Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dazai might die of heatstroke. 

The worst way to go, honestly. He won’t even make a pretty corpse at this rate.

At the height of July, summer has Yokohama in its grasp. The weather stations speak of record high temperatures. Salarymen die of exposure on the morning sprint to work. Tires melt into the taffy on the asphalt. Rumors spread that it is ability-related, but Dazai knows better: nothing but good old climate change. Human intervention at its finest. 

The afternoon sun bludgeons the Agency’s building, bleeding through the facade, insulation, and interior structure to strike at the ventilation system. Screws melted, coils popped, and now half of the Agency’s offices are tiny broilers. As such, the windowless conference room is hot and humid. Stifling, like the inside of a mouth. The heat draws an unhealthy flush to Dazai’s skin, sweat soaking into his bandages and cinching his shirt into a straight jacket. Listening absently to Kunikida drone on about their next case, Dazai shifts in his chair, nausea spilling through him when his joints peel apart in the heat.

It’s not as if the floors below them have had any better luck; Dazai spent half of the morning listening to the lawyers downstairs screaming at each one another about repair costs. The other half was spent watching Kunikida try and fail to fix the air conditioner on his own. Yosano ended up yanking him bodily out of the air vent when he got stuck into the chute at his waist. 

Dazai appreciated the distraction, since it took unwanted attention off himself.

Kunikida taps the stack of papers on the table, lifting a weary head drooling sweat. “So there we have it,” he pants, pushing his glasses up with two fingers. “Any questions?”

The table is silent, crushed by the heat. Kenji’s cowlick plasters along the side of his nose. Yosano’s makeup warps at the edges. Atsushi lays face down on the table, possibly unconscious. Body odor competes with Yosano’s strawberry perfume and Kunikida’s choice of intense musky cologne. Atsushi’s tender nose must be fried. The overhead lights beat down on them like the eyes of God, glancing off the lacquered hardwood.

“No~,” Dazai trills, rocking onto the back legs of his chair with a sweep of the jacket draped over the back of the chair. An ability user is running amock, turning people into their traumatized child-selves. There’s no mystery here, no allure. Dazai might as well spend the day napping on the couch. At least they still had air conditioning in the bullpen.

Gripping the edge of the table with both hands, Dazai swings his legs across the surface, crossing them at the ankle with a pleased sigh.

Kunikida kicks up a fuss, but Dazai’s all but tuned him out. Shutting his eyes, Dazai enjoys the music of his partner’s nagging him, listening to the ensemble of his coworkers.

Atsushi and Kyoka’s voices meld together into a low drone as they murmur to one another. Ranpo’s bag rustles, chips snapping in his fist. Yosano’s long nails drumming on the counter—painted scarlet to match her choice of heels and lipstick—the bangle gifted to her by a lover jingling on her wrist. Kenji’s stomach growls. The Director remains silent, observing from a corner of the conference room.

Fukuzawa’s eyes bore into him, sliding a knife under his skin. Dazai’s smile widens. Oh, the lingering gaze of an older man, how nostalgic. Of course, he knows the intention is different—probing and analyzing, but no less benign. Whatever the man is looking for, he will not find it. Fukuzawa is no detective, and Dazai is no open book.

Meltwater sweeps through Dazai’s veins, spreading frost and fury where there was once control.

Dazai’s fingers twitch with the urge to tear. That goddamned Book.

Dostoyevsky’s enamored little clown may have written both Dostoyevsky and Dazai out of prison, but now they were on the run with a page that could distort reality, and Dazai was here, meant to solve a case as if the world weren’t at stake.

Dazai’s mouth twists into a grimace.

If it wasn’t for that fucking book, he wouldn’t have had to call in a favor from an ‘old friend’ and be subjected to a parade of strained, awkward attempts to woo Dazai back. 

Damn. 

It was one thing when all of this appeared to be nothing more than the most pathetic, convoluted, and batshit insane excuse to see Dazai again. Drag him down with him. But now that the Book proved itself to be real, the idiot has a legitimate reason to skulk around Yokohama. Stalk and stare and leave drunken voicemails. Now, Dazai feels nothing but pity for him, and that’s leagues worse than being merely pathetic. 

‘You brought me back to life, Osamu. Won’t you stay with me a moment longer?’

Dazai opens his eyes, momentarily blinded by the overhead lights. 

Black spots lurch across a bleached canvas, trailing purple after images. A white world. A woman in black. 

Dazai’s breath hitches.

It really is too hot in here.

Dazai swallows thickly, squeezing his eyes shut once more, steadying himself. 

Happy thoughts. 

Happy thoughts. 

Chuuya made him breakfast yesterday morning: hardboiled eggs, a fresh filet of salmon, and a lovely little kiss on the cheek that sent Dazai’s heart tumbling into his ribs. This morning, Dazai sought to return the favor by allowing the redhead to sleep in for once. It was his day off, after all. He deserves to take it easy. 

Dazai’s smile takes on a softer, kinder edge.

When Dazai hobbled out of prison on a ‘technicality,’ Chuuya had glued himself to his side and refused to be moved. Now, a month later, Dazai has all but moved into the man’s apartment.

He might not enjoy the whitewash on the walls or the color of Chuuya’s bedsheets, but he’ll tolerate it if it means he can wake up in Chuuya’s arms forever.

God, it’s like he’s seventeen again.

Tanizaki distracts Kunikida with an actual serious question, causing the former teacher to quickly abandon Dazai for a chance to proselytize to a willing audience. 

Dazai smirks. Eyes remaining shut, he laces his fingers over his belly. ‘Carbon-fiber resolve’ is a phrase he’s heard Kunikida say more than once, but time and time again, the man contradicts himself. The man’s resolve is carbon, easily crumbled in Dazai’s fist.

“Dazai-kun,” Fukuzawa says when the meeting is concluded, peeling himself out of his shadowed corner. “Would you join me in my office please?” 

Dazai’s coworkers have cleared out, leaving the two of them behind. They struggle to relate to him nowadays. He’s become a pariah amongst his people.

“Of course,” Dazai cheers, returning his feet to the ground, all smiles for this man whose company he detests. The chair legs reclaim the floor with an air-splitting crack. Fukuzawa is too much like himself to be likable. 

Dazai follows the man into his office with liquid mercury sloshing in his guts.

“I wish we could have had this conversation earlier,” Fukuzawa says as the door falls shut. The man pads across his office in his braided sandals, robes hanging damp and heavy on his person. “I also wish we did not have to have it all.”

Sunlight scalds the floor in long columns cast by the tall windows behind the director’s desk, dust motes clinging to the air. Dazai grimaces his nose while the man’s back is turned. He despises dust. Old things, in general, have always disgusted him. Dazai slips his hands into the pockets of Oda’s coat, fingertips finding their homes against the seams. Well, perhaps disgust is not the right word. Dust and decay were alien concepts in the place he was raised; darkness was almost a privilege in a world where the lights never shut off.

“Let’s don’t and say we did,” Dazai offers with plastic laughter, settling heavily into one of the two green couches. A wooden coffee table is cupped between the couches, its corners deliciously sharp. Brand new, like everything in the office after it was bombed out. 

City ordinances ensured the outside was restored to its former baroque glory, but the interior was rebuilt according to their budget. Most of the hardwood was replaced by cheap, inferior choices, and all the couches had to be assembled on the premises. It was a nightmare from what he heard—he spent the day lounging on Chuuya’s couch, kicking his ass at Street Fighter.

If Dazai’s going to be treated like a little shit, then he’ll give as good as he gets; he toes off his loafers and tucks his feet beneath him. Shifting his body sideways, he rests his elbows on the arm of the couch, cups his chin in his palms, and smiles politely at the hypocritic.

“I wish I could,” Fukuzawa says, sighing heavily as he sits in a leather monstrosity of an armchair. Its back is tall, flared, and stupid. It was one of the few items to survive the blast. Blistered from a tawny red to a deeply discolored burgundy, it was repurposed into a rolling chair. 

Fucking idiotic.

Dazai’s closed-lip smile becomes an open one. “I understand. It’s your job to address such things.”

If Dazai lets his eyes wander, lets his mind lead down a path he seldom treads, it’s easy to conflate the past for the present. The room is hot enough to hold a hearth, after all. 

My father would never sit in a chair that dumb.

Dazai digs his fingernails into his grinning cheeks.

Fukuzawa sighs, oblivious. “In an ideal world, it would not even be on my agenda.” He laces his fingers on the table, hand over hand as if this were some garden party soiree and not the end of Dazai’s life in the light.

“Dazai-kun,” the Director laments, “I know I wasn’t able to keep your arrest record out of the paper…I know I promised that I would.” The man shuts his eyes, pressing his lips together into a white seam. “I owe you more than an apology, Dazai-kun, but I think it only prudent to offer one.”

Dazai narrows his eyes at the thrown stone. A ripple of fury dances across his lake, threatening to stir the beast dwelling below, but he wills the winds to calm. In its place roars a fierce embarrassment. He thought so many verbal spars with Fyodor in Mersault would hone his blade, but perhaps the deus ex machina of their release had ruined him.

Dazai flashes all his teeth.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he laughs, leaning backward a fraction. His lips twitch upwards, shaving a wicked edge to his smile. He curls one hand on the arm of the chair and presses the other to his chest.

“It’s not as if this wasn’t the first time you promised to wipe my record.”

“Dazai-kun—“

Dazai waves him off with a puff of laughter. “At least this time, I won’t have to leave the country in search of someone who could.” He shakes his head, shoulders shaking as his chuckle becomes a guffaw. The black hole in his ribs spans a galaxy. “Really, you won’t believe what I had to do to get a clean slate,” he says, the images flickering just beyond his periphery, beckoning with memories he cannot unpack here, cannot unpack ever. 

Dazai’s hand slides from his chest to his throat, touching his collar in what he’d thought was an old, unlearned habit of fear.

‘And you’ll always belong to me, my little Monkey.’

His stomach backflips and smacks into his lungs, rendering him lightheaded. Disguised as a natural motion, he forces his hand to the arm of the couch to join the other, linking his thumbs together. Ridiculous. Laughter belts out of his chest like vomit. “You could almost say I traded my soul! Kidding!” Squinting through gleeful tears, he catches glimpses of the Director staring at him with wide, worried eyes. 

Dazai’s hands become claws, the hard ridges of upholstery stabbing beneath his nails. “It’s not like I have one,” Dazai giggles, breathless with how much he hates this man. Dazai didn’t need to wipe his slate clean; he only had to die. The Agency wasn’t worth a moment in that nightmare. Why did he ever think it would be worth it in the end?

Fukuzawa makes a wounded noise, opening his mouth to retort, but Dazai cuts him off with a simper.

“Do I need to go abroad again?” Dazai sings, returning to their charade. “Should I bother to come back?”

Fukuzawa swallows thickly, on the backfoot. His stupid fucking chair squeals as he shifts his weight a fraction. “Your place is here at the Agency,” Fukuzawa says in a shuddering voice. “We will never turn you away.”

Ha.

Dazai waves a hand. “Oh, of course. And, might I say, it was quite refreshing to be greeted at gunpoint! Quite the trip down memory lane.”

‘You’re a murderer! Why do we have to take you back?’

“Kunikida-kun didn’t know—“

Dazai gasps theatrically, covering his mouth with a delicate hand, throwing up his brows. “Oh, he didn’t?” A giddy flush bridges his cheeks. Perhaps he’s achieved heatstroke, after all. “Then I should pull up the newspaper articles? Or maybe the tweets?” He shakes his head. “No, no—definitely the security footage pulled out of those sealed documents! Those will definitely enlighten him.”

Hundreds of hours of Dazai stripping men of their flesh, shooting traitors in the moonlight, and carving himself a legacy as a demon. All that he’d swept under the rug had come to light. There was no more pretending. Atsushi struggled to look him in the eye. Kunikida throttled him with real violence. Yosano gifted him only pity.

The emotion dashes differently across Fukuzawa’s face, digging deep furrows around his eyes and mouth. 

“I’m not a good man, Dazai-kun,” Fukuzawa says, a flicker of grief in his gaze, the muscles of his shoulders gathering into tight knots. He casts his eyes down, staring into the bowl of his cupped palms with a wrought longing. 

“I’ve done terrible things,” Fukuzawa continues with a throat full of gravel. “I won’t deny them.” His hands curl into fists. “I’d used to think creating this agency was a way of atoning,” he lifts a two-ton gaze, staring into Dazai’s eyes, “but I’m sure you can agree such things are not so easily done.”

Dazai resists the urge to roll his eyes, wrap both hands around the man’s neck, and squeeze. 

Instead, he laughs cheerfully and says: “Indeed! ‘136 murders, 312 cases of extortion, and 625 cases of fraud, along with various and other sundry crimes.’ Oh, what tiny numbers. You’d think our justice system could do a little better than that!”

Fukuzawa shrinks slightly in his seat, his shoulders narrowing. When he speaks, his voice rasps like shrapnel on concrete. 

“I’m sorry, Dazai-kun.”

Dazai nods, trembling with a certain kind of fury, a certain kind of frustration. There is no way this man can apologize to him, for him, without knowing what Dazai has done.

“Yes,” Dazai says, all humor bled from his voice. The smile falls from his face like the rock he flings into the lake, stirring shadows. “You did say that.” 

Dazai pushes off the couch and steps into his shoes one by one. He takes his time, tucking two fingers into the heel to ease the fit, using the arm of the couch for balance. Chuuya had bought him a new pair half a size too small. Dazai grunts as his heel pops into the loafer. His spine pops in three places when he stands to his full height. 

“You participated in the war, Director,” he continues, standing tall above a man cut small and solemn before him. “I’m sure you’ve seen terrible things that haunt your every waking moment.” Dazai takes a step forward, bracing himself against the table with both hands, staring into the eyes of a man twice his age who dares to look thrice it. “I’m sure you’ve done things for which a man can never atone.”

Sandalwood and notes of bamboo purl off the Director’s melting frame. The grooves beneath his eyes furrow into trenches. 

“War is a frightful thing,” Dazai continues. “And yet you’ve maintained your human kindness. I assure you, Director, by no fault of your own, that the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve done would strip you of that kindness…In your eyes, I would cease to be a human being.” 

Dazai grits his teeth, baring the sharp points of his canines, gnashing each word to paste. “You wield kindness too freely, Director. It is a weapon in and of itself.”

Sweat twirls the man’s bangs into strings, sticking to his gaunt, pale face. His eyes bore like salt mines, dark and cavernous and dead.

Dazai grins, allowing himself this little bit of gloating, treasuring the image of this great man bowed so low.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Dazai-kun,” Fukuzawa rasps, his voice close to a warble. “Please…Please excuse me.”

With the burdened, ponderous motions of a defeated man, the Director pushes his chair back with a grind of wheels on wood. The chair squeaks when he stands up, gathering his haori around him like a scorned woman’s skirts.

Dazai chameleons, folding upright, clapping his hands together with a cheer. “Of course! Take your time! I’m sure these things will resolve themselves. The Agency has proved so forgiving after all.”

Fukuzawa says nothing, striding across his own office like Dazai was a man who could be trusted with a bared back. Truly, this man is too trusting, too stupid.

Or perhaps he hopes Dazai will take his revenge and strike him while his back is turned. 

Instead, when the door is shut, and Dazai is alone, he breaks the man’s stupid fucking chair.

Chuuya stirs to a soothing, silent darkness.

Peeling open bleary eyes, he stares, disoriented, at the pale expanse of his ceiling, wondering what had woken him.

Heat surrounds him, pressing against him on all sides in what remains of last night’s pillow fort. He’s on his back, in his bed, with pillows wedged beneath his hip bones and shoulders like his memory foam mattress wasn’t enough for a man. The head of his bed is pressed against the wall, facing the giant flatscreen TV mounted above a mahogany dresser and beside the open doorway. 

His dream lingers for a moment, haunting him with the sensation of being buoyed by an adoring cult surfing him on a bed of furs. Chuuya wrinkles his nose. One of those dreams, then—where his overactive imagination supplied images of what his life might have been in the past, worshipped by the feudal masses. His only solace comes from the fact that the dreams are always different, always injected with silly dream-borne narratives. His brain is infested with what-ifs and what-nows—it’s only natural his dreams follow suit.

If only medication worked on him, he’d drown himself in every anxiety medication known to man.

Chuuya furrows his brows as his brain boots up. The grey swathe of his ceiling would suggest pre-dawn, but there’s a solid, crisp sensation in his chest. He’s well-rested, sated in a way incongruous for pre-dawn.

Chuuya rolls onto his belly, stirring the mingled scents of him and Dazai. He presses his nose into a pillow for a moment, inhaling deep the earthy, metallic scents Dazai carries with him at all times. The ghosts of greenery and gasoline cling to Dazai’s scalp, sweating sunflower oil through his skin. Chuuya loves the dichotomy of Dazai, in all its forms. He loves Dazai. 

He always has.

The mattress jostles, little feet carrying their precious cargo over to Chuuya. Momo’s wet nose presses to his exposed ear, sniffling with warm puffs of breath. Giggling, Chuuya lifts his head enough to scoop her towards his face.

“My baby girl,” he coos, burying his face in her spotted fur. Momo thrums with the tiny motor of her purr, squeaking good morning. Chuuya is a dog person. He never meant to adopt a cat, let alone a Bengal cat who screamed at all hours of the night. 

Dazai left Momo in his bedroom the night he disappeared, a pink bow stuck to her forehead like a present. If the note left on the bed near her happy donut curl hadn’t been enough to sway Chuuya into keeping Momo, her cute little happy chirps won him over. 

And she’s more dog than a cat, anyway.

“You stayed with me all night, didn’t you? What a good sweet baby angel you are for daddy.” Unlike Dazai, who slipped out of bed this morning without so much as a goodbye, and on Chuuya’s day-off no less.

A rare day off, and no boyfriend to spend it with. 

Chuuya runs a hand through his hair, wincing when his fingers snag on a knot. Well, an almost-boyfriend—his almost-sort-of-maybe-boyfriend who lives with Chuuya and shares his bed, but who also leans away from kisses and does not reply when Chuuya says, ‘I love you’. Maybe Chuuya is moving too fast. Maybe Chuuya’s too late. Maybe it’s too early for thoughts like this. 

With a wide-mouthed yawn, he scratches the side of his head whilst doing the same to Momo, his teeth clicking together with a smile as she walks into his hand, pushing her spine against him. “Hey, baby girl,” he coos, sliding his palm down the bumps of her spine. God, if Dazai heard him talk to her like this, Chuuya would never hear the end of it. She trills in response, tail slipping through his hand when she leaps off the bed, padding towards the doorway.

Looking over her shoulder with those big orange eyes, twitching tail held aloft. She chirps at him for breakfast.

Chuuya hums, wiping away the sleep in his eyes. “I hear you. I hear you. Let me text my stupid fish, and I’ll give you yours, yeah?” 

Silk bedsheets tumble to his lap, exposing his bare chest to the cool air of his bedroom, gooseflesh breaking out across his whole body. Floor-to-ceiling windows compose the fourth wall of his bedroom, the glass polarized to blanket the room in soothing, gentle shadows. When he left, Dazai must have voice-activated the tinted windows so Chuuya could keep sleeping. Warmth floods through Chuuya, bleeding a flush across his smiling cheeks. 

Maybe Dazai did care.

He reaches for his phone on the nightstand, thumbing the screen. The lock screen illuminates in a bright flash, making his eyes water. Really, he’s got to figure out how to control the dimmer switch for the window. He didn’t even know it had that function until Dazai showed, and voila, now his apartment has a dozen new smart functions he doesn’t even remember citing to the contractors. Then again, he was two bottles in when he called them up and sent it in writing. It’s not his fault he didn’t remember ordering an AI fridge to tell him when his ingredients expire and what recipes he can make with them. Just because Dazai’s nosy as fuck and figured it out doesn’t mean jack shit.

The background of his lock screen is Dazai’s bust in profile, a silhouette against the distant blue water of the bay. Taken on his living room couch, catching Dazai unawares, it’s one of Chuuya’s favorite photos. Dazai’s expression is hidden, shaded into darkness. The edges of expression are soft, the angles indistinct and unknowable. It’s impossible to tell what expression he’s making, and because Chuuya was drunk when he took it, there’s no way of knowing the truth. Dazai’s mystery, his allure, is honey wine to Chuuya. He would shovel to the center of the earth if it meant he’d be allowed to know a spoonful about Dazai. Willingly, of course, the man is nothing but covetous.

Chuuya also wants to sink his teeth into the man’s neck and shake him like a ragdoll, but that’s neither here nor there.

Typing in his password, he’s met with an adorable image of Momo belly-up on the sofa, peering at the camera with those big ol’ eyes of hers. Silly, he knows, but he likes the unobstructed view he gets of Dazai in the lock screen instead of piecing together the image from behind the grid of his apps. He thumbs into messages and pulls up his chat with Dazai, typing.

Come over and fix my windows, goddammit, and bring Thai for dinner tonight.

“There,” Chuuya says, hitting send. “My fish’s going to swing by this evening with dinner for Daddy.”

Momo lets out a garbled wail. 

“Okay, okay, he’s your stupid fish as well. I swear, sometimes I think you can understand me.” He cocks his head at Momo. “Hmm? You understand me, Momo? Silly girl.” 

Momo stares at him with pinprick pupils. Her tall tail flicks slightly, then falls still. Like she understands she is being spoken to, Momo spins her body to face him, chittering. “Mrrraow?”

Chuuya lights up like a lighthouse, resisting the need to squish her in a bone-crushing hug. He strangles a pillow instead, screaming into it. “Ugh! You’re so cute! So cute!”

Momo flees at the noise, or perhaps at her embarrassing daddy, leaving Chuuya to get ready for the day on his lonesome. Taking an indulgent sniff of the pillow in his arms—Dazai’s—inhaling verdant earth and oiled screws, he decides he’s ready to get out of bed.

Gently returning Dazai’s pillow to his side of the bed, Chuuya slips from the sheets with a sigh, feet kissing the short beige pile of his carpet. Cool air whisks heat from his bare skin, circulating the smell of cat litter and recent droppings through the bedroom doorway, carried in from the living room. Gooseflesh pimples once more across his skin, inducing a hard shiver starting deep in his abdomen despite the cold not quite touching him. He’s always run hot. It’s why he sleeps on silk sheets in a pair of boxer briefs. Last night, he chose a light grey pair Dazai vocally admires. 

The wall opposite the glass one is lined with white-washed sliding doors, the borders of which are lined with shining steel. According to Dazai, Chuuya is a living heater, and as such, he takes his time, choosing to bypass clothes for the moment and exit the bedroom.

The ‘living room’ was a large pantry when he first moved in, intended to be used for storage or a walk-in laundry room. He knocked out the wall, threw down a beige carpet he later replaced with hardwood when Momo’s litter caught in the pile, contracted someone to replace concrete with glass, and then bulldozed the call from building management, screaming that he couldn’t do that. It might make him a target, being the only stretch of glass in a building studded with portholes, but Chuuya isn’t afraid of a good fight.

While he’d have preferred a penthouse at the time, he couldn’t afford one when he first joined the mafia. Instead, his apartment was a decent-sized one-bedroom apartment stacked on the twenty-seventh floor of thirty-two. A broom closet of a living room to his left, with only a pearl grey couch pressed against the wall to watch the flatscreen flanked by two minimalist bookshelves. The window wall continues from his bedroom to stretch alongside the living room; it, too, is dimmed for his comfort. Momo pads out of the automatic litterbox shelved at the bottom of the bookcase, shaking off her back paws one at a time as she chirps at him in excitement.

“Okay, Momo, he laughs, angling towards the kitchen. “Breakfast time.”

The kitchen spans a good two-thirds of the apartment, eating up all available space with its pen of glossy marble countertops and wooden cabinets. With the pantry demolished and converted, the once stifling kitchen thrived in the open floor plan, shifting from cramped to cozy.

After Dazai strolled out Mersault, handcuff-free and gaunt as a telephone pole, Chuuya clocked the tensions between him and the Agency and decided a sleepover was in order. One night spent cramming popcorn down Dazai’s throat became two became three became thirty, and now Chuuya is left wondering: what are we?

Dazai’s touches to the apartment are far and few in between. His scent saturates his half of the bed, mingling with Chuuya’s. Khaki slacks and polished brown loafers hide in the closet. In the living room, a miniature of the Sky Casino sits on the top shelf of the bookcase, sandwiched between the window wall and the TV. In the bathroom, Dazai’s toothbrush leans in a glass, reaching for Chuuya’s. 

There is no greater evidence Dazai might be here for good than in the kitchen. Tins of crab in the cabinets. Bags of crab legs in the freezer. Dazai brought a brand new tub of MSG with him like a housewarming gift. It sits centerstage in the spice cabinet. It’s already a quarter empty and Chuuya hasn’t used it once.

Chuuya walks to the refrigerator and peels open the door. He takes an egg from the skull-shaped egg holder—a gift from Akutagawa, surprisingly—and holds it out to show Momo.

“You wanna do the egg test? Hmm?” 

Momo gallops into the kitchen screaming. She spins in a circle, eyes never leaving the egg, head spinning like an owl’s. With a chuckle, Chuuya crouches down. A gust of cold air tumbles from the fridge, catching him broadside in the ribs. He shivers, any vestige of drowsiness scattering from his mind. Chuuya crouches down and offers the egg to Momo. 

“All good right? Dazai didn’t buy expired eggs this time?”

She sniffs the egg, rubs her cheek against it, and then opens her mouth, chattering her canines against the shell. 

“All right, I’m trusting you.” Chuuya laughs, standing up. 

He goes to the cupboard and pulls out a frying pan. Setting it on the stove, he clicks the heat to a low-medium setting and, dabbing a pad of butter into the pan, steps away to feed Momo while the metal warms. Only the best for his baby girl, she eats an overly expensive tin of fish-flavored wet food every morning. He’d fed her actual fish for several months before learning fish was bad for cats in the long term. As an apology for taking away her sprats, he only buys the most expensive kind. Upending the tin on a ceramic plate in the likeness of her own face, he sets it down for her just as the butter begins to brown in the pan.

Taking his time, he cooks three scrambled eggs on low-heat for almost five minutes, culminating in a plate of warm, moist eggs that look and taste like butter. With a forkful of yellow into his mouth, he shuts off the stove, racks the pan and spatula in the dishwasher, and pads to the living room. Momo follows him out of the kitchen, licking her lips.

“All right girl,” he says around his mouthful of eggs, pulling out the fork from his mouth. “What do you want to do today? You wanna watch the news with daddy?”

Plopping himself down on the couch, he makes a move, the clicker trapped in the gap between the cushion and the arm closest to the window, when a dark shape outside catches his attention. 

In the distance, a dense black cloud of smoke rises from the old warehouses along the port. “God dammit,” he growls, setting the plate in his lap. “What is it now?”

The mafia hasn’t used those rusted boxes in years, but it’s still in their territory. Chuuya narrows his eyes. His good mood vanishes. If he has to come in today, so help him God. The smoke is enough to distract him from the tickle of Momo’s whiskers on his bare thighs as she proceeds to gobble up his breakfast.

Atsushi grunts as he’s thrown into the stack of crates, rotted wood splintering beneath his weight, collapsing around him when he falls through them, hitting the ground. His breath flings out of him at the impact, landing on his back. A shard of wood slips between the rungs of his ribs, piercing into his lung. Blood burbles in the base of his throat as he sucks in a shuddering, shrieking breath. Lightning-white pain lances through his side grips both lungs in sharpened talons and sends all his muscles into agonized spasms. The tiger takes over. They smooth a finger along every fork of lightning, smear cool gel over his burns, and the next breath he takes is no less desperate, no less filled with molten copper, but the hurt is gone, faded into memory.

“Atsushi-san?” Dazai sings from across the warehouse. “I could use a little help, darling!”

Rolling his eyes, Atsushi pulls himself from the wreckage, wiping the blood from his mouth. “A little busy, Dazai-san,” he calls back, glaring at the man who had thrown him, more annoyed that the bastard stood around and waited for him to get up than at being thrown at all. Getting hurt never gets easier, but it doesn’t last long—for that, he’ll always be grateful; he spent so many nights of his childhood in pain. Compared to those days, this is like pulling baby teeth.

“Aw,” his attacker coos—a tall, muscular man with bright blue hair shaved into a mohawk—uncrossing his arms, dozens of silver bangles jingling from thick forearms. “Did ‘darling’ hit his head?”

“Only I can call him that!” Dazai crows, dancing around the slender man who thrusts his knife at empty air. Dazai needs his help just as much as he calls him darling: he doesn’t. Atsushi’s mentor flashes a giddy grin as the man lunges again. 

With a shout of delight, Dazai slaps his hands on the man’s back and split-vaults over his head. Atsushi watches, nonplussed, as Dazai’s coat catches on the man’s head and sends both men tumbling into an awkward summersault. 

In the next instance, Dazai’s on his feet, laughing maniacally. 

It’d be nice to see Dazai so happy if the man wasn’t still coasting the high of the very illegal, very potent strain of blunt he practically hot-boxed them both with on the car ride over. Atsushi spent the drive standing with his head popped out of the sunroof, listening to Dazai and the driver sling jokes at one another like excited children as the car swerved in and out of traffic.

“Eyes on me, brat.”

Atsushi uses the tiger’s speed to dart out of the way of a swift punch. He doesn’t dodge fast enough, and his shoulder takes a hammer. A terrible pop echoes through Atsushi’s skeleton, flanked by a rush of blazing pain. Wincing, Atsushi backpedals, using the tiger’s legs to jump halfway across the warehouse, eager to put some distance between them. Landing on his feet, his shoes grind against the dusty concrete until he skids to a shortstop.

The man only laughs. “What’s wrong, kid? Want your Mama to kiss your boo-boos?”

Atsushi narrows his eyes, popping his shoulder into place with the aid of the tiger’s arm. He wishes he could use the tiger’s arm for something better, like knocking out this bastard—but he’s loath to touch him. They don’t know which of these two is causing all those people to turn into children, and that’s the absolute last thing Atsushi needs. 

“I can hear it now--,” the man continues, walking briskly towards him, scrubbing his eyes with both fists like he’s crying. “Wah,” he taunts. “Mommy, it hurts”

Atsushi pedals backward, trying not to let the words get to him. He never had someone there to kiss his injuries, maternal or not. He doesn’t even know what that would feel like. 

The man’s legs are long and strong, carrying him closer with each brisk stride, his booming taunts echoing off the metal walls.

Too close. Too close, dammit! His budding fear must bleed onto his expression, because the man’s face sharpens with a cruel glee. 

“No? Let’s find out?” 

Atsushi’s back hits the wall. Panic floods him, subsuming every instinct telling him to run. He doesn’t want to go back to being helpless, to being unable to sleep because of the pain. He’s worked so hard to run from that weakness. He doesn’t want to go back! 

Gasping, he sucks in a lungful of rancid, stale air, flattening his body against the corrugated steel, unable to move for the terror. His heart beats itself bloody against his ribs.

The man closes the distance between them in two terrible strides, and Atsushi shuts his eyes.

“Atsushi-kun!”

Searing yellow light overtakes everything, stabbing through his eyelids. Atsushi flinches, shying away. He claps his hands over his ears, blocking out the sounds of a struggle. A moment passes, an eternity, and then Atsushi is left with a ringing silence and the thrashing remains of his heart. Gingerly, Atsushi lowers his hands from around his ears, cracking his eyes open.

Black spots flicker in Atsushi’s vision, a strobing ache in his skull. He carefully peels himself off the wall, blinking furiously as he looks around. 

On his back and bleeding, his assailant lies several yards away in an ungraceful sprawl of limbs, knocked out cold. Atsushi licks his lips, rubbing at his eyes. It seems to do the trick, the spots shrinking a bit, allowing him to see what’s right in front of him.

Sprawled in the dust is a child.

Lying on their belly, they stir weakly, as if from sleep. For a moment, Atsushi doesn’t understand what he’s seeing, thinking it’s one of the victims, transported here under vague circumstances. The child is small, perhaps seven or eight—but Atushi knows from personal experience that children come in all shapes and sizes, especially those left at the orphanage—and dressed in black formal wear. Short brown curls frame a face round with baby fat, eyes big and brown. 

A boy, perhaps. It’s difficult to tell at this age. 

They are dressed in a blazer, loafers, and shorts that hitch over their knees as they scramble to right themselves, tall white socks snagging on the concrete, one crumpling to their ankle.

“Chto?” the child chokes out, eyes darting around with a wild, unsteady fear before settling on Atsushi. 

Atsushi watches the panic claim every bit of the child’s body, his own panic cinching his windpipe shut.

He recognizes those eyes. 

With a gasp, Dazai staggers to the side and presses a hand to the collar of his white dress shirt. His familiar brown eyes are blown wide with trepidation and confusion, his voice a trembling breath.

“Gde ya?”

Chapter Text

Scraped off the floor by government officials, raised in government-owned facilities, and trained in government-run schools, Yukichi’s life was a study in solitary living. 

Friends were useless. Goals were pre-approved. ‘Bred for war,’ Genichiro would say in the rare times they were alone, in bed or on the battlefield, and he wasn’t wrong.

Tensions around the use of abilities had built up since the Second World War, and when the Cold War finally boiled over, it poured out in earnest.

The Great Ability War rolled across the world like molten lava, razing capitals and capital and innocent children. Carnage became commonplace. Yet, it was only when Yukichi stood in the wreckage of a Chinese village, blood caked up to his waist, that he realized he’d lived a life of pre-chewed choices. 

Raised for war, indeed. 

Peace treaties were signed, new world leaders took center stage, and Yukichi shed his leash and collar in favor of finding himself. 

In Yokohama, he found everything else: an old friend, a teacher, and a child—but it was the child who stuck fast to his side, like a piece of hard candy to a shoe—even his teacher-turned-husband spent the majority of the year out of the country.

Yukichi built a company around a child to keep that child safe, and soon, the children came crawling out of every nook and cranny and long-forgotten cell. He was not their father, but they were his children.

Looking at this miniature version of his employee sitting on a wooden chair in the main office, he feels like he’s gained another child—because this is not the Dazai Osamu he knows. Silent, avoiding eye contact, and dressed for a funeral, this Dazai Osamu is an unknown, and Fukuzawa feels as out of his element as he does with every new recruit. Unsure of what to say, how to offer comfort, he hangs back from his flocking, frantic employees, observing the situation from afar.

The boy’s legs are crossed at the ankle, black socks clinging to his calves. Knees bared. Warm light glosses off shiny loafers. The top button of his white shirt is unbuttoned—the only part of his ensemble that is not put together, professional in the way a small child should never be.

Yukichi doesn’t know what to make of it, truly, but Soseki will have a few words of advice if he can be found. Sometimes, Soseki stumbles upon a garden full of catnip and forgets himself—the number of times Yukichi’s found his husband screaming in the back alley behind their house is alarming, frankly. He’s toyed with the idea of getting Soseki’s chipped. He’s only half-joking.

“And then it was like, ‘boom!’” Atsushi waves his hands around his head, eyes wide, making the sound of an explosion with his mouth. “I thought I was going to die! If Dazai wasn’t there I would have probably—” His eyes take on a manic light, and his shoulders shake. “If I had to be little again, I’d—“ 

Yosano settles a hand on Atsushi’s shoulder, and the boy blinks away tears, trembling less, and offers her a weak smile. He retreats to the couch while Kunikida and Ranpo voices raise in argument, taking over. Yukichi watches Atushi go, fingers itching to run through the boy’s hair. He’ll have to buy him a bowl of chazuki tonight, if things go smoothly.

“He can’t stay here,” Ranpo shouts, slamming his hands on his desk, rattling the unopened bottle of ramune, packages of snacks shifting, hard candy spilling from an open cup. “He’s not Dazai anymore!”

“Ridiculous. He’s as much a liability as Dazai ever was. Just because he doesn’t know us doesn’t mean he’s not part of the Agency.” Kunikida scoffs, waving his pen from behind the boy, leaning against the windowsill, filling his notebook as he talks. Yukichi notes Kunikida’s shadow swallows the boy, the man cast in silhouette by the midday sun. 

Yukichi watches Dazai flinch, little fingers knotting in his lap, and remembers that the most important lesson he ever learned as a father was that things must be said, no matter how they hurt.

Kunikida’s hand cramps as he scratches observations into his notebook, the bullet points simple and to the point so he can argue with Ranpo in a semi-coherent manner and not focus on how the guilt curls in the pit of his stomach.

The genius detective rolls his eyes, taking off his hat just long enough to run a hand through black strands. “Actually, that’s exactly why he’s not part of the Agency anymore. He’s a completely different person. And I doubt our Dazai would want this Dazai airing his dirty laundry anymore than our Dazai was happy to have his blown in the wind without his permission. After all the grief you’ve put him through over the past month, you should be relieved Fancy Hat is even willing to take him from us.”

‘Get the fuck out of here,’ he remembers shouting. ‘You’re a fucking monster is what you are.’ 

Kunikida winces, choosing to ignore that barb, plowing through. “He’s what?!“

With a slump of his shoulders, Fukuzawa closes his eyes and sighs through his nose—startling the room into silence.

“Kunikida, come with me,” Fukuzawa says after a moment, nodding to himself as he turns towards his office.

Kunikida’s heart sinks. Glancing down at his notebook—‘too small for his age. how old is he?’—he snaps it shut, following the man into his office.

“Director,” Kunikda starts, shutting the door behind them with a conscientious click. “With all due respect, I don’t understand why you would call a member of the mafia to deal with Dazai, of all people. We still don't know why the ability affected him, and still have to interrogate the user." 

‘You belong there, you bastard. Fuck, I can’t even look at you.’

He follows the man deeper into his study, crossing the thick emerald carpet to stop in front of the man’s desk, standing at attention. While the man slowly crosses behind the desk, silver brows knit over stormy, thinking eyes, Kunikida takes a moment to collect himself.

He draws a hand through his hair, readjusts his glasses, and smears both palms down the front of his slacks to dry the sweat which had broken out on every damning inch of him. It seems Dazai managed to draw out the preteen menace in him even when he was one himself. Considering how quiet and small he was, perhaps Kunikida was slightly off the mark on this one. Maybe. 

Kenji’s joyful shouting rings through the door as if to wag a finger, Yosano’s cackling rapping against his skull.

“I understand your concern,” Fukuzawa says with an air of diplomacy, settling heavily into the high-back rolling chair whose sides and arms were decorated with brass buttons where the leather came together, the weathered material the color of ox blood. The old spring mechanism wheezes, punching the man much lower in the seat than it ought, putting his eyes on an even keel with Kunikida’s stomach.

Out of respect and in a bid to stave off the chance he sweats through the armpits of his shirt for a second day in a row, Kunikida sits down on the edge of the coffee table, lacing his fingers into his lap.

“I understand your concern,” Fukuzawa repeats. He narrows his eyes at Kunikida in a manner more serious than reprimanding. Still, a bead of sweat sprints down from Kunikida’s hairline, licking around the shape of his nose. On reflex, he darts his tongue out to catch it before it runs over his lips.

Kunikida’s lungs shudder weakly. “I mean no disrespect,” he manages, his voice cracking. His breath becomes shallow as he stews in the shame of it.

“Our Dazai may not feel safe with us,” Fukuzawa admits, opening the eyes of a much older man, the lines around his frowning mouth deepening. “And Nakahara-san might not be a familiar face, that’s true.” Arms rotate places within the sleeves of his kimono, a shadow passing over the man’s eyes. The darkness flits away as quickly as it had come, and yet its swiftness stabs a bolt of disquiet through Kunikida.

Fukuzawa continues, lofty and unperturbed. “It is also true that the Dazai out there is not our own, and he likely has many things to say our Dazai would not want us to hear.”

Fukuzawa’s voice is like a gavel. It casts judgment without malice, demands obedience without debasement, presenting the obvious to Kunikida without shoving his nose in it. A flush of shame erupts through Kunikida’s body, rocking him forward an inch. If there is shouting in the main room, he can no longer hear it.

If he can’t push through his own neurotic hang-ups to see something so frighteningly transparent, then how can Kunikida replace this man should the worst come to pass?

How can Kunikida make up for smearing his coworker’s name through the mud, if he can’t control himself?

Inadequacy swells within him, raw and ugly and wearing the shape of his mother’s disappointed scowl. 

Leaning forward, he folds both hands around the sharp edge of the coffee table and squeezes hard.

Atsushi tucks into one corner of the sofa, draping himself over the arm so he can rest his chin atop his folded arm. He watches Dazai listen to Kenji describe his life on a farm with rapt wonder. He can feel Yosano watching over his shoulder, sitting at her desk, the two of them absorbed in the wonder of Dazai being…cute?

If Atsushi were to answer how he would describe his mentor, he’d have to be into several cups of watered-down sake before someone—Yosano—would have to wrestle it out of him, cackling as she did so. He wasn’t like Kunikida. Dazai killing people, scraping the meat off their bones while they screamed—Atsushi’s eaten people alive, if he can’t look past his mentor’s past mistakes, how can he ever look past his own? Whoever Dazai used to be, whatever he used to do, he wasn’t the same man.

The man Atsushi knows, the man he chooses to know, is unserious in a way that made Atsushi think of clowns—cheerful personas hiding what well might be a darker, more insidious presence—but Atsushi doesn’t think it necessarily a bad trait to have, better than his own anxiety that drips from him like molasses, tarring him down so he has to struggle to function some days at all. Unserious. Unmotivated. Deeply, deeply sad. If there’s one thing Atsushi drew from his life in the orphanage, it was the ability to detect hurt in others, the kind of bone-deep trauma someone forms themself around like a pearl.

“—and cows have four stomachs, you know?” Kenji says, throwing his arms out wide in a way that makes both Atsushi and Dazai flinch at the same time. Whereas Atsushi’s full-body jolts in surprise, the light in the boy’s eyes gutters for a moment, the lines of his body rigid as he disguises his fright as a slow recline in his chair, his smile polite and plastic as Kenji continues on unaware.

It kills Atsushi to watch. Children shouldn’t know how to disguise their actions to avoid being hurt. Unable to sit around, watching the innocent joy leech out of Dazai in muted colors, Atsushi clears his throat, unknotting his limbs and standing up from the couch.

“Kenji-kun,” he begins pleasantly, walking slowly across the room towards them, forcing his shoulders to remain relaxed, unbothered. Kenji is a kid himself, after all. “Can you get some pastries from downstairs? I’m sure Dazai’s hungry now, and I could use a little sugar in me, too?”

Dazai loves sweets. Ranpo always leaves him a foam gummy or a chocolate koala on his desk, even when Dazai isn’t there—and Ranpo doesn’t share his snacks with anyone, so he must love them quite a bit!

Kenji nods and bounds out of the office, babbling about all the cakes he will most certainly eat all by himself if they don’t micromanage him, leaving the office blissfully quiet. Atsushi sighs, turning to his tiny mentor with a grin, but Dazai's face is anything but excited.

Dark brown eyebrows knit over troubled eyes, interlaced hands rising from his lap to tug at the collar of his shirt. “O-Oh?”Dazai’s eyes widen at the crack of his own voice before that sugar-spun smile stitches into place. “That’s fine,” he says, hands shaking with a fine tremor at his throat. “I’m not hungry, really. But I appreciate it, I do! Can just put it in the fridge for now and take it with me when I go?”

A part of Atsushi wants to point out that it’s useless if Dazai thinks this is a dream, but the boy’s body has begun to shiver lightly, his eyes wide and imploring. Atsushi nods, his smile equally false. “Of course! Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they give us a to-go box for anything you want to keep.” Hidden in his pocket, Atsushi scratches at the cuticle of his thumb, picking at the painful thread.

The boy visibly melts with relief, and Atsushi’s smile warms. He takes the hand out of his pocket and is tempted to ruffle the boy’s hair the way Dazai will sometimes do to him when he remembers that flinch and discards the idea. Better safe than sorry. Speaking of—

“Yosano?” He cranes his head to address the woman who watches them with a mischievous simper on red-painted lips, her elbows propped up on her desk and chin cradled atop thin fingers. She arches a brow in question, lifting a pinkie as if to say, ‘Go on.’

“Do you think we should call Kenji and tell him to wait until the Director comes out? I know Kunikida doesn’t eat sweets before noon, but sometimes the Director—”

“Th-The Di-Director?”

Atsushi whips back around at the frightened voice, a chill spreading through him.

The boy’s skin washes pale as milk, and his breath hitches into a squeak. Sliding off the side of the chair bonelessly, his panicked eyes dart back and forth, scanning the room. Small shoulders ride to his ears. Atsushi watches helplessly as terror sinks its teeth into Dazai. His feet stumble a couple of steps sideways towards the bookshelf. Thin fingers interlace, trembling, sinking as claws into his stomach.

“I-I don’t—,” the boy wheezes. “I-I don’t understand. I did e-everything right, I—”

Atsushi mirrors him, shrinking into himself, his brain dry firing options on what to do, how to fix this—how he messed this up, fucked over Dazai when the man trusted him with his life, and now Atsushi—

The sound of a roller chair being pushed back from a desk wrests Atsushi from his spiral, Yosano’s heels cracking against the wooden floorboards. Dazai has worked himself to the right, into the corner of the room where he shoved himself the narrow space between the bookshelf and the window when Atsushi wasn’t looking, huddling down below the sill—below the sightline—faced buried into bare knees, fingers digging into his scalp. 

“It’s alright,” Yosano coos to the boy from across the room, and Atsushi whips around again as she approaches, his confidence all but into shreds, replaced that damned timidity he always carried like a shadow scorched into his skin.

“I-I don’t know,” Atsushi cried, tears wicking his eyes. “He just—”

Yosano brushes past him, never looking at him, and walks briskly to the boy, lowering herself onto a knee a solid arms-length away from the trembling child.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Yosano soothes, a gentleness descending upon her which Atsushi so rarely witnesses.

Atsushi watches, shoulders hitching up, afraid Dazai will shut them out, but then the boy shakes his head, fingers still pulling at his curls.

“I did everything right,” the boy says, muffled into his knees. “Y-You don’t need to call her here.”

Yosano’s face creases for a moment, deep in thought, before she holds out both hands, palms face-up in offering.

“We weren’t going to call her,” Yosano reassures him. “Kunikida is talking with our supervisor. We call him the Director out of respect.”

The little fingers cease their pulling, the boy’s shoulders falling a fraction away from his ears. He does not lift his face from where it is buried in his knees.

“I...”

Atsushi strains his ears to hear him, taking a hesitant step closer to make out the words.

“How do I know you won’t turn into her when I lift my head,” the boy whimpers, fingers resuming their twisting and pulling. Atsushi’s own roots ache at the sight. 

Yosano’s brows crease together for a moment, before lifting in understanding.

“You still think this is a dream,” she eases out. “Then why can’t this be a kind dream?”

A fine tremor runs through the boy’s body. He lifts his head. Atsushi’s heart breaks at the tears glistening on the boy’s cheeks. The boy’s eyes are firmly shut, and his lips are pulled into a wobbling smile.

“I don’t have good dreams,” he forces out, wet and pleading, his eyes opening a slice. “And I don’t believe things that science can’t prove. Where’s your proof that this isn’t all a dream? A simulation?”

Atsushi’s eyes widen. Oh boy. That’s some real big ideas he’s not entirely unfamiliar with, and he has no desire to revisit them. Once he gets into a spiral of derealization, the only one who can get him to calm down and believe in the here and now is Dazai.

Dazai, with his hands that do not waver when they lead Atsushi back to his room. 

Dazai, with his kind offer of tea pressed into his trembling hands. 

Dazai, with his smooth voice singing him to sleep the way a mother might.

Atsushi’s teeth set in his jaw.

That Dazai isn’t here right now, but maybe Atsushi can—

“I don’t have any proof,” Yosano says, outstretched palms steady. Patient. “But our supervisor keeps cat-shaped marshmallows in his office. Would you like some?”

When Dazai opens his eyes, Atsushi is briefly floored by the color. Bright golden flecks glitter from deep-cut flecks of his iris, a yellow glow like amber held up to a light source. It’s a strange, almost unnatural sight. Dazai’s eyes are a hazel color on the best days, rolling dark and thunderous when he is serious, and tinting a faint crimson in the wrong light. Dazai’s eyes now are yellow in a way blue eyes become particularly striking when teary. It’s mesmerizing 

The boy’s expression warps into a sob, and his hands slowly lower to his knees, forming claws into the skin.

“I know you a-aren’t her,” Dazai stammers, allowing fat tears to roll down pink, chubby cheeks. “Your voice is different, and your eyes are d-different, but your hair—” his chest wrenches with a terrible, jolting hiccup, “and your lipstick are the s-same.”

Yosano pouts, folding to her other knee and sitting on her ankles to put them on an even keel.

“Well, I can’t do anything about my hair—my hairstylist is out of town this week, and I’m not keen on bleach—but I can get rid of the lipstick, if you like.”

She lifts her right hand to her mouth and wipes the color on the inside of her wrist before presenting both palms to him once more. 

“There, is that a little better?”

Dazai sniffles, nods weakly, and wipes his face on his sleeves. His lungs stutter and squeak as he tries to calm himself down, the shiny toes of his shoes turning in. Once he’s able to breathe without sounding like a piping teapot, he uncurls his body in loose-limbed, exhausted motions.

Atsushi crosses his hands over his heart, the organ beating hard against his ribs, a sigh of relief rattling through him.

Dazai puts trembling hands into Yosano’s still, assuring palms. A tentative hope twitches across the boy’s face, mirroring Atsushi’s own. 

Maybe it will be alright, even if Dazai isn’t here.

Yosano is not a motherly person. She is good with children, because they are children, and they deserve to be treated with as much decency as anyone else, but she won’t be having children anytime soon. However, watching this tiny version of her coworker trust her enough to usher him through a door which, to his cunning, infuriating mind, might contain untold horrors, awakens something deeply maternal in her chest.

Guiding him inside with a hand spread over his shoulder blades, Yosano keeps the door open with her in case the boy needs to make an abrupt exit—which looks more than likely with how Kunikida is trembling where he sits on the coffee table in front of the Director’s desk, shoulders bouncing as he speaks with barely restrained unease.

“B-But, if we hand him over to the mafia in any way, aren’t we breaking the truce?”

A red veil descends over Yosano’s vision, her hand switching from the boy’s back to his shoulder in a protective reflex, unaware of how she’s practically skewering him with her nails until he stiffens in her hold. She lifts her hand away like she’s branded him, taking a step back to give him his space. Her anger only grows as she watches the boy crane his neck to stare up at her with a fleeting look of betrayal before he becomes blank as a doll, not even bothering to rub his shoulder. He stands, watching her, waiting to be told what to do and how to do it, and she hates how she cannot hold his gaze or offer him answers, the anger snow-plowing her attending to the men in the room.

“You’re going to what?”

Kunikida jumps up from the table, spinning around with a look of annoyance which morphs quickly into abject horror when he sees which little ears have heard him. Yosano points to the door, glaring. “Get out.”

“Wha—”

“Get. Out. Take the boy.”

Kunikida glances back at the Director for a moment before hastily rushing towards her. The boy goes with a gentle hand on his other shoulder, Dazai’s gaze downcast and empty, but Yosano only has eyes for her superior.

When the door shuts with a sharp click, Yosano strides across the room with long, confident strides, slamming her hands on the man’s sprawling desk. 

“Please don’t misconstrue my intentions, Yosano-san,” Fukuzawa says, seemingly unperturbed by how she’s digging scratches into the glossy, dark wood. “I have no intentions to hand over Dazai into the hands of the mafia-proper. I truly believe Nakahara-san holds Dazai’s kun best interest at heart. He is Dazai-kun’s emergency contact, after all.”

Yosano pinches the bridge of her nose, irritated, but not surprised. “Of course he is, goddammit.”

Atsushi and Kenji are no longer in the main room. Sunlight seems to gleam a little brighter on the tables, fingers of white gold touching down on the floor, bouncing off the unopened bottle of blue ramune left on Ranpo’s desk.

Kunikida leads the quiet, blank-faced child to the couch without touching him, resigning himself to observe this strange iteration of his coworker. Robotically, the child sits on the couch, his legs too short to fully reach the floor, the toes of his shoes dangling a hair’s breadth off the floor. Dazai folds his hands into his lap, his back ramrod straight, and stares at his fingers, laced neatly together like before. A disquiet bleeds through Kunikida, children shouldn’t be so quiet, so frightened of repercussions that they know how to put on airs. 

“Well, that could have gone better.” Kunikida says, clearing his throat into his fist. He sits on the edge of the coffee table with one thigh folded beneath him so he can lean sideways and face Dazai, even if he is looking down on him from this height. The boy says nothing, his body made up of rigid lines, faintly shivering. Expectant.

Sourness creeps onto Kunikida’s tongue. He swallows thickly, smiling sadly through his words. “I saw Yosano got you pretty good in the shoulder, huh? Do you want me to take a look at it?” He’s mildly disturbed the boy didn’t rub it when it happened, his expression merely cycling between betrayal and fear before smoothing into the emptiness the child still wears, eyes dull and unlit.

Dazai’s hands tighten a fraction, but he shakes his head, staring into his lap. “I’m fine,” the boy says, toneless. “It doesn’t hurt.”

The four indents on the front of the shoulder of the boy’s suit jacket say differently, but Kunikida knows not to press.

Then, he’s struck with an idea.

“I know! Do you like drawing?” Kunikida says excitedly, clapping his hands together. The boy lifts his head in surprise, a bit of life returning to his eyes. 

“Drawing?”

Kunikida nods, jumping to his feet animatedly and scurrying off to the desk whose surface he shares with Dazai. A pang of nostalgia strikes him at seeing Dazai’s messy, paper-strewn workspace, ink smeared on crumpled documents. The blue ballpoint pen Dazai favors is left askew on the desk where he’d thrown it that morning, eager to do anything not involving paperwork. In contrast, Kunikida keeps his side of the desk immaculate. Paperwork and post-it notes are arranged in neat piles, three reference binders filled with various city resources sit upright in a wire rack, and his mug of green tea sits half-full and cold on a cork coaster shaped like a lotus flower. His drawers, however, are another story. 

Crouching down, he pulls out the right bottom drawer until it catches halfway. Loose colored pencils with chewed ends and crumbling fragments of charcoal roll loose across the five sketchbooks kept in the bottom. Packages of fresh charcoal sticks, colored pencils, and expensive pens and markers stack haphazardly atop one another, pushed to the back of the drawer in a way that makes it impossible to open fully. Kunikida reaches inside and jiggles the packages around before trying again. Then, when that doesn’t work, he relies on good old brute force. Grabbing the knob securely between two fingers, Kunikida yanks on the drawer with all his might.

The gears on the track let out a metal wail, and then Kunikida’s breath is punched out of him by the drawer cracking into his stomach. Gasping, he blinks away the spots in his eyes, the drawer falling out of his lap and onto the floor with a solid clunk.

Dazai’s tiny voice pitches over the desk, the lower half of his body pivoting on the couch from what Kunikida can see through the knee-hole. “A-Are you okay?”  

Kunikida wheezes, gritting his teeth, a dull ache spreading across his abdomen. If this bruises later, he might actually cry out of shame. “Just fine,” he grunts, peering into the dark recess of the desk to see if there was any way to salvage this, but he can’t see in this lighting, and he’ll be damned if he takes out his phone to check and waste even more time. Instead, he paws through the drawer, grabbing a pack of colored pens and pencils, an eraser not filed down to a nub, and his most recent sketchbook. Squeezing the items under one arm, pushes the drawer beneath his desk and climbs to his feet, brandishing a fake grin.

“Not to worry,” he says, returning to the boy and kneeling to spread the items on the coffee table. Dazai looks down at the items with hesitant interest, pitching forward slightly on the edge of the couch. Kunikida’s smile warms, and he picks up the sketchbook, and flips through dozens of mandala patterns and rough charcoal sketches that belong in the trash before stopping and folding the book to the first blank page. He presents it to Dazai with one hand. “I’m three-quarters through this sketchbook, and I always finish filling in one before moving onto the next, so feel free to start here.”

Dazai’s eyes flick from the sketchbook to Kunikida’s face, expression straining with ambivalence. After a long beat of silence, in which Kunikida curses his attempt to be vulnerable at work, of all places, Dazai takes the sketchbook with both hands. Pulling it into his lap, the boy bows at the waist, his back as straight as rebar. “Thank you for the opportunity,” the boy says, the words striking Kunikida as something rehearsed. Dazai lifts from his bow, pausing halfway, teetering, then rising back into a seated position just as rigid and robotic as before.

A bit disheartened and quite confused, Kunikida sits on his haunches and watches the boy set aside the sketchbook and reach for the two packages of drawing utensils, perking up when Dazai picks up the package of colored pencils. “Oh,” Kunikida exclaims, grinning. “Those are great! They’re made of vegetable oil and only the smallest of wax so your drawings never bloom, and they’re even water-resistant and smudge-proof!”

The boy’s brows pinch together, mouth twitching as he glances between the pencils and Kunikida’s face, clearly not wanting to use the pencils but unsure if he’s allowed to refuse. Unwilling to give up hope, Kunikida stitches on another smile and nudges the packet of pens. 

“These come in different sizes,” Kunikida offers, “but they’re all black ink. Great for sketching.”

Dazai exchanges the colored pencils for the fine-liner pens, his frown deepening as he reads the back of the package. Running his bottom lip slowly through his teeth, he lifts his wary eyes to Kunikida, his fingers tightening around the pens.

“I can’t re—” the boy starts, that disconcerting fear edging at his expression once more, but then his eyes slip to Kunikida’s chest pocket, and the fear vanishes. Dazai replaces the fine-liner pens onto the table.

“Could I have a pen like that?” Dazai gestures at his own chest with one hand, the other squeezing his knee with a white-knuckled grip.

Disappointment swoops in Kunikida’s sore stomach as he glances between the boy’s hands, followed by grief and frustration. Why couldn’t they calm this boy down? What did they have to do to earn his trust?

What on earth did Dazai go through to make him so certain of punishment? 

“Sure,” Kunikida says, rising onto his knees with the intent to retrieve Dazai’s pen from his desk, only to settle back down onto his ankles. No, seeing this child using Dazai’s pen would be too much for Kunikida right now. Instead, Kunikida takes his own pen from his pocket, holding it out for the boy to take.

“Use this,” Kunikida says, hoping his smile isn’t what is frightening him. His mother always said his smiles were ‘unnatural, at best’.

With the seriousness a child should not possess, Dazai takes the pen and returns the sketchpad to his lap. Holding the pad lengthwise across his hips and grasping it on the top edge he tilts it upwards, sets the pen to paper, and levels Kunikida with a grave expression.

“Which project number?”

Kunikida blinks. “I beg your pardon?”

Dazai’s throat bobs with a swallow. His voice brooks no humor. “Which project number,” he repeats, monotone. “What do you require?”

Kunikida shuts his eyes tightly, sighing sharply through his nose. That’s it. Clearly, he came at this from the wrong angle. He opens his eyes to the sight of a child terrified of being hurt—Dazai clutches the sketchbook to his chest, the pad creasing in the middle from his strength—and Kunikida hates nothing more.

“Look,” Kunikida says, scrubbing both hands down his face, breathing deep before flashing a winning smile. “Why don’t we do something else? Could I have my pen back for a second?”

Dazai gives a jerky nod, passing the pen to him with shivering fingers. The shards of Kunikida’s heart grind into powder. Persevering, he slips his notebook out of his breast pocket and flips to the first page. Quickly, he scribbles ‘stun gun’ on the page and rips it free, pinching the paper between two fingers and brandishing it between him and the startled child. Green flame catches the edge of the paper, engulfing it in a moment. As the glow fades, sunspots erupt across his vision like black mold. When those, too, fade, a stun gun is left in his open palm. Its weight is familiar comfort, an assurance he doesn’t have to take a life to save one, and he closes his fingers around the device, lips curling up with pride.

A delighted squeal draws his attention back to the child.

The child he just created a stun gun to impress.

Kunikida can’t berate himself when there are veritable stars shining in eyes brushed gold with excitement. The color catches him off guard, distracts him with questions about the palette range of hazel eyes, and prevents him from reacting in time. Dazai reaches out and touches the rubber body of the stun gun.

The effect is immediate.

Blue light consumes the world, Kunikida’s ears splitting with the ring of Dazai’s ability.

This time, when the strobing spots fade away, there is nothing in his palm except the ice-cold fingertips of a child. His ears continue to ring. 

Dazai gasps, jerking his hand back to his chest. Toppling backward, body folding awkwardly against the back of a couch too large for his body, he pulls his knees to his chest, hiding his hands in his lap. Wheezing in his diagonal, frantic curl, Dazai waits and watches for Kunikida’s reaction.

Kunikida cannot react, because to react he would need to understand what happened, which is impossible. This Dazai is an impossibility, so far removed from the Dazai Kunikida tolerates and worries about on a daily basis. 

“I can make anything smaller than my notebook,” Kunikida says, robotic and in control. Unable to tolerate the boy’s eyes on him, he drops his gaze and open palm to his knee, gripping it tight with all five fingers. Hesitating, he adds: “At least, as long as I’ve given them a good look. I have to know how it functions to create it with my ability.”

He takes his sketchbook and pens ‘stun gun’ once more with a shaking flourish. Another green flash. Another stun gun. He holds it out between them and says: “Do you want to see?”

This is how Yosano finds them, not fifteen minutes after she kicked them out of the Director’s office, their attention buried in the inner guts of a deconstructed weapon. Dazai watches Kunikida dissect and label his weapon, pointing fingers and asking questions with real excitement in his voice. Real wonder. But there is also a worrisome undercurrent in his voice: the hard analytical voice of a scientist. A doctor. It is Mori’s voice she recognizes being funneled out of Dazai’s throat. Her own voice.

Confused and a little disconcerted, Yosano clears her throat. Dazai lifts his head and smiles at her. 

“What is your ability?” he asks, his eyes filled with stars. A few loops in her knotted stomach loosen their clutch. Yosano grins, pleased to see Kunikida has drained some of Dazai’s nervous, frightened energy. 

“I’m a doctor,” she says, playing around. “Isn’t that ability enough?”

Dazai’s smile widens, nodding vigorously. “I love doctors! Being able to save people is awesome!” Yosano blinks, a little surprised at his earnestness. “Thank you,” she says, placing a hand over her chest, heat building up behind her eyes. Then: “Do you want to be a doctor when you grow up?”

Dazai’s face shutters, a brick wall flinging up between them. “No,” he says, his gaze flat and voice defeated. “No, I don’t.”

The boy visibly deflates, retracting his hands from the table where he’d been hovering over the pieces of what Yosano thinks might be a stun gun. What the hell, Kunikida?

Noticing the foreboding atmosphere, Kunikida lifts his head, confused. His fingers are black with grease. “Did someone say something?” he asks, his brows knitting together. “Dazai, are you alright?”

Dazai hums, gaze tucked in his lap.

Yosano shuts her eyes and takes a deep, calming breath, nostrils tickling with the smells of sodering oil and burning plastic. She presses the back of her hands to her cheeks, flipping to her palms. Stress bleeds the warmth from her extremities and makes her hair fall out in clumps in the shower. God, she’s going to need a good drink after all this blows over.

Opening her eyes, she flashes Dazai a winning smile. “Why don’t we go sit in the waiting room,” she says, holding out her hand. “There’s someone coming to meet you in a few minutes, and I’d like to go over a few things with you first.” She keeps her tone jovial, non-threatening, and still he looks at her hand like she might grow claws. Her gaze flicks to his shoulder, the four divots stark against the material, lingering. Perhaps, she already has.

Dazai rises to his feet slowly, taking her hand with ice cube fingers. He pointedly doesn’t look at her, eyes trained on his shoes.

“W-Wait,” Kunikida stammers, reaching out. “There’s only two more components before I reach the amplifier circuit!”

Yosano rolls her eyes. She squeezes the boy’s hand lightly, careful not to stab him again. “You can show him later, Kunikida. We’ve got a time constraint now.” She glares at him. “Nakahara-san is arriving in ten minutes.”

Kunikida scowls, sighing in displeasure. Returning his gaze to his gun, he begins the slow, methodical process of putting it back together while Yosano leads her tiny coworker to the waiting room.

“Now,” Yosano says, projecting a bright smile as the boy climbs onto the edge of the green couch, his legs dangling high above the floor. “I know you’re confused. Nakahara Chuuya is a friend of yours in the future. He’ll make sure you have a good time today.”

Dazai’s somber gaze drops into his lap, little shoes toeing inward—much too small for a teenager or even a pre-teen.

“Okay,” he whispers. “I understand.”

Yosano frowns, momentarily distracted by how small Dazai is. Then, taken over by a different sort of concern, Yosano sits next to the boy, making sure to leave a good-sized gap between them. Her weight jostles the cushions, causing Dazai to calmly steady himself sideways with one hand, rocking away from her before righting himself with a shift of his hips.

A clock ticks away from its high perch above the office’s entrance, its soft sound adding tempo to the silence. Sunlight beats through the windows, casting midday light onto the floorboards, warming the air. The coffee table separating their couch from its identical twin has its own wooden twin back in the main office, Kunikida no doubt waxing its surface clean with one of the silly, unsanitary handkerchiefs he keeps in the pockets of his trousers. Yosano makes a mental note to pull out the cleaning supplies before she goes home tonight.

She glances sidelong at Dazai.

He is smaller in profile, the angles of his adult face smoothed out into the softness of childhood. Even the well-washed spirals of his hair boast a healthy shine. She wonders how old he is, and if the loose curls would spring back into place if she tugged on one.

The air conditioner kicks on. Yosano’s nose tickles as the perfume and cologne of their last dozen clients swirl into life. She closes her eyes for a moment, breathing in the nostalgic mixture. Her mother’s house smelled like this—men and women and the occasional well-behaved child gracing the parlor of their cramped kitchen, searching for answers only an aging housewife could provide. Of course, it was all smoke and mirrors. Lies. Her mother was as much of a psychic as Ranpo was an ability-user.

“Cows don’t have four stomachs,” the boy says in a low whisper, causing her to open her eyes. Dazai stares sadly down at his twirling thumbs. “They have one stomach with four compartments so they can regurgitate their food back into their mouths, break it down, and digest it again and again…and again.”

Yosano’s stomach pinches. He’s either trying to tell her something, or perhaps, tell himself. A deep sadness punctures her chest. She may not understand fully, but Dazai’s life was obviously a living hell, even at this age. Maybe he really is dressed for a funeral. She wishes she had her lollipops, plastic toys, and roll of stickers she uses with her more reluctant, teary-eyed little visitors when she moonlights for primary care, but words will have to do.

“When I was your age, my mother passed away,” she says with a tenderness she’d never show in front of Dazai on a normal day. He lifts his head, and she’s once again surprised at his eyes—not the color, his eyes are free of tears, this time—and the depth of the hurt she finds there. Hurt for her. She is so caught off guard by the idea of Dazai showing genuine empathy, even at this age, that she doesn’t react in time to the thick, heavy stomps of purposeful footsteps from the stairwell. 

Nakahara’s voice shouts through the open doorway: “I’m coming up!” 

The sound of popping, ripping fabric draws Yosano’s gaze back to Dazai. His little hands have formed claws into the couch, threads snapping under his nails. The thin cables of his tendons stand out against the back of his hands, exposing the blue veins snaking through powder-white skin. A glance at his face tells Yosano all she needs to know about what will happen in the next seconds, but Nakahara has already mounted the steps, and the boy’s mouth falls open.

The man is dressed in the outfit Yosano usually sees him in on the field: a long jacket draping from his shoulders, hat slightly askew. The opposite couch obscures most of his body, cutting him off at the chest from her seated vantage, and Yosano half-expects Dazai to make a joke about his height like every other time they run afoul of each other with witnesses present. 

Instead, Dazai lets out a deep, guttural wheeze of terror. 

Eyes bulging, he clutches at his throat with both hands. Yosano jumps to her feet. Falling to her knees in front of the boy, her heart leaping in her throat, she flutters her hands about his person, afraid to touch. Then, he drags in another stuttering, painful breath, and another. Panic, shame, and an enormous self-loathing tumble across the boy’s face. His wild gaze darts between her and Nakahara, mouth spitting rapid apologies in unmistakable Russian.

“Prosti menya, prosti menya—“ he gasps in a thin voice, and then, realizing his error, squeezes his eyes shut, jaw spasming, and then tries again. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to—“

Yosano watches Nakahara’s face go through the motions. Poor bastard. “I uh—“ He looks to her for an explanation, brows knit in frustration and confusion, but she only shakes her head, returning her attention to Dazai, who continues to hyperventilate. The child’s wrist is cold and clammy as she takes his racing-rabbit pulse, hands grabbing and pulling at his collar.

“Match my breathing,” she instructs, taking a long inhale and then blowing it out slowly through pursed lips. His flighty gaze latches onto her, flicking to her lips. Running his bottom lip through his teeth, he copies her with jerky, exaggerated motions.

“I’ll come back later,” Nakahara says from the doorway, hesitation leaking into his voice.

Dazai cries out. “N-No! I’m fine! I-I fine! Everything’s fine!”

“Sweetheart,” Yosano says, cupping his warm cheeks in her hands. “You don’t have to go with him. You can stay with us all day, I promise.” Dazai searches her face for deception, those ruddy cheeks soft and trembling under her palms as if he’s about to cry. “Ranpo will share his snacks with you if you want some, and I know we have a lot of board games stashed around the office. We can play games and eat snacks and we can even bring out some movies if you want. And if you don’t want to do anything of those things, that’s okay too. We’re here to make you happy. You don’t owe us anything.”

The clock ticks forward.

Dazai bursts into tears. 

Huge, quaking sobs wrack the boy’s tiny frame. He clutches at his heaving chest, shaking his head. Sorrow and shame and panic gallop across his expression as he fights back his tears.

“Prosti menya,” he gasps, swallowing air. “Prosti menya, prosti menya, prosti menya!” 

The child flaps his hands, his breath pumping fast and shrill from little lungs, and Nakahara blusters past Yosano before she can do any damage control, his long jacket flapping like a cape. He grabs the boy by both shoulders and squeezes tightly.

Yosano wants to scream at him—in no world is that an appropriate way to calm down a child—but the panic flowing off Nakahara is unmistakable. His shoulders rise and fall with heavy breaths. 

“I got you, kid,” the man says in a shaking voice. “I got you, you’re okay.”

Dazai halts off mid-apology, blinking through his veil of tears, and looks up at Nakahara. 

Pupils become pinpricks. The boy’s distress dissolves into a blank mask of pure, primal terror, and he lets out a reedy shriek. Nakahara jolts, recoiling. All of Yosano’s hair stands on end. Dazai’s scream abruptly cuts off. Eyes rolling back, his head slumps forward, and Yosano lunges forward, knocking Nakahara aside just in time to catch the boy as he faints into a boneless heap.

Chuuya rips a hand through his hair, hat abandoned upstairs, and takes the four steps it takes to pace the private staff bathroom of the Agency’s downstairs cafe. His voice trembles, echoing in the small space. 

“He just screamed, ane-san! I grabbed him, and it was like I was the fucking boogeyman! I almost jumped out of my skin, and then he fainted. Fainted!”

Chuuya growls as the white box high above the toilet sprays him with chemicals, floral deodorizer consuming all the air.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Koyou says severely. Chuuya stops his pacing, frustration stretching out his ribs. “No, I wasn’t—“ The deodorizer spits at him again. Throwing up his free hand, he bursts out of the restroom and storms straight through the cafe. “Bathroom sprayed me with something,” he grouses into the receiver, ignoring the waitress and patrons who startle and jump out of the way.

Anger surges up to take arms against the panic and the confusion, and the deep-set betrayal thrumming in his chest. It’s easy to be angry and not think about how small Dazai looked on a couch made for adults, how his eyes lit up golden with tears or the way Russian spilled so easily from his lips. Stomping craters on the sidewalk outside the cafe helps cloud the image of a familiar face twisting in unadulterated terror at the sight of him. He stomps one last hole in the sidewalk, watching the cracks spider into the pavement of the street, staying his breathing. His lungs fill with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, wafting from the cafe entrance nearby, and the sour smell of diesel fumes. If there are people watching him, taking pictures or whispering amongst themselves, he pays them no notice.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Chuuya says finally, following a long crack along the sidewalk, stopping at the tall dandelion grown from a few stubborn green sprigs. The flower’s bright yellow head bobbles on the stalk, swiveling around like a drunk. It flashes its face at Chuuya as if to say hello, and he smiles despite himself.

The line is silent, the faint twangs of a recorded shamisen playing in his sister’s office the only sign she hasn’t hung up.

“I’m sorry, Chuuya-kun,” Koyou says, a genuine apology in her voice. Then, in the same breath: “Perhaps it was not wise to grab him in that state.” Chuuya lets out a bark of fond disbelief, shaking his head and grinning at his shoes. “Yeah,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes. I learned my lesson—but that still doesn’t change the fact I have to take him home.”

“Do you?”

Chuuya balks, spinning on his heel and marching right back into the cafe, waving his free hand. “Yes! Yes, of course I have to take him home with me!” This time, the patrons expect him. They lean over their tables and sandwich themselves on the bar; even the barista disappears beneath the counter. He opens the bathroom door and drags out the poor bastard fiddling with his fly, steps inside, and slams the door shut behind him.

“I’ve got to bring him home because he’s my fucking boyfriend,” he hisses. God, it smells like shit in here. Did someone take a massive shit in the five seconds he was outside? “And who knows what he went through at whatever-the-hell age he is now. Fuck—,” he runs a hand through his hair again, scraping blunt nails across his scalp. “He was so small.” 

Small and sacred and so unlike the Dazai he knows, who has never cried in all the years Chuuya has known him, held him.

Koyou’s voice is soft in understanding. “He probably wasn’t screaming at you, Chuuya-kun. You said he was still crying, yes? He probably couldn’t see very well and confused you with someone else.” Chuuya stands with this knowledge, rolling it in his mouth. It’s palatable.

“You know what to do, Chuuya-kun,” she continues. “I have faith you’ll show him the kindness he’s so sorely lacking. It seems both of you have more in common than you realized.”

Chuuya huffs good-naturedly, rolling his eyes. “Thanks for the advice, ane-san.”

“Tone, boy. But while you’re open to my suggestion, I may know of a few ways you can get around the whole…screaming debacle.” 

Yosano sits beside Dazai on the waiting room couch. She pets his back as the tremors finally subside after a whole hour of waiting, according to the clock, but to her, it feels like it’s been a whole entire day. Her back is cramping from sitting on the edge of the couch with Dazai so as not to startle him by sitting behind his line of sight, and she could kill for a glass of wine. As the last of the tremors bleed out of his little body, she can admit to herself it was worth the wait.

Nakahara’s hat sits on the coffee table where she placed it after he left the room in a hurry, a fine coating of dust from the throw rug coating one corner of the felt horn.

“Feeling better?” Yosano whispers, stilling her hand at the middle of his back, between his shoulders. Poor thing looks like death warmed over. His skin is pale and waxy, hands balled into the hem of the beige blanket in his lap. The boy nods weakly, staring ahead at nothing with tired, heavy eyes, and pulls the blanket higher in his lap. He wouldn’t throw the thick fuzzy blanket around his shoulders like Atsushi suggested when he all but fell through the door of the waiting room, panting like a madman and making everything worse—nor would Dazai drink the bottle of water Kenji brought with him back from his little cafe haul. Yosano understands. This is a boy well aware of his triggers, and his hypervigilance claws at the soft, small places of herself Mori and the War hadn’t stripped away.

Yosano cranks her neck to glance back at the door to the main office. It’s quiet, but that doesn’t mean much. She doesn’t know how much longer the others can stay their curiosity and concern.

“I-I have to write an apology letter,” the boy says, drawing her attention back to him. He twists his body to address her, dragging his left knee between them like an easel. Averting his eyes away, bottom lip snagging between his teeth, he pulls the blanket higher onto the couch, exposing his dangling leg. “But my Japanese is—can you dictate for me?”

Yosano blinks. “You don’t know how to write,” she says, a cold wash of shock flooding her veins.

He recoils a bit, eyes widening. “Oh, I do, but only in Cyrillic a-and a little Spanish.” He drops his gaze into his lap, picking at his nails. “I only learned to speak Japanese for phone calls with ambassadors.”

Yosano opens her mouth—because what the hell does that mean—when Nakahara makes his reappearance.

At least, she thinks it’s Nakahara.

The bleach precedes him, eating up the fresh air and making Yosano wrinkle her nose. A strawberry-blonde, brown-eyed stranger mounts the steps, his lips pulled taut into a plastic smile as he turns to face them.

“Ta-da~” he says, throwing a set of jazz hands, striking a wide stance. She realizes he’s not wearing his gloves. Yosano would laugh if he didn’t look so damn earnest, like a clown trying to cheer up a frightened child on hospice.

Yosano glances at Dazai, whose eyes have become as round as saucers, mouth parting into the smallest gasp.

Nakahara’s fingers keep wiggling, the silence keeps widening, and Yosano might actually pull out her phone to snap a picture before the man decides to break the tension on his own. 

“I could do without the contacts,” Nakahara laughs airily, striding around the opposite couch with a bounce in his step, “but I’ve been meaning to go blond for a while!” It’s an obvious lie, but Yosano won’t correct him on it.

Nakahara picks up his hat. He frowns at the dust and gently pats it off before tucking it into one of the oversized inner pockets of his jacket to save it from ruining on his head. The action wicks the air currents into a volley of bleach-sharp blows. Yosano puckers her lips in distaste and leans away. Dazai remains steel-spined and silent, his face schooled into a mask of neutrality.

“So,” Nakahara says, flashing a mask of his own, his smile serrated at the edges, brown gaze flickering between them. “Can we start over?”

Yosano smiles gently at Dazai, goading him with her eyes to give the pathetic mafioso a chance. However, Dazai doesn’t pay attention to her. He looks up at Chuuya with a mixture of hesitation and the slightest, smallest glimmer of relief, hands folded over his heart.

“Of course,” Dazai says, a tad mechanically, but his smile is small and soft and full of hope.

Chuuya wishes he could kill whoever re-decorated the ADA’s office after it got destroyed the last time. The green tiled floors, rich mahogany desks, and abundance of greenery had been exchanged with desks that were each slightly off-color from one another, wooden floors whose boards were too narrow, and identical plastic plants. And the couches—oh, the couches—were atrocious. Leather upholstery was replaced by hideous seafoam green.

Chuuya holds his tongue and joins Dazai on the single couch in the main office, ignoring how the overstuffed thing isn’t even soft, because he won’t risk igniting the still match between them. The other occupants in the room have cleared out, gone elsewhere—but the doctor lingers, watching, from her desk at the far end of the room.

A collection of pastries and drinks sits on the coffee table, warming the air. Chuuya recognizes them from the cafe menu. One of everything, it seems. He grins, eyes crinkling. How cute. 

“So what do you do in your spare time?” Chuuya asks, picking up a styrofoam cup of tea. The cup is drenched in condensation, steam puffing from the tiny oval in the lid. Water droplets spill over his gloved fingertips, a lukewarm heat pulsing through the leather. Clearly, the thing’s been microwaved. He hands it to the boy. 

Dazai takes the cup graciously, holding it in both hands, but his expression creases in bewilderment.

“Spare…time?”

Chuuya grimaces, looking back at the coffee table. Tiramisu, carrot cake, and an assortment of bear claws: the sweetness in the air is sickening. Some of the items haven’t survived the microwave, surfaces warped and melted. He’s not going to put any of this in his mouth, not by a long shot. He’s not into sugar, but Dazai would eat this stuff up like crazy.

“Yeah,” Chuuya grunts, picking up a plate containing a ham and cheese sandwich sectioned into four triangles, examining the selection. Each of the sandwiches has an uneven edge, obviously made after the initial cut. One of Dazai’s coworkers must have cut them to better suit being served to a child. It’s adorable as it is a tad insulting. The Dazai he knew back when they were kids would never stoop to being served a sandwich like this.

He glances at the boy beside him.

Dazai sits ramrod straight on the edge of the couch, clutching the dripping cup of tea close to his chest, just below his chin. Steam flutters from the opening in the lid, licking at the underside of his chin. The boy’s expression is impassive, eyes anywhere but the food on the table, his body titled just a little too far back to be natural.

“You don’t like the food?” Chuuya asks, gesturing to a tableau of treats, empty jacket sleeves flapping. 

Dazai jolts at the question, skin draining paper pale. Damp fingers tighten around the cup. With a pop, the lid rips open on one side. Without the compression, the cup crumples in his hands, its damp sides causing it to slip out of his grip before he can crush it completely. 

Chuuya lashes out with his ability. The boy gasps as the cup and its liquid contents glow red, stilling a hairsbreadth above his lap. Flicking his wrist, Chuuya coaxes brown orbs of oolong tea over the table. The empty cup bounces off Dazai’s lap and onto the floor. Chuuya swirls the tea bubbles in the air with a twirling finger, amused at Dazai’s slack-jawed surprise. The smell of oolong tea overpowers its competitors as it sloshes in a circle. 

Dazai claps his hands in delight, brown eyes shining. “telekinesis,” he cheers, turning from the show to shower Chuuya with the rays of his excitement. 

Chuuya smirks. “Not quite.” Curling his fingers into his palm, he bends his wrist downward, instructing the liquid into a fluid, serpentine funnel into an open bowl of chazuke, concealing the rice as it rises to the brim.

“I’m a gravity manipulator,” Chuuya says. “But enough about that, you still haven’t answered my question. Do you not like the food?”

Guilt prickles across Chuuya’s skin when the joy vanishes from Dazai’s face, replaced by a flustered panic. 

The boy scrambles off the couch and retrieves the cup before hurriedly reclaiming his perch.

“A-Ah, I don’t—I mean, I don’t dislike the food, I just…” Dazai crunches the cup with both hands, cramming styrofoam under his fingernails. Chuuya hates how Dazai won’t look at him, his eyes downcast as if he’s at risk of a beating if he dares to make eye contact. The weakness in his voice has Chuuya’s molars grinding in a quiet, simmering anger. There’s nothing about Dazai that can show weakness.

The boy picks at his nails, creating a tiny pile of styrofoam flecks in his lap. “Can I put it in a box? Like Kunikida-sama said before?”

Yosano pipes up cheerfully from across the room. “Of course,” she says, laughing to herself. “And you don’t need to call him that. Just the normal honorific is fine.”

Dazai’s shoulders melt in relief. “Oh,” he breaths out, laying a hand on his chest. “Thank you, Yosana-sama.”

She chuckles deep in her chest, pleasantly surprised. “I’ll accept that.”

Chuuya clears his throat, placing a hand on the back of the couch and scooting himself backward so he can recline more comfortably. The upholstery catches on his jacket, forcing him to tent it like a skirt to sit down properly. He deserves a little break after bleaching his hair in the cramped, stinky bathroom of a cafe. His eyes sting from the cheap, store-bought contacts, and the skin where the bleach lingered on the edge of his hairline burns in the faint blowing wind of the air conditioner. This whole situation is killing him slowly. What a shitty way to start the week.

“So,” Chuuya starts, satisfied when Dazai’s eyes flick back to him without fear, mollified by his saddeningly simple request, “back to my earlier, earlier question. What do you like to do for fun?”

Dazai’s gaze drops again. 

He picks at the cup, shredding it into long, noisy strips. “I don’t…I don’t understand the question. I’m sorry. Could you phrase it another way? Maybe I don’t understand Japanese as well as I thought.”

Chuuya resists the urge to sigh. Kids really do have so much more energy than adults. He can’t imagine going through so many whiplash emotions in the span of a few minutes. Even watching Dazai flit between the extremes of hypervigilance exhausts him.

“Don’t worry about it, kid.” Chuuya definitely does not want to unpack that last part; Dazai is the most articulate motherfucker he has the displeasure of knowing. He doesn’t understand enough Japanese? “Do you like music?”

Dazai nods once, lips pinching into a white seam. “I do,” he says softly, his voice melancholy once more. “It takes the silence away…and helps me relax. I can’t play it loudly, though, or I’ll forget to listen for footsteps.”

Great. Fantastic. That’s not creepy at all. 

“Nice,” Chuuya cheers, “What kind of music?

“Mmm, I like music that’s culturally based?” The boy abandons the styrofoam mountain in his lap and counts on his fingers, starting with the thumb. “Arabic, Samoan—I used to listen to a lot of Taiko drums, but I couldn’t calm my heart down sometimes. Um, Celtic, I guess? I won’t listen to Classical or Jazz…that’s it, really? I like music with a history behind it, something that relates to the people who made it.” Dazai lifts large, earnest eyes to meet Chuuya’s gaze. “What kind of music do you like?”

All the moisture in Chuuya’s mouth has evaporated. This is more than news to him—it’s like speaking to an entirely different person. An intense sense of anxiety snakes its way up his spine, coiling dense and heavy in his lungs. 

It is not an answer a child would give; even Chuuya knows that, and he had never been a child.

A wan smile stitches itself across his face. “You have quite the varied tastes,” he says, pumping levity into his tone. “How old are you, by the way? Let me, guess: fifteen!”

A light blush ignites across round cheeks, flushing bright to the tips of Dazai’s ears. The boy plays with the styrofoam flecks in his lap, sweeping them into a fist for later. “No,” Dazai mumbles, his lower lip jutting sweetly. “I’m nine.”

Chuuya nods. He thought so—but the boy is still much too thin, the black suit doing little to fatten the lines of his body. 

He flicks his gaze up and down Dazai’s attire. A black suit, huh? 

Chuuya is a man with few cards held to his chest. Deception and strategy aren’t his style; he’d much rather be honest with both his enemies and his allies to be true to himself and prove he is here and he is human. Dazai had no such compunctions. Chuuya might share his bed and his body and half of his heart with the man, but Dazai has never shown him where he lived during their days in the mafia, shies away from anything but cuddles, and Chuuya can only hope he means a hexadecimal as much to Dazai as Dazai does to him. 

Sometimes, he wonders if he knows as much about Dazai as his coworkers do.

“Do you have any other hobbies,” Chuuya ventures. “How do you spend your day?” Dazai might never forgive him later; it might be terribly back-handed of him, but this opportunity will never present itself again.

Chuuya has been fascinated by the idea of time travel. All the people he could save, all the bastards he could kill…all the blankets he could wrap around Dazai’s narrow shoulders. the hugs he could give him. 

Time waits for no one, and he’s going to give Dazai the most spectacular childhood known to man. 

“Well,” Dazai tips his head, pursing his lips in pensive thought. “I was trying to show Kunikida-sama—“ the boy gasps, the color receding once more from his skin. “Kunikida-san, but he didn’t want to see it. He brought me a sketchbook and some pens, though.” Chuuya mourns the loss. If only he could pinch the color back into his cheeks, Dazai always had the most adorable blush. He rehashes the last sentences in his head, an old familiar resentment simmering in his stomach.

Kunikida’s name is a curse in their household, as far as Chuuya is concerned.

‘I was slacking off at work so Kunikida-kun choked me! Isn’t he so mean?’

‘I fell asleep on the couch and Kunikida-kun pushed me off, the spoilsport! Hey, Chuuya, do you want to order pizza or Chinese tonight?’

‘…I don’t understand why Kunikida-kun didn’t believe me when I told him I was depressed. He asked me how I was, and I told him. I don’t get it, Chu. I don’t get it.’

Chuuya forces himself to take a deep breath, opening his eyes to Dazai’s concerned face. Fending off his resentment of his boyfriend’s coworker, he feigns an innocent curiosity.

“What didn’t he want to see?”

The boy twists his body so he can perch on the couch with his knees, legs folded tight against his body so his shoes don’t dangle over the table of food. He searches the room from afar with squinted eyes, running his bottom lip through his teeth. “I don’t know if I can still use them, though. He might not want me to touch them without him.”

“I got it,” Yosano pipes up from her desk, softly scraping back her chair. “He left them over here.” 

The doctor pushes to the toes of her bright red heels and reaches into the topmost shelf of the bookcase lining the wall shared with the Director’s office. Her skirt swishes about her ankles as she touches back down with a soft sigh, and she takes a moment to tuck a lock of black hair behind her ear before spinning on her heel with a smile. She closes the space between them in eight long strides. Her arms are laden with what appears to be a sketchbook and a pair of plastic-packaged writing implements.

The golden bangles on her wrist chimes when she thrusts the selection out to Dazai. “Here you go,” she chirps, grinning at Dazai fondly. “Have at it, kid. And let me take that for you,” she gestures to the fist gripping the starburst remains of the cup. 

A polite smile wrinkles Dazai’s cheeks as he lowers carefully back down into a seated position, exchanging items. “Thank you, Yosano-sama,” he says, resting them in his lap. Yosano darts a glance at Chuuy while Dazai is busy twisting around, setting the packages on the couch. 

‘Be nice,’ she mouths, still smiling. Dazai pries open one of the packages with a pop of hard plastic, humming to himself.

‘Get fucked’ Chuuya replies in turn, grinning with all his teeth. Why is Dazai afraid of him when this is the woman who has him waking up in tears some nights, begging to be spared?

“Alright,” Dazai says, cracking a pen out of its plastic mold. “I’m ready.”

‘He thinks this is a dream,’ Yosano mouths, snorting. She flicks her nails at him as she leaves, returning to her desk. Chuuya’s grin falls into a firm frown. The agency’s director briefed him on what happened, but Chuuya thought the agency would have been able to convince Dazai of this being real, at least.

He can understand Dazai being skeptical of this being the future, but a bunch of strangers lying to him sounds more plausible to Chuuya than a lucid dream. What the hell kind of dreams does this kid have—or rather, how drastically different is his day-to-day that being essentially abducted by strangers could be so impossible? 

“I’m sorry,” Chuuya says, clearing his throat. “I zoned out for a second. Can you say that again?”

Dazai hums, nodding. He flips through a collection of random sketches until he lands on a clean page. Folding the sketchbook horizontally, Dazai clicks open the pen and looks up at Chuuya expectantly, if a tad wary.

“What project number do you want?”

What?

Chuuya blinks rapidly, properly flummoxed.

“Project number?”

Dazai nods, looking back to his notebook. “Yes, sir,” he says robotically. “You asked to see what I do all day. What number do you want to see?” Dazai’s voice holds firm, but a fine tremor runs through the hand holding the pen. A weight sinks low in Chuuya’s guts. 

“Four,” he guesses, wetting his lips.

Dazai nods again, a tad curt. Chuuya watches his brows dig together, mouth firming into a line.

The boy sets the pen to the top left corner of the page, and starts sketching. Figure 01 Dazai scratches in Cyrillic—a fact Chuuya only knows from the amount of research he’s had to sort through following the whole prison fiasco with Dostoyevsky—before using the straight edge of the plastic package of colored pencils to form a vertical rectangle the size of a business card. With strong, confident strokes, the rectangle becomes three-dimensional, and soon, Chuuya is able to recognize the object as the same one crammed against his hip bone.

“Oh,” Chuuya says, pointing at the image. “It’s a smartphone!” Is that what this is? Charades? Are they playing charades? Chuuya’s lips twitch into a grin, a burble of excitement stirring in his chest. He loves charades! At the mafia holiday parties, he and Dazai were the reigning champions at charades, always knowing what the other was with the barest movements. It cracked Dazai up. Chuuya’s glad to see this Dazai shares at least one thing in common with his older self.

But this Dazai only stares up at Chuuya with a startled expression. “Oh,” Dazai murmurs, crestfallen. “I thought I could surprise you. I guess it makes sense you’d know what it was before I was finished, considering this is a dream.” Dazai’s right foot kicks out lightly—the first real childish expression he’s made so far—and the boy tucks a curl behind his ear, flipping to another page.

“Okay,” Dazai says, “this time, can I hide the page from you? To surprise you?” He looks up at Chuuya with big brown eyes like maple syrup, and Chuuya will be damned if he snuffs out this small joy from the kid.

“Of course,” Chuuya says, smiling with closed lips. “Go ahead.”

Dazai shifts his body, keeping his shoes off the upholstery as he rearranges his legs to support the sketchbook at an angle. He picks up a black marker. Chuuya waits, listening to the felt tip scratching across the page, watching the boy’s face crease in concentration. Divot to his brows, pink tongue poking out of his mouth, Chuuya recognizes the same face in miniature he’s seen in every mission briefing when they were kids. It was annoying on Dazai’s face then; now it’s just adorable. A minute passes, then another. Chuuya grows impatient by the third rotation of the minute hand, opens his mouth to say something along the lines of—‘why don’t we do something else?—but then Dazai’s taking down his knees and turning around the sketchbook to show it off to Chuuya, and all of the background noise in Chuuya’s brain pulls to a violent stop. 

He gapes at the sketch, pulse lurching unsteadily in his throat.

Every line is drawn with confidence, not a scribble or a scratch anywhere on the page. There are equations drawn in a column penned to the right side of the page, the word ‘Proof’ written at the top in Cyrillic. Chuuya never experienced a formal education, but even he can tell these aren’t equations found in a high school textbook. Perhaps not even in college; forget letters—there are whole waveform symbols and graphical spheres neatly diced amidst the numbers.

A car screams across the right side of the page. The word ‘Ideation’ is written as a neat sub-heading. 

At the top of the page straddles: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle.

Chuuya doesn’t realize he’s leaned forward into the boy’s space to inspect the page until Dazai is pulling it back flush against his chest. Brown eyes watch him, filled to the brim with a growing uncertainty. 

“Oh wow,” Chuuya hears himself breathe, leaning back onto his side of the couch. “You could be an engineer.”

Hurt tumbles across the boy’s expression. 

“But I am an engineer,” he says, dropping his injured gaze, lowering the sketchbook onto his lap. Fingers interlace over the page, blunt nails digging white indents into the back of tiny hands, tendons tight as his trembling voice. “That’s my job.”

Chuuya swallows thickly, unsure what to say. He’s out of his element, so far into outer space he can no longer feel his fingertips where they curl limp at his sides. An engineer? Dazai? That’s certainly not a word he’d put the man, even as a boy. A tactician, sure—a politician, even—but engineering?

“I think we should go,” Dazai whispers after a long, stretching silence. He replaces the pen into it’s package with trembling fingertips. “I’m just not going to fit in here.” He gestures at the table with one hand, the other snapping the sketchbook shut. “They’re too nice. Too…unlike me. You and I, we’ve—“

He pauses, catching his lower lip between his teeth once more. When he looks up at Chuuya, it is with half-lidded eyes as dark and depthless as a pair of ancient wells, forgotten by time.

“You and I have both killed people,” he says in a low, rolling murmur, “so…I think it’d be fine if I went with you…is that okay?”

No one stops Chuuya from leading little Dazai out of the Agency’s office. Yosano throws a wave at the boy, her smile brittle like sugar glass, the rest of her coworkers conspicuously absent. Dazai follows him as dutifully as a duck down the narrow staircase descending to the cafe, his footsteps silent, not in the way Dazai’s footsteps often were—born of stealth and strategy—but in a timid and quiet manner. It breaks Chuuya’s heart with every step, swelling questions in his throat he knows better than to ask. When they exit into the cafe, the missing Agency members make their appearance, seated in the booth closest to the front door. Kunikida lifts his head from his cup of steaming coffee. The fog clouding his glasses is not enough to hide the sickening amount of worry on his face. Chuuya restrains himself from grabbing a nearby chair and lobbing it at him with the weight of an avalanche behind it. Kunikida may be Dazai’s ‘partner’, but Chuuya is his Partner, and as far as he’s concerned, Kunikida’s concerns are worthless. Still, the man’s acknowledgment of their presence is enough to stir the others at the table.

“Oh,” the blond farmer boy cries, turning around in the booth to hook his chin over the back. “Did you like the food?”

Chuuya glances behind him, frowning at the fright on Dazai’s expression. He holds a hand out to the child before returning his attention to Dazai’s shitty coworkers. “We took a to-go box,” patting the bulging pocket of his coat where his hat rests. A little hand slips into his own, Dazai’s fingers thin and freezing. Chuuya rubs his own around them, coaxing warmth into them, and sneers at the table. 

“See you in a few days or whatever,” Chuuya says, striding through the cafe, his tiny charge keeping pace so his grip never goes taut. As expected, the be-spectacle pencil pusher slides out of the booth to block the entrance.

“So you’re taking him, then,” Kunikida says, crossing his arms across his chest, taking a broad stance like he was going to stop Chuuya from stealing away with Dazai like a thief. His coworkers watch from the booth with wide eyes, the rest of the cafe drained into silence. 

Chuuya stops in his tracks, anger rising into a boil. He drops Dazai’s hand lest he crushes it. Closing the space between them in two swinging strides, Chuuya stabs a furious finger into Kunikida’s chest, forcing him back a step.

“You’re damn right I’m taking him with me,” Chuuya snarls, jabbing his finger with the glowing weight of a strong punch. Kunikida grunts, stumbling backward another two steps, his glasses fogging even stronger in the heat billowing from the open cafe door. With a determined twist of Kunikida’s lips, he tries to retort, to square his steps, but Chuuya isn’t finished with him, jabbing another bruising stab into his sternum.

“You don’t take care of him like I do,” Chuuya yells, voice rippling throughout the room. “You don’t even know the first thing about him!” 

Another jab, another wince, another step back—this time, across the threshold. Kunikida’s coworkers stir, shouting. Chuuya ignores them beneath the blanket of his fury. “You don’t keep him safe, like I do. You don’t love him like I do, and you sure as hell don’t know him like I—“

Dazai screams. A terrible, terrorized shriek exits tiny lungs with the force of a steam whistle. Chuuya doesn’t have time to turn around before the boy dashes past him, flinging himself on the ground, not between him and Kunikida, but on the patch of sidewalk behind him.

Kunikida startles. His heel strikes Dazai’s body, jostling a reedy cry from the child. It is only Chuuya’s quick reflexes which has him grabbing the man by the collar and hauling him like a ragdoll up and over his shoulder. The man shouts, flies into the cafe, and lands on his back with a thud, but Chuuya only has eyes and ears for the little stranger huddled on the sidewalk. Brown curls tremble, catching the sunlight in glossy spirals, his arms and legs pinned close to a body shielding something precious.

“Dazai?” Chuuya says, his voice caught in a whisper of disbelief. The boy whips his head up, exposing a face washed pale and frightened and warped with the desperation of a child begging not to be hurt. His eyes lance a strange, flickering gold in the sunlight.

Disturbed and rather light-headed, Chuuya’s gaze drifts down to the bouncing bright dandelion cupped between tiny hands, sprouting stubbornly from the sidewalk. 

Chapter Text

Beyond the walls and windows of Chuuya’s car, the world melts. 

Few people linger on the road, wary of leaving their tires to the mercy of steaming asphalt. On the sidewalks, pedestrians keep their heads down to avoid meeting the glare of storefront glass. A firetruck pumps water onto the scorched remains of a shop, the water cannon beginning to warp and melt in the spotlight of the skyscraper window causing the blaze to begin with.

Within the metal cage, Chuuya’s resolve puddles into the footwell.

“I never thought the real sun would be so warm,” Dazai murmurs from the backseat, his voice alight and airy. Chuuya watches Dazai press his cheek adoringly against the glass, a snake coiling in his stomach. His foot, a feather on the gas. Simply, watching. The boy shuts his eyes, basking in the sunlight. Chuuya’s fingers form shackles on the steering wheel. Dazai’s cheek must be scalded by now, pressed so tightly to the glass. Venom spreads through the ache in his Chuuya. He doesn’t understand.

This wasn't what he expected when he was told to pick up his boyfriend. 

Despite the guilt-gushing nausea, curiosity taps against his teeth. Chuuya opens his mouth, intending to pry for answers, only to backtrack on the exhale. “Let’s put on some music,” he says. Sweat stands out on his skin. The air conditioner died sometime between picking Dazai up, and driving away with him.

The boy hums a soft affirmative, lifting both palms to the glass. Brown eyes glint gold in the sunlight. “And the cars,” he croons, words pitching high in excitement. “I didn’t know there would be so many…and the sky...the sky is enormous!”

Chuuya breath catches in his throat. His hand falls short of the music dial. He spends the rest of the ride listening quietly to Dazai squeak and squeal, blinking through a veil of tears as the weight of the world settles over him.

‘How can there be so many people in one place?’

‘Is that a stroller?! I’ve never seen a baby before…”

‘The ocean! Oh, I hope we can go back to the ocean before I wake up! I wanted to jump in when I first met Nakajima-sama, but I didn’t want to be rude. Do you think the ocean will be warm or cold? I hope it’s warm. I don’t like the cold…’

The heat of the car seems to be getting to the boy, loosening his tongue. Chuuya finds his own tongue melting out of his mouth, his resolve coming unglued in the hearth of so many terrible confessions. 

“I’ll take you to the beach,” Chuuya promises, finding his voice as they pull into the underground carport of his apartment. “I’ll take you to the beach and the playground and the grocery store, too. I’ll buy you all the toys you could ever want, and tomorrow I’ll take you to the amusement park and the natural history museum, and if we have any time in the evening, we can go to the movies.”

Darkness washes over the car, promising a cool reprieve from the heat. Green and red beacons tell him where to drive and where not to drive, and his hands coast the car on autopilot toward its reserved spot. In the backseat, the boy is silent. Chuuya glances in the rearview mirror, expecting a response, but the boy is made of shadows. Silence and stillness. His eyes find Chuuya’s in the mirror, glistening and terrified.

“Shit!” Chuuya jams all the buttons on the ceiling, flooding the car with yellow light and flicking open the sunroof. Slamming on the breaks, he twists around in his seat, intending to reassure the trembling child. Dazai has shrunk away from the window, curled into a knobby ball, uncaring how his heels bit into the leather upholstery.

“What’s happening,” Dazai wheezes, high and breathless. “Are we being eaten? Did the Tower e-eat us?” In the shadows spilling across the backseat, Dazai’s eyes swallow all the light, gleaming gold and luminous. Strange.

Chuuya’s brain spits fumes. The boy’s gaze flickers up at the gaping void of the sunroof, his arms wrapping tight around his knees. Waiting for death. Chuuya tries to imagine what the boy is seeing—if there happens to be a couple of beacons above the car, resembling eyes—and what he might be thinking. Too horrible to contemplate, Chuuya jabs at the buttons again, the sunroof closing slowly with a low whirr.

“I’m sorry,” Chuuya chokes out, pressing a button on the center console. The backseat blinks into life, yellow light scattering shadows, and the boy lifts his head from his shuddering ball of limbs. 

“I’m sorry,” Chuuya repeats. “I should have explained where we were going. This is the parking garage for my apartment.”

Dazai blinks, dew gathering on long lashes. His voice is a piping reed. “I don’t...What?”

Chuuya grimaces, his grip growing claws where he hangs onto the headrest and shoulder of his seat. “A parking garage. For my apartment.”

Annoyance, frustration, and a flash of defiance dash across the boy’s face in swift succession, only to be replaced by a stone wall of forced professionalism. “I know what those words mean,” the boy says with a measured calm, uncurling his legs. His shoes touch down onto the footwell with a gentle tap. “I just thought we were going to the Port Mafia Headquarters. That’s what Fukuzawa-sama said.”

Chuuya sighs out through his mouth, shutting his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, Dazai’s expression has returned to that quivering uncertainty.

“We’ll visit my Boss tomorrow,” Chuuya says, because it is inevitable. “Today, I thought we could enjoy ourselves. Take it easy. Does that sound okay?” 

Dazai’s lips lift into the tiniest of smiles. A helpless sort of smile. Used to acquiescing with another’s plans. Chuuya adds: “But don’t worry, we’ll still do all those things I said. Just not today, alright? It’s too hot to play outside today.”

An elevator takes them from the parking garage to his front door. Only his. The retinal scan Dazai installed last week provides the access key.

‘It only works with your pretty blue peepers,’ Dazai had sang, stretching out on the couch like the cat he cradles to his chest. ‘Now, come and thank me for being so thorough!”

Little Dazai vibrates like a spent bullet casing. He spins in circles beside Chuuya in the elevator, starry eyes staring into his infinite reflections stretching in wrap-around mirrors. “This is amazing,” Dazai cries. “The elevator’s really moving. I didn’t know it’d feel so different from the one in—oh, how wonderful!”

Chuuya grits his teeth, affirming the boy’s enthusiasm without letting his own complete lack of it edge into his voice. The elevator shutters to a stop at his floor. The doors slide open with another scan of his eye.

His apartment opens to a gentle warmth. A gentle darkness. He supposes he’ll have to wait a full twenty-four hours to have Dazai undim them.

“Come on,” Chuuya beckons, leading the boy into their home. “Let’s get some food in you. I’m sure we can find something you like to eat. My fridge is full enough.”

A stoic hush befalls Dazai, becoming that dutiful duck once more. “If you’re comfortable with it, please leave your shoes by the door,” Chuuya suggests, probing deeper into the apartment. He catches sight of Momo on the bed. A sleeping croissant. Chuuya shuts the door to his bedroom. It’s best not to let them meet—not when he can’t gauge Dazai’s reactions in this form—he can’t risk her getting hurt.

“What would you like to eat,” Chuuya asks, gesturing with his head towards the kitchen. “Or rather, what do you not like to eat?” 

Dazai’s gaze glues itself to the carpet of the living room where he’s rooted himself, his socked toes rubbing together. White cotton. He fists his hands in the fabric stretched military-tight over his tummy. 

“I don’t eat animal products,” he murmurs after a long stretch of silence.

Chuuya’s brows fly up of their own accord. Well, he wasn’t expecting veganism, but he can work with that.

“Any allergies? Intolerances? Wait, those aren’t the same things, yeah?”

The boy shakes his head. Pauses, thinking, then shakes it again.

Chuuya smirks and shrugs his shoulders. Helpless, himself. “Then I can definitely work with that. Turns out the older you likes his veggies too.” He doesn’t, but little Dazai doesn’t need to know that.

Dazai nods to himself. Big brown eyes glance up at Chuuya through curling lashes, before flicking back down at the carpet. “That’s…nice,” Dazai says uncertainly. “This is a pretty apartment…I’m sure grown-up me would really love living here with you.”

Chuuya frowns, detecting the sour notes in Dazai’s voice. The redhead turns around and pads into the kitchen, throwing his voice lightly. Testing the waters. “And what kind of place do you live in right now? What’s it like?”

Heading towards the fridge, he throws a quick look over his shoulder. Sure enough, Dazai’s expression is pinched in bitterness. He says nothing.

Chuuya sighs, opening half of the fridge with a sharp jerk. The fridge is divided from top to bottom to give the freezer equal space. He doesn’t much care for the layout, but Dazai does consume mostly animal products, and Chuuya’s own metabolism demands an overdose of protein. Cold air puffs into Chuuya’s face, feathering the hair from his forehead, skin tingling where the bleach lingered too long. It’s not his first bleach job—Dazai once wanted to try highlights back in the old days—but it was certainly the hastiest. Chuuya doesn’t think he’ll ever make a repeat in a dingy cafe bathroom ever again.

Sauce bottles of all kinds fill out the shelves, turned upside-down for easy squirting. Dazai gets impatient if the mayonnaise for his tuna doesn’t spit out fast enough, and the last thing Chuuya wants is to revisit the Great Mayonnaise Incident of last year. He’s had enough of disinfecting his kitchen for a lifetime. Now that Dazai has somewhat moved into him, such changes are a must.

Pre-prepared meals are on the main shelves for when Chuuya is out of town and Dazai can’t bring himself to cook. A cobblestone street of nutrition.

Fresh leafy vegetables are tucked away in the crisper drawer, onions and beets stashed in the drawer below it. Dazai hasn’t touched a vegetable Chuuya didn’t ram down his throat. It’s as if the man eats nothing but animal products, come to think of it. Chuuya’s curious how long this veganism of his lasts in the timeline of Dazai’s life, and if it’s something new the boy has started. Kind of weird for a kid to go on a diet of his own accord, but hey—maybe that flower-saving attitude of his extends further than Chuuya thought. 

The idea causes Chuuya’s frown to deepen. He hopes it doesn’t go any further—that’s some moralistic bullshit he doesn’t have time to unpack right now, not when they don’t know how long this aging thing is going to last—not definitively—and when Mori will pick up wind. A Dazai this soft may not survive Mori.

“Anything you’d like to do while you wait for me to make you dinner? I have some tofu I can fry up with brown rice and chickpeas. Does that work?”

Dazai hovers by the couch, clearly longing to sit down, but his eyes are sharp and calculating, even at a distance. “I can eat,” the boy insists, as if needing to prove himself. “I can wait while you make it.”

“Yes,” Chuuya chuckles, uneasy, stepping back from the fridge with an armful of chilled ingredients pressed to his chest. “But you don’t have to. I can get you something to occupy yourself in the meantime.”

“A whiteboard,” Dazai says, throwing another long, enamored look around the living room. “I-I have a deadline in a few days and it’d be nice to work on it while I’m sleeping. I just need to come up with the answer. I can work backward from it as long as I check my work before I erase it. I do it all the time when I’m gardening.”

Chuuya recoils at more than one of his admissions. The package of tofu tumbles to the ground. Hastily, he sets the remaining items on the island counter, struggling to think of what to say. The tofu lies on the wooden floor, label facing upwards, a smear of liquid glistening in the overhead lights. He picks up the cold block of tofu, the package crinkling in his grip.

“You garden?”

He struggles to see Dazai on his knees in the dirt, working in the heat as if he doesn’t avoid manual labor like a cat to water.

Dazai nods absently, his attention snagged by the Sky Casino miniature he himself picked out as an adult. “I write in the dirt,” he mumbles, straying a bit from the conversation. It appears as if he’s about to give in to his temptation and walk towards the miniature to inspect it more closely, but then he stiffens, remembering himself. Whatever conditioning he’s undergone reasserts itself. It reminds Chuuya of a trained dog.

“Go ahead and sit on the couch,” Chuuya urges gently. “I’ll go get you a whiteboard, then I’ll make dinner. Does that sound good?”

He waits for the boy to nod, to seat himself on the couch all prim and proper like he’s in some sort of principal’s office—although Chuuya does not know such situations firsthand—before he finds a whiteboard from amongst the organized chaos of his storage closet. Small, pristine, and the size of a tablet—it’s brand new, accompanied by a tri-color pack of mini markers.

Chuuya returns to the boy, who takes the items like precious treasures. He half-expects Dazai to say he’ll ‘cherish them.’ Instead, the boy says nothing, and does not smile. Dazai opens the package of markers and selects the black one, tucking his knees to his chest as he so often does.

Chuuya leaves him to it, deciding it best not to pry.

Into the pan goes the tofu. The rice. The oil. It fills the apartment: the richness of the oil, the crisping grain of the rice; notes of saffron, onion and garlic. Momo scents a feast and cries from the bedroom. Chuuya calls to the AI radio thing Dazai bought him last year for his birthday and has it play “Celtic music” to drown out Momo’s cries.

‘Playing Celtic Lady.’

Some woman starts singing through the overhead speakers, and it’d be nice if Chuuya wasn’t caught up with how ridiculous it is. Little Dazai loves ‘culturally-based music’. What a strange world Chuuya woke up into this morning. Afternoon. 

Really, it’s too much. 

Chuuya steps back from the stove, peering into the living room. Dazai’s still on the couch, his knees pulled to his chest and whiteboard braced on his lap, tongue sticking cutely out of the corner of his mouth as the marker squeaks. Apparently, it’s going well.

From the frying pan and onto two separate plates, Chuuya gives Dazai time—takes his own to clean the kitchen floor. Wash the frying pan and spatula. Recheck he’s recycled things properly. Two glasses of water, two sets of cutlery wrapped in cloth napkins. With the island counter set and his hands scrubbed pink and clean, Chuuya turns his attention to his tiny roommate.

Dazai scrubs angrily at his whiteboard with the eraser on the back of the pen; his face screws up like he’s about to cry. His movements are jerky and short. The pen cap pops off. It clatters across the whiteboard, bouncing off the couch and onto the floor. The boy watches it go with rapid billows of his chest, his lungs wheezing from the kitchen. Chuuya is quick to flit to his side, retrieving the eraser and recapping it on the marker grasped in a white-knuckle fist.

‘Celtic Lady’s’ voice billows a melody straight out of a Disney film. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” Chuuya says, kneeling down in front of Dazai, staring up into the large, luminous eyes of a panicking child. “Hey, talk to me. What’s happening?”

Dazai shakes his head, tears beading along his waterline. “I can’t,” he squeaks, his breath catching shallow and sharp. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t fail,” Dazai gasps. “If I can’t come up with the answer now, then I’ll be no closer tomorrow. And then the day after tomorrow will come, and what if I’m unable to hand in anything to the Director?”

Chuuya squeezes his eyes shut, bracing his arms on the couch with his hands gripping, bracketing the boy. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. Open your eyes and don’t sound like a murderous asshole.

“Okay,” Chuuya tries again, his smile as brittle and fake as plasticine. He thinks back to his time with the Sheep—how he’d comfort the younger ones, so fresh in their grief—and attempts a different approach.

“Let’s look at it a different way, shall we? What’s the worst that could happen if you don’t figure this out right this second, hmm?”

The boy’s pupils grow until they almost swallow the golden rings entirely. His voice pinches to a horrified whisper.

“The Director will make me eat dinner with my Uncle. A-Alone and—” Dazai swallows, shutting his eyes tight, expression contracting in anguish. “Alone. We’ll be alone together and I’ll have to eat in front of him and I-I…” 

Tiny hands tremble in a tiny lap, forming tiny, shaking fists. His knuckles rattle against the whiteboard, smacking white dots into his equations. They are the same oblique, insane equations from the sketchbook. Chuuya curses his decision not to take the two pages with him, but he couldn’t bear to look at them, to have him burn in his jacket pocket like hot coals. An engineer. A vegan. A pacifist. These are not Dazai’s qualities; they are antithetical to his character.

The boy opens his large, pupil-dark eyes and releases a single sob. It punches out of him, ricocheting off his words, and tripping them up. “I don’t want to do that again,” he rasps, his hands finger-walk up his chest like struggling spiders, catching on the buttons of his shirt and its starched collar until he is clutching at his throat like he did in the office.

In the office, where Dazai screamed at the sight of him.

Pushing the probing, abhorrent thoughts aside—the idea of an Uncle in the presence of a traumatized child never bodes well, and he shudders to imagine if this Director is who he thinks—Chuuya hastens to soothe the boy’s fears.

“Then let’s find a place to stop and just take a breath—“

“I can’t just ‘find a place to stop’! Equations are—I am—it’ll keep me up all night unless I solve it in one go!”

“If this is a dream,” Chuuya babbles, “then we should be able to spend all the time we want in here, right?” 

Dazai sniffles, rubbing his eyes on his sleeve. He nods, urging Chuuya to continue with a determined pinch to his lips and brows. 

Chuuya’s smile blossoms without effort. “Why worry about the real world when time goes faster in a dream? You can take your time, eat your dinner—o-or not, whatever you want—and then get back to it later with a fresh mind, yeah?”

Dazai purses his lips, knitting his brows as the cogs visibly grind behind his bangs. 

“I don’t know,” he says, slow and uncertain. Brown eyes dart between Chuuya’s pupils. At his collar, his fingers twist together at awkward, sharp angles. Chuuya flicks his gaze down to them, catching the sight of reddened skin around his cuticles. Infection. In contrast to the blistered, raw state of the skin around his nails, the nails themselves are immaculate. Round and short. Chuuya’s heart sets in his stomach. Another way Dazai changed as he grew up, it seems. How many other ways have the years stripped Dazai of such little, lovable qualities, forced to hide his emotions behind a concrete shell?

Dazai’s voice hooks Chuuya’s attention back to the child’s solemn gaze. “Maybe…,” the boy says, equally as solemn, “but not for a long time.” The hands at his throat relax a fraction, slipping down his chest. “I—I think…I think can I eat now…”

Chuuya grins. “Great! We can eat together!”

Dazai sets aside his tools with reluctance. He’s clearly apprehensive at the thought of eating, but follows Chuuya to the counter regardless. What a shame he’s learned to be so brave.

“What do you want to drink?” Chuuya asks, passing through the kitchen. Saffron clings to the air, warmth pumping off the cooling stovetop. He stands at the counter, allowing Dazai to take up the stool set on the opposite side of the counter, allowing himself to be caged by the kitchen for the sake of Dazai’s peace of mind. 

“Anything’s fine,” Dazai mutters, peering down at his plate of steaming tofu, chickpeas and rice. “I don’t like alcohol.”

Chuuya stares at the boy, perturbed. Well, what is he supposed to say to that, of all things? “I didn’t think you did.”

Minutes pass, and Dazai does not eat. Minutes pass, and the tofu changes texture on Chuuya’s plate, beading with moisture. Growing cold. Dazai fidgets. He pushes the rice about his plate. Chops his chickpeas into a paste with the side of his fork. He does not eat. He does not talk. He does not lift his gaze.

Behind Chuuya, the fridge growls.

“You don’t have to eat,” Chuuya offers, tempted to say ‘we’. He won’t eat if Dazai doesn’t. It won’t feel right. He’s too used to watching Dazai eat, bathing in fondness at every erratic stab of Dazai’s fork, the way he slurps his soups; when Dazai uses a spoon, it exits his mouth flipped upside down, pinching his lips around the metal so it pulls out clean. This Dazai does not touch his spoon, or the glass of water sweating at his elbow, and he does not stop fidgeting in his seat.

“I’m fine,” Dazai chokes out, and being a bad liar becomes one more tally to mark the differences between him and the man Chuuya thought he knew. “I just—“

Chuuya watches bottom teeth fit into their groove, the boy’s lower lip disappearing behind a white picket fence. A shrug of the shoulders. A shake of the head. A pair of hands creep towards a slim, swallowing throat, and Chuuya realizes the ‘Celtic Lady’ has stopped singing. He realizes the growling isn’t coming from the fridge. 

It’s coming from Dazai’s stomach.

“Actually,” Chuuya says, stepping back from the counter, possessed by the need to put some distance between them. A need for change. “So, I have the bed and the couch. Normally I’d give you the bed, no questions asked, but I think it only right to give you a choice.” It doesn’t seem like you get many of them—but Chuuya doesn’t say that.

Dazai lifts his face, curious and confused. “Th-Thank you, but—what do you mean? I don’t need to sleep in a dream.”

Chuuya laughs at that, although it isn’t funny. He doesn’t find any of this funny. In fact, he finds it so spectacularly unfunny, he might just go and throw up in the bathroom right now. Instead, he laughs, because Dazai should never look so worried. So wounded by life.

“You can’t? Well, that’s news to me.” Chuuya picks up his own plate and migrates it to the counter on the left of the stove. “Aren’t some of the best dreams the dreams inside dreams?” 

Quickly, so the boy doesn’t think he’s upset, Chuuya opens the second drawer from the top and pulls out the cling-film wrap. He sets the box on the marble. Opens the lid. “I’m not hungry,” he says. “Don’t worry, go ahead and eat. I think the internet’s out. I’ll need to reset it. Take your time. Eat.”

The legs of Dazai’s stool creak as the boy shifts in his seat. “Are you sure?” The boy asks, timid, if not a tad hopeful. “I-I can wait for you! I-I’m sorry it’s taking me so long, I—“ 

Chuuya tuts, clicking his tongue. “Nu-uh,” he says. “None of that.” He rips a sheet out with a crack of tacky film peeling away from itself. “You’re a growing boy and you need to eat. However fast or slow you eat doesn’t matter. Not to me.” Chuuya rips the sheet along the serrated meal edge of the box, grimacing as the cling-wrap folds in on itself. “Just. Eat however much you want, however fast you want to it.. Don’t wait up for me.” 

The cling-wrap catches on his fingertips, sticking to the side of his hands and to his wrists and to its goddamned self. With a quiet snarl, he balls it up and throws it into the sink. “And don’t worry about this. Cling-film is a nightmare. I should have stuck with aluminum foil, but nooooo, I’m a ridiculous human being with a ridiculous taste in men who think cling-film is superior, somehow. And don’t worry about that either. It’ll just be the two of us tonight, okay? After dinner, you can try your equations again. Then I’ll take a shower, o-or you can take a shower first—whatever you want, really. And then we can watch a movie! How does that sound?” 

He throws a glance over his shoulder.

Dazai’s cheek bulges with the size of his bite, the fork crammed practically to the back of his throat. Eyes wide. Caught in the act. Dazai’s shoulders rise up. His expression, mortified. He doesn’t let go of the fork in his mouth.

Chuuya’s blood washes into meltwater. 

Oh.

Oh, no.

This isn’t about not being hungry. This isn’t about calories or veganism or whatever the Agency thought they could solve by buying one of everything and leaving them out to spoil.

No. This is about something else entirely.

Chuuya watches the boy tremble, the handle of the fork rattling against his teeth. His knuckles, white around the hilt. 

This wasn’t about eating. 

This was about being watched while he ate.

With a sharp inhale, Chuuya returns to his shoddy sticker-peeling. “I have lots of movies,” he continues, ignoring the snake-slithering of his guts and the choking, slurping, gagging of the child behind him. Stuffing his face like Chuuya will steal the food from him. Like he might turn around. 

Chuuya finally manages to best the sticky beast. He wraps his meal, storing it in the refrigerator without turning around—without turning sideways and letting the boy think Chuuya turned around—and then takes the wide path to reach his bedroom. 

Momo has been blessedly quiet since ‘Celtic Lady’ shut off, but she decides to open her lungs the moment he opens the door.

“Quiet,” he hisses, opening the door just a crack to wedge his body through, blocking her path with his legs. Shutting the door with a side-swipe of his foot, he squats down. Scoops her up. “Hey baby,” he coos, petting her little head. “Sorry about this. It’s just for tonight. I hope. Things are…weird…right now.” Momo sniffs at his shirt, her ribcage thrumming with a purr. She meows. Accusing.

“Yes, yes—I smell like Dazai, I know. He can’t come see you right now, baby. He’s busy.” 

‘Mrauw-wow.’

Chuuya laughs, pushing to his feet. He hopes Dazai is so engrossed in his food that he’s deaf to her cries. The last thing he wants to do is explain to a child Chuuya is afraid the boy will reflex-kill his own cat. It sounds horrible to his own ears, but it’s the truth. According to the man he thought he knew—the many, many theories about Dazai’s childhood the mafia still bet on to this day—a boy with that much trauma might break her neck for some ingrained, arbitrary reason. Chuuya refuses to put any of them through that.

A swift fiddle with the wi-fi router in the closet, and Chuuya kills time by gathering what he hopes will be proper bedding material for a child who can’t be watched while he eats. 

God. 

Both of them will need therapy at this rate. Out comes the weighted blanket, the nightlight neither of them use but is cat-shaped and thus can never be thrown away. A pair of bright pink cotton socks that have shrunk in the wash. They are placed on the bed he bothered to make before receiving the phone call of his life. Momo crawls onto the blanket and curls into a sleepy ball.

The Dazai he knows likes warm, honeyed teas with a splash of lemon. Crab bisques and risottos and sardines pried out of a can with a tiny fork. Fuzzy socks. Loose clothes. Harmless pranks and biting wit. Long walks off short piers. Chuuya can fill an encyclopedia with the quirks and crazies of Dazai’s personality, but they don’t seem like they’ll help Chuuya here.

“What do kids enjoy,” Chuuya mutters, pacing in front of his open closet. “What do kids who haven’t seen the fucking sun enjoy?” The room is silent. The world beyond his bedroom door a solemn grave. His socks gather static on the carpet, preventing him from reaching out to Momo for comfort. She offers him no counsel, snoozing away.

Chuuya sighs, pressing both hands to his face. Lemon clings to his palms when he washed the dishes, skin dried out and peeling from the bleach. He’s normally so careful with his hands, keeping them moisturized and manicured. 

With another sigh, Chuuya drops his hands and glances at his image in the mirror. Set at the back of his two-story closet, towering tall to catch even Dazai’s admissible height, the polished surface captures his silhouette and nothing more. He hasn’t turned the closet light on, and his room is still draped in a bleary dimness, and thus his body is clothed in shadow. He knows what he would see, were the room bright. His scalp is a nightmare, the burning lapsing into an itch. He wonders if he looks like he might cry. 

His scalp tingles now, the roots tender where he scrubbed too hard with the bathroom’s paper towels.

He’s tempted to scratch. To draw blood.

In the end, he decides it’s hopeless. He doesn’t have anything here he thinks this kid will like aside from fuzzy blankets and socks. Dazai’s wearing a suit, for crying out loud. He probably doesn’t know what to do with a stuffed animal or a handheld console.

When Chuuya returns to the living room, he finds Dazai has retaken his seat on the couch, curled tight over his whiteboard. The apartment is quiet save for the boy’s squeaking marker. Dazai dish sits washed and gleaming on the wrack, the utensils pointed downwards. There are shining swirls on the counter where disinfectant has dried in streaks.

Chuuya stands in the threshold of what has become their bedroom and watches Dazai scribble line after line of incomprehensible script. Both shoulders hunched around his ears. Curls spilling over narrow eyes. A pink tongue tucked into the corner of his mouth. In profile, this Dazai isn’t much different from his Dazai. Always working himself to the bone on projects no one asked him to complete. Always keeping his true colors to himself.

“I’ll need to take a shower,” Chuuya says to the apartment. “Get this bleach out of my hair.” His voice slings into the kitchen, a soft echo bouncing off the pans and plates drying on the rack. Dazai doesn’t stop writing. His breath doesn’t so much as hitch.

“Alright,” Chuuya calls softly. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, alright? If you need me, I’ll be just down this hall, here.” Dazai doesn’t reply, his marker squeak squeak squeaking as he races through another nonsense equation.

Chuuya rushes through his shower, heart racing as his brain flits through all the things that can go wrong in his absence. Dazai hasn’t made a serious attempt in years, but this Dazai—this strange, sweet boy—is a stranger. An unknown.

Lathering his hands, Chuuya smears chamomile suds into his hair,  working his fingers into a tender scalp. Hot water washes over him, pummeling into sore muscles to remind him of the pilates workout he completed soon after waking. Chuuya shuts his eyes as a raft of soap slips down his face. He’d thrown down a mat in the living room and followed program on the television. Momo watched from the couch behind him, electing to scale his leg and perch on his ass during a downward dog. Chuuya smiles, unhooking the shower head to spray out the shampoo. He’d stayed in the positioned so long his arms turned into noodles. She’s Dazai’s greatest gift to him, paired with his greatest betrayal.

Lavender steam billows around Chuuya, the white noise of the shower broken only by the musical splashes as he cleans his body. This morning, he was a mafioso with a boyfriend and a crazy cat. Now, he’s still all of those things, but colored a different shade. Played to a different tune. How can he look at Dazai and forget all that he’s learned? How many more violations of privacy does Dazai have to endure before he returns to normal and looks at Chuuya with contempt?

Is Chuuya the betrayer, now?

Chuuya options for a single wash, sparing only a moment to streak condition through his hair with frantic fingers before stepping out of the bath. Quickly now, or lest the worst come to pass.

The rest of his truncated bathroom routine passes by in a panting, steamy blur, only the sounds of cupboards and drawers smacking open and shut to fill the quiet. Hair strangled with a microfiber towel, he throws on the bleach-scented clothes strewn on the damp tiles and rushes into the chilly air of his apartment to find a beaming child on his couch.

Dazai turns to him with a thousand-watt grin. He flashes his whiteboard proudly above his head. “I did it!”

Chuuya pants, his body tensed and ready to resuscitate a nine-year old child. He flicks his pupils between the boy’s delight and the whiteboard. It’s just a string of numbers and shape. Fucking shapes. Fucking shapes that don’t even have names. 

“Okay,” Chuuya says, bobbing his head. “Guess that means we have to celebrate!” Heat-clammy feet carry him over into the living room, the carpet fuzz catching between his toes. He keeps his distance from Dazai, skirting the shelves and television in case his height triggers another panic response. The idea scratches laughter from him. His height. His height scaring Dazai. What a mess.

Chuuya’s heart sinks when a flash of some nasty, ugly emotion flicks through bright eyes. Their shine dims a fraction. Chuuya stands in front of the television set. His lips stretch into a gentle smile, disguising the bitterness rising on the back of his tongue. “Should we watch something? I’ve a whole collection here that your grown-up self hand-picked. Pretty sure you’ll find at least one movie that catches your fancy.

Brows dive into a thunderous frown. With a purse of his lips, Dazai twists his wrist over his equation, erasing his brilliance into a smear of black ink. He sets his whiteboard aside. Caps the pen and pockets it into the folds of his jacket.

“I don’t watch television,” the boy mutters. Dropping his gaze into his lap, Dazai picks at his fingernails. “I don’t have time for stuff like that.”

“So you’ve…never watched a movie before?”

“Only documentaries.” 

“Well, at least you like them. You can learn a lot from a documentary.”

The boy shakes his head. “I don’t like them. They’re always about war…and suffering. How hopeless it all is.”

Chuuya chuckles nervously, turns and reaches for Dazai’s movie shelf. He selects a pair of DVDs at random, knowing they’re all his favorites flicks. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.” Chuuya turns around and holds up a DVD package in each hand. He flashes his best smile. “Comedy or romance?”

Dazai cocks his head. Brown eyes dart between the choices. Concentration knits his features as if this were a serious question.“Comedy,” he decides.

Chuuya grins. With a gentle cheer, he returns Beauty and the Beast to the shelf and cracks open Para-Norman with his fingernails. Dazai’s shelves are stacked almost exclusively with children’s animated films. If it is Disney-adjacent, Dazai can’t get enough of it. 

Chuuya bends over and loads the tray, whistling the fallen contender’s theme song, falling into the rhythm of their biweekly movie nights. “Believe it or not, but you love comedies.”

Dazai lets out a considering hum. “I do? That doesn’t sound like me…”

Popcorn. Blankets. A hot serving of baked goods, half-baked brownies or a heaping plate of snickerdoodles. Dazai lovescinnamon. Sweets, in general, are never safe around him.

“Wait, do you like popcorn?”

“I…”

“Right, don’t worry. Not a problem at all.”

Chuuya pauses, his index finger freezing on the power button.

Sadness swirls in his stomach. He flicks his gaze up at the black mirror of the television screen. The boy’s expression falls, gazing into his hands once more. 

Chuuya squares his jaw. 

Tomorrow, he promises himself. Tomorrow, they’ll go to the amusement park and swim in the ocean. For however long this ability lasts—however way an ability managed to work on Dazai in the first place—Chuuya will give Dazai the childhood he never had. 

Reaching behind the DVD player, he searches for the remote. He saw Momo knock it behind the console last night after they watched Mulan, and Chuuya smiles to himself when his fingers brush the prickly-pear of Momo’s crinkle ball. He grasps the ball, intending to throw it towards the kitchen for her, when he realizes it will give away her existence. Chuuya sighs, hand closing around the cold body of the remote. He leaves the crinkle ball where he found it.

Taking a step back, Chuuya presses the power button on the remote. Behind him, Dazai whines. “You can have popcorn, if you want.” Chuuya whips his head around in time to see the moment Dazai’s eyes flash gold, eyes glossing with a thin film of tears. “Please,” the child pleads, leaning forward. “I don’t want to impose.”

Chuuya’s breath hitches. It takes all his willpower not to rush to Dazai’s side to calm him. The remote shakes in his outstretched hand, resolutely training it on the television. “You’re not imposing, kid,” he says, swallowing hard. “I just want to make sure you’re happy. We didn’t have any fun today, I’m sorry for that.”

Dazai inhales around his tongue. “What?” He flaps his hands, wringing them painfully from the wrist, the tears on his waterline bleeding into his throat. “But I am having fun! I got to ride in a car! A car! A-And I stood in the sun! The real sun!” Dazai sucks down a long, desperate inhale that rocks his whole body. Chuuya’s pinches his lips together, allowing his arm to fall by his side. 

A wave of helpless rocks him, but he’s spent too many moments like this, stabbed into the floor by bad news, by unexpected confessions, by the phone calls he dreads receiving in the dead of night. 

Chuuya watches the boy break. 

The child splits down the middle with desperation, the pieces of him plinking off his ribs, played like a xylophone, and Chuuya says nothing. He watches Dazai’s lungs struggle to slow, to bring him back to shore. He listens when the boy finally whispers: “And Kunikida-sama and Yosano-sama were kind to me.” The words drift, scattering into an apartment scented with soy sauce and ginger, dissolving like the cubes of butter still clinging to the air. 

Brown eyes tuck into his lap. Fingers weave into a basket. “I’ve been very happy today,” Dazai whispers, a single tear slipping down his cheek. Not bothering to wipe it away, Dazai presses his folded hands together, forming a pair of conjoined fists. A bony heart. “Very happy.”

Chuuya holds his tongue. At his back, the outside world sifts in blue tones, tucking itself into bed.

The bastard who did this to Dazai is out there, rotting in ADA custody with his heels kicked up on the table or bleeding out on the good doctor’s table. The Port Mafia has been monitoring the cases. Some of their own having fallen under those monster’s machinations. 

Chuuya lost a good kid under his command last week. 

She stepped off the top of her apartment complex. Thirty-three stories. They picked her up in pieces, sealing her in plastic bags to rest in cool storage. She didn’t leave a note. She didn’t have to. Sakura once confided him she’d been a car accident. Miscarried in her underwear, trapped against the dashboard with her husband’s dead body draped against her side. 

Old wounds reopened, prodded and pried.

When they were sixteen, Chuuya watched Dazai lie in a cot, hooked up to seven monitors and a ventilator. A hose snaked out of his stomach. Chuuya watched, after the betrayal, as Dazai slipped from Mori’s fingers like ash caught on strong, elusive wind. Months passed. Two years. Chuuya wondered if Dazai hadn’t died in a ditch somewhere and Chuuya would simply never know, only for Dazai to reappear after two whole years wearing another mask. Another coat. 

Dazai has come undone again and again and again, each time shoveled another foot under the ground. This ability was supposedly meant to throw you back to the time where you most vulnerable. Most affected by tragedy, trauma and violence. Chuuya heard one of the victims relived her father’s murder. Another, his rape by a former classmate. 

Why this age? Why this desperate, twitchy kid with too much cotton in his mouth, too much depth to his bow?

Cold fingers reach through the window pane to touch Chuuya’s bare elbow. A chill shudders through him. Fine hair raises beneath his clothes to remind him of their shape.

When he clears his throat, his voice comes out pathetically strained. Half-meant. “Glad to hear it.”

The boy nods to himself, holding himself together with spider-silk thread. Dazai gives a little sniff. Unclasping his hands, he wipes at his face, and Chuuya forces himself to take a leaf from Dazai’s book. He dons another plastic smile and gestures to the television.

“You’re going to love this. Promise.”

Chuuya spends the next hour and a half with eyes glued on Dazai, enjoying the slack-jawed immersion on the boy’s face. Dazai hugs his knees to his chest when the wolves show up. Grabs Chuuya’s hand when the pitchforks come out. The child cries for most of it, big fat tears that streak down an otherwise blank expression, the child’s chin trembling with the force of holding back his emotions. 

When the screen goes black and the credits roll, Chuuya slaps both hands on his thighs and vaults up from the couch. “So, kid. Give me ten minutes and I’ll set up my bed for you to sleep in tonight.” Dazai doesn’t look at him, staring at the scrolling names. All of them are written in English, and his lips work frantically as he tries to read and understand each one. 

Chuuya wonders if Dazai can even read English. Again, his mind strays to the perplexing idea that Dazai speaks fluent Russian, breathes fluent Russian. All these secrets Dazai has kept from him for all these years. This ability lasts twenty-four hours, and it’s only been eight or nine. How many more diseased, blood-soaked secrets will come to light in the next sixteen hours? Chuuya’s stomach clenches. He hopes they get a chance to sleep in tomorrow morning so they don’t have to deal with it. There’s no telling what Dazai will do when he finds out all his coworkers, all of his special, chosen family found out about all of this. 

A person’s worst fears, manifest. The despair of childhood.

Of all the abilities in the world to worm past Dazai’s defenses, it had to be this one.

Chuuya clears his throat, drawing the boy’s attention from the trailing names. “I’ll stay out here,” Chuuya says, gesturing the couch. “That thing is way more comfortable than it looks.”

“Actually,” the boy’s casts his eyes askance, thumbing the armrest hesitantly. “Can I take the couch?”

Chuuya waves his hands. “Oh, don’t worry, Osamu. I don’t mind. I sleep here all the time.”

Chocolate curls bounces as the boy shakes his head. “It’s not that,” he says, patting the couch cushion with a happy hand. “My bed’s just like this. Same shape and everything.”

Chuuya blinks.

“You sleep in a bed this small?” It’s not exactly strange for Dazai’s age but still—with the way he dresses and acts and speaks—Chuuya would think he slept in a king size bed in a mansion full of rare art.

“Ah, no—That’s not what I mean.” The boy cocks his head, expression pinching in consideration. “I mean, yes. Yes, it’s small like this, but—but I meant the shape—“ He gestures with his hands. “With the arms and the back. It’s like a box, so it’ll be easier for me to fall asleep in than an actual—Than the kind of bed most people sleep in.”

“Wait.” Chuuya takes a half-step backwards, his hands trembling as he raises them in the universal sign for surrender. “H-Hold up. Hold up.” Carbon dioxide spreads across his tongue with every quick, panicked breath. “You sleep in a box?”

Dazai shrugs, unconcerned. “I made it myself. The lid lowers down with hydraulics when I’m lying down in the cradle.” The boy slides off the couch with a rasp of cotton. “I designed it so if anyone tries to open it while I’m sleeping an alarm will go off and wake me up. I also designed the holo-panels to darken, but—“ Dazai sighs, padding over to the window to peer out at a city he should recognize. 

Chuuya’s heart lurches. This should be his home, goddammit. How far from it does he think he is? Dazai presses to his toes, pressing both palms against the glass. 

“I guess all those years I didn’t have my box ruined my ability to sleep without light, but tonight I want to try it. I know this is a dream, but maybe if I try it in here I can start to make my box dark at home.” 

Dazai drops to his heels. The boy throws a swift glance over his shoulder, too fast to note the distress etching deeper into Chuuya’s face. “I’m sorry I keep calling it a box,” Dazai continues, returning his gaze to the city. In the distant darkness, the red beacons atop the port Mafia Towers spark to life. “But I’m pretty sure you’d be upset if I called it a coffin.”

Chuuya swallows sand. His hands hang limp at his sides, drained into ice. Within him roars a vast, empty dessert full of dead, buried things. “Is that what you call it?”

“I’m a terrible liar, Nakahara-san,” Dazai chirps. “You’d know if I was lying.”

Stepping back from the windows, Dazai ambles towards the couch. The boy begins to unbutton his jacket from top to bottom, working the ivory buttons through the holes with great concentration. Chuuya struggles to remain standing, the child’s words sifting through his skull like dense flour catching on the strainer of his disbelief.

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait—Hold up.” Around him, the apartment tilts. Cold mud oozes up between his toes. “Why would someone open your bed while you were sleeping?” His bare feet carrying him two steps further away from Dazai. Three steps. Four. He crosses over onto the firm, chilly parquet blanketing the open sections of his apartment. The shock nails him to the floor. Chuuya’s voice pinches. “Osamu?” The boy says nothing, unmoving at the window, the lines of his shoulders rigid. “Is someone—“ 

“I don’t want to talk about this, Nakahara-san. Please don’t make this become a bad dream.”

Chuuya wheezes, fisting both hands into his hair and tugging hard. His heart can’t squeeze out enough blood. It’s as if his lungs are made of soggy sponges, drowning him with each shallow gasp.

He stumbles backwards out of necessity and a loss of balance, his gaze untethered and unfocused. The words pour out, unbidden. “Okay. Okay, I—“ Chuuya’s hand close around the ice cube of his bedroom doorknob. “Give me a minute, kid. Alright?” He’s babbling, his tongue a loose flap of muscle in his mouth. “I’ll be right back with some materials.”

Chuuya trips in his bedroom, barely retaining sense of mind to shut the door behind him before he sprawls onto the carpet.

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh my God.”

Chuuya’s elbows buckle and he belly flops onto the scratchy pile of his carpet. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. A single sob punches up from his chest. He rolls onto his back. Pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes, he begs the gods to let him wake up. For someone to pull the plug. He can’t do this. He can’t. 

Distantly he hears Momo let loose a curious trill, leaping down from the bed. Her little nose leaves a wet smear on his wrist. He ignores her, consumed by bleach-fumes and golden eyes and despair.

“Osamu…Oh, God. Osamu…”

There is a bunker below the Agency. Concrete descend into the belly of the earth, the air growing cold and stale, leading into a long, mold-crept hallway lit with sterile white light. Atsushi has never seen the lights off, nor has he found a single switch. Doors line the left wall of the short, dead-end hall. Portholes peer through the four steel doors. A surgical infirmary. A sound-proof interrogation room. A storeroom bearing boxes of manila case files. A morgue. The room’s contents are equally sterile, equally lit. All but one. 

“Alright, fucker,” Yosano snarls, leading Atsushi and Ranpo into the interrogation room. Yellow-lit and frigid, old blood curling in the air, the closed space reminds Atsushi of the filthy rooms the Headmaster would drag him to for punishment.

A raw bulb hangs from the ceiling like a cheesy trinket, casting the room in blocky shadows. A man sits at the wooden table set in the middle of the tiny room, seated facing the door and the empty chair set across from him. Yosano and Ranpo press deeper into the glorified box, leaving Atsushi to shut the door behind them, locking them all inside.

The large man dwarfs both chair and table, cable-strapped arms woven across a burly chest. His leather get up splits at the joints. He sneers at his guests, cocking his head when Yosano takes the seat across from him. Atsushi shuffles past Ranpo, skirting the perimeter until he pauses where he can watch both Yosano and the man from the side, taking in their profiles. 

Their suspect.

Hostage?

Atsushi’s not sure about the legality of the situation. He’s never seen the Agency detain someone down here. Don’t they have an obligation to turn over suspects to the police? 

Ranpo slams both hands on the desk, causing Atsushi to jolt. His bark echoes in the small room. “You’ve caused a lot of havoc these past few weeks, and now it’s high time you spilled the beans!” He points in the man’s smirking face. “Where’s your partner?!”

“Ranpo, please,” Yosano scoffs, grabbing him by the scruff and yanking him backwards. “You’re not the only detective here and we don’t need him turning you into a fetus.” 

Ranpo squawks. “I’m twenty-six! I out-rank you!”

Yosano waves dismissively over her shoulder. “Get lifts and then we’ll talk.”

Grumbling, Ranpo spins on his heel. Atsushi sweats, fearing the man will leave and dwindle their numbers, but instead the brilliant detective takes up post beside Atsushi. Leaning on the wall, crossing his arms and ankles, Ranpo watches Yosano take the reins. 

Yosano presses a slim, pointed finger into the table, narrowing her eyes at the nameless man.

“Okay motherfucker,” she says, upper lip  curling away from her teeth. “Here’s the deal. You and your shitstain of a partner have tugged us around the city by our noses, and I’m not a lady who likes to sweat outside of the gym or the sheets.” She leans back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest. Atsushi flicks his gaze from her to the man to Ranpo, who takes out a lollipop from his jacket and sucks on it with an angry scow. Atsushi hastily crosses his own arms across his chest so not to be the odd one out. Yosano licks her lips, leaning back further in her chair with a creak of old wood. “So,” she purrs. “We can do this easy way, or I can bring out my chainsaw.” Yosano lifts a manicured brow. “She’s been itching to grind into some fresh meat.”

Atsushi’s throat clicks with a swallow, a shiver spearing his spine. “Yosano-san,” he speaks up, voice cracking. Atsushi cringes, squeezing his biceps for courage when the man’s cool blue gaze slides to him. A boiling sea. “I think torture goes against the Geneva Convention.”

Yosano’s pale amethyst’s flick to him with blazing heat. “Do you want to interrogate him?”

The man smirks, reclining in a chair which groans as it struggles to stay together. Meltwater slips into Atsushi’s blood.  

“W-Well—“ he stares at a spot on the wall, his heart a small thrashing thing. His voice frays like a teenager, tapping color to his cheeks. “You said Ranpo-san wasn’t the only detective, right?” He fists his hands by his sides, clearing his throat before he speaks with a confidence he doesn’t feel. “I’ll give it a try.”

The man whistles. Yosano drums dagger nails on the table, teeth just as sharp. “Ooh, tiger’s got some fur on his balls.” She stands up from the chair, not sparing their suspect a backward glance. Her heels carry across the room in a single stride. “Okay, kid. All yours.” She claps him on the shoulder and pushes him towards the table in a single motion. “I’ll be bad cop.”

Stumbling, he catches himself on the chair, ears filling with blood as the suspect laughs at him. 

“You always play bad cop,” Atsushi mutters, taking a seat. He clears his throat, glancing up at the man hesitantly. “Mr…?” The man says nothing, only lifting a brow at him in a manner that sinks a stone in Atsushi’s belly. Flustered, his drops his gaze to the table, wondering what put the long scratches and dents in its surface. Even the lacquer has been buffed away in some places, in others it has folded over onto itself, black with dirt. “Ah, um—Your ability turns people into children. Or at least you return people to the point they were most traumatized, which happens to be their childhood.” He flicks his gaze up at the man.“Is that right?”

A wolf’s grin. “That’s right.”

Atsushi swallows again, his throat as barren as his thoughts. Fighting to remember what he’s here for, who he’s here for, he gathers the facts he’s jotted down in notebooks and on napkins and foggy mirrors, searching for an answer. All cases matter to him, but this one feels particularly tender. Atsushi tightens his jaw, glaring at the monster dressed as a man. 

“We’ve spoken to several witness and a few of the victims who were willing to come forward,” he says, readjusting himself in the chair to face forward, laying a forearm on the table like a knife posed between them. “All transformations lasted less than twenty-four hours before you deactivated the ability. You were in the vicinity for the duration of its activation, but were not within sight of any of the victims. They claimed to have relived their most traumatic and painful memories, often as children.” The man’s expression gains a wicked edge. Like he’s…getting off on this. Static encroaches at the edges Atsushi’s vision. He plows onwards, steering through rising fury. “Our coworker is now affected by this ability, and we are asking you to disarm it immediately. We also require the location of your associate who escaped from the warehouse.”

“Or what?”

Atsushi flexes the hand splayed across the table. Fur erupts from elbow to fingertips. Bones thicken. Nails stretch into spears. He narrows slit eyes at the man in the hot seat, the overhead light lancing pain where there once was none. “Or we will use force,” he says in a scratching growl, but the man only raises his hands in surrender, lips split and gaze hooded in an expression spelling anything but. 

“Scary,” the man laughs, leaning back in his chair. “But no thanks. I’m not into furries.” 

Atsushi wishes he could wring the bastard’s name from him at least, preferably with one or two pints of blood. “Look kid, I’m no rat,” the man continues. “We’ve had some fun, my buddy and I.”

“Fun?” Atsushi’s pelt ripples along his rising shoulders, a flick of an extra ear tickling his hair. “You’ve tortured at least eleven people! Four of which have killed themselves as the result of your actions!” Atsushi puts away the beast before his hand smashes through the table and gives this fucker a weapon. 

Yosano speaks, her voice a pistol raised in warning. “None of them were related. There were no links associating any of them except that they were alone, isolated from their friends and families, and were attacked at night.” She inhales sharply. “In their homes,” she snarls. “In their beds.” Her heels strike concrete as she takes a step forward, the heat of her body hovering at Atsushi’s back. “More than half of them show signs of sexual assault and physical battery. You sent these people back to the most horrific, violent moments of their lives and retraumatized them!” She reaches over Atsushi, slamming her hand on the table. “Do you even know what retraumatization does to a person?!” The man’s expression remains impassive. Yosano scoffs, digging red nails into the table’s surface, adding to its scars. “I’m sure you do,” she sneers. “You broke into these people’s home to break them apart. If I wasn’t bound by the law I would rip you into pieces and not bother to bring you back.”

“I’m sure you would,” the mans says with a grin. He tips his head. “I’m waiting, doll.”

Her rage ripples at Atsushi’s back, disturbing the air. He squares his jaw, narrowing his eyes in a hateful stare. “Yosano-san,” he says coldly. “Ranpo-san.”

She pauses, then retracts her hand, folding upright and leaving the room without another word, Ranpo taking the rear. The door slams on her exit.

Atsushi closes his eyes for a moment, steeling his resolve. “If you deactivate your ability and return Dazai to the proper age, then we are willing to negotiate with the police on your behalf for a lighter sentence.” opening his eyes, he channel his rage simmering beneath his skin into a blade. “I don’t want to do this,” he says, tapping his claws on the table one at a time. Nice and slow. “I want to kill you,” he says, looking up through his lashes at this man he hates so very much, his words a solemn threat. “However, I promised myself I wouldn’t eat human flesh again.”

The man leans back in his chair and whistles long and low. “I know all about you, you know,” he says, “You weren’t next on the list, but you were on it. Nakajima Atsushi. Eighteen years old. A fellow alumni of Sunny Skies Orphanage. We’ve never met, but I’d heard of you.” Atsushi’s skin prickles as a hairy grin crawls across the man’s face, a lecherous glint to blue eyes. “I heard you,” the man says. “Screaming bloody murder in the basement. Just another ghost story for the kiddos. You know, I get it. Ishida was a gnarly bastard. Walking around in those stupid robes like a clergy man, a hammer in his pocket to smack any sticky fingers sticking where they didn’t belong.” The man nods, uncrossing and recrossing his arms. “A real piece of work.” He purses his lips. His eyes glint in the overhead bulb like two shining cuts of cobalt. “I heard he took a liking to you.”

Atsushi’s stomach flips. He curls his upper lip, the tiger retreating beneath his skin.

“Don’t say it like that,” Atsushi spits, fighting back nausea. “He never touched me.”

The man laughs. A flash of teeth. “Really? Could have fooled me. All that screaming. The bishop get up.” He shakes his head. “Sunny Skies had a whole human trafficking thing going on, for fuck’s sakes.” Atsushi pauses, cold water washing through him. The hand kept hidden beneath the table grips tightly around the edge of the chair. Noting his shock, the man cocks his head in faux innocence. “Oh, you didn’t know? Where do you think all the girls went? It was dick city there, man. Come on. Use your head.” The suspect unwinds his arms, using them as he talks, sparking a jolt of fear through Atsushi as those tree trunk arms wave about. If the man wanted, he could reach across the short distance of the table and choke him out. “Lots of diddling went down in that place, let me tell you,” the man continues, placing a hand on his chest. “Including yours truly.” He quirks a brows at Atsushi, his smirk rueful. “Guess your teeth were too sharp, huh? Scared Ishida off.”

“If you think I’m going to feel sorry for you—“

“Sorry for me?” The man waves him off. “Please. I gave that guy as good as he got.” He leers at Atsushi, the edge of the table sinking into his abs. “You should have seen the way his head popped under the wheel,” he purrs. “Like cherry pie.”

Atsushi has no time to react before a foot lashes out and strikes his shin. 

“Fuck—!“ He doubles over, forehead smacking the table, pain radiating through his leg bone. Hissing, Atsushi lifts his head, tiger ready to pounce, when he sees the headmaster towering over him through his tears.

“Atsushi-kun,” the headmaster says, his voice gliding like silk. “You’ve been letting out your claws again. We’ll have to fix that.”

A scream climbs out of Atsushi throat. “No!” He rears back, chair tipping over and sending him tumbling to the floor. Atsushi’s heart thunders in his throat. He shields his head and face, tucking up his knees to shield his belly. “No! Stay away.”

The headmaster disappears, the man in his place, laughing his lungs out as he gallops around the table. The echo stings Atsushi’s ears, making him curl into a tighter ball. “Thought you had a hard-on for this guy! Guess someone’s got daddy issues!”

Ranpo flings open the door. “Atsushi-kun!” The man barrels past him, footsteps smacking down the hallway as he races for the stairs. Ranpo stumbles, catching himself against the wall of the hallway. He gathers himself, spitting after the man. “Bastard!”

Yosano swear echoes from down the hallway, her heels cracking against concrete as she sprints towards them. Atsushi holds no hope that she stopped him. A part of him wants the man as far away from them as possible.  

Yosano kneels by his side but Atsushi shakes his head. “I’m fine,”he  says, shying away from her touch. “I’m fine. I’m—I’m fine.”

Noting his unease, she keeps her hands to herself. Atsushi is so grateful he could cry.

“I didn’t turn back into a kid,” he sputters. “I don’t understand. I—”

Ranpo growls, snapping his phone shut. “Motherfucker,” he snarls. “He ran into traffic. Kunikida-kun’s in pursuit, but he won’t catch him. He got away.”

“No shit, genius!” Yosano throws up an arm and he flinches. “Atsushi-kun, you’re okay. You’re safe.”

Atsushi keeps babbling. It’s the only thing keeping his mind away from what just happened and all the truths buried in the lies. “He never touched Dazai-san in the warehouse. He needed me to touch him to transform. But that other guy,” he swallows, craning his neck to address Ranpo upside down. “That other guy was touching Dazai all the time in the warehouse. Maybe…”

Ranpo’s lips flatten into a stern line. “They’re both ability users,” he says. “And baldy-Mc-dickwad wasn’t the one who turned Dazai.”

Yosano snarls. “One of them turns you into a traumatized kid, and the other one turns into the one who traumatized you.” Her eyes flash with murder. “Motherfucker,” she reiterates. “He raped those people himself. I’m going to kill him!”

“Dazai-san—“ Atsushi’s lungs heave. “Dazai-san’s gonna be stuck like this for another—“ he tips onto the side, catching himself with his elbow as a bout of dizziness takes him. “Until tomorrow afternoon,” he wheezes. 

Yosano strokes through his hair, her perfume rolling over him. “He’ll survive, Atsushi-kun,” she promises. “He’s with the person he needs to be, Atsushi-kun. He’s going to be okay.”

At the doorway, Ranpo sighs. “At least the kid didn’t seem that traumatized,” he says. “Dazai’ll be fine.”

After a strong power cry into Momo’s belly fur, Chuuya pads into the living room to find Dazai standing at the window, peering out at the city. Chuuya tells him it’s time for bed.

“Wait.” Dazai blinks, stepping back from the window with a spill of shock dripping from his mouth. “You’re turning off the lights?”

Chuuya furrows his eyebrows. “Oh, um. You said you wanted to try to sleep without all the lights on. I can get you a night light.”

Dazai jolts and scurries towards the couch in a burst of manic energy, grabbing couch cushions and pulling them onto the floor.

“No! No, I—I’ve always wanted to sleep with the lights off. I just didn’t think I’d actually get to…” He stops in the middle of stacking the cushions into an A-frame on the carpet like a pair of cards. Staring into the middle distance, his voice drifts as the idea settles over him. “I’m finally going to sleep without all the lights on, I…Wow…”

“Wait. You sleep with the lights on? Not just a night light? Like, when you say ‘all the lights on’ you mean all the lights?”

Dazai nods, humming an affirmative. His grin doesn’t lose its brilliance even as he rearranges the couch cushions a little slower. “Well, I don’t have a choice, you know? It’s just how it is. The Tower doesn’t have any light fixtures per se. It glows white. All day and night. And without windows it’s difficult for me to tell when it’s day and night,” he tips his head left and right as he says ‘day and night’. The sarcastic lilt to his voice brings a hint of a smirk to Chuuya’s lips despite the absolute nonsense craziness he’s being told. Dazai shakes his head and throws the last cushion onto the floor, running his hand over the thin white fabric concealing the supporting coils of the couch. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve never seen outside.” He places both palms on the fabric and pushes down like he’s doing CPR, brows diving towards a thunderous frown as it apparently doesn’t match his standards. Dazai replaces the couch cushions with a mournful sigh. “Sometimes I go to the roof so I can look at the stars,” he continues. “The real stars, not the ones in the Garden. Although those are nice too, I guess.”

A silence passes, swells like a soap bubble. Chuuya watches Dazai fit the six couch cushions into a dozen different arrangements, digesting what he’s learned. What he hasn’t. The Director. The Tower. The Garden. He doesn’t know of any particular ‘Garden’ within headquarters. He can draw up at least seven plots in his mind. None stand out against another. The soap bubble trembles. Chuuya has never seen the lights turn off completely, however, and every now and then someone will call the boss ‘director’ during official meetings.

The soap bubble quivers and snaps. 

Dazai kneels and replaces the last cushion on the couch, returning it to neatness. He turns his head towards Chuuya, his expression unreadable.“Do you like your dad?”

Chuuya balks, saliva evaporating on his tongue. What? His dad?

His surprise must disturb Dazai, because he repeats himself, a little slower, a little more assured. Dazai’s gaze pierces. “Do you like your dad, Nakahara-san?”

Chuuya thinks about Verlaine, idling away in the basement of the Port Mafia, as far from a proper father figure as one can be. “Oh, I—I’ve never met him.”

Dazai blanches, clutching his throat. He waddles away from the couch on his knees like a sad, well-dressed penguin. “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry!” The child throws himself at Chuuya’s feet on his hands and knees, rubbing his forehead into the carpet with shrieking desperation. “Prosti menya! Prosti menya! Prosti menya!”

Chuuya’s kneecaps crack onto the wood.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay! I’m not offended! You haven’t offended me, okay?” He grasps the boy by his shoulders, grip gentle. “I’m not mad. I’m not mad.”

Dazai lifts a face covered in tears and a surprising amount of snot, “Really?”

Chuuya swallows, rubbing his thumbs along the lines of the boy’s collarbones. He’s almost glad he forgot to order some child-sized clothes to be shipped for pajamas. Chuuya would rather not see how skinny Dazai was at this age. “Yeah, kid,” he croaks. “I’m not mad.” 

Swallowing again, his throat catching on the lack of saliva left in his mouth. A thought rises in his skull. Bitterness spreads from the back of his tongue to the tip. “Your dad,” he says slowly, measuring his words. Dazai sniffs, not doing anything to wipe his admittedly gross face. Confusion flit across his expression, clouding his eyes. “Does he get mad at you? Does he get mad at you a lot?”

Dazai’s confusion deepens, a stampede of emotions knitting his features into unexpected, almost illegible patterns. Frustration chief among them. “What? No, he doesn’t get mad at me.” Dazai blows a sigh out of his nose, anger tugging at his lips. “He doesn’t get mad at anyone, he—“ The boy shakes his head furiously, knocking curls out of place. Black fury rolls across his face like a thunderous storm. “I hate him,” Dazai snarls, eyes flashing gold. The heat in his voice startles Chuuya, taken aback by the loathing glaring back at him. “Why do I have to be the one who—“ 

He breaks off on a rising scream, anger bleeding from him in a moment. The shoulders beneath Chuuya’s tightened grip puddle into putty. “No,” Dazai sighs, hanging his head. The hands forgotten in the boy’s lap dig crescents into his knees, words pinching out through clenched teeth. “Forget it,” he snaps, more frustrated than angry. Resigned. “I don’t want him here,” Dazai whispers. A line of snot dangles from his downturned face, oozing an impressive distance towards his knees. “This has been such a good dream,” Dazai swallows around struggling tears. “I don’t deserve good dreams,” the boy says, chuckling without humor. “But I guess I shouldn’t complain. Thank you for making this a good dream, Nakahara-san.”

“Kid, I haven’t…” Chuuya swallows, a gout of saliva rushing into his mouth like he’s about to vomit. “I haven’t done anything for you, I—It’s only been a couple hours.”

Dazai lifts his head, all of the darkness fled from him as if it had never existed.

“I know,” the boy breathes out in excitement. “I can’t even imagine tomorrow.”

Chuuya says nothing, the whiplash has drained him of every ounce of fight in him. He brings out the fuzzy blanket for the boy, waits until Dazai has balled himself onto the couch into a squealing lump before retiring to his room. He shuts the lights off before entering his room. Chuuya is asleep before his head hits the pillow.

He’s awake before he begins to dream.

A scream tears through the apartment.

It tears Chuuya from his bed. Barefoot, he sprints through his bedroom doorway before he even realizes he’s awake. His shin catches on the door way before his eyes can acclimate, ripping a shout of surprises from him. Chuuya tumbles to the floor, cheek smacking the parquet. He lies there. Dazed. One foot back into the dream even as his heart beats a bruise into his rib cage and the floor turns his body into a block of ice. His eyes lids flutter shut. 

Another scream.

Chuuya slaps his palms to the cold wood and scrapes himself off the flood, stumbling towards the fearful panting coming from his living room. Adrenaline beats the cobwebs and curse words out of his mind, the pain in his shinbone a bristling series of needles. He doesn’t know why there’s a screaming child in his apartment. He doesn’t know how they got in or where the hell Dazai is at this hour, but Chuuya knows that sound of terror as intimately as his own voice. He runs into his tiny living room, stumbling as he steps into the softness of couch cushions thrown on the floor. Nights spent cradling young, bleating Sheep have him kneeling by the couch in the next breath, gathering a shivering, stammering stranger into his arms. 

“Shhh, shhh,” he says, a moment before he realizes who he’s speaking to. 

Dazai’s suit is damp, his skin clammy where Chuuya’s fingers search for the boy’s head in the darkness. 

“You’re alright, babydoll. You’re alright.”

The window tint appears invisible in the night, all of Yokohama on glittering display. Moonlight bleeds onto the carpet. The living room regains its shapes and textures. Chuuya’s eyes adjust.

“You’re safe now, I got you.” Chuuya’s hand slides up the back of a damp neck and into hot, sweat-soaked curls. “I got you.”

Dazai’s white face appears like a specter at the foot of the bed. His lips move soundlessly, eyes rolling in panic. A tiny hand twists itself into the sleeve of Chuuya’s sleep shirt.

“Gde ya?” Dazai wheezes, wild eyes darting everywhere, seeing nothing. Seeing nightmares. Those crystal ball eyes lock onto Chuuya, and the boy sucks in a choking breath, pulse galloping where Chuuya’s thumb overlaps his carotid. “Kto ty?” Dazai chokes out, trembling with renewed fear. Beads of sweat pearl on his face. “Kto ty?”

Before Chuuya can rinse through what little Russian he knows, Dazai goes limp in abject despair. His lips form a trembling smile. “Menya proglotili?” he whimpers. “Ya mertv?”

Chuuya gasps, recognizing the word.

He adjusts his grip on the boy’s shoulders, slipping one hand to Dazai’s hip. A ball of wax rises in Chuuya’s throat. The urge to cry is overshadowed by the need to spare Dazai’s tears. 

“Oh no, no sweetheart,” Chuuya breathes, rocking them both on his heels. “No, no, you aren’t dead, honey. You aren’t dead. Don’t you remember me? It’s Chuuya.”

Dazai’s eyebrows knit together, a decade of gibberish time traveling nonsense cartwheeling through the ink pools of his eyes. Clammy hands loosen their grip on Chuuya’s sleeves, before lurching forward to grab his forearms. Dazai sucks in a horrified gasp. His expression falls open in shock, blunt nails digging into Chuuya’s skin. 

“Chuuya? A-Ah! Forgive me—“ Eyes racing into the middle distance, the boy wriggles in Chuuya hold, hoisting himself up, folding in two. Dazai’s hands release their vise to retake another. One of his hands bury in his curls, yanking. The other grabs at his own throat. Chuuya flounders helplessly as the boy rocks on the couch, pulling on his hair, strangling his windpipe hard enough to pinch his words. “Oh, forgive me—I-I’ve woken you up, I—“

“Wait, kid—“ Chuuya’s brain is a rolodex of frantic, illegible cue cards. The Dazai he knows responds best to brash, unpredictable actions. The stupider, the better. Bracing himself for the worst, Chuuya hooks an arm beneath the boy’s tented legs and rotates him swiftly, lifting his body into a regular seated position on the couch. Dazai gasps, his expression falling open in shock. Moonlight licks across the boy, illuminating eyes slick with unshed tears. His shirt is rumpled at his throat, top button torn out and lost, a clump of his hair frayed, standing out like a bump on the head, but both of Dazai’s hands are braced on the couch cushion for balance. Both of his eyes are on Chuuya. 

Holding his breath, Chuuya waits for the meltdown. The screaming. The raining fists and fainting spells. Instead, like a bad scare during hiccups, the boy seems shaken from his fear, a bashful look spreading across his face. The boy looks towards the window, an apology forming on his tongue, when he freezes. Dazai’s mouth parts in surprise.

“Is…Is that the ocean?” 

Chuuya gapes, taken aback at the jarring change, before hurriedly centering himself. “Yeah,” he replies, leaning back on his haunches to give the boy some space, the carpet digging into his shins. “Yeah, haven’t you—“ 

Dazai’s eyes glow silver in the light of the moon, his expression open and enraptured and as close to smiling as he’s been all evening. Chuuya clears his throat and gestures to the window.

“Yeah, that’s the ocean. It’s Yokohama Bay.” The ocean glitters in the distance, a gleaming half-moon pressing into the coast. Docks taper into narrow beaches towards the West. A few ships blink their lights, far out at sea. Clouds catch the moonlight, drifting low on the horizon where pockets of haziness signal rain-pelted waves. The moon reflects in the ocean as a long, silver spear pointed towards the shore. Chuuya takes a moment to marvel at a scene he’s seen a thousand times, its reoccurrence bleeding it of its beauty. Chuuya wets his lips. 

He really is lucky, to have a view like this.

His childhood-self could only dream of such privilege. 

“Well, it’s really Tokyo Bay,” he clarifies, his lips growing cold as the saliva evaporates, “but we call it that because…yeah.” He darts a look at Dazai, whose enraptured body has shifted, pressing against the arm of the couch for a better look. Chuuya lifts his right arm and points at the rows of warehouses by the docks. “And that’s where the Agency found you. Most of them are used for imports and exports, but the city lets people store their boats inside the empty warehouse when the seas get rough. Oh—and that’s the Ferris Wheel.” He points at the spinning, sparkling rainbow. “I’ll take you there tomorrow. We can get crepes after.”

He sneaks a glance at Dazai. At some point during Chuuya’s impromptu tour, the boy raised his palms, all ten fingertips pressed reverently against the glass. Chuuya huffs softly, a smiling hanging off his lips.

Chuuya points at the array of five black spears buried on the edge of the port. Red beacons breathe in and out of life, signaling to planes not to fly too close. Under the haze of night, the towers look like a black hand clawing out of Hell. “And that’s the Port Mafia Headquarters,” he says, pressing a finger against the cold glass. 

Beside him, Dazai hums. His own finger joins him on the glass, pointing at the buildings. 

“They had three towers originally,” Dazai chirps, squeaking the pad of his finger down the glass, tracing the line of the tower from his vantage point. “That was back when they broke grounds in 76’. The fourth one was constructed in 84’ when Yamamoto took over just so he could overlook a business rival for the sake of intimidation. I don’t—“ 

Chuuya drags his shivering gaze to Dazai. The boy’s brows are driven together, his lips pressed into a firm, white seam. “There shouldn’t be a fifth one,” he mumbles, a storm of uncertainty rolling through the brown gel of his eyes. Dazai drops his finger from the window. Tucking his index finger into a fist form by his other hand, he twists his wrist back and forth like he’s sharpening the finger like a pencil, warming it. “It fits, though” he says at last, turning to Chuuya with large, inquisitive eyes. “When was it built?”

Chuuya swallows hard. Those were things even he didn’t know. Meeting the boy’s expectant gaze, Chuuya races for an answer. “’02, I think. ’01? I wasn’t part of the mafia then.”

Dazai’s eyes widen. His lips form a tiny circle before flattening, frowning, slim brows pushing together as the boy casts his face aside in the thought. In his lap, the boy’s hands form neat fists on his knees.

“Really?” Dazai eases from his painful-looking W-sit into a neat seiza. “How, um—How—“

Chuuya chuckles. He rubs the back of his neck, grimacing as his fingers find the gritty sweat gathered at his nape. “I’m twenty-three.”

Dazai sticks his thumbnail in his mouth staring out at the city. “Do you think I’ll live to twenty-three?”

The apartment is silent aside from the soft thrumming of the refrigerator, the clack-clack of the ice machine and steady hum of the air conditioner panting down his neck.

“Of course you will,” Chuuya breathes out, digging his nails into his thighs. He stares at the boy, willing him to look at him. 

“Oh,” the boy says. Toneless. His gaze remains trained on the city, perhaps on something further in the distance. “Okay.”

They don’t speak for several more minutes, in which Chuuya spirals over what he’s gotten himself into. Dazai speaks Russian, is an ‘engineer’, and lives somewhere they never turn off the lights. It obvious he’s being mistreated, although Chuuya’s yet to see any bruises or signs of malnourishment. No child talks like this. No child worries about things like if the music he listens to is ‘culturally sensitive’ or whether or not someone watches him when he eats. 

Director. 

Uncle. 

What kind of life has Dazai lived before the mafia touched him? 

Why has this child never seen the ocean? The fucking sun?

How could this earnest child have ever killed people?

“Can I sleep here?”

Chuuya eyes stutter in a series of blinks. 

He looks at the boy seated on his living room floor, knees bent in W in a way he doesn’t think they should after toddler-hood. Moonlight combs through tousled curls. Dazai’s eyes are large and shining, fingers knotted expectantly in his lap. Chuuya swallows, knowing it’s a lost cause. 

“On the floor?”

“Yes,” Dazai nods, turning his nose towards the couch, casting his face in silhouette once more. Chuuya’s watches the dance of Dazai’s pupils as he scrutinizes the couch cushions, formulating all the ways he can arrange them. He faces Chuuya, his smile small, tentative, and a scant hopeful.

Then a troubled look washes over the boy’s face. Teeth grasp bottom lip. “Can’t sleep on the floor at home,” Dazai says, his voice drawn tight into a whisper, his body tilting close. Chuuya finds himself matching Dazai’s caution, leaning forward of his own accord. The boy places a small hand on Chuuya’s knee and bears down the meager weight of himself, raising his mouth high enough to speak directly into Chuuya’s ear.

“The Tower is always hungry,” Dazai tells him. The cold point of his nose presses into Chuuya’s cheek. “Sometimes…” Dazai’s throat clicks. “Sometimes I catch it watching me when it thinks I’m sleeping.” Fine tremors migrate from the hand braced on Chuuya’s thigh. Dazai leans in further, bone-sharp shoulder pressing into the meat of Chuuya’s arm. “And it feels—“ Dazai’s other hand materializes on Chuuya’s shoulder, slotting into his collarbone. His voice pinches into a shrill of hot air. “It feels like the Director’s watching me. All the time. Everywhere. As if…as if she is the Tower.”

Then all at once the boy leans away, leaving Chuuya with a hammering heart and a heaving chest. The boy cups his heart, one hand forming a fist around the other thumb. He looks up at Chuuya with eyes brimming with dew, expression moon-bleached and squirming. “Does that make sense?”

Chuuya’s head involuntarily jerks to the side. Where the fuck is he even supposed to start with that? Christ.

Momo is perched on the kitchen counter, watching them with her luminous green eyes lit by moonlight.

Shutting his eyes, he blows a sigh out of his nose.

This days has to end. Now.

“Alright,” he says, unfolding to his full height. “You’re going to be okay, Osamu?”

The boy hums a quiet affirmative and Chuuya hastily takes his leave, scooping Momo off the counter and disappearing into his bedroom.

He loosens his grip and Momo elegantly pours onto the floor with a confused chirp. His bedside clock screams ten o’clock in angry crimson. He and Dazai are usually playing fetch with her at this hour, but he’s plumb through with exhaustion. “Sorry baby,” he mumbles, diving into bed. “Daddy’s beat.” Burying his face into the plump softness of Dazai’s pillow, he imbues himself in the scent of earth and metal.

The emotional fallout hasn’t hit him yet, and he doubts it ever will. He doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with anything he’s learned tonight. He can barely deal with what he learned this afternoon. No. No, All of this has been but a bad a dream. 

No one bothers the boy when he sleeps. 

The ’Tower’ isn’t hungry. 

Dazai doesn’t know things about the Port Mafia a child shouldn’t. 

He doesn’t speak Russian. He’s not an engineer. 

He doesn’t sleep in a coffin.

Chuuya’s phone vibrates on the nightstand, rousing him from his terrible thoughts. With a groan, he flops onto his back, smacking the nightstand until he finds the thin body of his smartphone. Chuuya thumbs the accept button. Putting the device to his ear, he shudders at the cold glass.

Mori’s smooth voice slithers into his brain like a viper. “Good evening, Chuuya-kun,” the man says. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Chuuya shuts his eyes against the darkness of his bedroom, inhaling the calm, cool professionalism on which he prides himself.

“Of course not, sir. How can I assist you?”

“Not need for all those formalities, Chuuya-kun, I assure you. I’ve simply come to learn our favorite brown haired beauty has finally been struck by lightning. Transformed into a child, no less. What are the chances?”

Chuuya grits his teeth, heat flooding his veins as his ability activates on surging, seething hatred. Everyone and their fucking mother knows of Mori’s filthy proclivities, but Chuuya has never allowed his mind to go there.

He fists the sheets with his free hand, mashing the fabric into a tight, painful ball so he doesn’t do the same thing to his phone.

It makes sense. Too much sense. Chuuya’s inner ear spins out of whack, sending him tumbling through space without moving a centimeter. Dazai lives in a ‘Tower’. Dazai knows more about the Port Mafia than any child should. 

Someone watches him sleep. Someone watches him eat.

Someone he calls ‘Uncle’.

“You’ll bring him to me tomorrow morning,” Mori says sweetly. “Make sure you validate your parking with the front desk. We don’t want a repeat of last time.”

Chuuya grits out what he hopes is an approximation of ‘yes sir’ and hangs up the phone. He promised himself he’d never go down this route. This is his boss. Mori gave him purpose.

But Dazai gave him love, and Chuuya is loyal to his bones.

With an exhausted, aggrieved sigh, Chuuya sets the phone on his chest. He stares at the ceiling, the red glow of his ability shading the room. At his hip, Momo dozes in a pretzel.

“Guess I can’t take you to the amusement park after all, kid.” Chuuya shuts his eyes. Tired as he is, closing his eyes actually makes them sting all the more. 

“Fuck.”

Chapter Text

“Good morning!” Chuuya cries, stepping out of his bedroom at the asscrack of dawn. His cheeks ache with the size of his grin, palm clammy around the door-jam as he swings towards the living room.

Dazai is there. Perched on the edge of a well-made couch, fragile hope peeks out from between knit brows and a tiny smile. Chuuya's stomach sinks. He must have made too much noise getting dressed for this to be much of a surprise.

Chuuya returns Dazai’s smile with an unenthusiastic flash of teeth, bounces on the balls of his heels, and casts his gaze in a quick sweep around the apartment.

The lights are on. The main switches in the living room are flicked up, of course, but the kitchen is also illuminated, as well as the entryway and the tiny light over the range. Artificial daylight. It’s bright enough to chase off the natural shadows in the apartment, but not enough to dash those swiped beneath Dazai’s eyes. 

From the heat swirling in the air, the lights have been on a long, long time.

Chuuya decides not to mention it. 

“Good morning,” Dazai says, his soft, timid voice like sour smoke. Chuuya watches the boy’s gaze dart askance, small hand smoothing down his shirt, checking for misplaced buttons. Pressed and clean—like a packaged shirt from a konbini —his jacket is off, folded over the arm of the couch with precision neatness. In contrast, fine wrinkles warp his shirt and shorts from a night spent tossing and turning. Trying not to cry. One of his socks slouches to his ankle. Tracing the path of Chuuya’s gaze, Dazai lurches to fix it with a yelp of Russian. 

Chuuya's throat squeezes in a rough swallow that reminds his tongue he hasn’t brushed his teeth yet; salty, like tears. Socked feet carry him into the kitchen. Inside his chest, his emotions snarl and snap at another, vying for dominance he cannot concede. Chuuya has to be on his best behavior today, for Mori and for Dazai. 

Hunger feeds anger, and Chuuya has plenty to serve. 

He can’t behead Mori—it’s a Saturday—so Chuuya pries open the cool half of the refrigerator, only to be slapped by a rancid cocktail of prepared meals. All this crap, and no one to eat it. Chuuya sucks on his bottom lip, tugging it through his teeth until they catch on a layer of dead skin. He worries his lip until it gives way.

Well, Dazai won’t mind if he steals a bite or two. He hardly eats anything anyway.

Perusing a rainbow of nutrition packed into glass bricks, he decides to wiggle out a container of egg poppers trapped between the top shelf and the second tier of cobbles. His lips quirk into a triumphant grin when he wiggles it free.

A quick snack and they can be on their way. There’s nothing vegan-appropriate Chuuya can whip up on the fly for Dazai, but this meeting will be short. They can duck into a cafe right afterwards. It’s not Dazai who is liable to punch out a man’s heart when he’s hungry, after all. Best behavior.

“Did you sleep well?” Chuuya calls over his shoulder. Shivering as he slips the container into the crook of his arm, he shuts the fridge with a sticky smack. Moisture traces the inside of his elbow with an icy finger. He knows it’s a stupid question. The apartment is baking from a lonely child’s lonely fears, and Dazai has never slept like the dead.

“I did,” the boy croons, all blinding cheer. “I usually remember my dreams, but last night—I don’t remember a thing!”

Humming in acknowledgment, Chuuya putters to the paper towels kept beside the sink, afraid to hook a look over his shoulder and see one of Dazai’s plastic smiles.

Chuuya nods to himself. If this Dazai says he’s a bad liar, then Chuuya will believe him. He owes him that much trust. “I’m glad,” he says, cracking the lid of the egg poppers and setting it belly-up onto the counter. Chuuya wrinkles his nose in disgust as droplets flick everywhere, raising the hairs on his arm where they patter. The eggs look like shit, and smell like it too. Chunky and off-colored, stewing in a pool of their own juices—fuck, if he eats this, he’ll puke for sure. Microwaving them will only make it worse. 

An idea scratches at his brain and Chuuya tips his head with a considering pout. Well. He’s always preferred shooting down two helicopters with one bullet. “It’s good you got ready so early,” he says, recapping the egg disaster with two snaps of the buckles. “Give me a minute and we can leave.”

Chuuya flicks off the range light, then reaches for the main switch stamped into the tile wall behind the stove. The three lamps dangling over the island counter wink out. Shadows drape the wood floor, heat retreating from the air a fraction, but not much. Now that his nose is awake—and possibly paralyzed—he can pick out the finer notes of last night’s dinner, pulled out of the furniture by the heat. God, his air conditioner was probably running all night long. Not the worst price to pay; Chuuya’s favorite thing in the world is running a bath until his toes prune.

Beyond the island counter, in the tiny glowing box of the living room, Dazai returns his stare with large, inquisitive eyes. Chuuya flinches, not realizing his eyes had wandered. With a reassuring grin, Chuuya trots quickly towards his bedroom to feed his little love her favorite thing in the world, when his not so little love pipes up once more.

“You eat inside your bedroom?”

Chuuya freezes, his hand on the doorknob. His grip is slick from handling the container and so he tenses his arm to maintain it. His heartbeat pounds through his palm.

“A little snack for later,” he replies, ignoring how the brick sweats into the crook of his elbow, cold water seeping into his vest. Dazai loves cats, but Dazai also kills reflexively. Chuuya can’t bring up Momo now. Bearing the weight of Dazai’s probing gaze, Chuuya internally scrambles for something to say. “A-Ah,” he stammers, squeezing the doorknob tighter as he shifts his gaze to Dazai. “Speaking of which. Osamu, I’m sorry, but we can’t go to the beach just yet.”

Dazai wilts. The light knocks out of his eyes. “Oh,” the child says, resigned. “That’s alright.” The smile stitching across his face is as small and fragile as the veins of Chuuya’s heart, thudding hard.

Chuuya swallows another rush of salt, an ache building in his breast. “It isn’t alright,” he says firmly, wet hand slipping off the doorknob. He readjusts his stance to face the boy head-on, like he deserves. Dazai continues to stare at him on a steel-pole swivel, caution and suspicion edging into the boy’s posture, sharpening his stare. Chuuya clears his throat. He shifts his weight to one leg, rolling his lips. “It’s okay to be upset,” he urges, desperate for Dazai to understand. “It’s not fair, and it’s okay to be mad.” 

Staid. Still. Dazai’s expression is fit for a mannequin. “I’m not upset, Nakahara-san,” the stone child says, and a chill creeps along the lines of Chuuya’s body. The ache worsens. All those years of people claiming Dazai was like a little wind-up doll, and Chuuya had managed to never make the same comparison. 

Until now. 

“We’re going to meet someone,” Chuuya says in favor of pulling that train into the station. Dazai’s eyes widen, pupils swelling in wooden spheres, and so Chuuya rushes out: “It won’t be for long,” Chuuya takes a frantic step forward, raising a hand out as if he can snatch the fear off Dazai’s face. “A-And it’ll probably be super boring, but we got to meet my boss for a bit. Just for a bit.”

The child perks up a bit. A glint of curiosity polishes the wood with a vibrant lacquer, bringing out a swirl of natural color. “Your boss? You mean the boss of the Port Mafia?”

Chuuya nods, solemn. “Yes.”

It’s the last place Chuuya wants to take him, but if Chuuya’s to keep the ship steady then he’ll have to make the concession. For all his myriad faults, Mori has kept the Port Mafia from sinking into chaos, steering them into safer, richer waters. This is the only choice Chuuya has to keep the peace.

Dazai cocks his head, gaze sliding off Chuuya and into the middle-distance. The boy hums, pressing his lips together, deep in thought. 

For all his claims of living untouched by gravity, he feels it like lead in his blood.

Those intelligent eyes flick back to him, spearing Chuuya through the skull. 

“Is it Mori?”

All the saliva in Chuuya’s mouth evaporates. He hears himself as if in a tunnel, distant and delayed. “How do you know that name?”

He tells himself it was the Agency, loose-lipped losers who didn’t know their place. Dazai shrugs and tells him otherwise.

“Oh, well—he has ambitions.” 

The child reaches for his jacket, pulling it from its perch and into his lap. “I read it in his file,” he explains, as if it’s a simple, obvious thing. He slides on the jacket one arm at a time, eyes shut, reading the pages in his mind. “He’s about to become a field doctor,” he continues, hands sliding to the collar to snap the jacket into place. “Then he’ll go back to working for the mafia. A lot of his background has been obfuscated, but it’s easy to read between the lines.” Dazai adjusts his jacket so it cups his shoulders, busying with the buttons, oblivious to Chuuya’s slack-jaw stare. “And since that fifth tower wasn’t here back then, he’s made his move.” The boy lifts his head, returning Chuuya’s gaze. Slim brows furrow together. “Nakahara-san? Are you alright?”

Chuuya stares past Dazai, his thoughts one screaming line.

“I’m fine,” he says once he’s recovered. At his side, the container is warm with body heat. “Just…” He licks his lips, nose screwing up of its own accord when he catches a whiff of cold eggs. That damnable salt. “Let me put this away and we can head right out. After I brush my teeth.” 

Chuuya leaves the plate of poppers for Momo by the closet and apologizes before locking her in for the day. There’s a half-empty glass of water on the nightstand. It’s long grown stale, but it should tide her over until tonight. Unguarded glasses are her second favorite thing, after all. 

Chuuya makes a game of racing Dazai to see who can brush their teeth faster, jamming elbow-to-elbow in a bathroom with more than enough counter space, trying to goad the boy into playing. Dazai stares at him with big baby eyes and asks what’s in his mouth.

Evidently, the Tower doesn’t carry toothbrushes.

Leaving that terrifying conversation for another time—another decade, preferably—he chases Dazai to the elevator so the boy doesn’t catch Momo’s caterwauling protests.

Unlike yesterday, the ride is short and uneventful. Even the few fingers of heat streaking across the sky are enough to bake Chuuya into his suit. In the rearview mirror, Dazai drools against the window. His cheek smudges the glass, lips tugged up on one side to reveal a white point.

Traffic is nonexistent. Any sensible person is tucked into bed or just stumbling into it. He and Dazai were supposed to be two of those red-eyed people, clubbing their way towards the sunrise with at least seven drinks between them, but life loves to fuck them over, apparently. Chuuya drums his fingers on the wheel, watching color bleed back into the world, and promises himself they still have tonight when this all wears off. 

He’ll need more than a few drinks after this. A full bottle. Maybe two.

He parks on the curb right in front of headquarters, knowing he won’t be towed. ‘Validate your parking ticket’ his ass. Last time he used the parking garage they ate both his ticket and his credit card.

With a click of the door, Dazai tumbles out of the backseat, drunk from a taste of much-needed sleep. Slapping his palms on the curb, he catches himself before Chuuya can have an aneurysm. Dusting off his palms, staggering to his feet, Dazai tips his head back to take in the buildings’ full glory. Spit shines on his chin. 

“It’s so much larger than I thought,” Dazai breathes out, reaching back to shut the car door without taking his eyes off the spectacle. Chuuya clucks his tongue, fighting the urge to snarl. Begrudgingly, he turns towards headquarters, trying to grasp the sight as if it were the first time. 

The five-fingered emblem of the underworld scratches towards a shifting orange canvas. Its windows, like black plates of obsidian, catch fire with the rising sun, licking up the buildings from top to bottom. Such a magnificent sight is worthy of the Port Mafia. This morning, it reminds him of a funeral pyre. 

Four dozen stairs lead to the main entrance. There is no ramp. There are no guard rails. It’s a test of endurance for the rank-and-file, not to mention this skinny slip of a kid.

“I can do it,” Dazai protests, shying away from his offered hand with red cheeks. Chuuya's smile is wan. They begin to climb the steps together, but it doesn’t take long for Dazai to trail behind. It almost makes Chuuya laugh. A skinny slip of a nerd, even now. He half expects to hear the raucous complaints and theatrical wailing, but there is only the Dazai’s laboring breaths cutting the silence of a slow Saturday morning. 

Chuuya presses his lips together. 

The morning is thick with heat, a humidity clinging to the air that will burn off in a few hours. Not even clouds make it to noon, these days. Moisture swells the sponges of his lungs. Choking him. Demanding relief. 

His coat snaps in gusts of warm, salted wind. The scent of brine and diesel fumes carries across the city, sharpening his senses, rousing him, demanding speech.

Crawling his stride, but not stopping, Chuuya shuts his eyes and speaks.

“So much larger than the Tower?”

Dazai is silent in reply.

Guards greet them at the entrance, armed with black suits and hidden weapons. Dark sunglasses are tucked into their breast pockets. Chuuya has no idea what their names are. There are so many new recruits nowadays, a thousand handymen where there was once only one. 

The men nod at Chuuya, brows twisted, slow to recognize his hasty dye-job. Having avoided himself in every reflective surface this morning, he can’t hazard what he looks like, and he’ll be damned if he asks. He must look like an absolute nutcase. At least he made the blessed mistake of forgetting to replace his colored contacts.

There’s been no more screaming and fainting, so maybe Chuuya won’t have to wear them again.

Chuuya nods at the men in return, ignoring their confused grunts when Dazai mounts the landing, panting with his head hung low, clutching knobby knees.

They know better than to voice their questions.

Still, their eyes linger.

Chuuya holds open one of the double glass doors, allowing Dazai to slip under his arm, stealing a breath of quick laughter when the boy’s bouncing curls pass beneath his arm by half a meter. The door shuts on Chuuya’s heels, sealing in the cold. The lobby is a study in scarlet drapery and black marble. Chuuya sets a hand on the boy’s shoulder and guides him deeper into the hall, bypassing the front desk and its sleepy receptionist, all his effort focused on not crushing Dazai’s shoulder in his hand. Chuuya thought the boy would be frightened. The cavernous space, the lonely, sterile atmosphere. Chuuya thought he’d have to cradle Dazai close.

It is clear Dazai is right at home.

The child glides over marble shot through with golden thread, his round face as solemn as stone. He doesn’t look at Chuuya for comfort. He doesn’t shake off his touch. A fine tremor quakes through the boy’s frame as he permits himself to be led towards the elevator, a trembling that ceases the moment the glossy black doors part on a mirrored car.

With a sigh of obvious relief, the boy steps into the elevator and out of Chuuya’s hold.

“Oh,” the boy exclaims, examining the console with glittering eyes. “There’s buttons!” He lifts his head to address Chuuya, face split into a grin. “What floor?”

Chuuya swallows thickly, stomach reminding him of his hunger. His anger. “Twenty-seven,” he says, stepping across the threshold and parking himself in a corner to give Dazai space, and to observe. The boy presses the button, bouncing on his heels as the doors shut. 

The car shudders and lifts into the air. Chuuya slides his gaze to the boy admiring himself in the mirror, pulling on his ears and sticking his tongue out like a kid his age, and a lump grows in the base of Chuuya’s throat. He feels like a fish reeled inexorably towards the surface. There is no escape. Whatever has been done—done in darkness and in daylight and right under Chuuya’s damn fucking nose—it will come to light now.

There’s no turning back.

Chuuya swallows the salt in his mouth and voices the thought that kept him up all night. 

“Have you met Mori Ougai before?”

Dazai nods at his reflection. “I have,” Dazai chirps, blowing a raspberry.

As the boy waves his arm in a slow arc, a thousand Dazai’s chained together into infinity, the cheer bleeds away, draining into nothing. 

For a moment, there is only this: Dazai, observing a reflection of obedience, and Chuuya, observing his own.

“I’ve never spoken to him directly,” Dazai says, hand sinking to his side. Every one of his clones wear identical expressions: strung taut and knowing.

The child turns his head, peering over his shoulder. His clones look away.

Dazai meets Chuuya’s gaze, a deep, unwavering calm descending upon the elevator.

Dazai’s smile spreads thin.

“I remember thinking…his eyes were sad.”

Mori Ougai’s office is a chunk of six floors, like a Rubik’s Cube right down the middle, all the walls and doors and whole floors knocked down to make way for a grandstanding power play. It’s as beautiful as it is ridiculous. Golden fingers claw across checkerboard marble as the sun rises out of the sea. Gilt trim glints on the crimson carpet rolled from door-to-desk. A pair of velvet chairs and a single couch huddle about a coffee table, peering out at the panorama. There is no other furniture. No dust. No waste. No place to hide.

Chuuya pauses to take it all in, reminding himself to savor the small things, to swallow the rage crawling up his throat, but this office is anything but small, and his mouth is dry.

One hundred meters of glass along one perimeter. Forty-three thousand books span the other two. Where the bookcases fail to reach, emerald flocking stretches towards an eighteen-meter ceiling vaulted like a grand cathedral. A train of low-hanging, low-light chandeliers lead to the desk pressed to the far side of the room. The tiny figure of his boss sits behind the desk, waiting for his cue to begin the performance.

Really, what a chaotic waste of space.

The heating bill for this room must be insane, which is why it’s kept as cold as an ice box at night. Chuuya’s skin prickles. As insanely stupid as it is, it serves its purpose. A long walk towards a short drop.

Perhaps it’s not such a waste after all, but psychological power plays are not his wheelhouse.

Chuuya pinches off his hat and cups it to his chest. His sensitive scalp tingles. Hand molded once more around the boy’s shoulder, his touch light, Chuuya guides them down the scarlet path. Behind them, the doors shut with a rib-rattling echo. What is Dazai thinking? What is he looking at? Chuuya doesn’t let his gaze stray from the growing image of his boss, knowing that to look away begets defeat.

“Chuuya-kun,” Mori croons when they are close enough, his chin cradled by white gloves, elbows propped on the desk. “I see you’ve changed your look. It suits you.” A green banker’s lamp glows beside him, casting shadows. Immaculate stacks of paper. Emptied ink bottles and a rollerball pen. A single lamp doesn’t seem enough. Chuuya often wonders if the chandeliers’ dim light gives Mori headaches. Now, he hopes it grows a tumor.

“How kind of you to arrive so early,” Mori says, a slip of silk. The barest slouch of his shoulders and the sheen of grease at the part of his hair are the sole indicators the man hasn’t slept in days. Chuuya notes the compact of powder at Mori’s elbow.

“I hope you didn’t skip breakfast on my account,” his boss says, snapping Chuuya’s gaze back to him. Chuuya's stomach is a clenched fist. He promised Dazai beignets as they left the apartment—the good kind: fried in a truck that served nothing else—but now Chuuya wishes he’d eaten those eggs, if only to give the anger scraping at his teeth something to chew.

Taking a leaf out of his boyfriend’s book, Chuuya bows his head in greeting. “We had eggs,” he lies, keeping his voice even despite the fury gnawing at his bones, demanding blood.

“Good morning, Mori-sama.” Dazai bows, folding in half. “Thank you for having us.” Chuuya stiffens, lifting his head warily. 

Mori’s eyes crease at the corners. The smile he gives to Dazai is all bows and ruffles and sticky-sweet apple pie. 

“-san is fine,” Mori purrs. Lowering his hands, the man leans back in his chair with a creak of old wood hidden beneath the crimson upholstery. “What should I call you?”

Chuuya flicks his gaze between Mori and Dazai, surrender be damned. He didn’t expect a question like that, but he supposes it makes sense given Dazai’s strange, shrouded origins. The beast claws onto his tongue, forcing him to clench his teeth to bare the gates at the thought his Dazai might go by a different name, that there’s a tiny grave out there somewhere, labeled for a stranger. Unattended. Unloved. Forgotten.

Dazai folds his hands over his belly, pressing tall. “Everyone calls me Dazai Osamu,” he replies.

Twin dimples bore into Mori’s cheeks, bracketing his sly mouth. “Then Dazai Osamu it is. Lovely to meet you once again.” 

Mori exhales a wistful sigh, the top sheet on his stack of paperwork curling at the edge before unraveling. The man leans forward to rest his chin in one hand, the other splayed across the desk. 

“This brings back memories.” 

Chuuya prickles at the fondness, at the audacity. A certainty grips him by the ankle, tugging him down into darkness. Inky black water pours into his lungs, drowning his already waterlogged lungs. 

He was right all along.

None of the frilly dresses and crayon drawing and blatant admissions disguised as jokes were ever an act. It was never a joke. It wasn’t funny in the least.

“Chuuya-kun,” Mori says, his eyes never straying from the child’s steady gaze. “Would you give us a moment alone?”

Chuuya resurfaces, a sleek, starving shark.

“My deepest apologies, sir,” Chuuya says, straightening to his full height with a click of his heel. “I have to decline.” Will Mori’s blood be darker than another’s? Will he cry out for mercy?

Twin garnets sharpen into diamonds. Chuuya squares his jaw, grip tightening around the horn of his hat, the material deforming with a pop. He shakes with the size of his hysteria, the unbridled joy. He hasn’t killed someone he hated in a long, long time. He’ll savor this like a fine, French wine. “The Armed Detective Agency and the Port Mafia have established a truce while Dostoyevsky and the Angels are a threat,” he parrots, fighting to restrain a manic grin. “I’ve been given strict instructions to keep an eye on him at all times, or the Agency will dissolve the contract.”

Mori narrows his eyes into slits. “Is that so?” 

Chuuya’s breath hitches, smacked by the shock of a predator’s gaze. The stillness of the room finally registers in his ears. In the silence, he parses the faint twitch of clock tucked on one of the shelves behind his boss.  

Chuuya grinds his molars, enamel squeaking, creaking, threatening to shatter. No predator alive, big or small, can take down a monster like the one inside him right now. It’s time to rip this bastard to shreds and grill the leftovers. No. Chuuya’s breath sears through his teeth. He bares them at this idiot who dares to look away and fiddle with the bottles of ink on his desk, sweeping the compact into his lap with a deft swipe of his arm.

Chuuya’s going to paint the whole room red. The lump in his throat is a bomb, anger about to blow his fucking head off.

He opens his mouth, releasing the beast and—

“Motherfucker,” Mori breathes out, staring at a paper he holds out in front of him with a look of abject despair. “Dazai was supposed to file our taxes last night.”

Chuuya’s brain skids out. The length of the fuse slips away from him. 

He stares at his boss, a laugh building in his throat. 

What? 

“We pay taxes?” 

He’s never paid taxes in his life. Was that something he was supposed to be doing?

He thought mafiosos didn’t pay taxes as a rule .

Mori sighs, setting the paper aside. He interlaces his hands atop the desk and pins Chuuya with dark, weary eyes. “Personally, no,” he admits, smile rueful. “However, the Port Mafia is an accredited organization. Dazai-kun deals with that for me when he feels generous.”

Beside Chuuya, Dazai presses to the tips of his toes. “I can do your taxes,” the boy exclaims earnestly. Chuuya’s eyes widen. Peering down at the boy, he’s met with budding embarrassment. The boy weaves his fingers together, bouncing on his heels, and returns his gaze to a bemused Mori. “I mean, not now b-but—Chu—Nakahara-san said we’re going to the beach! A-And the ferris wheel!” Chuuya's heart clenches at the desperation. The screaming hope. Chuuya wants to earn such excitement. He wants to be worthy of it. 

“I want to do those things before I wake up,” Dazai continues, eyes gleaming. Determined. “But I can come back afterwards and do your taxes!”

Mori’s smile softens. “Thank you, Dazai-san, but we’ll manage.” Mori’s shoulders rise and fall. “It is a shame you appeared when you did, but it’s a small price to pay for just how interesting this day has become.” Chuuya stiffens, hands curling into fists at his sides. He tells himself he isn’t imagining the frightful intent behind those words. He tells himself, this is it. All these years he turned a blind eye to Mori’s proclivities, but now—

Now, the act of knowing is actively killing him.

“Now,” Mori cheers, clapping his hands once and reclining in his chair. “I’ve heard you speak Russian,” he asks Dazai with thinly veiled glee. “Is that correct?”

Dazai bobs his head, excitement splashing bright and young across his face. Chuuya watches the boy bounce on the balls of his heels, trembling happily with the notion of speaking what might well be his native language, and chews on the sides of his tongue. To think something so small could make Dazai happy.

Mori’s smile widens. “How wondrous. How are you feeling today? Are you in any pain?”

Dazai’s eyes round in surprise. “No?” Shifting his weight from foot to foot, he darts his gaze between Chuuya and Mori, worry pinching his face. “Should I be?”

Mori chuckles, shaking his head. “Not at all,” he says, his words soft and slippery like silk ribbons. “I just worry.” 

Chuuya’s lungs quaver on the long inhale he pulls to calm himself. “Boss.”

Mori’s teeth flash sunrise pink. “Can’t a man have his fun?” 

The boss’s gaze flicks to Dazai, a sigh building in his chest. “Such a pity,” the man breathes out, endearment and resignation tugging apart his expression. “I have so much to ask you, but you and I have an agreement if such a case were to occur.”

Mori draws back in his chair, heavy legs scraping against the floor. Unfolding to his full height, the man draws a hand down the buttons of his vest and threads out from behind his desk, looping around his chair to peruse the bookshelves.

“It’s one of these silly things,” Mori mutters, scanning a small collection of silver boxes, each one a different shape and size. “But I can’t begrudge a decent method of planning ahead.”

Chuuya mulches the man’s words, musing aloud. “Dazai thought this might happen? But he’s a nullifier, this shouldn’t have happened in the first place.” Truthfully, he’s not too surprised. Dazai has always lived ten days in the future, knowing everyone’s thoughts before they think them. It makes playing him 1v1 a nightmare.

“True,” Mori replies, retrieving a slim silver lockbox, its edges tarnished black. “But Dazai-kun’s countermeasures would put the pentagon to shame. Well, more shame than usual.” It appears not to weigh much. Lifting the box, he slips into his seat and sets the box on the desk with a muted clack of claw feet. Flicking up the pair of dirty buckles on the front, he gestures for Dazai to retrieve it. “Here. You left this for yourself if you ever slipped back a few years.”

Dazai hesitates, glancing at Chuuya for reluctant approval. 

“This is more than just a few years,” Chuuya mumbles, watching Dazai like a mother hawk as the boy pads politely to the desk. “Why did this even happen?” Chuuya trembles with restraint as the boy leans over the desk, reaching for the box. Dazai takes the box with both hands, leaning up and out of Mori’s reach before padding off the side to open it with privacy. Mori’s eyes follow, but those terrible hands remain palm down on the table. Chuuya’s chest uncoils. Breath returns to his lungs. Arahabaki drifts back to sleep, for now. “How, exactly, did this happen?”

“Who can say?” Mori shrugs, glancing at Dazai who opens the lid with a wide-eyed curiosity that reminds Chuuya of a puppy. “As much as I value the Agency’s assistance with the Angels, the way they handle important matters is…quite the embarrassment.”

A muddle of emotions twists Dazai’s expression as he peers inside the box, but Chuuya’s startled gaze flicks back to Mori before he can parse it.

“In what way?”

Mori grimaces lightly, resting his elbows on the table to cup his chin once more. Distantly, he wonders if his boss ever sleeps. 

“You have eyes, Nakahara-san,” Mori sighs. “Their work is sloppy and half-hazard at best.” Mori shakes his head, a strand of greasy hair catching against the bridge of his nose. “I don’t personally see a need for an armed detective agency to exist when we have government task forces made specifically for such purposes.” The man attempts to remove the errant strand of hair with a poorly disguised twitch of his nose, but it remains stubbornly sandwiched against his nose. Mori’s shoulders deflate. His smile, weak. “But I suppose it creates jobs for people unable to find jobs elsewhere.”

Chuuya wishes he could disagree. The agency gave Dazai a safe space to swell his social circle and put some meat on his bones, but also constantly put him at loggerheads with Mori and people like Dostoyevsky. Taking one step out of the fireplace won’t stop you from burning. As long as Dazai lived in Yokohama, he’d always run into people who knew him as a monster.

The snap of the box pins the gravity of the room. The boy’s expression is shuttered as tightly as the clasps he shuts with small fingers, a sodden type of sadness draped over his shoulders that Mori seems to ignore completely, smiling brightly. “You’re finished?” The boy nods, slides a palm over the top of the box for a moment, gaze downcast and pondering. He ambles back to the desk. “Perfect,” Mori says, standing up. He reaches across the desk to take the box from the sullen boy. “I’ll take that. Thank you.” Dazai gives it over wordlessly, his head hung and shoulders slumped. He returns the box to the shelf, pauses, and then readjusts the box so it is arranged in perfect symmetry with its siblings.

“One of the men complicit in this case slipped through the agency’s fingers last night,” Mori says, returning to his desk. Chuuya watches his boss all but slump into his seat.

“What?”

Mori finally brushes the lock of hair from his face with an impatient hand. “As I said,” he tuts, eyes cut low. “It’s an embarrassment that wouldn’t have occurred under our purview. The man escaped custody, but we now know his identity and that of his accomplice. Yamada Eiji is on the lam, likely to rendezvous with his partner, Ishida Kaido. They’re former wards of Sunny Skies Orphanage. That tiger boy Akutagawa-san seems so fond of happened to come from there as well.” Mori shakes his head again, scowling when his hair plasters his cheek with dark fingers. He leaves it alone, gaze weary. “Seems these two chose to follow a different path.”

Chuuya swallows the names down to inform the beast in his belly. “Do we have an idea of their motives?”

Mori’s eyes flicker to Dazai for a moment, and Chuuya follows his gaze to see a familiar shut-down compliance has wrapped itself around the boy, flat brown eyes staring into the middle distance. 

Mori’s lips thin in grim determination, sliding his gaze to Chuuya. “Not ones I’d repeat in the company of tiny ears.”

Dazai lifts his voice, tiny and adrift. “It’s alright. I’m accustomed to talking about all manner of terrible topics.” 

The boy squeezes his eyes shut, upper lip curling back in a display of remorse, touching down in the present.  

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

Mori sighs with a small, resigned smile. “It’ll take some get used to.”

Dazai frowns. “It’s inexcusable.”

Chuuya swivels a wide-eyed stare between his boss and Dazai, thoroughly confused. Clearly, he’s missing something.

“Nonsense,” Mori says. His grin furls, positively impish. Sickness swirls in Chuuya’s stomach. “The you who wrote that isn’t here, so I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Chuuya swallows thickly. “Sir,” he says, wetting his lips. “When does Yamada-san’s ability wear off?”

Mori shrugs at Chuuya with an insulting helplessness, like they didn’t have a kid-diddling psychopath on the loose..

And one in charge.

“That I cannot say,” Mori sighs. “It’s not Yamada’s ability he’s under at the moment. It’s Ishida’s. Yamada seems to have a shape-shifting or projection-type capable of transforming him into the person one fears the most.” 

Mori lifts his chin, leans back in his chair, and laces his fingers on the table.

His eyes have lost their edge. “It’s a shame I didn’t find him sooner.”

Chuuya hums, not exactly mirroring the sentiment. It’s not like the mafia to drop the ball like this. Or Mori, for that matter. When Mori set his sights on an enemy, he ate them alive within a few days. Now the month is creeping towards a close, and Chuuya’s friends are sharing bunks in the morgue. “It’s a useful ability.”

Mori’s grin grows teeth. 

“ Very useful. Especially for intimidation purposes.” 

He tips his head towards the boy, that compassionate, furious affection sweeping over his face once more. “Now, unless you have any more questions for me, Dazai-kun?” 

Chuuya glances at the child, Dazai shaking his head softly, staring at his shoes. “No? Well then that’ll be all for now. Please go and enjoy the beach and whatnot.” Mori gaze slides to the window, an ugly grimace splitting his lips. “Soon it’ll be bright enough that the whales are baking.”

Bowing low, Chuuya guides Dazai out of the office and into the elevator. 

“To go to the beach,” he says, choosing the button for the twelfth floor. “We’ll need a few things from my older sister. I left them with her the last time we went swimming together.”

Dazai blinks out of his stupor, lifting his chin in surprise. “You have an older sister? I have—”

The boy sucks in a gasp, surprise bursting across his expression. He shuts his eyes. “Nevermind,” he squeezes out, turning around to give Chuuya his back. “I’m sorry.”

Chuuya hums, watching the child stare at his chain of reflections. “You say sorry a lot.”

A thousand brown-haired boys nod shaggy curls. “I know,” Dazai murmurs to himself. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s alright,” Chuuya reassures. “Just…it’s important to save your apologies for the times you really need to apologize. Otherwise it just becomes another word.” 

Dazai’s fists ball at his sides. He glares at his reflection with the murderous rage of the Dazai who once hacked off three of Akutagawa’s toes after he botched a mission.

His words eke out through clenched jaws. “Not letting my dad come here.”

Chuuya startles, staring at the boy in the mirror. “What?”

Dazai rounds on him, chest puffed out like a lion. “Those are his words,” he snarls, eyes blazing amber. His voice echoes in the small space, bouncing off silvered glass. The gaze he pins Chuuya with is full of pure malice. “Not letting him interrupt my good dream.”

Chuuya stiffens, eyes widening at the show of anger. “Okay,” he chides. “Okay.” 

Chuuya raises his hands in surrender, hoping the boy won’t leap and attack him, or something. God—were children always so mercurial, or just Dazai?

The boy’s shoulders rise and fall with the swell of his ribs, panting echoing in the small space. Chuuya watches the boy glare a hole through the floor, a strange pinching in his stomach. Once again, he thinks of Verlaine. “You really hate your dad, huh?”

“I’m not supposed to say anything,” Dazai says, carrying all the venom of an adder, and Chuuya wishes he could reach out and ruffle the boy’s hair. Take the hurt away. Chuuya knows what it’s like to hate someone so much it consumes everything else. The whole world, shaded black.

“That much, huh?”

Dazai grits his teeth, expression twisting. “I’m not saying anything.”

Chuuya sighs, shaking his head. “Don’t have to. Sometimes you hate someone so much it all spills out whether you mean to or not.”

Dazai shuts his eyes, tipping his head back to rest against the mirror. He pinches his lips together, throat bobbing with a heavy swallow. “He’s not a bad person,” he chokes out, screwing his eyes shut. “That’s why I hate him.”

Chuuya blinks, more than a little mystified. “What happened to saying nothing?”

The boy lifts his head, pushing off the wall with a click of his tongue. “You already know,” he grumbles, opening brown eyes to stare at the floor. “And I don’t like older me anyway.”

The pinch becomes a stab. 

Chuuya thought he’d been painting Dazai in a good light: a job, an apartment, a man surrounded by loved ones. 

“Why is that?”

Dazai flicks his gaze up, lifting a brow, looking at Chuuya like he’s said the sky is green. “Because he’s me?”

Chuuya sucks in a sharp breath. A reply curdles on his tongue, unable to spit out even an approximation of kindness. He turns his back on the boy.

What can he say to that?

They finish the ride in silence. 

Let out in a corridor papered with maroon silk, Chuuya leads Dazai to a pair of traditional shoji doors set in the modern hall. Dark shapes move on the other side, abstract and merry. Young laughter filters through the rice paper, carried on the plucked strings of a shamisen.

Chuuya doesn’t bother knocking. He parts the lattice frame onto a rift in space time. 

Fragrant tatami mats and a myriad of perfumes pour on a warm, humid breeze. The traditional room sprawls with open space, sunlight bathing the mats in a light incongruous for the hour. In the left wall, another set of doors is shut on a separate room. 

More tittering laughter. 

A few steps from the threshold, a trio of Kouyou’s girls sit around a low table, knees folded primly in their floral kimonos. A cup passes from the girl in the pink kimono to an older girl dressed in green. “Your turn, Mei-Mei!” 

Another girl sits across from them, a blonde in blue. Chuuya doesn’t recognize her.

The far wall of the room has been replaced with a vista of a pond. Water burbles from an unseen feature beyond the edge of the porch. A slender tree grows from verdant banks, shading the area with an unseen canopy, as if an ability opened a portal to an idyllic park.

But no, it’s simply money.

Chuuya clears his throat, bracing his forearm on the doorframe. The girls turn to him with a series of startled squeaks, only for them to break out in uniform grins.

“Chuuya-sama!”

“Chuuya-sama, we missed you so much!”

“Chuuya-sama, what are you doing here so late?”

Chuuya smiles, sliding a palm down the doorframe, feeling how Dazai plasters against his back, hiding behind the spill of his coat. “I think you mean,‘so early’, Kiki-chan.”

The girl in pink blinks owlishly before the girl in green knocks shoulders with her, poking fun. Kiki flushes, nudging Mei-Mei in return. The girl Chuuya doesn’t recognize rolls blue eyes and tips the container into her palm, rolling the dice silently, scrutinizing the numbers before jotting down the sum on her little pad of paper with a short pencil.

Kiki’s gaze flicks over, catching her in the act. “Hey! That’s cheating!”

The blonde rolls her eyes again, collecting the dice and dropping them into the cup. “Only if I fudged the numbers. Guess you’ll never know, huh?”

Mei-Mei reaches over the table and snatches away her pad. “Be a team player, Rachel . This is why you’re never picked for threesomes.” Flipping her own pencil, she erases Rachel’s score and scribbles another number further down the page, ignoring the squawk of outrage. Mei-Mei tosses the note pad back at her with a scoff, Rachel fumbling to catch it.

Kiki tucks a lock of brown hair over her ear, sticking out her tongue at Rachel. “The reason they never pick her is because she can’t give head for shit. Can you believe she’s bitten four clients in the last week?”

Mei-Mei laughs, not unkindly, leaning her weight into Kiki. “You won’t last long biting off cocks like they’re bananas! What’s going to happen if you chomp the next one clean off? Ozaki-sama will have you shipped back to remedial!”

Rachel darts a hesitant look between them, fear creeping through the makeup. Kiki shrugs off Mei-Mei with a sigh and reaches a hand across the table, grasping Rachel’s. “It’ll be fine,” Kiki assures, running her thumb over the girl’s knuckles, her expression sweet and understanding. “After this, you and I can break out the cucumbers and figure this out. Okay? Everyone’s trash on their first go around.”

Mei-Mei blurts out another barking laugh. A flush rides high on her cheeks, tumbling down her chest, a glassy sheen to her eyes that speaks of sake or other spirits. “Oh, yeah, Rachel— Rachel , you won’t even believe—,” she smacks Kiki’s back, knocking black hair from its bun, and earning a venomous glare. “Kiki once broke a guy's dick! Like—Like really snapped it in half. Like a pencil. She couldn’t ride a coin-operated pony!”

Kiki squeezes Rachel’s hand once before rocking back on her rear, letting go. Twisting, she flicks Mei-Mei in the ear. “As if you’re one to talk,” Mei-Mei pouts, clutching her ear with a pout. “Last month you screamed out: “Oh, Mister President ~,” she pitches her voice, mimicking a howler monkey on the verge climax. Mei-Mei sways, covering her mouth with a giggle. “We heard you from the third floor!”

Kiki huffs and crosses her arms over her chest, turning up her nose.

Rachel swings a perplexed glance between her friends before covering her mouth with both hands, bursting into laughter. Mei-Mei flings herself forward, draping her front over the table with a sprawl of her arms, her notepad fraying into pages. She shakes with whooping laughter, red cheek pressed against the table. Her score sheets flutter, rocking back forth in the air like autumn leaves, and Kiki’s stern pout breaks, dissolving into giggles.

Chuuya stands in the doorway, arm slack at his side. Staring.

The three teenagers laugh amongst themselves, eyes creasing with heavy blots of red shadow and glitter. Their kimonos are rumpled—collars uneven, their makeup smudged just so—alluding to the long night shift they pulled. 

Chuuya wishes he hadn’t come here.

He wishes he could have allowed the girls this private moment of fun together so they could unwind before tucking in for the day. 

The child at his back shifts slightly, a hand curling into the fabric of his coat, catching on his shirt so it pulls taut over chest, and another skewer of shame stabs through his belly. 

The boy is too young to hear such things, and yet—

Yet—

And yet Kiki was only a year older than Dazai when she was sold. Mei-Mei was twelve when she was snatched from Hong Kong. He’s never met Rachel, but she can’t be older than sixteen. 

All of them, teenagers. 

All of them, children.

Chuuya opens his mouth, intending to excuse himself. He can grab an inner tube and cheap sunscreen anywhere, he doesn’t have to interrupt Kouyou and her girls when the makeup was caked beneath their eyes like warpaint and—

The woman herself snaps open the other pair of shoji doors, striking the room into silence.

Her girls startle, skin peeling down to stark white. Dazai’s small nose jabs into Chuuya’s tail bone.

Chuuya rocks off the doorframe, shifting weight into his other hip, and unfurls a tired, troubled grin. 

“Hello ane- san,” he breathes, grateful for her presence. 

The woman rakes a disapproving gaze over the girls who scrabble for pencils and pages and the half-empty bottle of soju stowed beneath the table. The sight kindles fond memories, bringing a natural grin to his lips. Long nights spent hunched over his desk, half-dozing, only to be dragged off by a sore ear. The many meetings she took notes for him when slept through them as a new executive, unable to juggle missions and meetings and mentorship all at once. All the little care packages, hand-wrapped and hand-delivered. All the tender smiles. 

His fellow executive, his benefactor, and sister all rolled into one. She has a talent with children he’s never grasped. 

If she can pry the tiny fists off his coat, even just a fraction, he’ll owe her a thousand steak dinners.

Leaving the cushions askew, and a page flipped ink-side up on the tatami, the girls take the hint and flee beneath the bridges of Kouyou’s arms, disappearing into the next room without a word. Chuuya takes a step into the room, tiny charge clinging to his back, to peer at the name of the game. Written in English, he takes a moment to sound out the letters under his breath. 

Y-a-h-t-z-e-e? 

Huh. 

Learn a new thing everyday, he supposes.

Kouyou shuts the doors behind her with a swift clack. “Well,” she tuts, smoothing her hands on the apron of her kimono. “I expected you’d be around eventually. I assume you’ve brought the little lad?” 

Arms in her sleeves, woven over her stomach, she strolls into the room with an elegance unbefitting to the luggage beneath her eyes. Chuuya’s lips twitch downwards. 

No one sleeps well anymore, except the dead. 

Kouyou’s white-socked feet carry her an arms-breadth away, her perfume curling around like an embrace of jasmine. Face powdered, kimono pressed, Chuuya scans his mentor with the swelling warmth of pride; Kouyou is always the most immaculate character in the room. Staring Chuuya down, she raises a slim, auburn brow. Asking.

Chuuya's eyes widen. Oh, right.

With a sweep of his right arm, he makes an abortive gesture behind him, trying to convey the situation without making it worse. Pleading with his eyes, he silently explains this isn’t the same Dazai she knew who once left a severed head on Kouyou’s bed post when she threw out Dazai’s handheld.

Understanding dances behind the frosted panes of her eyes. Drawing a sleeved hand to her mouth, she leans sideways to peek at her little visitor, her hair tumbling down in an orange waterfall. Chuuya slips a hand behind him, finding the tracks of Dazai’s ribs. Petting them kindly, he nudges the child into Kouyou’s sight.

Her eyes melt molten orange. 

“Oh my,” Kouyou murmurs, lifting a hand to her mouth to hide how it thins. “He is small.”

Dazai stiffens and Chuuya stills his hand on the boy’s crown, thumbing through thick tresses to rub into the child’s scalp. He flicks his gaze to Kouyou, purses his lips, and gives a sharp nod.

Nodding softly in return, Kouyou sinks down slowly to the floor.

She smooths a hand down her thighs and pins the kimono beneath knees before folding to the tatami. A swirl of emotions gathers in her eyes. Molten glass molds into a parody of shapes, unused to exposing this part of her heart for Dazai. This was the same child she once believed to be an aspect of Mori’s ability. The same child who routinely ripped people into pieces. The same child she left in Mori’s grasp, feigning ignorance even when she learned the truth.

Chuuya tells himself she has no choice.

She shifts her hand from her mouth and extends it to the boy. 

“Hello, dear,” she says, coral lips spreading into a delicate smile. “My name is Ozaki Kouyou.”

Chuuya nudges the boy with his hip, twisting to meet the child as he creeps out of Chuuya’s shadow, laying his other arm over Dazai’s shoulders. The boy is pale. Fine tremors wrack his frame. Fearful eyes flit from Kouyou’s demure smile, to her hand, to Chuuya’s firm gaze. Dazai’s lips pinch, eyes searching for reassurance, and Chuuya frets that the girls’ conversation has traumatized him. 

If someone is watching Dazai’s sleep—if he has heard: “all sorts of terrible things”, then perhaps he knows words like that. Chuuya’s stomach clenches taut. 

God, he hopes not.

Chuuya drops his voice to a whisper. “You’re safe with me, Osamu,” he reassures, smoothing a hand over the boy’s curls. They rebound back like blades of grass. Adoration ripples warm and tender through him, lulling his voice into a murmur. “Okay?” 

Crown to nape, Chuuya runs his palm over the boy’s head once more, tucking a strand behind Dazai’s ear as he does so. 

Dazai jolts. He claps a hand over his ear and lifts his chin, staring up at Chuuya with those big brown eyes like pots of dew-dressed soil. Some of the fear shakes out of them, but not all. Guilty and far out of his depth, Chuuya addresses Kouyou with a silent scream of a smile.

“This is my teacher,” he tells Dazai. “She’s safe too.”

God. He hopes there isn’t a teacher involved. Chuuya wasn’t made to measure every word, sifting out the red hot embers. That was Dazai’s wheelhouse. But Dazai isn’t here right now.

Ice water flushes through Chuuya’s veins, turning his guts into a runny mess. Kouyou is busy speaking with Osamu in a low, fluid croon, unaware as to why Chuuya’s hand slips off the child’s head to flop against his thigh. Chuuya stares at the wall and spirals.

God. Is Dazai anywhere , right now? Did he blink out of existence, or is he dreaming, caught in some liminal unawareness?

Osamu shifts beneath his hand, snapping Chuuya back to reality. He lightly squeezes the boy’s shoulder and meets his upturned, nervous gaze.

“Osamu, are you alright,” he says, kneeling down on one knee, overcome with the fearful need to soothe this child after all he’s been through today. Mori, the girls—awakening in the house of a stranger, afraid of the dark. Dazai searches his face for a moment. The boy’s expression wrinkles in anger.

“I’m fine,” Osamu snaps, stepping back so Chuuya’s hand falls off his shoulder, frustration twitching around the angry sneer of his mouth. “I’m fine .”

Chuuya swallows heavily. He just can’t do anything right by this child, it seems. 

“Are you sure? We can just go back to the apartment, I have some towels we can use at the beach and—”

Osamu stomps his foot, voice catching. “I said I’m fine!”

The boy scampers away, towards the museum exhibition porch and the burbling pond, his little shoes thumping on the tatami. Chuuya winces. Ah, he’d forgotten to tell the boy to take him off. Glancing down at his own shoes, he sighs heavily.

Perhaps they’re all out of sorts, today.

Kouyou arches her brow, lips furling into a simper. “Barbed, even at this age?”

Chuuya stares after Dazai. The boy plops down on the lip of the porch and crawls onto his hands and knees, peering over the edge.

“Not at all,” Chuuya says. He climbs to his feet with a sigh. “I’d even say he’s declawed.” Stepping on the back of his heel, he toes off his shoes one at a time before bending down to retrieve them. “They don’t grow back when you do that.” 

Kouyou motions for him to leave them by the front entrance, her smile blunted and sad. “Cats learn to defend themselves in other ways.”

Chuuya nods, padding to the doors on socked feet, the bumps of the tatami like gravel on sore soles. Maybe he should invest in a pair of orthopedic shoes. Twenty-three isn’t too old, is it? 

“But they have to suffer so much,” he says after he’s laid them in the corner, arranged nice and neat like he’s about to step off a roof. Right now, he might as well be sprinting for the ledge. Mori might not die today, but soon or later Chuuya’s rage will froth and bubble over, and the deed will be done. He’s not ready to take the mantle, he’s not built for leadership, but the only suited for the job is the very one he’s trying to protect.

“There are different types of wounds, Chuuya-kun,” Kouyou says, stepping forward to curl a painted hand on his shoulder, her eyes creased with understanding. He grimaces, shutting his eyes. If she knew what he was thinking, she wouldn’t be so merciful. He hates her a little bit for her complicity, after all. 

There are no winners in a murder. 

Chuuya opens his eyes and pulls a fortifying breath, in time to startle out of his skin at Dazai’s cry.

“Ducks!”

Chuuya whips his head around to witness the unholy sight of Osamu ripping off his shoes and socks and leaping down into the pond, the water deep enough the porch ledge covers up to his neck.

Chuuya chokes on his spit, lunging after him. “Osamu—” Kouyou’s hand on his shoulder roots him firmly to the ground.

“Let him play, Chuuya,” she chides, chuckling. “I must admit, I didn’t expect him to be so…”

Chuuya’s heart is hammering in his throat, a litany of all the nasty germs in a pond full of ducks , apparently. He’s never seen any ducks in there before, he thought it was just a display. If Dazai gets sick—

“What,” he spits, panic building when he realizes they haven’t yet gone to the beach or the amusement park or done anything to make Dazai’s childhood a little happier, a little less full of pain. “Bipolar?”

Kouyou’s laughter grates his ears. “Innocent.”

Chuuya grumbles to himself. Dazai’s brown curls bounce as he lightly splashes around the water, audibly churning water as he attempts to walk through the muck or whatever filth lines the bottom of the pond. “I don’t think he’d agree with that statement.”

Kouyou’s eyes drift into the past, her voice taking on an airy, wistful tone. “I’d always wondered what life Dazai had before he came here.” 

“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors.” She arches a slim, manicured brow, gaze boring down on him. “Do any hold any merit?”

Of course he’s heard the rumors, or bets, as it were. The largest betting ring inside the Port Mafia was based on Dazai—where he came from, which way he swings, what he does in his spare time. Growing up the son of a politician, in a big empty mansion where no one loved him, seemed to be the best guess to his background, followed by a homeless street urchin and the son of the previous Boss. Chuuya never threw any money at the pool, thought it tasteless. Now, he’s afraid one of them might be correct.

Dazai seems too at home in this sprawling, half-empty building, too dressed the part of a politician’s son.

Chuuya snarls, shrugging her hand off his shoulder, resentment burbling in the back of his throat. “I’m not going to gamble on his suffering.”

Kouyou huffs, smirking. She folds her arms beneath her chest, hands slipping into her sleeves. Her gaze burns through him. “That never stopped you in the past.”

Chuuya casts his eyes to the ground. 

He never tosses money at those bets, but he was the bookie for every one. It offered him a measure of satisfaction after all those years Dazai left him behind, scurried off to die somewhere Chuuya couldn’t find. In the end, the pools grew so large there was no point in withdrawing them. He’d have a riot on his hands.

A loud splash draws his attention.

“Osamu?”

When he doesn’t receive an answer, Chuuya’s heart leaps into his mouth. He races to the porch, hoping the boy didn’t find a way to drown in less than a half-meter of water.

It really is an actual, miniature pond. Bright green grass climbs the rolling slopes around the tall oak tree, its branches and leaves contorted to the shape of the small bell-jar space, walls washed in blue paint stamped with wispy clouds. A pair of colorful ducks voice their complaints as they climb out of the water, wiggling their behinds. 

The boy has fallen on his backside in the center of the pond, arms splayed behind himself to catch himself on the smooth stones lining the bottom. He’s drenched head to toe, brown eyes wide and spooked and staring up at the painted sky, but otherwise unharmed. 

Yet the relief doesn’t arrive.

Dazai’s arms and legs are too long, the knees jutting up from the water dressed in a pair of black slacks he wasn’t wearing moments prior. A white long sleeve shirt clings to the boy’s chest, a tie snug to his throat. The planes of his pale, shocked face are a little sharper, a little more drawn out. 

Beneath the surface, the warped image of a pair of black loafers wags at Chuuya. He glances at the lip of the porch. Dazai’s hastily discarded shoes and socks have vanished, as if they were never there.

Mori sighs through his nose, shutting his eyes against the sunlight lancing through the large windows he’s begun to despise. Summers are too hot, now. As fair skinned as he is, it takes no time at all to burn. Hence the gloves. And the lab coat. And the sunscreen, of course. He never leaves his bedroom without it.

“I hardly see how that’s relevant,” he says, opening his eyes. Gold. Orange. Blinding white. Sunlight casts across his office at an angle, stopping just right of the carpet path. When he drops his gaze to the desk, the bisected image of the chessboard tiles imprints itself on the wood in purple squares. 

His phone lies face-up on his desk, cupped between gloved hands. The sun hasn’t touched him yet. It will touch him soon. It will rake its scalding fingers down the slope of his cheek and pool in the places he hasn’t managed to hide with clothes. It will burn him raw.

There’s no escaping the blaze when you’re stuck in the hot seat, and he’s nailed down with railroad spikes.

“You can’t see the truth, because you’re blinding yourself on purpose, Ougai-kun.”

An animated image of a calico cat snoozes on his phone screen. Lounging over the kanji of the caller in place of a profile image, the creature is an apt representation of the man on the other side of the screen. The cat’s front paw dangles over the last letter block, paw furling and unfurling as the seconds pass, unanswered. A chime clangs in the distance, gentle breaths held away from the receiver. Perhaps his teacher is standing at the edge of a temple or seated on a back porch awash in heat. Perhaps he’s sitting on the edge of his bed, television carving away the darkness. 

“You need to sleep, Rintaro,” his old teacher says on speaker, the warmth of his voice swallowed by the cavern of Mori’s office. “You’ve relived a terrible tragedy.”

Mori clenches his jaw, the muscles below his ears spasming. 

A tragedy. 

What a farce. 

He got what was coming to him, plain and simple. 

Too much skin. 

Too much ambition. 

He lived in the lap of luxury for as long as he could stand it, until the Great War whisked him away to live the life he’d always dreamed of. 

No, his tenure as Gen'emon Tsushima’s dutiful mistress was nothing more than another notch on the long belt of adversities that held together Mori Ougai.

“A tragedy,” he scoffs. “Don’t inflate it more than a simple crime.”

His mentor chuffs like a large cat. “Is it a simple crime,” he asks, “to worm past your defenses?”

Mori shrugs, the knots his shoulders and neck only tightening further. He hasn’t slept in seventy-two hours, hasn’t bathed in almost a hundred. Fear simmers under his skin. Keeps him vigilant. Bodies stack high in the morgue. Suicides, the lot of them. He half expected Dazai to appear amongst them, but the boy in his office not moments ago was worlds apart from the husk he found in the dumpster all those years ago, thrown down from the roof without checking where he would land.

“We’ll find those two in short order,” he says, not believing his own words. Somehow Ishida and Yamada—plain in face and name and sordid tastes—managed to slip through his fingers without leaving so much as an unpleasant residue. Unable to react as he bled back from whatever year he’d been suspended, whatever moment rewound in time, he’d reeled from the sight of his predecessor lording over him, the beard around Gen’emon’s mouth damp with sex, withered cock draped from the split in his robes. 

Mori had frozen for a single, stunned moment.

But a moment was enough.

His ex-husband fled, leaving Mori alone on the mattress, and if Rin’s voice followed Mori for the next few weeks, her hands twin talons on his shoulders, then Natsume needn’t know.

It was all in the past.

“I’d say I’ll make sure of it,” Mori laughs without humor, “but after your soft-hearted husband let that bastard escape, this is going to take longer than expected.”

A beat of silence. A shake of chimes. A crackling murmur as the television switches to commercial.

“I’m so sorry, Rintaro.”

Mori shuts his eyes, seeing the outline of Gen'emon’s four-poster canopy. He listens to the man snort and snarl like a rutting pig, feels the ache in his hindquarters, the sharp pain at his core. He lost so many children in those days, sometimes even the act.

“As am I.”

“I’m always here to listen,” his teacher says, but Mori only scowls. 

Rin died as she lived, on her back beneath a powerful man.

Mori was that powerful man, now, and yet—the dancing girl hovers at his back, forever watching, forever reminding him of what he’s lost.

Mori’s fingers burn. He opens his eyes to find the sun has reached him now, a straight line rinsed over his first two knuckles, searing heat through his gloves.

Hands spider onto his shoulders, painted lips pressing into the shell of his ear.

“There’s nothing more to say,” Rin hisses.

A small, self-deprecating smile creeps across Mori's face as he repeats her words and ends the call.

“There’s nothing more to say.”

It’s Dazai, but not his Dazai, not quite. Awkwardly long limbs, eyes too big for his face—the boy gathering his wits in the water can’t be more than thirteen or fourteen—a off-color version of the teenager who grabbed his neck in Suribachi a lifetime ago.

Chuuya's heart throbs in his throat. He swallows firmly and shucks off his jackets, letting it slither to the floor. 

“Osamu,” he ventures slowly, toeing off his socks in preparation for hauling the dazed kid out of the water. “Are you alright?”

Coin-round eyes blink once, twice, three times before sweeping around the enclosure in utter bewilderment. Gooseflesh breaks out on the boy’s neck, body stiffening as he registers what must be ice cold water. Brown eyes dilate as they find Chuuya. The executive freezes in a half-crouch, one hand braced against the tatami to swing his legs off the porch. Breath seizes in his lungs. 

They stare at one another, suspended on the fine edge of a piano wire. The plucking of a shamisen drifts away, water burbling into Chuuya’s ears, the salty notes of pond life biting his nose. Damp curls frame the terror, confusion, shock and disbelief swirling into those large earth-brown eyes. 

The boy opens his mouth. “I’m—” Chuuya witnesses in real time as the cogs spin, steam spits, and the belts stretch taut around the whirring gears of Dazai’s brain. Chuuya blinks and time surges forward.

Dazai’s voice shakes, the words rusty in his mouth like he’s not used to speaking Japanese. Water streams off his limbs as he climbs from the water. On the bank, the ducks honk in alarm. 

“The generator, right?” The boy stands on shaking legs, arms thrown wide for balance, and Chuuya’s struck by the silly thought that Dazai’s pants are far too high on his waist, as if he’s wearing a pair of pants meant for middle-aged women.

“I wasn’t looking where I was going,“ Dazai says, squeezing rank water out of the black tie hanging from his throat. “My deepest apologies for the mess. I’ll be finished in a moment.”

The boy turns around and trudges towards the grassy bank. Honking again, the ducks beat clipped wings, racing one another around the crescent bank to hide behind the tree. Water churns around the boy’s calves. Clothes plastered to his body like a second skin, Chuuya’s struck by what a deathly skinny silhouette the boy casts.

He plunks down on the edge of the porch, legs folding haphazardly beneath him. Kouyou’s voice calls to him from the other side of the room, but she might as well be speaking in tongues. Chuuya can only watch in morbid fascination as the boy climbs onto the bank, walks up and over the soft rise, and kneels down beside the small generator camouflaged against a false sky.

Eyes drifting to the boy’s waist, Chuuya realizes he’s looking at a black cummerbund or a seamless corset, slimming his body into the feminine shape he’d mistaken for malnutrition.

The boy searches the pockets of his pants with visibly trembling hands, shoulders covering his ears.

“I never thought I’d see that proud boy cower,” Kouyou whispers beside Chuuya’s ear, splitting his stomach with a shock of lightning. He slaps a finger to his mouth and cranes his neck up to shoot her a frantic look. She spreads her fan over her mouth and rolls her eyes.

The boy lets out a pleased sound, drawing a brown leather pouch from his back pocket.

A tool roll.

Grinding metal, squeaking gears—Chuuya stares at the shifting back of an absolute fucking stranger fixing a generator.

Absurd to the point of hysteria, Chuuya grips the points of his knees and tells himself he’ll only make a scene if he throws up now.

“There,” the boy says, rising to his feet. “Good as new.”

His smile is slight and nervous as he returns by the land bridge of the bank, climbing onto the porch before Chuuya can move to stand, let alone offer a hand. He turns to Kouyou, but doesn’t meet her gaze. “I’m so sorry to trouble you,” he says, folding his arms stiff at his side. Droplets falling from the limp tips of his hair to darken the porch wood in splotches, his bow angled so they don’t reach the tatami. “I don’t want to track water on your floors...” He trails off, asking without words.

Kouyou’s smile saddens. “Ozaki Kouyou.”

The boy lifts to his full height, earlier hesitance replaced by a salesman’s smile. 

“Ozaki-sama,” he says, sweeping an arm towards the pond behind him. Water flies off his hand to splatter Chuuya across the face. “Your exhibit is beautiful.”

Chuuya wipes his cheeks discreetly with the back of his sleeve and rises to his feet, dragging his jacket with him. The boy’s arm shakes, but he doesn’t acknowledge Chuuya or what he did. Fear pours off the smiling boy in waves.

“Thank you,” Kouyou replies, smoothing past the situation. “They’re traditional Mandarins.”

Dazai’s shoulders drop from their steady climb. 

“They’re lovely,” he breathes out, arm carefully returning to his side. Beneath the black polish of his loafers, a puddle expands its borders, dribbling through the fine gaps in the boards to chime into the water below. “Much more respectable than swans.”

Chuuya stares at the boy’s shoes, a slice of black socks peeking out beneath the hem of soggy slacks, brows furrowing at the strange response. What the hell did swans have to do with anything?

Kouyou cuts through his confusion with another maternal offer of her hand. “Let's get you into something dry.”

“That’s—” Chuuya’s gaze sweeps up in time to catch the fear that flits across the boy’s expression, replaced by another mask of calm. “I couldn’t possibly accept such a gracious offer, Ozaki-sama.”

“Don’t be daft,” Chuuya says before he can catch himself.

Kouyou flicks him a venomous glare, all taffy sweet when her gaze returns to Dazai. “Now, now. We can’t have you catching a cold.” 

The boy pinches the fabric at his navel, where the white shirt folds a little over the corset-like hem of his pants. Pulling it taut, he stares down at it with blatant distress bleeding off his frame. Chuuya’s heart lurches. Is the outfit so important to him? He opens his mouth, babble on his tongue. He snaps it shut with Kouyou’s fan. 

In six short strides, Kouyou reaches the shoji doors leading to the side room and shoves them open. The doors rattle on their tracks, smacking the far end. 

The boy’s head snaps up. 

“Girls—” Kouyou calls, leaning through the doorframe. “Start up the dryer and—” Tilting back a fraction, she cranes her head over her shoulder to scrutinize a moon-pale Dazai. She purses her lips and ducks her head back through the frame. “—bring me Satoru’s kimono, one of the ones he wore for Golden Week this year. Make sure it has both socks and underclothes. I need a full set. And a towel.” There is a murmur of assent from whoever she is addressing, a smell like caramel corn drifting through the gap. Taking a step to the right, Chuuya glimpses a sliver of the ceiling over Kouyou’s head, lit with a duller, yellow light, the classical scheme extending from this room into the next. Distantly, the clack-clack of shoji doors echo back and forth, multiple pairs of feet thumping on the tatami.

Kouyou steps backward, palms sliding from the doorframe as Mei-Mei spills into the room.

“Here, Ozaki-sama,” Kiki pants, makeup half swiped off her face in a vertical smear like she’d just begun readying for bed. She bows, chestnut hair tumbling down from its bun, and offers the executive a thick stack of clothes. A kimono patterned with a bold puzzle of gold, black, red, and white lays atop the many layers of underclothes, a pair of white tabi draped over the kimono.

Overhead, the shamisen track skips, repeating itself.

Kouyou clucks her tongue even as she slips her hands beneath the stack and lifts them carefully into her arms.

“You forgot the geta , child,” Kouyou admonishes. “And the towel, for God’s sake.” 

Kiki’s ears flush red, bowing lower. The seconds swell, Kiki practically folded in half, before Kouyou’s annoyed expression twists into an angry one. 

“Well go get them,” she snaps.

Kiki bows impossibly lower, as if she means to touch her toes, squeaking: “Y-Yes ma’am!” Snapping upright fast enough to make Chuuya dizzy, the beet-faced girl dashing back through the doorway and deeper into the complex. There’s another clack of shoji doors, signaling her departure.

Kouyou sighs, shaking her head.

She turns to Chuuya with world-weary exhaustion knitting her elegant features. “I swear,” she says. “That girl doesn’t have a thought in her head, sometimes.” She passes the stack to him, the underclothes made of soft cotton that grows warm in his arms.

“Dazai-san,” Kouyou says, shifting to face the boy who stares back with wild-eyed apprehension. “You can change here. No one will intrude and disturb you. Nakahara-san and I will step out into the hall until you’re decent.”

Chuuya shifts one arm diagonally to balance the stack evenly and frees his other arm, taking the top layer of kimono between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing. Friction gathers warmth as he does so, the material shiny and satin-soft. The golden puffy clouds and gingko leaves gleam like coins.

Chuuya allows himself a small, secret smile. Soft. Beautiful. Dazai would wear this, if Chuuya strong-armed him into it with crab and cartoons and a new pair of warm, fluffy socks.

“You’ll love them,” Chuuya says without meaning to. When he lifts his gaze, the boy’s pupils flit nervously between his own, droplets of pond water drying on his cheeks like sweat. Poor kid. Probably thinks this is the strangest business meeting on planet Earth.

Chuuya’s mouth sours. 

Or perhaps, this is an entirely normal one.

Chuuya closes the space between them as slowly and non-threateningly as a bleach-blonde imbecile way out of his depth can manage. Up close, Dazai’s eyes are so much larger, not yet grown into his face. He stinks like pond water and koi fish.

“We’ll be right back, yeah?” 

Dazai stares at him with owlish brown eyes, expression unreadable in its otherness. He takes the clothes like they might have been spun from gold. An ugliness twists in Chuuya’s stomach that he’s careful to keep off his face; just another bunch of Dazai’s triggers he’s got to navigate, a fat-lot of good that’s done him.

Chuuya follows Kouyou out into the hallway, a quick peek over his shoulder reveals Dazai hasn’t moved from his stiff stance, kimono pressed between his hands.

The hallway is dimly lit and silent. Sconces dot the walls every few feet, casting halos of pale light that picks out the velvet shapes on the emerald flocking: reeds and serpents shining silver.

Chilly air gusts down from the vents, stirring the tips of Chuuya’s hair, tickling his face. A shiver runs through his body as she shuts the shoji doors behind them, softening the shamisen to rounded musical notes.

Chuuya throws up his hands, rounding on his mentor. “Well,” he scoffs. “It seems the ability doesn’t exactly last twenty-four hours.” His lips wrinkle back from his teeth. “Or that bastard dispelled it early.”

Standing near the embossed wallpaper—never leaning, a lady never leans—Kouyou stares at him cooly over the edge of her fan, the matte fuchsia accordion darkened purple in the ambient light.

“Shouldn’t he recognize you? I thought he joined the mafia around this time?” A couple centimeters or so off from the boy who fired bullets into dead bodies and tricked Chuuya’s own friends into betraying him in a partial act of mercy, and the shrapnel is absent from his eyes, but he can’t be a year or so off the mark.

Kouyou sighs softly, breath tickling Chuuya’s nose with the scent of peaches. 

“When Mori took him under his wing, Dazai’s eye and limbs were bandaged. Real injuries, as far as I could tell at the time.” Her expression sours into a grimace. “Although I thought nothing of it, thinking them as real as injuries could be an ability.”

A low hum drifts from the base of Chuuya’s chest, reaching towards a growl. The glare Kouyou pins him with is nothing short of venomous. Chuuya holds his ground. Anger simmers, swells, threatens to boil over. Loyalty and gratitude strangles it with both hands, rooting him firm, but it isn’t enough to soothe the sparks erupting between him and his mentor.

Chuuya bites back a scathing retort that perhaps gifting Dazai the clothes of a prostitute was a far cry from keeping up with the ‘professional’ act, that the second she realized Dazai wasn’t an ability she should have done something about the abuse instead of sitting on her ass like a stubborn fool. Instead, he shoves his hands into the pockets of his trousers and steps back with one foot, hanging his head with a heavy sigh.

“Fuck,” he grumbles, rubbing warmth into his arms. “I hate this.”

Kouyou snaps her fans shut, “Language, boy,” she says with a reluctant, amused affection.

A soft voice drifts from behind the shoji, Dazai’s slim silhouette cast on the rice paper. Chuuya swallows his ire and slaps open the doors. “They fit you well,” he cheers before he really looks at the boy, desperate to move things forward. They have to go to the beach today, come hell or high water.

Dazai nods, a little bashful, taking a half-step backwards. The kimono clings to his person as if they made for him, the bold patterns complementing his skin like a Klimt.

“Oh my,” Kouyou says, stepping into the room. She circles around the boy in a wide sweep, fan unfurled over her mouth. “A fine choice. It’s a s if they were made for you.”

Dazai smiles weakly, hands flitting from the hem of his collars, to his sleeves, to the tips of his hairs, eyes pinched in a grimace. “Thank you,” he says, sweat gathering gold on his forehead, his voice fraying, breathless. “I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality.” 

Chuuya’s frown deepens, his urge to haul Dazai out of here gathering momentum, but, once again, Kouyou beats him to the punch. 

“You can repay me by joining this fine young man and I for breakfast.” Kouyou strides to the other set of doors. She parts them slightly, just wide enough to slip her head inside, slim hand braced against the frame, and murmurs something to the room’s occupants.

“It’s…” Dazai pins Chuuya with a set of bewildered brown eyes. “I’m sorry,” he implores, sweat gleaming gold on Dazai’s forehead. His timid voice asks: “What time is it?”

Chuuya stares at the boy, Dazai’s breath gathering speed, pupils searching Chuuya’s expression with blatant trepidation. 

Chuuya flicks his wrist, exposing his watch. He rolls his wrist back and forth until the glare wipes away, revealing the onyx face and sterling dial, surrounded by a silver bezel. Three custom subdials tell him the altitude, temperature, and atmospheric pressure; a single case of altitude sickness is enough to make an impact. After he crawled out of the infirmary, Hirotsu pointed him in the direction of a good watchmaker.

Chuuya takes a moment to calculate the time on a watch face decorated with roman numerals. It’s not like he got a formal education—at least not one he remembers. “Exactly ten past seven in the morning.”

Panic flits across the boy’s face, dashing into the gaps of his armor, sewing it shut. “Alright,” he says, his smile close-lipped and polite. “I didn’t catch your name.”

Chuuya inhales sharply. Hot wet grief slits the yolk sac of his heart, spilling an agony so fierce his next breaths come strangled and shaking. “Chuuya—” He chokes, swallowing his tongue. “Nakahara Chuuya.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nakahara-sama,” Dazai says, closed smile growing, and that agony spreads to Chuuya’s fingertips, making them tremble against his sides. His eyes crease, cheeks pressing them into crescents, but the emotion in them is anything but pleased. In fact, Chuuya struggles to find any emotion in them at all.

Chuuya licks his dry lips.

“Likewise.”

They gather about the low, rectangular table, its pale wood a near match to the tatami. Pillows cushion their shins, thin and understuffed.

“Normally I’d have us eat elsewhere, of course,” Kouyou says, wiping a disgusted finger across the scratched surface of the table. “But in the interest of saving time, here will have to do.”

Chuuya’s girls float out of the side room, their arms ladened with heavy wooden trays ladened with food.

A bowl of steaming rice, pale omelette rolled and diced, and a fat strip of grilled salmon decorates the table, set for each of them. Kiki stumbles, drunk on exhaustion and sake, her eyes like two swollen plums without the makeup to hide them. The girl kneels down beside Kouyou with her tray, head bowed to hide her appearance. Hastily, peels her hair out of the creeping puddles of broth and serves their bowls of miso soup with damp fingers. Kouyou sniffs, disapproving, and Kiki stutters a farewell before dashing back through the shoji doors.

“I’m sorry for our unsightly staff,” Kouyou says, wiping off the droplets from the side of her soup bowl with agitated dabs of her napkin. “Sadly, those girls are only refined in the evening. Absolute slobs in the daylight.”

Osamu’s smile is molded clay.

“Regardless,” he says, “it’s a lovely spread.” The boy bows his head, drawing his hands together in prayer. 

“Itadakimasu,” he murmurs.

Chuuya’s never seen Dazai pray, not even for the sake of custom. “Itadakimasu,” Chuuya echoes and tucks into a meal he has no appetite for anymore.

Dazai picks through half of his fish and a quarter of his rice before he asks: “Do you know when my uncle will be retrieving me?” He sets down his chopsticks, laying them flat over the top of his soup. He gives Kouyou his full attention. “I’d like to measure how long I can present my work.” The boy’s expression wrinkles with the force of his smile, brows knit in an upwards slope. His voice strains. “He’s quite the stickler for time.” He tumbles into a small bout of nervous laughter, sweat beading on his nose and cheeks.

Horror cartwheels through Chuuya, stirring up his fury, disgust, and helplessness. He wants to take this boy by the waist and throw him over his shoulder, carrying him far away from here. He wants to cut off Mori’s dick and feed it to him, piece by piece. Most of all, he wants to cry.

It isn’t fair.

“Dazai-san,” Kouyou says, gentle and urgent. Her meal lays untouched, hands folded into her sleeves. Dazai stares at her with abject confusion, as if hearing his own name for the first time. “Mori can’t hurt you anymore.”

Dazai goes suddenly, utterly still. His confusion deepens into abject bewilderment. “Mori,” he says, the name rolling off his tongue like a marble dropped onto a Rube Goldberg machine, spurring a cascade of mechanisms to follow. Two brows knit into one. He carefully drags his eyes from Kouyou to Chuuya, blazing a trail of suspicion that pinches, slowly, into a bone-chilling certainty. His skin bleeds pale. Brown eyes plummet to his rice. In the other room, one of Kouyou’s girl’s squeals ‘Yahtzee!’  

Chuuya watches the boy lick his lips, swallow with a heavy sort of hesitance, the machine snapping from one contraption to the next, racing, giving off heat. 

“I…” Dazai’s voice cracks, and Chuuya’s heart cracks with it. The boy swallows again, a twitch of his throat, and when his gaze lifts, it’s the gaze of the same boy who threatened to slaughter his friends if Chuuya didn’t come to heel.

“What did you put in my food,” Dazai says, calm words dripping poison. Lightning cracks apart his armor, scattering shrapnel with a roaring scream. “What did you do?! ”

Dazai grabs the underside of the table and leaps to his feet, flipping it onto Chuuya with a heaving crash. Scalding soup drenches his front, a cold fillet smacking him in the cheek moments before the table’s meager weight smacks into his chest, the force behind it bowling him backwards. He lands on his back, momentarily dazed. In his shock, his ability flees his grasp, left to crawl on his own from beneath the table, ears ringing, and stagger to his feet.

Kouyou blade is drawn, staggered outside of the splatter zone, not a hair out of place. Dazai stands in front of the sliding doors with his own weapon at the draw. 

The static retreats. Chuuya folds to his knees, muscles unknit from his bones, helpless to do anything but stare at the boy shrieking death threats at Koyou from behind the sterling point of a fountain pen.

His thoughts crash together, spinning and spiraling into one single, thin filament as strong as steel. 

He’d always thought of Dazai as a character. An actor, playing every part. Even so, in the end, he was an artist confined by his medium; Dazai could only waltz through a tragedy or play a clown.

But this Dazai gets angry; Dazai doesn’t get angry.

Like Chuuya, Dazai wields his anger like a weapon, but where Chuuya is a nuclear weapon, Dazai is a burning brand of dry ice. Words honed into dagger, guided just beneath the skin. Taking control. Pulling teeth.

One of Kouyou’s girl’s slides open the partition and peeks her head inside, brows knit and eyes wet, only to squeak, slamming the door shut as Dazai hurls a bowl of rice. It flies through the rice paper like a shot put. Crashing in the other room, sticky rice glues to the shoji door in an arc.

“Please,” Kouyou begs—and isn’t that a sight—Chuuya watches his mentor kneel on the ground, bowing low in a seiza . “Mori Ougai, our boss, can give you the answers you seek.”

The boy’s face turns a funny shade of puce, cords of his neck flexing taut. He flips the pen downwards in his hand, gripping it like a knife with the intent to skewer Kouyou through the head should he decide to close the distance, and Chuuya jumps to smooth over his mentor’s admittedly flowery words.

“You’ve been hit by an ability,” Chuuya rushes to explain. “This is the future.”

Dazai pins Chuuya with a look that could sizzle ants, eyes narrowing beneath the notch of his brows.

“Explain.” The boy snarls, arm coaxed into a fine tremor. Light glances off the silver body of his pen like a promise.

The trip down to Mori’s office is one spent in tense, ailing silence. 

Dazai stands in a corner, hugging the buttons while he glares holes in Chuuya, shoulders still hiked up around his ears like an angry cat. Chuuya does his best to placate him. He stands in the far corner, at the back of the car, and says nothing, letting his raised hands do the talking.

Chuuya runs a slow breath through his nose, maintaining eye contact with this boy shot straight out of the past, and realizes there is a roaring storm of terror behind those brown eyes. Fear, walled up behind the anger. The knot cinches tighter in Chuuya's chest, blocking his windpipe.

Mori regurgitates the same teasing back and forth, teetering on the edge of flirting, pointing out Dazai’s kimono with gleaming eyes. The only change comes from Dazai’s quick, clipped responses and the recognition in his voice.

This Dazai knows Mori, and Mori knows him.

Chuuya presses his lips together to the point of pain as Mori slips to the shelf, retrieving the metal case. His boss’s gaze is too sharp when he passes the box to Dazai, their fingers brushing in a way rattles all the shrapnel in Chuuya’s brain, poking and prodding and demanding action, but the box is passed and Mori’s mouth curls like a cat’s and Chuuya doesn’t move. He doesn’t do jack shit.

Chuuya darts his gaze between Mori and Dazai, their expressions equally discomfiting.

Like before, Dazai ambles away to open the box on his own, not afraid of giving his back to the man who stares after him like a long lost child or a fine jewel glittering on a table, inviting sticky fingers.

The boy’s mouth slices into a scowl. He snaps the box shut with a resounding clack and closes the distance between him and Chuuya in four cutting strides, all but shoving the box into Chuuya’s hands without removing his eyes from the carpet. The mental box is cold in his hands, heavy with dread. Dazai turns around, wandering off a short distance so he can peer out of the window without walking too far for the sake of professionalism. Chuuya takes the opportunity to emulate Dazai in the only way that’s ever worked for him. A mix and match of talents.

“Why are the boxes larger on the top shelves,” Chuuya asks, interest not wholly faked. Some of the boxes on the top shelves are so large, there’s hardly any space to wiggle them out of the bookcase. Chuuya slips his thumb to the seam. It seems counterproductive to put the heavier boxes so high up, but the bookcases themselves are so tall a rolling ladder would be needed to reach them.

Mori hums. “They’re not as heavy as they appear,” Mori says, shutting his eyes. A thrill of adrenaline rushes through Chuuya. Swiftly, he pops open the box slightly, tipping it back to peer inside, but he can’t make anything out.

“Unpleasing to the eye, I know,” Mori says. Chuuya’s heart skips a beat and he shuts the box with a silent snap of velvet lining. Mori’s eyes are still shut. Chuuya’s body bristles with ice. He waits, holding his breath, but Mori doesn’t open his eyes or continue speaking. Instead, the man’s breathing slows, chin sinking onto the hands clasped beneath his chin.

Another rush of adrenaline bulldozes Chuuya.

Mori’s falling asleep!

Cracking the lid open once more, he wedges his thumb into the gap to keep it open. Resting the box in the crook of his arm, he fishes for his cellphone in the pocket of his trousers and slides it deftly into the gap, snapping a photo. He tucks his phone away and shuts the box, glancing at the window.

Dazai stares at him with hidden eyes, backlit against the blinding swathe of Yokohama’s sea.

A chuckle snares his attention. “My, my,” Mori simpers, drawing a hand through his hair. The bruises beneath his eyes have deepened from his short nap, aging the man by a decade. “How embarrassing. It seems I’ll have to cut our meeting short. Chuuya-kun, the box please.” He holds a hand out to Chuuya, a fleck of scarlet knowing within those tired eyes.

The meeting wraps up in short order, Dazai drawn to Chuuya’s side as he turns to leave. The long walk to the exit stretches a thousand years, his boss’s stare scorching into Chuuya’s back. He expects a dozen armed guards to greet them in the hallway, guns trained on Chuuya’s heart, but the building is empty. No one stops them as they take the elevator back to Kouyou’s floor. There are no blood stains awaiting them when they step onto the tatami.

“You go on ahead,” Chuuya says, stepping back over the threshold, one hand in his pocket, grasping his phone. “I have to make a call.”

Like before, there is a veil drawn over the boy now, a haunted sadness in the small nod Dazai gives him before padding deeper into the room, towards the pond.

Pulling out his phone, Chuuya steps into the hallway, weaving an arm behind him to clack the shoji shut. His eyes water at the plunging darkness contrasting with the brilliance of his phone. He thumbs the brightness down and pulls up his photo app, selecting the last image in his cue.

Scarlet velvet fills his screen, a silver shine brushed where the flash picked out the fine threads. Across the bottom of the box, a long strip of paper unfurls from edge to edge, Cyrillic letters printed out in the Courier font of a typewriter.

Chuuya scowls. Russian, again. He struggles to weave connections, but it’s like trying to knit a blanket to throw atop Mount Fuji. With each new row, half of the previous row’s stitches unravel, falling apart in his hands. 

He runs the image through a translating app. Three little dots bounce up and down, internet lagging, and Chuuya’s foot begins to hammer time into the carpet, anxiety electrifying in his blood. The screen darkens, then snaps to the next page. 

The saliva evaporates in Chuuya’s mouth all at once.

Open your mouth too wide, and who knows what he’ll stuff inside?