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The Port Mafia had always been the scourge of Yokohama.
Misfortune followed those who dared to step foot inside like a curse, the omnipresent threat of death looming, waiting; it was common knowledge that to enter their sterile, bleached-clean halls was to sign your life away to the devil.
The devil, or, as he was also known, Osamu Dazai.
With one visible eye devoid of any light and a soul blacker than his innumerable crimes, he ruled the Mafia with an unwavering gaze, seeing everything, knowing everything.
Face carefully blank, staring off into nothingness, it was as if he was born for the role, presence overpowering, and above all, promising. It was an expression that vowed to lay waste to those who crossed him, an expression that spoke of the workings of a mind far greater than simple Mafia lackeys could ever hope to imagine.
Looking at such a face, one could only think—no, know that something was coming. It lay just across the horizon, farther than the normal human could see clearly, foreboding in its mystery,
Dazai had never been the average person.
An empty sheet of paper lay before him, mocking, piles of discarded work strewn haphazardly across the desk, spilling onto the plush carpet of the boss’s office. Motionless, he sat there, hollow gaze fixed on the page like he was trying to burn a hole through it with sheer force of will, before sighing in an all-too-human way.
Ah, what was the point of perfection, when the end was so near? When that inevitable future was drawing closer and closer by the hour, the minute, the second, thrust into motion by a weak man’s last shred of self?
Resolute, he began to write, a wry smile spreading across his pallid, gaunt face. For what felt like an eternity, he did nothing but madly scratch across the page, words spilling out of him as if he couldn’t expel them from his pen fast enough.
Like a marionette with its strings cut, the hysterical scribbling ended as quickly as it had started, and Dazai fell to the desk with a bang, the empty sound echoing through the too-quiet room.
He stayed like that for a minute, before tucking the paper into his coat pocket and exiting the room.
The look in his eye was one of a man on the verge of death.
Chuuya Nakahara had been called many things in his life; unhinged, ruthless, a coldblooded monster of a killer.
Whatever insult one could come up with, it had been hurled at him, and it had been true. Chuuya wasn’t innocent by any means; the pile of bodies he stood on to reach his position as the second-in-command to the Mafia’s boss grew by the day, their dying screams still echoing in his ears.
He even found comfort in the killing, sometimes. As a general rule, Chuuya tried not to slaughter those who had done nothing wrong, and who could blame him for finding some satisfaction in ridding the world of some of the worst filth in the city?
Unfortunately, he still hadn’t gotten the chance to put the most deplorable person in the city out of his misery.
Osamu Dazai, overlord of the Port Mafia and eternal pain in Chuuya’s ass.
The bastard with a million personalities, playing with the lives of those around him as if they meant nothing, playing with Chuuya’s life as if it were nothing to him. Hell, the man barely valued his own life, let alone those of others.
Ever since he had forced the Sheep to betray Chuuya, the latter hadn’t had a moment of peace; if it wasn’t quite literally stabbing him in the back, it was spiders in his shoes, or sending him on a mission to the middle of nowhere just for the hell of it. “Ne, Chuuya,” he would say, “you’ve been looking relaxed lately. Let’s fix that!”
It was what he had done just the day before; out of the blue, he showed up in Chuuya’s apartment with a new mission assignment, dodging the flying pieces of furniture thrown at him. Who in their right mind would break into a Mafia member’s bedroom at three in the morning!?
Osamu Dazai, apparently.
There was a strange… emptiness in his eye as he tonelessly delivered the assignment, a simple protection mission of one of their allied organizations across Japan. Even with Chuuya’s speed, it would take him at least a few hours to get there.
He was sure to send a punch strong enough to level a building at the fishy bastard on his way out.
Oddly specific instructions accompanied him there, too; under no circumstances was he to open the cardboard box that had been veritably shoved into his arms by the pilot until he had checked into the Mafia owned hotel. It was rather light—was there even anything in it?
Ugh. That Dazai really couldn’t make anything easy, could he? Knowing him, if there was anything in there, it was rigged to explode upon opening, or worse.
Whatever it was better be good; Chuuya wasn’t someone to be simply ordered around on a whim, damn it. He was the most powerful ability user in Yokohama, and the Mafia’s top martial artist. One of these days, he really was going to wring Dazai’s neck, loyalty to the Mafia be damned.
Landing lightly on the roof of where he would be staying, he set the box down. Finally, answers as to why that jackass would send him off into the middle of nowhere at the crack of dawn…
Unceremoniously, Chuuya kicked the box over, lifting an eyebrow in mild surprise as piles upon piles of paper spilled out. Huh. Paperwork, maybe? Honestly, it wasn’t as if he were a trash compactor. A light scoff escaped him, floating off into the air as he absently scuffed the papers into the ground. Might as well take a look.
--
Atsushi-kun,
I have made many mistakes in my lifetimes. In this world and the other, I've failed over and over again, making the wrong decisions countless times.
It pains me to say that I was right in knowing that you could only thrive in the light. Every time I see you, see the emptiness in your eyes, I remember that it’s my fault; I was the driving force behind your murder of the orphanage headmaster. After all, what other reason would I have for expressly forbidding you to go there?
Fear is a cruel but efficient master, I have found. We’re all ruled by fear, one way or another; the fear of loss, the fear of change, the fear of yourself. You and I are no different.
You used to fear abandonment, the loss of your new friends and family. You needed someone to tell you that it was okay for you to exist, to take up space, that you were worthy of what you had gained. Now?
Now, you fear the past instead of the future. I wonder, is that a blessing or a curse?
Someone I once knew said that being in the light is at least a little more beautiful than the dark, and someone I once knew said that it made a difference. It makes a difference to you.
Every day, I watch the suffocating blackness of the Mafia blow out your fire. I miss the Atsushi that would laugh with Kyouka, and the Atsushi that would go along with my schemes, and the Atsushi that didn’t look as if he would cry every time I looked in his direction.
I have to go now—there’s an annoying dog yapping at my heels about something or the other that needs to be done, but I wanted you to know that I never wanted to hurt you. It just happened as a result of my ignorance to anything but my own selfish desire.
I’m sorry that I did this to you.
Your old teacher,
Osamu Dazai
--
…What the fuck?
It was a letter to the White Reaper? Chuuya had never seen him smile, let alone laugh, and he had certainly never been taught by Dazai. It was in that bastard’s handwriting, sure, but he would never apologize for anything, and certainly not for manipulating someone. It was easier than breathing for him.
Dazai never looked twice at the boy, and it grated on Chuuya’s nerves to no end. First you mess up his life, then you leave him alone to deal with his trauma through murder? He was no therapist, but even Chuuya knew that it wasn’t helping the kid become less of a basket case.
If he didn’t know better, he would say that the letter had some truth to it. It was an exaggeration, but it was clear that Dazai felt some guilt over his treatment of Atsushi in particular—the special treatment he received still rankled at Chuuya. Oh, yes, leave the boss alone with the most insane member of the special division, that can’t go wrong at all!
Not that Chuuya cared, though. He just wanted to be the one to finally put that idiot out of his misery.
Picking up the next letter, he tapped his foot impatiently. Who was this one addressed to?
--
Kunikida-kun,
I haven’t seen you in years.
How are you doing? Are you still a math teacher, here? Did you ever take down the Azure Messenger without me? I have so many questions, yet I know that if I approached you to ask, I would be leaving with a bullet lodged firmly in my skull and with curses flung at my back.
I really am the opposite of your ideals, aren’t I?
A coward, a fool, a follower of people who never existed. There is nothing “ideal” about me, nothing good, nothing worthwhile. Somehow, I find myself missing your schedules, just because I always found it entertaining to watch the steam fly out of your ears when I turned up at the office hours late. You always entertained me.
This isn’t to say that you were only an amusement—not in the slightest. You made me a better man. I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay like that.
I collect pens for you, did you know? Every so often I get a meeting where there’s tons of the fancy brand you liked just hanging around in cups, and I take as many as I can fit in my pockets. My poor coat is soaked in ink now, since I usually forget to take them out.
No matter what I do, I can’t pretend like things are normal again. I’m just not used to the new status quo just yet, I suppose; I keep trying to nettle my old partner, the one I told you about so many times, forgetting that he really, truly hates me now. I never thought that you’d be right when you said that people were more complicated than ideals, but I get it now.
Did you know that I miss you?
Ha. Just kidding, of course. Got you! I can hear the enraged screams and the sound of your pen breaking in half from here. See you in my memories, Kunikida-kun.
Your old friend,
Osamu Dazai
--
Well. This one was absolutely incomprehensible. A math teacher? Ideals? Nobody Chuuya knew fit that description, and, by extension, nobody Dazai knew either.
Dazai had never been a good man either. Sure, he had his moments, but those were life or death situations; he may want to die, but as a general rule, the mission came first.
Speaking of the mission, Chuuya was starting to suspect that there might be something more important than the letters hidden in the stack of papers.
He snatched the next one up from its resting place on the floor, and began to read.
Hours passed, Chuuya doing nothing but tear through letter after letter, confession after confession, the dates becoming closer and closer to the present as he made his way to the bottom. If this was an elaborate prank, it was starting to get strange.
Specific details of the Mafia’s inner workings were detailed in multiple, the attention to the mundane accurate to a startling degree. From importing disputes to violent conflict over territory to the broken coffee machine on the fourth floor lounge, the letters talked about everything and nothing, sometimes just rambling on about a particularly good book or a cat he had met on the way to work.
It was oddly… human.
Chuuya Nakahara was finding Osamu Dazai human, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
The emotion shown in some of the more recent letters had been frankly haunting. Chuuya would die before admitting it, of course, but he was beginning to see the rationale behind some of Dazai’s actions.
One letter in particular had piqued his attention; it was addressed to some detective agency member by the name of Akutagawa.
--
Akutagawa-kun,
When I first found you, I thought that you could only thrive in the darkness.
After your sorry excuse for a life—every single one of your friends dead, left alone in the slums of Yokohama, fighting tooth and nail just for the right to exist—I saw myself in you.
It scared me, to be completely honest. It terrifies me still.
I saw you as like me; born to die. Expendable. A waste of breath and space.
I could not have been farther from the truth.
A universe away, I smothered your fire under my heel because I thought it would make you stronger. I wanted you to hate me; I wanted to drive you forward with the single-minded goal of killing me.
Now that I write this, it seems familiar to a certain person's feelings towards me. I always knew he would be a much better teacher than I could ever hope to be.
I digress. You failed to hate me; you sought my approval more than anything. Do you know what I realized then, Akutagawa-kun?
You can't stop yourself from loving. It's who you are.
You love so deeply that it cuts you, that each breath into your lungs stings with the sheer force of it. You love so deeply that you mistake it for hate, because what other feeling could be so strong? You love so deeply that I, of all things, was brought into your heart just by virtue of showing a moment of kindness to you.
I thought that it made you weak. I was wrong.
You’re doing well in the Agency, Akutagawa-kun. My acknowledgement isn’t something you need anymore, but for what it’s worth, I was—I am proud of you. More than ever.
If only I could tell you.
Your failure of a mentor,
Osamu Dazai
--
Dazai? Being self-aware? Incredible.
Chuuya could love the man he reads about in the letters, he realizes belatedly.
Too late, he realizes that Dazai showed him this for a reason. He never could say what he really meant, and if Chuuya was right, then this was—
He turns on his heel and runs.
On the roof of the Port Mafia, three men talk about an erased universe and erased lives. Chuuya bursts in just as they finish.
Dazai falls.
Before he knows it, Chuuya’s falling after him, a desperate yell ripping from his throat. He knows that Dazai will nullify his ability as soon as he touches him; he doesn’t care. After all he had read—after all he had found out, all that he had learned—this was how it was to end?
No. It couldn’t.
Increasing the force of gravity upon his body, Chuuya plummets towards Dazai, hands brushing against his fluttering coat as a piece of paper floats out, lost in the sky somewhere above them.
Below, Dazai smiles brilliantly, the happiest Chuuya has ever seen him. You never fail to surprise me, slug, he mouths, and then there is nothing but Chuuya, the blood seeping over the cobblestone, and the screaming.
Absently, Chuuya realizes that it’s probably him making the noise, but he can’t bring himself to care.
His gloves are soaked through with blood, why won’t the bleeding stop, why won’t Dazai open his eyes—
Snow white paper drifts down into the pool, and the corner starts to take on that brilliant red. With shaking hands, Chuuya opens it.
--
Chuuya,
Somewhere, the setting sun quietly bleeds over Yokohama, and I am there to see it with you.
That is not here.
Where do I start?
I’ll tell you what I told Atsushi and Akutagawa-kun. There’s a book, one of a kind, filled with blank, white paper. Whatever one writes becomes reality.
The Book is more or less the foundation of this world.
I’ll spare your simple mind the details, Chuuya, and just say this—reality as you know it is one of infinite universes inside the Book.
My ability created a point of singularity, and I was able to recover the memories from the Dazai there; that is, the original version of me.
Do you know what I saw there, Chuuya?
Us.
When I first received these memories, I could do nothing but wonder; what had I thrown away?
I have not known a love like yours before or since.
You loved as the setting sun loves the sea, as the summer breeze loves the leaves on the cool, dark earth. You loved to the point of nonexistence. You were—you are the sweet, sweet ash that fills my cheater's lungs, the dust left in the wake of sunlight; you are everything. You are the best of me.
I am a collection of those who have touched my life, and without a doubt, you are the one who breathed true life into the shell I was before you; you are the one who frightened my heart into its staccato rhythm, who still frightens it into motion when you walk into the room.
I'm sorry. I'll never be sorry enough for telling you this.
You were—you are still the most stunningly human person I know.
Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. But watching you? I thought, oh. So that’s what it is.
I’ve heard it be said that I have multiple personalities. It was the difference between the facade I put up and what I hid; though my heart reached out to you, yours never reached back. It was the difference between this reality and the other.
In my darkest moments, you were the golden ray of light leading me to the end of the tunnel. I was entranced with your fire; I wanted it around me always. Seeing you barely control your disgust at simply existing near me made whatever semblance of a heart I had ache.
Instead of saying that you cared, deep within yourself, and that was why you shut down your vitriol, perhaps it describes the situation more accurately to say that I was looked after in a strictly professional capacity. Nevertheless, Chuuya, I was grateful for your presence, no matter what manner of threats and hatred flew from your mouth.
I realize I’m rambling, now. I won’t force your attention for much longer.
There is just one last thing I would like to say to you, my loyal dog.
I’ve dreamed a thousand dreams about how I would die. By hanging, or drowning, or painless drugs—that's how I wanted to leave this world.
So, why did I choose to jump off of this tall, tall building instead?
What a terrible way to go, to plummet to death with enough time to look back at the things I have done, the things I wish I could have had, and the person I’m leaving behind.
This is my final gift to you, Chuuya.
So, don’t be angry with me now that I’m gone, okay, hat rack?
I’ve let you kill me. I’ve made sure that gravity crushes me thoroughly—just like you always said it would.
Congratulations.
I’ll let myself be selfish just once more before I leave you for the last time. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Here, there, in every universe, Chuuya, I
Your partner in life and death,
Osamu Dazai
--
Unblinking, Chuuya stared at the words, feeling as if he were watching the entire, hellish chain of events unfold from a thousand miles away.
What was Dazai trying to say in the section covered by his blood? It couldn’t have been… no.
He didn’t get to do this.
Somewhere in the static, faint cheers erupt, and the streets explode with footsteps, thundering towards the body, mocking. Distantly, he feels someone clap their hands on his back in celebration, congratulating Chuuya on the kill. Finally, the devil is dead, he says. Aren’t you happy?
How could he be happy, after all that? The one time he needed it the most, and gravity failed to bend to his control. It was as if Dazai was laughing at him from the afterlife.
Dazai loved Chuuya. Chuuya loves Dazai.
It was too late.
Chuuya Nakahara howls, and the rising sun is no more.
O, granters of dark disgrace, you need not wake me again.