Chapter Text
April 11th - 18: 11
He runs as fast as the soles of two feet can carry him, Yokohama's port painted a vivid crimson behind him as the sun dips low behind clouds, setting the sky ablaze in a million colors. Exploding in infinite variations under the invisible brush stroke, the horizon's blue burns a solid cadmium yellow, bleeding a nauseating mauve before it dissipates, enraptured in the bleak despair of arriving night; black veils enveloping the city. A burial shroud for their lost souls.
He runs, and his feet hurt from the abuse, cramped inside the same old leather shoes he's worn out to the point they hang flimsy around his ankles but he's never found the chance to change out of. His sides strain and his breath becomes arduous, fighting to escape his chest cavity as tired lungs struggle to keep up with his erratic heartbeat, thundering loudly and reverberating through his ribcage. Some strands of dark hair cling to his face and obscure his vision but he doesn't seem to care; deep brown eyes fixated on the road up ahead seeing nothing.
Feeling nothing.
Vacuum.
He runs without pausing to rest, back drenched in sweat so cold it prickles his skin like a thousand little sharp needles and burrows to the core of his being, gnawing at bones and instilling itself like an inflammatory ache in his marrow. Mouth too dry, tongue turned sandpaper against lips when, in vain, he tried to wet them, the taste of salt and metal thick and suffocating and he threatens to choke. But there shall be no such release.
He runs until he can run no more, physical limits screaming at him to stop, flesh into lead, dense and tired as he collapses against a wall, a hand barely brought up in time to bounce off it in a manner so that he wouldn't hit his head on it.
For some time he remains there, unmoving, vacant eyes turned to meet an empty sky being slowly painted a pitch black, city lights robbing any hope left for stars to shine as he begins to doubt there being any left at all up there; trapped in an invisible box under a cardboard sky, human puppets littering the streets, moved by some hand unseen.
He lifts a hand to his face, motions languid and muscle beyond tired, as if seeking his own broken tethers dangling from wrists wrapped in white, and allows his eyes to set on a palm where deep gashes have long stopped bleeding, shards of glass still etched deeply within wounds. He reaches to poke one out, an innocent gesture, and the pain shoots a scorching needle right through his brain, a harsh reminder of the reality of his situation. With a hoarse cry stuck in back of his throat he leans his center of weight away, chest heaving and head resting against hard concrete as his lips attempt to form words to ease the turmoil that plagues his mind.
But there shall be no such release.
June 6th - 4: 38
Beyond the margin of eyelids, parted a single hair's width, there's a world painted an excruciating white. Bright light gushing, hurting his retinas as it invades his eyes and he hastens to bring them back shut, hand brought up with a groan to cover his face. The sudden action only begets more pain and he finds himself muttering something incomprehensible under his breath, words jumbled bad enough that nobody could ever hope to make any sense of them.
It takes him several tries until he can finally peer around, everything still glossed over in this awfully white haze until his eyes begin to adjust, painfully aware of the presence of another in the same room as him. His mind expending every effort to recall the last thing he could have possibly done he doesn't try to move yet, eyes making the light fixture on the ceiling the center of his attention.
He remembers standing very still against the bleeding sky, fire painted on skyscrapers' windows as he ruefully regarded the ground bellow, wondering of the precise acceleration his body would have when hitting the ground and if it might be kind enough to do him in for once. Yet his feet are firmly rooted in place, entangled in imaginary roots that dig deep in his ankles and hurt his knees until he's keeled over, bent until his forehead touches the ground in front of him.
Gravity was not his friend. The distance nothing to be sneered at. He knew full well what he had to do, a deep, aching longing in his gaze that he wouldn't allow himself to admit nor recognize if it was staring him in the face; dry eyes suffering the weight of scorching tears left uncried, every step he couldn't make and a voice inside his head that keeps on teasing.
He remembers lying on the floor, later that night, prescription bottle empty of the sleeping pills he had been given against everyone's better judgment when sleepless nights had started weighing down on him like a heavy stone. Surrounding him were empty bottles reeking alcohol, his eyes reflected back at him a million times, image distorted in tinted glass as he barely hang on his senses.
“They weren't quite enough, huh.” he muses, voice raspy and rough as it rises from his throat.
“You did quite a number on us.” the woman that is now examining him more closely from the side of his bed, crosses gloved arms over her chest and shakes her head a little at his sorry excuse of a state. “Kunikida-san wasn't pleased either.”
Dazai forces himself to sit up a little and feels his head swimming, a splitting ache that begins between his eyes threatening to crack his skull open, a foul taste brimming in his mouth, stars rimmed a sickly green color dotting his field of vision. His lip curves into a half-grimace, half-smile that is hard to discern as he finally pieces together the fragments of his predicament. Before he knows it, he's chuckling a bitter laughter as his eyes settle on Yosano, his gaze returned by her own steady set of stormy gray beads that look on to him, unrelenting.
He laughs and shakes his finger a little, beyond amused, even though the tremors set in motion by the action cause him to recoil all the same. “They were placebos, of course they were!” he exclaims. That explained why nobody had bothered monitoring his dosage all this while; why he wasn't dead. He did, likely, manage to drink himself to the point he gave himself alcohol poisoning, or at the very least drank himself senseless, but that was hardly comparable to actually managing to end his life by mixing up his sleeping pills and bottles in a lovingly fatal cocktail.
“That was a good one, Yosano-san!” Dazai grins, but the doctor next to him is not smiling.
When the slap across the face comes, however, it is not by her hand but by Kunikida's own. And Dazai doesn't bother to move his head, not even to as much as bring his eyes to look at him. He doesn't think his anger isn't rightful, he simply can't bring himself to care, a bitter smile still curling his lip while an unsettling silence charges the atmosphere between them to a point of evaporation.
“For heaven's sake, Dazai!” the man exasperates, hands brought to grasp him by the collar of his shirt because every fiber of his being screams of pent up tension, accumulated frustration and desperate desire as he attempts to shake him awake from his reverie. “Can't you stop being selfish for one moment in your life?” there are a million things he can tell him, and every single one of them hurts more than either of them can probably realize; words that are sharp and cut deep, deep enough that when one would be to realize that they're bleeding it might already be too late.
But Kunikida speaks no other words, blows never come, eyes never meet, and both pretend to forget the void looming just behind this anger, this desperation, this writhing emptiness that was thrust upon them without any of them asking for it. They don't dare bring it up or look at it in the eye and it stings, poisoning their silence, because although both of them know full well they can tear at each other, wielding it as the horrible weapon it is, they choose to keep it close to their hearts, painting them black with its taint instead.
Dazai lowers himself back on the bed, eyes searching the dawning sky outside his window for nothing and everything combined, the ache burning at the side of his face yet another reminder that he is still alive, as Kunikida slides fingers behind glass frames to press them tight against his eyes in an attempt to hide from everything he never wanted to see; pride the only thing that keeps him from apologizing in a manner that means very little and will amount to nothing at all.
And they both remain there for quite some time, the clock hands dropping to paint the distance between them a bleak scenery: bridges all burnt, fingers crossed - content to lie to get away. Empty.