hand stopped.
There were people who sounded nervous when they called. People who spoke too quickly, people who whispered, people who filled every silence because silence gave their thoughts room to catch up with them.
This voice did none of those things.
It was light, lazy.
Yosano knew it.
She put the cup down.
“Dazai?”
Nothing.
Then he said, “I think my dog is going blind.”
Yosano stared at the incident form beneath her keyboard.
There was a box asking whether the caller presented an immediate risk.
She had filled out that box hundreds of times.
She had never expected to hear Dazai's voice through a headset attached to it.
“What makes you think that?”
“He doesn't look at me anymore.”
“Doesn't look at you how?”
“He used to stare.”
A pause.
“Constantly, actually. Rather flattering. I'd enter a room and there he'd be, watching me. Now he looks at the wall.”
Yosano pulled her headset tighter against her ear.
“Has he been eating normally?”
“Yes.”
“Drinking?”
“Yes.”
“Walking?”
“Yes.”
“Any changes in his behavior besides the eye contact?”
“He's been following me more.”
Yosano's fingers stopped above the keyboard.
“More?”
“Yes.”
Dazai sounded thoughtful.
“I suppose that's contradictory. If he can't see me, you'd expect him to stay put. Unless he's following me because he can't see where he's going.”
Yosano looked at the clock.
11:47 p.m.
She had twenty-three minutes left on her shift.
She would have preferred an ordinary caller.
A stranger with an ordinary problem.
Someone she could help, document, transfer if necessary, and forget before she drove home.
Instead:
“Dazai.”
“Mm?”
“Where are you?”
He ignored the question.
“He used to sleep at the foot of my bed. Now he sleeps beside the door.”
Yosano stood.
Her chair rolled backward.
“Dazai, where are you?”
“I've been wondering if dogs understand absence.”
“Dazai.”
“If he can't see me anymore, does he know when I've left?”
Her throat tightened.
“Listen to me.”
He went quiet.
Yosano knew that silence.
From patients.
From people who had finally stopped performing for whoever was listening.
She lowered her voice.
“Stay where you are.”
A breath.
“I don't think that's necessary.”
“It is.”
“You're working.”
“I know.”
“You'll get in trouble.”
“I know.”
“You might lose your job.”
Yosano reached for her coat.
“Dazai, I am currently deciding whether losing my job is more annoying than finding you somewhere I don't want you to be.”
That earned a faint laugh.
She hated herself for being relieved by it.
“Stay inside,” she said. “Lock the door if you haven't already.”
“...”
“Yosano.”
“What?”
“Are you coming?”
She stopped with one sleeve halfway over her arm.
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
He sounded almost surprised.
“Then I'll wait.”
She ended the call.
For a moment, the headset remained against her ear despite the dead line.
Someone from the next desk looked over.
“Akiko?”
Yosano pulled it off.
“I have to leave.”
“You have a caller, and your shift isn't over.”
“I know.”
The supervisor had already started toward her.
Yosano grabbed her bag.
“I'll file the report.”
“Yosano—”
“I'll file it.”
“You cannot leave the center because someone you know called—”
She knew exactly what the policy said.
She also knew Dazai had called a suicide hotline to talk about his dog's eyesight.
There were rules for that, procedures, forms.
But there was no fucking procedure for knowing the caller's voice before he gave his name.
Yosano shoved her arms into her coat.
“If you want to fire me, do it tomorrow.”
She was out the door before he answered.
______
She made it to the car without running into anyone else.
Better; she did not have the patience to explain herself again.
The ignition caught on the second turn.
Yosano put both hands on the wheel, then remembered she had forgotten her seat belt.
“Brilliant.”
She pulled it across her chest and reversed.
Yokohama's roads were almost empty. The convenience stores were still open; they always were. A taxi stopped two cars ahead. A cyclist crossed against the light and made her brake too hard, her coffee cup to tipping over in the holder.
She swore.
Her phone rang.
“Kouyou.”
“Akiko?”
Paper rustled on the other end.
“You're working?”
“I was.”
“You sound like you're driving.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Dazai called.”
The paper stopped moving.
“He called you?”
“The center.”
“Why?”
“He said his dog was going blind.”
A beat.
“And?”
“He wouldn't answer my questions.”
Kouyou's voice lost its office composure.
“Where are you going?”
“To him.”
“Akiko—”
“He never calls.”
“Please think rationally—”
“He doesn't call when he's lonely. He doesn't call when he's upset. He certainly doesn't call a fucking hotline.”
Yosano tapped her thumbnail against the steering wheel.
Once.
Again.
She stopped.
Started again.
“Last time he tried something stupid, he went swimming in that lake.”
“In winter.”
“Exactly.”
“I remember.”
“He thought it was funny.”
“He usually does.”
“It wasn't funny.”
Yosano pressed her thumb against the steering wheel until the nail whitened.
“He talked about the dog for five minutes.”
“And?”
She kept her eyes stayed on the road.
“He asked me if I was coming.”
That silenced Kouyou further.
Yosano swallowed.
“He asked me if I was coming.”
“I heard you.”
“And I said yes.”
“... That's good.”
“I don't know if that was the right thing to say.”
“It was.”
“What if—”
“Akiko.”
Yosano stopped.
Kouyou's voice was firm now.
“You told him you were coming. So go to him.”
Yosano breathed in.
Held it.
Released it through her nose.
The next intersection turned green.
She drove.
Eventually, she the apartment easily enough, tucked between two buildings that had seen better years but had not yet surrendered to them.
t was not shabby, exactly, though it had none of the polished sterility of the places Dazai occasionally inhabited when somebody else was paying; the corridor smelled of rain and old concrete, and the wind had begun pushing through the open stairwell with the force to announce the storm gathering somewhere in the city.
Yosano climbed the metal stairs with one hand wrapped around the railing, wondering what, precisely, she expected to find on the other side of the door.
The last time she had come looking for him, she had found a red scarf wound around his face, the fabric pressed over his nose and mouth as though he had been trying to breathe deeply enough to recover a scent that had long since disappeared from the room.
She had not asked whose it was.
She had known.
Now she reached the landing.
The door was exactly where Dazai had said it would be.
Yosano entered the code.
The lock gave its small electronic chirp.
It was an ordinary sound. There was nothing in it to distinguish this door from any other door she had opened in her life, and yet her chest tightened around something that felt too known.
“Dazai?”
No answer.
She looked down.
One pair of shoes sat beside the entrance.
Black.
Yosano let out the breath she had been holding.
He had stayed.
Thank god.
She stepped inside.
A chihuahua erupted into barking from somewhere deeper in the apartment, its tiny body apparently convinced that volume could compensate for size.
“It's okay, it's okay,” Yosano said, crouching as it came toward her. “Chuu. It's me.”
The dog stopped just short of her hand.
It sniffed.
Then it caught the sharp medicinal smell that clung to her fingers from the center and gave a small, uncertain whine before turning away, trotting toward the kitchen with its nails ticking against the floor.
Yosano watched it go.
Something about the movement bothered her.
She followed.
The kitchen light was on. The rest of the apartment was dark.
She saw the chair first.
The table.
Then what had been left there.
Yosano stopped.
Her mind did what it had been trained to do. It catalogued the room before allowing itself to understand it: the position of the furniture, the open cabinet, the untouched cup, the phone lying where it had been abandoned.
Then it reached the part she had not wanted to see.
Her eyes widened.
For several seconds, she did not move.
“Dazai?”
The apartment gave her nothing back.
Only the dog, standing beside the kitchen doorway, looking toward the place where its owner should have been.
Later that night, the first ambulance siren woke the apartment building.
Doors opened along the corridor. Someone cursed sleepily. A light came on upstairs, then another, until the building had begun to stir around the noise without understanding it.
Outside, the storm finally broke.
.・✫・゜・。.
“His transplant itself is stable,” the doctor said. “The heart is functioning within the expected range, and there is no evidence of acute rejection. That is not, unfortunately, the same thing as saying he is well.”
Yosano sat with her elbows against her knees, her hands covering most of her face while the doctor's voice moved around her.
“The original cardiac condition appears to have left damage that we still cannot fully account for. We had hoped the transplant would resolve the systemic complications once his circulation stabilized, but some of the neurological and autonomic symptoms have persisted. His episodes of disorientation, altered perception, the fluctuations in his blood pressure and heart rate—we have treated each of those individually, but they don't form a pattern that gives us a satisfactory diagnosis.”
“What does that mean?” Yosano asked through her palms.
“It means we don't know yet.”
The honesty of it made her lower her hands.
The doctor looked exhausted. His tie had loosened sometime during the night, and the crease between his eyebrows had deepened into something permanent beneath the fluorescent hospital lighting.
“We know that his body has been under considerable strain,” he continued. “The cardiac surgery corrected the most immediate problem, but whatever process began before the transplant has not disappeared. There may be neurological involvement. There may be an inflammatory component. At present, we're still investigating.”
“And his eye?”
The doctor paused.
“The left eye was already significantly compromised. Tonight's injury made the impairment worse.”
Yosano's stomach turned.
“He did that deliberately?”
“We cannot say what his intention was with certainty. What we can say is that the damage was not consistent with an accidental injury, and given his existing visual impairment, any additional trauma was particularly dangerous.”
She looked down at her hands.
They still smelled of antiseptic.
She had held them over her face for so long that the scent had followed her there.
“The ophthalmology team has stabilized the eye,” the doctor said. “There is no indication that the remaining vision will return to its previous level right away, and we won't know the long-term prognosis until the swelling and inflammation have settled. For now, we're protecting what remains.”
Yosano nodded once.
The doctor continued speaking, explaining medications, monitoring, consultations, the transplant team's involvement and the examinations they would need to repeat once Dazai regained consciousness, but the information began to lose its edges somewhere between neurological involvement and we'll know more later.
She understood every word. There was no comforting mystery in medicine when the mystery belonged to someone you knew; there was only a list of things you could name without being able to name the thing itself.
The door opened.
Kouyou entered without the hurried disarray Yosano had expected. Her hair remained neatly pinned despite the hour, though several strands had loosened near her temples, and the dark coat over her shoulders carried a faint sheen from the rain outside. She looked as though she had stepped out of a boardroom rather than driven through a storm to a hospital, the only concession to the night being the exhaustion beneath her eyes.
Yosano looked at her.
Something inside her finally gave way.
She lowered her head again, pressing both palms over her face.
Kouyou crossed the room and sat beside her without asking permission.
The doctor glanced between them before continuing more quietly.
“There is one other thing I want to discuss. The memory suppression.”
Yosano looked up.
“We've seen no meaningful benefit from maintaining it,” he said. “If anything, the suppression appears to be making his cognitive symptoms more difficult to assess. His memory is fragmented already, and repeatedly preventing him from accessing certain associated memories may be contributing to the disorientation.”
Yosano swallowed.
“I thought it would help him.”
“I understand why you thought that.”
“But it didn't.”
“We don't know that yet.”
“I do.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“I thought if he didn't remember certain things, he wouldn't keep circling back to them.”
Kouyou's hand found hers beneath the doctor's desk.
Yosano felt the pressure of her fingers and, for the first time since she had entered the hospital, some of the weight in her chest shifted. It did not disappear, but became something she could carry without folding over beneath it.
The doctor gathered the papers in front of him.
“For now, our priority is keeping him stable. Once he's conscious, we'll reassess his neurological state without suppressing those memories and see what changes.”
Yosano nodded.
She did not trust herself to speak.
Across the room, separated from them by glass and a curtain drawn only halfway closed, Dazai lay unconscious beneath the hospital lights. The machines beside him had reduced his existence to numbers and quiet alarms, each one measuring some small function his body had continued performing despite everything else that had happened to it.
Kouyou turned her hand over and laced their fingers together.
Yosano stared through the glass.
After a moment, she whispered, “I should have known.”
“No one ever does.”
Kouyou's thumb moved once across the back of her hand.
Yosano watched Dazai's chest rise beneath the blanket, slow and mechanical-looking only because she had become too frightened to trust anything she saw.
She closed her eyes.
For the first time that night, she allowed herself to breathe.
.・✫・゜・。.
Atsushi bit the side of his nail for the fifth time before realizing there was nothing left to bite.
He lowered his hand from his mouth and looked at the hospital entrance, where the automatic doors kept opening for people who had somewhere to be at five in the morning.
Ryunosuke had called shortly after four to say that he could not come because of his sister, and Atsushi had told him it was fine before hanging up and calling Dazai again.
No answer.
He had tried several times after that, alternating between Dazai's number and Yosano's, until the absence of a response became sufficiently unlike them that he stopped waiting for one.
The university had no classes that day, which meant he could afford to disappear for a few hours, although his thesis supervisor would probably have preferred the remaining hours be spent revising the methodology section instead of sitting in a hospital.
His examinations were approaching, his thesis still needed to be finished and submitted, and he had slept so badly over the past week that coffee had stopped feeling like a stimulant and started feeling like a food group.
None of it mattered at five in the morning.
He had brought the crab sticks Dazai liked, because bringing something was easier than arriving empty-handed, and Chuu was attached to a leash in his other hand.
The chihuahua had not seemed particularly interested in the hospital when they entered the grounds. She walked beside him for several steps, stopped, then turned her head toward a corridor that did not contain Atsushi at all.
“Chuu.”
Her ears twitched.
She corrected herself and continued.
A few minutes later she drifted toward the wall again, nose working against the air.
Atsushi crouched beside her.
“Come on.”
She sniffed his fingers before following.
He had noticed it more clearly over the past few days. Chuu still knew his voice, his scent, the apartment, the familiar routes through it, but she no longer navigated quite the way she used to. Sometimes she walked directly toward a chair and stopped only when her paws touched the leg. Sometimes she stood in the middle of a room with her head tilted, waiting for something she could no longer locate by sight.
Dazai had noticed before any of them.
Of course he had.
Atsushi straightened and looked through the glass doors.
A security guard stepped in front of him before he could enter.
“Sir.”
Atsushi stopped.
“I need to see someone.”
“Visiting hours aren't until later.”
“I'm not visiting. I'm—”
He glanced at Chuu.
The guard followed his gaze.
“No animals.”
“She belongs to Dazai Osamu.”
“That doesn't change the rule.”
“She isn't going into the ward. I'll carry her.”
“No animals inside.”
“She can't see properly.”
The guard's expression remained apologetic but unmoved.
“I understand, but hospital policy—”
“I just need to know if he's awake.”
“You can ask the desk.”
“I've been calling him.”
“He's in the hospital, sir. His phone may be off.”
Atsushi stared at him.
“I know that.”
He heard his own voice rising and hated it, but the guard had already begun gesturing toward the entrance as though Atsushi were another problem that could be redirected to another department.
“I came here at five in the morning because nobody answered their phones. I have his dog. I have his food. I just need someone to tell me what happened.”
“I can have someone come speak with you.”
“Then do that.”
“I said I would.”
“And I'm saying I don't want to wait outside.”
Chuu whined beside him.
Atsushi looked down.
The dog had pressed herself against his ankle.
His anger faltered.
He was tired. That was all. Too tired that the thought of standing outside a hospital arguing over a dog felt like the final insult in a week that had already asked too much of him.
“Sir?”
Atsushi exhaled.
“Please.”
The guard opened his mouth.
“Atsushi?”
He turned.
Tanizaki was hurrying toward them from the reception area, still fastening the collar of his uniform as he walked. His hair was slightly disordered, as though he had been called in before properly waking up, and he stopped beside Atsushi with an apologetic glance at the guard.
“It's okay. He's with me.”
The guard looked between them.
Tanizaki nodded toward Chuu.
“She can stay in the waiting area with us. I'll take responsibility for it.”
Atsushi's shoulders dropped.
“Thank you.”
“Don't worry about it.”
Tanizaki looked at the dog, then at the paper bag in Atsushi's hand.
“Is that food?”
“Crab sticks.”
“For Dazai-san?”
Atsushi nodded.
Tanizaki's expression changed slightly.
“He's still unconscious.”
Atsushi's fingers tightened around the bag.
“Is he—”
“He's stable.”
The answer came quickly enough that Atsushi caught himself before asking the next question.
Tanizaki continued, quieter.
“They're monitoring his heart and his neurological symptoms. Yosano's here. Miss Kouyou came too.”
“His eye?”
Tanizaki hesitated.
Atsushi understood the hesitation before he received the answer.
“It's worse than it was.”
“How much worse?”
“I don't know the exact numbers. The doctors are still assessing the damage.”
Atsushi looked down at Chuu.
She had wandered a few steps away while they talked and was now standing beside the leg of a chair, nose lifted toward the air.
He tightened his hold on the leash.
“Can I see him?”
Tanizaki nodded.
“Once we get you through.”
Atsushi looked at the crab sticks in his hand.
“They're his favorite.”
Tanizaki gave him a tired smile.
Atsushi followed him inside.
By the time they reached the elevators, Atsushi had stopped thinking about the hour altogether. The hospital was beginning its morning routine around them: nurses moving between wards with folders tucked against their sides, someone wheeling a cart of supplies past reception, the smell of disinfectant becoming stronger the farther they went from the entrance.
His phone rang just as Tanizaki pressed the elevator button.
Atsushi looked at the screen.
“It's Ryunosuke.”
He answered before the second ring.
“Where are you?”
“I'm at the hospital.”
“You got there already? What happened? Did someone tell you anything? Is Dazai-san awake?”
Atsushi glanced at Tanizaki, who had stepped into the elevator ahead of him.
“He's awake. Tanizaki-san said he's stable, and they're still checking him.”
“Stable doesn't mean he's fine.”
“I know.”
“What about his heart? Did they say anything about the transplant? And Yosano-san is there, right? You said she was going. Is Kouyou-san there too?”
“Yeah. They're both here.”
“And his eye?”
Atsushi hesitated.
“They said it got worse.”
There was silence on the line.
“How much?”
“They didn't know yet. They're still testing him.”
“Atsushi, you should have called me when you got there.”
“I know. I'm sorry.”
“Don't apologize. I just wanted to know where you were.”
He smiled despite himself.
“You've asked me that about four times now.”
“Because you keep disappearing when you're stressed.”
“I haven't disappeared.”
“You walked to a hospital at five in the morning.”
“That's not disappearing.”
“It's close enough.”
The elevator doors opened.
Atsushi stepped inside beside Tanizaki and leaned against the wall while the doors closed again.
“I brought his crab sticks.”
“You brought food?”
“His favorite.”
“Of course you did.”
“He might eat them later.”
“And Chuu?”
“She came with me.”
“You brought the dog into a hospital?”
“They're letting her stay in the waiting area.”
“Atsushi.”
“I know, I know. Tanizaki-san helped.”
“Good. At least somebody there is sensible.”
Atsushi glanced sideways at Tanizaki, who had very deliberately turned his attention toward the elevator numbers.
“You're being mean.”
“I'm being worried.”
“You sound tired.”
“I am tired. We all are.”
The elevator stopped at their floor.
Atsushi stepped out, then waited while Tanizaki held the doors for him.
“I'll call you after I see him, okay?”
“You're not staying there by yourself.”
“I won't.”
“Promise me.”
Atsushi lowered his voice.
“I promise.”
A pause followed, softer than the rest of the conversation.
“Okay. Go see him.”
“I will.”
“And Atsushi?”
“Yeah?”
“Try to eat something yourself.”
He looked down at the paper bag in his hand.
“I'm carrying crab sticks.”
“Those aren't breakfast.”
“They could be.”
“Goodbye, Atsushi.”
Atsushi laughed quietly.
“Goodbye. I'll call you later.”
“I love you.”
His face warmed.
“I love you too.”
He ended the call before Ryunosuke could say anything else and slipped the phone back into his pocket.
Tanizaki looked over at him.
“How long have you two been together?”
Atsushi nearly walked into him.
“Ah—what?”
“You said it pretty naturally.”
“Oh.”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Almost a year.”
“Almost?”
“Eleven months.”
Tanizaki smiled.
“You were counting.”
Atsushi's ears turned red.
“I just know when we started.”
“Sure.”
They continued down the corridor.
Atsushi became quieter as they approached the room.
The door was closed, but a woman's voice carried through it, calm and measured as she asked a question he could not quite make out.
At least he was awake.
That thought settled something in him, though not enough.
Tanizaki knocked.
“Come in,” someone called.
They opened the door.
A woman sat beside Dazai's bed with a tablet resting against one knee. She looked to be in her forties, with dark hair cut neatly at her jaw and thin-framed glasses that she kept pushing back whenever she looked down at her notes.
“Dr. Mizuno,” Tanizaki said quietly.
She nodded and motioned for them to enter.
Dazai was still answering one of her questions.
“I don't know,” he said. “I remember the apartment, but I don't remember why I was there.”
Dr. Mizuno glanced toward Atsushi and Tanizaki before returning her attention to him.
“That's okay. You don't have to force yourself to remember.”
Dazai nodded.
His appearance unsettled Atsushi more than the machines had.
He looked young and old at once, his face still recognizably Dazai's but thinner than Atsushi remembered, his skin pale beneath the hospital lighting. His wavy brown hair had grown long, brushing the back of his neck, and the strands near his temples were untidy from sleep. There was something almost boyish about him until he looked away, and then the exhaustion in his face seemed much older than thirty.
Dr. Mizuno turned toward them.
“Dazai, do you know who they are?”
Dazai looked over.
His gaze moved from Tanizaki to Atsushi and remained there for several seconds.
Atsushi waited.
“They were my juniors,” Dazai said at last. “Back in high school.”
Atsushi exhaled slowly through his nose.
Dr. Mizuno made a note.
“Do you remember their names?”
Dazai looked at him again.
“Atsushi.”
Atsushi's shoulders loosened.
“Yes.”
Dazai's attention shifted toward Tanizaki.
“And Junichiro.”
Tanizaki smiled.
“That's right.”
Atsushi stepped closer to the bed, lifting the paper bag slightly.
“Dazai-san, I brought you your favorite—”
“Where's Chuu?”
The question came so fast that Atsushi stopped.
“She came with me.”
The moment he said it, Chuu's ears perked.
She gave a sharp little bark from the doorway and pulled against the leash.
“Wait—Chuu.”
The dog had already decided waiting was beneath her.
She hurried across the room, her paws skittering slightly against the floor as she dragged Atsushi after her. He tightened his grip on the leash before it could slip from his hand, but Dazai was already smiling.
“Come here.”
Chuu reached the bed.
Dazai held out his hand.
She sniffed his fingers, recognized him, and immediately attempted to climb onto the blanket.
Atsushi loosened the leash.
“Careful.”
Dazai helped her up, and Chuu settled against his lap as though the hospital room were no different from the apartment.
Dr. Mizuno watched them for a moment before speaking.
“She seems very important to you.”
“She is.”
“Can you tell me about her?”
Dazai looked down at the dog.
“What would you like to know?”
“Anything you remember.”
He considered that.
“She hates baths.”
Dr. Mizuno smiled.
“Anything else?”
“She steals food.”
“Does she?”
“Mostly mine.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
“It is. I forgive her.”
A small smile appeared on Dazai's face.
“She likes sleeping near the door. She used to sleep beside my bed, but recently she stopped.”
Dr. Mizuno glanced briefly at Atsushi.
“Why do you think that happened?”
“...I don't really know.”
Dazai's fingers moved slowly through the dog's fur.
“She can't see very well anymore.”
Dr. Mizuno nodded.
“What do you do when she gets confused?”
“I call her.”
“And she comes?”
“Usually.”
“Does she recognize your voice?”
“Yes.”
“What about your smell?”
Dazai smiled.
“Unfortunately.”
Atsushi almost laughed.
Dr. Mizuno did.
Dazai looked up at her, expression turning thoughtful.
“Your eyes are beautiful.”
The doctor blinked.
“My eyes?”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“Thank you.”
Dazai studied her for another moment, then his expression softened into something almost apologetic.
“They aren't as beautiful as his, though.”
Dr. Mizuno laughed under her breath.
“Oh, I bet.”
Dazai giggled.
It was such a young sound that Atsushi's throat tightened.
He looked down before either of them could notice.
His nose stung.
He told himself it was the disinfectant.
It wasn't.
He turned toward the door.
“I'll, uh, get some water.”
Nobody stopped him.
The moment he stepped into the corridor, he covered his mouth with one hand.
His eyes blurred.
He wiped them quickly, but the tears had already begun falling.
Leaning back against the door, he could hear Dr. Mizuno's voice through the partially closed door.
“Can you tell me what color his eyes are?”
He stopped.
There was a brief pause before Dazai answered.
“Blue.”
Something in the way he said it made Atsushi turn back.
Dazai was still looking down at Chuu, one hand resting loosely against her back, but his voice had changed. There was no teasing in it now, none of the casual amusement he had used when talking about the dog. He sounded absorbed in the question, like the answer required more care than it should have.
“They're a very particular blue,” he continued. “Not the one you see in the sky. Those are too far away. His are closer to water.”
Dr. Mizuno waited.
Dazai's fingers moved once through Chuu's fur.
“Sometimes they're darker. When he's angry, usually. Or when he's tired. They look different depending on the light, but I always know them.”
Atsushi closed his hand around the sleeve of his jacket.
He pressed his knuckles against his mouth before the sound in his throat could escape.
Dazai continued speaking.
“They're not especially gentle eyes. He doesn't look gentle, generally. But they are beautiful.”
Atsushi stared at the floor.
He could hear himself breathing.
He told himself that this was good. It was good that Dazai remembered something. It was good that he could answer questions, that he recognized people, that he could sit there with Chuu in his lap and talk about something as ordinary as someone's eyes. Memory did not have to return all at once. It could come back in pieces. That was normal. That was what Yosano had said.
There was nothing wrong with this.
Nothing except the fact that Dazai was describing those eyes with a familiarity that made Atsushi's chest ache.
Dr. Mizuno spoke again.
“And who is he?”
Dazai did not answer immediately.
Atsushi looked through the narrow opening in the door.
Dr. Mizuno waited without prompting him.
“He's…”
Dazai stopped.
The room became so quiet for Atsushi to hear the faint hum of the equipment beside the bed.
“How did you meet him?” Dr. Mizuno asked.
Dazai looked toward the window.
“...I don't remember.”
“Do you remember where you met?”
“No.”
“Anything about him besides his eyes?”
Dazai's expression changed.
It was so subtle that Atsushi might not have noticed if he had not been watching him so carefully. His fingers stopped moving through Chuu's fur. His gaze remained on the window, though there was nothing outside worth looking at.
After a moment, he asked, “Did you know that dogs can recognize their owners by smell even when they can't see them?”
Dr. Mizuno did not immediately follow the change in subject.
Then she said, gently, “Yes.”
“Chuu does that.”
“I noticed.”
“She used to follow him around.”
“Who?”
Dazai looked down.
“The dog.”
Atsushi covered his mouth.
He breathed through his nose, slowly until his lungs began to ache from the effort.
It was fine.
Dazai was awake. He knew his name. He knew Atsushi and Tanizaki. He knew Chuu. He remembered blue eyes, even if he could not—or would not—say whose they belonged to.
That was something.
It had to be.
Atsushi held onto the thought because there was nothing else available to him.
Without warning, another memory came back.
Sound.
Dazai laughing from somewhere inside the apartment.
Another shouting at him to stop touching his things.
A cupboard slamming.
Dazai saying something Atsushi could no longer make out, followed by the other’s unmistakable, irritated voice telling him to shut up.
Then laughter again.
They had always sounded like that.
Even when they were arguing, there had been something familiar beneath it, some rhythm Atsushi had stopped noticing because it had been there so often. Dazai provoking him. The other snapping back. One of them walking away. The other following. A door closing too loudly. Someone complaining from the next room.
Noise.
So much noise.
Atsushi had complained about it himself once.
He wished he could hear it again.
He lowered his hand from his mouth and took another breath, staring at the strip of light beneath the hospital door.
The silence on the other side felt wrong.
He remembered the noise before the silence.
That was what frightened him most.
…
It had been near the end of the term, when the corridors were full of graduation notices and the seniors had begun counting down their last few weeks at school.
The yearbook committee had been taking photographs whenever they could catch someone between classes, and the photojournalists had spent most of the morning wandering from room to room with their cameras, stopping graduating students against whatever clean stretch of wall they could find.
Atsushi had been walking back from the library when he heard Chuuya shouting from the other end of the hallway.
“Will you fucking move?”
He looked up.
Dazai was leaning against the wall with both hands occupied, one trying to keep Chuuya away while the other protected his face from the camera.
It was not going particularly well.
Chuuya was smaller, but that had never seemed to prevent him from making up for the difference by being considerably more aggressive about everything.
His hair had been cut into a mullet that week, dark red falling over the back of his neck, and the silver in his ears caught the fluorescent light whenever he moved. There was another piercing beneath his lower lip, a small piece of metal that Atsushi had once heard three different students whisper about as though it were evidence of some criminal record rather than jewelry.
Chuuya had a reputation at school that preceded him by several corridors. He was one of those students people moved around without being asked, particularly when he was already irritated, and very few people would have thought it sensible to grab him by the shoulders and try to shove him away.
Dazai apparently had different standards for sensible behavior.
“You took my picture while I was asleep,” Dazai complained.
“Because you wouldn't wake up, dipshit.”
“That wasn't permission.”
“It was a yearbook picture.”
“I looked terrible.”
“You always look terrible.”
Dazai stared at him as though Chuuya had committed some personal offense.
“That's mean.”
“Give me the camera.”
“No.”
Chuuya reached for it.
Dazai immediately pulled it away.
The photojournalist standing in front of them looked increasingly uncertain about whether this was still part of the assignment. He had been trying to take Chuuya's graduation photograph for the past several minutes, and judging by the camera hanging from his neck, he had decided that getting the picture was worth surviving whatever argument had broken out between them.
“Can you just look at the camera for one second?” he asked.
“No.”
“Chuuya.”
“I'm not smiling.”
“You don't have to smile. Just stand still.”
“I'm going to stand still when he gives me the fucking camera.”
Dazai looked at Atsushi then, apparently noticing him for the first time.
“Atsushi-kun, tell him he's being unreasonable.”
Atsushi stopped.
He looked at Chuuya.
Chuuya looked at him.
There were extremely few situations in which Atsushi had ever felt that choosing the wrong answer might shorten his lifespan, but this seemed like one of them.
“I think you should just let him take the picture.”
Chuuya's expression flattened.
“Traitor.”
Atsushi covered his mouth.
He was trying very hard not to laugh.
The photojournalist raised his camera again.
“Okay, Chuuya-san. Just look here.”
Chuuya sighed, clearly deciding that murder could wait until after graduation.
He turned toward the camera.
Dazai was still holding onto his sleeve.
“Smile.”
The shutter clicked.
Dazai, after a few seconds, started laughing.
Chuuya turned around.
“You better not—”
Another photograph.
Atsushi finally had to look away.
It was funny.
He could admit that now.
…
Dr. Mizuno left the room a few minutes later, taking her tablet with her and asking them to give Dazai some time to rest before the next examination.
Atsushi stayed near the door while Tanizaki opened the paper bag he had brought. The crab sticks had been packed so tightly that the plastic had become annoyingly difficult to tear, and Tanizaki ended up using his fingernail to split the corner while Dazai watched with mild interest.
“You could've just asked me,” Dazai said.
“I thought I could get it.”
“You've been trying for a while.”
Tanizaki finally managed to open it and handed one over.
Dazai took it without comment.
While he ate, Tanizaki adjusted the controls on the side of the bed and raised the backrest until Dazai was sitting more comfortably. Dazai shifted the blanket over his legs and looked down at Chuu, who had settled across his lap and was now sniffing the crab stick in his hand.
“You want some?”
Chuu lifted her head.
Dazai broke off a small piece and held it out.
Atsushi watched them from the other side of the room.
It was almost ordinary. That made it easier to forget where they were.
Dr. Mizuno returned before the thought could settle.
She stopped beside Atsushi rather than going immediately to the bed.
“Atsushi-kun, could I ask you for a favor?”
“Of course.”
She glanced through the open doorway, then lowered her voice slightly.
“While I was speaking with Dazai, he kept bringing up someone from his high-school years. He wasn't able to give me a complete account, but he mentioned a church several times.”
Atsushi listened.
“He said someone there used to serve with him,” she continued. “I'm not sure whether he meant a priest, another volunteer, or someone else entirely. His recollection is still quite inconsistent.”
Atsushi frowned.
“Did he give you a name?”
“Not clearly. He changed the subject whenever I asked him to explain.”
She seemed almost apologetic about it.
“I was wondering if you might know which church he meant. If you do, would you be able to contact them?”
Atsushi glanced toward Dazai.
“Why?”
“We're trying to understand what is happening with his memory. At the moment, there are several gaps, and we're having difficulty determining whether they're entirely neurological or whether the psychological component is affecting how he's retrieving them.”
She folded her arms loosely.
“If there are people or places he associates strongly with that period of his life, speaking with someone who knew him then may give us information we can't get from him directly. More importantly, if we're able to help him recover some of those memories naturally, we may be able to distinguish which parts of his current symptoms are related to the underlying neurological problem.”
Atsushi nodded slowly.
“So you want him to remember?”
“As much as we safely can, yes.”
She looked toward Dazai again.
“We don't want to force anything. But right now we're working with fragments, and fragments make it difficult to understand the whole picture.”
Atsushi thought about it.
The church.
High school.
Someone who served there.
He searched through what he remembered from those years, letting the pieces arrange themselves without rushing them.
“I think he meant Fyodor Dostoevsky.”
Dr. Mizuno's expression changed slightly.
“Does that name mean something to you?”
“He was around back then. He served at a church near the school.”
“Do you know which one?”
“I think so.”
Dr. Mizuno nodded.
“That would be very helpful.”
Atsushi looked at Dazai again.
He was feeding Chuu another piece of crab stick, completely absorbed in making sure she actually swallowed it instead of carrying it somewhere and forgetting about it.
Atsushi pulled out his phone.
“I'll find the church.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded.
“I'll contact them today.”
He was already searching through his memories for the address when Dr. Mizuno walked back toward the bed.
For once, he did not have to wonder whether there was something he could do.
There was.
So he would do it.