Work Text:
Black.
Everything is black.
Like an endless void swallowing me whole.
Like a leech, sucking the life out of me.
Like an all consuming darkness I cannot escape.
The first thing I sense is the overwhelming fume of smoke.
Skin gripped beneath my fingers.
I let go.
I open my eyes and everything is red.
The sky, the ground, the buildings.
Red.
Huh.
I have this uneasy feeling of wrongness, as if I know it's not supposed to be like that… but how could I?
There's a loud pop and then I can hear sirens, voices, crashes — it's loud.
Too loud.
My ears are ringing.
It's all fading in and out like a damaged record.
Record.
What is that again?
A metallic taste fills my throat and I cough onto the pavement.
It's also red.
It hurts.
The world is swimming.
I tumble sideways even though I'm sure I wasn't moving before.
I hear a voice shouting, closer than the others.
“DAZAI-SAN!”
I'm confused.
Who is this person talking to?
I turn to my right.
In the spot where I was before lies a body.
A strange looking man wearing a trench coat and many bandages.
He is still.
I look up at the sound of footsteps.
They belong to a young man with a terrible haircut.
The young man kneels beside the body putting an ear to his chest, then starts sobbing.
I just sit there staring when I realize the Bad-Haircut boy is looking at me.
He looks so hateful.
I do not understand why.
Have I done something wrong?
The world tilts around me once again and I lie back down on the cold pavement.
What is happening?
Where am I?
Who am I?
I can't…
I can't remember.
Black.
Again.
Why does it always come to this?
I awake to bright lights and a very angry looking woman staring down at me.
Yosano.
Yes.
That Detective Agency's violent doctor.
She glares at me but other than that she simply ignores my existence in the room.
I sit up and expect it to be painful but everything feels… fine.
Normal.
She must've used her ability on me though I can't imagine why.
I jump off the bed and walk to the door, trying to gauge her reaction.
She doesn't move from the table so I resume my exit.
Before too long I manage to find my way out of the Agency's Headquarters which is simply a small office building with a café on the bottom floor.
I search my pockets and to my surprise there's actually a phone.
I send a message to Kouyou-San to tell the boss I won't be coming back today, leaving out the part that I may not be coming back ever.
During my coma, which seemed to be about a week long, I had managed to regain my memory.
Though knowing what I know now I wish I hadn't.
I remember the lab, Verlaine, the Sheep, the Port Mafia, Kouyou-San, Boss, Akutagawa-Kun, and… Dazai.
I walk down the sidewalk and push open the cemetery gates, making my way to a big tree that hangs low, shading a couple of gravestones at the top of a little hill at the back of the vast graveyard.
The names engraved on the headstones are “Oda Sakunosuke” and the one beside it… “Dazai Osamu”.
Of course someone had managed to get him buried beside that guy.
I kneel in front of Dazai's grave and glare at the words, unintelligible to me in my current state.
“Dazai, you shitty bastard. Even in death you manage to piss me off. You're fucked up in the head you know that?”
I pull a revolver from my belt and load it, hesitating only a moment before putting it against the left side of my head.
“Just know this isn't for you, Dazai,” my voice comes out rough and shaky, “I've killed too many innocents this time to forgive myself. Thanks for nothing. I almost feel bad for that doctor's work going to waste.”
I pull the trigger.
The cool autumn breeze passes through a cemetery in Yokohama.
The city is peaceful for the first time in weeks.
On that little hill in the back are two graves.
And lying atop one is a body, a gun barely gripped in the left hand.
As the wind blows across said graves, a piece of neatly folded paper floats out of the coat pocket of the corpse.
Its contents are as follows:
Well Dazai, I don’t know why I'm even writing this to you since you're already a dead man, hell I even managed to miss your funeral, lucky me. But I guess a part of me feels partially guilty for I told you I'd kill you one day. I once thought you were just a shitty guy who enjoyed killing and ruining everyone's lives. Well, I wasn't necessarily wrong. I bet those bandages you wrap yourself in ate your brains. Or maybe you're just a psycho. But I know that's not all you were. You were also just another lonely orphan with a messed up life like so many of the rest of us. Maybe we all forgot because of how good you got at putting up that damn ugly mask of yours. I resent you for that. Even when you almost seemed to say you cared about anyone or anything you turned it into some kind of sick joke. I guess in the end you probably actually did hate me, didn't you Dazai. I didn't always hate you. I loathed you for taking me away from the Sheep in the first place. I shouldn't have worked with you searching for information about Arahabaki. If I hadn't it wouldn't have ended this way. Just know that I still hate your guts you fucked up Mackerel...
– Nakahara Chuuya
P.S. I'm blaming you for Akutagawa's death and for leaving that tiger kid alone. Know that.
And as both the sender and the receiver are gone, this letter’s destiny is to just drift off somewhere into a gutter, torn to shreds by rats for nests, and whatever is left is to decompose meaninglessly along with all the other trash under the city.