Chapter Text
“Do you think Atsushi-kun has been acting different lately?” Twenty-two-year-old Dazai Osamu poses while bound by ropes to his chair. “I bumped into Gin-chan earlier. Apparently, Atsushi-kun confronted her brother at the harbour the other night but Akutagawa was so spooked by his behaviour the match ended prematurely.”
Yosano straightens her documents with the sound of a chopping block. “What did Atsushi do exactly?”
“I’m still figuring it out.”
Having overheard their conversation, Naomi ducks her head into the main office. “Atsushi-san has seemed odd these days. Yesterday afternoon, we found him napping on the floor.”
Tanizaki enters after her. “Yeah, he was under that window over there… right where a ray of sun had hit. But he said he got a leg cramp and was stuck there for a while, so I think that’s all it was.”
Dazai leans back in his seat, glances to the white tiger doll now living atop a nearby desk. “A ray of sun, you say?”
“Oi Dazai,” Kunikida cautions from the other end of the room. “I didn’t tie you to your desk to have a chit-chat—”
“I also found Atsushi-san doing new things since the age reversion case,” Kenji contributes as he bumbles pass with a load of electronics.
Yosano has now long postponed her task. “Kenji-kun too?”
“On Tuesday, Atsushi-san and I were eating ice-pops from the stall Ranpo-san recommended, but some of it broke and splat onto Atsushi-san’s sleeve. And I could tell he was upset about it because Ranpo-san was right! The ice-pops were so tasty!” He hefts desktop monitors over one shoulder, raises his other forearm to his chin. “So, when he thought I wasn’t looking, he lifted his arm to his tongue and—” Kenji motions the alleged action.
“That’s not strange! Just unsanitary.”
“I thought it was a good idea!” Kenji hops onto one foot to showcase his denim pant leg. “I did the same when mine spilt onto my overalls!”
“For someone vigilant with his manners, I do find that unusual for Atsushi-kun,” Dazai ponders. “His gestures seem almost…”
Naomi conjures up the suitable descriptor, “… Feline?”
“Catlike…”
Kunikida slaps his folder down, his chair sliding grudgingly as he stands. “If you’re implying that Atsushi has turned into some kind of animal since the nonsense two weeks ago, just remember he is one hundred percent a human being whose perception of him is entitled to some dignity.”
“My scalpel reflected light onto the workbench last Wednesday,” Yosano adds to the brewing discussion. “Atsushi tried to catch it under his hands.”
The man with glasses pauses. “WE LET HIM BECOME TOO CHILDISH THAT PAST WEEK AND NOW HE’S FORGOTTEN TO MAINTAIN THE AGENCY’S IMAGE OF CIVIL RESPONSIBILITY!”
“That week and a half we had him younger does explain the way he’s acting now.” Ranpo interposes from his desk.
The workers swivel to the back window to listen.
“Atsushi-kun now has parallel childhoods, one where he was raised by the orphanage, the other by us. While his memories at the orphanage still dominate, his short time with the Agency eased the suppression of his ability. With the help of Boss’ All Men are Equal still taking effect, Atsushi-kun’s tiger expression has since emerged less hostile.”
The second-sharpest detective in ropes considers the proposition, “So… we were taming the tiger side of a weretiger?”
“Catnip might make it more effective.”
“Infused in his tea?”
“He won’t appreciate it.”
Dazai twists around to stare at Ranpo. Ranpo stares back at Dazai.
They proceed to snicker in unison.
“Based on that theory Ranpo-san...” Tanizaki raises his sleeve to his chin, gasps, “Could we have cared for Atsushi-kun’s ability… to the point we domesticated it?”
“If we babysat him for longer while he was younger.”
Kenji hops with both bare feet, the electronics clunking precariously. “A massive white tiger? In our office? Twenty-four seven?”
“If he stays in the form that often.”
“Now, now hold on.” Kunikida tries to interject the office. “We are not encouraging any more barbaric behaviour… No pets at the Agency!”
“Well, Atsushi’s still one hundred percent human regardless,” Yosano reasons.
“It’ll enhance his ability capabilities on missions,” Ranpo points out.
“An extra-large fluffy white cat doesn’t appeal to you, Kunikida-kun?” Dazai whines and rocks in his chair, his restricted arms flailing in every direction manageable. “We need to boost Atsushi-kun’s health and happiness!”
Kunikida exasperates at the rest of Agency, at their increasing excitement, “THEN WHAT DO YOU EXPECT US TO DO NEXT? BRING ATSUSHI BACK AS A BABY?”
The commotion ceases. The idea pricks the height of their shoulders.
“The lack of opposition right now is concerning.”
And as if the kid himself wants to go undergo the nausea of a second time jump, eighteen-year-old Atsushi Nakajima enters holding packages and Kyouka’s hand — immediately confronted by an office of eagerly enlarged gazes, condensed frames at the brink of take-off.
He first turns to Kyouka beside him to see if the stares are directed to her, realises all the stares are directed at him.
Then his nose twitches, checking for an invisible presence other than his own to explain the peculiar phenomenon across his colleagues.
Next, he sweats. “Have I done something wrong?”
“We’re just glad to see you and Kyouka back.” Yosano reassures from her desk. “Especially you as your usual self.”
“Did you collect the supplies I listed?” Kunikida asks.
“Yes, they’re here…”
Dazai intently eyes the standoff from his desk — the boy straining the boxes and bags to Kunikida — Kunikida failing to obtain them. It’s as though all past unprofessional scenes with child Atsushi, containing details which Kunikida refuses to disclose but the office witnesses the effects of nonetheless, are once again flashing through the man’s glasses.
“You can… put them on my desk…” The increasingly flustered Kunikida utters while reflexively bending from the youth who tiptoes around him. This is the fun part of the day that has been ongoing for the past two weeks.
It’s like watching two sizzling strawberries under the scorching sun.
Finally, the boy manages to scuttle away and the man clears his throat, rummaging through a box. The first thing he takes out is a pen with an oversized pompom on the end. His glasses scan the room for an explanation.
Kyouka possesses a bunny doll with a price tag still attached to its ear.
“For me, Atsushi-san?” Naomi clarifies upon receiving an embroidered purse.
The boy produces a plush scarf from the bag still swinging from his forearm. “And for Tanizaki-san…”
One by one, the Agency members receive a unique item from the white-haired detective ducking between desks and crab walking along the walls. Cluttered on Kunikida’s desk are more purchased goods for other workers at the office. Dazai suspects the package wrapped in newspaper conceals a stained-glass windchime.
With his supplies distributed, Atsushi returns to the front of the office, explains, “I remembered I wanted to buy gifts when I was eight years old… again… and the store I planned to buy from reopened today...”
Sitting in the eye of the gift recipients, the man inside the rope tornado takes note of the fidgeting behind the black streak of hair, the springtime tint rising from the boy’s cheeks.
So, this is what spooked Akutagawa the other night.
The shoulders wriggle with sweat overproduction but the modest youth clasps his hands together, his message forthrightly sincere, “This is my thanks for taking care of me while I was a child and for always taking care of me since I joined the Agency!”
Kunikida stares at his pompom pen. “Hey Atsushi.”
“… Hm?”
The blond detective keeps staring at his pompom pen. “These are from the toy store.”
The boy’s confidence dims. He goggles back at the googly eyes rattling from the pompom pen, the novelty gadget he has given to his superior.
“Ah, I thought it might be silly!” He suddenly exhales, as if feigning relief. His gloved hand reaches to retrieve the pompom pen. “I’m sorry, I’ll return these right away—”
The taller blond man whips the pen to the ceiling.
Atsushi chases Kunikida’s evading arm. “If you let me—”
Yosano inspects the sequined hairpin between her gloved fingers, leans over her chair to where the boy struggles. “I can give you another kiss if you’d like.”
The victim springs higher than his attempt to take back the pen. “NOOO thank you, YOSANO-SAN—” He squawks, arms enraptured in a windmill frenzy. “I mean, THANK YOU… but NO thank you—”
Ranpo takes his candy shop model as well as the package wrapped in newspaper. “I’ll deliver this to Boss!”
“Wait, WAIT—”
And the man who sits idly in his chair is once again hit with the familiar surprise — something new in the same people he sees every day. This time he finds it in the flustered kid, who despite his rocketing embarrassment has pupils dilating at the airborne dust in the infiltrated sunlight, ears unceasingly flipping between a scraping sharpener and a worker’s hum. After returning from his younger self, Atsushi’s hairs are instantaneously thrilled by the breathing moment, in every particle.
“This is so cool!” Kenji exclaims as he clicks his miniature flashlight and fills the room with the robotic cow’s cry.
The projected light flashes into Kyouka’s face. She closes her eyes.
Dazai is bound to his chair, held in happy hostage amid the ocean glees and grievances of an office on the fourth floor. He reflects on the four years revisited and the golden memory repeats — final days blurred in the second trip to a more than familiar bar, visions doubling, aches amplified. But in the fragmenting of eighteen years, of everything once thought to be known on an inhabitable ice giant, a wish other than his own has come back to him — a wish that remains here in this moment.
So, today’s another day he won’t die. Dazai wonders whether the people here have noticed changes in him that he remains unaware of — whether they like the flesh arisen from his shadow. He rises from his desk and pops his shoulders, effectively shedding all ropes in one fell swoop.
Kunikida turns his spectacles, chokes at the instant collapse of the day’s labours, “How…?”
“I’ve been sitting all day!” Dazai announces loudly. “Time to head out.”
“SIT BACK DOWN, DAZAI! YOUR REPORT IS DUE BY FIVE O’CLOCK THIS EVENING—”
The bandaged detective heads towards the exit, on the way fist-bumping Tanizaki and patting Kyouka’s doll. He passes behind the frantic white-haired youth at the front of the office. “I’m visiting someone and would like some company,” he prompts. “Let’s go.”
In his failed efforts to have his gifts returned by their recipients, Atsushi’s ear cocks to the voice located higher than his agonized wails. Atsushi hears this voice and his purple-yellow eyes brighten in the excuse to leave all mortification in the office, in the presence of a saviour which Dazai unashamedly takes pride in. “Okay, Dazai-san!” The weretiger graciously sighs and takes Dazai’s hand.
Dazai freezes before reaching the exit.
Atsushi’s flushed neck vanishes to ghost white.
The rest of the Agency fall silent in the ensuing amusement as both look down to their held hands. Whether Atsushi’s eight-year-old impulses are yet to wear off or they have rubbed onto him, they clearly haven’t left.
Dazai slaps Atsushi’s hand away as quickly as Atsushi shakes Dazai’s hand away.
~.~.~
In every waking hour there is something new to scream externally over, Atsushi’s memories of being age-reverted bleary like over-exposed photos from a decade before yet their effects intruding his wardrobe-bed door like it all just happened yesterday. Two weeks hasn’t been long enough to recover.
Loose gravel grinds beneath his boot soles.
“—tried to wipe his footage of Naomi-chan from our video camera…”
His younger self had required so much pampering despite his need to be self-sufficient while surviving the orphanage. He also cried a lot, though the Agency has already seen some of that before.
A broken beer bottle sprinkles hazardous glitter over the curb.
“—proceeded to panic when he thought important video evidence had been saved…”
Atsushi now trails behind the man who babysat him for longer than a week, the same mentor who he can hardly speak to after what just happened at the office. Of course, Dazai is aware of this and is compensating for Atsushi’s absence in their dialogue with the slurp of his carton, the back of his head bouncing down the sidewalk while recounting a recent story. “—but Kunikida-kun practically celebrated once he found out Tanizaki-kun accidentally cleared the camera storage…” Depleting drops of soymilk are heard gurgling by Dazai’s chin. “—he thought the last video file of him under the Dogra Magra curse was finally removed…”
Sunlight flashes into Atsushi’s eye from the car windows whizzing by his right.
The engine slipstream causes locks of Dazai’s hair to flap horizontally. “—was so happy… exceedingly relieved… until the end of our briefing when Katai-kun handed me the back-up database…”
The passing traffic inflicts Atsushi’s nose with rapid intervals of exhaust fumes accompanied with the persistent fish stench from the butcher across the road. Remembering his temporary childhood at the Agency dissolves Atsushi to red-flushed steam yet sloshes like in his belly autumn miso soup.
“You should be paying attention, Atsushi-kun.” Dazai intones from ahead. “The person we’re visiting is highly important.”
Atsushi’s hearing flips forward, the boy’s eyebrow flinching. “… I’ve been listening since we left the office building,” he replies, sheepish. “We’ve walked to the far end of the city yet you still haven’t told me who we’re visiting. Who is it?”
The plastic straw pops. He hears Dazai smack the soymilk from his lips.
Dazai considers his question.
“And then I projected the video of Kunikida-kun as soon as the briefing finished,” Dazai jovially resumes and tosses his milk carton over the garden wall to their left. “The screen took up the entire wall of Katai-kun’s place like—”
He throws himself over the wall too.
Atsushi stops walking. Atsushi watches Dazai dive sideways over the garden wall.
Atsushi watches Dazai fall down a slope on the other side of the garden wall.
“EHHH?!”
The bandaged body rolls jagged down the hill.
“This is off-track!” Atsushi shouts, leaping over the wall to chase after his superior.
“WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Dazai replies agonisingly while zigzagging by tree trunk against tree trunk.
Atsushi stumbles down the descent, struggles to tame his speed over the slick grass. The branches overhead block out too much sun and it’s too hard to see the Dazai-shaped lump in the dark — like they’re plummeting down the belly of some terrain entity, their disruption going thump, thump down the gulped gravity. Dazai is falling too quickly and Atsushi is panicked enough to call on his beastly limbs but is also withheld by the fact of only mending his uniform less than a week before. He doesn’t want to rip his pant legs and sleeves so soon. Not for this.
But Dazai drops further down the hill. The aggressive snapping of shrubs and sticks is screaming alarms. And ahead is the end of the woods, where soldiering trees disband, the border choked with bushes and beyond this Atsushi spies a terrain of coarse grey, a jutting stretch of stone awaiting the fallen at the bottom of the slope.
Tiger hairs begin to spill over Atsushi’s forearms. “This is dangerous! You need to stop!”
Dazai advances to the end of the woods.
Atsushi drops himself to the ground and whizzes down the slope, his abseiling claws slashing the earth. “Where are you going?”
Dazai hurtles through the air and the border of bushes sucks him in between. Dazai disappears in a clap of branches.
“Dazai-san!” Atsushi tries to fly out the trees but Dazai goes. Dazai goes and Atsushi can’t see him — the hill gurgling as its dirt remoulds after being rolled upon, its lumber teeth realigning after the black figure’s departure. Atsushi can’t see him anymore, the tangled roots from beneath sprawling up to his stomach, and he cries, “DAZAI—” The child cries alone in the sunless forest. “COME BACK!”
The leaves whip by Atsushi’s ears. The branches break away.
An explosion of light.
The beast-boy springs out of the bushes and sees
Brown.
On the hair of the man’s head. The man, who now stands where the trees have cleared. So have the buildings, now shrunken to matchsticks along the far side of the harbour. And at the harbour’s near side, they have arrived at a plain stippled with carefully chiselled stones.
Dazai stands by a single grave at the cemetery.
Atsushi gathers himself onto his feet, his beastly features retracting under his skin. His colleague has his back to him and the boy plods gingerly from behind, peeks over the taller shoulder to read the characters etched into the headstone. “But Dazai-san…” He gasps breathlessly. “This is…” He steps out to the side to reverently bow as low as his hips.
Without a prior word, Dazai ambles close to the headstone and slumps against it, his frame eased to the ground, his elbow propped along the curve. “Sorry for not visiting lately,” he casually greets. “Got caught up by a ghost haunting Yokohama who I tried to follow from afar. It took us sometime to realise we needed to see each other but my plan worked out in the end. We’re all fine.”
Atsushi keeps his body bowed, broken grass and clay coating the toes of his boots. He hears the tan textile of a trench coat shifting off someone’s shoulders. It’s the same trench coat Atsushi once sniffed when he was eight years old, its owner who he might have excessively nuzzled and slumbered over. The man must think he’s feral and Atsushi agrees — if not plainly appalling.
The man continues to converse with the grave, “Atsushi-kun is also here today. I know you don’t mind.”
Atsushi jolts at the mention of his own name. His torso stays bowed. He’s unsure when to lift himself back up.
“You know him now, don’t you?” Dazai supposes. “That’s why I asked you to join.”
The sun illuminates the land at Atsushi’s feet, grass blades wavering like slackened flames. Though Atsushi’s shadow obstructs the middle, the earth caught under the area of his overcast hidden from the mellow weather. The black shape of his head refracts upon landing over the headstone’s base.
“Hello Odasaku-san,” Atsushi salutes to the gravestone, swallows. “Dazai-san recently told me many stories about you. It’s nice to properly meet you this time.”
Dazai pats the patch of free grass beside him and Atsushi straightens his back to sit with them — filing a single line across the lawn of the cemetery.
Atsushi. Dazai. Headstone.
The man in the middle has scrunched his trench coat and dumped the bundle at their feet. He rolls up his sleeves and the youth beside him glimpses his indefinite bandages, the flecks of dirt clung to the cotton, twigs and miniscule leaves fraying the coiled fibres. And after their fall down the slope Atsushi wants to neatly fold the trench coat, to pick the forest remnants from the man’s arms and hair but Dazai is like a mirage that Atsushi fears will dissipate as soon as he reaches out to him.
And Dazai has seemed as a mirage since the day Atsushi awoke as his usual self at the War Museum two weeks ago. The trench coat had slid off his head, his hazy vision trying to fixate on the bundle of bandages once wound over an eye that had flopped to the floor. It felt like they had just been at the carnival a flashlight ago — until everything that had happened between flooded the spaces of his brain. And Atsushi knew immediately why he couldn’t remember returning to the orphanage, why it was taking so long for Dazai to respond. The boy was meant to help Dazai find a reason to live when the man had been catapulted back into every cause to stop searching instead.
It was at the reverted bomb shelter two weeks ago when Atsushi stayed kneeling over Dazai, trying to shake life back into the slumped shoulders — screamed his mentor’s name like a bloodshot siren over the sunken head. But by the time the other Agency detectives rushed inside Dazai suddenly flipped his face to the exposed ceiling — rejoiced vociferously for a case well completed — eager to unload the youth onto the hard floor — gorge on celebratory barbeque he wasn’t paying for—
“What’s bothering you?”
Atsushi perks his ear to the voice beside him, though at first he isn’t sure who Dazai is asking this to.
The grave’s muted infinity convinces it’s meant for Atsushi.
The boy draws in his knees, his clay cladded heels dragging through the lawn, the grass snapping delicately beneath. “I was willing to relive my four years to recover our ages. I knew I was going to be fine because I had already regained some memories from my ability. On the other hand, Dazai-san only knew the hard parts that were going to happen.” The sun is warm but Atsushi grips his upper arms. “How could you prevent me from saving you when you said you couldn’t live it a second time?”
Atsushi dares to peek at Dazai but the man does not face either side of his company. The man only looks straight ahead.
The wind whispers from the trees they had departed, gently provoking the leaves.
Dazai’s fringe flaps forward, patching over his eyes. “I suppose you have reason to ask…” His murmur wanders.
The man in bandages has seemed the exact same as he was before and this only concerns Atsushi more. Atsushi’s afraid of the damage he cannot locate by sight nor smell. And maybe the loss isn’t there, or if his mentor chooses to mask it somewhere undiscoverable to Earth should it be a question for the boy at all? Atsushi tries to spy Odasaku’s headstone in his periphery but the sitting shape of Dazai blocks the view. He worries. He wonders. If someone were to tread their life again, through unaltered mistakes, would it change them?
“I was never going to let you tear the photograph. That would’ve been a disservice to you as your superior.”
White arcs of sunlight bob over the gravestones, ripple through the grass like the gentle surge of the sea.
Dazai parts his lips, speaks a second time. “Do you want to know what it was like?”
But Atsushi doesn’t know if it’s a challenge or an invitation and all he can do is tuck the bottom half of his face behind his drawn knees. No one alive can decipher the mystery of Dazai’s mind. Encountering his memories in the bomb shelter had brought the boy closer than the man’s comfort but another wall can always be built, another blind thrown up. Dazai is always another step afar and Atsushi doesn’t know how to reply.
Yet in the blaze of the daytime, the unknown figure crouched nearby tells another story, “It was as the ghost child said. I knew I was living in the past yet I couldn’t do anything about it… Never in a situation have I felt so powerless.” He pauses, a rush of a breeze running with his breath. “Still, I am thankful I saw my friend again. And I appreciated every good moment together I had otherwise forgotten.”
Atsushi raises his chin from his knees.
The man sitting against the gravestone is the same shadow who once sat cross-legged by his pillow. The difference is the room isn’t so dark anymore.
“After the Port Mafia there was more for me to learn and maybe even I, executive or detective, had room to grow. I learnt that from some people I met in the future,” the man says and reaches out for Atsushi. “… I’ve waited four years to be with them now.”
The youth tenses at the hand stroking his hair, though the effects are as fast as firing a salvaged stove. His head instinctively lolls towards the hand, buries close into the touch, no longer savouring the absence of pain but brimming with all familiar things good. The familiar thing. Dazai makes snow angels through Atsushi’s tufts of hair, cottoned wrist brushing his temple, and mummy man pockets air in his nostrils, twitching in and out, until all is let out and the weretiger chuffs.
Atsushi double blinks. He blushes.
The brunette locks wave with the grass, framing Dazai’s brown eyes set alight, pinched with cheekiness at the sides. For the smallest of seconds, the man bumps their foreheads together.
And face-to-face Dazai and Atsushi are a double image — breaking with laughter in satisfying synchrony.
Odasaku. The story at the end of their nightmares. Atsushi wishes he met Odasaku though maybe the friend isn’t so far apart. Atsushi feels the pleasant pull of his muscles as he and Dazai stretch their legs over the lawn, backs reclining from arms propped behind. Like Dazai’s soiled bandages, Atsushi feels grains of dirt sneak into his fingerless gloves, collect in the dips between his fingers, weed sprouts prickling his calves.
And so, the Armed Detective Agency members sit, side by side, a crooked pair by the far side of Yokohama. The boy still hears the Headmaster and he knows the man still waits to fulfil his lifelong wish. But with the hassle of waking each day there is another life they can save, another day they every so often look forward to.
“It occurred to me that I didn’t buy something for you from the shopping district,” Atsushi says as they admire the glittering harbour in their open view. “I hope it hasn’t bothered you today.”
“Atsushi-kun may have not intended it, but I like to think the gifts were from both of us.”
The beast is free but the beast has also claimed territory he doesn’t mind napping inside in the late afternoon. And it is not a place. It walks on a team of legs with uprooted road signs or a sharpened cleaver — a pocketed notebook or deduction glasses — a hanging school tie or bunny doll — trailing sweater sleeves or trench coat or black haori.
The sprinting air riots with their unkept hair and the landscape’s layers of green. Another breath falls in step with the next heartbeat.
“Will you pay me back for half of the expenses then?” Atsushi asks.
Upon hearing this, Dazai’s gaze immediately dulls. He turns to the headstone beside him. “He’s a little silly…”
“At least don’t tell him while I’m here.”
“But Atsushi-kun! We used up your tickets too soon!” The bandaged arms salute the sky, cotton ends fluttering in the uproar. “Please take me to the top of the Ferris-wheel!”
“Good thing the carnival is done for the year.”
“We should try fishing at the nearby creek!”
“With what equipment? We only have our bare hands...”
“—I’ll make you salmon chazuke.”
~.~.~