Chapter Text
I’m Chuuya Nakahara. I have a lot of friends. I think I’m a good person.
Chuuya Nakahara is sitting in the uncomfortable chair of the dean's office that’s
poking into his back and catching on his hair with blood on his knuckles and a bust in his lip.
That dumbass deserved it. I’m not sorry.
He was being annoying. I’m not sorry.
He was being an arrogant asshole. I’m not sorry.
Bragging and egging people on like he’s better than me or something. Fuck him. I’m not sorry—
“Chuuya. Are you paying attention?” The dean said firmly while snapping her veiny, wrinkled hands in front of him.
“Oh- uh yes…?” He mutters his eyes flicking up from the table at her stern face, forced to snap out of his thoughts immediately.
“Do you know what happened in the café?” Her voice was resigned. She knew.
Chuuya tries to think about it… Him, Tachihara, Kouyou…Kajii too? Maybe, yes, he was there. Kajii was there. They were at the lunch table when this kid, JV track runner? Or basketball? One of those. He came up and started bragging, acting like he was better than everyone at the table, an arrogant piece of shit. After that his memory is like swiss cheese, holes, dark spots, gaps. He punched that kid, he punched back then… nothing, terrifying, calm nothing.
“I punched a kid, I know, big deal.” He mutters again, kicking his shoe against the carpet that may have had geometric patterns but was now just dirt and sweat caked into its fibers.
“You didn’t just punch him Chuuya… he has a broken nose, a broken clavicle, and he’s missing 3 teeth.” She says that sternly, factually, but there’s unease in her voice
Chuuya freezes, he didn’t do that. Did he? He just punched him? Right? His eyes lower this time to the hands in his lap. There’s a tooth embedded in his ring. For some reason his eyes sting.
I broke his nose. I’m sorry.
I broke his clavicle. I’m sorry.
I knocked out his teeth. I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to…
I just found him annoying and got mad…
I’m sorry.
His eyes are wet, his cheeks are wet, his lower lip, the busted one, is trembling and there’s hiccups coming from high in his throat. He’s crying, in the dean's office, because he beat a kid up, like a baby. He quickly and aggressively wipes the tears off his cheeks like that prevents her from knowing he’s a little child who cries when he does something wrong.
The look on her face shifts from an angry stern to a pitying soft.
“You’re suspended for a week, I’m gonna call your mom, tell her… what happened and to come pick you up, okay?” She says softer than before, as if trying to not set off a bomb activated by decibels.
Chuuya just nods. His chin is still dipped all the way down to his sternum.
“How about you go to the nurse, she’ll fix you up.” She then sits down and opens her computer to file whatever paper work you have to file when a kid mauls another kid then starts crying about it.
Chuuya nods once more then stands up, grabbing his backpack that suddenly feels heavy when it didn’t before, he walks out of the door his vision blurred and swimming with tears.
The hallway is empty, it’s 8:30 pm, everyone has already gone home. Good. They can’t see his pathetic, tear streaked face.
He gets to the nurses office, the lobby part, not the medical part where the nurse, a steady, heavy-set woman with long brown hair that stopped at her navel. She treated everyone like she was their mom.
For a second he just stands there, sniffling quietly, the hair of his bangs covering his eyes, for some reason, he can’t stop crying even though he wants to.
The nurse is typing on her monitor, probably filing a sports physical or an eye exam when she turns to grab something from an upper cabinet when she spots the small ginger boy standing in the doorway.
“Hey… come in here, what do you need?” She says, her voice is that gentle, motherly but firm tone.
Chuuya shakes his head, head dipping even lower if possible.
“I- uh- I got into a fight” he whispers, he tries to make his voice stronger. He failed.
The nurse scurries out of the medical wing and into the lobby. She stands about a meter in front of him. She examines the state of the boy, the busted lower lip, the bloody knuckles, the tooth embedded into the ring on his index finger, the bruise forming on his left cheek. Then his emotional state, the tears on his cheeks, the tremble in that same bloody lip, the dipped chin, and the mix of anger, frustration, guilt and strangely… fear in the heterochromic eyes. She notices all of that in the span of 2 seconds flat.
“Hmm, come to the medical room” she says as she turns and walks back to the room like she expects Chuuya to follow.
He does.
Chuuya slowly follows her back, through the “privacy” curtain, that provides about as much privacy as a screen door. He sits down on the resting bench, it isn’t comfortable, but it’s better than the deans chairs.
The nurse goes to those upper cabinets, grabbing paper towels, and alcohol wipes, and a HiChew, the green apple flavor, not the shitty grape ones she gives to the kids who just go to her to get candy. She sits back down in front of Chuuya and wipes his face with the paper towels first, wiping away the tracks of salty tears and the dust kicked up from the fight that stuck to his sweaty skin. Then she takes out the alcohol wipe and gently cleans the cut on his lip. Chuuya winces at the sting. Once the bust on his lip is reduced to just a small cut she moves to his hands. First taking his ring off and placing it into a small biohazard bag. She wipes the blood away, cleaning the small serrations as well. Chuuya winces again, smaller this time.
After about five minutes of gently wiping away and cleaning, Chuuya looks good as new, she places the candy into his open palm and moves her chair back to give him space.
“Why don’t you rest here until your parents get here, alright?”
Chuuya nods, he’s basically catatonic because he knows if he starts talking he’ll start crying again. He shifts into a laying position on the bed, then turns to face the wall.
It takes Chuuya’s parents five minutes to get there, they live ten minutes away.
Chuuya’s mom, a tall woman with tightly curled blonde hair and deep brown eyes named Fuku Nakahara, she basically runs into the front office, a plexiglass box. His father is following behind her. He’s a shorter, scanty man with short brown hair and green eyes that seem vaguely tired but also wise and gentle, Kensuke Nakahara.
“Where’s Chuuya?” Fuku says almost anxiously, her eyes scanning the office for a small boy with a thick head of wild ginger hair.
“I- sent him to the nurse a little bit ago, right down the hall…” The dean's voice is resigned, like she’s been through this all before. She points to the door just down the hall with that same wrinkled figure.
Fuka starts walking down the hallway with a one tracked focused mind. Kensuke follows behind her once, nodding once at the dean who nods back like it’s a well known routine.
Once they get to the door to open it, She spots the rust colored mop laying on the institutional blue bench and rushes into the room towards it.
Chuuya sits up at hearing the cadence of sneakered feet and an anxious, vaguely angry, fast, little steps that could only be his mother followed by the slower, quieter footsteps that could only be his fathers. He turns over and looks up and his eyes start to burn again at seeing his moms face, it’s comforting, damn it…
Fuku sees her son's eyes welling up with tears and speeds up. Once she reaches him she gently pulls his head into a hug, softly cradling his cranium against her collar bones, chin perches on the top of his skull, eyes softened, knowing her baby is okay. Kensuke catches up to her and pulls his son into a hug too, arms around his shoulders. They’re going to figure out what happened later and act accordingly but right now they can tell Chuuya needs to be held.
Chuuya sits still for a moment, in his parent’s arms. He tries for about 5 seconds then his head dips, forehead against his dads arms and he starts crying again, with soft gasps and hiccups.
“I-I he- he was being a jackass and- and I hit him…” he sniffles quietly
Fuku strokes his hair and holds onto him tighter, Kensuke just sighs and rests his forehead against the crown of his son's head.
“I-I hurt him really bad…” Chuuya adds on quietly, his voice is guilty, remorse filled and confused.
“I don’t remember… I don’t remember… I don’t remember…” he whispers with despair tracing his voice.
His parents are tearing up too. Something is wrong.
My name is Osamu Dazai. I don’t have a lot of friends. I don’t think I'm a particularly good person.
Today is my first day at my new school.
Dazai is standing in the front of his math classroom, which is his first period class. He’s in simple jeans and a plain black sweater. He’s looking around at the students who suddenly seem much more interested in what the teacher has to say than they were two minutes ago when she was explaining trigonometry with almost as much boredom as her students. Dazai’s looking at them all with these large brown eyes, so dark they could be black if anyone looked close enough, they seem big, round, almost innocent appearing except for the flat, empty quality of the color; they have a restlessness to them, not scared outwardly, just shifty and observant. He’s pale, in a way that looks like he’s a little sick and that he’s never seen the sun.
“Hello. I’m Osamu Dazai. That’s it, thank you.” His introduction is simple but polite. He walks to a seat, it’s the middle column and second row to the back. He sits, the chair is bolted to the desk so he originally folds his long legs under the wooden desk, then decides to just sit with his knees pulled up to his chest. He’s tightly folded between the back of the chair and the desk it’s bolted to.
The eyes of the students are locked onto him curiously and almost hungerly, the seat behind him is empty he doesn’t know why, but he can tell the people around him are tense in a way that isn’t just nerves and excitement from having a new student.
The lesson is boring, calculus 2, nothing interesting. About halfway through, a guy, tall, blonde, a cross country runner, turns to face him with a small, cruel, cruel grin on his pale lips. The type that will make you feel bad for existing around him.
“So… what’s your deal?” he whispers after looking to make sure the teacher isn’t watching.
Dazai’s eyes quickly glance over to him, doing a once over of the boy to evaluate. A small little smile touches his cheeks.
“Hmm…” he tilts his head “I don’t know, what’s yours?” He whispers back. He’s teasing.
The guy looks confused, like he expected a different reaction.
“I’m a runner.”
“Congratulations”
His brows furrow and his grin dies down.
“I mean- I do XC.”
“I heard the first time”
He stammers.
“Well— like what do you do—?”
Dazai looks back to his paper and tucks part of his fluffy, curly brown hair behind one geometric ear, pink at the top.
“I skate.” he says absentmindedly, as if bored of the conversation.
His grin perks back up right away.
“Skateboarding? Unexpected.”
“Nope. Ice skating”
The boy's grin becomes crueler, meaner, having finally found something to pick at, twist and dissect into something to get entertainment from.
“Ooo? Ice skating, that’s not a real sport, it’s also so girly, y’know?”
He smiles a little, it’s a nice smile, charming, relatively soft, but it’s closed.
“If you see it that way.”
His eyes are still confused but his grin sharpens into something wicked.
“Wha- I bet you jack off to dudes too”
The comment gets an array of giggles from the people around them that spurs him on and a disapproving glance from the teacher that does nothing to discourage him.
Dazai blinks and his eyes flicker over again, his head tilts again, like a curious cat, like he can’t understand why, like something isn’t clicking to him but his smile remains.
“Why would you care? Do you like thinking about that?”
His own grin becomes a little bit cruel but it appears more sarcastic and a little mean rather than cruel. He’s being weird. Make a joke.
He then adds on.
“Mr. ‘I’m a runner’”
That strangely gets to him, like Dazai was insinuating something and he couldn’t tell what, just that he meant something insulting by that. His grin fades to a scowl and he turns back to his seat.
“...Faggot…” he mutters under his breath grumply.
Dazai amusedly huffs once then turns back to his own paper, twisting the sharpened pencil between his fingers in rhythmic little loops. Like the interaction had never happened.
Well that was kinda fun. I kinda like talking to people. Sometimes. Occasionally.
A few people around them giggle at the whole interaction; it was objectively kind of funny to watch a new kid get called gay and a jock pout like a little baby, if you were a highschooler.
The teacher asks a question to the class
Dazai gets the answer in a couple minutes, working out the math on the spiral notebook the teacher had given him upon entry.
He knows the answer is x/6×e⁶x-1/36×e⁶x+c. It’s integration by parts.
Dazai raises his hand and the teacher calls on him.
“Very good, Dazai.”
And that’s that.
The cafeteria is loud. I don’t like loud places. My house was loud. I liked my house.
Dazai, after not even checking the cafe, circles around the school a few times, he finds a quiet bench beside the auditorium. He’s not eating, he has a deck of cards. Solitaire. He likes playing cards.
He’s winning, he always wins. Winning is easy even if he’s playing alone.
Then someone rushes by, in some kind of hurry to get to lunch. The win causes his cards to scatter into the air then flutter down to the floor.
He crouches down gracefully and begins picking up the cards one by one with long, pale fingers. He stacks the cards and places them in their box then puts them back in his bag with a sense of reverence that he just doesn’t hold for most people. He gets up from that bench. It’s not quiet anymore. He walks down the now empty stairs, fluorescent lights screaming and buzzing above him. His next class is in 10 minutes. He walks to the classroom door, puts his hand on the handle then pauses with hesitation for a few moments; he then retracts his hand and turns around, just because he can, at least that’s what he’s saying.
He walks down the halls, they seem like they’re a mile long, walls and linoleum floor stretching unnaturally under the buzzing lights. He turns down into the branch of the hallway. There’s a cat with a bitten off ear on the window sill, he opens up the window and the cool fall air hits his face immediately, a few leaves blowing inside through the gap, it smells like alive, he pets the cat who leans into his hand with a soft purr. Dazai smiles, the cat then jumps off the window. His smile fades down and he shuts the window, it smells like institutional cleaning bleach and musk again.
He ends up in a single stall bathroom. He’s on the floor, sitting with his knees up to his chest against the door. He’s playing solitaire again, now spider solitaire. He’s still winning. Can you really win a game you play alone? He asks himself that. Then he makes his next move placing a king onto the queen he already placed, completing the foundation pile.
“...single-suit stack, I’m out.”
The cafeteria table is quiet, not comfortably like it sometimes was, but with the weight of a missing presence and the awareness of what happened here only a day ago.
“uh I heard the kids and his parents don’t want to press charges…So that’s good…I guess” Kajii says quietly, the usual energy and excitement that spews out of him is dead today.
Kouyou nods distractedly. Doesn't reply.
“Yeah that’s good.” Tachihara says flatly.
The table falls into silence again, eyes all looking on the bench that was painted with blood and pain 16 hours ago. The table is quiet without Chuuya’s noise, without his anger, without his temper, without his jokes. Chuuya has a temper but he also has a sense of humor and a grin that could make anyone smile too and any adult bend to his will.
The video of the fight was being shared around despite its violence and the teachers repeated warnings and requests to stop sharing it and delete the video. That doesn’t stop anyone, life is boring and this violence is the only thing interesting enough to care about for this month till the group moves on.
The cafeteria remains loud, it always will be. Chuuya’s phone is getting blown up with texts. People sending videos of the fight, insults, compliments and hyping him up, comfort, telling him what he missed, and telling him there’s a new student, he’d hate him, maybe, probably.
September 29th.