Chapter Text
“Where is it? God, where did I put it?”
Dazai tore into his office after his afternoon lecture. It was quite a harrowing experience, as his students asked for their grades on a paper he had assigned on a whim half the term ago. (“That was the first assignment, Professor. It has been three weeks since, and you already assigned us six more reflections and a revision on the essay we haven’t got back yet ”) Well shit, three weeks, two days, it didn't matter because Dazai didn’t grade any of them. More specifically, his trusty TA didn’t grade any of them.
“Ah fuck. Where is Atsushi when I need him? I don’t pay him to disappear.” Dazai didn’t pay Atsushi at all, but the professor could hardly remember where he hid the bottles of sake in his office (Heaven knows he couldn’t get through this sober), let alone inane facts such as how his graduate student is funded.
He could barely walk through the office. Stacks and stacks of ancient tomes, filled with criticisms of Plato and the criticisms on the criticisms of Plato and all sorts of literature by boring old dudes that only pretentious people like him ever cared about, overflowed from the crowding bookshelves onto the floor and his desk. Dazai tripped over a dripping coffee flask as he attempted to reach the blinds behind the couch he pulled in from the dumpster behind the Community Center. Bundles of paper crisscrossed the cushions, and Dazai’s geriatric laptop computer flickered weakly by the foot, no doubt filled with emails that he never bothered to answer. He shrugged and grabbed the two folders that looked the most interesting and heaved them back to his desk.
He grimaced at the half eaten sub lying forgotten to one side of the table, surrounded by various empty bottles of alcohol. Dazai’s desk was undeniably more of a mess than his office. Spilt ink decorated the front of an official looking memo from the dean of his department, and crumbs of chips dusted the tops of the books that made it onto his table. He swept aside a clutter of pens, most of which weren’t working, to make just enough space to set his papers down.
“There is a method to my chaos, Atsushi,” Dazai once told his TA when the latter complained of his unsightly organization skills, “Everything I own is calculatedly placed where it is most optimal for my brain. Of course I know where everything is! I can tell if you moved anything in here.” What a lie. Dazai couldn’t tell if a raccoon jumped in through the window last night and danced the can-can on his desk before stealing all the chalk from a tin he last saw two semesters ago.
He disregarded the unknown stain on his desk chair as he plopped down to look at the papers he brought back. One page in, two pages in, three pages in… This is a review of Antigone that Professor Dostoyevsky wrote a few weeks ago which sent Dazai into a seething rage that was returning to him presently. He had printed it out to burn it in the faculty lounge fireplace.
Dazai groaned, bringing to his lips the bottle next to the grotesque desk toy Atsushi had gifted him last year, and groaned louder when he realized it was empty. He flicked through the remaining pages that he set out. A page from Atsushi’s dissertation, forms he had to fill out for academic funding, a final paper from three years ago, a letter from Dostoyevsky cussing Dazai out for breaking into his office and using up all his lip balm. He found a flier for free bubble tea being distributed in the quad from the spring semester two years ago, and a bunch of coupons for the local grocery store. The papers his students so sternly asked him to return were still resolutely missing.
He made his way back to the couch which acted as his file organizer and half heartedly moved papers here and there in hopes that the assignments would turn up soon enough. As sheets fluttered about him, a growing resentment threatened to burst out of Dazai’s chest. He stalked out of his office, muttering to himself.
“This is Atsushi’s job. He should know where the papers are. In fact, I remember that I asked him to grade them. The nerve! I barely even see him around these days. Where’s he running off to, that kid?”
The painkillers Dazai popped before his class were already wearing off. His morning headache returned with its full onslaught at the sight of his colleague, Professor of Greek Philosophy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the faculty lounge. Dostoyevsky looked as greasy as he always did with his unwashed ushanka pulled low over his droopy bangs. His smile didn’t reach his eyes as he tipped the copy of Virgil’s Eclogues he was reading in greeting at Dazai. Childishly, Dazai made a face at him and staggered towards the coffee maker. He smashed in some buttons and impatiently tapped at his mug as the potent liquid dripped down. From the corner of his eye he caught Dostoyevsky opening his mouth to say something undoubtedly insipid.
“I know you love hearing your own voice, Fyodor, but I find your company marginally more bearable when you shut up,” Dazai said as he unceremoniously dumped three packets of sugar into his coffee, “I’m busy.”
“You’re looking for Atsushi.” He noted before disappearing behind his book.
“Have you seen him anywhere?” The last time Atsushi disappeared, he was locked in Dostoyevsky’s office with three copies of the Iliad and a quill pen. The professor had a penchant for stealing away his colleagues’ students in attempts to reform their thinking.
“You should pay more attention to your TA, Professor,” Fyodor’s disgusting ushanka peeked from the top of the book again. “Didn’t he get a new job this week?”
He did? Ah yes, he did. Dazai certainly remembered his young mentee excitedly telling him after class on Monday. Dazai wasn’t too happy with this new job cutting into hours he could make Atsushi spend doing something useful like grading snot nosed undergrads’ colorless essays or replying to Dazai’s already overflowing inbox. He would have to drag the lad back. Now where was it that he worked? The college cafe? The convenience store down by the back entrance of campus?
“He’s probably at the physics building,” Fyodor interrupted,” Must be helping that new professor get his lab set up.”
“The Physics Department?” Dazai set down his mug harshly. What work would his good classics student have in the physics department? Atsushi’s mind would get sullied by all the talk of error margins and spectroscopy and alpha particle decays. Dazai must rescue him immediately. And make Atsushi grade the papers he needed to give out the next day. Surely a noble cause!
Dazai strode out of the lounge, leaving his coffee abandoned on the edge of the sink. He slammed the door shut and ignored Dostoyevsky’s angry protests from the other side. He raced down the rickety stairs of the classics department and out onto the quad it overlooked.
The last dregs of summer saturated the campus with a brilliance that was hard to look at. The afternoon sky was devoid of any clouds and pulsed a distracting shade of blue. The trees which decorated the quad were turned up to high definition. Every single leaf glinted green gold in the stringent sunlight. The manicured lawns bristled in the low wind. Clumps of students were enjoying the gentle breeze and making the most of their time lazing about in the grass before the weather and the semester both turned sour. The clock tower chimed four, and with that more people trickled out from their afternoon lectures. Dazai paid no attention to the pleasant day brewing around him and set his sights on a monstrous glass building gleaming in the distance.
The Physical Sciences Building was on a small hill past the quad that housed the Classics Department. Dazai continually complained that the modern abomination loomed over the tottering old humanities buildings scattered around, ruining the old school ambience of the Arts Quad. He made quick work of the meandering paths that crisscrossed the lawn, only stopping at the stairs leading up to the campus’ main road to catch his breath. That dastardly monolith looked deceptively close to his home base, but no matter how much he walked it seemed to be on some messed up hill of Sisyphus.
After a labored trek up the slope and a few empty promises to start going to the gym, Dazai found himself in the pleasantly air conditioned atrium of the Physical Sciences Building. The steel and glass glinted in the afternoon sun, illuminating the dozens of tired students tapping away on their laptops and scratching their heads at problem sets. Dazai was a fish out of water in this veritable glass bowl of people who lived and breathed the antithesis to his cause, STEM. He stepped around in dizzying circles, trying to find some sort of clue which would lead him to Atsushi and out of there as soon as possible. He stumbled into a stairwell and headed down into the bowels of the building where the frantic chatter of the students working above quickly deadened into a pregnant silence. His ears buzzed with the ever present hum of equipment and the rhythmic thumping of machines chugging along finishing some incomprehensible experiment. The stairwell that Dazai came down in disappeared as quickly as he found it, so he was lost in an unfamiliar environment that he was most definitely not supposed to be in.
As he turned a corner, Dazai saw the flutter of a black coat at the end of the corridor which he slowly jogged after. The owner of the coat was a young man whose bangs were cropped comically short with two scraggly bits on both sides which were dip dyed silver. He examined a clipboard and was deeply concerned with the information written on it.
“Hey you!” Dazai called out. The stranger’s head shot up to stare at him in shock and fear. He hastily looked back down at his clipboard and scurried off with the black coat flapping in his wake.
“Yeah, you! With the weird coat and the ugly bangs.”
Dazai huffed and followed him down the sterile corridor. The man looked back with a horrid mix of recognition and desperation and walked faster. Did Dazai know him? When the quick search of his memory turns up no results for jagged black hair and the absence of eyebrows, Dazai figured it was no one important. Then why was he running? Was he not supposed to be here either?
“Have you seen a silver haired youth pass by? He’s about ye high and has the most pedestrian takes on Euripides.”
The man was practically sprinting now. He turned a corner and Dazai thought he lost him until he saw the telltale flap of the black coat entering a room on the far end. Dazai slammed the door open, unperturbed by the other man’s awkward escape attempts.
“I was just looking for one Atsushi Nakaji—”
A spacious atrium greeted Dazai on the other side of the door. A dozen desks were arranged haphazardly against each with monitors and laptops displaying spreadsheets of data and squiggly graphs. The researchers in the room stopped muttering over their results and turned to stare at Dazai. The man in the black coat looked mortified as he fiddled with expensive looking equipment at the back of the room. The scientists’ eyes slowly travel to his left. A mountain of boxes was piled next to him, blocking the view of that entire side of the room. His TA appears from behind the stack, holding another box overflowing with loose paper and spiral bound reports. Dazai pouted and walked over.
“Atsushi-kun! Oh dear, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Come on now, let’s go back. Greek doesn’t wait!” Dazai started towards the door again.
He was usually a shameless man, but the suffocating atmosphere in the lab and the scientists’ eyes returning to him made even him feel self-conscious. It had been so long since he interacted professionally with someone outside the humanities field, forget barging into their lab looking for someone. Of course, it was his TA he was taking back, and there was nothing wrong with that. But, these people were doing something ridiculous like curing cancer. It would be in the best interest of everyone in the room if he leaves as soon as possible to let them get on with their work. Which is why a pang of confusion and betrayal rumbled in his gut when Atsushi smiled at him in greeting but made no move to follow him. Dazai’s eyelid twitched as his grad student placed the box on a shelf on the other side of the room before turning to talk to him.
“Hello Professor!” Atsushi said. He walked back to pick up another box. “Is this about the report you wanted me to turn in today? I’ll come by your office after my shift to drop it off.”
“No, it’s not, Atsushi. It’s about you avoiding your responsibilities as a good TA and disappearing when I needed you. Only to come to the physics department? What is wrong with you?”
Someone interrupted from the hidden side of the lab.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Dazai’s blood came to a standstill. That voice. It had been years but there was no mistaking it. He involuntarily took a step further into the space to see for himself. Behind the mountain of boxes was a standalone desk shoved to the corner with a bookshelf shielding it from the main view of the lab. The mess in the alcove created was comparable to Dazai’s own office. The blackboard next to it was covered with incomprehensible equations and strange diagrams of fuel chambers and trajectories. A trail of chalk stubs led to a simple plywood desk. Piles of graph paper weighed down by textbooks on all kinds of topics populated the tabletop. A faded red copy of ‘ Kleppner & Kolenkow: An Introduction to Mechanics ’ brought back a memory from his undergraduate days that he swallowed like bile. He traced the black gloves and hat resting on top of it to meet a pair of striking blue eyes. They were bluer than he remembered.
If Chuuya Nakahara remembered Dazai, it didn’t show. He nonchalantly set down his pen and crossed his arms. It had been twelve years since Dazai last saw Chuuya. The passage of time was kind to him. His face scarcely looked different from a decade ago, but he had grown his hair out. The flaming locks were tamed into a braid over his shoulder. The leather jacket he was never seen without when they were in college was replaced with a dark pinstriped blazer. The top two buttons of his maroon shirt were undone, revealing a glinting red pendant on a thin black chain. So, he outgrew his choker as well. Dazai ignored the sudden pang of wistfulness that the observation brought.
Neither of them broke the expectant silence that permeated the space. Chuuya’s eyes finally betrayed the tiniest hint of judgment as he gave Dazai a onceover. For the first time in a long, long while, Dazai was uncomfortably aware of his physical appearance. His vest was haphazardly buttoned and his shirt was well overdue for laundry. His morning coffee left a decent ring on the white of his slacks. His students didn’t mind. The women at the local bar didn’t mind— they’d come home with him no problem and leave in the middle of the night to never look at him again, but that had to do more with his winning personality than his reluctance to use shampoo. Chuuya knew this of course; the man once called Dazai an enemy to all women. But, some drop of pride deep in his mind burned with shame. The way those sharp eyes raked over him guaranteed Dazai that Chuuya saw the ugliest parts of him. Just like he always did. Dazai didn’t want to see Chuuya like this. Dazai never wanted to see him again at all, but if he had to choose a situation to run into the devil, he would've chosen a day when he combed his hair.
Chuuya broke their staredown, turning to Atsushi. “What’s the problem, Mr. Nakajima?”
The unearthed tension seemed to have affected Atsushi as well who jumped at being addressed before awkwardly bowing in apology and gesturing at Dazai. “This is my advisor, Professor Dazai,” Atsushi turned to Dazai next, “This is Professor Nakahara. He joined the faculty recently and I’m helping him set up his lab this semester.”
Dazai felt his eye twitch as he mustered the fakest, most poisonous smile as he stiffly extended a hand to the seated man. “Dazai Osamu, Classics Department. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Professor Nakahara.”
“Likewise,” Chuuya said, not bothering to accept the handshake.
Of course he remembers . Dazai awkwardly clutched the hand he held out with the other, fidgeting with his fingers as he shifted on his feet. All the researchers had stopped their tasks and were intently following the exchange. It was his job to finish this ordeal as quickly as possible. He just needed Atsushi and then he could skedaddle from the Physical Sciences Building. It was a big campus. He never had to see Chuuya again. He widened the winning grin he used on the Dean when he needed an extension to submit grades for final transcripts. He was a big boy. He could do this.
“Welcome to the faculty! It must be a hassle getting set up during the semester, so I’ll leave you to your work soon. I just needed Atsushi to come with me for some help grading papers. It’s so wonderful that he’s helping out here, though.”
“He’s not doing it out of the goodness of his heart,” Chuuya said, “I’m paying him. This is a job. Something he might not get in his own field.”
Twelve years and Chuuya doesn’t change.
“Now, Professor Nakahara.” The phrase felt foreign on Dazai’s tongue. Chuuya was Chuuya and no one else. They might be professionals now, so Dazai couldn’t just steal the other’s hats or scribble on his homework to get what he wanted, but this was about his graduate student. Chuuya was always dismissive of the arts, yes, but Dazai couldn’t let this slide by. “Graduate studies is a full time job, and I am not sure if Atsushi will be able to balance his studies and his duties to your—”
“Oi, Mr. Nakajima. Do you mind dealing with your advisor after your shift?”
Rude as ever. Dazai had half a mind to head right on over to Chuuya’s desk and make him listen, but no he was calm, he was collected and he had evolved more self-restraint than a slug. Atsushi wouldn’t listen to that gremlin of a physicist, right? Atsushi was an enlightened being. He surely knew where to draw the line.
“O-of course, Professor,” Atsushi said, “I’ll be right back to work.”
There was no loyalty in this world. His own grad student, his intellectual flesh and blood, sided with a science professor, and not just any run of the mill STEM rat, but Professor Nakahara Chuuya. Dazai had angered the elder gods somehow. This was simply too cruel a fate. Chuuya snickered silently as he got up to write yet another problem on the overflowing chalkboard. Dazai’s coffee started making its way back up its throat as he examined the neat diagram Chuuya set up before writing down lines of equations.
“Dazai-san, I’m sorry, but I have to go back to work now. Is it anything urgent?”
“You missed a negative sign,” Dazai said before he could stop himself. Chuuya looked over his shoulder with a neutral expression before correcting his mistake. Dazai held his gaze and suppressed a smirk.
“Dazai-san, do you need anything from me?”
Dazai’s eyes snapped back to Atsushi.
“It’s a matter of utmost importance! You need to come back—” He trailed off as he looked back at Chuuya who was now almost finished with the problem. He scrutinized the board to see if there was any other mistake he could throw at Chuuya. It was immaculate. Unfortunate.
“Dazai-san.”
“The class needs to get their essays back. I haven’t started on them yet, so I need you to get that done, like yesterday.”
Chuuya was now dusting the chalk off his hands. He leaned against the wall, quietly listening to their conversation. His expression betrayed no judgment. It was as if he was not surprised by Dazai’s haphazard pedagogy.
“I’m sorry, Professor. You’ll have to grade this round yourself. Didn’t you say you were halfway through two weeks ago?”
Look at him, the little snollygoster, always bringing up old shit. Makes for an excellent Classics student, but a terrible mentee. Dazai didn't even look at the papers two weeks ago. Maybe some part of him hoped that they would critique themselves, and the grades would magically appear on his spreadsheet. Now, Dazai was older and wiser, and already willing to take responsibility for his past actions. (Not out of morality, heavens no, but the fact that consequences wouldn’t just be wiped away by his miracle TA) Dazai accepted his fate earlier today, when his students had cornered him. He needed to grade the essays in the immediate future. One problem remained: he still didn’t remember where they were.
“Did you happen to see them anywhere, Atsushi-kun?” Dazai lowered his voice so as to not let Chuuya hear him. As referenced earlier in the chapter, he did make a genuine effort to find them but turned up blank. Chuuya was not aware of this fact and Dazai was not willing to share it so that Chuuya could revel in his incompetence. Dazai could already imagine college age Chuuya sneering at him. Current Chuuya’s expression was still dreadfully neutral and that was somehow worse than all the insults hurled at him so many years ago. The chilling difference in the slug’s behavior made Dazai want to peel his skin off.
“You made a big show of taking them home. I saw them on your coffee table when I went to drop off your groceries last Friday.”
“Are you done?” Chuuya butted in, “Look Da- Professor Dazai, I have a lab to run so I would appreciate it if you respected my employee’s working hours. This is hardly a reason to come barging in. Besides, you’re not even allowed to be here.”
Another pregnant silence befell the conversation as Dazai found himself floundering again. Chuuya wanted him out of here as soon as possible. Dazai couldn’t bear to look at the other’s face for a moment longer. So why were his feet so stubbornly attached to the ground? It didn’t help that Chuuya was looking at him so expectantly.
“Thanks, Atsushi-kun. I’ll get going then.”
Dazai turned on his heel and scuttled out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He swore he could hear Chuuya grumble on the other side. He effectively turned tail and ran, but this insignificant act of disrespect gave him disproportionate satisfaction.
Of course, this was still an utter loss for Dazai. He had to grade the papers by himself at home. Atsushi got yet another job which meant that Dazai wouldn’t be able to push as many errands onto him anymore. To top it all off, Nakahara Chuuya was working at the same university as him. Nakahara Chuuya was exactly the same and unrecognizably different. The fresh sting of his uninterested stare made Dazai’s stomach turn in on itself.
Fate was cruel. Fate was laughing at him as he danced like a bug in a circle of chalk. Why did Dazai’s ex-lover have to end up here, of all places?