Archive of Our Own

Apr. 30, 2010 — The Japanese music industry is mourning the loss of 23-year-old singer, composer and guitarist Takahashi Shinkichi, more famously known by his stage name “Albatross”, who died in a devastating car crash in downtown Yokohama last night.

Key members of the Yokohama Police Department were on the scene for several hours yesterday evening to determine the cause of the crash. So far detectives have yet to rule out any theories, however, they do not believe the collision to be suspicious at this time. Locals will be aware of the higher than average levels of rainfall seen this April, and road conditions last night had also been suboptimal. Investigators believe that Takahashi would have died instantly on impact.

No other passengers were present, and no pedestrians or other road users were harmed in the collision.

A Promising Career Cut Short:

Takahashi was at what some in the classical music industry might describe as the beginning of what was set to be a staggering career. As one half of the incredibly popular duo “The Flags” (previously named “The Young Bloods”), Takahashi leaves a short legacy behind in the form of his musical counterpart and fellow member of The Flags, Nakahara Chuuya.

”Albatross was set to take the music world by storm. He was on track to become the next Mori Ōgai, perhaps even reaching the heights of the late, but equally celebrated, Piano Man,” said Fukuzawa Yukichi, a renowned music critic.

”His loss is a heavy blow for music lovers everywhere, not just here in Japan. His sound was an inspiration to us all and had a magic behind it that could reach and unite people of all backgrounds and life journeys, amplifying the natural skill of others. Unfortunately, all eyes will now fall on the young Nakahara Chuuya to see if he steps down from the limelight or rises to this devastating new challenge. Let us all wish him well in whatever he chooses to do next.”

Not only was Takahashi a key force behind The Flags’ sound, as well as a masterful lyricist, he was also an incredibly talented musician in his own right, winning several of Japan’s highest national accolades in both vocal and classical guitar performances. Critics everywhere have praised him tirelessly for his mature-beyond-his-years and refreshingly introspective sound.

”There was so much untapped talent there still to explore, he was one of those artists you yearned to hear more of. I regret that what was sure to be a promising story written in music, has been cut so short,” said Sōseki Natsume, of music giant Stray Dog Records.

The Flags’ upcoming album, Triumph of the Sparrow, was expected to scoop up a number of awards and nominations and had been widely anticipated since their official debut almost twelve months ago. It is currently unclear whether the completed album will release as planned or whether the schedule will be put on indefinite hold to allow time for Nakahara to digest this tragedy and for fans to grieve and pay their respects to the duo’s lost lead.

“Albatross” was born Takahashi Shinkichi on February 1st, 1987 in Kaizuka, Osaka. He and his family moved to Yokohama when he was 12 years old. After studying singing and classical guitar at his local school in Osaka, he began to self teach at home when it became clear that lessons with his peers were not moving at the pace he’d set for himself. He was discovered and signed on to PM Records when he was only sixteen, and soon spent time shadowing fellow artists whilst learning to compose and write lyrics. A few years later, he himself discovered the talent of the young cellist Nakahara Chuuya, taking him under his wing and advocating for his subsequent signing to the label, eventually becoming the duo celebrated today.

***

Chuuya didn’t mind mornings.

As someone who hadn’t slept more than a few hours at a time for the best part of a year, Chuuya especially liked the hours leading up to morning, where his wakefulness, compared to the rest of the world, became gradually less remarkable.

In that quiet time between sleeping and waking, when the world was wrapped up in a thick hush, the silence gave him the foundations to build the world that he wanted through music.

Or that was the idea, anyway.

So far, he’d had no such luck.

And then finally, once the time came, he would yawn and stretch alongside everyone else, convincing anyone who might ask that he too had achieved a restful night's sleep.

In a reality that he would never admit to anyone, his nights actually consisted of hour after long hour holed up in his studio, the window slightly open to tempt a bit of life into the apartment, which came with the added bonus that, by morning time, he had front row seats to the early birdsong outside.

Lack of inspiration drove him to find it in any place he could. He liked cold mornings in particular, preferably when it was cold enough that even the bird's breath could be seen as small puffs of mist in the air, their song perfectly captured in frost.

It was that kind of inspiration that Chuuya sought the most.

The natural kind.

The reality was that more often than not the sounds of nature were drowned out by the monotonous sounds of corporate Yokohama.

The reality was that his best friend was dead, and he’d not been able to write a single good song since.

He’d found himself aimless after the loss and had tried to bury himself in work as one might expect… but the music he’d made since was shallow, overly positive, basic, and lacking any real expression.

Denial clearly still had him in a chokehold, he wasn’t so self-unaware not to recognise it, it was evident in the music he was writing. Like nothing had happened. Like his insides weren’t numb, and like there wasn’t a gaping hole in his chest that rattled with every step he took.

The music he’d made with Albatross had been a perfect facsimile of the man himself. Beautiful, raw, bonkers. Sharp teeth, wild curls tamed by song, an enigma hidden behind black frames. The music he made now was cheap tasting. Put simply, it was junk. There was no word of truth behind it, just one pretty note after another with no meaning or direction. It was suffocating to play, even more suffocating to pretend it was any good.

He could have taken time off to process it all. Taken time to grieve, if he’d chosen to. In fairness, he had been asked to, half told to in fact, by the people who still looked out for him.

Easier said than done. Chuuya needed music to breathe. Therefore quitting, even on a temporary basis, would have amounted to something akin to suicide.

Still, despite the regular frustration around his inability to write — or play — anything of actual value, there was something about the way the sun rays fell upon his cello strings in the morning. Something about the way each twang and vibration lifted the dust and shook the air of sleepiness that had mocked him since the sun had set the night before, that kept him coming back to music anyway.

And for his part, Chuuya still stretched his way into the day. Still yawned until his vision blurred.

Not that he particularly needed his vision to play, the bends and curves of his instrument had been second nature to him for a few years now. He no longer needed a map to navigate his way through a melody. It had been something he’d always strived for as a frustrated, music hungry child — the quicker he could make sounds as easy and as naturally as breathing, the better.

Such a thing did eventually happen, steadily over time, and with as much perspiration as inspiration, and — many would argue, mainly Albatross — a healthy helping of innate genius. Chuuya disagreed.

And besides, making music as natural as breathing only served to guarantee his future dependency on it.

He’d sealed his fate himself.

That was how his apartment had got to be the state that it was. Misery loves company, and the company Chuuya sought was, apparently, the crumpled up and discarded mountains of paper that surrounded him on the floor. Songs that would never see the light of day.

Yet the shelves beside his music stand were empty in a way they shouldn’t have been. The Flags had gone on to win a handful of awards, but Chuuya had been reluctant to display them.

And so the shelf they’d set aside for just that, had remained empty. An empty shelf for an empty promise. They were going to win awards together. That was what was supposed to happen.

He hadn’t even attended the ceremonies, God only knows what the acceptance speeches would have sounded like on their behalf. He knew it wouldn’t have come close to whatever excited gibberish would have flown from Tross’ mouth. Probably wearing a grin from ear to ear to match a variety of uncomfortable leathers.

Chuuya would have burst with pride just to be there, standing beside him.

It was evening when Chuuya received a text from Ane-san, inviting him to join her for a drink. Knowing Ane-san, it was less an invite and more of an insistence, lest he receive a stern earful the next time he was in the studio.

The reflection that stared back at him, when he approached the mirror to check whether he could pass for ‘normal’, was mostly the same as it was before, his hair a bit longer, maybe, and a few more lines despite the short amount of time.

But it was different, there was a gap, he wasn’t whole and the reason surrounded him. The reason lay in every facet of this haunted apartment.

There was no inspiration to be found here today. Same as yesterday.

Same as the day before.

“Fuck this.”

He needed to get the hell out of here.

***

“You should write songs,” Albatross said simply, like he’d just suggested he should make himself a sandwich.

“You should fuck off.”

“Why not? First time for everythin’, and all that jazz.”

Chuuya scoffed before shaking his head, did he really have to spell it out? “But I’m not a writer.”

“Bullshit, what does that even mean?” The blonde was being extra obnoxious today.

“Don’t play dumb, you know exactly what it means… asshole!”

Tross was lying on the floor with his head on Chuuya’s lap, curls tickling through his ripped jeans and making Chuuya want to itch like crazy. Their instruments had long been abandoned in the corner, along with their motivation. Albatross had instead been filling the room with ‘la la la’s in various keys and tempos whilst Chuuya made a note of the different melodies for future reference. In other words, their practice session had morphed into an impromptu songwriting session.

“Don’t think I’ve not heard ya experimenting when you think nobody’s around, what would you call it then?”

He blew a cloud of smoke into Chuuya’s face until he coughed. Chuuya flicked his forehead in return. Prick. Not only was the smoke a thousand times more irritating when it wasn’t your own, but his gigantic fucking head was starting to hurt his thighs. He could feel his own pulse struggling against the force of it every time ‘Tross moved an inch. It also happened to be stiflingly warm in the studio, he didn’t need or want the additional body heat.

No way was he moving, though. Albatross seemed to be thinking, and Chuuya knew better than to snap whatever strings were connecting the chords in his mind. He was annoying, yes, but he also happened to be a genius.

”Playing sheet music is fine and all,” the braided menace continued, examining his fingernails too fucking close to Chuuya’s face, “but all you’re doing is playing stuff a bunch of old fuckers wrote forever ago.”

And yet it had been Albatross who’d insisted on introducing him to the majority of those ‘old fuckers’.

“Sure, it’s easier, but eventually you’ll hit a ceiling right? Don’t you want to be one of the old fuckers people remember instead?”

Chuuya shrugged, avoiding the black lenses glaring up past his jaw. Why on earth he insisted on wearing those shitty sunglasses indoors was beyond him. He supposed every great musician needed a thing. That was half the legacy.

What was Chuuya’s thing?

In reality, he’d never really thought about writing before. He already appreciated ‘Tross taking the time to coach him when they were actually playing music — not that he’d ever come out and say it to him, the guy did not need the ego boost. And besides, they already spent every waking second together. Would teaching him to write not be a burden?

“What if I don’t want to be remembered?” What if he sucked? “What if I just wanna play for me?” Chuuya couldn’t help but notice the way his voice faltered at the question. Like he was asking for permission.

Growing up, Chuuya hadn’t done a whole lot just for himself. Was that a selfish thing for him to say? Did playing for Albatross’ sake make it any less selfish?

”Besides, I can play your music, right? You’re the one who wants the legacy, not me…”

Silence the length of a breve.

From upside down, Albatross almost looked like he was frowning. “Isn’t that what The Flags is all about?” Chuuya continued, pausing slightly to consider the effect of his words on the crease deepening in the middle of Tross’ forehead, “you write, we play — works fine as it is.”

The freak actually took the shades off. The frown had gone, instead, he was wearing that smile he sometimes wore when he was about to say something that would make Chuuya crack a rib. He braced himself, and a playful smirk jumped the gun in anticipation.

”But I want you to be remembered too, mon petit frere.”

That wasn’t hilarious.

That was so not fucking funny.

Chuuya felt his cheeks warm under Albatross’ naked gaze. He wriggled his knees so that blonde hair hit the floor with an impressive thud.

“Tch. Since when did you learn French?”

***

“You’re depressed, Chuuya.”

To the point. No fucking about. That was Ane-san.

Chuuya admired her for many reasons, but her ability to slice right through to the heart of a matter was probably one of the things he admired most about her.

The bar was loud. All Chuuya could hear was an abrasive thud thud thud leaking from some beat up speakers and the offensive cackling of the other patrons. He couldn’t quite believe that Kouyou had chosen here of all places. It also didn’t feel like the kind of place to be having this conversation.

”What makes you say that?”

Kouyou simply raised an eyebrow. Be serious, Chuuya.

And yet… he wasn’t being totally obtuse. If there was one thing he was truly putting effort into these days, it was performing for Ane-san. He chose his outfits based on the colours and style of normality. Smiled with as much verve as he always had. He’d trained his laughter to match the pitch and frequency of a soul that was whole, lightweight in a way that his heart simply wasn’t.

So, what had made her say that? What was he lacking, exactly?

Sincerity… probably.

Kouyou was his mentor at the label. As soon as Chuuya had stepped foot through the door, she’d taken him in, under the folds of her kimono sleeves, closely supervising his development thereafter. He’d only been a kid, after all. A kid in desperate need of nurturing, of polishing — and not simply in the sense of musical style and raw talent.

By contrast, she’d never taken quite as much interest in mentoring Albatross. He was full grown by comparison. It wasn’t that they didn’t get along, but their attitudes happened to be polar opposites. Albatross — loud and brash, pure confidence wrapped in ego, Kouyou — structured and deliberate with a confidence only obvious in its silence. What could she really teach him about the industry? How could she navigate him through fickle waters when he was already miles offshore, determinedly chartering his own course?

Chuuya, on the other hand… what had he inspired in her? Pity? That thought had nauseated him once upon a time, before he’d realised that Kouyou wasn’t the type to pity anyone. Or be pitied. Instead, her reasoning for taking an interest had been neatly packaged as “untapped potential”. Chuuya liked that better.

The tuition styles between his two senpais had been a constant source of confusion for Chuuya. Kouyou was all about accuracy and precision, a philosophy she seemed to carry in everything she did, from her posture and movements to the delicate grace and elegance of her wardrobe. Albatross was all about the feeling, whatever that meant. He’d once described an instrument as the only vehicle that had the power to transport a person to where you happened to be — and, as with life, all journeys needed a few bumps. Bumps were what made a would-be perfect performance interesting. Precision was boring. Predictability was boring.

The prick always liked to think he was profound as hell. Chuuya had brought him down a peg by kicking him hard in the shin swiftly after.

Yet he had hung onto his every word anyway.

Despite the constant back and forth, despite the time wasted trying to unlearn the teachings and guidance of the other, Chuuya’s own playing style had bloomed into something adaptable and true. Precision was his strength, flexibility his virtue.

“Chuuya?”

Kouyou’s voice wasn’t stiff, it was exactly as soft as she meant it to be.

As it was, she was far too elegant for this bar. Some would call her ‘haughty’, others would call her ‘stern’. Chuuya called her ‘older sister’ exactly because he could see through that hard exterior. He guessed it worked both ways, then.

The silver earrings, casting a soft glow against her delicate neck, dangled and swayed as she shook her head in disapproval, eyes narrowed as if seeing him plainly, right through the frills and hastily plastered cracks. Her rings tinkled against her glass, as she wrapped her fingers around the bowl, grip tight with a tension she couldn’t school as well as her expression. Chuuya felt his grin falter.

”Well?” The nostrils that flared in his direction were alarming to say the least. Chuuya could maybe see why others called her stern, after all. “Do you deny it? You’d be a fool to try.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re a fool, then.”

“I guess so.”

The frustration that she was getting nowhere in this conversation was evident. Chuuya would have reached out a hand to reassure her if he wasn’t worried, in that moment, that it would be sharply slapped away. She must have sensed fear because a second later her shoulders relaxed some and her eyes softened. The slight frown she wore was different now, an emotion Chuuya couldn’t place, but he was relieved that it looked to be the opposite of anger in any case.

“For heaven’s sake, Chuuya, are you going to make me say it? I’m worried about you. When was the last time you slept?”

***

The comedown was hell. He felt the relentless waves of nausea swelling and receding every few minutes and yet, no matter how much he chased it, he couldn’t seem to pin down the source. It manifested as a sour taste on his tongue, a heaviness in the pit of his stomach, a dizziness behind the eyes that made keeping them open even more dizzying.

Lucidity finally began to rear its ugly head halfway between the club and the station.

The non lucid part of him hadn’t fully registered what the uniform had said. “Sorry”s and “regret”s punctuated a stream of technical terms that were far too clinical for Chuuya’s liking. He was annoyed to find that understanding had stored itself somewhere, compartmentalised itself of its own volition, so that when lucidity did come, as hazy and as suffocating as the midday sun in August, he remembered the gist.

Albatross was dead.

And now, as the closest thing to family, he was on his way to the station to answer some routine questions.

Happy fucking Birthday.

The now slightly lucid part of him was clinging onto the notion that it had all been a strange dream. He’d never been drunk before. And he definitely remembered there being large stretches of time that he couldn’t remember, was it not entirely possible that he’d passed out and concocted his worst nightmare instead?

He’d also never had a nightmare before, but there was a first time for everything, right? That was what Tross always told him. He heard those words repeated as a taunting whisper in his ear, at odds with the dead silence of the car — he could practically see the annoying bastard grinning his widest grin beside him, ruffling his hair as he always did, at least until he’d receive an elbow in the ribs from Chuuya.

If Chuuya were to elbow him now, he’d only hit the backseat cushions.

Flashing red and blue broke through the teals of dawn. The blurry outlines of the highway through the window felt somehow sharper than his thoughts. The backseat cradled him from all sides as the car rocked him steadily. If he were to look at it straight in the eye, consider it all for what it was, then the nightmare theory would come to a swift end, and the true nightmare would sorely begin.

He wished he was still drunk.

.

.

.

“Name?”

The journey from the police car to the little grey room with the wobbly desk and the old as fuck tape recorder was one Chuuya hadn’t fully been aware of. He also hadn’t realised he’d been cold until there was a piping cup of coffee in his hands, the burn of it stung the fingers through his gloves. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. The fluorescent lights on the other hand… weren’t helping his nausea in the slightest.

”Nakahara, Chuuya.”

Someone had wrapped a blanket around him at some point, too, although he wasn’t sure who.

It was extremely soft.

”Date of birth?”

Soft was nice.

”Twenty-ni —“

Chuuya’s tongue got caught in his throat. He spied the empty waste bin mere feet away, as he determinedly swallowed down bile.

”Take your time.”

The policemen were both old enough to be his parents, if he’d had any. The hats they’d removed had clearly been hiding bald spots; receding hairline on the guy on the left, crown on the guy on the right. Both reeked of coffee and tobacco.

”Twenty-ninth of April, 1992.”

”Oh… Happy Birthday.”

Chuuya scoffed. The left guy followed the lacklustre well-wish with a small smile. The guy on the right awkwardly picked at his own styrofoam cup before taking a solemn sip.

Chuuya supposed they weren’t being unkind.

”Right.”

They probably just didn’t know what to say.

That made three of them.

***

Chuuya had always yearned to fly.

He guessed that was why he was so fascinated by the birds that sat outside his window each morning. They could choose their path, could choose how high they wanted to climb, without the fear of tumbling back down to earth like fallen angels — wings clipped by self-doubt.

They didn’t second guess their song either. Whatever they sang, whatever music escaped their tiny beaks, was just right.

Chuuya couldn’t fly, that much was obvious. That fact had never felt more devastatingly true than when he’d taken those twelve heavy steps from the table he’d been drinking at alone to the piano in the corner of the bar.

The weight of each step had been dizzying, it was a wonder he’d been able to stand at all. It had taken far longer than it should have to finally seat himself down onto the stool, and thumb the keys with interest.

Kouyou had gone.

Chuuya had done his best to assure her that he was, in fact, perfectly fine. By the end, he’d even started to convince himself. She must have believed it, too, or else gotten tired of arguing the contrary because she did eventually retire after a couple of hours, leaving him to drink alone. The alcohol had helped sell the lie, both from Chuuya’s side, since giddiness came far easier after a few drinks, as well as Kouyou’s, who was far more likely to believe a Chuuya whose guard would surely have been lowered by booze.

The reality was that the giddiness had merely been a side effect, and Chuuya’s guard had never been lowered in the first place. That sort of thing had never come easily to him, drunk or not.

He tinkled the keys a little, enjoying the change of instrument. Perhaps a change was what he needed to unlock a bit of inspiration.

He could play piano as well as cello, but the cold keys never felt quite as comforting to his fingertips as the bow felt in his gloved grip, or the strings felt as he held them flat against the fingerboard. In Chuuya’s opinion, it had never quite complemented an acoustic guitar as well as his cello had either.

But now?

Well now, Chuuya was on his own. What else could he do, but play the cards that had been dealt?

The first chord came without any real fanfare. It was a light sound, not unlike the sugary attempts at ‘music’ that Chuuya had been unable to stomach for the past year, and yet, it was all that he could produce. The sweet notes tasted like tooth decay and felt like a fuzz on his tongue that he couldn’t wash away.

Shit.

PLONK

Fucking shit.

PLONK

Why did everything—

PLONK

—he touched—

PLONK

— turn to absolute shit?

PLONK

What was the answer? Why?

What. Was. The. Fucking. Point?

Tross had always said that music was the answer to a question nobody asked. But it was Tross that always had the answer.

And Chuuya was asking.

Chuuya was begging.

For the first time in over a year, there was something monstrous swirling inside of him that he couldn’t tame, his fingers slipping as he tried to hold onto it with both hands. It was far too hot to touch, and it fucking burned.

The flames scorched the pads of his fingers like the bite of a beast unleashed, spreading from his shoulders to the defenceless wood and ivorite.

It was wreaking havoc in his head, stinging his eyes, plucking at his skin.

If he screamed, would it stop? Would the beast be satisfied then?

He didn’t know what the fuck he was playing anymore. He didn’t care. He was past worrying about what it sounded like, past being professional, past drifting through life like a goddamn ghost, past avoiding his reflection because it reminded him that it was the only company he had in that fucking apartment.

That shitty, too big, graveyard of an apartment that he treasured more than his fucking life.

The storm inside changed the music as quickly as each anguished breath. Each note rained upon the keys like they’d fallen from the sky itself, the pace quickening into a frenzy that Chuuya couldn’t keep up with.

Crescendo crescendo crescendo crescen—

Until he was on top of it, looking down like he’d achieved the very thing he’d always yearned for.

Yet there were no wings to justify the flight. Only a boy with a dirty blonde braid and a goofy ass grin, arms folded like he knew something Chuuya didn’t.

He seemed to be making fun of Chuuya’s turmoil, poking at his cheek and pulling at his hair, so much so that Chuuya had half a mind to launch his fist straight at the boy’s face — that was, if he wasn’t so worried that the illusion would shatter with the lightest of taps.

It couldn’t be real.

Tross was dead, it couldn’t be real.

Was he even playing anymore?

But if it wasn’t real, why was the blonde menace pointing towards the door? Freckles spreading even wider than before, just a set of beige constellations all pointing to something beyond the top of the piano.

If it wasn’t real, how could he have spotted something Chuuya hadn’t until that point?

If Chuuya stretched, surely he’d see it. And yet, he couldn’t take his eyes off Albatross. Albatross… who seemed to understand his dilemma completely.

I’m not going anywhere— the grin said. Chuuya had been bitten by that assumption once before, though.

Curiosity got the better of him and, without meaning to, he found himself peering over the glazed mahogany towards a pair of brown eyes by the door, transfixed and unwavering as they bore back into Chuuya’s.

At the angle he was at, and by the way the dim light was hitting his skin, Chuuya could have sworn the man was wearing some sort of rags or bandages. Or it could have easily been the booze.

Tross was still grinning like a cheshire cat. The bandaged man was grinning, too, almost teasing, and Chuuya didn’t know which one he wanted to strangle more.

Bandages or Tross, Bandages or Tross, Bandages or Tross… matching grins.

Until there was only one option remaining anyway. His friend had gone, as quickly as he’d come, leaving Chuuya alone at the piano again.

The grin had been a lie, but Chuuya couldn’t blame Tross for his own drunken delusions.

He was never meant to be there in the first place.

Knowing that didn’t make it sting any less.

The bandaged man, however. He had been real. So real, in fact, that he’d continued to stare at Chuuya, wide eyed and wordless, long after Tross had left.

Until, without warning — he too, left.

As quickly as he’d come.

***

And so Chuuya had become a songwriter too. Because obviously he had. Whatever Albatross wanted, Albatross got, music wise — not by being a brat, or otherwise tyrannical in any way, but by being revered in all senses of the word. Chuuya could have dug his heels in further if he’d wanted to.

But he hadn’t.

Besides, the end result would have been inevitable either way. Why bother resisting?

Chuuya was surprised to find he loved it. There was a freedom to it that he’d always been curious to explore. He’d always toed the boundary of such freedom whenever he was practicing alone, adding his own small tweaks here and there to change a melody to match his whim. The fear that a handful of whims wouldn’t stretch to something original, something meaningful, had always held him back from crossing that boundary.

But he needn’t have worried. Albatross had seen that potential in him as clear as day. He should have just trusted him, as he always did.

Not that he wasn’t ruthless when it came to guiding him through the art of writing music. His laid back, if not non-existent, attitude towards achieving musical perfection did not mean he wasn’t strict about how often and for how long they practiced. Moreso when it came to writing. He could motivate and encourage with a smile, true, but there was also an ever-present threat that neither would be able to leave the studio until they were satisfied. Thankfully Chuuya never wanted to. The thought of leaving dissatisfied hadn’t even occurred to him.

After all, Albatross’ — somewhat unconventional — definition of perfection was built on trust and mutual sacrifice. Both would stake everything on it just to try.

“I dunno man, something isn’t working for me here,” were words he heard often. If Chuuya was ever feeling lost or overwhelmed Albatross expected that to come through in his music. If he was frustrated, Albatross expected to feel that in the melodies, to feel it in the way the strings fought against his bow. There was no point in playing if he wasn’t playing the truth.

“There’s no higher form of trust than laying your feelings bare for the world to see.” People don’t pay for lies. “Ou— no, your fans deserve that trust, don’t ya think?”

To prove the point Albatross took Chuuya to a variety of shows and performances. Classical, mainly, but often other genres and styles too. After every performance he had Chuuya reflect on how he felt during a show. And why.

If he’d felt nothing, well then…

“You didn’t enjoy it, did you?”

“Not really.”

There was more power in music than even the most music obsessed could ever perceive. Power in feeling. Power held in the balance between writing and playing.

Albatross taught him that. Ane-san — for all her instruction and guidance, for all she’d improved his technique, infinite times over — hadn’t.

***

Wait…

Wait.

Something about that shitty smirk hadn’t sat right with him.

Chuuya’s fingers hovered over the keys, frozen in time. How long had he played?

When had he stopped?

Those eyes. They’d crinkled in triumph.

Or had it been something else?

What did he know? What had he seen? Chuuya had played the piano to be heard — by whom, he hadn’t given much thought — to anyone who’d wanted to listen, he supposed.

For himself.

For Albatross?

But those eyes, alive with something Chuuya couldn’t quite place, had seen, really seen. Chuuya had never played to be seen.

Before he knew what he was doing he was up, letting the stool fall to the floor with a sharp clatter as he edged awkwardly around the piano‘s frame, using one unsteady hand for balance.

The barman opened his mouth to say something, but Chuuya waved him down.

He’d pay for his drinks later.

If he’d called back to him Chuuya didn’t hear, the sensation of blood pulsing through his ears seemed to mute everything else to a dull roar.

Outside, the darkness was thick now. The dim light from the bar lit the path for only a few seconds more before the door swung to a close behind him, leaving behind a world tainted grey. Everything, from the sky to the buildings in this dank little alleyway, happened to be spinning, just to complicate matters further. Chuuya lunged forward on impulse to grab onto… something, but his gloved fingers fell through the gloom empty handed and back to his side.

The fuck had he gone?

He was only vaguely aware that he was running. Stumbling a bunch too, in fact ‘staggering’ might have been more accurate. He followed the sounds of cars. Where there were cars, there’d be light. Where there was light, there’d be taxis. Logically the stranger would also go where those things happened to be.

At this time of night there’d only be a small window until said stranger managed to flag down a cab — if that was indeed his goal.

But the window wasn’t wide enough to second guess himself.

His boots slapped clumsily through side streets, water seeping in from where it had rained earlier. His footwork wasn’t sober enough to avoid the cracks in the pavement where small puddles had formed. His mind wasn’t sober enough to care.

He ran until the cadence of his footfalls fell out of time with a second pair, growing steadily louder in line with the sounds of the nearby traffic. These steps were slower but had the advantage that they seemed to know where they were going. Chuuya would have to hurry up.

”Oi!”

He wasn’t stupid enough to think that directing his yells at the tail end of a beige trench coat, as it rounded another corner, would have had the effect he’d desired, but it had been worth a try.

And yet despite speeding up he still kept missing him, just missing him, his quarry flitting beyond corners and melting into shadows like he was a professional fucking avoider. He must have been well aware that he was being pursued now — Chuuya hadn’t exactly been considerate of the neighbourhood’s residents with the noise he’d been making, not that he was sorry about it — and yet the man, always two steps ahead, didn’t even bother to run.

“WAIT!”

This guy was slippery.

”I said wait— fuck, just-”

Like a damn fish.

”Fucking slow down, shitty mackerel”

The man finally slowed to a stop, turning to face Chuuya at last. His face split into a wide smile as he bent over chuckling.

“Mackerel?”

For someone who clearly hadn’t wanted to be caught he sure seemed pleased about it. Chuuya’s brain seemed to whir in confusion as he took a few steps closer, closing the gap so that only their shallow breaths could pass between them.

“My my, aren’t you a delight!”

The beanpole had the audacity to pat him on the head as Chuuya seethed, suddenly seeing a red so violent it blocked out the brunette’s teasing gaze.

Chuuya brushed him off with a growl, shoving the man’s hand to the side and squaring up like he had half a mind to knock him to the ground. The man, so irritating that Chuuya forgot why he’d been chasing him in the first place, simply extended a bandaged hand out to Chuuya’s instead, still wearing that curious expression that he’d worn at the bar. The expression left Chuuya breathless.

Left his mind completely blank.

“You were so close though…”

In fact, his vision was blurry too. The chase seemed to have increased the potency of the drinks he’d consumed, he supposed it made sense. He suddenly found himself fighting the urge to flop down onto a curb and take a nap.

What had he been meaning to ask him?

Chuuya took the hand he’d been offered and found his breath hitch, his pale cheeks suddenly burning beacon-like in the darkness, as the man leaned in close.

Close enough to tickle his ear with a whisper.

”The name’s Dazai.”

***

“Do you believe in forever, Chuuya?”

They were in Chuuya’s room. In the apartment he shared with Albatross.

“Eh? What kind of fucked up question is that?”

Their living arrangements just made sense. Albatross had used the money from his adoptive parents’ will to buy his own apartment. He’d had enough left over to convert the second spare bedroom into a soundproof music room for them to practice in. The space had just enough basic functionality to record too, if they so desired.

Albatross’ adoptive parents were dead, died when Chuuya was sixteen, only a year after the two had met. Chuuya had gone with him to the funeral.

The ceremony had been tasteful, no insipid frills or over the top floral arrangements. There was beauty in its simplicity, a warm, even classy aesthetic befitting the couple who had lovingly raised their son like a phoenix from ashes. The style screamed Albatross. The real Albatross, not the persona behind the sunglasses.

They’d instilled in Albatross a love of music in addition to unwavering kindness. Their departure, whilst inflicting a pain on their son beyond any he’d felt before, only exacerbated his own joy of life and his appreciation for the value of living.

Besides the inheritance, Albatross had managed to save a small fortune from his own income. The guy never failed to surprise. Chuuya would have bet his own far smaller pile of savings that Tross would have spent his newfound fame on beer and good weed.

Being good in the industry was one thing, but being liked and appreciated was another. Albatross just happened to be all three, and Chuuya had been welcomed along for the ride. Income included.

“Were ya even listening?”

“Huh?”

Truthfully, no. Why Albatross had chosen then to chat was beyond him. Maybe its because he was beating his ass at Mario Kart.

He’d only been vaguely aware of his voice continuing to yap away in the background but as far as Chuuya was concerned, the fact he hadn’t heard a word was on Tross for even trying.

“I was saying that I do, actually… believe in forever, I mean.”

“What brought this on?” Tross looked as if he was staring off into space, his character in the game caught in an endless cycle of being eaten up and spat out by one of those piranha plants. “Tross?”

Pause.

Something was off. Which was unusual for Albatross.

”It’s nothing.”

”Yeah fucking right.” If this was connected to that weird ass question, Chuuya may as well answer it to see if he could get the bastard to spill. “Whatever— to answer your question, I have no idea.”

This was why the sunglasses were a terrible idea. If Chuuya couldn’t glean anything from his full expression then how was he supposed to read the situation? Though, there was a restlessness to his manner that gave plenty away in the absence of eye contact.

”I mean, it would be cool if some things lasted forever, right?”

Chuuya had no idea where this was going. But the statement somehow felt like a trap.

”I guess...” Maybe it wasn’t a trap. It was normal to be concerned for your friend, right? Albatross looked after him every waking fucking moment, it was natural for Chuuya to want to do the same. ”Sure you’re ok? You’re being weird.”

The blonde braid flew onto his shoulder as he quickly shook his head.

”Hah, ya fell for it! Was just tryna throw you off— eat my dust baby-Chuu.”

Chuuya pulled his best grin, not entirely convinced. “Big words for someone who’s about to get lapped.”

Unpause.

He wasn’t going to pull it out of him if he wasn’t ready to share. He’d try again later if he was still in a funk.

It was only when Chuuya entered the final lap that he remembered.

Pause.

“Oi—why didn’t you remind me, huh? I could have come too?” Typical of him. If he wasn’t making people laugh, he wasn’t bothering to open his damn mouth.

Albatross simply shrugged.

”I overheard something funny today, people talking at the cemetery.”

Chuuya remained silent, urging him on with a kick to his foot.

He went on to tell him all about some guy that could bring the dead back with a certain score. Witnesses had seen it with their own eyes, and the rumour was now running through Japan like wildfire. The guy was difficult to find though, nobody was certain where he came from or where he was going, but apparently the man didn’t stay in the same place for too long.

As luck would have it, everyone partaking in this particular piece of gossip was in agreement on one thing — that this miracle musician had strong roots in Yokohama. Or so the legend went, Albatross explained.

Chuuya tried not to scoff, today was always going to be difficult for his best friend.

“And do you believe it?” Chuuya asked, attempting to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

”I dunno, maybe—“ he shrugged again, clearly holding back. Chuuya didn’t know why — for all it went unspoken, both knew that they were each other’s safe space… no exceptions. “I think a lot of things are for forever. Maybe the soul is just one of them y’know?”

The blonde hesitated, turning it over in his head. “Take music for example, it’s cool because it will always live on. The player changes but if you write a song that’s good enough then…”

It would almost be like creating your own version of forever.

He made a fair point, maybe some things really were forever. But that didn’t mean life should be, necessarily.

That would be boring, wouldn’t it? And besides, music as a concept would always exist, just like memories would always live on in those who held them with both hands.

But that was the thing, they lived on as memories. Music didn’t have a body that could cease to exist, the two weren’t comparable like that. If there was someone out there who could bring back the dead by playing just a few notes… Chuuya wasn’t sure if he even wanted to meet them.

How to say that to Tross without being a dick, however, was another matter. As tempting the idea of eternal life was — and as tempting as the idea might have been to Tross, who had just today endured one whole year without his parent’s love and support — that just wasn’t the way of things.

It was horrible, but it was true.

”Songs end too, though. Right?”

Albatross said no more on the matter, but he seemed to feel better just for having the conversation in any case. Chuuya hoped he’d been a small source of comfort and not been an inadvertent asshole — but by the way Tross had trapped him in a headlock only moments later, his whole mood lighter like he’d shaken away some of the sharper remnants of denial, he seemed to appreciate the attempt. That was enough for now.

.

.

.

Until the fucker blue shelled him.

***

It hadn’t taken long for Chuuya to realise that the reason he’d awoken early, still sleepy and cursing the sudden arrival of morning, was due to the simple fact that his feet were cold.

That and the fact that something feather light, and just as soft, had landed on his top lip, ruffling slightly as his breaths transitioned smoothly from slumber to waking.

Inspecting it with his tongue he was disappointed to find that the thing was easily removed; tiny, like a piece of confetti; and tasted awful.

Bitter, grassy.

He freed an arm from behind his head to remove the offending object and peeled open an eyelid to inspect.

A sakura petal… pretty. On the tip of his finger it looked like a small piece of candy.

That’s when his eyes settled on the branches surrounding him, their fingers spanning in all directions as if stretching through a content sigh. A million polkadots, in various shades of pinks and whites, punctuated the dark space in between, blackened by the sun casting its morning light from behind.

It should have been peaceful, all things considered.

Might have been… if it wasn’t for the throbbing in his head, becoming harder and harder to ignore with every second miserably awake.

Where the—?

The birdsong, extra loud today, mocked him for even entertaining such a dumb question.

He was outside, obviously….

Sitting up to investigate further he was briefly distracted when a long polyester trench coat fell from his shoulders and pooled into his lap, the tacky beige decorated with a billion more petals and small pieces of twig.

… And on a bench…

Buildings towered above him, windows gleaming in the light, whilst cars and pedestrians alike went about their day as usual.

… A bench in the middle of a busy street.

He was suddenly very grateful for the blossom tree hiding him from the judgy eyes of the surrounding hotels.

He shivered, pissed that the sun’s warmth was still yet to reach him. For a brief moment he considered throwing that god-awful jacket back over himself and going the fuck back to sleep.

But that was when he noticed that his shoes had been removed and deliberately tucked under the steel slats, his hat too had been placed neatly on top.

He didn’t remember doing that.

In fact he didn’t remember doing much, not after meeting…

Oh fuck.

Oh fucking fuck.

The guy Albatross had told him about. It had been him, right? He’d been convinced of it last night, even more convinced of it now…

He’d made an enemy of Lady Luck in a past life. He must have. Why else would he have forgotten to ask?

Why else had he forgotten the bastard’s name?

He couldn’t write that shit if he tried.

(Not that he could write anything these days.)

Manic cackles suddenly exploded from his chest, taking him by surprise. A mother pushing a pram jumped in fright several feet away.

He’d blown it.

He’d fucking blown it.

This was hilarious.

He was still laughing when, hands jittery, he found a folded up piece of paper in his pocket and smoothed it out over his thighs.

Morning doggie!

You didn’t tell me your name, I’m sure you’ll forgive me for the nickname. If it helps it’s perfectly fitting — I’ve never met anyone who yaps as much as you do.

You passed out before I got the chance to ask you where you lived, so I dumped you on the nearest bench to my hotel.

Hope you don’t mind.

Your fault for passing out though.

Anyway, hope you don’t feel too bad this morning — judging by how much you drank… I’ll not hold my breath :)

Sincerely,

Never mind, check your forehead.

P.S. Did you know that you snore louder than the foghorns that pass Minatomirai?

P.P.S. you’re welcome to keep the jacket, I have more than one, though I suspect it’s too small for you.

By the time he’d finished reading, Chuuya was no longer laughing. In fact, he was surprised the letter hadn’t yet burst into flames under his murderous gaze. He threw the trench coat onto the ground in disgust and scrambled to his feet.

In the absence of a mirror, he sought the help of a very clean window, nestled into the wall of a nearby office block.

That. Fucking. Prick.

***

The ink had taken several hours of scrubbing to remove.

The shitty handwriting was befitting a man so annoying, and the fact that he’d used permanent marker was just the icing on the cake.

A cake he was sure he was allergic to, somehow.

Dazai.

That single word had been branded onto his forehead, as welcome as a burn and just as subtle.

Still, it was a lifeline at least, it had been the very name he’d been searching for after all. And for whatever reason the name had conveniently come to him instead — roughly gift wrapped and signed in permanent ink.

His forehead still felt raw from where his fingernails had scraped through the washcloth. The whole ordeal had meant he’d spent more time that he’d have liked, back in his empty apartment, staring into the mirror.

There was nothing to be done. It had been virtually impossible to isolate the temporary from the permanent as his whole portrait, now with fresh ink bleeding seamlessly into the paper-white canvas beneath, stared miserably back at him.

He’d distracted himself, as he’d scrubbed, by contacting a private detective agency he’d found in the phone book and arranging an appointment with their most senior detective for later that day. According to the information he’d managed to read between each face wash, the Yokohama Young Men PDA specialised in finding individuals whose roots began in Yokohama, wherever they may stray thereafter.

Chuuya sincerely hoped that the man he was looking for, the one he strongly suspected was the same man Albatross had mentioned all those years ago, did indeed have his roots in Yokohama — as the legend had gone.

That all brought him to now, sitting in a modest little cafe, waiting to meet some guy named “Ranpo”. He fidgeted awkwardly with the small hoop on his pinkie, his eyes darting from the door, to the table, to the floor, to the other patrons, and back again.

His leg, jiggling involuntarily, hit the table and caused the salt to spill.

Great.

Any minute now he was expecting some inconspicuous middle-aged guy — someone deliberately forgettable if you were to just go by appearances — walk through that door and shake his hand.

Someone cool in demeanour. The silent type.

Was it cliché? Definitely.

Chuuya’s knowledge of the modern day detective came from crappy daytime dramas. Those shows just happened to be ‘Tross’ guilty pleasure.

The fact that his own death had enabled Chuuya to hire a real life detective? Well, Chuuya couldn’t help but think that his friend would find some twisted irony in that. He just hoped that there wasn’t such a thing as jealousy in the afterlife.

And yet, despite these childish expectations… the reality was even less believable.

What he got instead was a guy reminiscent of a squawking bird, yet with all the tact and goad of a spoilt housecat.

What was more, he had the gall to address him as “Mr. Fancy Hat”, when he was clearly the older one and wearing what can only be described as a shit Sherlock Holmes cosplay.

Was this a terrible idea?

”I don’t know if you’re aware, Mr Fancy Hat—“

”Please stop calling me that,” Chuuya warned, as politely as he could. A pointless endeavour given he’d, so far, been unable to fix his scowl.

”Sure thing! You’re the client after all,” Ranpo assured brightly. He gave Chuuya a sweet smile, eyelids pressed together so tightly they appeared closed for the rest of the conversation. “So, as I was saying. I don’t know if you’re aware, Fancy Hat-san…”

Chuuya didn’t know whether to laugh or punch the guy.

“…but you just happen to be speaking to the greatest detective in the world. All things considered, you’re in excellent hands.”

He took a slurp of hot chocolate. A small foamy moustache remained.

“But just to be absolutely clear, he only left you his name? You’re definitely sure?” Chuuya wished he’d wipe that moustache away already. “And he didn’t leave a phone number or anything else like that?”

Chuuya shook his head. Fucking obviously he hadn’t left a number. Why else would he be paying him to help, if he had?

Ranpo suddenly grinned at him, if Chuuya didn’t know any better he might have mistaken it for mocking.

“And did you check your arm?” he drawled, thoroughly amused at Chuuya’s sudden blush.

”How did y—? Fuck.” Chuuya made the mistake of actually checking, whilst Ranpo continued to wear that nauseating smirk. “Tch whatever, never mind that. Yes, the rest of me was clean, and no, he definitely didn’t leave any other information…”

Ranpo raised a single eyebrow.

“…I’m positive.” Chuuya tacked on for good measure.

”And have you considered that he maybe doesn’t want to be found?”

… kind of dumbfuck question was that?

Seriously, why did it matter anyway? Not everyone who’s found, wants to be. Just like how not everyone who wants to be found, will be. Chuuya would know, he’d seen every possible side of that coin.

Besides, if the only things that ever happened to you were the things you wanted to happen, well then…

”Do you ask this to every client offering to pay your next six month’s salary?” Chuuya grumbled.

Not everyone can control everything all the time.

Sometimes things just happen.

”Will you find him or not?”

Ranpo grinned wide.

He didn’t respond immediately. Instead he pulled the menu closer and took a second to read it. Only when he was finally satisfied with its contents, did he return his attention to Chuuya.

”Find him? Piece of cake. Speaking of which, most clients don’t just sit there you know? They do excellent cake here, don’t be shy.”

The nerve of this kid.

“And I’ll have a slice of the butterscotch.”

.

.

.

Five mouthfuls in and Ranpo seemed content with his choice, swinging his feet under his chair like a child, humming quietly between mouthfuls in what Chuuya could only assume was appreciation.

In any other circumstance Chuuya might have found it endearing…

“Can I ask you something?” The detective asked, like Chuuya could hardly refuse.

…Right now, it was just plain annoying.

”When I asked if you were sure he wanted to be found, you avoided answering— don’t think I didn’t notice...”

Ranpo stabbed the cake with his tiny fork, but spoke no more of it, shoving the small portion in his mouth before continuing.

(Chuuya couldn’t help but imagine how much Kouyou’s nose would wrinkle in disgust at the lack of table manners on display.

Not that Ranpo would have cared, it seemed.)

“…But are you sure you want to find this guy?”

Chuuya sighed.

Seriously, why did it feel like everybody seemed to know shit that he didn’t? First Dazai, now this fucking kid. He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t starting to seriously piss him off.

He had his reasons for wanting to find Dazai again. There was no way this Ranpo guy, despite being the ‘greatest detective in the world’ or whatever batshit delusion he fed himself for breakfast, could know those reasons. How would he ever know that the reasons could be traced back to that first night he’d spent alone since he was fifteen. The first morning he’d awoken to the sound of traffic and not the low hums of a guitar through the drywall.

He couldn’t.

*

“What’s your name, kid?”

His name? Chuuya couldn’t remember the last time he’d been asked that.

What was his name?

Somehow he did remember it, despite not remembering the moment he’d been given it, or at what point the name had latched itself to him so that he and ‘Chuuya’ were one and the same.

In the absence of those who’d gifted it to him, he’d grown into the habit of referring to himself in third person, lest he forget.

”Chuuya, huh?” The strange boy repeated, and Chuuya’s heart skipped a beat hearing his name roll, so easily, off someone else’s tongue. “Chuuya the cellist,” the blonde laughed fondly.

Not only had it been the first time in forever that someone had referred to him by name, but, as far as he remembered, this was also the first time anyone had bestowed upon him something so familiar as a nickname.

“You look fuckin’ starving, ya want to get somethin’ to eat? Can’t have Japan’s next musical prodigy dying on me, can we?”

*

Or maybe the reason could be traced back even further than that.

Whatever.

That was all by the by… he’d done his time, now. He’d dipped his toe in grief and had decided, resolutely, that it simply wasn’t for him.

If reality was the nightmare, then Dazai would be his morning.

It was time for his friend to come home.

Looking up he realised Ranpo’s eyes had finally opened again. What was more, he was now wearing a thin pair of glasses. Weirdly, Chuuya thought they kind of completed the outfit. There was something perfect about it.

He was staring him down, scanning him for answers. Despite the intensity of his gaze, his expression remained light. In fact it smoothed over, a genuine smile soon replacing the calculating one.

It was only then that Chuuya finally found himself believing that Ranpo truly could be the one to find Dazai.

At that, Ranpo suddenly stood up, dusting off his trousers to remove the crumbs he’d missed. Bizarrely he picked the plate up with him, complete with half finished dessert, before gesturing at the waiter with a two-fingered salute — who nodded back in polite resignation.

Chuuya wondered how many more of the café’s plates had wound their way into Ranpo’s possession without any hope of their return.

“If you need anything, just call,” the detective trilled, flapping his way out of the cafe and leaving Chuuya alone with his frown.

Chuuya may have accidentally, in no way deliberately, overpaid the bill as he left.

For the first time in a while he actually felt excited. There was a tingle in his chest that he couldn’t push down with blunt pragmatism. A lightness in his step that made his feet feel loose and clumsy. A giddiness he’d struggle to explain, if anyone cared to ask.

But, what if?

What if this Ranpo fella couldn’t find him?

Shit, what if he could?

What if it had all been a mistake, a delusion on Chuuya’s part, born from a desperate need for someone to embody the legend? Had this ‘Dazai’ just been wrong place, wrong time? A side character that had simply stumbled, unknowingly, into the fantasies of a guy not yet ready to close the book?

Time would tell, he supposed. No point in worrying about it until he heard from Ranpo again, one way or the other.

Besides, he didn’t have the energy to deny the butterflies stirring restlessly in his chest, finally giving into the sensation with a grin.

It was warmer outside the café than it had been that morning. The warmth and the butterflies drove him to a yawn.

The phone that he’d just tucked into his pocket began to buzz. He didn’t recognise the number.

“Hello?”

Warm was nice.

“Fancy Hat-san, I found your man.”

***

It was like playing a piece of music he’d almost forgotten, taking the Tokaido line to the capital. The cheery little jingle as he awaited the train at the station, had changed, the price of the ticket had changed, the colour of the seats in the carriage had changed.

Chuuya had changed.

And yet… the route was the same. The destination was the same. The journey, itself, was the same. It was almost funny, experiencing a train journey he’d taken a hundred times already with Albatross, as if it was a novelty.

He drummed his fingers on the metal grab rail, trying not to acknowledge the squirm in his stomach as he considered the ridiculousness of his current situation.

That detective kid had called it an “easy job”, finding Dazai, and to come back when he had “something more difficult”. It had taken everything Chuuya had not to pulverise his phone into dust just to silence that smug drawl. Instead, he’d graciously thanked the boy, with a promise to seek out his services if he found himself with a challenge sufficient enough for him in future.

“Here’s a challenge, try being less annoying — greatest pain in the ass in the world”, he’d grumbled, moments after hanging up.

Despite his frustration, Chuuya had wasted no time gathering a few essentials from home and making one final pit stop to the outskirts of Yokohama with a bunch of flowers and a grin — before jumping on the next train to Tokyo.

All of that meant he now found himself sardined in a metal box being shuttled towards the unknown. Truthfully, he had no idea what this journey would bring, and really, there was a lot of shit that could go wrong.

Maybe Dazai was just an ordinary guy.

Maybe he wasn’t, but wouldn’t want to help him anyway.

Maybe he’d lost his fucking mind.

*

The bar in Tokyo hadn’t been difficult to find. It was almost like his body was moving on instinct, weaving through the crowds in Shinjuku whilst his heart beat out of his chest.

It was a small little place, despite the crowds. There was a buzz here that suggested each and every person considered this place their own little secret. Something to be treasured and withheld from the general masses. The atmosphere was addicting, quite unlike the stiff concert halls and auditoriums he’d played at in the past.

Not that he’d ever given the ‘vibe’ of a venue a second thought before. Chuuya had never cared about where or when he’d played, as long as there was a stage and space for two, plus strings, he was happy. Even the crowd, he could take or leave.

Chuuya had only just managed to order himself a drink before a tall brunette strode onto the small stage. Even though the image Chuuya had tried to hold onto in his mind had been hazy at best, blurred by booze and exhaustion, there was no denying this was the guy he’d met in that alleyway in Yokohama. Everything from his arrogant strides, to his stupid bolo tie, to his charming smile, all reeked of familiarity in a way that left barely any room for doubt.

The man didn’t even bother to introduce himself, he just nodded to the now quiet audience, before flicking his bangs away from his face and blowing into his flute.

Oh.

Oh.

Chuuya took it all back.

His strides hadn’t been arrogant, they’d been the strides of a man who’d earned whatever confidence had settled itself beneath his skin.

The bolo tie wasn’t stupid, there was an elegance to it that was easy to miss. Blink and you’d perhaps miss just how perfectly the colour sat against his chest and highlighted his cheekbones from below. The black silk ribbon followed his every micro movement as his body chased the sound it was producing, the turquoise gemstone chasing the light in turn.

The charming smile had been nothing to scoff at. It was dangerous, like most charming smiles were, but coupled with the music that bled from his fingertips like a fatal wound, sweet as honey and just as addicting, it was almost too much to bear.

Simply put, the man had convinced Chuuya in mere moments that he could be the one to give him everything he ever desired.

The very idea that anyone could hold such power… was fucking terrifying.

And yet, what he actually desired, right now? That was no less terrifying.

When the music came to a stop, the sound of polite applause did little to break Chuuya out of his reverie. It was only when someone bumped into him, as he remained anchored to the spot whilst the rest of the crowd dispersed all around him, that he managed to shake himself back to life.

Fuck.

How long had he been standing there, having such an inconvenient out of body experience?

In the minutes that had already passed, the slippery bastard had gone.

Had he intended to play Chuuya into a state of blind submission, so that he could sneak away undetected? Without even knowing him Chuuya strongly suspected that to be the case. There was no denying that their eyes had met whilst Dazai had played — and if the teasing smirk had been imagined, it would have taken a lot to convince Chuuya of that fact.

Pushing his way through the crowd he soon found himself in the area by the side of the stage, staring out at the now deserted sound equipment. Even backstage, reserved only for staff and performers, was eerily empty.

Had he seriously left already?

This wasn’t ending here.

He hadn’t hired a goddamn detective, hadn’t taken a last minute train to Tokyo, or made a hasty promise to a friend, all just to fail in his attempts at catching a stupid mackerel.

The guy had left him his name. Not to mention the fact that he’d only travelled to the next city over, when all of Japan was at his fingertips.

For someone rumoured to be so elusive, he had sure made it simple for Chuuya to find him. There was no way Chuuya could allow himself to miss his chance, not when it was right there. Right…

There!

“YOU!”

How he’d spotted that mop of brown hair in such a dark venue was beyond him, Chuuya suspected he’d developed an innate ability to sniff out the fish like his own life depended on it, ever since that first meeting. In reality it was probably just Tross giving him a nudge in the right direction, like Chuuya had imagined, that night with Kouyou.

Dazai, having successfully managed to sneak towards the bar, grimaced at Chuuya’s sudden raised voice, holding his head with the hand that wasn’t holding his drink.

“Oh, it’s the doggie,” the brunette said flatly. Chuuya opened his mouth to protest his new nickname but managed to shake the urge, never mind that.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” Chuuya had to fight to keep his voice down, even though his chest was ready to explode. “I fucking knew it, knew as soon as I saw you.”

Although it was technically true, Chuuya still cursed himself for forgetting to ask during that first encounter. It could have saved him a lot of hassle. As it was, the fact he’d bought himself another opportunity to do just that, was far too exciting to be pissed off by the guy’s shitty nicknames.

Despite Chuuya’s confidence, the brunette was giving nothing away.

“If you could be a little more cryptic that would be fantastic,” the man groaned, “and by all means speak louder, please. I’m a tad hungover.”

By the handful of empty shot glasses already beside him, Chuuya seriously doubted that.

“But, you’re drunk.” Chuuya pointed out, brow furrowed in distaste. This… could be a problem. He couldn’t have been out of his sight for more than five minutes.

“Ahh, hair of the dog,” the brunette grinned, almost wincing at the effort, all the while playfully pulling at Chuuya’s ponytail.

Don’t rise to it don’t rise to it don’t rise to it don’t rise to it…

“Just— whatever,” Chuuya hesitated, before whispering, “you’re the guy who can bring back the dead, right?”

The man stilled but didn’t give any indication either way, simply bringing a new shot glass to his lips and taking a slow sip.

Who sips a shot?

“The one who can play the score?” Chuuya added, faltering slightly at the unexpected lack of recognition in the brunette’s eyes.

Despite the fact that Dazai continued to neither confirm nor deny it, he did begin to fidget uncomfortably in his seat, suddenly becoming very interested in picking the corners of a beer mat. Chuuya was far too excited to give a shit.

“Fuck, I’m right aren’t I?” Chuuya’s stomach flipped in elation, the bastard was right. “Holy shit, can you—“

“I’m going to stop you right there, chibi.” The beer mat was lazily tossed aside as Dazai finally met Chuuya’s eyes again, “I’m not in the business of revealing my secrets to anyone, least of all someone too short to see over the top of a piano.”

If it had been any other person, Chuuya would have knocked the glass he was still sipping from, straight out of his hand. He almost did, in fact, his fingers twitched beneath his leather gloves as he felt a sudden ache, throbbing in his temple.

Besides, there was plenty of time to strangle the bastard, he just needed him to comply first.

“But… you have to, you don’t understand…”

Dazai waved him down, “I don’t have to do anything.”

Brown eyes slid back to his still full glass, staring into the clear liquid like he was bored, yet carrying a tension in his grip that wasn’t difficult to spot.

“Just— fucking listen. Please.”

He was learning the hard way that he was not, by any means, above begging. He couldn’t even blame himself for it either. Fuck, he needed the guy. How could he convince him to hear him out?

“Not interested. I’m sorry but you’ll just have to move on like everyone else,” Dazai downed the tiny glass before ordering another.

Just have to move on like everyone else. He said that like it was simple.

Well what the fuck did he know about it? A bold statement, really, for someone famed for not moving on — surely he was no better than Chuuya.

‘Just have to move on,’ said like grief wasn’t a never ending cycle of denial, anger, depression, bargaining and back again. Like it wasn’t sometimes all four in one day.

Sometimes the path was neither cyclical nor linear, but two steps forward, four steps back, and one fumbled misstep straight off a cliff.

By the time Chuuya had stopped reeling from such a statement, Dazai had already received a new drink before moving to a stool further down the bar. Chuuya shamelessly followed him.

“Fine, I know when something’s a lost cause. Not like I’m not fucking used to it.”

Dazai didn’t bite, instead choosing to twirl the new drink around in his hand so that the ice cubes clinked against the side. Chuuya would need to try another tack.

“You’re insanely talented by the way…” Chuuya watched closely as the man seemed to freeze at the compliment, it certainly looked like he’d managed to pique his interest. He was listening at least, he just needed to hold his attention a bit longer, if he could, “I can see why it would be you of all people to have that kind of skill.”

The brunette sighed, frowning into the glass. He was refusing to glance in Chuuya’s direction, again, but something told him there was some serious thought going on behind the empty gaze.

”Look, you’re not the first person to beg me for the score, ok? And I never gave it to any of them.” Dazai paused, taking a deep swig. “Why should you be any different?”

So it was about fairness? Seriously?

His best friend was dead.

Chuuya had lost him on his birthday.

They’d been in the process of releasing an album and had been excitedly planning their first tour.

None of this was fucking fair.

“Because…” If Dazai wanted to know what was so special about Chuuya’s situation, then surely it was just a matter of sharing with him who’s life was under consideration. “You’ve heard of Albatross, right?”

The no longer empty gaze poured directly into Chuuya’s. Dazai’s brow furrowed, like he was only just seeing him for the first time.

“Of course I have, anyone with even a vague interest in classica—“

“Well…” Chuuya was lesser known, he knew that. But it was still worth the gamble, still worth putting faith in the cards he had and hoping for a convincing hand. Especially with someone who held the same level of interest in music. “…I’m Nakahara, Chuuya.”

The brunette’s eyes widened. It was the first time Chuuya had managed to catch him by surprise.

“I’d heard he’d found himself a partner, but I’ll admit it’s been difficult to keep track of what’s been happening in the music world the last few years,” Dazai seemed to eye Chuuya with fresh interest, drink almost forgotten, “so… that was you?”

Chuuya lowered himself into the stool beside Dazai, choosing to put them on level terms. It was as good a surrender as he could manage. He figured the man might respond well to such a gesture.

“Musician to musician, I need your help.”

It felt like he was, perhaps, getting somewhere now. Dazai was seriously studying him, mildly bloodshot eyes locked into Chuuya’s, a faint light behind them that had been missing only moments earlier.

He didn’t have a whole lot to lose, really. What else could he do but turn his cards over and lay everything on the table.

“Please, Dazai. I need him back.”

The last four words seemed to move the brunette, who suddenly clutched at his lower arm, almost absentmindedly.

Slowly, he cocked his head to the side to eye him from a new angle, as if finally able to see him better.

“You really want my help?”

Chuuya nodded, his toes curling into his shoes and his stomach dangerously close to plummeting through the floor. He gulped around more nodding, licking at his dry lips.

“You’re sure?”

Dazai’s gaze no longer looked bloodshot. There was a clarity to it that suggested he was speaking directly to Chuuya’s soul. He looked… concerned, which was strange to Chuuya. Obviously he had no idea how the score worked or whether it even would. According to the legend it had worked once before, so surely it could work again? Besides, wasn’t it worth a try? What would there be to lose?

All in all, the question seemed odd.

You’re sure?

Why wouldn’t he be?

Chuuya nodded again.

“Fine, I’ll help you. But I need you to do something for me first, then I’ll decide whether you’re worthy or not,” there was something suspicious about Dazai’s sudden change in demeanour, something that said the brunette was almost enjoying himself — like some bizarre power play.

“I’ll do anything,” Chuuya asserted. The glaring red flags, glowing behind the dark curls that attempted to hide them, were ignored for now.

Chuuya’s response only seemed to excite the sick bastard even more.

“Music to my ears, chibi!” he declared with a shit eating grin, downing his drink with a flourish. “Tell me, do you get travel sick at all?”

“No?” Chuuya did not like where this was going. The fresh twinkle in the brunette’s eyes didn’t bode well in the slightest. “Why?”

“How do you feel about coming with me while I travel for the next few days?”

Chuuya felt his eyebrows raise at such a proposal. The idea was ludicrous, they’d literally just met.

“Er…”

And yet this whole time he’d been taking gamble after gamble, living by the very accurate notion that he had nothing to lose.

“Then after that I promise I’ll help you. I’ll tell you everything you want to know!” Dazai added.

Chuuya really did have nothing to lose. And he had told the lanky prick that he’d do anything.

For the second time that evening, he began to suspect he’d lost his goddamn mind.

“I’ll do it.”

What would Tross have done?

“Splendid!” The brunette sang, clapping his hands together and pinching Chuuya’s cheek until he managed to elicit a deep growl from the redhead. “Oh— just one more thing! I’ll need you to bring something with you, I take it piano isn’t your main instrument?”

What would Tross think about him being so goddamn stupid?

“No.”

Was this reckless?

“Well… I should think not, the piano was far too big for you, so what do you actually play?”

Ane-san was gonna kill him.

“Cello.”

Dazai suddenly snorted, waving his hand in an unconvincing attempt at an apology.

“Bring the cello,” he said simply. It wasn’t a request but a demand.

Chuuya had already agreed to everything else, what was one more? “Fine. But I’m not playing, I’m only bringing it to shut you the hell up—.“

“We’ll see.”

***

All that was left was the little matter of getting his cello to their next destination. Dazai was being annoyingly secretive about the exact location, but he did say they wouldn’t be swinging by Yokohama en route.

He did, however, give Chuuya the zip code of the hotel they’d be staying in — but made him promise not to look it up. Apparently the guy liked the idea of it being a surprise.

He also assured him that he’d book additional rooms for each of the hotels they’d be staying in over the next few days.

It was odd, putting so much faith in a stranger he’d just met, Chuuya must have been certifiably insane for even entertaining this — for lack of a better word — partnership. However, on balance, the fact that he was relying on said stranger to help bring his best friend back from the dead, was perhaps slightly more odd.

As for the cello issue, he didn’t really have much choice.

Chuuya: I have a favour to ask.

Kouyou-san: Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?

Ane-san. She was a person, in Chuuya’s ever shrinking social circle, for whom he would trust with his life.

It was a delicate matter, though, Chuuya was reluctant to give too much away about what he was planning on doing. Ever since the accident, Kouyou had been extra sensitive to Chuuya’s needs, to Chuuya’s fucked up journey in grief. As evidenced time and time again, she also wasn’t overly concerned about sharing with Chuuya a few harsh truths when needed.

If it had been anyone else, Chuuya would have resented it. But with Kouyou…

It wasn’t like she hadn’t also dallied in grief. The loss of someone you love, regardless of circumstance, will hit each person differently — that’s a fact. But the pain that comes with being hit in the first place, is the common denominator.

That, is what it means to love.

In fact, love and grief come part and parcel, and Kouyou knew that better than anyone. Grief was just love with no place to go, or so he’d heard.

No amount of magical scores or other such miracles could bring back someone who chooses to leave of their own free will. You can’t force a person to come back, this was especially true of those still living.

What was more, he’d robbed her of memories she might have otherwise found comfort in. By comparison, there was nothing tainted about Chuuya’s loss. Tross had been taken at the peak of their friendship and all he had left were memories, good memories.

The best.

It was true that their grief wasn’t the same. But it wasn’t totally different either.

Chuuya: I’m going away for a few days

Kouyou-san: Not what I expected...

Kouyou-san: And the favour?

Chuuya: I need you to send my cello. If you agree, I’ll send you the address

Kouyou-san: …

Chuuya: I’ll explain everything when I’m back

Kouyou-san: I meant what I said, Chuuya

Chuuya: What do you mean, Ane-san?

Kouyou-san: That I’m worried about you

Chuuya: Don’t be, I have a plan

Kouyou-san: That’s what I’m worried about

***

By the middle of the next morning, Chuuya had found himself almost three hundred miles from home, halfway up one of Japan’s most popular landmarks.

For only knowing the guy a day, at most, Chuuya was already building up quite the picture of his new travel companion.

The picture was hazy, true, the finer details hidden behind small dollops of paint that blended and smudged into something that resembled only a vague impression of the man — but it was an impression all the same. Getting closer to Dazai was more like taking a step back, and Chuuya was surprised to find that there were, in fact, some things he could glean clearly enough through the haze.

For starters, the man ate soft serve like a fucking cat. Seriously, who eats like that? Chuuya had watched, half-amused, half-horrified, as the brunette’s tongue broached the frozen treat with curiosity, before ploughing ahead with a series of tiny kitten-sized licks. At one point he’d overestimated the distance and got a blob of kinako ice-cream on his nose. Chuuya had pointed it out with a snort, the brunette’s nose wrinkling as he’d tried to remove it with the back of his hand, leaving the tip sticky and pink.

It definitely hadn’t been cute.

Second, the guy was surprisingly functional hungover. On the early morning train to Kyoto, when Chuuya was still rubbing his eyes and communicating via grunts, Dazai was annoyingly bright eyed and bushy tailed. Even if those bright eyes were lined with a small amount of red.

He’d later remarked that he’d had another drink or seven after Chuuya had left him, to help him “sleep better”, apparently — that had certainly explained the even stronger smell of alcohol Chuuya had noticed the whole time he’d been sitting beside him on the train.

Yet none of that had stopped him suggesting a trip to the Fushimi Inari shrine as soon as they’d dumped their stuff at the hotel and Chuuya had been reunited with his cello. The stinky fish had seemed far too eager for Chuuya to refuse.

Not that he would have.

Not like there was any point in him sitting around in his room until evening.

From what he remembered, which admittedly wasn’t a lot, Chuuya had spent a lot of his childhood outdoors. As a result he had always been used to walking as a primary means of transport. Dazai, on the other hand, had that pallid look of a city boy, one more comfortable lounging indoors or wherever just happened to be closest to a bar.

And yet the brunette had climbed the steep landmark with ease, not even breaking a sweat. Benefit of longer legs, Chuuya had supposed, panting to keep up.

He wasn’t at all bitter about it.

“Hurry up chibi, you’re missing the view!”

Asshole. Who was he trying to impress?

He quickened his pace anyway.

Chuuya had never been to Kyoto before. Truthfully he’d never really traveled much outside of Yokohama, not counting the odd concert hall dotted around the Kanto region. Besides, as a kid who’d spent most of his early life on the streets, where was he really gonna go?

Of course, ’Tross had had grand plans for them. After the release of their album, and after successfully breaking the Yokohama and Tokyo classical scene, they were going to tour the whole island top to bottom. Big venues, small venues, food markets, tourist traps, obscure shrines… they were going to do it all.

This place probably fell into the category of tourist trap.

And honestly, Chuuya kinda got it.

Red. Blue. Green. Red. Blue. Green. Red. Blue. Green…

The vermillion red of the torii gates were even more impressive in person, burnt orange depending on where the light bled through the blue sky above. The heat of the day was mercifully assuaged by the surrounding forest so that looking up revealed a showcase of revolving colour. Vivid red. Piercing blue. Flush green. Chuuya stumbled a few times in an effort to take it all in.

Dazai’s hair and eyes, as he sat next to Chuuya on a dusty wall, happily licking his ice cream, were brown. The colour of the earth.

His travel companion seemed to breathe easily here, like he himself belonged. Earth and nature clearly suited him. It was said the vermillion colour of the gates had the power to ward off evil, to inspire vitality…

Chuuya didn’t know what to make of that, all things considered.

“Hey look, it’s Chuuya!”

Dazai was excitedly pointing at a slug beside his foot, seemingly unaware of the ice cream dribbling down his thumb.

Chuuya had been foolish to hope that the ice cream would shut him up.

“A picnic would have been nice,” Dazai had teased, settling himself onto an unoccupied piece of wall. They’d only just reached the summit and the brunette was already trying his best to wind Chuuya up.

“I think a picnic would give people the wrong fucking impression, mackerel, don’t you?” Chuuya had replied through a snort, trying to suppress a smirk as the brunette’s lips twisted into a ridiculous pout.

Chuuya had proceeded to pull a bunch of snacks from his backpack anyway, having grabbed a selection at the train station. Dazai’s whole face had lit up like a Christmas tree at the prospect of free food.

Once they’d demolished the snacks, Chuuya abruptly vanished, only to return a few minutes later with two ice creams.

Something cold and sweet to soothe the pain of the climb.

At such a height, the view was… certainly something.

Chuuya had never felt so small, a fact he would never dream of sharing with the lanky beanpole beside him. The vast city below gleamed white in the daylight such that the buildings all looked like they were made of marble and chalk. Modernity met classical in every direction, connected by bridges and highways, sometimes punctuated by small bodies of water that sparkled silver like spilled mercury. A fitting foreground to the mountains behind.

For whatever reason, Dazai was purposefully missing the view. Chuuya could feel the tip of his ears burn under his gaze, and found that it was far easier to blame it on irritation than anything else.

“What you staring at?… Freak.”

”Gasp! That’s no way to speak to the person you begged for help from only yesterday.”

The fact that the man was completely right, was a bitter pill for Chuuya to swallow.

”Shut up and eat your ice cream,” Chuuya grumbled. He didn’t exactly welcome the reminder.

”I’m full—”

”You’re hungover,” Chuuya reminded him — again, his mind added — eyeing the green tinge to his companion’s now far paler complexion. The hike must have destroyed him, if the new grey and purple rings under his eyes were anything to go by.

Chuuya couldn’t help but feel smug about it. ”…And you look like shit.”

”I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

He didn’t deny it though.

”You look like if I tapped you on the shoulder you’d fall over.” Chuuya smirked.

”Chuuya’s mean,” Dazai mumbled into his ice cream, just loud enough for Chuuya to hear.

“Chuuya’s honest. Tch, if you pass out on the way back, don’t think I’m carrying your ass to the hotel.”

”Oh? I think you’ll find that it’ll be me carrying you, or did you forget how we met?” Dazai’s eyes gleamed in triumph and Chuuya’s cheeks burned, despite the genuine smirk he couldn’t quite hold back.

”Wanna bet?”

Dazai’s eyes widened in amusement, there was a far off twinkle amongst the brown that certainly hadn’t been there moments before. He seemed to respond well to challenge.

Chuuya made a mental note.

”Ha! You’re on — and if I win, which I will, you need to play tonight!”

“I already told you I’m not playing! You fucking agreed—” Chuuya couldn’t help the nervous twinge in his stomach at the mere prospect, but pushed it down.

”Did I? I don’t remember ever agreeing to something so ridiculous, slug.”

Had he?

Come to think of it, he didn’t remember whether Dazai had agreed.

Chuuya opened his mouth to protest but immediately closed it. Its not like he could really lose the bet anyway, especially considering how much better he was faring compared to that fucking mess.

”Fine,” Chuuya conceded, “but if I win you show me how to play the score, then I can go the fuck home.”

A cloud shifted above their heads, causing the temperature to suddenly drop.

Dazai seemed to consider it, he was calculating something in any case… if the fresh pout was anything to go by. Chuuya was positive he was looking for a loophole, he couldn’t trust the guy as far as he could throw him.

Whatever. It’s not like he had much to lose anyway. And if Dazai tried to renege on it later, well then Chuuya would just have to murder him.

His expression seemed to clear up before meeting Chuuya’s eyes again with a sickly sweet smile.

“You got it!”

Dazai held out a hand so they could shake on it. But since it was covered in warm melted ice cream, Chuuya declined.

He did seal the deal with a flick to the forehead though. That’s how he’d always settled anything with Albatross.

“Can I ask you something, though?”

Chuuya was pleased to see that Dazai had taken the hint and was wiping his fingers with the napkin he’d thrown into his lap. He rewarded the brunette for his astuteness by allowing him to continue.

“Why don’t you want to play?”

It was… a fair question. One Chuuya had expected to be asked at some point on this trip. Of course he knew he couldn’t run from it forever…

Eats ice cream like a cat. Functional when hungover. Responds well to challenge. Asks obvious questions.

Chuuya was getting to know him all right.

A dork with a dark side. Chuuya could see it plain as day. Though for all his quips and nicknames, for all his pouts and theatrics…

He seemed sad.

And if there was one thing Chuuya could recognise, it was that.

Yet, same as Dazai, the one thing Chuuya was desperate to ask was why. For someone who held the key to recalling the dead, he sure didn’t seem any better for it.

And it made No. Damn. Sense.

The fake smile was huge. The real one feeble. At times Chuuya wondered what would happen if the bastard allowed it to spread any wider. Would it crack?

Would he shatter?

“It’s not that I don’t want to, shitty mackerel,” he answered through a sigh, “it’s that I can’t.”

He’d give anything to be able to play. He wasn’t lying. The instinct to lie hadn’t even occurred to him.

Besides, for all his faults, Dazai was a fellow musician. Surely he’d get it?

Recognition seemed to flit across the brunette’s expression. But it was gone as soon as it had appeared.

Could have easily been a trick of the light.

*

“You’re falling asleep, Chuuya.”

That voice… soft, warm, reassuring in a way that seemed to contradict all of his natural instincts — also sounded mildly teasing.

He certainly hadn’t meant to fall asleep on Dazai’s shoulder. His skin was still sore from the last time he’d been unconscious in his care. Not only that but he’d promised himself he’d win the bet if it was the last thing he did.

And yet, the gentle rocking of the train back to Kyoto was comforting in a way that he hadn’t experienced in a long time. The warmth of the shoulder beside him, at just the right height to catch his drowsiness if he were to droop, provided a closeness he hadn’t experienced since…

“You’re falling asleep, Chuuya.”

It had been an odd comment to process. How could he be falling asleep when he’d heard such an observation clear as day? Was that not a contradiction?

To his surprise, Chuuya found that his eyes were, in fact, closed. When did that happen? Surely closing your eyes was always a decision made consciously — when had they made the executive decision to close on his behalf?

He tried to rouse himself. It wouldn’t be fair to leave Albatross sitting alone on a silent train, with nobody to keep him company, if Chuuya allowed himself to succumb to sleep. Would that not be rude of him?

He felt Tross shimmy closer so that they were shoulder to shoulder, and Chuuya felt his cheek sink into Tross’ hoodie against his will.

“It's ok man, get some shut eye. I’ll wake you when it’s our stop.”

Albatross would have caught him, too.

Had, in fact.

Without complaint.

And with a gentle nudge when it was their stop.

And well, if Dazai complained, about dog drool or slug slime or whatever ridiculous thing he could find to complain about, then that was just another win in Chuuya’s book.

As it happened the brunette was silent for once — in fact the only sounds that could be heard from the strange man beside him were his slow and measured breaths, getting deeper with each inhale, and heavier with each exhale. Chuuya felt that same heaviness slumping against his side, and was surprised to find himself responding in kind, sinking into the welcome pressure.

If complaints were ever made, Chuuya never heard them.

***

“~Chuuya…”

… His name, half-whispered, and with a dreamy lilt behind it, almost sounded like a song.

“It's time to go!”

Fuck.

He was lying on a bed.

To make matters worse it wasn’t even his room. The fact that Dazai had been respectful enough not to root around his pockets as he’d slept didn’t make him any less pissed about the situation.

It should have, but it didn’t.

It also wasn’t fair, the bastard had fallen asleep too, Chuuya was sure of it. He’d awoken briefly to brunette bangs, that certainly didn’t belong to him, lightly tickling his forehead, but had obviously been lulled back to sleep by the warmth of the carriage and the gentle thum-thum-thum of the wheels before he’d had a chance to rouse himself properly.

Not that Dazai would admit to it. But the fact that he looked suspiciously well rested simply served as additional evidence that he could probably use against him, if he’d had the energy to fight about it.

Which he didn’t.

And yet because he’d been carried back to the hotel, he’d lost the bet.

“You got dog drool on my jacket, by the way.”

For fuck sake.

.

.

.

“So… where are we going, exactly?”

The question came with a yawn. Chuuya did his best to stifle it, but one escaped him anyway, popping his ears with a sharp crackle as the lights above his head flickered. He couldn’t understand why he was still so tired when he’d arguably slept more in the last forty eight hours than he had at any point in the last year at least.

Maybe being with Dazai was exhausting him. That would certainly check out.

”I was invited to perform with a band at a venue that I’ve played at a few times. The place is small but the people are nice, they’ll give you a warm welcome — you don’t need to worry about it.”

That’s not what he was worried about.

”So you’re like, one of their regulars?”

”Semi-regular” Dazai corrected. ”You probably know already but I don’t tend to stay in the same place for too long. Got to keep moving, right doggie?”

Eats ice cream like a cat. Functional when hungover. Responds well to challenge. Asks obvious questions. Flighty.

Chuuya was about to say something horribly sarcastic in response, when the train suddenly rolled to a stop and the doors slid open.

“Ah— this is our stop.”

Chuuya envied the tiny case Dazai carried as he reluctantly lugged his cello through the crowded and labyrinthine subway system. Dazai had refused to even entertain the idea of a taxi, even waving him down when Chuuya offered to pay. The guy was proud, apparently.

Yet if Chuuya had had any doubts before, he certainly didn’t have them now — the bastard was definitely doing it on purpose. He kept glancing behind him to watch Chuuya struggle, sometimes offering to help, sometimes helpfully informing him that he needed to, “hurry up my little cello string, the venue closes in a few hours!”

The venue itself was a warm little place, tucked away not too far away from the Gion district, easily missed unless you knew it was there. That explained the moderately sized audience, sitting at small tables with drinks in their hands, who all seemed to recognise each other, and stranger still seemed to know Dazai, sending him an appreciative nod or wave as they entered the place, which Dazai mirrored respectfully.

Before Chuuya had a chance to ask where he could store his cello, Dazai had already sauntered off to find the manager. Not long after, he returned, practically skipping.

“All sorted! The manager couldn’t believe his luck that the Nakahara Chuuya was going to perform too, you should have seen his face!”

“Great,” Chuuya grunted.

“Oh don’t pout chibi, it makes you look even more like a tiny chihuahua.”

So… he was really going to do it then?

He was really going to have to perform, before he was ready, all because of a stupid lost bet?

A bet that had been his idea to begin with.

This was the absolute worst.

The audience looked agreeable, forgiving even, just as Dazai had said. But instead of feeling reassured the idea made him feel about a hundred times worse.

He didn’t need their pity if this all went pear-shaped. He didn’t need their approval at all.

It was someone else’s approval he’d always sought.

And the fucker wasn’t even here.

Without him his melodies were directionless. Aimless. He’d lost his compass, guiding the path to good, and he couldn’t even trust his own intuition anymore.

This was going to suck.

Chuuya was left alone whilst Dazai introduced himself to the band he was accompanying. He seemed lighthearted, breezy. If Chuuya didn’t know any better he would just seem like any other person. Effortlessly charming, seriously gifted, a delight to be around.

But Chuuya did know better.

Before it was their time to perform, Dazai returned, thrusting a glass into Chuuya’s hands.

A peace offering?

The brunette was no longer smiling, even looking a little hesitant, almost like he didn’t quite know what to say to the man he’d forced into this predicament.

He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by the band’s main violinist who waved him over for a pre- performance huddle. When he didn’t move, Chuuya raised his glass to the eyes still raking over him, meeting concern with confidence.

“Break a leg, then, shitty Dazai.”

.

.

.

Dazai’s performance did little to ease the gnawing feeling growing in his stomach as the audience applauded. He suited the stage, really suited it. Wearing a persona seemed as easy as breathing for him — assured that the flute, his trusty partner in crime, would never tell a soul.

It had been a good performance, solid. Shallow, in a way, but exactly what the audience had wanted to hear. If Dazai was good at anything, he’d noticed, it was knowing exactly what the audience wanted to hear, even if it was still unclear what it was he wanted to play.

Chuuya could respect that, even if it was something that would never feel natural to him.

Besides, Dazai was playing with people. There was a time and a place for honesty and sometimes playing with others was just not it.

Sometimes blending in was best.

After his performance Dazai had found Chuuya backstage, sat on a needlessly uncomfortable chair, curled over his knees and clutching his stomach.

“Ok little slug, it’s showtime!—”

The abrupt silence was deafening. Chuuya was too busy trying to focus on his shoelaces, rather than his sudden inability to breathe properly, to look up and spare a glance at the man he was sure was now stood frozen in the doorway like a spare prick.

His head was spinning.

He needed air.

He needed to fucking go. Go nowhere. Go any-fucking-where-but-here.

This was a stupid idea.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

He needed…

“Chuuya?”

*

The first time Chuuya had stood on a stage, he’d found himself overwhelmed by the heat of the lamps. The sweat produced from such an intense spotlight had meant his performance had been sloppy, he’d fumbled notes he could play blindfolded, in his sleep even. And yet his fingers hadn’t moved how he’d wanted them to. How he’d trained them to move.

If Chuuya could dream he would have described it as one of those nightmares where you’re woefully unprepared for an exam or recital. Except this had been real, and in real time had resulted in six minutes of pure hell.

His performance had been so awful that it had unlocked a frustration in Chuuya that he’d never experienced before. That… shattering disappointment had settled somewhere in his chest, making his breathing feel about as natural as playing upside down.

And yet.

The longer he stood on stage, the cooler the lights felt. By the end they no longer burned. No longer blinded. He could feel some sense of control return to his fingers and the strings beneath them felt like his own again. There was new power to them, new energy.

Just a shame it all came a little too late.

Albatross had clapped him on the back anyway, congratulating him sincerely as he’d guided them both off the stage. The fact he had single-handedly carried their performance went unspoken, and Chuuya had ignored the subsequent applause with a scowl.

Albatross was having none of it. The applause was for the both of them equally, he’d explained.

“You think I played well? Are you kidding?”

“Absolutely not, you fucking bombed! But the point is you got up there and did it. And it gets so much easier from now on, trust me.”

Trust him.

He always did.

Chuuya couldn’t do much but stare back with his lips pursed and his jaw unnaturally clenched. His best friend didn’t half talk shit sometimes.

And yet. The disappointment that had settled in his chest earlier now felt like it had no place to go but up, burning his throat and the corners of his eyes in its pursuit of liberation. It took his breath away a bit.

“I’m proud of you, you know.”

He’d never been told that before.

Tross was right, there was a first time for everything. The idea of more firsts like that, with Albatross by his side, set a million butterflies off in his stomach and chest.

Chuuya brushed his partner’s hand off his shoulder, firing him with the most unamused look he could muster, which had the undesired effect of making the blonde’s grin even wider.

Goofy fuck.

What was he saying about trust, again?

“Whatever, let’s just go.”

*

“Chuuya?”

His shoes were laced weird. If he could move he’d fix them.

As it stood, he couldn’t.

Someone else’s shoelaces appeared between his own as he gazed at them, and whoever’s they were ended up kneeling before him. A gentle hand unpeeled the fingers clutching his stomach, then took the other hand too, so that the surprisingly soft palms held a matching pair in their own. He didn’t mind that the hands were a little cold, in fact the coolness brought him down a little.

“Chuuya, you don’t have to do this… if you really don’t want—“

“I’m fucking doing it asshole just give me a minute,” Chuuya growled, whatever knots that were twisting and pulling inside his stomach felt like they were about to snap.

Give me a minute? Who was he kidding?

How many did they have?

Some of his best performances had been over in minutes. The polaroid he’d taken of ‘Tross before his eighteenth birthday party, had only taken minutes to process. A minute was nothing, tiny. Enough time to immortalise a memory, anyway. Just shorter than the length of a miniature. Just longer than the length of a red light.

A minute was nothing.

Some moments would take a lifetime to process, but a polaroid had only taken minutes.

Without warning, the hands and shoelaces were gone. Chuuya found himself looking up at the blank space despite himself.

Backstage wasn’t much, but for a place that was mainly a drinking venue, which just happened to have live music from time to time, it was spacious enough. The space felt strangely bigger now that Dazai had gone. Emptier.

He didn’t like it one bit. Not least because he didn’t have the strength to pick at that feeling just yet. He could examine it later, if he wanted, but now was not the time…

Right now, his laces were tied weird.

To his relief the man returned, expression determinedly unconcerned but eyeing Chuuya like a hawk, the ghost of a frown hidden beneath messy bangs.

”Where did you go?”

”Aww did my doggie miss me? I thought I trained you better than to be so clingy.”

”Dazai?” Chuuya groaned, his voice cracking even despite the lack of volume. He was alarmed to find he lacked the energy to even fake nonchalance.

The man sighed, considering his words. Chuuya would be lying if he said the delay didn’t surprise him, the brunette he’d hastily chosen as a travel partner didn’t seem the type to value consideration like that. Was this just another thing he was learning about the guy? Could he bank on that?

”I bought us some time, we have maybe a few minutes before the stage manager comes searching again.”

Oh.

He supposed that had been considerate. The guy owed him nothing and yet here he was, just a couple of feet away, facing him. Throwing him a lifeline.

”So… wanna talk about it?”

Chuuya’s hands felt lost, resting pathetically on his knees, whilst Dazai maintained the distance. Chuuya wouldn’t have minded if he hadn’t.

”Not really.”

”Helpful.”

”What do you mean ‘helpful’? I already told you—”

”Told me what?” Dazai challenged, half a smirk on his face and eyes flashing with something wild. Chuuya thought the expression might have been vaguely terrifying to a normal person. Not to Chuuya though.

In fact, Chuuya despised being dragged into this game of technicalities, like he was being dared to spell it out when the answer was laughably uncomplicated. Simple enough to vocalise during an ice cream break, even.

“Come on— play fair, slug, you’re going to have to use your words if you really want to prove me wrong. You really haven’t told me anything.”

Yes. He had told him.

Something in Chuuya’s eyes must have said as much, his hackles raising in warning.

”Told me what?” Dazai repeated, expression softer, weathered down in response to the storm growing inside of Chuuya.

Dazai’s eyes darted to Chuuya’s hands, still resting on his knees, but didn’t move.

The brunette was kneeling before him again. A white flag if Chuuya ever saw one.

Well, he had started it.

“Chuu—”

For whatever reason, the white flag felt less like a call for peace and more like a slap in the face, sudden and white hot — the heat spreading until he was ready to ignite.

“That I can’t play!” His own words, now echoing across the room, laced in a quiet rage, seemed to light the spark.

All of a sudden he felt like his whole body was on fire, and yet he’d never felt so weak, like the flames were devouring him from the inside out, rather than lighting a clear path forward. “I fucking told you, Dazai.”

So defeated.

So insignificant.

Insignificance was arguably worse than defeat.

“…but you didn’t listen to me,” he continued, voice shaking, not entirely sure he could be heard even in the silence. Just like his music these days it all felt like he was uselessly screaming into a void, “nobody’s ever fucking listening anymore.”

It was too much. It was nothing.

His cello was still in its case, untouched since he’d left Yokohama. The thing hadn’t even been tuned.

”I’m fucking sick of it,” Chuuya added weakly.

Dazai was being respectful enough not to check his watch. In fact, Chuuya could have sworn he saw him wave away a stranger wearing a headset, from the corner of his eye.

And if the brunette had glanced away, it had only been for a second. Those deep brown eyes, warm in a way they hadn’t always been, were trained on Chuuya, and somehow seemed to ground him.

Understanding, in whatever form, was a beautiful thing. And Dazai’s eyes, in that moment, were beautiful, he’d be an idiot to deny it.

”Hey, why do you think I’m here?” Dazai was speaking barely above a whisper, like he didn’t want to disturb whatever admission was lingering in the air between them. He instead met Chuuya’s admission with his own. “I’m here to listen, Chuuya.”

The bastard looked embarrassed. He didn’t think the dumb mackerel was even capable. Despite the obvious awkwardness Chuuya was impressed to see him inch forward, closer.

“When I heard you playing at the bar, I’d never heard anything like it,” he continued, a delicate blush creeping up past his bandages and blooming across his cheekbones.

“Actually, I tell a lie, I heard something like it once…” His eyes momentarily glazed over, almost as if he’d suddenly been plunged into the throes of some significant memory, yet it was over within seconds, “but I heard you, Chuuya, really heard you. How could I not?”

To Chuuya’s horror the man’s cheeks suddenly burned a bright scarlet. It was uncomfortable to look at, and he surprised himself by turning away just to spare the bastard any further embarrassment.

“Your music is… special, I don’t say that lightly,” Dazai confessed. The words were, apparently, painful for the man to admit, and Chuuya could feel the heat in his own face rising to the surface in response.

Yet despite such reluctant honesty, Chuuya also suspected that there was a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence.

“But—“

Called it.

“—maybe people aren’t hearing it because it isn’t really you.”

Isn’t really you.

The statement nipped at Chuuya’s skin, irritating… itchy.

How would Dazai know? He’d known him, what? A day? Chuuya could pretend all he wanted that he knew the guy he himself had chosen to stick with, but it was all just words and baseless assumptions. He could only truly speculate, could never really know the true Dazai. Maybe that mask he wore hid a second mask. Maybe it wasn’t a mask at all but a… nuance, a complication. He didn’t know Dazai. Dazai didn’t know him.

It isn’t really you.

And besides, how would Chuuya know? The real Chuuya died when he was a child, resurrected again with the help of sunglasses and strings, only to die once more as the sun finally set on his childhood.

To ‘have a body’ implies that we are something more than ourselves. We own a body, we control a body, not the other way around. But right now Chuuya felt like a passenger. He was a body, a vessel. Just notes on a page. Nothing more.

‘It isn’t really you’ implied there was a ‘you’ to begin with.

What did Dazai know? What did he see? He’d asked that question once before in a dark little bar in Yokohama, and was asking it again now, worlds away.

”Dazai, how—.” The question died in his throat. Yet Chuuya wasn’t entirely sure he even knew what it was that he was trying to ask. Dazai provided an answer anyway.

“Your music deserves honesty —,“ he began, making a decent attempt at looking Chuuya dead in the eye, almost as if to lead by example. “At the bar you were playing the truth, and I couldn’t look away. I think you owe it to yourself to tell it, hm?”

Honesty? Tsk. He was one to talk.

And yet. He’d heard something like that before.

Albatross was all about the feeling, whatever that meant.

Tross. It had always been Tross. He’d listened, he’d heard. He’d followed the sound and fucking found him where he was.

Who was listening now?

“But if you really don’t want to do this, we can leave. I take no pleasure in torturing my pets,” Dazai concluded, sitting back on his heels to give Chuuya the smallest bit of space to think it over.

Think it over.

Like Chuuya ever had any real choice in the matter. If Chuuya was to skip out on this performance, and retreat back to the hotel the way he came, he could kiss his chances of getting the score from Dazai, ‘goodbye’. What choice was that, exactly?

It would take him a few minutes to tune his cello. Maybe a few more to convince Dazai he was up for it.

It took him roughly twenty seconds to fix his laces.

He was glad to see the smile again, for once. It was enough to say Dazai already knew.

“How do you feel? Right now I mean”

Tired. That was a given.

But how did he really feel? If he had to name that queasy feeling in his stomach, the urge to take his cello and get the fuck back to Yokohama, the answer was obvious.

‘Tross had always told him to play how he felt too. And yet with him all he’d ever felt was inspiration.

He knew the name, he just didn’t want to say it.

Dazai’s hands were in his own again. No longer cold. His thumb brushed against the skin near his wrist and Chuuya felt the path he’d traced tingle.

So he was human? Go figure.

The thought settled his queasiness a little. Enough for Chuuya to speak again at least. Though vomit may well have been preferable to the admission that bled from his lips like a fatal confession.

“Scared.”

The brunette smiled, the feeble kind, patting him on the head. Chuuya supposed the action could be construed as him being nice, in his own way. He didn’t find it nearly as annoying as the first time.

Nor patronising in the slightest. It seemed that he was, genuinely… trying.

“Right. Now go tell the audience.”

***

The performance was ass.

It almost felt like that very first time playing with Albatross. Reflecting on it immediately after was almost as difficult as getting up to play in the first place, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d ended up playing, it could have been something he knew like the back of his hand, or it could have been some sort of shit freestyle, but at least the audience hadn’t seemed to mind.

Dazai had been right, knowing they were a nice crowd beforehand had actually made him feel a little better, in the end.

He’d done as he’d asked, anyway. The performance was what it was, ass or not, recital or freestyle, one to be proud of or one to chalk up to being woefully out of practice.

Chuuya had said he’d felt scared, in a show of honesty he’d never thought himself capable of before, Dazai’s influence was certainly… something.

The whole time he’d embodied that feeling, his mind had wandered contemplating what playing truthfully, what playing ‘scared’, actually meant. It was then he’d realised he’d never played on a stage alone before.

And it all came through in the imperfections, just like Tross had taught him. Kouyou would have been seething.

The main difference versus that first time also happened to be the one thing that had kept him from completely choking, the difference being that the only person Chuuya would be letting down if he ended up crashing and burning, was himself.

Playing alone was a new experience, but not necessarily a bad one, not when he was feeling so… musically inadequate. He could have sworn he felt a ghostly slap around the head at the exact moment that thought had occurred to him.

It had put a weak smile on his face, replacing the anxious grimace for a few seconds.

He’d even been brave enough to look up every so often, avoiding taking note of any of the audience’s expressions in particular. Except one.

Chuuya’s eyes couldn’t help honing in on the lanky brunette leaning against the bar with another drink in his hand, smirking at Chuuya with a shit eating grin. Whenever he felt like he’d botched something, he could see the bastard’s smirk grow wider — more than once raising his glass to him. Asshole. Chuuya didn’t really know what to make of it. His body seemed to react independent of further thought, though, his heart skipping each time a glass was raised.

It was in those moments that he felt the butterflies in his stomach briefly turn from nerves to annoyance, and his fingers responded by working the strings far more aggressively, at odds with the playful turn the music itself had taken. Dazai’s eyes would soften, surrendering to something Chuuya couldn’t put a finger on.

Pride?

He’d forgotten what that could look like.

Would Tross have been proud?

All in all the experience had been beneficial if only to reacquaint himself with the buzz of performing live. Playing in the apartment, without an audience, with years of memories to catch him like a safety blanket if he slipped up, was a completely different ball game to playing live. And another thing again to play live alone.

To be so exposed, so… vulnerable. No wonder the idea had made him nauseous.

That nausea was gone now, but it seemed to have settled somewhere in his legs as he stumbled back towards Dazai — who was still watching him closely, stupid grin in tow.

”Does Chuuya know that he looks even smaller on stage?”

*

The night ended with a much too heavy head pat from an overly affectionate drunk, both musicians tripping over their feet as they finally made it back to their respective hotel rooms.

As Chuuya struggled to aim his room keycard into the — far too tiny — slot in the door, he was momentarily distracted when Dazai staggered over, giggling a bit, but otherwise coherent.

”You did good, chibi. A part of me didn’t know if you’d actually get up there.” Dazai whispered, swaying like one deep breath would send him tumbling backwards. Chuuya thought he looked horribly sincere, despite the giggling.

“Hah?”

The brunette retreated back to his own door, now also attempting to jam the thin bit of plastic into the slot above the handle.

“It’ll get easier now, promise.”

With a triumphant yelp, Dazai’s door swung open. He gave Chuuya a thumbs up and one final broad grin, his eyes half lidded and glassy.

Chuuya felt himself blush.

“Fucking fish. Go to bed,” Chuuya smirked into his cello case, ignoring the bizarre flutter in his chest.

It ended with a promise to meet again bright and early the next morning.

***

The bullet train to Hiroshima was wrapped in a hush just as soundless and still as the broken side of the city.

Dazai was surprisingly quiet for once, occupying himself with stupid games on his phone until he could no longer keep his eyes open. The journey wasn’t long, but the peace and quiet were just what Chuuya needed to decompress after everything that had happened. His nerves were shot, deadened by overstimulation. In fact, Chuuya thought he’d never feel so emotionally spent ever again.

Maybe that had been the point.

He also found that enjoying his travel companion’s company was a billion times easier when Dazai was sleeping soundly, in a dream somewhere, miles away from here.

Chuuya could have been petty, he really could have, but luckily for Dazai, he hadn’t had the foresight to bring a pen.

The convenience store onigiri he’d bought before boarding tasted like heaven. Cold and sweet and salty, with textures so reassuringly familiar, it made him want to stop and savour each bite. Each mouthful, purposefully small to make the whole last longer, put feeling back into his fingers and clarity back into the swirling virus of emotions that lingered under his skin.

The power of breakfast, Chuuya guessed.

Speaking of viruses, he made sure to save one of the triangles for Dazai — whenever the fucker woke up. Only because he didn’t have the energy to listen to him complain about being hungry.

Certainly not for any other reason.

Not because maybe, just maybe, he also deserved to feel that same level of comfort and ease as Chuuya just had.

All in all, this was… nice. The late morning sun, lighting up the little plastic table and warming one side of his face – felt nice.

And this pure, raw, contentment, was… disconcerting, to say the least. Surely something was on its way to ruin it. Perhaps skipping towards him with a bounce in its step and a grin wrapped in bandages.

A minute bump on the track smacked Dazai’s head against the window. Chuuya barely stifled a snort when the brunette’s eyes flew open, dazed and adorably confused.

“Ow.”

*

They arrived in Hiroshima just after noon, adequately rested and somewhat nourished.

“Chuuya, here.”

A weak tug on his sleeve accompanied the words, and Chuuya spun around to see Dazai holding something in the palm of his hand. By the way that he was holding it, Chuuya suspected whatever it was must have been quite frail – delicate, even. Chuuya’s brow furrowed in curiosity, leaning in for a better look before he even had the chance to feign disinterest.

Upon closer inspection, Dazai seemed to be holding two black, paper cranes. Judging by the brunette’s expectant gaze, Chuuya gathered he was supposed to take one.

Placing it lightly in his own palm, Chuuya inspected it from all angles and found that, despite its simple design, it really was quite beautiful. Black had certainly been a… choice, but even the lack of colour didn’t take away from the elegance of the small folded bird. It made him think of Kouyou for some reason.

So intricate. Dazai was full of surprises.

Eats ice cream like a cat. Functional when hungover. Responds well to challenge. Asks obvious questions. Flighty. Full of—…

Ok that one didn’t need to be said.

Looking at them side by side, he almost felt bad for splitting the pair up.

“When did you have time to make this?”

Brown eyes seemed to sparkle at the question, pupils dilating only slightly as his lips curled into a smile.

Not quite feeble. Not quite huge.

Somewhere perfectly in between.

“Do you like? I made them this morning, when Chuuya was still sleeping.”

He did like. He didn’t need to tell him that though; Chuuya was sure his own eyes were sparkling too, holding the fruits of Dazai’s labour in his hands as the brunette watched him cradle it close to his chest.

“I didn’t know you could do origami.”

“That’s because you don’t actually know me,” he countered with a teasing wink.

“Touché.” He supposed he didn’t.

But why did that one simple and obvious truth leave such a sour taste?

Dazai led him slowly through Peace Memorial Park, allowing Chuuya to take his time absorbing it all. It was a funny thing, being here with Dazai.

Dazai, the one guy on the planet who held the secrets of life and death, the key to recalling those who’d been lost. Did he feel anything as they travelled through this sacred place, so laden with loss? Chuuya had no idea how it worked, the mackerel was keeping frustratingly mum on the matter, for now at least, all Chuuya could really do was speculate.

The brunette certainly seemed different here anyway, weighed down by a weight Chuuya couldn’t quite see.

The clouds above mimicked his uncertainty; the ghost of a heavy rain cast its watery shadows across the ground, making it so that whatever light did shine down, doubled back up from below. It illuminated the landmarks of this peaceful, little place so that they bloomed even larger.

”Over here, chibi.”

It was only then that Chuuya realised Dazai was no longer behind him, but pressing forward towards a row of colourful glass booths arranged neatly in a curve, not quite a full semi-circle.

As he approached, Chuuya realised that the numerous floor to ceiling rainbows that decorated the booths were actually long strings of paper cranes, in all different colours and sizes – stacked together,entire walls of delicate origami.

”They’re symbols of peace,” Dazai explained, studying Chuuya’s face with interest; he felt his eyes round and his lips part in awe. “I usually stop by and leave a crane when I visit the city.”

There were so many, Chuuya couldn’t even begin to count them. The effect was almost overwhelming. He watched as Dazai squatted down to the floor, placing his own little black crane into the most tucked away corner he could find.

Chuuya almost burst out laughing; the tiny bird could barely be seen amongst the sea of primary colours and patterned paper. It seemed to blend seamlessly into the shadows of the thousands hanging above it.

You’d probably miss it, even if you knew it was there.

Although, Chuuya supposed the point wasn’t necessarily to be seen or stand out from the crowd. Peace wasn’t something showy or decorative. Neither was hope.

Dazai straightened up, expression not quite as weighed down as it had been, a moment before. He looked to Chuuya, then to the second small bird still in his hands.

”Oh, unless you want to keep yours? I’m sure they won’t miss one little crane.”

The idea of keeping it was ludicrous. Not when the whole idea was to leave it behind. The tiny symbol was meant to become a part of something – a something much bigger and more powerful than itself – Chuuya recognised that with his entire being.

And yet. The smallest part of him, the part that most resembled a child with red hair and scraped knees, wanted only to pretend to lay it down, to slip it back into his pocket and hide it away, so he could treasure it forever.

The mere thought of probing at the ‘why’ was already giving him a headache.

Instead he ignored that part of him, as he always did, by placing his own crane on the floor right next to Dazai’s. There was something perfect about the two of them together again, and Chuuya knew instantly that he’d made the right choice.

“They look good together, don’t you think?”

“Hm. Not bad for a mackerel.”

***

Hiroshima was a tale of two cities.

One side was shrouded in a solemn quiet. Respectful. Peaceful, in its own right. To Chuuya, this would always be the place where a pair of black cranes were sitting together forever.

The other side was as bustling as any other city. For all its tragic history, for all its past, present, and future mourning, the city still breathed life, still found joy in and amongst the darkness. It was a reminder that life always moved forward; looking back wasn’t meant to be a call for stillness, but a measure of distance travelled.

The irony of him following a stranger across Japan for the sole purpose of going backwards, rejecting history as it was, was not lost on him.

Dazai had insisted on returning to the hotel to pick up their instruments before heading back out to explore the rest of the city. He’d assured Chuuya that he was not, by any means, obligated to play too, but that he should bring the cello ‘just in case’. Chuuya knew better than to understand ‘should’ as ‘should’ and not as the intended ‘must’.

And that’s exactly how he ended up in the Hondori district, sitting on a curb, watching Dazai perform effortlessly for the crowds of passers-by, whilst he massaged a pair of sore arms. The cello wasn’t exactly heavy for Chuuya, who’d always been blessed with natural strength, but it was awkward to carry, so a lot of additional arm power was put into manoeuvering it out of harm's way, preventing it from getting bumped and damaged — or from taking out a small child. Right now, it was propped uselessly up against a tree, probably cursing Chuuya for being such a goddamn coward.

As it turned out, Dazai had a permit to perform on the street.

A fucking permit.

This guy really was determined to keep moving. Chuuya briefly wondered just how many performances he’d lined up in advance, all in a frantic effort to be anywhere except Yokohama. Anywhere except the city where Chuuya happened to live.

The legend said that Dazai lived a nomadic lifestyle, playing from city to city. A lonely wanderer, if ever there was one.

But, legends were legends. Chuuya never really paid much mind to all things mythical, and Dazai was no legend… yet. He was corporeal — just boring, old flesh and soul, as much as he tried to convince himself otherwise.

(Resurrecting the dead put aside).

There must be a reason why, though. If Dazai wasn’t travelling to spread the good gospel of his miraculous abilities, then why was he? What was he searching for?

Or, what could he be running from?

His playing style today was freer than yesterday. He seemed to be improvising much of it rather than rattling through a bunch of tried and tested melodies. His fingers moved quickly, erratically, before slowing to a crawl, pulling out the long notes and teasing the audience with an occasional change in key.

The audience, well, they were eating that shit up. And whilst they seemed to be enjoying it, Chuuya wasn’t entirely sure the same could be said for Dazai.

All the while he played, the man attempted to hide his apparent discomfort behind a neutral expression. Chuuya wondered whether anyone else had even noticed. His eyes looked empty, and the slight frown — easily disguised as concentration — pulled at Chuuya’s own in question.

Between scores, Dazai shot the audience cheesy grins and attempts at coy modesty, but Chuuya knew better. And yet, it didn’t stop him clapping along when he finished yet another perfect melody.

He was good, he’d give him that. He wondered what they would sound like playing together.

Before long Dazai was plonking down beside him on the curb.

“I know what you’re gonna ask.”

“Awww, why not?” The brunette whined.

That was… not the response he was expecting. In fact, it made absolutely no sense. Dazai read as much from his face before knocking his knee against Chuuya’s with a smirk.

“And I knew what your answer was going to be. Two can play at this game, slug.”

Chuuya laughed, just twice, slow and sarcastic, “Very clever.”

“You could, you know?”

“Could what?”

“Play.” Dazai said simply.

“You’re like a broken fucking record, seriously, could you for once ju—“

“Shush, chibi, just hear me out.” Chuuya rolled his eyes but kept his mouth shut, urging Dazai on. “You don’t have to, obviously. You’ve fulfilled your side of the bet, so you don’t need to worry about me refusing to help you, or anything like that. But you could always just, you know…”

“Spit it out shitty Dazai—”

“Play for fun.” Chuuya stared at him. Play for fun? “When was the last time you played just for fun?”

“Honestly?” Before he’d turned eighteen. “Let's just say it's been a while.”

“So, you’re long overdue, right?”

Chuuya bit his lip. He had no idea what playing for fun meant anymore.

Dazai elaborated, somehow encouraged by Chuuya’s wavering. “Back when you first started, you must have played for fun, right? Not like you could have been doing it for any other reason.”

In the beginning, before Albatross, he’d played for survival. For escape.

Was that fun?

He guessed? He supposed he’d been just like any other kid who’d watch tv or read a book, all in an attempt to wrap themselves up in fantasy for a while. The stakes were different for him, but the point was that it had been a choice. And he’d chosen music for the simple fact that he enjoyed it.

He’d enjoyed bringing worlds to life with a bend of his bow. Enjoyed pushing himself to learn more and more complicated melodies, from geniuses who’d already had their time – who had handed down their stories to be retold, again and again.

It had all seemed so simple back then.

“You can follow my lead if you want…”

Following his lead would certainly be easier. He could still flex his creative muscles and play ‘for fun’ with the additional benefit that responsibility would be on someone else’s shoulders for a change.

Maybe it would take him out of his head. Maybe the music itself would be… good. And besides, he did miss playing with somebody else.

Would it be enjoyable with Dazai?

“…If you can keep up, of course,” he threw in, almost like an afterthought.

Clearly, he didn’t have high hopes of swaying him, because soon the brunette wasn’t even looking at Chuuya anymore, too busy unscrewing the various pieces of his flute in what was clearly an act of graceful defeat. “Nevermind, I know a lost cause when I see one, we can go, once I’ve cleaned and packed up my stu—“

Dazai’s unfinished thought was abruptly drowned out by the low warble of a bow on strings. He nearly broke his neck, whipping around to identify the source of the noise, and he almost dropped his flute’s head joint to the sidewalk for good measure.

Chuuya had his eyes closed, or else he would have quite enjoyed the look on Dazai’s face; his companion stood dumbstruck, watching him tune with his mouth hanging open.

He did, however, catch the comical double take as Dazai suddenly noticed the small stool he’d materialised out of nowhere, and couldn’t help sniggering into the pegs.

“Close your mouth, you look like a fucking fish.”

”Chuu~ya!”

”Dazai?”

”But I thought you didn’t want to play?”

”Well… I’ve changed my mind. Now, what was it you were saying about keeping up?”

A knowing smile melted a path through the brunette’s still frozen expression. Dazai raised a free hand to drag his palm down his face before chuckling into his fingers. The whole thing instantly made him look a good five years younger; it was possibly the most genuine thing Chuuya had ever seen.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, shitty Dazai. Are we playing, or what?” Chuuya smirked, “or are you just gonna stand there giggling, like a five year old girl?”

Chuuya had never seen someone reassemble a flute so fast in his life. It did nothing to assuage the weird feeling in his chest, as if a small animal was trying to burrow its way out of his ribs. He found the sensation somewhere between nauseating and strangely wonderful.

“Right you are, chibi!”

Right you are.

Right.

Playing with Dazai felt right.

Chuuya despised himself for thinking so. The guy had done nothing but withhold, annoy, and push and pull – all whilst having him following along obediently. Chasing the fucker around Japan, like he was a goddamn prize.

And now, he had him playing music. Again.

His music.

Chuuya had already thought that the power dynamic in this hastily thrown together partnership was tipped in the brunette’s favour, but following him blindly into the musical unknown, with no way out but to listen closely to the other man, only served to bend the scales even further in that direction.

His feet were now dangling from a height, and all he could do was pray the bastard didn’t hop off the other end and send him hurtling back to the ground.

As it was, Dazai’s lead kept him safe. There was no power play or betrayal; they played as equals, and all at once they found that their two sounds complemented each other, perfectly, because of Dazai.

The brunette must have thought so too, given the way his pursed lips tightened further, his eyelids scrunching at their corners in barely concealed glee.

He didn’t even look smug about it. Seriously, what was the deal? Could it really be that he was just… enjoying this moment too? Was it really that simple?

Chuuya felt himself grinning like an idiot.

Was that even allowed?

They were gaining far more attention as a duo, a few observers pointed at Dazai in recognition — just how often did he busk here? — but Chuuya was pleasantly surprised to find that people were whispering his name too. He responded by playing off their energy, and Dazai seemed to relish in this new positive feedback also, pushing ahead with far more difficult melodies and changing the game with little warning, sometimes throwing teasing glances at Chuuya, as if daring him to back down.

But Chuuya kept up. The balance of power endured, as Dazai had planned it to.

If anything, this was just a game.

After all, he was the Nakahara Chuuya. Famed cellist of the once revered duo, ‘The Flags’. It didn’t matter that there was an empty shelf back home. It didn’t even matter that he hadn’t enjoyed playing in over a year.

Dazai could eat his fucking dust.

***

A heavy cello was not conducive to a night out drinking.

Which is why, Dazai had insisted on traipsing back to the hotel to dump their things before taking Chuuya on a “tour” of the rest of the city.

And by tour, he’d meant visiting every bar in the Nagarekawa district.

The pretty lights that had once danced in the late evening drizzle, sent flashes of neon into the water, shining up from the floor into the night. Though pretty, Chuuya found them increasingly more disorienting with every change in destination. If Dazai hadn’t been squeezing his hand, pulling him from place to place, he probably wouldn’t have avoided face-planting straight into their reflections.

“Your round, chibi!” The mackerel had to raise his voice to be heard over the live rock music playing in the opposite corner of the bar.

It felt like the last round had been his too, thinking about it, but Chuuya had lost count of whose turn was who’s. In fact, trying to think at all was getting tricky, the night was beginning to feel like a series of knots in a rope that he was desperately clinging to with one hand – each bump: a hazy picture of Dazai grinning, speaking, or else shoving a drink into his hand.

“So, are you having fun now?” The brunette beamed as he clinked his glass against Chuuya’s, urging him to take a generous swig.

Now? What did that even mean? He’d been having fun the whole time…

…had he not told him that?

Chuuya scoffed instead, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand but refusing to elaborate. By the way Dazai’s smile got even wider, he obviously got the message. Not that Chuuya cared particularly; he’d suddenly found himself obsessing over the dimple he’d only just noticed – the one pressed into Dazai’s left cheek.

“Well?”

Dick. He knew the answer, he just wanted to hear Chuuya say it.

“Fuck off.”

The brunette laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling and his hand clutching his stomach – the sight pulled at Chuuya’s own lips until he was grinning like a fucking toddler. An odd reaction for someone being goaded so ruthlessly. By a stinky fish no less.

“Good comeback chibi! I’ll keep a note of that one, you know— if I ever need a sure fire way to win an argument in future.” His eyes practically shone with mischief, eyebrows raised in triumph like he was a fucking genius.

“Well what did you want me to say? Dumb mackerel,” Chuuya hissed. “Would you have preferred if I told you this is the most fun I’ve had since…”

In fact, Chuuya realised then, this had been the first time he hadn’t even thought about the score. Or of badgering Dazai to give it to him. It was almost like he enjoyed the company in its own right.

Weird.

It had been too late to turn away by the time he’d realised he was blushing.

“Chuuya! You don’t mean?!”

“Yeah, yeah – don’t let it go to your head, dumbass.”

That ship had clearly sailed, though, Dazai’s eyes were swimming like he’d won the goddamn lottery, and he was looking at Chuuya like he’d just made all of his dreams come true— and not simply admitted that he didn’t totally detest his company.

“So, is it safe to say you’re happy you came away with me?”

“I must have had a screw loose or something,” Chuuya mumbled into his drink, “But… I guess, it's not been all bad.”

He knew he’d made a mistake making such an admission as soon as he felt it slip from his tongue. He blamed the booze. In fact, if was blaming things, he blamed the brunette now positively vibrating with glee opposite him.

“Not all bad!” Dazai rose unsteadily from his stool to face the rest of the patrons, “Do you hear that, everyone?”

Chuuya groaned, burying his face into his elbows whilst his ears burned in misery.

“I, Dazai Osamu, am not all bad!”

“Fucking sit down— people are staring,” Chuuya hissed, livid that even drunk, he was still helpless to his stupid mackerel’s dumb sense of humour. The whole thing was mortifying.

“That was kind of the point,” Dazai leaned in to whisper back at him, before clearing his throat and loudly declaring, “This calls for a celebration!”

Chuuya was confused as to what they’d been doing so far, if not celebrating.

“Come on little fairy, let’s get going!”

*

Admittedly, Chuuya had no idea where Dazai was planning on taking him next, but there was an excitement, as hot as electricity, thrumming through his fingertips as they slotted neatly into Dazai’s own hand — Dazai, who was now dragging him against the flow of people coming down the street they were walking up.

He was even more confused when they suddenly stopped, outside of an arcade – Chuuya slamming straight into Dazai’s back.

“We’re here!” Dazai gestured towards the little building before looking straight into Chuuya’s eyes, just as they happened to widen pathetically, searching his expression for something Chuuya couldn’t fathom.

He must have found it though, somehow, in the way Chuuya’s mouth was hanging open, taking in the garish fluorescent lights and the high pitched idol music bleeding into the street, because in the next moment Chuuya was being pushed through the automatic doors and steered to the nearest machine.

They spent the next hour there. Dazai had brought a flask and insisted on sharing its contents with Chuuya, who was feeling less and less affected by the burn with each hit to his throat.

Dazai thrashed him at most things – even the dance machine, which happened to be their closest battle yet. By the end, Chuuya’s bangs were matted with sweat, and he was feeling vaguely queasy from trying to keep up with Dazai, who’d been giggling the whole time, like a little kid playing jump rope. Chuuya didn’t dare ask how much time Dazai had spent on this particular machine.

A small part of him didn’t want to know.

Another part of him wanted to challenge him to another round.

It would have been a pointless endeavour though, given the way Dazai was now staring longingly at a claw machine.

“That!” He pointed.

“Use your words, shitty Dazai.”

He was looking at the machine like he wanted to burn a hole right through the glass. Chuuya wasn’t sure what it could have been about the prizes on display that held his attention so intensely.

“I’m going to win you that.”

He was pointing at a tiny sheep plushie, squeezed between the glass and another, almost identical, sheep plushie.

”Chuuya mentioned he doesn’t sleep very well. I figured a little sheep might help you out.”

The sheep he was pointing at and the sheep immediately beside it were very similar, but fundamentally different. He understood why Dazai liked that one in particular. It was rounder, friendlier looking; it also looked like it would be more satisfying to hug.

Chuuya loathed himself for thinking so.

Still, there was no denying, it was kinda… adorable. The lashes reminded him of Dazai.

And it was fluffy.

“Does Chuuya want it?”

“Yes,” he admitted through gritted teeth. He wasn’t quite sure why he was being so honest tonight. He didn’t dislike it and luckily for him, Dazai wasn’t being an ass about it.

“Alright then, stand back chibi, and er… maybe keep a lookout…”

“What do ya mean keep a look out— oh, fuck.” Instead of putting his hand into his pocket to pull out whatever coins were needed, Dazai had crouched down to the little square hole where the machine’s prizes could be collected. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” It looked like he was about to… Surely he wasn’t that ridiculous. “I thought I told you to keep watch, just what kind of guard dog are you?”

“The kind that’s gonna leave your ass if we get caught.”

Dazai tutted, “Rude.”

To Chuuya’s surprise, Dazai suddenly rolled his sleeves up and without a second thought, began unravelling the bandages on his arm from wrist to elbow, before tying it into a makeshift lasso.

Chuuya had speculated, he’d admit. So the sight of the uncovered skin, otherwise smooth but for the haphazard mix of old and new scars — some still healing wounds — wasn’t totally unexpected. Chuuya was willing to bet there was a night alone behind each and every one of them, but knew better than to ask.

Not when Dazai was as content and unguarded as he’d ever seen him.

What was surprising, though, was the easy way in which they unravelled. Almost as if there had been no hesitation behind the action. Dazai was laying himself bare, in every sense of the word tonight, and Chuuya couldn’t help but feel his heart swell in kind.

Maybe tonight was about honesty for both of them.

Threading it through the prize bucket and up through to the opening, Dazai began to throw the loop at the small mountain of plushies.

As he could have guessed, the ‘rope’ was far too flimsy to catch onto anything. Chuuya clicked his tongue in faux impatience, even though watching Dazai try, in vain, to do something nice for him, especially when it required quiet concentration from the brunette, was probably the highlight of his night.

“That is never going to work.”

Besides, he was fucking drunk, the fact he hadn’t passed out against the machine was impressive in itself. Instead the man was clearly getting frustrated at the lack of immediate reward.

”I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want it any more” – he did, but not at the expense of Dazai’s genuinely good mood – “You don’t have to do this.”

A few laboured grunts were the response. The lasso flying once more before being pulled back, flying then pulled back, flying then—

Oh, he almost got it that time.

“Dazai?”

Flying and— CLUNK

Chuuya’s eyebrows almost reached his hair, as Dazai triumphantly withdrew the prize from the bucket, grinning from ear to ear. “Shit, I can’t believe you actually…” Chuuya spluttered. “How did you—”

“OI!”

Fuck.

He’d forgotten to keep an eye. Dazai was right, he was a terrible guard dog.

“Looks like it’s time to go,” Dazai announced brightly, nodding at the boulder of a security man approaching from behind Chuuya. “Catch, chibi!”

Dazai had fled by the time Chuuya had caught it, both now high tailing it out of the building, boulder-man in tow. Chuuya only needed to follow the sounds of Dazai’s chuckling as he slalomed between humans and machines alike – surprising himself as his own laughter escaped too, free and unburdened as he chased after the brunette’s back, out into the night.

*

Chuuya hadn’t been this drunk since his eighteenth birthday.

In the absence of any fatal interruptions, he’d drank more with Dazai than he’d ever had before. Too much, arguably. His body was, physically, filled to the brim by booze – so much so, that there had been no other logical place for it to go but spilling back out again.

The main difference to then was the puke, though he still far preferred this to that.

The hand rubbing his back was surprisingly gentle. Each violent spasm twisting in his stomach, until its contents lurched up into the toilet’s bowl, was accompanied by a light brush up and down his spine, another hand gripping his hair for safekeeping. It didn’t make the taste in his mouth any better or lessen the feeling of slowly choking, but knowing somebody was there — even if it was Dazai — was a comfort at least.

The brunette was making fun of him for puking, but even drunk, Chuuya couldn’t detect a single hint of malice — in fact, the quiet chuckling between retches almost sounded fond. Sympathetic, maybe. Chuuya thought that the stench of vomit, combined with the string of garbled obscenities that also flew from his lips, would be enough for anyone to run a mile. And yet, Dazai had stayed.

Truthfully, the idea gnawed away at him a little, but he wasn’t ready to question it. Not when the hand brushing over his shoulder blades was so soft, so… pleasantly distracting.

That last retch had, thankfully, had some sense of finality about it. Though he was still panting heavily into the bowl, he felt sturdy enough to shift his weight from his knees to his thighs, so that he could rest his face against the cool rim of the seat.

He heard the rip of toilet paper being unravelled and felt a wad of it being placed into his hands. Although his eyes were closed, Chuuya managed to find his mouth so he could dab away the excess sick, his lips tingling like they’d been partially numbed.

He must have looked pathetic, and probably gross as fuck. The idea made his cheeks burn against the porcelain to match the red around his eyes.

And yet, being caught blushing was the least of his worries.

The guy he was relying on to help him break the natural law of things, had just watched him puke up his entire guts. Worse still, he’d not even considered leaving his side through it all. Chuuya couldn’t help but feel concerned at the growing list of favours he was beginning to owe; it was becoming dangerously long.

This wasn’t an equal exchange, not even close, and Chuuya had no idea how he’d go about settling the debt. Or if he even could.

Seriously, what was in it for the mackerel? What did he get out of all of this? Chuuya’s company couldn’t have been that good, just look where it had gotten him. On his knees, hunched over, holding red curls back like he was a human fucking hair tie.

And genuinely smiling about it, like he was happy to just be there. Happy to just help. The fucker was disturbed as all hell.

Usually, Chuuya could smell the sadness on him from the other side of the room, as if he truly was the dog Dazai always claimed him to be – so what was so special about this situation?

And, aside from now, just why was he so miserable anyway? He had the power to overturn grief itself; he could have life and death bend to the dance of his fingertips with just a few calculated breaths.

What else was there to sadness if not plain old grief?

Why? The question would never, itself, die; it was there, always, lingering in the back of Chuuya’s throat, making him gag, like a poison. The question that rearranged everything he knew of Dazai into something muddled and wrong. The impression he’d built suddenly fading as if the picture was being painted over with different colours. Darker. Harsh contrasts punctuated with a series of rough brush strokes.

“Music was the answer to a question nobody asked.”

It was time Chuuya asked.

“Why arn’t ya happier?”

He hadn’t intended to say it, in fact he only heard himself say it after the fact. Like a guest in his own body, he was as surprised as Dazai at his words.

He attempted to distance himself from the question by wiping his mouth again with the back of his hand, as if he could simply rub all evidence of such an offence away, like fingerprints. But it was more like a bloodstain.

The words must have stung.

And he immediately felt like an asshole.

The brunette didn’t react immediately. His eyes did widen – almost imperceptibly, but even through the static of his drunken haze Chuuya could still pick up the slightest change in the man’s frequency.

Dazai pulled back to sit on the rim of the bath. Looking curiously, down at Chuuya, now leaning against the sink pedestal opposite.

“What an awful question, chibi.”

Chuuya lied, “M’not sorry.”

He was though. He really fucking was.

Kouyou had asked him something similar once, before this unexpected journey. In fact, it had been less of a question and more a statement of fact.

Chuuya hadn’t been able to respond either. He wasn’t being fair.

Dazai didn’t deserve this.

All he’d done was withhold the score. He’d never said he wouldn’t share it with him, all he’d asked of Chuuya was patience.

Chuuya could wait. He had to wait.

Besides, Albatross was dead, he wasn’t going anywhere. Lashing out at Dazai wasn’t going to bring him back any quicker.

And yet he’d just watched himself lash out anyway. Was watching himself.

“Mean it. Why aren’t ya happy? You can fix the worst of this shitheap of a world — so why’re you so fuckin sad all the time?”

Dazai’s face split into a wide grin. But there was no sparkle in his eyes. Nothing behind them at all except a challenge, as if daring him to see anything beyond the smile. The entire effect was unnerving.

He was still sitting on the edge of the bath, whilst Chuuya was on the floor.

That seemed about right.

“Is that the way it is?” Dazai breathed. “Tell me Chuuya, do I seem sad now?”

Chuuya looked up at him, “You do, actually.”

“Well, well, aren’t you a stubborn little slug.” Dazai….

“Just— fucking be real… for once.”

Real.

Masks weren’t real, that was the whole point.

“Chuuya,” Dazai’s tone lacked the warmth that he’d somehow grown accustomed to. It sounded more like a plea, and the very thought chilled him to his bones.

Chuuya would have shivered if it weren’t for the impatience burning somewhere in his stomach, flooding his body with prickly heat. “Answer me, Dazai.”

He felt feverish. Throwing up had made him feel better for all of five minutes, and now he wished his head was in the bowl again...

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

… While the man he was destroying caressed his spine.

“Then explain.” Chuuya pleaded in turn, “Why?… Why aren’t you happier?”

Why wasn’t Chuuya relenting?

Dazai’s head was in his hands, as if he was holding onto pieces of the mask himself as it crumbled around him. When he spoke the sound was muffled, but measured — consideration in every syllable.

“Well let me ask you. Would they be?” Dazai’s shoulders were slumped but there was still a tension in his posture that put Chuuya on guard.

The eyes that sought his own, as he finally raised his head from his hands, might have been red. Chuuya could barely see them now, his own were swimming… burning.

“If you finally experienced peace, true peace. The kind we look for, day after day, the kind I know you’re searching for too. Would you be happy to be the one to take that away from them? Even if it made you happier?” He wanted Chuuya to understand – was practically begging him to turn the cards over and reconsider everything he thought he knew. “What’s the right answer, Chuuya?”

That hadn’t been a fair question either. Chuuya supposed he deserved it.

Albatross had wanted Chuuya to be remembered. And yet he was the one being remembered. Every damn day.

But… what about Chuuya?

Chuuya hadn’t cared to be remembered, but Albatross had insisted on it. How was he supposed to feel about that? The one who could have was gone. The one who’d called for it on his behalf, gone.

Albatross had only experienced a small taste of the kind of fame he’d sought. No, maybe not fame, it was never something as narcissistic as that; Chuuya would have had something to say about it if it was. Legacy was perhaps a better word. A name his friend could be proud of, when all was said and done. A name that left people wanting more when the curtains finally closed.

Well he’d fucking had that.

But Chuuya was just a bud waiting to bloom in that respect. Not so much a household name as a fleeting anecdote, someone who could have been something, once upon a time. With Albatross — by his side as he should have been.

Kouyou would remember him, probably. Was it enough?

Would Dazai?

If it was the other way around, and Tross had been asked that question. Would he feel the same?

“I’d want to see my friends again.” Chuuya mumbled.

Did Dazai have a point? Would Albatross want to come back when he was already immortalised by his own legacy?

And just how the fuck would Dazai know either way? What gave him the right to assume what his best friend would want? He’d never fucking met him.

“You need to prepare yourself for the real possibility that Albatross wants to be left in peace.” Albatross would have wanted to stay with him. “The dead don’t want to stay amongst the living once they’re dead.”

Albatross wouldn’t have left him by choice.

“And how the fuck would you know? Y’act like you know what you’re doing, like you always have the fuckin answer.”

That empty smile was infuriating. Chuuya didn’t want a smile, no less a fake one...

He wanted to shatter that smile. With his own hands.

With words. With music. With truth.

He wanted answers.

“But look at you,” he shot, pointing a shaking finger at Dazai’s forearms, “You’re as fucked up as I am.”

Shatter.

The shitty walls of the bathroom were closing in. Cracked, stained tiles and all. Porcelain, still full of vomit.

And Dazai looked like he wasn’t even fighting it, like in that moment, he’d be perfectly happy being crushed. Like he was already crushed. Broken. Chuuya couldn’t breathe.

He’d gone too far.

That was way. Too. Far. He suddenly wanted to spill his guts again as a distraction, but was disappointed to find that his stomach was completely empty.

The betrayed look on Dazai’s face wasn’t one that could be faked, even for someone as adept at wearing a mask as the stranger before him, blurred around the edges from whatever booze that had managed to work its way into his blood before he’d managed to purge it. At no point would he have ever thought that such a sight could kill him, but it did.

And the silence that followed buried him, mercifully ended by the sound of the door closing and the new buzzing in Chuuya’s ears.

Tross wasn’t his priority right now, Chuuya was sure he’d understand that. His priority right now was the man who’d just left.

He would understand, right?

Chuuya would understand, if it was the other way around. He would also understand if Dazai decided he wanted to end this, whatever this was. What he’d said had been uncalled for, and he’d take it back in a heartbeat if he could. But he was surprised to find that the idea of not getting the score wasn’t eating him up as much as he thought it would, not as much as the idea that Dazai might never speak to him again.

Worse still, the fact that it was his fault.

When Chuuya managed to peel himself off the floor and stagger through to Dazai’s room, he was unsurprised to see dark brown curls peeking out over the top of crinkled bedsheets. The rest of the man he was looking for was hidden beneath, curled in on himself.

The few feet or so in the space between them felt like miles, and Chuuya wasn’t sure whether he should even try to close the gap he’d created. But there should never have been one in the first place. This was a correction.

You live, you die.

You win, you lose.

You fight, you…

Chuuya found himself within Dazai’s space in seconds, under the covers and sharing the pillow so that the man’s hair was practically in his mouth. Dazai was facing away from him, as Chuuya expected, but they both knew there was no way he was sleeping. Dazai was drunk too, but not enough to sleep through a stab to the chest.

“Oi.”

The brunette didn’t show any indication that he’d heard him, but the words seemed to linger in the air, tension thrumming with the anticipation of more words to come.

“I didn’t mean that. I was pissed and took it out on you.” Dazai’s breaths quickened against his will, if he’d been pretending to sleep he was doing a pretty shit job of it. “M’sorry, Dazai.”

Maybe this was a bad idea. He’d said he piece, he could apologise again tomorrow.

Chuuya made to leave, but was suddenly stopped from wriggling back out of the bed by a hand grabbing him by the wrist. From the feel of the material around the other man’s arms, Dazai had had enough time to wrap himself in fresh bandages whilst Chuuya had been stumbling from his room to the corridor. The bandages were tight. And firmly secured. Chuuya tried not to draw attention to the fact that he was doing his best to subtly inspect them with his fingers. Following the edges from wrist to elbow.

He wanted nothing more than to unravel them so he could soothe the scars underneath. But based on how Dazai must feel, the act could end up doing more harm than good.

Chuuya could just about see the brown eyes now facing him, despite the low light from the streetlamps filtering through the thin curtains. They were dark, the colour of soil. They’d always reminded Chuuya of life and growth, not darkness and misery, despite what he’d said.

“I know how it feels to be angry, Chuuya.”

No way was he throwing him a fucking lifeline, no way was he choosing to save his life, a thousand times over.

“Why do you think I travel all the time, hm? You’re not the only one looking for answers.”

Chuuya didn’t dare speak. But he didn’t want Dazai to stop talking either. The brunette’s voice was lacking any real anger, for reasons beyond Chuuya’s comprehension. Instead, Chuuya felt it in his ear like a soothing balm.

After all, Chuuya knew his words had been less about attacking Dazai, and more about protecting himself. Karma meant he’d caught himself in the crossfire too, his words biting his own skin as easily as if he’d been speaking into a mirror.

Apparently Dazai knew that too.

“And I know I don’t have all the answers, far from it. All I can do is speak from experience.”

Why was he so good? What was the catch?

The brunette suddenly sighed, sinking further into the bed. Chuuya knew there was something he was still wanting to say, but that whatever it was was having trouble being said. He found himself pulling at his wrists by the bandages in encouragement, so that the man’s fists were curled up against his chest, his heart pounding against the contact he’d made happen.

It seemed to do the trick, because Dazai suddenly took a deep breath — Chuuya relishing in the sudden warmth of it as it caressed his cheek.

“…I couldn’t convince him, Chuuya. He’s back where he belongs.”

Couldn’t convince him? Who?

The person who’d inspired the score?

Realisation fell heavy in Chuuya’s stomach as he gripped Dazai’s hands even tighter. That same realisation tasted like regret, and sat awkwardly on his tongue, still heavy enough not to say a word.

“You need to prepare yourself for the real possibility that Albatross wants to be left in peace”…

Oh.

“I… didn’t know.” And yet Chuuya should have known. “You never said.”

Chuuya heard the regret in the husk of his own voice, quiet from lack of use. Dazai simply smiled, eyes teasing as they continued to bore into Chuuya’s.

“You never asked.”

“Right.”

Time didn’t seem to exist as they lay facing each other — truly facing each other — for the very first time. Time was something easily controlled in music. Real life, not so much. If Chuuya could, he’d let this moment of quiet surrender last a lifetime.

Whatever fight had existed before, had resulted in a truce, for now. White flags, the same shade as those cold bathroom tiles, lay peacefully between them.

“I need you to trust me.”

Chuuya still barely knew the guy.

“Do you trust me?”

And yet something dark and downright nauseating had threatened to consume him when Dazai had walked away. That same beast he’d felt over his shoulder at the bar. The beast that had replaced the comforting shadow that Tross had left behind.

That feeling had spelled out that he wasn’t ready to let Dazai go just yet. That he wasn’t ready to face another night alone.

He didn’t know what that meant. Was it trust? Probably not. If anything, being with Dazai was terrifying, in a way. A desperate gamble in which Chuuya could either win everything he wanted, or else lose what was left of his mind completely.

But did he trust that Dazai was truly trying to help him? In whatever form that took? Even if the rest were only ripples in the truth?

A public bench. A name written in permanent marker. A bet. A stage. A challenge.

A crane.

A plushie.

A back rub.

A hand on his wrist, keeping him from slipping away between white sheets.

He’d given him no reason not to trust him yet, not really.

“I do,” it was a reluctant truth, but a truth nonetheless.

One of them needed their head examined, and Chuuya was no longer sure which it was out of the two of them.

“Well, then… I guess I could accept your apology.” Dazai concluded with a grin, “if the slug’s really going to cry about it.”

Asswipe.

Chuuya’s eyes had slipped shut against his will. The word ‘accept’ had been the magic word he never knew existed, to bring sleep as surely as a year without it would. “Hey, slug? If you did cry, would the salt from your tears kill you?”

The boundary between wakefulness and slumber was thin enough for a chuckle to toe the line, two identical smiles pressing into the same pillow.

“Go the fuck to sleep, mackerel.”

***

The morning came without alarms or the usual feeling of emptiness. It came without the knowledge that he’d failed again in his non-existent attempts at rest, came without the ache from fingers that had tried in earnest to produce music that was even halfway decent.

It came instead with heavy eyelids, still far too heavy to peel open. With birdsong that Chuuya could simply enjoy, with eyes tight shut and arms tucked around the waist of a mackerel, instead of studying for inspiration’s sake. It came with the comforting stirs of a man who’d been a mere stranger only days ago.

Dazai was still fast asleep. Chuuya could feel it, in the heaviness of the bones pressed up against his chest and torso, and the ribs steadily rising and falling beneath his arm — without any visual evidence required to confirm that fact.

The brunette was a loud breather… fucking figures. And yet the noise wasn’t so much a distraction as it was a surprising source of comfort, the heavy breaths only serving to beckon Chuuya gently back into slumber. And if it wasn’t for the lingering feelings of guilt — an emotional hangover from the night before, to match the physical hangover he could already feel was on its way — he’d already be sleeping again.

He’d hurt Dazai last night. That was on him. He’d wanted answers that Dazai didn’t owe him.

The man had shared them anyway. Reluctantly, Chuuya knew, but at least he was making the effort to meet Chuuya halfway. Perhaps even further than halfway. Chuuya would have to make it up to him.

He carefully unpeeled his arm from around Dazai’s waist — not least because he wasn’t sure what the bastard would make of their sleeping positions if he woke up mid-spoon — so that he could grab Dazai’s phone from the bedside table and check the time.

The bright light was like a vicious prod to the heachache he’d been expecting. As was the unwelcome realisation that they were due to catch their train out of Hiroshima in just over an hour, which would mean packing and getting ready… five minutes ago. The reality came with an involuntary groan.

Fuck it. Chuuya could afford to buy them both tickets for a later train, it was the least he could do. For now, he could let the dumb fish sleep.

Besides, he reasoned, as he threw caution to the winds and tentatively slipped his arm back to its original position — and if Dazai ever questioned it, Chuuya could just blame the lack of space and the fact that he’d been asleep the entire time too, how the fuck could he help it?! — …

Chuuya was still tired too.

***

Chuuya was infinitely glad to be back in Yokohama, he hadn’t quite realised the effect a few nights away would have on what he suspected had always been a dormant love for the city. The buildings in various shades of grey, all sitting on top of each other like stickle bricks; the vast gardens that could give those sneering parks in Tokyo a run for their money; the constant, soothing wind that tasted like the ocean.

His routines were here. Ane-sane was here. His bed and his space were here. His quiet was here.

Right, his quiet was here. Chuuya was struggling to remember when that had become a good thing.

Wasn’t he supposed to love music?

He was even more glad of his return when he’d arrived to pick up Dazai from his hotel — after a quick stop at his apartment to check the place hadn’t turned to ashes in his absence.

As expected, Dazai’s choice of hotel was to be desired, all expenses had been spared, apparently. Though, Chuuya would perhaps argue that this was one of the better ones. And that said something.

If they were ever to travel again in future, Chuuya would have to insist on being the one to pick their lodgings.

If? What a pointless hypothetical. This whole thing he had with Dazai was sure to end once the fish relinquished his grasp on the score, right? There’d never be an opportunity to choose the hotel.

Don’t be fucking stupid, Chuuya.

The carpet, as he nervously stared down at his feet, was a charming mouldy brown colour. Stained too, just to complete the look. He could hear the mackerel somewhere behind the door, half skipping to answer his impatient raps, which he did two seconds later with a wide smile on his face.

“Ahh you made it! Thank goodness, I was just getting ready to print off some lost dog posters—“

His hair was all fluffy from only being half dried and his lips and cheeks were rosy from shower steam. He smelt… annoyingly good, like the sweet tang of cheap shower gel that Chuuya could seriously get used to if he wasn’t careful.

His shirt wasn’t fully buttoned either. Clean bandages on full display, wound tightly from chest to collar bone to neck.

The overall effect caught Chuuya sharply in the throat so that a dry squeak traded places with “hello”.

Fucking humiliating.

As mercy had it, Dazai wasn’t fairing much better. The initial smile had faltered quickly after taking one glance at the items in Chuuya’s hands. His silence gave Chuuya a few seconds to recover from his own internal screaming and successfully get the jump on him.

”Oh, these are for the cemetery,” Chuuya explained, as nonchalantly as he could when Dazai’s eyes were still shining like that, stray curls hiding just enough of his long lashes that Chuuya wanted to cut the man’s bangs himself. Stunned silence really suited him.

He held a bouquet out for Dazai to take, which he did when he eventually figured out that they weren’t going to bite. That left two bouquets still in Chuuya’s hands. He could tell the brunette was doing some incredibly painful math as he continued to stare blankly at them.

”Erm… And these are for you.”

Chuuya would have given Tross’ entire inheritance to not have blushed a magnificent shade of magenta at that very moment. It seemed luck was on his side again, as Dazai looked ready to keel over. Seriously a tap on the shoulder would have done it, Chuuya would have tried it if he wasn’t worried it would somewhat ruin the whole point of the gesture.

“Take them then, waste of bandages,” he spat, thrusting the bouquet into the brunette’s chest and almost knocking him flat anyway. Dazai’s eyes were as big as plates and just as good at processing, it seemed. Chuuya would have burst out laughing if he’d not been trying to avoid drawing attention to his still crimson cheeks.

Dazai’s grip on the plastic wrapping tightened as he pulled the flowers closer to his chest, nose suddenly disappearing into the nearest group of petals to take a slow inhale.

“But… why, chibi?”

Chuuya got the impression the pathetic bastard rarely received gifts. He’d have to change that.

“Thanks, I guess…”

”For what?”

The brunette grinned — sly, like he had the upper hand. Chuuya cursed his blush for serving it up on a platter.

”You fucking know what, don’t push your luck.”

The knowing smile was enough to say he appreciated the thought. Eyes sparkling, almost sheepish in gratitude. Chuuya took a moment to drink it in before suddenly remembering where he was.

As it happened, the brunette also shook his head, obviously clearing it out of a similar daze.

”I got you something too.”

He awkwardly beckoned him into the room, stepping aside and setting his flowers down onto the little side table. It was strange, the man looked nervous despite the fact they’d been flitting in and out of each other’s hotel rooms the last few nights over. Why was today any different? The nerves seemed to be catching, because Chuuya felt his skin tingle with an anticipation he couldn’t put a finger on. The room was ordinary. Dull, even. But it still seemed to possess a magic that made his insides squirm restlessly at the very idea of being in such close proximity to the mackerel again.

The brunette edged around the side of the bed, to the bedside table on the opposite side of the room, before extricating something small and flimsy from the, mostly empty, drawer.

It was a paper crane, two in fact. Black because of course they were.

It was Chuuya’s turn to be knocked to the ground, the tables turned with such speed that he found his carefully trained emotions now haphazardly thrown all over the floor. The whiplash was dizzying.

His mouth suddenly felt uncomfortably dry.

“I got the feeling you liked the other one a lot”, and yet Chuuya could have snorted at the fact that the words came out without a shred of confidence behind them. Hope, maybe, but not confidence. “I thought you could either keep them both or I could keep one and you keep the other one.”

“What, like a memento of our wonderful time together?” Chuuya scoffed before he could stop himself.

Sarcasm had always been his least favourite defence mechanism. All it did was create a gap, manufacture a misunderstanding ex nihilo. He didn’t mean it. Truthfully he was touched by the gesture, his heart genuinely glowed at the idea that he would always have something to remind himself of how it had felt not to be lonely for a little while.

It was the perfect gift. His bouquet of flowers were dogshit in comparison. Only temporary.

Dazai’s eyes suddenly rounded into pathetic ovals, lips downturned. The fucker was embarassed and Chuuya felt his heart break in several places at once.

“I was joking, shitty Dazai.” He needed the, for once, genuine pout to go away immediately — for his sanity. “I honestly love it.”

Brown eyes instantly brightened and Chuuya felt his own smile lift, mirroring the pathetic man opposite him. He was still holding both birds in his hands like he’d been afraid Chuuya would tear them up and laugh him out of the room, but at Chuuya’s confession he gladly held out his hands for Chuuya to receive.

“You keep that one, makes sense for us each to have one.”

Dazai beamed, warming the room by several degrees and driving Chuuya’s own smile even wider against his will.

What a sentimental fuck.

”Yay! I’ll just finish getting ready then we can be on our way, err…” he checked the room for a chair but had clearly failed to spend enough on the most basic room type to be granted such luxuries, “sit on the bed if you like.”

Plopping himself down onto the bed, he watched as the brunette busied himself fixing his shirt and finding his shoes before throwing open the doors to the tiny wardrobe. He managed to retrieve his jacket with difficulty, finally prising it away from the other items of clothing that had all been squashed in together.

Chuuya’s jaw dropped at the ten or twelve identical beige trench coats neatly hung up on the rail. Disbelief turned into amusement as a rogue snort filled the silence, all whilst something burned, humiliatingly warm, in the wallet pressed up against his thigh. A piece of paper he’d received only a few days prior, folded into equal parts and kept like another origami memento, words written in jest but apparently built on a foundation of truth:

“P.P.S. you’re welcome to keep the jacket, I have more than one, though I suspect it’s too small for you.”

***

The graveyard was surprisingly busy today. Such an idea sat bittersweet in Chuuya’s thoughts. In Tross’ little corner, they were somewhat hidden, and Chuuya was infinitely thankful for Takahashi-san’s foresight, having chosen the perfect set of plots for his family. If it had been up to Chuuya… he feared he’d lack the resources to pull it off quite like this.

He had, however, insisted on a three word quote, uttered by the grave’s occupant himself. It was a simple thing, not profound per se, but so perfectly Albatross that there had never been any doubt over what words should feature on the headstone.

*

“Well, you know what they say, ‘mistakes are human’, I think I read something like that somewhere.”

To err is human — reading that days after had to have been the quickest instance of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon he’d ever experienced.

Which he also, ironically, read about only a few days after that.

The misquote proved his own point, and Chuuya liked his turn of phrase far better than the original. It was perfectly Albatross — to the point and forever taking the path least pretentious, which was, perhaps, where his similarities with Ane-san ended.

And of course, Chuuya had understood exactly what he’d meant, as time went on. A machine or an artificial entity could never create good music. Music was only perfect if it was humanly flawed.

Beauty is flawed.

Perfections in reality are merely flashy lies that can only exist in a universe that is, itself, perfect. Humans create music and it’s beautiful because it's inherently flawed.

A single breath can stutter and falter and will never make the exact same sound twice. The pace and timbre too, can be almost but never quite exact.

Mistakes are human.

Chuuya had oftentimes questioned his humanity. He’d never felt connected to real life like others seemed to so naturally. Albatross had, respectfully, told him to fuck off. He was as human as anyone, and speaking of which:

“That was dogshit, Debussy would be spinning in his grave.”

*

The words seemed to shine today.

It had been raining, again — and recently. So recently, in fact, that tiny droplets were still making their leisurely way from top to base, tracks as smooth as the flow of a river and just as pretty.

The grass underfoot was dotted with wildflowers. Some would call them weeds, and in any other circumstance Chuuya would too, but they were kind of perfect, in a way. Wildflowers, growing freely and without order where his best friend lay — a painting in a multitude of colours, a world apart from any neat bouquet. Unconventional. Imperfect.

Perfect.

Dazai was nearby, hanging over his shoulder like an awkward shadow. The ridiculous sight lightened the weight in his chest. As much as he’d wanted to get used to these visits, he never really did, and that weight had never really left. He was just as awkward as Dazai once upon a time, but at least he could talk to him now, if he wanted.

As it stood, he had nothing to say today. The problem being that he had too much to say. His mind was a haze of broken wires and splintered wood, and if he opened his mouth he wasn’t convinced that anything but garbled nonsense could seep out.

How to even begin recounting everything that had happened in the last few days? Fuck.

He propped the fresh roses against the headstone as a compromise. Dazai’s eyes followed him the entire time, as if studying how it should be done. For such a simple act the brunette looked awfully troubled by the scene.

Perhaps this was too intimate for a bystander. After all, Dazai had never known him, and as such was understandably disconnected from this ritual in both mind and spirit. Chuuya hadn’t really appreciated that beforehand.

“So this is what a grave looks like?” As if squashing a thought, the brunette stepped closer to Chuuya so that they were shoulder to shoulder, eyeing the writing on the marble with curiosity.

Chuuya blinked. “You’ve never seen a grave before? You’re joking right?”

”Don’t be silly chibbiko of course I’ve seen a grave before, I’m not an alien—”

He was.

“—I’ve just never seen one…” He paused for a moment, gesturing to himself then to the flowers before them. “Like this. As a visitor I mean, it’s not nearly as creepy as I’d always imagined.”

By ‘creepy’ Chuuya took that to mean ‘scary’. He did get it — understood far better than he wanted to — it had taken him some time to get used to being a visitor too. It really wasn’t something you could ever prepare yourself for.

He was in the mood to throw the man a bone. “It took me months to come visit Tross’ grave.”

It annoyed Chuuya beyond reason to hear his voice come out quiet and thin. Traitor. Dazai tilted his head in interest at the sudden change, instinct clearly telling him not to interrupt, to which Chuuya was grateful. “I went to the funeral, obviously, but I bowed out before the burial. I just couldn’t watch him go like that.”

Fine rain tickled his nose as he spoke, the ends of his hair now damp from the stealthy change in weather.

“He was the bravest guy I knew. But he didn’t really like small spaces… I don’t either, to be honest.”

At the time, the idea of his best friend in a wooden box for all eternity had twisted itself around Chuuya’s windpipe, as if he was the one suffocating in a space not even big enough to stretch. Not even big enough to bend a bow.

Dazai’s shoulder twitched against his, as if withholding the impulse to face him. Maybe he was worried about what he would see if he did.

He needn’t have. Chuuya’s eyes remained as dry as they always did.

“If I didn’t see it happening then it wasn’t real, I don’t know if that makes any sense or if it makes me sound crazy.”

Yet at no point had Chuuya looked away or stopped seeing for even a moment. That name etched into stone and rain, looked the same as it always did. It was easier to acknowledge it all now.

Hope would do that, he supposed.

“Both.” Dazai smiled in answer, seemingly unable to miss an opportunity to call him crazy.

Fucker.

“Though I imagine it’s something that gets easier with time,” the brunette said wistfully, a few moments passing before he shook his head and corrected himself with a hum. “No, not time since a loss… our time.”

The brunette thumbed the petals on his own bouquet with the lightest of brushes, deep in thought.

“I always thought that we carry our grief in our bodies, rather than hold onto it with our hands. We’re never the same after and it marks us—”

Chuuya’s gut churned at the memory of the skin beneath the bandages. He knew that’s not what Dazai meant, but he still couldn’t shake the image.

“—You’ve noticed it. I know you have.” His eyes glistened with understading, and the common ground between them felt less like sand and more like the solid foundation Chuuya found himself lacking in the moments he’d spent alone at his friend’s resting place. “The elderly have seen it the most.They live with it in their bones, they carry it in their shoulders. It weighs them down, one wrinkle after another. It’s harder, in a way… but it’s also easier.”

Chuuya scoffed, a thin cover for the fact that he was taking in what Dazai said like the man could shift reality with words alone, never mind the score. Like he could shift Chuuya’s reality. “You’re just making shit up now.”

“It’s true!” The brunette laughed anyway. It was small but it was something at least. Chuuya didn’t know when he’d grown to adore the sound.

They stood in silence for a little while. Chuuya noticed that the rain had grown in intensity, Dazai’s hair was full of it, and he couldn’t help but cringe at the thought of his bandages getting cold and damp — surely that had to be one of the most miserable discomforts to exist — but unfortunately for Dazai…

It wasn’t time to leave. Not just yet.

As it happened, the place where Dazai’s roses belonged was just a few minutes’ walk from Albatross’ grave, in this very same yard. Neighbours in death.

Chuuya briefly wondered if their paths could have ever crossed in life, not that he knew anything about the man that had inspired the melody. The melody that had made him seek his stinky fish in the first place. Dazai had never said a word.

He’d find out once they arrived at the grave, he guessed.

The walk through the maze of gravestones gave Chuuya a chance to really appreciate how big the place was. So much death here. Love too. Enough to fill this peaceful corner of the world to the brim with stone, flowers and incense.

Dazai seemed anxious. The comment about never seeing a grave before had caught Chuuya off guard initially, but on further inspection was perfectly in keeping with what he knew of the guy.

He was fidgeting with a piece of string hanging loose from his trenchcoat. Twirling and yanking at the little fucker. Chuuya wouldn’t be surprised if he was distracting himself enough to walk straight into the headstone of someone’s dearly departed. He needed to tease him out of his head.

”What was his name?”

”Huh?” The string was half twisted around his index finger, making the tip a harsh red colour. “Oh, you mean Odasaku?”

”Odasaku?”

”Well, Oda Sakunosuke. But, I always called him Odasaku.”

”So, why Odasaku?”

The tip of Dazai’s finger was on its slow but steady way to black. The dumbass didn’t even seem to notice, evidently lost in a memory, eyes glossed over and nostalgic. Chuuya forced the brunette to a stop and pulled the suffering hand towards his own, gently unwinding the string while the man kept talking.

“He was an author. I thought he needed a cool pen name — something with a single name like Dante or Ovid, but way better than those pretentious old duffers.”

With the string now removed, the shock of white skin beneath soon flushed into a healthy pink. The action was enough to feel Dazai’s pulse through his finger, and it quickened slightly as Chuuya hesitated to release it.

”Was he good? At writing I mean?”

”The best! He wanted to go by just ‘Oda’,” he huffed, “but I respectfully disagreed. Told him he was far too weird for such a short name.”

Chuuya snorted, suddenly dropping his hand. Of course he fucking did.

All things considered he kinda felt sorry for the guy. Although, in fairness, Dazai was probably right, he must have been at least a little weird to choose the company of that lanky menace.

… Then again, maybe Chuuya was weird too.

.

.

.

They’d arrived at the grave. And sure enough, the short name etched upon the monument read “S. Oda”. This was him all right. Chuuya had a bizarre urge to thank the poor bastard for fulfilling the thankless task of keeping Dazai entertained for all those years. Thank him for inspiring a score that was sure to be his own salvation.

And yet a very small part of him, the part of him that wanted to come back to this very spot without the mackerel following him like a lost puppy, wanted to ask him why.

Why didn’t he stay? If he’d had the chance to come back, and rejected it anyway… would Albatross feel the same? What was his reasoning? What would it have taken to change the outcome?

Was he happy?

Was Albatross?

In the end, he just stood in silence. This wasn’t about him.

Dazai’s eyes were round. Misty even. Almost unbelieving, like he was trying to reconcile something difficult in his head.

Chuuya could probably guess what. After all, it must be a weird thing, seeing the physical evidence of death before his very eyes, as blatant as a headstone and the solid earth underfoot, when everything he’d done since then had all been to convince the universe to reverse that fact.

He could definitely relate.

The flowers seemed to shake for a moment before the brunette managed to steel himself. The cellophane crinkled noisily as Dazai moved closer, squatting down to the little container that was specifically made for laying flowers. Chuuya too, took a step closer on instinct, almost as if to reach out to him, the man currently mesmerized by a name.

Frowning slightly, like it’d been spelt wrong.

Which of course, it had been.

”So…” Dazai eventually coughed, straightening up and brushing his hands on his thighs. “What about Albatross?”

”Eh? What about him?”

”You’re telling me that was his real name? How unfortunate. His parents must have really hated him.”

”Of course it fucking wasn’t!”

“Well then?”

Truthfully Chuuya had no idea where ‘Albatross’ had come from. Surely Tross had told him at some point or other, so why hadn’t he committed it to memory? He was realising too late that he hadn’t held onto the little things as tightly as he should have, and now they were slipping through his fingers like grains of sand in an hourglass. Memories tumbling and fading with each day that passed.

He’d been a fool to assume he’d be an exception to the rule.

Albatross, a bird famous for its large wingspan. Perhaps it truly was fitting. His ‘Tross had been larger than life, in so many ways. He didn’t just fly, the guy literally soared. There was no such thing as ceiling, no sky too blue. He was the freest person Chuuya had ever met, and had learned from him the immeasurable value to be found in freedom.

He taught him his music, to be joined in and repeated like birdsong — whilst also stepping aside when it was time for Chuuya to come into his own.

And yet always there to catch him if he fumbled.

The wings to his gravity.

“Well?”

“Its ’cos he looked like a fucking bird.”

*

It wasn’t long after that they said goodbye to Oda. Dazai, a man not known for his silence, had chosen not to say any words, in the end.

Chuuya understood.

”So! When will you be back here, slug?” Dazai asked as they reached the gate. He’d taken one last glance back in the direction of the plot they’d just left. He seemed lighter for it, so Chuuya could forgive him for the oversight in his question.

”Well… hopefully never,” he replied with a chuckle. The guy could be seriously stupid if left unchecked. ”Last time I came here was only a few days ago, told him I was going to meet you and that I’d be bringing him back soon,” he added, unable to help the excited flutter in his chest.

After all, Chuuya had fulfilled his end of the bargain now, right? There was nothing else standing in their way, Albatross wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

He pushed down the tiny part of him that worried Tross wouldn’t want to come back. He hadn’t known Oda, not by any stretch, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t guess that he and Tross had been very different people. He’d been older, for starters, based on the dates that had been engraved onto his headstone. Their circumstances had been, almost certainly, nothing alike.

Yet Chuuya immediately knew he must have said something wrong when the brunette stopped in his tracks, stumbling like he’d missed a step.

Doubling back to check on him had been a big mistake. Dazai’s eyes were round, his eyebrows drawn together but tilted upwards in a fresh sorrow that felt unrelated to the visit he’d made to his old friend’s grave. It was the same expression Chuuya could have sworn he’d seen on multiple occasions, whenever he’d managed to chance a glance at the brunette when he thought nobody was looking, an expression he’d convinced himself that he hadn’t seen.

‘Why arn’t ya happier?’ Echoed again through his mind like a requiem. He thought their drunken argument had been enough to get it all off his chest and onto the table, but there had still been a small part of him that had questioned whether there wasn’t something else bothering the man. A missing piece that had been staring Chuuya right in the eyes, and that Chuuya, in his haste to finish the puzzle, had refused to acknowledge.

Chuuya felt the butterflies beneath his ribs falter, the flutter of their wings now frantic instead, replacing excitement with a dread he couldn’t explain.

“Dazai?”

Dazai suddenly paled, the eyes that slid over to meet Chuuya’s were watery, rich in something unspoken. Chuuya had a horrible feeling that he knew what had been left unsaid this whole time.

”Let’s go for a drink, Chuuya. There’s something I need to tell you.”

***

Horrible feeling.

A shitty bar and a horrible feeling.

Kouyou had brought him here, once, to give him what he was sure was a well-meaning dose of cold, blunt truth. That truth seemed further away now, miraculously. Who knew such a remedy would ever have come in the shape of a tall brunette, precariously held together by music and bandages?

The truth was that he was not as depressed as he had been a couple days ago. He would have been an idiot not to acknowledge that.

And yet, truth was at the heart of this horrible feeling.

He’d dared to hope, had gotten swept up in the moment, had moved forward from that same depression towards a chance of a reunion.

The disappointment after a good dream hits twice as hard upon waking when you convince yourself it’s real — that’s what Chuuya had always understood of dreaming.

He’d never dreamed, technically, but fuck if he hadn’t been dreaming these last few days.

And now Dazai was looking at him like he was the unwelcome crack of dawn.

If reality was the nightmare, then Dazai would be his morning.

And yet he’d lived that reality only days ago. When did reality become the good dream he’d been chasing instead? And why, again, was Dazai there, at the end of all things?

“You know what I have to tell you, don’t you slug?”

And there he was, sitting across from him. On the very same table he’d sat at with ane-san, blocking the exit to happily ever after.

“Don’t call me that.” The nickname felt overly familiar now, a tarnish on something he’d once secretly treasured, something he’d once worn fondly against his chest, but would never admit.

Tross had had tons of nicknames for him, each one more ridiculous than the last, but that had been his right as his best friend. Nicknames were to be earned.

Someone he’d known only three days could never come close.

Still, it hurt to take it away.

“Fair enough,” Dazai had the audacity to look hurt, it wasn’t fair that the sudden droop in his shoulders plummeted like a rock through Chuuya’s stomach too. “Look, Chuuya, I’m sorr—“

“Nope, don’t you fucking dare.” Chuuya didn’t want apologies. Not when the brunette hadn’t even admitted what he was apologising for. What he wanted was accountability, and for the truth that Dazai was desperately trying to avoid, to be the true lie, “I need you to say it, why the fuck should I be the one to make this easy for you?”

The drinks between them would never be touched, as if either could stomach a single sip, knowing what was coming. The whole idea was laughable.

Chuuya wrapped a gloved hand around the glass anyway, watching the watery edge stick to the side as the contents sloshed this way and that, trying in earnest to keep up with gravity. His gaze eventually found the brown eyes opposite him, as hollow as his smile, and tainted with a thick layer of regret.

“Chuuya, you have to understand—“

Did he fuck. Chuuya was done with understanding.

“— no you have to understand!” The brunette didn’t dare speak over him, expression cracking like paper walls under the heat of Chuuya’s glare. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?! Did you have any idea what this would do to me?”

“Of course I knew, I already told you — I understand you more than you think.”

”No, you clearly don’t know me,” why was it that that particular revelation had caused his voice to crack? The idea that Dazai didn’t know him, not one bit — and that Chuuya really didn’t know Dazai… it felt like his bow had slipped on the strings, the illusion of a perfect performance shattered by a simple oversight.

It hurt more than he’d been prepared for.

The man opposite was silent, eyes darkening as they searched Chuuya’s, sharing in his pain.

But why? Why was it that he was in pain too?

Why?

”Why, Dazai? Why did you do it? This wasn’t some fucking game — surely even you get that?” For someone he’d just accused of playing games, the guy didn’t look like he was enjoying this one bit.

He looked broken, even more than he had in that cursed hotel bathroom, that wasn’t something you could simply fake. ”And you’ve still not even had the balls to say it.”

It was all he could do to keep the plea out of his voice. He didn’t want to give him the satisfaction if this had all been some sick joke. He didn’t want to give anymore.

He was better off alone.

”Say it, Dazai.”

His name burnt his tongue. Even the name felt like a lie. The man was a stranger… stranger’s don’t have names.

“Chuuya please, just hear me out—“

He’d asked him not to call him by a nickname. The man had listened. Why bother if he didn’t care?

“Say. It.”

Because he obviously didn’t.

“It’s not that simple.”

There was no way Daza— that man, cared. He supposed he was a bit like Albatross, in a way. Neither cared about him now, but for vastly different reasons.

“That’s for me to judge. Spit it out, now.”

He’d never seen the brunette look so cornered. The sense of control, like he had him right there under his thumb, ready to squish with a force greater than gravity, was oddly satisfying. He needed Dazai to say it, needed him to feel the pain of acknowledging just how fucked up the lie had been. Wanted him to endure just a sample of the hell he was putting Chuuya through, right alongside him.

The man seemed to struggle with it, the words visiting all corners of his tongue in their reluctance to come out. He was picking at his bandages again, eyes practically begging for a mercy that Chuuya was never going to grant him. This wasn’t about him.

It was simply a truth he was owed. The only one he’d ever been owed.

Why couldn’t he see that?

Dazai closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Chuuya might have felt sorry for him if he wasn’t falling through the five stages of grief all over again, getting battered and bruised at each step.

His eyes opened, eyes Chuuya had found comfort in only hours ago. He had to brace himself for the fast approaching reality that he’d never find comfort in them again.

He watched his lips move before he heard it.

“The score’s… not… real.”

The words filtered through Chuuya’s brain almost… garbled. The chair felt like the only thing keeping him from being swallowed whole by the earth, and yet the sounds in the bar seemed to swell into unbearable white noise.

In one ludicrous moment, it almost reminded him of the time Albatross had pressed an enormous seashell up to his ear, cackling at the look of childish awe that had played across his face. Except this white noise made him want to smash the shell into pieces until his palms bled, not keep it safe in a box of phantom trinkets.

His eyes burned at the sudden memory.

“See? Wasn’t so hard, was it?”

And yet Dazai’s admission hadn’t made him feel even the slightest bit better. If anything the words seemed to lag through his consciousness, pulling at his insides until he felt like they were about to spill right out of his mouth.

He didn’t know what to say. The fact all colour had drained from his face suggested Dazai didn’t have a clue either.

“You promised you’d give me the score.” Chuuya’s voice came out quiet, peeping through the cracks.

“I only promised to help you, I never said I’d teach you the score.”

“Oh— fucking technicalities asshole, very clever. You must sleep so well at night knowing how fucking superior you are to us mere mortals.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, just listen—“

Listen?! Listen? Was he kidding? Cat had caught his fucking tongue like five seconds ago and now he wanted to talk?

“Give me one good reason why I should hear you out?”

The man was panicked now, grappling at straws. Grappling at his hair in a frenzied attempt at grounding himself. Or simply acting. Chuuya didn’t fucking know anymore.

“Because, Chuuya, I—“

Chuuya had every right to ignore everything that came out of the bastard’s mouth and yet he couldn’t fucking move. Sucked in by the man’s dilated pupils, no light reflecting or escaping them, like two black holes.

“I really was, just like you… once.” Dazai’s voice was pathetic in its regret. “When I lost Odasaku, I could hardly take it, it felt like everything that made me had been ripped away and I was just existing for existing’s sake.”

The brunette took a shuddering breath, scratching at his forearms, “I couldn’t play either. I tried, just like you, but it all felt like I was just going through the motions. I wasn’t truly believing it. The audience weren’t hearing it. When I looked in the mirror all I saw was what I was missing.”

Chuuya remembered the feeling.

Still didn’t mean they were the same, though.

“I saw that same emptiness in you when I first saw you, in this very bar. But I also saw there was a fire in you searching for… something. I knew then that you hadn’t given up. And then I heard you play—”

“Shut up,” Chuuya snapped. He couldn’t stand to listen any longer. He didn’t want to hear any more, if he was going to compliment him on his playing, well that ship had fucking sailed.

He might have secretly liked it once upon a time.

“We are nothing alike. Face it, Dazai.”

But not now.

“And you wanna know why?”

Dazai’s expression said that he didn’t. Said that he would have given anything not to know what he was about to say.

“Because I would have never fucking lied to you.”

Chuuya suddenly grabbed his jacket, avoiding Dazai’s gaze. He didn’t want to see those eyes right now, any guilt he felt at the expression that might have stared back at him would have just been an inconvenience. The rage he felt inside would have been enough to extinguish it anyway, but he wanted to hold onto that rage, as much of it as he could. He wanted to feel something different to the icy disappointment that was making his bones ache and his head numb.

“You’ve wasted my time. Don’t fucking follow me.”

This was it. He would never see Albatross again. Any further affiliation with Dazai would only remind him of that fact.

“Chuuya, please.”

He needed to leave him behind, starting with this cursed bar. Starting with—

Plunging a gloved hand into his pocket, he pulled something tiny and black from its depths and threw it onto the table in front of Dazai.

He had no need for paper cranes. No need for momentos.

Goodbye, Osamu.

***

The next week dragged by, empty and numb, haunted by pleading brown eyes, wordlessly begging him to stay.

It had been a desperate attempt to return to a normality that now felt worlds away. And, put simply, it didn’t suit him. His normality felt tiny, now, like he’d outgrown it. 

Besides, what was normal anyway? Why was this normality something that he craved to return to? Before he’d met that man, normality had been hour after hour playing chords and riffs that went nowhere; eating food that tasted stale and unseasoned; living the nightmare because he’d been too restless to sleep.

As it was, Chuuya was infinitely glad that the notes stopped at the walls of the studio, they weren’t worth wasting the time of anybody else. They were self-indulgent crap, an attempt at feeling something, except they weren’t in the slightest because Chuuya despised them. 

As for the rest of ‘normality’, the food being tasteless was not his most pressing concern, and the fact that he hadn’t slept a wink since the bar was not at all surprising to him.

It was a choice he’d made, born from lack of alternatives.

Ane-san had picked up on his funk. Not that it wasn’t obvious, he was tired of hiding it now. Being vulnerable had only brought him pain, but it had also broken a seal he wasn’t sure how to mend. He was out of practice, and it showed.

As it happened, a week turned out to be just the right amount of time for him to gather the nerve to face the music, and finally accept the summons to her apartment. As expected, he’d been reprimanded to high hell for doing something so reckless. 

Still, at least she cared.

On the walk home — past parks and bustling streets, each scene only gracing the perimeters of his mind as colourless blurs — Chuuya discovered that being out and about again had the, altogether unsurprising effect, of freeing his mind a bit, and found it wandering as a result.

.

.

.

There was something to be said about fresh air. 

It welcomed deep breaths and fresh blood to the brain, that had been trapped, somewhere around his stomach, for the same length of time as he’d confined himself to his apartment.

It gave the illusion of clarity. And whether it truly was clarity, or whether Chuuya was simply drunk on the stimulating sounds of the city, he wasn’t sure. He submitted to it, though — this new ‘clarity’ — and decided to ride whatever wave happened to come from it.

Starting with one, simple doubt:

Had it been an overreaction? 

If he thought about it long and hard, did he ever truly believe it would have all worked out like Albatross had made out it would, all those years ago? He’d questioned it once too, so what had changed?

Bringing back the dead with music… was crazy, wasn’t it? Yeah Dazai lied, but he wasn’t to blame for Chuuya’s gullibility. Delusion was born from desperation. Was that not on Chuuya to avoid it?

Maybe legends would only ever be legends.

Something was still bugging him, though. 

The rumour. The rumour. If it had all been a lie then where the fuck had that rumour come from in the first place? ‘No smoke without fire’ was a clue as much as it was a turn of phrase. 

Just what had happened to Dazai? He’d lost his opportunity to ask. As odd as that man was, there was no way he’d made up the rumour himself, that would be a level of twisted beyond the dark genius of that stupid waste of bandages. 

Speaking of bandages.

Is that why he had still looked so sad? Because he couldn’t bring his friend back? Had never had the chance to convince him in the first place? That theory certainly seemed the most obvious but something was missing, if he’d known that from the outset then why would he still be sad? He wasn’t the one being lied to, was he?

Unless… Did lying to yourself count?

Maybe?

It still wasn’t the answer. No matter how much Chuuya poked and prodded at that explanation it didn’t fit properly. Dazai always seemed saddest when Chuuya was the one talking about the score. 

Well, fuck if he knew.

It was all just a tiny chapter in his life to close off as a bad mistake now, a book he never should have read — after all, fantasies always lead to disappointment. 

Still, the lack of answers was screwing with him. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Chuuya was the one who’d lost everything, twice, and yet he was  the one fumbling blindly through this mystery like he was struggling through quicksand. Each question dragged him further and further down until he was choking through the burden of ignorance.

Dazai said he’d wanted to help him. Fucking asshole, lying must have been easier than fucking breathing to that prick. 

Sure he’d found inspiration again, had gained some confidence back, had experienced things he’d only ever dreamed of doing with Albatross. Not to mention it had been the first time he hadn’t felt the pangs of loneliness in his chest since his eighteenth birthday.

He’d even been sleeping… easily — since the first time in what might as well have been forever — safe in the knowledge that bandages would still be there in the morning.

But what had it all been for? Chuuya’s benefit? Surely not. But then…

Why else?

Question, upon question, upon question piled up in Chuuya’s mind like bricks, building the wall around a truth he thought he’d been told. Yet all evidence was pointing to that not being the case.

And the questions were torture. They consumed him, from his head down to his feet, which he’d seemed to have lost all control over since leaving Kouyou’s apartment.

He was barely aware of where he was going. He thought his anger was taking him back to his apartment so he could continue to pretend that this whole shitshow had never happened. 

His feet had other ideas, however. Before he knew it, he was back outside the cemetery gates, breathing in the cool wind in a fruitless attempt at steadying himself.

He’d have to apologise to him. Tross had been a victim in this scam as much as Chuuya had been. If there was one place, one person, that he could find comfort in right now — they were waiting for him beyond those gates.

*

Beyond the gates.

Each step took him further up and further in, beyond those gates.

Back to the final resting place of his best friend.

There would be no alternatives. No second chances.

Tross really was at rest. Forever.

Ironically, all that it had taken for it to truly sink in, was that second instance of loss. The weight of that realisation was enough for Chuuya to fall to his knees, legs weakened by the effort of keeping himself upright for so long.

Denial. Anger. Depression. Bargaining. Denial. Anger. Depression. Bargaining. Denial. Anger. Depression. Bargaining.

Each one had weighed a fucking ton. He’d carried them separately, at times had carried them all at once, but had always carried them.

Now they were on the floor surrounding him, as the dew from the grass seeped through his jeans and wet his knees.

That only left acceptance.

Acceptance was the thing to pick him up off the floor and dust him down. Instead of sitting on his shoulders, it was a friendly hand in his, walking beside him, urging him forward with a reassuring squeeze.

Acceptance was in this graveyard. And in the most fucked up way it was Dazai’s lie that had carried him here again.

The idea that it had been gifted to him by Dazai, after all of that, was so ridiculous that he had to fight the urge to burst out laughing. Yet all he could muster was a tired smile, laced with bitterness. As far as he was concerned the ends did not justify the means in this case.

Not when the ends consisted of wet knees and equally wet cheeks. The first tears of his adult life.

.

.

.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say…”

The familiar voice made him jump out of his skin. He was on his feet before he’d consciously decided to stand, stumbling in the direction of the words, words he assumed had been directed towards him. He opened his mouth to answer on instinct, but what he saw instead left his mouth hanging open in stunned silence.

The voice was Dazai’s, as Chuuya suspected.

But he wasn’t talking to Chuuya.

Chuuya had seen enough of Dazai’s many facades to know when he was genuinely nervous. His body language, for example, gave absolutely nothing away. There was almost too much confidence to it. His back was straight and his feet set apart for grounding, his hands were in his pockets like he was talking about the weather. Yet there was a minute tension to the man’s jaw that Chuuya could see a mile off. From behind, no less.

”You probably know who I am already. I’m sure you’re keeping a close eye on our little slug.”

There was the nickname again. So he truly was oblivious to Chuuya’s presence, then? Oblivious to the fact that Chuuya was there watching him from mere feet away.

For whatever reason, the nickname didn’t feel like such an offence this time. 

It was too much for his nerves, already stretched to breaking point, to take. And yet there was nothing that could be done, there was no way he could move without the risk of being seen.

”I think… no, I know I owe you an apology too,” the brunette continued, unaware of Chuuya’s turmoil just beyond his shadow, “Chuuya won’t listen to his, you know what he’s like.”

“You know what he’s like.”

Despite it all, Dazai was still adamant that he knew Chuuya. Chuuya wished he could have said the same, perhaps it would have saved them both from the inevitable fallout.

And, as a result of the inevitable, Chuuya now found himself silently clapping a hand over his mouth to restrain himself. The nerve of him, talking to Tross like their relationships with him had been even remotely comparable.

The very thought of comparing the two sat uncomfortably in his chest. Albatross had been his best friend, but Dazai…

“… I get it — I wouldn’t want to listen to me either.”

The brunette suddenly glanced to the floor, checking for obvious bits of dirt, before settling cross legged on the wet grass before Tross’ name. All evidence suggested he intended to stay for a little while, until his legs were soaked through probably.

Chuuya’s stomach churned at the thought of what he might hear, and for the second time since arriving tried to wrestle his way through an internal debate about whether he should flee or not.

Yet something was telling him not to distract the man, or risk evoking self-consciousness whilst he was laying himself bare like this. Besides, maybe Tross did need to hear this from him.

“Whilst we’re on the subject, I guess I’m also sorry that you don’t have the option to storm off like the chibi.”

He said that like storming off had ever been a choice, and not the only thing that Chuuya could have done to save himself from falling apart at the seams.

“That’s… probably my fault too. I mean, Chuuya certainly thinks so, and I don’t blame him.”

Dazai shifted slightly to lean back on his hands.

His whole demeanor had changed. He was relaxing before Chuuya’s very eyes, and the tension he’d spotted earlier seemed to have eased significantly. He was getting the hang of this.

Is this how he would have spoken to Odasaku’s grave if he’d tried? Would it have helped him sooner?

“Anyway, no point in beating around the bush, this is already awkward as it is.”

The very fact he could admit that out loud was evidence of the contrary.

“I just wanted to say that… I’m sorry.”

The last two words came out choked, heavy on the tongue.

And Chuuya believed them.

“I’m sorry I can’t get you back to him. I’m sorry that I failed him.”

But…

He hadn’t, though.

Chuuya was the most pissed he’d ever been at a person, at a situation — but, apart from the obvious exception, all Dazai had ever done was help him succeed. Life had failed them. Both of them.

He was still so incredibly livid at him, why wouldn’t he be? But now that fire was channeling itself into becoming the man’s defender.

Chuuya always yearned for others to understand the value in their existence. It was a curse he’d been afflicted with all of his life. He was born fighting: for himself, until such a time came that someone else took up that mantle; but for others, always. It manifested as a deep seated desire to fight for the underdog, to lift a person when they were spiralling into self-loathing, to hold a mirror up to their soul and point out all the beauty to be found in it.

Perhaps that had been why he was so drawn to Dazai in the first place, he could smell it on him, like self-hatred and regret bled from his very pores.

He sometimes wondered if this was something he’d inherited from his parents. Or perhaps it had grown steadily more radical over the years due to Tross’ influence.

His feet itched to run towards the brunette. To scream himself hoarse until he could get it through his shitty mackerel brain that the only failure here had been communication. And, perhaps more obviously, judgement.

“I’m sure you’re sorting it out with the big guy to make sure there’s a restraining order in the afterlife.” He suddenly giggled at his own joke and Chuuya felt his eyes roll. The fucker could be so unserious sometimes it was frightening.

“You don’t need to worry though, I won’t chase after him. The little hatrack was right when he said I’d wasted his time, we both know he’s better off without me.”

No.

That isn’t…

You fucking— idiot, Dazai.

Chase for me. I fucking dare you. You think I’m better off without you?

Ever since we met… everything has been you.

When had music faded from the foreground? When had Tross, faded from the foreground?

“Between you and me, I actually quite like the slug, he’s sticky. Makes you want to stick with him. I kind of wish it wouldn’t end this way.” Dazai suddenly shook his head like he’d just tasted something disgusting, “don’t tell him that though, yuck. If his head got any bigger he wouldn’t be able to fit into that tacky hat.”

Dickhead.

“And to tell you the truth I don’t even know what it is I like about him. For someone so short he’s unbearably loud, he has terrible taste in hats, he snores like a boat hitting rocks, and he’s foul mouthed to boot.”

Chuuya’s eye twitched. He half-stifled a growl as his fingers resisted the urge to strangle the bastard.

”But… I suppose he’s also an exceptional cello player, is way softer than he dares let on and has one of the most disgustingly beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen.”

Chuuya scoffed, internally, all the while ignoring the fact that his cheeks were burning like he was running a fever. What he couldn’t ignore, though, was the sensation that he’d stumbled and was now falling from a very great height.

Dazai made an illustrative gesture with his hands, balancing the scales of Chuuya’s traits in both palms.

“So you know, he does have some redeeming qualities.”

Eats ice cream like a cat. Functional when hungover. Responds well to challenge. Asks obvious questions. Flighty… Shit at confessions.

Looks like Chuuya wasn’t the only one who’d been taking notes.

“Anyway, I guess you knew all that already, I can see why you stuck with him for so long.”

If Chuuya squinted he’d be able to see the words engraved on Tross’s monument.

‘Mistakes are human’, truthfully it still made him laugh a little. As long as he remembered that, Albatross would still be with him. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Yet this man, a man he’d only met days ago but who’d settled under his skin like a bad rash, a man he was fast realising he didn’t want to lose — and yet was dangerously close to losing if he wasn’t careful — could.

The reason why Dazai had still looked sad made sense to him now. It was all very simple.

He hadn’t wanted to lose Chuuya either. The truth, and the fear of what dead ends lay ahead because of it, must have been eating him alive.

‘To forgive, divine’. If mistakes were human then forgiveness was divine, or so the original saying went. Divine implied that forgiveness was of a power equal to a God’s. It almost felt unreachable in that sense.

And Chuuya wasn’t a God. Not even close. He wasn’t ready to forgive…

But Chuuya had the heart of a human. He’d been convinced of that, once. That woefully human heart meant that he wasn’t ready to let Dazai go, either.

Not just yet.

”What are you doing here, Dazai?”

The man’s arms almost gave way in fright, but he managed to save himself from tumbling backwards at the last minute.

”It’s not important,” he immediately lied, as nonchalantly as he could muster whilst panickedly scrambling to his feet. Chuuya felt his eyebrows raise, impatience seeping out of him in waves as Dazai sighed, relenting under his murderous gaze.

“I came to apologise to your friend. I owed him one too, don’t you think?”

”Funny, I was going to do the exact same thing. But by all means continue, since I guess it isn’t really my fault at all, is it?”

The silence that followed was awkward, Chuuya got the feeling that Dazai was questioning whether he was welcome here at all, or whether it had all been a dangerous mistake on his part. Chuuya supposed his reaction made sense.

But he didn’t have time for awkwardness, he wanted this settled now.

“You asked me if I trusted you,” Chuuya said, head tilted and eyes narrowed at the brunette. Like before, he wasn’t going to make this easy for Dazai, but he at least wouldn’t shut him down if he was still willing to explain himself.

“I did.” Came the quiet reply.

“Should I have?”

In a turn of events that Chuuya couldn’t have made up if he’d tried, it started to rain again.

Even the sky was fucking weeping. An emotional release Chuuya could only dream of.

“I was trying to help, you have to understand. I know the way I went about it was wrong, and I don’t know if I’d forgive me either but…” his voice died away. Ironic, given Chuuya was finally willing to lend an ear.

“So all that crap about not being able to convince him, that was all a lie too?”

The brunette was getting drenched. Chuuya knew he wasn’t faring any better, but he still relished in the sight of it.

“It’s what I believed, Chuuya, for so long. I thought I saw him with my own eyes. I’d begged him to life and he stayed dead anyway.” Chuuya guessed that the rumours, born from multiple witnesses who’d seen the whole affair firsthand, must have only perpetuated Dazai’s belief — once the rumour had come full circle.

“Either the music I played brought him back for real, and he left me behind again, or…”

It had all been pure delusion.

“I refused to believe it wasn’t real for so long. It almost drove me to —“ he grappled, a little absentmindedly, a little frantic, at the bandages on his arms and Chuuya suddenly found himself surging forward to grab his hands. Realisation dawned all at once: blinding, hot and painful, as the rain continued to batter them both.

Denial was arguably the most dangerous of the stages of grief.

Or, was it bargaining?

Then again, anger and depression were probably what had made Dazai turn on himself, in the end.

Dazai had been right, he really had understood.

Brown eyes shone through the grey evening light, and for the second time in his life Chuuya made the easy decision to put that living, breathing, mess of a man first.

He brushed his thumb across the brunette’s cheek until a droplet, warmer than the rain, got caught on the tip.

“I couldn’t fully believe that the score wasn’t real until I met you, actually,” Dazai smiled, expression warming as he leaned into Chuuya’s touch. “As soon as I saw you play, as soon as I saw that look in your eyes — my whole, carefully created world — came crashing down.”

Chuuya remembered the look on Dazai’s face the very first time they'd made eye contact beyond the piano. He hadn’t recognised it then, but he was willing to bet it was the same exhausted smile that had spread across his face only moments before. The smile of relief, the bitter smile of…

“What happened to you is the exact same thing that happened to me, you were showing me the truth I was refusing to see. You helped me, Chuuya.”

… acceptance.

“In Tokyo you said you needed my help,” Dazai’s gaze was unwavering now, earnest. “You did, but not in the way that you thought. So I tried to, by—”

“—stringing me along?” Chuuya interjected, meeting Dazai’s eyes with a challenge to deny it.

“By helping you see the bigger picture.”

And Chuuya was finally beginning to see it.

Bigger picture.

Life was still to be enjoyed.

“You already knew the score, you’d already played it. The score isn’t real in the same way the legend goes, but that doesn’t mean—”

Dazai’s gaze finally dropped as his voice tailed off, seemingly unsure of how to articulate what he meant. But Chuuya understood, now.  

The score couldn’t work. Would never have worked. That’s not how ‘It’ worked.

And that was the point, wasn’t it?

“If we play earnestly, like you did that night,” Dazai’s words came out slow this time, not wanting to make a mistake, not wanting to be misheard, “…and like I did the night the rumour started, I think the music does reach them. Don’t you think?”

A shadow of a smile. Feeble. True. Chuuya could almost see his own reflection staring back at him, as Dazai’s eyes glazed over.

“He heard you, I’m sure of it. That’s why he came to you.”

There was no doubt about it now. Tears were falling thick and fast from his lashes, chasing the raindrops down to his chin, which wobbled — probably tired from gatekeeping the truth for so long. The combination of waters made his eyelashes look ever longer, and magnified the dusting of pink around his eyes and nose.

Unfair.

“I’m sorry, Chuuya.”

It didn’t need to be said, but Chuuya appreciated it all the same.

“Idiot,” Chuuya sniffed, voice just as thick as Dazai’s, and eyes just as misty.

Rain was dripping off the brunette’s nose and onto his lips. Which were now an unhealthy blue. God, he was pathetic.

“We need to get you out of the rain,” Chuuya said suddenly.

The brunette looked like one of those people that got sick easily, someone who got sick by simply looking at rain, even through a window, “wanna go finish that drink?”

Dazai’s eyes crinkled at the prospect of warmth and shelter.

”My round!” he said brightly, voice still a bit wet.

”I should fucking think so.”

Chuuya turned away, thinking better of grabbing Dazai’s hand and dragging him back to the bar and out of the rain himself.

Truthfully he wasn’t sure if he was ready yet, not sure if he was ready to go back to how things were. But it also felt like a loss of something, an opportunity maybe, by going right back to zero — perhaps this was simply the price to be paid for the emotional burden they’d just shared.

They just needed time, he supposed there was no rush, really, they could take it slow, get to know each other — after all, Chuuya didn’t truly know himself how he felt about the gu—

Umph.

All at once Chuuya was being wrapped around the middle by a pair of cold, sodden bandages, a mess of brown hair nuzzling into his shoulder and seeking his neck like it was the sun, a perfect shelter from the bleak weather. Despite the cold Chuuya felt his cheeks blaze, a relief that he’d never felt before burned in his gut, like a branding of sorts. He would never have guessed something so wonderfully comforting could be born from such a simple act of affection.

Without thinking, his hands were wrapping themselves around Dazai’s, pulling him in closer, daring him to let go.

After all, he’d already lost one pain in the ass, he wasn’t yet ready to lose another.

”What’s this for?” Chuuya grumbled, not convincing in its bite.

The brunette stilled, arms suddenly tighter around his waist, shifting his head so his forehead lay flush against Chuuya’s still burning cheek. The reason fanned hot and warm against his jaw as Dazai explained himself.

“For the flowers.”

Yeah right.

Whether he was possessed by the devil, here in what should have been sacred, holy grounds, or whether he had finally lost control of his goddamn mind, Chuuya wasn’t sure, but in the next second his was untangling Dazai’s arms from around his waist and turning to face him, threading his fingers under the strings of that hideous bolo tie he always wore.

A comical flash of fear fell across the brunette’s face before realisation dawned, sweet and blinding, as he finally understood what was happening. Chuuya pulled him down into his space, reaching out a hand to fruitlessly wipe sodden bangs away from his eyes.

“Chuuya?” he gasped, hot condensation ghosting his lips so that he could practically sample the taste. It tasted like home.

“Just— shut up a sec.”

The brunette’s breath hitched so that Chuuya’s lips were suddenly cold again, clinging wet from the rain.

The fucker was flighty, if knowing him still counted for something, even after their fight, then he knew that much.

The fucker was flighty.

And right now he looked like he wanted to fly. Soar even.

He couldn’t be having that.

Before either could move, Chuuya’s lips plunged forward, searching for Dazai’s until he’d claimed them as his own. In the next moment Chuuya felt his hand rise up to caress the back of his neck, gentle but determinedly locked in his grip, all to keep the man from disappearing off the face of the planet.

There was an element of desperation in it, lips warm and swollen, violence at odds with the delicate drops of rain that they shared on their noses. It was a kiss to convince him to stick around. And a kiss to convince himself that there was still something good to be found in honesty.

And what could be more honest, more vulnerable, than this moment they were sharing?

When they finally pulled away, Dazai’s cheeks were glowing apple red through the gloom. His hair, sticking to his forehead and framing his cheeks, made his dumb doe eyes stand out even larger — even darker. They looked taken aback but… fond, undeniably so.

He truly was beautiful.

As for his kissing?

The whole thing had been perfect, he supposed he should have expected it given his instrument of choice.

The man was a fish in name only.

It had been over too soon though. Chuuya corrected that by leaning in to plant a smaller, softer kiss on the freckle near the corner of the brunette’s nervous grin. Dazai seemed to chase it, pouting adorably when Chuuya pulled away again.

”And what was that for?” Dazai purred, bringing Chuuya’s knuckles to his lips so he could delicately press them with the question.

Everything else.

Was it wrong that they’d just kissed in a public cemetery. In front of his best friend’s headstone no less? He had a feeling Tross wouldn’t have minded, he was always telling Chuuya how important seizing inspiration was before it had a chance to slip by.

Is that why he’d kissed him? Because of inspiration?

There was no doubt that Dazai had the potential to be an inexhaustible spring of inspiration for him. In only a couple of days he’d taught him that music was meant to be terrifying, especially when it was real. He’d reminded him that music could still be fun, and if it was still fun then it still served a purpose.

Not to mention he’d played his emotions as easily as his flute. As annoying as it was, he felt known. And it was a nice feeling, something he’d missed.

Dazai had sought to help him and at the end of the day that’s exactly what he’d done. It wasn’t in the way Chuuya had expected, but they were all tools he’d been feeding him in order to survive in reality.

And maybe he hadn’t been ready to face it, then. Maybe that’s why Dazai had chosen to do what he did. It didn’t excuse the means but he definitely could see the ends for what they were.

Chuuya had asked for help and Dazai had tried his best.

He hadn’t known him then, hadn’t owed him anything and yet had still given him the greatest gift Chuuya had ever received.

Acceptance.

Isn’t that why he’d kissed him?

”That was for the crane, dickhead.”

***

The bar was far quieter now. The only people left were regulars, or patrons who were in it for the long haul.

Chuuya got an earful from the barman for forgetting to pay for the drinks he’d knocked back that night with Kouyou. A fact that Dazai teased him for, endlessly.

“Heehee, if you got arrested would they have to put the handcuffs around your tentacles, slug?”

They soon settled back into the rhythm of things, both slowly drying from the rain, indulging in their usual antagonistic back and forth.

It was a relief to have everything out in the open. There were no more unpleasant feelings gnawing away at Chuuya’s insides, and for Dazai’s part, the man looked like he was ready to float away — his shoulders free from the tension and baggage he’d been carrying the whole time they’d been together. He even looked happier than the very first night he’d chased after him from the bar, before the lie had even been conceived.

Maybe Chuuya was reading into it too much. Or, more embarrassingly, projecting.

Dazai had been resting his head on Chuuya’s shoulder when someone suddenly staggered up to the piano, causing them both to sit up straight to watch in interest.

He was a young man, dark hair falling over his face in large chunks, as if it had previously been slicked to the side. His eyes, slightly bloodshot, were uniquely yellow, and the green suit that he was wearing was stained with booze down the lapels. It didn’t look like he drank all that often, by the unsure way he was carrying himself.

The man began exploring the board, tapping individual keys and letting the note ring out, long and solemn. Before long the young man was playing full bars and melodies. He seemed to be making it up as he went along.

That was until, something shifted in the man’s demeanor. There was a fury behind his playing, now, and Chuuya couldn’t help but be moved by it. By the way Dazai squeezed Chuuya’s hand, he must have felt the same.

Perhaps recognised it for a second time.

And sure enough, the fury continued to possess the man, who was now playing without any real comprehension of where he was or what he was doing. What was obvious, was that the man was staring transfixed, mouth agape, at a something neither Chuuya nor Dazai could see.

Chuuya felt the hairs on his arms stand on end, the haunting music stirring up hazy memories of a ghost and a piano.

”It’ll get better for him, won’t it?” He whispered, so that only Dazai could hear.

Even as Chuuya said it, another young man — who he’d recognise anywhere, given the bizarre outfit — slowly approached the other, who continued to play as if he hadn’t noticed a single other person in the room. A second man closely followed, his long bangs covering eyes that Chuuya was sure would have swam with concern for his friend.

Chuuya thought he’d maybe misjudged the detective.

”Hmm. I guess we’ll never know… but he has a good chance, don’t you think?” Dazai whispered back.

He seemed to be in good hands. That would be enough for now.

But ‘now’ was different to ‘forever’. Grief was a life sentence after all.

“It still hurts, though.”

Dazai hummed in agreement, following his chain of thought as easily as if it had been his own.

”I think it’s meant to.”

Chuuya guessed it made sense.

Grief was a bit like playing music, when he thought about it. The sound would always depend on how the body reacted to it. And even if it sounded the same, day after day, it might never actually feel the same. Chuuya would be a different person each time he played: older, hungrier, more tired, less tired — so it couldn’t possibly be the same.

And in the same way that Chuuya, and even Dazai, would never stop playing, the grief too would never truly leave them. All they could do was learn to play alongside it, and accept it.

It was kind of beautiful, in a weird way. Just like playing music was beautiful. It just meant that there’d been someone to fill in the silence for a while.

“Dazai?”

The brunette’s cheeks were starting to flush, Chuuya didn’t need to press a hand to his forehead to know that his temperature was warmer than it should have been, but did it anyway.

The pain in the ass was definitely coming down with something.

“Yes, slug?” It was possible the dumb fish hadn’t noticed yet, but he was almost certainly going to make Chuuya’s life miserable when he did.

Not that Chuuya minded, he suspected the guy had never been given the TLC treatment a single day in his life. Although he was sure Oda probably tried.

The bastard wasn’t gonna know what had hit him.

“Want to come back to my place?”

***

Dazai had played upon a stage so many times that the lights were no longer blinding. No longer a novelty.

And there had been nothing about this particular performance that had suggested anything extraordinary would happen.

He played the songs he’d rehearsed. The band did the same. He played to the quality expected of him, now that he was making a name for himself. The thoughts that circled through his head were of nothing in particular — there were just enough of them to control the music he was playing, and just enough to maintain a vague awareness of the band that supported him.

A thought or two did wander, he’d admit, as it often did during a performance as routine as this. Stomach rumbling, his mind chased after some inspiration for the dinner he’d be eating as soon as he’d finished here.

Maybe fish cakes.

He liked the sound of that, his fingers travelled across the keys with a flourish at the very thought.

Or curry?

Curry.

That had always been his favourite.

The word always conjured up the smell alongside it, with the smell of cigarettes never far behind.

He’d been specifically avoiding that dish because of that fact. When had he forgotten to remember?

It hadn’t been a conscious decision. If Dazai were to retell this moment he’d struggle to articulate just what kind of feeling had washed over him. It was as if his mind had stepped out of autopilot, but instead of gaining a sense of control, somebody else had taken up that mantle.

His breaths were coming out sharp and desperate, the slight pucker to his lips produced sounds he would never have conceived of in his wildest dreams. His fingers too were moving of their own accord, as if he were a puppet bending to a higher power’s every whim.

He could hear the audience gasp in unfiltered awe. The band exchanged confused glances as the song they’d been diligently following raced off ahead without them, leaving them behind to watch helplessly as it disappeared from view.

This new, unknown melody became more and more frenzied whilst Dazai’s chest became more and more tight, his fingers in agony as he played through a pain he was trying to bury, trying to fight. Sweat was clinging to his skin like a cold sheet, as his impromptu solo crescendoed into delirium.

The notes were higher than his usual range, and louder than he could stomach, overwhelming in the dead silence of the auditorium.

Faster than he could chase.

Higher… faster… louder… higher, faster, louder—

Until…

Calm.

Dazai’s fingers suddenly slipped off the keys. It might have mattered if it weren’t for the fact that he’d lost all breath anyway. In the absence of sound, the keys clicked in a fruitless attempt to create it.

The band had long stopped playing, the music that had filled the air only moments before had been entirely his own.

It was as if the whispers and low chatter of the audience too, had receded like the tide, to somewhere Dazai couldn’t hear, nor cared to.

Even the view from the stage was different, cloaked in a fine mist that hid the confused onlookers from view. The world around him was smudged, haloed by the lights, and wrapped in a soft glow — all other details of no importance compared to the profile of the man walking toward him from the wings.

The man seemed to shimmer in the light, and yet looked as solid as if he’d never left. Corporeal in a way he shouldn’t have been. Dazai could reach out and touch him if only he wasn’t frozen to the spot.

He looked… healed. No scars or stubble. No bloom of red on his usual shirt.

Well rested.

It suited him.

“Odasaku?”

.

.

.

Dazai knew what was coming next as if it had all happened before.

Mainly because it had.

Usually at that point, he’d fall to his knees, flute still held tight in his grasp, and beg the man before him to stay. The audience would gasp, some would even weep, and yet time and again the man would refuse. Dazai would plead until there was no breath left in his body — his recollection of all that was said and done, would be foggy at best.

But… not tonight.

Tonight Oda continued to shimmer. Continued to smile like he had all the time in the world. Dazai wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t plead, wouldn’t hit the hard stage floor with both knees.

Instead, a warm, gloved hand would slip into his and Dazai would turn to smile at another man, who had just appeared, and who the hand belonged to.

This man would pull up a stool that hadn’t been there before, and nod to Dazai to pick up his instrument and bring it back to his lips.

And then they’d play, side by side.

Odasaku would be watching, the glow surrounding his profile never wavering. A blonde man with a braid would join him to watch, a wild grin stretching wide beneath a pair of dark sunglasses.

And the music would be beautiful.

Because Dazai and Chuuya remembered them, honoured them, with every day spent enjoying the music they’d learnt to love again.

*

Dazai awoke with a numb arm, awkwardly trapped under a redhead who was currently dead to the world.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

Freeing it from its chibi prison, he used his tingling hand to pinch Chuuya’s cheek — to check if he was still dreaming, obviously. That’s how it worked right?

Or maybe this was the dream. It was a nice dream, if so. He’d had one very similar once in a hotel room in Hiroshima, not long after meeting the redhead. He hadn’t wanted to wake up then, and didn’t want to wake up from it again now.

Chuuya’s apartment hadn’t changed in the years he’d known him. The only change of any real significance was his rephrasing of the words ‘my apartment’ to ‘our apartment’, Dazai no longer ‘visiting’ but ‘living’ there. Semantics, really.

Aesthetically the place was much the same. Dazai hadn’t had a whole lot of stuff to move in, when Chuuya had eventually gotten sick of watching Dazai waste copious amounts of money on ‘shitty hotel rooms’ (to quote the chibi) and insisted he ‘settle the fuck down’ with him. The concern had been adorably endearing.

The sheep plushie, as much a permanent feature in the bed as Dazai was, remained locked in the redhead’s arms — charmingly worn and frayed as a result of nightly cuddles and a dependency the chibi would deny.

There were some small changes, however, and Dazai only viewed them as vast improvements.

The empty shelf, for one, now displayed a handful of awards that Dazai had convinced the slug to finally put where they belonged. Just next to them sat a pair of tiny black paper cranes.

There was also the not-at-all surprising addition of numerous frames and photographs on every piece of wall and empty surface. The place looked like a photo album had thrown up. The slug could be very sentimental when he wanted to be.

Which he’d also deny, of course.

And if asked, Dazai would deny the comfort and solace he found in those photographs too. Old and new, images of friends always remembered, and places for memories still to be shared.

The most obvious change was probably the addition of Dazai’s instrument in the studio. Where cello and flute slept side by side until morning.

Chuuya grunted in his sleep, but didn’t wake. It was only when Dazai pulled him in closer that he finally spoke, tongue heavy, one foot still in slumber.

“Z’it that dream again?”

It was true Dazai had had the Odasaku dream many times over the years. It usually ended the way it had in his memories, and he’d suddenly find himself violently awake, with Chuuya softly shushing him and threading his fingers through curls drenched in sweat.

The ending had been different tonight though. As far as he was aware, that had never happened before.

He much preferred this ending.

Chuuya was falling asleep again. The silly slug really should have known it hadn’t been the same dream by the lack of thrashing from Dazai’s side.

His brain clearly shrunk at night.

“I dreamt the chibi was flying,” he lied, knowing Chuuya wasn’t going to remember a thing anyway. He didn’t want to keep him awake longer than necessary when he was fighting so hard to stay awake for Dazai’s benefit.

“Y’re weird,” he slurred into the pillow. “Sounded… like a good dream though.”

Honestly, it had been the best dream he’d ever had. Reality not included.

“Go back to sleep, slug.”