Work Text:
Chuuya loved living in a city;
it reassured him that he was never alone.
While yes, he was physically alone in his apartment—and maybe fundamentally alone as the only known vessel of a god—yet the knowledge that there were about a dozen other human beings on his floor, as well as the floors above his head and below his boots, was comforting. There were maybe a hundred other entities in this building emitting warmth; one hundred constant and steady pulses.
Sometimes, all he needed to do was sit at his modern dining table, pour a cup of wine, and glance out to his right to see the liveliness of Yokohama. Even at the peaceful time of 2 a.m., there were cars in the intersections and people wandering along the sidewalks, drunken or exhausted or just existing. Across from his building were other towers of concrete and glass, looking like clusters of stars in a strangely crowded galaxy that sank to the bottom of the universe. Yet through those windows with the lights still flickered on, bright and bold and stark against the other darkened windows, he’d be able to make out the shadow-like figures who performed the daily scenes of their life.
It reminded him that there were hundreds of thousands of millions of other souls just a crosswalk distance away from him; each with their own content lives, values, and shitty problems. He often peered at those moving shadow puppets and wondered what they were doing at that very moment. Perhaps playing with their ginger and black cats? Pulling an all-nighter to study for a college exam? Marathoning a trashy TV show with their significant other?
They were going about their daily lives: mundane, ordinary, boring, brutish, bland, yet dangerously charming, addictive, familiar. It was the kind of allure that a cup of well-made hot chocolate in a worn porcelain mug held by weary hands brought, like the soft plush of a cardigan around chilled shoulders; like a new layer of soft form-fitting skin to slip into when the old one is dirtied and discarded; like how the earth orbits and gravitates around the sun for eternity, but not in a perfect circle or cycle.
It was what Chuuya always wanted to protect.
Yokohama is the city he’s fallen in love with; is the reason he’s fallen in love with cities. His first love and most likely his last; his soul’s final resting place when his body is off rotting in a foreign country. All he wants is for those perfect strangers to continue about their normal lives; filing taxes, doing laundry, eating leftovers.
Because if those people can manage to do exactly that, then Chuuya is doing his job correctly; then Chuuya is strong enough to keep the universe in order, smart enough to let the physics equations and theories flicker through his mind before swiftly kicking the dinosaur-killing meteor back into heaven.
For Yokohama must remain as the world’s fleeting limbo; and he’d be damned to let his proudest love regress into the hellish, suffocating forces that threatens it.
Even when the obnoxiously loud snores Dazai creates to whisper: "the day is over, let the thinking cease, come back to me, my beloved,” begin to reach the crisp air of the balcony, his message soft yet heavy, Chuuya continues to stare and stare and stare.
And he continues to wonder. And he continues to love.