Peach Flower Boy

by EuGrace

Chapter 3: Notebook Three

I. Smokescreen of Farce

Mori’s faux show of a guardian’s pride for Dazai’s finishing elementary school, though annoying, was exactly what the boy was waiting for, for he could now use that false pretense as an excuse to ask his uncle for a ‘reward,’ AKA a phone of his own.

Up until then, Dazai had juggled between using a shitty iPod he’d found at a secondhand electronics store and one of Mori’s even shittier flip-phones, but now that he was in high school he was determined at the very least to have something manufactured within the last five years.

Dazai had to agree to pay Mori back half once he got a job, but it was worth it because a week before ninth grade started he was able to spend $100 on a used iPhone that someone was selling near Central Square. Dazai took a blue bike there and all too happily received his hard-won prize.

Despite being secondhand, the phone was relatively in good condition. There was a small crack at the bottom of the touch screen, and for a second Dazai shrugged it off because “Chuuya can just fix it for me; he loves tinkering with this kind of stuff,” but then he remembered Chuuya was oceans away, and if Dazai wanted the screen fixed he’d have to pay someone else to do it.

Still though: new phone.

The first thing he did with it was call Chuuya. He could’ve just sent him a text message, but Dazai wanted to hear his voice.

“Hello?”

“Yo, chibi.”

“The fuck? Dazai?”

“Yeah!”

“Where are you calling me from?”

“I got a new phone!”

“Whoa! Mori let you?”

“I have to pay him back, but it’s whatever,”

“That’s not fair,”

Chuuya always managed to voice the things Dazai never let himself say. He realized then that a part of him had wanted to hear somebody else say those words, the ones he’d kept distant and closed off lest the weight of its truth made him feel angry.

What was the point of getting angry?

The two boys talked together the entire bike ride home. When Dazai got back to the apartment, he thought their conversation would continue later into the afternoon, but he heard Kouyou’s static voice from Chuuya’s end and his friend gave her a muffled response before getting back to Dazai and saying, “Have to go. Ane-san and Big Sis wanna go shopping since it’s the last week of summer vacation.”

Dazai felt his face sink. “Oh okay. Try not to buy even uglier clothes than the ones you already have,”

“Asshole,” Chuuya retorted back. Then, after a brief pause, he added, “Hey listen, I forgot to tell you,”

Dazai perked his head up. Chuuya’s voice had shifted in a way that told him what he was about to say was a big deal. Dazai expected some news about Kouyou-nii or Agatha, maybe even something about what Mr. Rimbaud or Verlaine’s doing back in France again.

He never expected Chuuya to bring up a boy.

“His name’s Shirase,” Chuuya said, sounding kind of giddy.

Giddy.

“I met him last night at the student info night,” he continued. “I went by myself and wasn’t even five minutes into the gym when he came up to me and said ‘Hey you look familiar.’ He has cousins in Boston too, can you believe it? He visited them a year ago, maybe he saw me while he was here?”

Dazai immediately knew that he personally couldn’t care less that Shirase had been in Boston a year ago. In fact, he found it quite hard to believe.

Trying to keep his voice impassive, Dazai asked, “So are you going to hang out with him again?”

“Well probably. We’re in some of the same classes. He likes math and science too. He said he wants to be the head doctor at a big hospital,”

“Like, he wants to or his parents want him to?”

“He legit wants to.”

“Gross,”

“He wants to save people’s lives. Isn’t that cool?”

Dazai frowned, unimpressed. He of all people knew being a doctor didn’t necessarily mean you were helping people; sometimes you were doing the exact opposite. “Sounds like the model Asian kid,” he managed to comment. “I bet he’s a trust-fund baby,”

“Well, his parents are probably rich. He looks rich, he was wearing designer jeans and an expensive watch when I met him,”

“He sounds repulsive,” Dazai deadpanned, unoriginal.

Chuuya went quiet -- so quiet that Dazai started to worry he’d somehow weirded his friend out or offended him, but that was when Chuuya said, “. . . I don’t know, I think he’s pretty cute,”

Dazai suddenly felt like throwing up. “What,” he managed to say, ignoring how hot his face had gotten just now. From the nausea. “Cute? What are you, a subpar gay character written by Disney?”

“Hey fuck off,” Chuuya laughed, the trill of it making Dazai’s phone vibrate slightly under his ear. “I’m just saying, like . . . He doesn’t look bad,”

“Like how Ryan Gosling doesn’t look bad?” Dazai snorted sarcastically.

“Ryan Gosling’s hot,”

“No, he just has dogs,”

“Yeah, and that’s hot,”

Before Dazai could come up with another smartass retort, Kouyou said something again on the other end, so Chuuya hastily told him they’d talk later. Dazai didn’t even get to say ’bye before Chuuya abruptly hung up, leaving him sitting alone in the apartment dining room staring down at his new, cracked phone.

 

. . .

 

The first day of Dazai’s high school entrance was one of many ill omens.

His mother had asked for leave to stay the night before so she could see her son off the morning after, but a mixup had happened at the institution and Tane wasn’t allowed to sleep over like she’d been promised.

The look of pained, apologetic regret never left her face even when she got into the cab that would take her back. Before she sat in the passenger seat and gave Q a kiss goodbye, she turned to Dazai and cupped his cheek entreatingly. “I hope you have a good first day tomorrow,” she whispered, and Dazai gave her an encouraging smile that said, “It’s alright Mama. Don’t worry about me,” which quickly vanished once the taxi drove away, because if there was one thing worse than his mother once again being absent during one of the few big milestones in Dazai’s lonely life, it was having to forgive her for missing out on so much in the first place.

The second ill omen came when Dazai got lost on his way to his first class, which was History. When he eventually did find it, there were already a handful of kids sitting at the desks ready to start.

Three of those desks held familiar faces: John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and Nathaniel Hawthorne had taken the cluster of seats right near the front, and, before Dazai had processed that the ringleader of all his childhood bullying as well as his two bird-brained lackeys, -- now teenagers like him yet still looking as obnoxious as when they were kids -- John’s crystal blue eyes had landed on him, followed by a swift look of doubtless recognition, before they darted away to noncommittally focus on a poster that was tacked on the wall in a deliberate show of irritated avoidance.

The feeling was mutual.

Fortunately, as the day went on and Dazai gradually acquainted himself with his class schedule, he realized History was the only course he and John had together. He had another class with Mark and Nathaniel each, but, true to form, they both desiccated like untouched mannequins when John wasn’t with them, so they usually sat at the back and gave off as much presence as a wall clock whose only reminder of its existence was the occasional tick or gruff cough it emitted once every half hour.

This was fine by Dazai, but, even though he only had to spend fifty minutes of the day in the same room with John, it proved yet still unbearable.

Before, Dazai would say History was one of his favorite subjects. He derived pleasure in analyzing the chronological and predictable downfall of human beings throughout time and space, over wars, tragedian love affairs, and flimsy oaths of comradeship that more often than not resulted in empires crumbling, art being stolen, or melancholy cathedrals caught on fire. He liked that History complimented literature so well. To him, they were the epitome of compatibility, of symbiotic perfection. He liked reading the works of Euripides and Aeschylus in a classical context, as well as knowledge of the Greek pantheon and Roman mythology. The works of Oscar Wilde were worlds more interesting after he knew more about his trials for ‘indecency’ and personal propensity for Catholicism.

History simply went well with literature and vice versa, the way two seasonings made a dish all the more ravishing instead of just one.

Yet, as everybody came to frightfully realize, being taught a subject one was interested in through an academic setting like school was the quickest way to kill its delicate place in someone’s heart.

Being taught History was a completely different experience from learning History by himself, with books, and free reign of the internet and library, because the latter held infinite possibilities, leniency, and scholastic freedom, whereas the former, was school, and such an institution, which was never meant to educate but to indoctrinate, viciously contorted young minds for the bleak, highly modernized world with the efficiency of a steam-powered engine, and no matter how sharp one’s genius or noble one’s work ethics are, the fact remains that if you put children through a meat grinder, most would come out very dead, as they were never prepared nor intended for meat grinding, and said meat grinder certainly lacks the human empathy towards such a catastrophic predicament that is needed to ameliorate this issue due to the fact that it is a machine that regurgitates, rather than truly supplies, anything substantial.

To add to this injustice, History class also meant Dazai had to listen to John and other students like him (who were annoyingly the majority) give their hideous opinions on things that only mattered to them in an abstract sense, and were more exercises in political philosophy -- like the trolley problem -- rather than touchable reality.

Boston was home to some of America’s most notable shrapnels of history, creating within its present-day inhabitants a sense of patriotism that became well groomed with each raising of the star-spangled flag each morning in school courtyards, which, inevitably, equips them with a false sense of entitlement to the kind of historical revisionism they deem their right to evangelize and redistribute.

“There were benefits to colonialism, it was inevitable,” John stated one day during the first week of class, and, to Dazai’s irritation their teacher -- white as most of his students were -- simply tilted his bald head in faux intellectual pondering before eventually nodding, as if this was a matter of opinion. “Regardless, forgiveness is key to solving the race problem. You shouldn’t blame the current generation for their ancestor’s mistakes.”

“It’s white guys like me who’re really getting the short end of the stick nowadays. Minorities get into college with full scholarships just because they’re marginalized, not because of their own merit,” John said again on a different day, and a census of agreeable, sympathetic voices surrounded him like toxic waste that never considered itself toxic waste. “How is that fair?”

On another, John lamented, with enthusiastic nods from Nathaniel, “It’s really hard to be Christian nowadays. I’d argue it’s the most persecuted religion in the world now, like in the time of Nero.”

He used words like ‘dichotomy’ and ‘reconciliation,’ further emphasizing his misconception of both, and was never confronted nor challenged for his puppet interpretations that he’d simply inherited from others like him, who also thrived in their own fallacies because they made all the world smell like a rose garden.

Even when he said something more generally insulting -- “Feminists want equal rights but are going about getting them the wrong way by hating men, as if we were all abusive rapists,” -- a good percentage of the girls in the class found him yet still charming: thinking his view on things was superior on the stupid basis that he spoke his thoughts with suave confidence and eloquent language.

Dazai listened to all of this and more for fifty minutes every day, first thing in the morning.

Strictly for survival, he maintained a silent disposition and neutral expression whenever these infuriating microaggressions were passed around the room like holy water. He didn’t want to have to deal with his ignorant peers more than he already had to.

This was why he was most shocked when a redheaded girl, who sat at the back and never talked at first, angrily berated John suddenly as he was giving his opinion on an American founding father whose name is as decidedly irrelevant as his pretence of an honorable legacy in history was, for did he not abuse his wife, mistreat his slaves, -- which he did own, despite being an abolitionist -- and did everything he could to uphold antediluvian conservative values that benefitted only him and his people? All this the girl said bluntly in a rapid stream of fiery criticism, her cheeks pink with evident frustration.

She was out of breath by the time she stopped talking, and Dazai, although wary of voicing his agreement with her because of his well-manicured façade of being a peaceful bystander, couldn’t help but be a little impressed. He almost smiled, but was half scared she would turn to him -- the only non-white person in the room -- and expect him to join her small flame of retaliation, but her apple-green eyes remained fixed onto John’s face, which was upturned in a wry, sarcastic smile, the way one entertained nonsense solely for the purpose of entertaining themselves: the more intelligent party, who alone was capable of correction, but was considerately withholding it for the other, less educated’s, sake.

Their teacher was stammering out a ‘thank you’ to the girl for bringing up a valid point, which prompted John, who didn’t want to be the bad guy, to insincerely acquiesce, almost cordial in his insufferable shrug of acknowledgement to her contra against his pro. With one last look of smugness, he turned away from the girl and addressed his next words to a disembodied listener. “I don’t disagree with her, of course, and I thank her for her input, but --” He broke off, snickering.

Mark cut in. “-- Hey Lucy, aren’t you from Canada?”

This earned a small collective laugh from everyone in the class. Lucy glared, not giving him an answer, which of course was its own affirmative.

“What you’re saying is true, sure, but,” Mark shrugged as well, suddenly an individual. “You’re not American -- well, really American -- like most of us here,” (This with a side-eye to Dazai, whom in his mind was Lucy’s only equivalent within the vicinity seeing as they’re both unthinking foreigners). “So you can’t really understand what John’s really saying,”

More laughing, which made Lucy’s face turn as red as her hair. She seemed to want to say more, but one sardonic look from John communicated clearly that he had won and thus she was fighting a losing battle, which silenced her for the rest of the class.

Once the bell rang, however, Lucy sprang up from her desk and shuffled out of the hallway, obviously still livid about earlier.

Dazai didn’t know why or how, but he followed her.

The high school campus was very large, and Dazai had barely explored a quarter of the grounds up until then. Something in the back of his head signalled alarm that he might get lost and lose his way to his next class, but his feet just kept walking.

After what felt like a Rube Goldberg machine of a route, Dazai found himself outside a locked classroom with other students his age waiting around for their teacher to open it. The class he was supposed to be in was on the other side of this building, yet he remained glued to the spot as he watched Lucy finally set her bag down near her ankles as she sidled up next to a boy -- a Japanese boy whom Dazai had never seen -- with silver hair and a pink hoodie that had a white tiger on it. “Ugh!” she huffed, not bothering to say hello.

The boy took off his headphones and settled them around his neck. Taking out his phone, he turned off his music and turned to his clearly irritated friend. “What’s up?” he asked. His voice sounded like a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Lucy folded her arms. “I got into a stupid fight with John in History,”

“John as in John Steinbeck? Your-mom’s-sort-of-old-friends-but-not-really-Steinbeck? He’s not worth your time,”

“I know, but he and his lackeys were saying such ignorant things and it was obviously to bully that guy at the front I told you about --”

“Dazai?”

“Yeah. Dazai. He’s always aloof and hardly ever talks but nobody wants to hear that shit targeted at them, no matter how indifferent you make yourself out to be, so he must be annoyed too and is just too polite or scared to say anything,”

“So you decided to speak for him?” Atsushi said with a sarcastic yet patient smile.

Lucy’s face grew hot again. “Well of course I did! Someone here has to put John in his place and it might as well come from me!”

“You sound very performative white ally right now, Luce,”

“I know, but I wasn’t just gonna sit there!”

“Like how you’ve been sitting there since school started?”

“Don’t push me, Kitten,”

Another Japanese boy in an all-black getup and even blacker binder came up to them and easily inserted himself into the conversation. A few subtle greetings were exchanged between the three friends before the newcomer asked with a gruff yet not altogether hostile voice, “Is this about you and John Steinbeck’s fight this morning?”

“Yes, it is,” Atsushi supplied, since the very mention of such a name was enough to make Lucy’s anger re-spike so as to momentarily deprive her of the ability to talk. “How did you know about it, Ryuu?”

The guy in black -- Ryuu -- shrugged. “It’s the newest freshman gossip. I heard it from my sister,” (This referring to his twin Gin, who was younger than him by about three and a half minutes).

Atsushi nodded, but that was when he noticed a pair of brown eyes staring at him and his friends intensely from just across the corridor. Once their gazes met, his onlooker (our peach flower boy) immediately straightened his back and awkwardly darted to the next hallway, away from sight.

Atsushi, rather than being creeped out, had an unusual inkling to perhaps chase after the boy in the round glasses and excessive bandages. He knew almost everybody in the school who was Japanese (they all grew up together in Boston’s Chinatown district), so seeing Dazai’s face and immediately not recognizing him was quite refreshing.

But that was when the bell rang, forcing Atsushi, Lucy, and Ryuunosuke to again pick up their bags and binders to head into the classroom, which their teacher had just unlocked with a swift bustling of brass keys.

In a hallway nearby, the school’s unsupervised and grainy security cameras, which, like the eyes of God, nursed a kind of omnipotent seniority over these hallowed halls that all of the school’s dwellers took for granted, the same way we never check to see if the sun was still shining, caught footage of a young boy half running across the east wing hallway on the second floor, his heart slightly thumping like a megaphone inside his chest as he tried to reach his next class, for which he was already five minutes -- very late -- for.

 

. . .

 

A week later, Dazai, almost unbeknownst to the agency he surely exercised to achieve this, found himself amongst Lucy and her friends: a group that highly outnumbered his personal list of friends, to which only Chuuya really belonged and was therefore practically zero since he was an ocean away learning about the War of the Roses and resulting Tudor dynasty. (Pray we do not envy him for learning such exotic subjects, as Dazai’s jealousies laid more in the miles between them, rather than Chuuya’s actual destination or all-engrossing lessons).

It happened during lunchtime. Freshmen and sophomores had lunch at 12:00 PM sharp, so they all tended to convalesce in the large canteen hall that deftly avoided their upperclassmen’s preferred seating arrangements for lunch, which was right next to the microwaves. This arrangement, in retrospect, may seem absurd, but high school called for a natural hierarchy that prioritized antecedence. Big kids got hot food, and freshmen either brought food that didn’t require refrigeration or starved.

Since the semester began Dazai had gone outside to eat his lunch. It was still bright autumn. The leaves from the trees and the diluted sunlight sank their teeth into his skin as he traipsed across the main building’s foyer and sat on a secluded bench, just like when he was in elementary school on the playground. The sharp pulp of the afternoon air swept past him like fairies.

Dazai performed this ritual on the predictable assumption that nobody would ever take notice of his eccentricity. Yet Lucy, whose apple green eyes were sharp and observant, caught onto his anomalous pattern quite easily.

Dazai’s silence in History class intrigued her. They’d gotten a few quizzes back and she’d been able to snag a peek at his test results -- all perfect scores -- so he must’ve been paying some attention to the course despite his supposed nonchalance. Lucy herself asked questions in class and took ambitious notes, but she was never able to get a perfect 100% on any of the quizzes.

His unseen intelligence ramped up her curiosity.

Or maybe he was cheating, but anybody who got away with cheating had an inherent cleverness to them, and thus did not dampen Lucy’s interest.

When Atsushi mentioned that he’d seen Dazai that day in the hallway, Lucy, extrovert as she was, decided to, in perhaps indelicate terms, ‘adopt’ him into their friend group.

This is how most friendships in this topsy-turvy world are made, of course, which undeniably proves, for better or for worse, that annoying people are needed to make the earth go round. Otherwise, nobody would talk to each other.

The picture she had in her mind of this bespectacled dark-haired boy was one of the tormented soul. Atsushi had said Dazai ran away when they’d met eyes, presumably to the east wing to get to another class. As with most retellings of their everyday lives, Lucy took this mild illustration and exaggerated it with airy odors: A jittery encounter. A mysterious yet brilliant fellow peer. A chance at a new friendship -- it was all too romantic. Perhaps he was a kindred spirit!

And so, in the middle of one of his usual romps by which the final destination was always his stoic bench of solitude, Dazai found a redheaded white girl in pixie braids and a worn gingham dress blocking his path.

Thinking she must’ve been standing there for some reason he’d rather not know, he pivoted a little to try and walk past her, but Lucy jumped back and again barred the way to his bench.
“Dazai,” she said suddenly like she was taking attendance.

Dazai frowned. His shoulders slackened. “Yes?”

She placed both her hands on her hips. “We’re in History together,”

“I know,”

“How come you don’t talk?” Lucy tilted her head. “Even when John’s saying such stupid things,”

“You mean, why don’t I talk like you did last week?”

The back of her neck heated slightly. “Yeah! I mean, yes, like me, but also -- just in general.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t talk in general.”

“Sure I do,”

“This is the first time I’ve heard your voice this clearly,”

Dazai, a bit annoyed now, felt his stomach growl for the curry he’d made and packed for himself this morning. “Well,” he announced, trying to subtly move away from the girl. “I talked. I’m very honored that such a beautiful lady paid me this much attention, but I think I’m going to go now,”

Lucy blushed again at him calling her beautiful, -- what a weird boy to say that so carelessly! -- but she was quick enough to grab his sleeve before he scurried away from her sight. Dazai turned to her, staring down at the hand that was slightly gripping his arm.

One of his bandages had gotten loose in the bristle, but he didn’t have much time to notice it because that was when Lucy stated, “Don’t go to your lame bench. Have lunch with my friends and me instead,”

As he processed the words in his mind -- Dazai didn’t appreciate his bench being insulted -- he realized that this was the first time -- aside from when he’d been with Chuuya -- that someone his age invited him to something.

A dozen questions burst into his mind: Did I hear her correctly? Is she just making fun of me? Did John put her up to this? I shouldn’t believe her. This is awkward. I don’t want to be here.

Having a knack for sensing these invisible troubles -- what Lucy called her ‘feminine intuition’ -- the girl released her grip on his sleeve and watched as some of the hardness in his face disappeared over her not touching him anymore.

Dazai was still trying to pinpoint what her motives were: not for one second seeing her harmless invitation to lunch as something genuine, for he was naturally distrustful, and was freshly suffering through the loss of a special best friend, who wasn’t dead, but may as well be as far as the moon by now for how distant Dazai felt he’d gotten. (He was of the unsteady opinion that human bonds were numbered, and therefore necessarily divided -- as numbers are -- whenever a new one was forged, like a mosquito parasite feeding off of blood, or an additional factorial mixed into the equation. He did not yet know love didn’t have to be draining).

He squinted a little at the determinedly stubborn girl, unsure but quite sure that he was unsure.

To Lucy, however, he looked like a skinny boy with a dumb look on his face. And there was only one way to deal with those. She put her hands on her hips again. Power stance. “So hey. Are you gonna eat with my friends or not?”

Dazai hadn’t expected her to renew her invitation (or to say it in such a direct manner). He was frankly at a loss for words, and so he said nothing.

Lucy sighed at his silence. “You really don’t talk much, do you?”

The boy shook his head mechanically.

She then turned on her low heel and gestured for him to follow her. She was afraid he wouldn’t, but, to both their surprise, he did. Like a little soldier following a field marshal, Dazai trailed behind her as she led him back to the cafeteria area, eventually stopping at a big table that had the two boys Dazai had seen talking to Lucy earlier -- Atsushi and Ryuunosuke -- but also a round of unfamiliar faces that made his brain slightly fizzy. They were all looking at him now: one of the blonde girls suddenly freezing midway through putting a piece of chicken in her mouth, the black-haired boy with dark red highlights sitting beside her stifling a snort at the funny look she was now frozen in. There were about nine other people too: strangers he’d occasionally seen wandering around the halls like taffy ghosts but never actually thought he’d talk to, much less eat his lunch with.

Most of them were Japanese like him.

Dazai’s eyes bugged out from behind his glasses.

Lucy had a lot of friends.

Her tinny voice broke him away from his thoughts. She made a humble flourish to him and cleared her throat. “Everyone. This is Dazai.”

Everyone, as addressed, looked from Dazai to Lucy, Lucy to Dazai.

“Dazai?” one of the kids piped up. He had gold-tinted sunglasses and a fashionable yet outmoded cap that film noir detectives wore all the time back in the 50s. It looked silly but it also oddly fit him, in the way teenagers just wore whatever they wanted, and it was alright because they weren’t a complete person yet. His arms were crossed, giving him an almost foreboding aura (for a fourteen-year-old), but the girl who sat beside him -- she had a silk white scarf that matched her blazing cyan hair -- shattered his brooding image when she poked her head close to his and gawked at the table’s newest arrival.

“Dazai?” she squeaked. “Like, the quiet Japanese guy in your History class Dazai?”

“Don’t speak with your mouth full, Tsujimura,” the boy with the cap muttered.

The girl with the cyan hair -- Tsujimura -- didn’t even look at him once she heard this: her eyes never left Dazai’s slim figure, although she did make it a point not to talk anymore in favor of chewing up her food properly and swallowing.

“Yes,” Lucy answered, prompting everyone to spin their gazes back at her. “He’s the one I’ve been talking about,”

Dazai, who, up until now, had had mostly bad experiences regarding other people talking about him behind his back, stiffened.

Lucy put her hands on her hips (again). “He’s really smart. Maybe even smarter than you, Ayatsuji,”

The boy with the half-acceptable/half-uncanny cap scoffed as he took a juice box out of his lunch bag and started shaking it. Tsujimura leaned into his ear and seemed to whisper something to him. A second later Ayatsuji took out another juice box, which had been premeditatedly packed that morning for this exact scenario, and handed it to her, which she took and smiled graciously.

Dazai would’ve probably remained fixated on this odd pair had it not been for Atsushi sitting up from his spot near where Lucy was standing to say, “You should sit down,” He indicated an empty seat right next to where he was on the bench.

Dazai, who seemed to be quite cooperative this afternoon despite all his propensities for the contrary, felt himself take the seat Atsushi offered. He’d barely set his lunchbox down on the table before Lucy, who also had sat down, said to him, “We all hate John too,”

A chorus of general, enthusiastic assent twittered out from everyone’s lips.

Dazai didn’t know how to respond to that. “I never said I hated him,”

The blonde girl who’d been in the middle of eating her chicken supplied, “It’s okay. You can admit it. He called Gin and I fat at volleyball practice. I had to restrain Tachihara from starting a fight with him.”

Two kids -- the black-and-red-haired boy and a girl who strikingly looked like Ryuunosuke -- nodded from their spots at the table.

A guy with dirty blonde hair in a messy ponytail and square-framed glasses set his chopsticks down and said, “You should’ve reported him to the office, Higuchi. That’s a form of harassment,”

Higuchi gave him a sarcastic look. “Even if we reported John for every stupid thing he said or did to the office, the principal and teachers won’t care because John’s mom is on the student board committee, Kunikida.”

Kunikida, who knew this, nodded sympathetically. “I still think it’s worth reporting him,”

“Maybe when you become student council president,” The girl in a stylish bob haircut with a butterfly clip in her hair nudged (or rather, gently kicked) his leg from underneath the table.

Kunikida straightened his posture and puffed out his chest a little. “I know you’re teasing me but I will be president, just wait and see.”

“We’ll all vote for you,” Atsushi gestured shyly to the other side of the table. “Even Dazai. Right?”

At being addressed, Dazai perked his head up. All eyes were on him once again.

“Um,” he said, more than at a little loss for words. “I didn’t even know we had a student council,”

A short silence followed this comment before the entire table erupted into mild hysterics.

Benign as it was, Dazai had never made a group of people laugh before. He’d gotten his mother and father to laugh, as well as Q, Chuuya, Mr. Rimbaud, Mr. Verlaine, Koyou-nii, Agatha, and even Mori sometimes (although whether or not he really thought his nephew hilarious was a different question), but he’d never been amongst a gaggle of expectant listeners who’d burst into almost uproarious laughter over something he’d said.

He wasn’t even trying to be funny, which was why their laughter confused him a little and it unconsciously urged him to start scratching himself underneath his sweater, but he didn’t get to because Lucy suddenly broke away from the collective giggling for a second and gave him a dazzling smile (literally, it was dazzling: she had braces; it was like she’d swallowed a disco ball). She didn’t say anything, and, after smiling, she went right back to laughing just a little longer with everyone, more caught up in the tides of adolescent camaraderie than particularly fixated on the initial ‘joke.’

She didn’t say anything, but her eyes seemed to reach out to Dazai, like an extended hand from the darkness. Welcome, her look seemed to beckon. We’re glad you’re here.

Growing up, it had always been through Chuuya that Dazai met and talked with other kids his age. Even then, they were Chuuya’s friends, not his -- not totally forbidden or maliciously estranged, but Chuuya’s no matter how anyone saw it.

Dazai, who wanted for nothing, had always accepted this and never thought of making friends of his own since he already had one, -- by sheer luck -- and one was enough. (Even if it was some hyperactive, cocky idiot who was dumb enough to leave him for England to talk to rich boys aiming for med school and think it’s perfectly okay).

Dazai felt like sighing, but it was not altogether strained. When he’d taken that hesitant spot at Lucy’s friend’s lunch table, and accidentally made everyone laugh with his mindless comment, he realized having one friend -- having someone like Chuuya -- was never about being ‘enough,’ the same way simply breathing every day did not amount to a life completely lived.

Other people didn’t have to compare.

It wasn’t something that was divided, and therefore scarce, like so many things Dazai had kept away from.

It was, in fact, quite multiplied, and was now so eagerly asking him to join them.

We’re glad you’re here.

It was like a deep, cold well had suddenly alighted: a trembling lantern peering in from above, still uncertain, still unclear, but just enough to catch a glimpse of the bottom.

The way rain pierced the sky and found its way to the golden soil.

II. Dazai Gets A Job

As the weeks and months of first year passed, Dazai got to know more about everybody.

As Atsushi had revealed, everyone in the group had more or less grown up together since most of them lived in or around Boston’s Chinatown district. Ryuunosuke and his twin sister Gin lived with their parents who were both lawyers and eccentric workaholics who spent more time in their respective law firms than in their own house with their children. The Nakajimas were family friends, so Ryuu and Gin spent a lot of time at Atsushi’s house, where he lived with his single father and adopted sister Kyouka. It was also where Lucy was currently lodging since she’d started high school in Boston. Her parents were divorced and so she’d had to move a lot between Canada and America her whole life, eventually ending up here since Atsushi and Ryuu’s dads were college friends of Lucy’s mother, who she visited on the weekends in New York City. (Her father lived on Prince Edward Island as a journalist with a new wife and children that Lucy didn’t know much about). Since adults have a tendency to corral children of the same age together whenever the opportunity arose, Lucy, Atsushi, Gin, and Ryuu inevitably got to know each other very early on in their lives and had been friends for as long as they could remember. Lucy and the two boys were closer though, because Gin had been into sports since she was little and therefore had more of a bond with her teammates. Her brother always stayed at home because of his delicate health, so most of her adolescence was spent either by his bedside or hanging out with Higuchi or Tachihara, who’d been with her in basketball, badminton, swimming, soccer, and now their high school’s volleyball team (the Black Lizards). Tsujimura was also really athletic, -- despite only being a sophomore, she was accepted into the school’s senior track & field team with no problem and her coaches praised her more often than not -- so that’s how she and her oldest friend Ayatsuji, who was usually antisocial, joined the group. Kunikida, Yosano, Edgar, and Ranpo were also a year older, but they had all gone to the same middle school. Thus, everyone’s families more or less knew each other: “We Japanese, we have to stick together,” Atsushi’s father would always say, and he was right.

Lucy and Edgar were, of course, the outliers in this Japanese bunch.

Edgar had been born and raised in Boston but had spent most of his early life with his uncle due to his parents both being away for work. They were both well-known stage and musical actors who traveled the world to perform and film, hence their only son being named after a Shakespearean character. Because of this original absence, Edgar had been a lonesome child who had kept to himself, but that all ended when he moved back to Boston after his father suffered an on-set accident that prevented him from doing the same action and thriller scenes his job made him famous for, so, he opted to stay at home with Edgar while his wife spent most of her time overseas filming the next blockbuster. Edgar was closer to his father because of this, and also because his father used to be drinking buddies with Ranpo’s dad, Fukuzawa, back when Mr. Poe and he had accidentally become friends while working grunt jobs for a restaurant during college. Since the two young boys met in grade school, Ranpo and he had been inseparable due to their shared love of mysteries and detective novels. So, in a way, Edgar had been sucked into the group as much as Lucy had been, in that chance somehow managed to get him where he was now, and, fathoming its miracle, he wouldn’t have changed anything.

In Lucy’s case, however, it was a tad different. Both her parents had been born in Canada and went to America for university. After Lucy’s mother Clara graduated, she had a brief two-year internship in Salinas, California, where she met the Steinbecks through the local grapevine since they were doing similar work in economics. They stayed in contact longer after Lucy’s mother finished her internship and married Hugh John Montgomery back in PEI, and that was how Lucy grew up with news of the Steinbecks, Hawthorne, and Twains, who were all big names in US production companies and businesses, with the Steinbecks being the richest due to their roots in agriculture and livestock on top of the wine business John Steinbeck (the first John Steinbeck, AKA present John’s great-great-great grandfather) started all on his own over a century ago.

Lucy grew up hearing all about these three families -- and their trio of esteemed eldest sons John, Nathaniel, and Mark -- and came to regard them as like bothersome, overachieving cousins. Her mother’s initial relationship with the Steinbecks had already gone sour (apparently John’s father had had a messy affair with one of Clara’s best friends), yet, due to the already twisted and mechanical conventions that brought people together -- on a whim, by destiny, who was to know? -- the Montgomerys stayed perfunctorily associated with these three prominent families as if they’d enmeshed themselves so deeply into their web-like acquaintanceships to the point where any possibility of disentanglement was more troublesome than not (or, at least, that’s what they told themselves). Even Lucy’s parents, who barely ever talked to each other anymore after separating, still each kept up their cursory correspondences with the Steinbecks, Hawthornes, and Twains, with the three eldest boys who weren’t really part of the family (but kind of were) having just the same probability in receiving a Christmas card from Clara and her ex-husband than Lucy did. And so, John, Nathaniel, and Mark, whom Lucy barely remembered engaging in subpar playdates with through the years, remained in the shadowy backgrounds of her everyday life, like weeds overgrown in a long-dead garden miles away from a fruitful orchard. Unlike her parents, Lucy saw no point in staying in touch with the three families, or their precocious sons, her mother’s past history with them be damned, and so had cut them off as much as she could as the years went on, only to have this boundary shattered once she discovered the high school her mother had graciously enrolled her in was the same one where those three soon-to-be patriarchs were also attending, with John as their rattan leader.

This unwanted but solidified connection was why Lucy herself seemed to bear an even deeper grudge towards John than her other peers, who simply disliked him because he was dislikable and microaggressive.

Dazai didn’t tell her that he’d also sort of grown up with John and the two other boys. When Lucy had told him about her strained relationship with them, flashbacks of when those same three boys would torment him as children before his mother pulled him out of that wretched school drizzled in his mind. He’d since blotted out those memories and kept them locked in a rusted tin box in the back of his head: He knew that if he told her, or anybody, really, she’d be sympathetic and irate, which was alright, but it wasn’t kind.

What good was there in lingering on the anger and injustice of it all? Anything Lucy had to say or felt, Dazai already had storming inside him since he was nine years old.

Despite being the newest addition to the friend group, though, Dazai got along well with them all. It surprised him, of course, and he found himself letting his guard down more and more as the months flew by.

One time around Halloween season, they’d all gone to Edgar’s large house for a horror movie marathon. Because of cruel luck and their school’s especial thoughtlessness, their midterms were starting the very next day -- November 1st -- and nobody wanted to study and was all too thrilled to nod along when Ranpo suggested a comprehensive to-watch list comprised of J-Horror and ‘classic’ scary movies made before any of them had been born for Sunday night.

They’d just been in the middle of watching Rosemary’s Baby when, at a very suspenseful scene, Dazai noticed Kunikida sitting under their group’s amassed blanket fort quivering in fear and holding onto his long ponytail for comfort, to which Dazai, unbeknownst even to himself, decided to lean over to him and whisper, “Ehh, Kunikida-senpai, who’s that behind you?”

Kunikida screamed. Bowls of popcorn sprang up like jack-in-the-boxes. Somebody hastily turned on the lights and paused the movie. Tsujimura, who had fallen asleep on Ayatsuji’s shoulder, jumped up and groggily looked around saying, “Wha . . .?” There was some noise in the other room, so Edgar went out to tell his dad everything was fine and Ranpo followed him with Edgar’s pet raccoon Karl in his arms. Atsushi immediately started cleaning up all the spilt junk food and wrappers that had now been revealed by the lights to be scattered all over the floor. Ryuunosuke had previously been in the bathroom and had now walked in on everyone gawking at Kunikida, who’d been reduced to a covered shape trembling behind Dazai and had pulled the other boy’s sweater vest over his own head in terror.

After they got Kunikida to calm down and explain what happened, Ayatsuji let out a laugh and raised his soda drink in Dazai’s direction. “You were holding out on us,” he smirked. “I knew you weren’t just some shy quiet kid. So now you’ve shown your true colors,”

Dazai felt everyone’s attention on him after Ayatsuji said this. Again, the urge to scratch underneath his sleeve possessed him, but instead, he heard himself snort stupidly and let go of the laughter he hadn’t realized he’d been suppressing.

Hearing this blasphemous giggling, Kunikida poked his head out of his hiding spot and glared at him. “You bastard! If you’re going to call me your senpai, at least show some respect!” he shrieked, but there was hardly any bite to it since his teeth were still chattering like xylophone keys. Yosano put an extra blanket on his shoulders to calm his agitated nerves.

Dazai, perhaps feeling bolder than usual, winked and stuck out his tongue, as if he was saying, “Gotcha!” and that made Kunikida even more flustered. At this point everyone was laughing, telling Kunikida to calm down and take the joke, and pretty soon they were back on their horror movie marathon.

However, soon afterwards, the high of made-to-be-scary cinema, as well as all the candy, pop, and sweets they’d consumed during the hangout, dissipated out of all of them like high energy through an overworked drain, and it was Tachihara and Higuchi who asked to go home first since the stress of the morning’s upcoming midterms had finally hit them. They also had volleyball practice bright and early, but Gin didn’t seem to share the same anxiety as her two teammates did despite all of them having an English exam at 9:00 AM.

“I’m not too bad at it,” Gin explained, gathering some of the paper plates on the ground with half-eaten pizzas on them.

“She’s being modest,” Ryuu rolled his eyes, also now helping with the plates. “Gin’s a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to academics. Our parents don’t know what she’s going to do for college,”

“You’re one to talk, brother,” Gin muttered, raising an eyebrow.

Ryuu opened his mouth to protest but that was when Atsushi butted in. “She’s right. Both of you got the smarts in the family. You’ve always been in the school’s top ten ever since we were kids, after all.”

Both siblings’ faces turned a slight shade of humble pink.

Dazai knew this. Out of the entire group, the Akutagawas had undoubtedly grown up with the most competent education since their parents had paid for the best private tutors and schools ever since they were young. Not that it made either of them happy. They’d both had to plead to be in a ‘normal’ high school with their friends instead of a private academy with total strangers for months until their parents relented.

Everyone in the friend group tended to regard academics as a high priority, and it showed too. Atsushi was well-versed in coding and had dreams of studying computer science at one of Boston’s universities. Ryuu, on top of being good at everything like Gin, also showed a unique promise in biology and environmental science. Yosano was similarly great at Chemistry and wanted to be a doctor. Kunikida was set to be class president and representative, with goals of studying pharmacy once he graduated high school.

On top of this, Dazai had also learned that Ayatsuji and Tsujimura were age-old rivals since their preschool days, with the former dominating academics and the latter practically being born as a star athlete, which more or less kept them on equal footing, yet both were always looking for a way to steal the upper hand.

Ranpo ironically didn’t care much for school, (“Why should I work so hard? All for a 9-5 job after college? Sounds boring”) but he still earned high grades along with Edgar, who, by contrast, was very dedicated to his academics. They studied together all the time and could frequently be found at a corner in the library, but often it would be Ranpo eating snacks (even though those weren’t allowed) and playing on his Nintendo Switch while Edgar had his nose buried in a 500-page textbook on criminology.

The only ones who didn’t have as impressive grades were Tachihara, Higuchi, and Lucy. Lucy didn’t care about her consistent 60s and 70s since there were no consequences to it other than a few bothersome comments from teachers about how she “could do better” and “was wasting her potential.”

Tachihara and Higuchi, however, had Asian parents to come home to and were therefore not as carefree. Hence why Tachihara and Higuchi were the first ones to recall school’s all-too-crushing stresses near the end of that lackadaisical horror movie night, even when they had sworn at the beginning of the evening not to worry about it anymore and just have fun.

This vow was halfhearted, as everyone knows that when one is a student, one can never really have fun. Getting an education was its own kind of Faustian contract with the devil.

Especially so when one is a student ranking amongst the average scorers on the roster.

They watched Pulse and decided to call it a night. As everyone checked the bus schedules or contacted their parents to pick them up, Tachihara and Higuchi’s defeated faces seemed to become more sunken, as if each second that ticked closer to the next morning’s exam time was sapping away all their strength. Ayatsuji and Tsujimura had already called their ride in advance, so they had left first. Everyone else had migrated over to the foyer save for Edgar, who was checking up on his father.

“You guys are bumming me out,” Ranpo cringed. He was sleeping over, so he’d changed into his tanuki-themed pyjamas. “Geez, are you two really that bad at English?”

“Don’t tease us, please,” Tachihara groaned, putting his backpack over one shoulder. “My Dad’s already threatening to take me off all my sports to focus on school,”

Higuchi sighed in sympathy. “My parents won’t stop reminding me how my little sister’s getting better grades than me, so I feel you,”

“Why don’t you get a tutor?” Kunikida suggested, always the problem-solver.

Tachihara and Higuchi met eyes, then proceeded to ponder over this idea in sync.

While they were doing this, Atsushi piped up, “Aren’t you and Yosano tutors, Kunikida?”

Yosano yawned from the other side of the room. “We are, but Kunikida only teaches mathematics, and I do sciences. Ayatsuji used to do History and English, but then --” She rolled her eyes. “-- Mr. Genius quit all his extra-curriculars after freshman year,”

“Now why did he do that,” Ryuu said in a tone that made it obvious that he already knew the answer but was smart enough to indulge Yosano in her gossiping.

Yosano gave him a look that clearly communicated she knew what he was doing, but nevertheless said, “He says it’s so he can focus more on school,”

“Okay but nobody actually does that,” Lucy snorted.

“Yes, they do, Luce. You’re just white.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

Ignoring them, Yosano continued, “Emphasis on says. I don’t believe him. He’s not focusing more on school. He doesn’t need to! He’s always top of the class!”

“That’s true,” Kunikida joined in. “Ayatsuji practically gets perfect marks for everything. He’s definitely set to go to a good university once he graduates.”

“So why would he quit all his extra-curriculars? Wouldn’t that just mess up his CV?” Tachihara piped up.

“Maybe he’s trying to get in some volunteer hours?” Atsushi said.

“Maybe he’s prioritizing his mental health,” Kunikida offered.

“You’re both wrong,” Yosano shook her head. “Also, to be clear: he quit all his scholarly extra-curriculars. Student council, tutoring, debate club, yearbook committee: all gone, but he kept his sports.”

“That’s true,” said Higuchi. “Ayatsuji still comes to some of our practices, but --”

“I saw him with the sophomore baseball team earlier,” Tachihara interrupted, earning him a frown from Higuchi. “They just finished warmup,”

Dazai hadn’t said anything during this entire exchange. “What a well-balanced guy,” he now commented drily.

“Please,” Lucy said, a girlish hand coming up to cover her giggling mouth. Her face seemed to twist into an almost evil grin. She locked knowing eyes with Yosano before continuing, “Ayatsuji quit to focus, all right, but not on sports,”

“Oh yeah.” Yosano smirked. “He doesn’t come for the practice,”

“Not this again,” Kunikida sighed. “You can’t just make assumptions about people, you know.”

The two girls dismissed him with a synchronous roll of their eyes.

Dazai must’ve looked incredibly lost because Higuchi gave some context: “Everyone thinks Ayatsuji has a crush on Tsujimura --”

“Not everyone!” Kunikida interrupted.

“-- That’s why he’s still doing sports and joining new teams just to be near her.” Higuchi said, ignoring him. “The genius and the track star, but said track star certainly didn’t drop any extra-curriculars for him . . .”

“That’s so cute!” Atsushi, a hopeless romantic, held his hands together in excitement. “I mean, since we were kids it was kind of obvious Ayatsuji liked her.”

“Remember that time nobody would talk to him because he liked reading those long complicated novels? Even in preschool? When Tsujimura heard from the other class she marched right into our classroom and told everyone to ‘be friends with Yukito. He’s not that weird!’ She practically dragged him by his collar to the front of the class and forced him to introduce himself.”

Everyone chuckled at the childhood memory, but its cheeriness went flat after Tachihara let out a disheartened sigh.

“So Ayatsuji’s not in tutoring anymore,” He pouted. “Great,”

“There’re other tutors,”

“Yeah, but we don’t know any of them,” Tachihara said. Higuchi nodded. “Besides, most of the tutors are juniors and seniors anyway. They don’t really give a shit about helping their younger peers, they just want the money.”

Dazai’s head perked up. “You can get paid for being a tutor?”

“Kunikida and I get $11 per student we help,” Yosano said, placing a hand on her hip. “It’s not even minimum wage,”

$11 per student was just fine. Even if it wasn’t much, it would be enough to get Mori off his back about getting a job. Dazai asked more questions. “How do you become a tutor? Can freshmen really not get in?”

Yosano folded her arms, catching on. “Well, technically you could get in, but you’d need permission from your guardian and recommendation from a teacher or a senior tutor already on the job. I don’t mind bringing you up to Ango -- he’s our leader -- since he’s been stressed about how all the humanities tutors are leaving despite the high demand,”

“Why’s everyone leaving?”

“Because nobody knows how to write essays.”

“Guilty,” mumbled Tachihara and Higuchi in defeated sync.

“And most of the humanities-related requests we get at the writing center are English essays.” Yosano went on. “There’s currently only one tutor for it, but he’s really unapproachable, so no one ever sends in anything for help. I don’t know why Ango hired him.”

Kunikida disapproved of this flimsy characterization of a fellow tutor. “Fyodor’s smart in his own way,” he said haughtily.

“Yeah, as in sociopath,” Ranpo mumbled. “I get having a vampire phase, but he’s taking it waaaaay too far.” Everyone snickered. Kunikida took the liberty of being noticeably annoyed.

“You should be a tutor for English, Dazai!” Atsushi said once everyone had stopped laughing. “You’d be really good at it with your grades.”

All eyes were on him again. Dazai folded his arms. “But English isn’t my first language,”

Ryuunosuke snorted. “That won’t be a problem. Everyone knows native English speakers are the worst when it comes to their own language,”

“Your English is fine,” Ranpo agreed. “More than fine. Great. You should sign up.”

At the compliment, Dazai physically felt something in his brain malfunction. In an instant, he remembered all the times John had made fun of him in elementary for his accent and awkward English. He’d gotten better over the years thanks to his books, he knew that, but was he confident enough to become an English tutor? And not just a regular English tutor, a freshman English tutor?

The doubt sank its fangs into his skin, drawing blood. It must’ve shown on his face since Kunikida was quick to add, “I-I’ll also put in a good word for you if you apply. I’ve heard from Lucy that you’re very good with literature,”

“More than the juniors and seniors!” Lucy supplied. “He’s really well-read too. Before class, he’s always reading something until the teacher arrives, like a book quickie or something.”

Dazai disliked the phrasing and was about to say as much when Tachihara interrupted, “If that’s the case, then you should be a tutor! And, since we’re friends, I get first dibs on the English lessons. I’ll always request you when I ask for writing help.”

“That won’t save you from failing our midterm tomorrow though,” Higuchi deadpanned. Her words were like an anvil falling on Tachihara’s shoulders. He slumped in surrender.

A chorus of laughs again.

The next morning, right after a very easy English midterm (for some, not for others), Dazai went to the writing center and picked up an application form to be a tutor.

 

. . .

 

His uncle seemed surprised yet altogether pleased that he finally found a semi-decent paying job -- and on the school campus too! How convenient.

Mori had no qualms signing the registration papers -- for once he was happy to serve in his role as guardian -- and even proceeded to exaggeratedly express his support towards his indifferent nephew.

“This is wonderful, Dazai,” Mori approved. “I was starting to worry you wouldn’t find work. It’s been over two months into school and I hadn’t seen you applying for any jobs,”

“I did apply, but they all rejected me,” Dazai said, half-lying. He’d looked at job listings online and ads in newspapers, but literally all of them wanted applicants fifteen years or older; the ones that didn’t specify an age range never got back to him, presumably because he lacked experience and that he was still really young.

Mori scoffed. “When I was your age I got a job fairly quickly. You ought to have tried harder, or at least applied for more spots.”

Dazai stayed quiet.

Eating this silence, Mori went on, “In any case, kudos on the tutor idea. How did you find the posting?”

“My friends suggested it,”

“Are they tutors too?”

“Yeah, but for sciences,”

Mori frowned at this. “And you? What will you be tutoring?”

“English,” Dazai mumbled, looking down at his shoes.

“Hmm.” Taking a pen from the kitchen counter, Mori put his signature on the application form’s bottom line then extended the papers out to Dazai. Before he could take it, Mori snatched them back again, forcing his nephew to meet his eyes. “If you can, do get a job tutoring for maths and sciences like your friends. I told you that since you’re older now, you need to consider your future, thus you have to keep your CV in mind. Take it from me Dazai, ‘English’ won’t get you anywhere, much less a decent career once you really start working,”

Dazai stayed quiet. He reached for the papers again, and this time Mori let him have them.

He was turning to leave when he heard his uncle’s voice once more, “Your mother and I have talked and she wants you to go to university. Of course, my earlier offer of being my assistant once you graduate high school is still on the table if you don’t want to go to college --”

“I want to go,” Dazai blurted out, knowing he sounded pathetic.

Mori frowned at him, annoyed at the interruption.

“I want to go,” Dazai repeated, fingers digging into the sheets in his hand. “I don’t want to be your -- a doctor’s assistant all my life,”

“Well, certainly, that’s fair,” Mori nodded. “But, you should know, and you mustn’t tell your mother I told you this, but there isn’t much money for you to go to college. Your mother and I are doing everything we can -- we’ve started looking into what your father left you, but, like I said, you should know it isn’t much. You’re likely going to have to apply for student loans and eventually pay it all off once you get a job. It’s doable, but being in debt is never a good thing. You might have to work years before you can pay it all back,” The man’s voice suddenly turned serious, as if he wanted his nephew to carve out his next few words in stone. “Do you understand? That means you have to have a high-paying job. Have you thought about what you want to do?”

This was the first time Mori had asked something like this to him so directly. For the past five years, Mori’d never shown much interest in Dazai’s life -- or his future -- unless it had somewhat of an impact on his own. Their interactions were strung together through their mutual responsibilities, through Q and Tane, and through the unchangeable fact that they lived under the same roof, breathed the same air, played house, played family, in a place neither of them considered home. But that was all.

“I . . . don’t know,” Dazai said after a while. It was an honest answer.

Mori sighed, as if to say, “Of course, what should I have expected from you?” Crossing his legs on the dining chair he sat on, he said, “Dazai, you’re a smart boy. If you don’t want to be a doctor’s assistant, why not become your own doctor? Your mother would benefit a lot from having a son for a doctor, we don’t know how long her illness will last.” This Mori said with an air of blame that made Dazai’s stomach sink.

He was right. He would be able to do more for his mother as a doctor. Hadn’t Tane even hinted as much when she’d told him not to waste his gifts? “You have the genius for it,” she’d said, meaning he should put it to use.

There was no room for being selfish.

Dazai wanted to push the thought down and let it suffocate underwater, but it came anyway: Maybe he could even save his mom. Make her her old self again. Before everything happened. Before his father killed himself and they had to move to America.

“Or a lawyer?” Mori continued, ignorant to Dazai’s ballerina mind. “Maybe a businessman like your father?”

All of these potential career paths felt remote and far away -- possible, yet so distant, like the moon, like the bottom of a pool -- before Dazai even really let himself think any deeper about them. He found himself nodding robotically, if only to appease his uncle for the moment.

It worked. With another sigh and a wave of a dismissive hand, Mori let Dazai go back to his room. He wasn’t under any delusions or hopes that he’d inspired something patient, yet dormant, from within his nephew that would now motivate him to dedicate himself to rewarding ambitions, but he at least wished the boy would take his advice.

Dazai turned and left. Mori watched him walk away.

English.

The thought of it brought dry bemusement to the man’s mind.

 

. . .

 

Dazai got the job without any problems. The senior leader, Ango, was surprisingly welcoming, if not a bit on the strict side. Yosano informed him that Ango was a workaholic; he was addicted to caffeine, stayed up late most nights, and spent more time on-campus than anyone else in the entire student body. (“It’s like he’s already in college. Or a government worker!”). On top of being in charge of the writing center, Ango was in numerous clubs, organizations, committees, and extra-curricular groups that dominated his entire life. “He might be even more stressed out than Kunikida,” Yosano joked. “At least Doppo sleeps,”

Nevertheless, despite Ango’s insane drive to accomplish everything all at once, he (thankfully) didn’t expect nearly the same dedication from his peers and employees. With Dazai, he even seemed to be especially accommodating due to his being still a freshman and one of the only willing students who consented to tutor English, which was always at such a high demand that the writing center couldn’t keep up with it.

On his first day, Ango had even checked in on Dazai during his tutoring sessions with other students to see if he had any questions or to remind him to take a break once in a while. “Make sure not to overwork yourself,” Ango chastised, but there wasn’t any real weight to his words since behind his glasses were very prominent and heavy eyebags.

Dazai liked him. And he surprisingly liked his job too.

He didn’t take Mori’s advice to switch over to maths and sciences like Kunikida and Yosano. It was mostly because the day he was accepted Ango emphatically thanked him head to toe for signing up to tutor English since they were so short-staffed, so Dazai’d felt obligated to stay on considering they’d hired him so easily.

The other reason was that he was at that age when defiance against the authorities that nurtured you -- or, in this case, Mori, if he even deserved to be an ‘authority’ to begin with -- was as thrilling as it was a pursuit for that thing all humans like to call ‘identity.’ Dazai was slowly coming to realize the importance of making his own decisions -- with or without his uncle’s blessings or permission -- and it felt good. More than good. It felt like some things were finally his.

So he became an English tutor. It wasn’t hard to adjust to the new work schedule at all, and Dazai found himself looking forward to the sessions, which was especially astonishing because he’d thought his natural antisocialism would deter his performance as a tutor -- a tutor for students who were oftentimes older than him and were more or less complete strangers he knew nothing about. When he was teaching or editing someone’s paper and making suggestions, he found it simple, almost like discovering a hidden reflex, and he had little to no difficulties being friendly with others even if they weren’t especially friendly themselves, because he’d come to the intensely validating conclusion that he, despite only starting to learn English when he was nine, was better at it than the kids who’d lived in Boston all their lives. His friends had been right.

Perhaps it was because native language speakers always took fluency for granted, and therefore went through most of life unbothered by little details like proper punctuation or grammar. Dazai, on the other hand, had studied English almost obsessively: When others would hold natural-flowing conversations every day, he would be alone in his room, boring his eyes onto an English book and willing himself to learn to talk like the characters in the pages did.

Now, as dozens upon dozens of native English speakers came to him for help on a language they’d always spoke, always wielded, always depended on, and was now shocked to have had the rug pulled from under them, it was feverishly vindicating, and Dazai seemed to almost bask in it. It was his small enjoyment, getting to work as a tutor, and with every time he (politely) corrected somebody on their spelling or essay structure, or pointed out something in a novel most people wouldn’t have seen before, those early days when he’d first moved to America seemed to flutter away like noiseless, pristine butterflies merging their wings with silver clouds.

He was good at what he did. More than he’d let himself think before.

Tutoring gave him a sense of stability he’d never felt. He felt like a grownup, having so many responsibilities, which admittedly wasn’t glamorous, but it was rewarding with every student he helped and every compliment he got from Ango. It felt like when he took care of Q, but somewhat different.

This felt like it was all his own.

Dazai’s one dread, however, was that one day John, Mark, or Nathaniel would come to the writing center and be assigned to him for tutoring, and, illogical as it was, he’d be reduced to a stuttering, clueless child once again, standing in front of an entire classroom who looked nothing like him and made sure he knew it.

But, thankfully, none of the three ever came during the times Dazai had a shift (or at all, for that matter), so his baseless yet all-too-real fears soon dissolved with the laxity of a peach pill on a swollen tongue.

After a while, he stopped looking over his shoulder any time he heard someone come in for essay help. His shoulders relaxed. He scratched his wrists less.

Sometimes there were slow periods when the writing center was basically empty, with only one or two students showing up every thirty minutes for assignment help. Usually they only needed clarification on sentence structure or Chicago Manual Style, so Dazai barely spent a quarter of an hour with each. In humdrum times like these, he’d either read a book or screw around on his phone. (He had a lot of word games. He was on Level 456 on Word Cookies).

He was doing exactly that -- 457 cleared! -- one particular day when he suddenly got a text from Chuuya that felt like a mountain of rocks sliding down on his skull:

“So uh. Shirase’s my boyfriend now.”

Dazai immediately grabbed his backpack, locked himself in the staff room, and called Chuuya despite the time zone differences.

“Hello?”

“Chibi, what the fuck,”

“Haah?”

“You got a boyfriend and you didn’t tell me?!”

“I literally just told you. You’re so dramatic. Aren’t you on a shift -- ?”

“Okay but you didn’t tell me exactly when it happened, which was --?”

“I dunno. Like, yesterday,”

“Oh my God, you’re killing me.”

“Like I said: dramatic,”

“What happened?”

To Dazai’s minimal horror, he could hear Chuuya’s smile in his voice on the other end. “Well . . . we’ve been hanging out a lot. I’ve been to his house a couple times --”

“-- You’ve been to his house??”

“Yes. Chill.”

“Why didn’t you tell me??”

“I guess I forgot,”

“You’re so stupid.”

“Hey!”

“So mean too.”

“Oh, I’m the mean one?”

“How do you just forget to mention that?! And now you’re dating?”

The other boy’s laugh tickled against Dazai’s ear. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“How does that even work.”

“I told you! We’ve been hanging out a lot, he confessed, and I --”

“He confessed?!” Dazai frowned severely. “When did that ha --”

“I think about a week ago?”

“A week ago?!”

“He caught me after school and told me in the front courtyard,”

“That’s so lame!”

“Shut up I kinda . . . I dunno, . . . I think it was kind of cute. He asked me out right after,”

“And you said yes?”

“No shit, peach flower boy,”

Dazai felt like screaming but he didn’t know why. “S-So now you’re . . . Boyfriends?”

Chuuya laughed again. It sounded like Christmas bells. “Yes, dumbass. We went out twice, --”

“Twi --?”

“-- And yesterday he asked me to be his boyfriend, so I said yes,”

“Just like that?”

“What, did I have to consult with you first to check if it was okay?”

“Yes that’s how best friends work,”

“Oh so you’d tell me when you were dating somebody too, right?”

Dazai opened his mouth but no words came out. Shit. Chuuya’d given him a taste of his own medicine.

“Hello?”

“I . . .”

To his surprise, Chuuya snorted in amusement. “Exactly. I knew you were already in a relationship,”

“Wait -- what?”

“A month ago you accidentally butt-dialed me and I heard a woman’s voice giggling. You called her Yosano-senpai?”

Dazai blew air out of his nose. Chuuya really was so dense sometimes. “Oh, no, I’m not dating her.”

“What? But you’ve mentioned her a couple times,”

Is that how humans act when they’re dating people? “She’s just a friend. She’s in the grade above me. She’s a tutor too,”

Chuuya’s voice took on a tone of mischief. “She sounds great. I bet she must be smart and pretty too. Soooo . . . why haven’t you asked her out?”

“Why would I?” Dazai was genuinely confused.

“Well you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but,” Chuuya paused, as if relishing in what he was about to say. “Then that would mean I got into a relationship first between the two of us,” Dazai could see him sticking his tongue out mockingly when he added, “Beat you.”

A bit of silence passed, but then both boys burst out laughing. All the tension in Dazai’s body deflated, and, strangely enough, he felt better. “Yeah, I guess you were,” he acceded easily once he got his stomach to stop cramping. “But just because you were first doesn’t mean you’re automatically a winner, you know. Your new boyfriend might turn out to be a shitass.” (This said with an adjunct stubbornness). “Meanwhile I’ll be dating someone when you realize his shitassery way too late so I’ll have to leave my beloved soulmate to comfort you through your first pathetic heartbreak,”

“Heh, fuck off. Who says I need you for that? And Shirase isn’t a shitass,”

“Bet,”

“He isn’t! I have great taste in guys,”

“Careful, you might jinx it. He might be really weird and ask you to use a British accent during sex,”

Dazai had barely registered what he’d said before the ugly, ugly, hideous thought of Shirase and Chuuya having sex came to his head, the way a dead frog floated up to the pond’s surface.

“I dunno,” Chuuya mused, oblivious. “Maybe I’ll find it hot. We’ll see.”

The dead frog contorted. Its mouth opened, the tongue hung out, swaying like a pendulum, like a boomerang, like an inevitable, certain bridge on the horizon one won’t just cross, but will have to cross eventually.

Probably happily, as well.

Pleasurably.

The words “We’ll see” reverberated in Dazai’s head, along with all its miniscule, universal suggestions, -- suggestions he had to look for and pick up, whereas others just had them in their pockets, like keys, or dust bunnies -- when he heard a gentle yet firm banging on the staff room door.

“Dazai?” Kunikida called from the other side. “Are you in there?”

His voice was loud enough for Chuuya to have heard it. “Uh oh,” he teased. “Dazai’s in trouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuble,”

“Shut up. I hate you,”

“I hate you too. Later, delinquent.”

Dazai hung up then went to open the door, but that was when he heard the sound of keys turning and the door opened by itself, revealing a flustered Kunikida standing a few feet away from him. “You’ve already had your 15-minute break!” he said, hands going to his hips. Over his shoulder Dazai could see Ango from the front desk turning his head at the commotion.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

Kunikida, goody-two-shoes that he was, froze. After a second, he finally gave Dazai one last glare before he turned to Ango with a pacifist smile and said, “Nothing! I was just telling Dazai his break was over and he should get back to work,” (This he said through gritted teeth, which was a sign for Dazai to get his ass up and just be grateful Kunikida didn’t rat him out this time).

With an ever appreciative smile, Dazai gathered his things and swept past Kunikida, giving him a small pat on the shoulder as thank you for not getting him in trouble. Quietly, he made his way to his desk station, where a student was patiently sitting with her laptop that had a blank Google Docs page pulled up. She had mid-length jet black hair that framed her face well, which was what Dazai noticed first. Just from a quick lookover of her aqua green sweater and white skirt that showed off her lithe form, anyone would naturally come to the honest conclusion: She was very pretty.

“Hello,” Dazai greeted. “I’ll be your tutor for today. How can I help you?”

“Hi,” the student smiled. “My name is Sasaki Nobuko,”

III. Azure Rosewater

After that first meeting, she’d come by the writing center almost everyday with a new assignment issue or questions about essay writing. She’d always asked for Dazai specifically, which is something everyone had picked up on with loosely hidden amusement. No one was nosy enough to tease Dazai about it, but with each time Sasaki turned up after school and then left hours later feeling “so grateful” that she’d “learned something new today,” the knowing smiles and side-eyes from his coworkers were hard to miss.

He knew what they were thinking. He took note of what they were thinking.

It didn’t help that Kunikida in particular barely tried to hide his fervent curiosity, -- he kept saying indirect, vague things like, “How did it go today with Miss Sasaki?” or “Make sure to be respectful to her,” -- which at first Dazai thought was just him being kind, and therefore dear, but now it was a little annoying.

Their knowing suspicions weren’t senseless either. He liked Sasaki. She was really charming and, as Dazai soon realized, very smart. Her grades were close to perfect and she was particularly interested in social psychology, which was an interest none of the other students who came to the writing center particularly shared. (Yet at the same time Sasaki claimed to be struggling with all of her subjects and was extremely grateful for all the help Dazai had given her).

When the second semester rolled around, because life does have that bothersome tendency to happen, they ended up being in the same physics class together, and so they spent even more time in each other’s company.

Pretty soon she’d already invited him over to her house a couple times to study, but when Dazai came over she barely paid attention to anything school-related and instead asked him random questions or showed him some of the things in her room. Thankfully, she never asked about his family or home situation, but instead about arbitrary things Dazai’d never thought about before like “What would you say is your favorite flower?” or “Do you watch more movies or TV shows?” He hardly knew how to answer most of the time, and whenever he did, he knew what he’d said was lame, but Sasaki never complained about it.

Effortlessly, she’d sort of become part of the friend group as well. She had her own circle (she was quite popular), but occasionally she’d sit with Dazai and his friends during lunch or converse with them in between classes. She was funny. All of them liked her, and why not?

He liked Sasaki too.

It came to be that the school was hosting a fundraiser (something about trees, it was always something about trees), which turned out to also be a dance. This turned the entire campus upside down.

For the weeks leading up to the event, all Dazai heard about were people’s plans to ask someone out or which new couples had finally gotten together last weekend so that meant they were definitely going to the dance together and everyone, just like the infinite milieu of teenagers from millenia before, could stare at them in conflicted wonder. If the talk wasn’t about who was dating who, it was about who wasn’t dating who, coupled with shallow assumptions as to why that might be. The kids in the upper classes were really abuzz with it: rumors about crushes, certain heartbreaks, and messy breakups circulated all across the school to the extent that even the terrified, nervous freshmen heard them and thus became obsessed with mimicking their superiors in their tomfoolery.

One day the general mania was brought up (once again) in class and John crudely dubbed it “cuffing season,” but Dazai didn’t really know what he meant by that.

As expected, John had already secured a date -- and with a sophomore girl too! Most of the freshmen guys seemed to be more ecstatic about it than John even was. Whenever they had a moment to spare, they’d feel the need to comment on how “He’s really lucky” and “Maybe they’ll actually start dating for real” and other such colorful wonderings of clueless adolescent boys for which there’s no need to repeat here.

Dazai found it all a bit weird. Sure, he was curious sometimes -- mostly baffled (“Oh huh. They’re a thing now? I never knew he liked her? They never seemed to speak outside of class?”) -- but it was really fun when one of the girls would rush up to their cafeteria table, jumping up and down in a flush of eager excitement before saying, “You’ll never guess who just asked out who.” (Although it was mostly Lucy or Yosano who got all the hot gossip. God knew how they got it so fast, and so consistently too).

Other than the strange entertainment it granted, Dazai would’ve otherwise stayed out of the whole thing. If the point was to ask someone you liked out, that would require someone he liked, which was nobody.

He soon found out things weren’t that simple though.

The first incident happened when the school just announced the charity dance over the PA system. They’d timed it so that everyone was in between walking to their next class so most of the student body could pause in the hallways and listen to the news.

Dazai had been at the library reading Macbeth for English class when he heard the broadcast. Aside from getting an immediate phone notification from Lucy screaming in the group chat about “HOLY CRAP GUYS THERE’S GONNA BE A DANCE I CAN FINALLY WEAR THE DRESS WITH PUFFED SLEEVES MY AUNT BOUGHT ME!!” he didn’t think much of it and was able to put it out of his mind for the most part.

Yet at the end of day, when he was headed to his locker he saw a group of four girls (all of them white) clumped nearby, whispering. He wouldn’t have paid them any attention except for the fact that, once they saw him, they all huddled together football team pregame-style and started quietly laughing, like hyenas.

For a second, Dazai felt his stomach tighten, remembering all the times in elementary when he knew people were not just talking about him, but also making fun of him.

It had been unbearable, not knowing what they said; being unable to decide whether he even wanted to know or didn’t.

Before he could think too deeply about it, one of the girls left the group and walked straight up to him. At that point he’d reached his locker and had opened it. When it became clear she was coming towards him, he forgot what he was even there for. Instinctually he tucked a hand underneath his shirtsleeve, the pads of his fingers searching skin for somewhere to pick at.

It took her a minute to finally reach him. Dazai had never talked to her before, -- that much he was sure of -- but he also quickly realized that she was one of Sasaki’s friends.

She was grinning at him like a cat when she said, “Dazai, right?”

He nodded.

She didn’t offer up her name. “You’re Sasaki’s . . . friend, right?”

He didn’t like where this was going. He nodded again.

Miraculously, her grin grew wider. “Thought so . . . So. Did you hear about the dance?”

He didn’t reply. To his own horror his face suddenly broke out into a clownish grin that almost matched hers in slyness, but inside he was just confused.

Briefly, she looked at him like he was a lunatic, but she decided to take his smile as a good sign. Of course he’d heard about the dance. “Okay, well, obviously I’m not asking you to the dance --” This she laughed at good-humoredly, the way bombs must be amused at the buildings they destroyed. “I mean, you are pretty cute, but --” Laugh again. Hyena. “Never mind. Somebody else already asked me.”

Dazai very much doubted this fact (the dance had just been announced, after all), but instead of commenting on it he just kept staring at her -- whether out of politeness or plain befuddlement, he didn’t know.

She cut to the chase. “Are you going to ask Sasaki?”

He blinked. The first thing that popped in his head was, “Do I have to?” but he knew that wasn’t the answer she wanted.

Before he could even give an answer, however, she let out an airy giggle, hand over her mouth, like a coquette hiding behind a fan, and said, “Just kidding! Just kidding! I just wanted to see your reaction.”

“My . . . reaction?”

She waved a dismissive hand and, after exchanging a few more words (a verbal transaction for which she dominated prodigiously), she said ’bye and made her way back to her friends, who had been watching the entire encounter from the other end of the hall. When she met up with them, they automatically started moving away, like she’d stolen something from the convenience store and they needed to make a clean getaway from the scene of the crime.

It was then that Atsushi came out of the nearby science wing and saw Dazai next to his locker. He didn’t catch sight of the girls.

Atsushi simply greeted, “Hi! How are you doing?”

Dazai answered gratefully, “Nothing much. Are you going home now?”

The other boy shook his head. “Ryuu and I are gonna go see a movie. I’m waiting for him to finish getting changed since he just had gym class,”

Dazai took note that, unlike most times he saw Atsushi and Akutagawa hanging out together, Gin or somebody else from their friend group was usually with them. But not this time.

He also noticed that Atsushi seemed like he was about to invite him to join them, but something told Dazai that was the last thing Atsushi wanted.

It was then that Dazai’s phone rang.

It was Chuuya. They usually called when Dazai was on his way home.

Remembering Dazai had a friend in England, Atsushi put two and two together and bid Dazai goodbye with a friendly smile. The relief in his eyes was obvious.

Dazai waited until he was out on the front lawn to pick up the call.

“Yo,” Chuuya said on the other end. Some explosion sounds in the background indicated he was playing a video game.

“Hey,”

“Where are you?”

“On my way to the station,”

“Hurry up and get your ass home so you can help me with this level.”

“Predictable. Chuuya can’t beat a hard level without me,”

“Eat shit, I just wanted to hang out, that’s all. We haven’t played in a while and I want to clear this game before the next one comes out in a month,”

Neither of them mentioned that the reason why they hadn’t been able to hang out as much was because Chuuya, in spite of all of Dazai’s taunting, was spending more and more time with Shirase. They’d just passed the one month marker on their relationship.

“Dazai? You there?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, I’m almost at the station now,”

“You’re too slow today, Mackerel. Kinda weird too.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah. Weird. What’s up? Anything happen? You can’t fool me.”

The memory of the grinning white girl flashed in Dazai’s mind for a second -- just a second -- before he shook his head, as if throwing off the image, and said, “No. Nothing happened.”

Chuuya was silent, evidently not buying it. After a while, he just sighed exasperatedly and said, “Whatever. Call me when you get home. I’m gonna make a snack.”

“Sure, chibi,”

“Stop calling me that.”

“No chance,”

“Whatever. See ya, peach flower boy.”

Shutting off his phone, Dazai heard the platform bell ding satisfactorily -- like a lighthouse -- and the sound of rails rattling.

He’d missed his train.

 

. . .

 

Another girl, also one of Sasaki’s friends, came up to him the following day. She acted about the same way as the first one did, -- like she was expecting something from him -- but this time she was a little more straightforward.

“Are you going to the dance?” she asked him, blunt, as he was on his way to the writing center after class.

Aside from yesterday’s encounter, he honestly hadn’t thought about it. “I haven’t thought about it,”

“If you go, will you take a date?”

“I guess I’d have to?”

She frowned, unimpressed by his answer. “Who will you ask?”

“I haven’t thought about it --”

Someone appeared behind the girl and gently touched her shoulder. It was Sasaki.

“Oh, Nobuko!” the girl jumped. “What’re you doing here?”

If Sasaki thought anything was off, she didn’t show it. She held up a forest-green notebook and then smiled at Dazai’s direction. “Tutoring. I told you I come here sometimes, didn’t I?”

The girl shrugged innocently. Of course she knew; she had been counting on it.

Without any more bravado, she took one last look at Dazai before saying -- more to Sasaki than to him -- that she had to go, it was nice talking with them both. She left just as swiftly as she appeared.

“Did she say anything to you?” Sasaki asked once her footsteps receded. It sounded a little accusatory.

“No,”

She looked into his eyes -- the way someone held their breath as they wound up music box strings tighter and tighter. All he could do was stare back.

Not seeming to have found what she was looking for, Sasaki shook her head vaguely after a while and then went inside the writing center without another word. Dazai followed her, and their usual tutoring session began.

By the time a third girl friend of Sasaki’s came up to him a few days later, Dazai had had enough. The second the girl came up to him he blurted out, “Does Sasaki want me to ask her to the dance?”

The girl’s eyes were like wide saucers -- bulbous and blue within her skull’s deep cavernous sockets -- but only for a moment. She didn’t say anything, just smiled into the palm of her hand, but it answered his question nevertheless.

The next day he asked Sasaki out. She said yes.

Her girl friends stopped coming to him after that. Dazai let out a sigh of relief.

When the night of the dance arrived, he biked to her house wearing a crisp dress shirt, tie, and slacks. (He thought of buying her flowers but he’d already bought Tane a small bouquet earlier that week so he didn’t want to spend more money on another batch so soon).

Since Sasaki lived close to their school, they’d agreed to meet up at her place and just walk together to the event.

As always, she looked really pretty, and Dazai said as much, which made her blush. She did that a lot throughout the night, which was good because it gave him the right cues as to when to ask if she wanted to dance, or if she was thirsty and needed him to get her a drink. The proper things to ask.

It was fun, all things considered. They danced together (not gracefully, but not abominably either) for one slow song and spent most of the time mingling with everyone else. The whole thing was a school-wide event, with activities, raffles, and a catered buffet in the cafeteria. The dancing happened in the three gymnasiums. The upperclassmen had claimed the third (and best) gym as theirs, so Dazai and his friends spent most of the night wandering between the first and second.

Save for Higuchi and Tachihara, who had cram studying to do, everyone he knew had shown up.

He was, however, the only one out of the group who had an actual date.

Blessedly, none of his friends meddled or asked any stupid questions about it. Even when they’d eventually found out Dazai and Sasaki were going to the dance together, the worst of their reactions was Lucy’s wry, knowing grin and Kunikida’s noticeably scarlet cheeks.

Aside from that, they had all dropped it for the most part, and, since Sasaki was also technically friends with everyone by proxy, nothing really out of the ordinary happened, which took off a bit of the pressure of it actually being a date.

At one point while they were eating though, Dazai felt Sasaki suddenly slip her hand into his. She was wearing gloves so the feel of the lace on his skin was what first startled him. Not daring to move, he looked over at Sasaki, who was acting like nothing was going on and was still chatting with everyone else like normal. Dazai saw the pink tinge on her ears. The sight of it made his chest tighten, like a coil, so, before he realized what he was doing, he’d intertwined their fingers together and held her hand more firmly.

Again, she didn’t show any outward signs that something had changed, but her shoulders relaxed and what used to be a fidgety, nervous flush on her pale skin was now an inspired glow.

They held hands the rest of the evening. Again, his friends didn’t comment on it, but when Dazai wasn’t looking they traded knowing glances to one another.

Sasaki’s friends, off to the side, watching from the corners, most of them date-less, also stared. Vicariously. Thankfully, none of them approached Dazai’s entourage the whole night.

It was only when Dazai had dropped Sasaki off at her front porch that he let go of her hand. He was surprised with how equally easy it was to hold on and let her go.

When the cool air met his palm he realized his hand must’ve been sweating.

Sasaki was looking at him again, not expectantly, but hopefully.

So he kissed her on the cheek.

He’d never done that before. But he’d felt it was the thing to do.

Dazai went home that night feeling lightheaded and crazy. When they saw each other again on Monday, Sasaki grabbed his hand in the hall on their way to class, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

She became his first girlfriend.

They went out twice again -- once to a movie, the other to Harvard Square -- before Dazai mentioned Sasaki to Chuuya.

“I have a girlfriend. We’ve been together for about three weeks now,” he texted in the middle of the night, just after he’d gotten home from his most recent outing.

He hadn’t expected Chuuya to see the message until later, but his phone pinged within five seconds with a response: “Ha! And you were the one who gave me grief for not immediately telling you when I started dating. You’re such a hypocrite.”

Dazai rolled his eyes, the blue light of his phone making him squint in the dark. He suddenly felt really tired.

His phone pinged again, insistent: “What’s she like?”

It took a while to find the adequate words to describe Sasaki, and even when he’d sent them it didn’t feel completely right: “She’s great. Really smart. We’re in physics together.”

“You sure it wasn’t chemistryyyyy?”

“Shut up, you’re not funny.”

“I think I’m pretty funny,”

“Must be nice living in delusion. Is that what we call England these days?”

“I’m happy for you, asshole.”

“Thanks.”

Dazai was falling asleep, but he didn’t want to stop texting just yet. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, but he couldn’t type out anything worth keeping the conversation going.

Chuuya did it for him instead: “I hope I get to meet her. Any girl willing to put up with you is a martyr in my eyes,”

“For your information, she told me earlier today that she was happy I ‘picked’ her. Apparently a ton of girls have been crushing on me at school,”

“Sure, I’ll believe that.”

“It’s true! I’m quite the catch,”

“I pity them, the poor souls,”

“Not as much as I pity Shirase,”

Chuuya sent a laughing emoji. He added a “Fuck off lmao” text for good measure.

Dazai smiled.

He’d almost fallen asleep before Chuuya sent him one last message: “Oi Dazai, don’t give her a reason to break up with you. I mean it. I do wanna meet her, so don’t screw this up, idiot.”

He replied in his head, but he didn’t get the chance to properly type it out before everything slipped into black.

 

. . .

 

Sasaki was a great girlfriend. She was thoughtful, patient, and surprisingly unphased by most things. She wasn’t jealous or irrational; Dazai and her hardly ever got into arguments. She wasn’t fussy or asked too many intrusive questions. He’d worried her becoming his girlfriend would make her feel entitled to the more personal things in his life, like the truth about his mom or why he didn’t like leaving Q alone with Mori for too long, but she wasn’t. She was perfect.

She made him laugh. The more time he spent with her the more he realized just how beautiful she was. For one thing, even though they were only first-years, Sasaki looked much older. More refined and blooming, and Dazai would be lying if he said he didn’t claim some pride in the fact that he had such a mature, sophisticated girlfriend.

He liked Sasaki. He liked hanging out with her. He liked their easy-going conversations and quiet walks around Somerville and cafe-hopping on the weekends. He liked that she was organized yet open to change if hiccups happened. She had a gentle smile and almost otherworldly patience that reminded him of the worn yet content-looking discount Buddha statues in some of the temples and makeshift shrines back home.

On weekends she’d bake him treats (he never had much of a sweet tooth, but she made such great cookies). She’d smile when Dazai would give her one of the flowers from the bouquet he’d buy every week for his mother. He liked her laugh, the swan-like curve of her neck when she rested it on his shoulder, and her long black hair that tickled him sometimes when he leant down and kissed her.

Sasaki made him feel grounded. Like a balloon being led by a tight string, Dazai went along with anything she wanted -- mostly because she took more initiative between the two of them. Less and less since they started dating did he ever take the lead. She planned outings, always called or texted first, and she never beat around the bush. If she was hungry, she said so. If she didn’t like how he said something, she let him know.

All in all he couldn’t have asked for a better girlfriend. When asked about her by his friends or Tane, he’d often shrug contentedly and say something along the lines of, “Nothing to complain about. She’s great.”

Not to make it seem as if he was all too blasé about this fact. As the first year of high school rolled on, more and more people in his grade started entering and breaking off relationships left and right, like firework trails blazing, flaring, and spreading out after the initial burst of light, creating universes at stunning velocities.

Since word traveled fast, Dazai couldn’t help but know the sordid details about some of them. And sordid they were: Freshman year brought out a lot of immaturity and pettiness, especially when it came to something as emotional as not texting somebody back after soccer practice or failing to plan anything for their 3.25 week anniversary. Whenever he’d hear of dramatic public breakups that happened outside classrooms and resulted in one or both parties storming off to different parts of the campus, or large-scale mixups that got so many people involved to the point where one had to pick a side and have an opinion -- and there were certainly right sides and right opinions -- Dazai felt a pinch of satisfied relief that at least he and Sasaki weren’t like that, thank God.

It was in this way that Dazai’s first year of high school passed by, like mist rattling past steady wind chimes: enough to draw out some sound, perhaps a mighty clangor now and then, if the weather was fair, but altogether a routine tranquility reigned. Pretty soon it was summer -- the air was sticky, like cream -- and Dazai found himself spending a lot of time with Sasaki at Mori’s apartment.

At first, Dazai thought he’d want to keep her away from his uncle’s place as possible -- when they were just friends, he’d made sure to never invite her to his house or even talk much about his home situation. He could tell she was curious and it had gotten to a point where he grew worried she resented his being so closed off. So one day he invited her upstairs, and she got to meet Q, who she immediately adored, and that was that.

Having Sasaki around wasn’t as catastrophic as he feared it would be. She blended into his life like watercolors on canvas.

He never let her meet Mori, however. He would always make sure his uncle was either out of town or away from the apartment whenever she came over to hang out.

Pretty soon his friends would come over too as well -- mostly just the guys and not the girls, which was fair since Mori’s apartment was a hovel and Dazai dreaded the way Yosano and Lucy would surely stare too long at the piles of unfolded laundry haphazardly stacked on the couch in between old medical books and Chinese leftovers scattered across the living room. (Oddly enough though it didn’t bother him when it came to Sasaki seeing these things. She never seemed to notice or comment on it, which he was grateful for).

There was never a point where the entire friend group was present in Mori’s apartment like they had been at Edgar’s house for the Halloween movie night -- partly because the space was far too cramped to accommodate so many people, but also because, slowly and surely, everyone had picked up on the lingering fact that Dazai preferred not to talk about what his life outside of school and hangouts was like. (The reasons why, they all surmised, though mysteries needn’t be solved for them to be accepted). The second reason was because most of his friends lived closer together, so it was usually Dazai who came to them instead of them coming to him. Which was just fine.

Aside from taking care of Q, Dazai felt no special attachment to the apartment. (At least none that inspired attachments to attachment). He liked taking the train or biking to whichever hangout his friends decided on going to somewhere within the city. Even when it was just him and Sasaki together, Dazai, usually such a homebody on his own, almost always wanted to get out of the house and go to the nearby park so Q could play or even just wander aimlessly around familiar, open streets that were now festooned with summer droplets mixed with sunshine, birdsong, and cicada ennui.

Since Chuuya was never one to make the least out of life, his free time in England was usually a whirlwind of events, plans, outings, and touring whether with his family or his friends, so Dazai was thankful for the distraction.

He did find it a little annoying though: when they were in school, they couldn’t talk because of school, but when it was break time, they couldn’t talk because his best friend was physically incapable of sitting still. Just like when they were younger, Chuuya had to chase life while Dazai could do nothing but watch from afar and flash him the occasional smile when he came back to ask how things were going.

He missed him, but Dazai never told him that. He was at that point in life where he’d rather die than be human.

That’s why he tried to spend more time with Sasaki and his friends, not letting himself dwell too long over how none of them really got what he was talking about some of the time, when he’d think, “Chuuya’d know. Chuuya would’ve laughed.” Chuuya always knew.

Near the end of summer, Tane got sick again. It wasn’t anything serious -- “Relapses happen all the time,” the nurses had told Dazai, pearls in their mouths shining like acid foam -- but it was one thing to say that and another to have to witness his mother spending days in bed, refusing to eat, and smiling only when it seemed her son needed to see it, not because she was particularly happy.

Dazai had a lot of free time now. (A caveat of working for the school’s Writing Center was that it ceased all operative functions in the summer, which was admittedly a blessing to its most fervent of devotees, namely Ango, for it meant not only a vacation from high school, but also a vacation from the capital workaholism he seemed to be both addicted to and persecuted by). Dazai spent these spare hours reading when he had them to himself and did not dedicate the time to other people, who required a limited monopoly of his attention, as love costs us and it may be measured in minutes. Whether he read for himself or to his mother, whom he visited more than he usually did during the school year, Tane didn’t make any attempts to hide her amused exasperation with her son. He’d come see her with a bouquet at least three times a week, and every time she smelled the scent of flowers fresh off the cool ice, she’d plaster on a wry smile and watch Dazai enter her room, so much older now than her little boy who she thought would stay a little boy forever. She would say a variation of the words like, “I’m sure you have better things to do than visit your sick mother, Osamu,” to which Dazai would simply hand her the bouquet and lean over to kiss the top of her head in greeting.

Q only accompanied him half of the time, as the pilgrimage to Tane’s institution was tiresome and time-consuming, and they couldn’t understand how their older brother found the energy to do so much commuting. Besides, Q, who was straddling the early brimmings of childhood, was ironically busier than Dazai, as their attentions were split between summer camp and going over to their friends’ house for playdates. When they weren’t socializing and conquering the world, they slept, or simply lounged about with both chubby legs dangling off the edge of the bed as they stared existentially up at the glow-in-the-dark stars stickered onto their ceiling, as to be young is to be lethargic, like caterpillars, in between bubbles of spontaneity.

When Q did come along, they’d often plop themselves next to their mother in bed, snuggle up against her warmth, and fall asleep almost immediately for the allotted time they were meant to visit. Sometimes they listened to Dazai reading out loud, blinking every so often when he said a word they didn’t know (and there were many), but they were of that age when anything even resembling monotony was like an immediate sleep draught. (Though it is good to note that Q never does outgrow this tendency to tune out when something did not really interest them, which was a shared trait their big brother made more of an effort to mask than they did).

Mori hardly ever came, and if he ever saw his sister it was always alone.

Tane was delighted to hear anything about Sasaki. If he was being honest, though, Dazai had initially debated whether or not to tell her about his new girlfriend.

More and more, the details of his life had solely become his. When he was younger, he remembered telling Tane everything, -- when his stomach hurt, what he thought about during a bus ride, what he saw when he went outside -- but now his life was measured out in simple, vignette-like updates, as if he were relaying a brochure of his existence in an attempt to sell it to his mother. (What he was trying to sell, he didn’t know exactly).

He sensed that Tane was aware of this shift in their relationship. Because even when big things changed, little things stayed, such as her ability to sense when her children were further away from her than they’d ever been. Dazai could tell she was disappointed; it made her feel more isolated -- from the world and what little family she had left -- and Dazai felt guilty that he'd let this happen. Tane used to know him better than anyone and now he didn't even tell her what assignment he was stressing about at the moment, or what music he was listening to when he went on the train. She used to know those things. Those insignificant blips in life.

Dazai wondered how love and family could turn out so distant. How you could be a completely different person to the ones who brought you into this world and watched you grow up and will most likely never see you die. Are summers strangers to autumn? Could the moon never speak to the sun when it’s lonely?

How can someone be next to you and still be planets away?

Tane asked about Chuuya. “How’s London?” she asked during one visit, running her long fingers through Q’s hair as they slept on her lap.

“I don’t know. All the hatrack mentions is Shirase, Shirase, Shirase,” Dazai couldn’t hide the irritation in his voice. “A couple days ago they went on a date at the big ferris wheel thing. Pedestrian and touristy idea for a date, if you ask me,”

Tane smiled and didn’t mention anything more. You miss him terribly, she wanted to say, but she knew it would upset him.

Despite what her son thought (and feared), he was never too far away or too grown up. He could’ve been ten feet tall -- a giant among men -- and she’d still see the small boy with moppy brown hair, bandages, and watery eyes looking up at her, begging for approval, so smart and so wise yet so immature all at once. Big things changed, little things stayed.

A mother knows, even if they all said she’d gone crazy.

 

. . .

 

Tane’s sickness worsened near the end of the summer. Aside from when her brother and children visited she hardly ever got out of bed. She had nightmares about Gen’emon, about her difficult pregnancy, about waking up from the anaesthetic dizziness and feeling like they’d carved out something that was only ever meant to be her own and now that it was gone it couldn’t truly be hers anymore and never, ever will.

The institution had insisted on cutting her visiting hours because “She needs to rest,” but the very idea was ridiculous -- all she did was rest; they were just keeping her children away from her even more. What did they even know? Did doctors only get degrees so they could tear families apart?

And just like that, what used to be three or four hours of Dazai seeing his mom regularly trickled into just one. And then it was just once a week. Thoughts of second year, his friends, Sasaki, his job, schoolwork, and taking care of Q occupied his mind. Like jaws closing in, his world simply became what was around him, making everything smaller and all the more claustrophobic.

It was also around this time that Dazai grew extremely aware of his strained relationship with his uncle. Every little thing Mori did bothered him, especially in regards to Q. He loathed his impersonal irresponsibility, his tactlessness disguised as efficiency: all the man’s habits, his mannerisms, even his breathing gradually acquired an insufferable layer of gangrene in Dazai’s eyes. It had come on so suddenly and yet also felt like the most familiar thing. He wouldn’t have been able to point to a single moment when it all began to shift -- when his uncle the man morphed into some kind of monster -- but it was true all the same. He truly loathed Mori. Some days he might’ve even said he genuinely hated him.

The man himself remained static, and at first Dazai was struck at realizing just how little presence he had in his and Q’s lives, but he soon saw that he had always been this absent. Mori never changed, but Dazai was getting older, and to grow up is to see the ugly faces behind what had otherwise been infallible and hardened. Little by little, his disillusionment and animosity towards his uncle metastasized tenfold. It was like a tumor beating between them: malignant and alive, yet inoperable, with no hope of extraction. It was a parasite. A thorn. An accepted reality that had nevertheless become more unbearable with each passing day.

Or maybe it wasn’t always this tense. Maybe Dazai was just making it all up. Mori denied any enmity -- sometimes they’d have a disagreement and Dazai would accuse him of being unjust or cruel, but the man would merely shrug and claim he wasn’t capable of something like that.

As Dazai grew more and more estranged from his uncle, however, the more Q seemed to cling onto Mori. They would ask to go on more outings whenever their uncle was off work and grew upset when their requests for affection were denied -- oftentimes harshly.

It was a regular occurrence at the apartment whenever Mori came upstairs for Q to come rushing out of their room, throw themselves at his feet, and ask him to play with them. Sometimes he yielded, but more often than not he’d dismiss Q with a tired sigh, dripping with annoyance, making it clear to the child that they were not wanted and most certainly not loved -- at least at that moment.

Mori was like that. He made you think love was something you had to deserve. Like something you had to clock in for.

With each exasperated dismissal, Q would start crying -- sometimes quietly, like a brave soldier, but most times they just outright sobbed and pitifully asked, “Why? Why won’t you play with me?” -- which would irk Mori even more. When it got to that point he either elected to ignore Q altogether or summoned Dazai to “deal with it.” But, of course, in Q’s eyes this was another form of rejection, and even if their big brother hurried over and took them in his arms, letting their blotchy face bury itself at the crook of his neck just like when they were still a baby, nothing soothed that simple ache in Q’s tiny heart. Only when their uncle was more cheerful and willing to play with them were the times Q’s smile wasn’t forced and genuinely genuine.

It hurt Dazai to see it. It was like applying bandages to bullet wounds, the way he tried to pacify Q when Mori was in one of his moods and refused to spend any time with either of them. He watched Q bleed, he watched them ache, and all he could think about was what Tane would do if she knew this was happening -- and had been happening, like a beehive burgeoning into a swarm -- ever since they brought Q home.

Dazai thought about telling the truth -- the whole truth -- to his mother, of course, but every time he thought he could, he’d visit her and see the exhaustion in her eyes, see the emptiness behind her answers when he asked her how she was doing, and it was all useless. So he never said anything.

Sometimes he tried hinting at Mori’s incompetence, but Tane mistook his frustration as her son gently teasing his ridiculous uncle and didn’t think too much of it. Because Dazai never let her think too much of it.

After a while, he even convinced himself that telling Tane would make no difference. Mori was her brother and he’d always been the one to make the big decisions between the two of them, so naturally she’d believe him over her teenage son who was reportedly always running off with his friends (according to Mori) and spending too much time reading his books, daydreaming. It became the truth that this was just how things were. Because it had to be. Because there was no other way to live.

Dazai’s scratching heightened. Some days he’d have to change out his bandages more than once because he’d scratched straight through the gauze to pick at the mettled skin underneath. Other times he’d lock himself in the bathroom, crawl into the empty tub, and just stare at his wrists, or his arms, or his thighs, and think, Why isn’t it bleeding? It should be bleeding. And soon enough he made it so, when he could help it.

Sometimes he just couldn’t help it.

By the time second year of high school rolled around, he was only wearing sweaters, even if the summer hadn’t completely faded away yet, and the sun still lingered, waiting for goodbye kisses.

A month after the new semester started, Sasaki told him she wanted to have sex.

She’d never done “It” before, but she wanted to, and she trusted him.

Dazai couldn’t say he hadn’t been expecting it for a while. It seemed like everyone around them was having sex with someone else. Most of these ‘hookups’ weren’t even by people in official relationships, which was its own kind of novelty, but it only served as a constant reminder to anyone who wasn’t Doing It that they Should Do It. No boyfriend or girlfriend necessary.

And why not? It was all anyone could think about, whether one liked it or not. Such is growing up, isn’t it? More than ever Dazai would find himself in conversations with other guys who were very eager to share their lewd thoughts: which girls they’d hit up, which girls they wouldn’t, who had a nice chest, and who had pretty doe eyes you’d want to look up at you as she sucked you off like how they did on naughty adult sites these boys would stalk almost religiously. It wasn’t just ugly snickering in locker rooms or whispered gossip in the hallways either. It was dirty jokes, dirty looks, dirty sounds exchanged like dirty, dirty currency in between the how are yours, did you hears, and I’m alrights, but -- .

It was everyone automatically, like there were gears in their wrists, turning to the long-worn and vigorously perused Reproduction module in biology textbooks. It was growth spurts, going underwear shopping after school, wearing red, and awkward poses in front of the mirror. It was on everyone’s bodies, it was brimming like rosewater, it was ecstatic shame hidden as silence. It was all anyone could think about -- more than homework, more than football games, more than your parents getting divorced because to get divorced means to get married and to get married means to fuck.

Even outside the pubescent camaraderie, Dazai noticed It more than he ever had before. He kept wondering, Was this normal? Did this happen to everybody?

How was he supposed to feel?

So he told Sasaki alright, let’s do it.

She looked relieved, like it had been something she’d been wanting to check off a to-do list for a long time and it had been nagging at her. Her eyes after he finally agreed asked what her prim mouth couldn’t: “When will we do it? Soon? Later? Preferably soon, not later.” (Virginity was like wisdom teeth in that it needed to be gotten rid of and extracted as soon as possible, lest it led to further issues that would bring with them more pain and suffering as well as an egregious increase on the metaphorical dental bill). Once again, it occurred to Dazai that Sasaki had certain expectations for him that he now had to figure out on his own.

She’d decided she wanted to have sex so he had to make it happen. That was an indelicate way of putting it, but it was the most honest.

Amusingly, after she’d suggested it, and he’d agreed, she was suddenly very shy about the whole thing, and any mere allusion or reference to sex made her face sulfurously hot. Even if it was just one of their friends making a crude, suggestive joke or an offhand comment like, “Use protection!” whenever they went somewhere alone together, Sasaki would get flustered.

It was cute at first, but, over time, it started to take on a kind of deliberately performative quality. Dazai even thought she relished in it.

As the boyfriend, he knew he was supposed to take the lead, because that was just how it was. It didn’t matter that the extent of his sexual experience consisted of half-hearted masturbation sessions in his bedroom -- which were sometimes nice, moreso tiring, like finally getting around to wash the dishes -- and accidentally stumbling onto bot sites that made girls look like meat on a slab with lace panties and candy cane bras that didn’t leave much to the imagination.

Maybe it was humiliating to admit, but up until Sasaki had brought up sex he’d never really watched porn. It was too mortifying, watching two people doing stuff like that to each other. Rather than human beings, they looked more like finger puppets brainlessly humping against one other, or a pair of mannequins trying to eat each other’s plastic skins off. Even on the rare times when Dazai did feel aroused or curious, the sight of any two people naked in front of a camera and moaning like hernaic donkeys immediately killed the mood -- he burst out laughing more often than not any time groaning started; it just felt so rehearsed and cringe-worthy, like he was watching someone satirizing sexual pleasure instead of actually experiencing it.

He knew it was bad, but the only porn he could stomach was written smut. Whenever he came across a sex or even remotely suggestive scene in one of his books he’d instinctively clench his entire frame, as if he was waiting for something to snap, and it was only after he was over and done with that part in the book did he relax again. He got boners, sure, but most of the time he saw them as like alien appendages completely detached from his body, like it was someone else’s penis that he was watching and feeling swell up with blood, not his.

He knew most of the guys his age watched porn though, so he made a note to do that in preparation for sex with Sasaki. He should jack off to it too. It was kind of like preparing for an exam: He wanted to do well. He wanted to make her feel good. It was an important event in one’s life, wasn’t it? Losing your virginity? Or at least Dazai assumed it must be. He both understood how it was yet also didn’t. Was it different because he was a guy? Aside from having to get a condom (he assumed that was his responsibility), it didn’t really affect him that much? Did something change? What did? Would it hurt? Would Sasaki get hurt? And why was it a big deal anyway? Why was everyone obsessed with it? Didn’t it freak people out too? He thought about how helpless he’d felt when he first saw a popup ad for a porn site; a clearly photoshopped girl wearing bunny ears looking up at him and asking if he would be a good boy and click the link down below that just so happened to also be between her gigantic shiny boobs.

The visual effect of it was like a jumpscare.

He’d kill himself before he told anyone he preferred jacking off to tastefully written erotica than moving, breathing, sweat-drenched bodies covered in spandex and tight costumes. In books it was never too explicit. It’d all get covered up with metaphors about fruit and hanging vines, but he’d know. He’d know and that at least made the whole thing a little thrilling, even just for a few moments.

Of course, he couldn’t talk to anyone about any of this. It felt wrong to talk to his friends since they also knew Sasaki; it felt like he’d be talking about her behind her back or disrespecting her and it made him feel sick inside.

More than once, Dazai thought of mentioning it to Chuuya since, by that point, he was definitely more experienced than he was in the sex department. (He knew Chuuya and Shirase hadn’t Done It yet, but you didn’t have to Do It All the Way to Do It). In some ways, Dazai was a little jealous, but it was weird to say something like that when it came to Chuuya. He’d seen him cry over cringey rom-coms Ane-san had made them watch with her on the weekends; he’d seen him puke his guts out and have diarrhea the first time he tried some of Verlaine’s hard gin; Dazai could hardly see his best friend as someone particularly enviable -- let alone a sex expert with whom he could productively discuss his first time with Sasaki. The very idea of it made Dazai want to puke his organs onto the floor. It wasn’t even that he felt embarrassed or paralyzingly awkward about it either. Even now, after being apart for two years, Chuuya was still the only person he ever wanted to talk to about whatever crossed his mind. Granted, it’d be weird as hell talking about how he should go about losing his virginity to his girlfriend with his gay childhood best friend all the way in England, but it was Chuuya, and, even if he would be so insufferable and relentlessly tease Dazai about it long after they finished talking, it’d be alright. Oddly enough, Chuuya would make it alright.

But he didn’t tell him, even though it was constantly on his mind ever since Sasaki had brought it up so assuredly, like it was a landmark on a map that they had always meant to pass.

Dazai came to realize that Sasaki had simply assumed he’d be eager about the whole thing, maybe even waiting for her to bring it up; and now that she finally did, it was like a favor. Like she was giving him something that he had been craving ravenously all his life. Finally, like he’d been bottled up and now he can sate his uncontrollable horny male desires, unlike his poor friends who were not in relationships and therefore had zero to little chance of getting a girl’s attention, let alone a spot in between her legs.

She was letting him do what he must’ve been consumed by, morning, noon, and night, just like everyone else.

Just like everyone else.

So Dazai said alright, let’s do it.

IV. Lovers

Ever since Sasaki had brought sex up, it felt like everyone suddenly wanted to talk about it more than usual. It seemed as if every time Dazai came to school he was immediately hit with the early morning buzz and chatter and it was always about hookups, couples, and sundry instances of horny teenagedom.

Girls looking through lingerie catalogs. Guys with condoms in their wallets. Nudes being sent left and right. People Doing It in their parent’s bedroom. Dirty magazines being passed around. People Doing It at the park. 2 for 1 sale on lube at the nearest convenience store. People Doing It instead of studying or literally anything else.

It all felt so juvenile, -- something Dazai often read in books or saw on trashy TV shows, but wasn’t that the whole point? Wasn’t this what growing up was supposed to be?

Though he’d agreed to have sex with Sasaki, he failed to tell her when he wanted to do that. Obviously she wanted to get on with it, and Dazai told himself he did too, but he still found himself hesitating, coming up with lame excuses that stopped being endearingly boyish and shy about two weeks after he’d said a definitive yes, sure, I’d love to.

It got to the point where he avoided being with Sasaki one-on-one, which was hard considering she was his girlfriend. It was difficult to dodge her when she was hanging out with his friends, as well as in the classes they had together, but usually after school they’d go somewhere or Dazai would walk her home, but lately he’d been coming up with surprise doctor appointments he had to rush to or made up random errands to run because “Q’s sick” or “My uncle needs me for something.” He was ashamed of how half-assed his apologies sounded, as well as just ditching Sasaki with no explanation. He could tell she was starting to worry and he hated that she was probably blaming herself for his weird behavior, but there was no way he could tell her why he was so awkward all of a sudden.

He didn’t even know himself.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t constantly thinking about it. It was the only thing on his mind. It was like he’d had his eyes closed all his life, but now they’d been forcibly opened and all he can do is gawk.

Sex, sex, sex.

Was it wonder? Was it confusion? He didn’t know. All he knew was that it was everywhere.

It was in innuendos about the future, dripping with lilac butter. It was in advertisements telling you to buy oysters and stylish haircuts. It was in bus stop ads and restaurant menus and elevator music and calendars that had pictures of eggplants and peaches for February and just . . . Every . . . fucking . . . thing.

Sex, sex, sex.

It made his head hazy.

He was jacking off more regularly now. It didn’t really bring him any pleasure aside from the five seconds of release the pathetic orgasms he wrung out of himself brought him, but he couldn’t stop. He was obsessed. Half-disgusted, half engrossed, like he was watching a crime scene unfold in front of him.

Every time he finished and got down from the infinitesimally brief high, he’d sit on his bed or in the bathroom in deep, deep shame and exhaustion, like he’d just crossed something arduously ungratifying off his agenda and now his entire body felt hot, sticky, and uncomfortably wrong.

He took a lot of showers. He’d sit in the bathtub looking up at the showerhead, barely feeling the warmth from the water wetting his hair, kissing his skin, baptizing his body. He’d spend hours in there. Sometimes he was just still. Sometimes he scratched himself, like lottery tickets. Sometimes he just stared at his dick.

The lights would flicker and crackle. A fly would fizzle in, whispering sweet nothings before it thrust against a light bulb and killed itself because of the shock.

He wasted decades in the bathtub, numb to his bones. He wouldn’t even take off his bandages. The humid air would cling onto his scars, making him feel like chopped summer rain. The gauze would peel off his skin and float limply at his sides, measuring his boredom, or perhaps something else.

At some point he’d hear knocking at the door: Q coming to check up on him or complaining he’d been in there too long and they needed to pee too. He would only get up when their voice switched from mildly irritated to scared, like when they were a baby and afraid of the dark, or after Mori had yelled at them for bothering him. It was when he’d hear that certain crack in their voice that Dazai would mechanically get out, turn off the dial, towel himself off, come outside, and lean down to hug Q, reassuring them he was alright.

Q was starting to outgrow hugs. When they were a baby they welcomed them, but now that they’re a little older they’ve begun to accept affection less and less. Dazai knew it was just a part of growing up, but he felt partially guilty. He’d grown up with loving parents, for however short a time. His dad would raise him up on his shoulders as his mom gazed on lovingly, petting Melos’ fluffy head and taking him in her arms when he wanted to go down.

Q never had any of that. Just Dazai’s stiff, cold arms circling their tiny frame since the day they were born.

He lost more and more interest in school. His grades didn’t fall or anything like that, but he found himself trying less than he did in first year. Since the new semester began and he’d gotten into new classes -- most of them without his friends because they were more STEM-oriented and had extra-curriculars, clubs, and their own lives to live. He didn’t have more than the bare minimum motivation to do his homework. He stopped studying for exams and doing his readings. He went to class out of habit, not even having the strength to be stressed about the fact that he was essentially giving up and disappointing his mother.

Aside from lunch and his job at the writing center, he was mostly alone with no one to talk to.

Chuuya was answering less and less.

Sometimes his friends would drop by, give him some coffee, try to cheer him up from whatever was giving him that sad look in his eyes, but such distractions were never permanent.

Sasaki would come by too. (She was still his girlfriend, wasn’t she?).

She must’ve sensed that the reason Dazai had grown distant was because of the sex thing, but she never mentioned it or asked him anymore.

He could still feel her disappointment though. It was on her like a tattoo. They would be talking about a show they were both watching or an upcoming school event and he’d catch that look of frustrated expectation in her eyes; saw how she bit her lip and wrung her hands, like she was in line for something and was waiting for them to finally call her number.

It got a little unbearable, so one day he finally snapped and decided he was being an idiot.

“Let’s go back to your house today!” he said cheerfully after Sasaki had come to see him after his tutoring shift was over. He had that clownish smile people often mistook for boyish sincerity.

Her eyes widened. He hadn’t been over to her place in a while, -- not since she brought up Doing It -- and the way he was looking at her made her heart quicken. She knew what he was suggesting and it made her both thrilled and nervous.

She nodded.

They walked together in silence.

When they got to Sasaki’s house, she unlocked the door and led him upstairs to her bedroom, which was immaculately clean, like it was a stage set.

The sun had begun to go down, its orange rays fibrous and earthy as they peeked in between Sasaki’s bedroom blinds. She turned off all the lights and gestured for Dazai to sit down on her bed, as if this was one of their usual hangout sessions.

But they both knew it wasn’t.

Where Sasaki’s face was red and flustered, Dazai’s was surprisingly calm. She thought it was meant to be reassuring; he knew it wasn’t.

“Uh . . . Do you have . . .?” she stammered.

Dazai nodded, patting one of the pockets in his jeans.

Gently, she put both hands on his shoulders and climbed on top of his lap, her legs straddling his. She was biting her lip, but the flush on her face told him she was determined and not at all as shy as she was pretending to be.

He guessed she just wanted to play the part.

So he did too.

He held her hips in place and buried his face in her chest, inhaling the scent of blueberries and expensive lotion. She breathed in sharply, her hands coming to grip his skull. She ran her fingers through his hair, marveling at how soft it was.

He came back up and took off his glasses, bringing her closer to him so their torsos were touching. His face was blank. He hoped he looked hopeful.

They met each other’s eyes. She leaned in first, and they were kissing. Her crotch grinded against his, subtle enough to be sweet yet efficient all the same. He got hard.

Sasaki felt it brushing against her thigh, which gave her the confidence to start unbuttoning her shirt while still making out with him. She tossed it off, revealing a cute white lace bra and smooth silky skin underneath. Almost impatiently, she took one of Dazai’s hands and placed it on top of her breast, encouraging him to touch her.

Dazai got harder.

He squeezed her, boldly dipping his cold fingers into the bra and fingering her nipple, making her gasp. He did the same on the other. He switched between kissing her and staring at her body.

It was perfect.

He’d never touched anyone like this before, but he knew how it went from movies and books. Anyone would say Sasaki was gorgeous.

At some point she’d taken off her skirt and was now grinding even harder against Dazai’s leg.

It was noticeably damp where she straddled his lap. She was almost fully naked now. Dazai still had on all his clothes, but she didn’t seem to mind.

They kissed for a couple more minutes before Sasaki put her palm on his chest and gently pushed him down so he was lying on his back. She hovered over him, cheeks rosy, skin flushed. That was when she found the courage to touch his groin, the stiffness between his legs making her bolder. As soon as she felt his erection she wanted to see it. Without thinking, she reached down and unzipped his pants, pawing off the fabric to reveal plain black boxers.

Dazai let her do it. He closed his eyes and let her stare at him, only lifting his legs a bit so she could take off his jeans completely and toss them on the floor.

In one swift movement, she moved his underwear aside, and the next thing he knew he felt her hot mouth on him. His breath hitched. Opening his eyes, he looked down to see Sasaki staring up at him, his dick in her mouth making her look correctly alluring.

He thought of saying something, but that was when she started to move. Her lips enveloped him snugly, making him feel warm, and soon she was bobbing her head up and down, her tongue expertly licking all the right places, making him shiver. Briefly, Dazai wondered where she learned how to do that, -- didn’t she say she’d never done this before? -- but that was when he felt the tip of his dick touch the back of her throat.

Oh God.

She let out a sweet noise, her lips vibrating against his balls. He didn’t know what he was feeling. It was good, -- she was a natural -- but --

“W-Wait, let -- let me,” he blurted out, sitting up and forcing her to pull away from him. For an agonizing second they just stared at each other. Yet, just like Sasaki, she quickly regained composure and started twiddling with the straps on her bra.

Maintaining full eye contact, she slowly lowered one cup, and then the other, revealing small yet perfect boobs. She gave him exactly ten seconds to look at them before she clambered onto his lap again, smiling against his lips at the feel of his erection and pulling him in for another kiss. He let her, tasting himself on her spit, swallowing down some disgust at the thought that he was basically kissing his own crotch.

Again taking the lead, she took both his hands and placed them on her sides, silently telling him to drag her panties off. He obeyed, a little surprised at how wet the underwear was once he fully got it off of her. He’d barely let himself realize Sasaki was fully naked now before she grabbed his thin wrist and gently placed his fingers against her pubic bone, teasingly letting him touch the bumpy smooth skin there before finally dragging his hand to where she really wanted him.

She wasn’t just wet. She was soaking.

When Dazai’s palm grazed her labia, she let out a cutesy moan, welcoming him to continue. She grabbed his index finger and pressed it right at her entrance, inviting him to come inside.

He did. She felt like velvet.

One finger turned into two. Impulsively, Dazai dove down and caught one of her nipples in his mouth. She moaned again.

She was perfect.

It went on like that for a few minutes, him sucking necessarily and her basking in how good it felt. He had three fingers in now and was gently rubbing her clit, which made her moan even louder. She was really enjoying this.

He kept doing what he was doing. Her thighs started to tremble. Her stomach clenched. Her legs wrapped around his hips like a noose. She was almost screaming. He guessed she was close.

He kept doing what he was doing.

Sasaki threaded her arms around Dazai’s neck and rested her chin on his shoulder. He still hadn’t taken his shirt off. She sighed into his ear, making him cringe.

He kept doing what he was doing.

When Dazai was almost willing to admit this position they were in was really uncomfortable, perhaps even unexemplary, she moaned loudly one last time and pulled away from him again, locking their eyes together. He froze.

She was ready. Her chest was heaving.

Dazai blinked, then he nodded slowly. He untangled himself from her and went to where his jeans laid on the floor. He’d just heard the crinkle of the condom wrapper in his pocket when he realized something horrible: He wasn’t hard anymore.

Shit.

Pathetically, he tried pumping his dick, hoping it’ll get up again without Sasaki noticing, but he must’ve been squatting there for a minute too long because he heard her sit up from her bed, her green blanket covering her chest, like she was a professional actress in an adult movie intent on making her look demure, and she asked him if he was okay.

Dazai started to panic.

To his horror, he heard her giggle. “Do you . . . Do you need help putting it on?”

Dazai took a deep breath. “No,”

He should just tell her.

It happened all the time.

He was just nervous.

There was no need to be ashamed.

Sasaki was a nice person. She was great. She was perfect -- a perfect girlfriend. She would understand, maybe even be her usual kind self and soothe him for being a complete failure. She’d take him in her arms and pat his head -- kiss him on the forehead with the lips she’d been sucking him off with before, -- and she’d wait patiently -- certainly for longer than five minutes -- for him to calm down so he can get hard again. She’d keep grinding on his thigh or show him how wet she was and it’d set him off again. He was just nervous. He’ll have it back up in no time and they could keep going.

There was no need to be ashamed.

Dazai took another deep breath and moved to turn around to tell her, but it was at that second that they both heard the click of the garage door being opened, followed by the hum of a large vehicle outside Sasaki’s bedroom window.

Shit.

Dazai was paralyzed, not knowing what to do.

In a flash, Sasaki had tossed off her blankets and scurried to her walk-in closet, her boobs bouncing comically as she hastened to open a light.

She came out a second later with a loose baggy T-shirt and pyjamas (did she even have underwear on?). Her hair was uncharacteristically frazzled. Without a word, she grabbed Dazai’s pants that he’d been dumbly holding in his hands and shoved them against his chest, the look in her eyes telling him he needed to put them on now.

Before he could say anything, she all but shoved him into the closet. Not wasting a breath, she picked up her clothes and undergarments off the floor and tossed them into a laundry bin next to her bedside table.

The front door had just shut, followed by the unmistakable sound of grocery bags crinkling against one another before being placed on what was probably the main floor’s kitchen area.

Dazai didn’t know when he got dressed, but he felt himself stupidly walk out of the closet and meet Sasaki’s eyes before she placed a warning finger against her lips, shushing him. Hesitant, she turned to the door, unlocked it, and peered outside into the empty hall. “Mom?” she called out.

“Hi sweetie! I got you some crème pie! There was a sale at Market Basket!”

That was absolutely the worst news sweetie could’ve been given. Sasaki shut her eyes, the frustration evident on her face.

Just as she decided fuck it, she’ll come out and find a way to sneak Dazai outside later, her thoughtful, quiet, and gentlemanly boyfriend suddenly laughed.

Almost stupefied, she whipped her head around and confirmed that, yes, Dazai was indeed laughing. Not just laughing, but clutching at his stomach and looking like he might fall over. His hair was unkempt from Sasaki’s playing with it, his shirt wasn’t tucked in, and his glasses were all askew. He looked a little insane.

Scared at all the noise he was making, Sasaki swiftly jumped from her spot near the door and slapped a hand over Dazai’s mouth, muting some of his chortling. His mouth vibrated against her palm. Her eyes were wide.

“Sweetie?” she heard her mother call. “Can you come down here and help put the groceries away?”

To be honest, Dazai was genuinely trying his best not to be loud, -- he had been so distressed just minutes before -- but the silliness of the entire situation landed on him like a bomb, making his chest absolutely heave with explosive laughter. He tried to stop, -- he knew he was being a douchebag, he knew this wasn’t how he was supposed to be acting around a girl he was in the middle of having sex with-- but with each passing second everything seemed to get funnier and funnier.

Sasaki was noticeably annoyed now. He couldn’t blame her. He was glad she was pissed. For a second he reflected on how only a few moments ago she’d been eagerly humping against him, moaning out his name in between her teeth, and ready to do more. That somehow added to the hilarity of it all.

He sincerely tried to stop, but he couldn’t.

He laughed for a few more minutes before he finally managed to force himself to pause. There was silence for a second. Sasaki glared at him. He’d never seen her look like that before. She looked like a completely different person.

“Nobuko?” a voice called from outside.

The hateful look on Sasaki’s face quickly vanished, almost as if it hadn’t been there. Without another word to Dazai, she hauled herself up and went out her door, calling to her mother and running downstairs to help her with the groceries.

Dazai could’ve waited until she came back, -- that would’ve been the right thing to do -- but he didn’t. Instead, he collected all his things, smoothed down his hair, readjusted his glasses, and walked to the window. He lifted the pane, hitched one leg over it, and then another, and climbed out to the roof. Not to his surprise -- as if he’d been expecting it -- there was a wooden ladder that led down to the backyard.

He thought he heard Sasaki’s footsteps hurrying back to the room by the time he’d scaled past the hedges at the front. His feet trampled against the azure flowers growing in the grass, but he kept on walking.

By the time he’d reached the end of the cul-de-sac where she lived, he’d decided what he’d cook for dinner that night and was already looking up the bus schedule home.

 

. . .

 

The next day at school, he didn’t get to talk to Sasaki. The cheerleading and senior volleyball teams had left campus early in the morning for a tournament that’d last all day. It was a relief, but the clammy sense of dread mixed with worrisome indifference still clung to his skin like honey paste.

His morning class was let out fifteen minutes early because their teacher had to make a call. All of Dazai’s friends were in their own classes so he found himself wandering the hallways until he eventually found himself in one of the school fields just outside the third gym. It was a little hot for the month, but there was a tingling breeze that pitched and wriggled like mischievous cool water rippling across the campus. It caught tree branches, grass shoots, and the pale white fabric of students’ T-shirts as the cross country team ran a lap around the area. Dazai was too far away to see if he knew anyone who was running.

Aside from the team, their coach, and a stray gardener with a hose, the field was basically empty. Dazai’s eyes streamed over to the bare bleachers, like a camera lens, and was surprised to see Ayatsuji sitting at the first row, also watching the runners with a bored expression on his face.

Dazai drew closer.

Suddenly he heard a faint sobbing.

Because of where he was standing, he hadn’t seen that there was a girl in front of Ayatsuji. She looked like she was crying or nearly about to.

Dazai walked up to the pair and addressed Ayatsuji sharply, “What’s going on here?”

Both of them perked up, barely noticing he’d come until he barked out the question. The girl opened her mouth, but that was when all three of them heard someone jogging up to where they were. Instinctively, they all turned toward the unknown runner. The bronze sunlight caught their eyes, but it didn’t take long for them to realize it was Tsujimura, whose signature cyan hair was put up in a high ponytail. She’d used the matching scarf she usually wears around her neck as a ribbon.

“Yukito, what’s going on?” she gasped, only stopping to take a breath once she reached them.

Ayatsuji hadn’t talked, even when Dazai came, but, as usual, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut when Tsujimura was present. Casually, he leaned back on the bench he was sitting on and nodded towards the girl. “I was just watching the team when she came up to me and said some stuff,”

“What stuff?”

Ayatsuji was silent -- so silent Dazai knew it slowly killed the other girl, who must’ve been holding back her tears, so he blurted out, “She was crying,”

The girl let out an almost strangled whimper, but Ayatsuji’s face remained impassive despite Dazai essentially tattling on him.

Tsujimura blinked once, sighed, and then looked at him for a long time. For a moment it seemed like Dazai and the girl weren’t even there, like they’d become part of the landscape or disappeared into breathy vapor, like they were now molecules, or sprites, or pieces of dandelion, both watching the two stare each other down.

Finally, Tsujimura turned to the girl, addressing her for the first time with an apologetic look. Wrapping arm around her frail shoulders, Tsujimura led her away out of earshot from Dazai and Ayatsuji and said something to her in low murmurs. After a beat, the girl wiped her eyes, eagerly nodded, and, to the boys’ shock, let out a small laugh. Tsujimura and her talked for a few minutes longer and the girl’s entire face was transformed; she was smiling, almost relieved, like she’d just been told nothing she had ever done was worth all the pain she had put herself through, and so it was best to shake it off.

After her and Tsujimura talked some more, she gave one last nod, and, without taking a second glance at Ayatsuji or Dazai, hugged the other girl and walked away, head held high, turning one last time to give her new friend a wave before disappearing around the corner to the building.

Tsujimura walked back to them only after the girl had gone inside. Her patient, apologetic face when talking to the girl immediately switched to one of irritation as she stomped her way back to where the two boys were.

Dumbly, Dazai watched her coming towards them, but before he could say anything, she halted right in front of Ayatsuji, who was still sitting, looking enormously bored on the bleacher, and put her hands on her hips, the same stance Kunikida did when Dazai was goofing off at the writing center or was being too much a little shit for them to deal with right now.

“I told her you still pee your bed even now and the reason you rejected her was because you live in constant fear and shame about your bed-wetting problem coming to light and so won’t let anyone get close to you so she should just forget about you since you’ve doomed yourself to dying alone anyway, along with your unmanageable piss,” she said, crossing her arms, like she’d just played a really good card. “I also told her you like to watch weird maid animes and that you love maids and everything about maids.”

“Well, that’s not entirely untrue --”

“I can’t promise she won’t tell all her friends about it,”

“Did you tell her about that one Halloween when you dressed up as a maid from that niche cooking video game you were obsessed with as a kid but when nobody knew who you were you burst into tears and I had to comfort you while everyone else left us to go trick-or-treating?”

“Of course not!” Tsujimura huffed, her cheeks pink at the memory. “Just the pee thing! I made sure she felt bad for you and she did. Once I told her that, it was like seeing a switch being pulled in her brain. You weren’t dreamy Ayatsuji anymore, you were piss-his-pants loser boy!”

A pause. Then, rather humbly, “I suppose you’d say I deserve it,”

“Yes you do! You were so mean! This is the third girl that’s confessed to you this month!”

“I simply said I wasn’t interested in returning her feelings for me, just like I did with all the others. Are you saying I should’ve lied?”

“Of course not! Ugh, Yukito, you’re hopeless.” Tsujimura threw up her hands exasperatedly. “Would it have killed you to have been nicer?”

“Yes, I do think it would’ve. By the way,” Ayatsuji reached into the bag that lay next to his thigh and pulled out a thermostat. The ice inside it clinked against the metal, like Christmas bells. He offered it to her.

Tsujimura was still frowning but nevertheless accepted it, taking a swig of the cold water inside and wiping her mouth once before handing it back to him.

Ayatsuji put the thermostat back. “I noticed you haven’t been bringing your water bottle to practice lately. You lost it, huh?”

Tsujimura frowned. “Did you steal it?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Mizuki.” He zipped up the bag with a satisfying zzzzz! “I’ll leave the thermos in your locker since you’ll probably need it for your soccer game this afternoon,”

“I thought you were coming to that,”

“Of course I am, but I have to buy myself a new thermos now since I had to be a Good Samaritan and give a certain careless person the one I already owned,” He grinned at her.

Not rising to the bait, Tsujimura merely sighed, giving up. “Whatever.” A pause. “One day, Yukito, someone’s going to break your heart. And I won’t be there to pick your sorry ass off the floor when you come crying to me about it.”

Ayatsuji gave her another cocky smirk, not saying anything, which might’ve provoked her had it not been for the sound of a loud whistle breaking the air.

It was the coach, annoyed that one of his students had run off and was slacking during practice.

Tsujimura turned to go, but before she left, she said, “I’m sorry you had to see that, Dazai. The girl said you seemed concerned and she appreciated it. Thank you. Don’t mind Yukito, he can be a real jerk sometimes.” Ayatsuji scoffed good-naturedly but made no comment.

Dazai felt himself nod once. “No problem. I just don’t like seeing girls cry,”

She smiled at him. “You’re sweet,”

He didn’t think he was sweet. Sasaki certainly didn’t think he was now.

Both boys watched as Tsujimura turn around and joined her team. A beat passed before Ayatsuji broke the silence. “I suppose I should apologize to you too, Dazai. I am sincerely sorry you got roped into that.”

Dazai turned to him, thinking he was going to say something else, but he was too fixated on the figure of Tsujimura growing farther and farther away from them.

From him, more specifically.

The breeze rose. The earth turned like carousel wheels.

“You love her,” Dazai said plainly.

Ayatsuji didn’t speak for a while, and for a second Dazai thought he didn’t hear what he’d said -- the enormity of the statement -- but then he closed his eyes and smiled. A real smile. Not like the sarcastic ones that, up until now, he’d only seen the other boy give.

“How do you know?” Dazai blurted out suddenly. “How do you . . . How are you so sure?”

“I’m not. But,” Here Ayatsuji met his eyes, rarely honest. “I think I’d like to keep giving her my thermos, even if she loses it the next day, maybe not for forever, obviously -- although Mizuki is the type of person to keep losing her thermos for the rest of her life, but as long as she needs it. As long as she needs me and my stupid thermos. That doesn’t seem so bad to me. No, not bad at all,”

That was all he said. His smile disappeared, like a switch had been flipped, and he became regular Ayatsuji again. “I’ll see you around?” he said. It sounded like a question, but they both knew it wasn’t.

Dazai nodded. He must’ve walked back inside, for the bell had rung, and it was time for life to move on.

With the image of Tsujimura walking away from them still on his mind, perfectly clueless she was so adored, he thought, What a messy business it is to be fallen for.

What uneasiness lies in being loved.

A memory bubbled up, the way a drowned fly floats up to the surface in a half-empty glass of water.

It was when he was younger, when he was still at his old school. It was fuzzy, but he remembered John Steinbeck with Mark and Nathaniel standing behind him, looming like sinister lanterns. He’d pushed Dazai to the ground and looked down at him, triumphant. He did that often: Come up to him unawares and suddenly shove him down to taste the asphalt, but this time it had felt more violent. He’d cut his lip; the cement bit his palms.

Dazai never understood why. No matter how many times he thought about it, he could not understand why.

“No girl will ever want you. I heard even your mom abandoned you, isn’t that right?” John’s words were like an echo chamber in Dazai’s heart.

His tormentor kicked his leg. He winced.

“You’re never going to be normal. It isn’t just because you’re pathetic. Or that you look weird. It’s like you’re not even a person. You should be taken out of the race altogether. Disqualified and thrown away! You’re no longer human!” John screamed, like he was cursing him. “Nobody wants you. Did you hear me, Japanese boy? Nobody wants you.”

Nobody would love him.

What did his Mom say about his father once?

“When I met your father I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s the rest of my life,’”

He was still a little boy then. He was sitting near her, absentmindedly playing with Melos as they both waited for Gen’emon to come home from work. Her words eluded him. “What do you mean, Mama?” he had said, curious and a little afraid.

She turned to him then, her little boy. Gen’emon’s son. She smiled and put a finger to her lips. “When you get older, you’ll see,”

Within a year from when they had that conversation, Melos had died. His Papa went into a black car filled with gas and never went out. They moved to America soon after.

Now Dazai was older, but he still didn’t understand. Had his Mom lied to him? What did she even know? The love of her life killed himself without saying a word. The rest of her life had been a lie.

Then the thought entered his mind: It’ll always be incomprehensible, this thing people call love. To him, love was uneasy, wobbling, like a stone statue right before it crashed into a million pieces on the pavement.

There would be no vows or rings or growing old together with someone special. His parents would never watch him stand at that aisle, holding hands, exchanging vows, and smiling fondly, sentimental because, within themselves, they were remembering their own wedding day, and now that they had endured life together — birth, children, and so much time left over — they were ever more sure that some things lasted eternities.

Some things couldn’t be touched by death. Or sadness. Or rain.

But most things did. And Dazai was one of them.

He thought of Sasaki. She was perfect. Exactly the kind of person who could love and be loved in turn.

A wide gulf opened up underneath him, dragging him by its teeth.

I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others.

Even if someone did marry him they’d surely realize they had made a mistake and rally for a divorce or break up or leave after about a year.

Like Sasaki. Like Chuuya. Like everyone.

He’d almost forgotten about those memories, of John yelling at him back then and his mom looking out their apartment window, waiting for his father, not knowing she’d have to watch him break his vows and die, and then force herself to barely live without him afterwards.

He’d almost forgotten, though nothing that hurt that much was ever really forgotten. Just buried.

Like silent movies. Like pandora. Like a corpse.

 

. . .

 

The day he broke up with Sasaki was the same day Chuuya and Shirase had sex for the first time.

Chuuya didn’t elaborate much; said he wanted to maintain privacy in his relationship now that it was getting more serious.

But it was good.

That’s what he’d said. It was good and it felt good.

V. Scratch Art

People talked about him more than ever since he stopped being Sasaki’s boyfriend. He got the feeling that everyone had their own creative version of the story of why they broke up, but no one but him and Sasaki actually knew what happened.

She wouldn’t even look him in the eye whenever he saw her in class afterwards. Dazai didn’t blame her.

Strangely enough, he carried no anxieties or guilt for how their relationship ended. He was fine being the idiot ex Sasaki told her friends about.

He was fine being the asshole.

At least it was over.

Thank God above it was over.

Most of the school seemed to like the idea of there being “sides” between them. Dazai knew this because, generally, everyone made sure to show him that no one was on his.

He figured he deserved it. He had been an idiot and he knew that.

Why did he ever think someone like him could date someone like Sasaki?

That gulf came back again, hungrier and hungrier. It opened its maw, the air in its breath more like a violent wind than anything touched by summertime.

He started avoiding his friends. He hung out with them still, but not as frequently like before. At lunchtime, which was when all of them were most likely to see each other and chat, he’d sneak into one of the gymnasium’s smelly empty locker rooms, find the stall farthest from the entrance, and sit there chewing on a granola bar.

Sometimes he cried. He couldn’t help it. He made sure nobody heard.

As expected, his friends grew worried about him but found themselves helpless to help. Since they’d met in first year, they had all usually stayed out of Dazai’s business -- not that they wanted to. Of course they wanted to reach out, but over the months everyone had come to the silent, unbreakable realization that Dazai preferred to carry everything bad, everything that hurt, and everything ugly all by himself. So they never asked to come over. They didn’t ask about his relationship with Sasaki, and they acted the same and as if nothing was different after they’d broken up.

Admittedly, Dazai had worried his dating fuckup was going to be a source of tension within his friend group, making him even more unwelcome than he already felt, or at least displaced amidst the circle somehow, like a glass bottle floating down the current right before it dashed itself into pieces against the stones beneath. What if they thought it was his fault? It technically was. He didn’t hold anything against Sasaki, nor did he really want to explain himself, even if it meant gaining more people’s sympathy.

It seemed the entire campus watched him, like researchers stalking a specimen in a petri dish, chanting in unison, “Tell us your version. Add more sand to the fire. We might just forgive you if you tell, tell, tell . . .”

He imagined all his peers surrounding him, like the many times John had pushed him down and rallied everyone else to watch Dazai get beaten and humiliated, like it was a circus and he was the main act. He imagined them as interlinked bars that made up one giant cage, repeating that mantra, “Tell, tell, tell . . .”

Sometimes, when he pictured it in his head, his friends were among the crowd.

Of course, he knew they were better than that -- they didn’t pick sides or spread nasty rumors, least of all lies about him -- but he couldn’t help thinking about it. The idea was a parasite in his chest, tugging him further and further away from his friends.

They put up a fight too. For a few weeks, Atsushi had texted him everyday, asking if he wanted to do something, always inviting him to whatever outing he and Ryuu were going to that weekend. Lucy had baked him chocolate chip cookies; she broke into his locker and placed a pink basket wrapped in an apple-red bow with a smiley-face note, which Dazai knew meant, “If you don’t eat all of the cookies I made, I’ll never forgive you.”

He ate the cookies.

He was eating one of them now, sitting in a locker room stall. Occasionally his phone notified him that people were looking for him, asking him if he was okay, but he shut it all out. It was easier to just sit there by himself, even if the tiles were cold against his bandages.

Yes, his friends tried very hard to get through to him. Tsujimura and Yosano tried to get him to talk and feel more included whenever they were all together. Tachihara somehow became even more ridiculous and clownish than ever, saying cringe-worthy or sappy motivational things out of the blue, making everyone groan, snort, and roll their eyes at how embarrassingly un-funny he was. Ranpo even offered him some of his candy one day at lunch. Dazai suspected Kunikida told Ango to “go easy on him” at the writing center; since then he’d had less tutoring jobs assigned to him, which would have been a tiny reprieve if it weren’t for the fact that the money he used to make from the writing center had decreased by about 30%.

Recently, Mori had gotten Dazai to help pay for a quarter of the monthly utility bills to “prepare” him for “when he was on his own.”

Being on your own. He found that strange, almost barbaric. Why did he have to be alone?

Why were people born, raised by the world, and then abandoned in the thick of it? The admirable thing they called independence was a joke. What was the point of freedom if you had no one and nothing at the end of the day?

Despite all their efforts, Dazai grew more convinced his friends all hated him. For whatever reasons, not just because of Sasaki. The idea grew like a tumor, like a beating malignant thing that slowly killed you with its insidious, sweet patience.

One day Dazai’s teacher told him to stay behind after his last class of the day. He wasn’t used to being addressed directly by his teachers, so he was a little surprised, but nevertheless obeyed.

While everyone else filtered out the classroom door, a multitude of eyes gawked at him, wanting to know what he did that would warrant staying after class. Because that was what was newsworthy. Through drought and famine and natural disasters, kingdoms falling and angels calling, what seized teenagers’ attention most was high school drama. They sniffed it out like rabid wolves.

“Tell, tell, tell . . .”

Dazai heard a camera click behind him. Someone must’ve snapped a ‘candid’ photo of him on their phone to go show their friends later. The quiet sad kid who was told to stay in class.

He scratched the inside of his palm as both he and the teacher waited until everyone was gone and the room was finally empty.

“I don’t want to keep you, er, Dazai,” the teacher said, apologetic. Avoidant.

“It’s okay,” he replied mechanically. It wasn’t okay. He was going to miss his bus.

His teacher cleared his throat. He had been awkwardly flailing his hands randomly, like he’d suddenly grown them and couldn’t figure out their mechanics, but he soon settled both palms on his desk, like two dead flies. “I wanted to talk to you about the most recent assignment.”

They were tasked with writing about 1000 words explaining why their favorite book was worth reading. Dazai read a lot, but, as people who read as much as he knew and understood, he could not pick a favorite book, -- and he never will -- so he simply wrote on the one he was currently reading, which was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. In all honesty, he’d written it last minute since that night Mori had forgotten to get the groceries they needed on his way home -- even though Dazai had texted him the list earlier that day -- so he had to take the red line at 8 PM to get cup noodles for him and Q at a shoddy convenience store.

He couldn’t even remember what he wrote about for the assignment.

“Did I fail?” Dazai asked. He’d never failed anything before.

“No, not at all. In fact, it was rather . . . quite good. Well, as usual.”

“Oh.”

“You’re the only one who writes on books I actually recognize,” His teacher smiled, leaning down to the leather canvas bag near his leg and pulling out Dazai’s essay, handing it to him as if it were a crisp, shiny prize he’d earned at a contest. “Well done,”

Dazai took it meekly, staring down at the 98% circled in bright red at the top of the first page. He didn’t know what to say. If he got a good mark, why did he have to stay after class?

His eyes flashed to the wall clock just above the blackboard. His bus had left. He’d have to rent an ebike if he wanted to get home in time to start on dinner. That meant he had to spend more money than he intended this week.

As the boy ruminated on his economic prospects, a silence hung between him and his teacher, which he quickly found to be unbearable on top of worrying how he would get home.

Thankfully, the teacher finally said, “Dazai, do you know Mr. Taneda? We recently just hired him. His office is near the vice principal’s.”

Oh. Upon hearing the name, Dazai suddenly understood. This was something white people did. They tried to be nice to you by bringing up something vaguely related to your racial background to get conversation going, -- or to ask you a favor -- but it always ended up being something ridiculous like, “Hey, you’re Japanese. I’ve had chow mien before. Can I interview you for my paper on Pearl Harbor?”

It was usually ignorant kids his age that said this type of crap, but it wasn’t uncommon for adults to do it as well.

Still, Dazai was a bit confused. Did his teacher keep him after class just because they hired a new Japanese guy on the staff? Even for white audacity, that was a little much.

His teacher must’ve sensed his confusion because he swiftly provided some clarification. “Mr. Taneda is the school’s new student counselor. I -- ahem -- I brought your name up to him and he’s told me he’ll talk to you sometime next week.”

Dazai blinked dumbly.

The man cleared his throat. Loudly, like there was a headless frog lodged in his esophagus that was still wriggling around somehow. “Dazai. The work you’ve been submitting has been excellent. As of now, I would say you are my top student in terms of grades and understanding of the material. However,” The frog convulsed. “Your essays have been . . . concerning in many ways that I, as your teacher, cannot simply ignore anymore. You write well, but the topics you discuss -- depression, suicide, tragedy, obsession -- it’s . . . it’s not suitable. It’s not healthy. Do you understand?”

Dazai felt like he was in a goldfish bowl. The words were like rainbow pellets falling from the sky, slowly swifting down and waiting for him to eat them up so he could vomit up the toad in his own mouth that was sitting on his tongue, unwilling to hop out on its own.

He felt himself nod.

“I tried contacting your guardian, but he’s a tough person to get a hold of! Maybe he should check his phone plan!” The teacher looked at him expectantly, his eyes all but pleading for this kid to laugh a little and not look so intense, but to no avail. “Ahem. So I’ve decided to seek help elsewhere. That’s why I asked Mr. Taneda to talk to you. He . . . He knows how to help with cases like yours.”

Cases like his?

“He’ll most likely come up to you soon and ask you about arranging a time to meet him in his office.”

He didn’t want to talk to a Mr. Taneda.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I looked up your schedule and saw that you had a 50 minute break after lunchtime. Mr. Taneda will most likely see you during that free period. I, uh, told him you were free then.”

Dazai used that time to read. Some mornings he would only wake up and get ready because of the promise that he’d get to find a corner in the library in the afternoon and read for a little under an hour.

“Dazai. Do you understand?”

“I understand, sir.”

 

. . .

 

That one conversation with his teacher had unknowingly started Dazai on a roundabout goose chase for the sake of his ‘mental health.’

He didn’t know what to expect with Mr. Taneda, but when Dazai came to his office at the appointed time, he found the man to be agreeable enough. He didn’t talk down to him like most adults did, but during the entire session a pervasive air of discomfort and hesitation lingered between them.

Dazai figured taking the honest and communicative but still detached approach would be best. He answered all of the counselor’s questions -- How is your home life? Do you have supports? How’s school going? -- in a matter-of-fact tone that he could tell made Mr. Taneda a little uneasy. Dazai told him that his uncle had been legally in charge of him and Q since they’d immigrated to America, basically. Their mother was in an institution because of chronic and mental illnesses. Father was dead. No other family.

Mr. Taneda listened quietly to all this information, jotting some notes down slowly on a pad and only raising his eyes to meet Dazai’s if he paused to take a breath. Aside from his voice, the clock on the wall was the only thing making sounds in the room.

Despite this, things seemed to be going alright until Dazai got asked about his eating and sleeping habits. Mr. Taneda insisted that a boy his age should have a healthy diet and ten hours of sleep every day, which made Dazai blink a few times because that ideal could not have been farther from the truth. Aside from Ranpo, he knew virtually no one his age who slept that amount frequently.

“I eat whenever I can,”

“What do you eat?”

“Simple stuff. I eat when my sibling Q eats. I cook for them.”

“Doesn’t your guardian cook for you?”

Dazai bit his lip. “Sometimes he does,” he finally said. It wasn’t a complete lie. Sometimes Mori could be persuaded to make them food. Or, to be more precise, he’d start preparing something but then halfway through he’d “accidentally” burn something or would get a call for work and “have to step out for a minute,” so Dazai would have to finish up the meal if they wanted to eat something edible before midnight.

If Mori was in a really good mood, he’d order them takeout or go with them to get food somewhere in the city. Nowhere extravagant though, just small family-owned restaurants or some of Boston’s cheapest, grimiest street food. Mori would take half of the expenses out of Dazai’s monthly allowance to “help pay for everyone,” so even though Q, who only knew what a wallet was because their brother never denied them his, was always eager to get Chinese, Dazai had gotten to a point where he’d rather just not eat if it meant saving his money.

It was hard to say no to Q though. They were getting really big and never seemed to stop wanting food, particularly brown sugar candies from the bakery and sweets shop near Harvard Square, which was usually bought by tourists and therefore pricier than logic and morality allowed.

Most of his friends had lunch cards so they could eat whatever the cafeteria offered, and there were a couple places to get food near campus, but they overcharged even with the student discounts. At the start of the school year Dazai tried to make himself food, but he got more and more lazy every morning, and eventually he stopped eating lunch. And it wasn’t as bad as he thought it’d be, to be perfectly honest.

In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he felt hungry.

He told none of this to Mr. Taneda, of course.

“What about your sleeping?” the counsellor asked. “Are you getting enough rest?”

Dazai tilted his head. After school and picking up Q, he would be doing a mixture of cleaning the apartment, cooking dinner, finishing up his homework, reading a book, or napping. On the weekends he’d hang out with his friends, but lately he’d been staying home more. He’d sleep all day and wake up blearily at 8 or 9 PM to Q shaking him, concerned they hadn’t seen him all day, and Dazai would groggily rub his eyes and find himself as exhausted as he had been when he first laid down.

“I sleep enough,”

“How many hours a day?”

“Um. Since childhood, I haven’t been very good at sleeping consistently. I sleep for about four to six hour intervals, if I’m lucky, but then I wake up suddenly and can’t go back to sleep.”

“And do you think there’s a reason for that?”

“No. I’ve never thought about it.”

“Have you ever tried out ways to help your insomnia?”

“Yes, I read a book about it once, but nothing’s worked effectively.”

“So you’re not eating well, nor are you sleeping regularly.”

Dazai didn’t answer.

Mr. Taneda wouldn’t break eye contact. “I know you’re smart enough to know that this is serious. You’re only sixteen,”

Again, Dazai didn’t answer. It was stupid, but up until then he hadn’t really thought that what he was doing and the way he was living his life was all that concerning. Mori never scolded him for it. When he was dating Sasaki, she never brought it up. His friends stayed up late to do work and missed some meals too. He didn’t see what the big deal was.

But even he knew at the back of his head that that wasn’t true. He wasn’t like his friends.

A beat passed. Mr. Taneda scrawled something on his notepad, ripped off the sheet, and handed it to Dazai.

He took it, noting it was a slip for the school clinic.

“I want you to go to the campus clinic,” the teacher said. “They’ll say you can only see a nurse, but give them that slip and you should be allowed to see the school physician. I’ll send her an email in advance telling her what you told me today.”

This was a little alarming. Dazai straightened his back. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get in trouble,”

Mr. Taneda shook his head. “You’re not in any trouble. I just want to help you with what you’re struggling with right now, and I think getting the clinic involved would open up some possibilities for you.”

“Possibilities?”

“Well, for one, you could get recommended to a professional therapist, someone more qualified than me to handle your case.”

There was that word again. Case. Like his life was a murder scene.

“Or, additionally,” Mr. Taneda continued, not noticing how Dazai seemed to be growing smaller and smaller, even if nothing about him absolutely changed at all. “You could talk to a psychiatrist, who can prescribe you medications.”

“Medications?”

“Antidepressants,”

“Oh,”

“But that’s a last resort, of course. You’re very young to be medicated, but we’ll see what the doctor says, alright?”

“All right.”

“And, one last thing,” Mr. Taneda handed him another piece of paper from his desk drawer. This one looked more like an official form.

To Dazai’s dismay, he saw the words “Guardian’s Signature” and a thick, black line indicating where to sign at the bottom of the page.

“If you can, get your uncle to sign that before you go to the clinic. That should move things along so we can get you the help you need,”

Dazai didn’t say anything.

“He’ll have to be informed eventually,”

Dazai nodded.

He did go to the clinic a week later after school, but he’d copied Mori’s signature on the paper. The secretary didn’t even ask him any questions when he came in and handed her all the forms; she just told him to wait for the doctor, which ended up being a waste of time because, after an hour of waiting, one of the nurses told him that they were closing up soon and the doctor’ll see him tomorrow.

When Dazai did finally get an audience with the physician, she only talked with him for thirty minutes before approving a visit to a psychiatrist downtown. Another form had to be signed and forged.

It took a month for the psychiatrist to see him. He didn’t at all seem surprised when Dazai came to the office by himself and without an adult. He was even more prompt and indelicate than the others, as if being rude was an abundant currency he could afford. The psychiatrist barely looked at Dazai before writing up a prescription for 10 mg of Fluoxetine.

He picked up the pills from the pharmacy about a week later. There was a note attached to the paper bag that told him, “Say hi to Dr. Mori for me. We’re old friends.”

He got a discount on the antidepressants.

Dazai didn’t ask any questions.

 

. . .

 

He didn’t tell anyone about this new change in his life.

All of the counseling and clinic appointments brought him deep into the city, so he started spending a lot of time downtown. He subconsciously avoided Chinatown because he didn’t want to run into his friends, but for the most part Dazai was an invisible man.

Now that Q was a little older and bodaciously independent (“You don’t need to keep fussing over me, Nii-san. You’re worse than a mama”), Dazai found himself experiencing a microscopic form of aimless empty nest syndrome.

Despite being in Boston for years, he’d never actually spent more than an hour at most in the public library. Oftentimes, we take forever to realize we have the keys to the kingdom. Whether because of our own stubbornness or abject refusal to coronate ourselves to better horizons, most opportunities go flaccid and untapped. He had a library card, but he was always at home taking care of Q or at Chuuya’s house. Until now.

To a kid like Dazai, the library was basically heaven on earth: a paradise hidden within the bustling city, and he felt stupid for only realizing it now. It was free. It was old. It was always busy yet somehow always serene, as if all the shelves swollen with books bore witness to everyday hurricanes with an indifferent, knowing smile, keeping its secrets, watching reality in motion, completely content whether or not the world ended or decided to live another day simply to be polite.

In the library, Dazai could learn to be lonely.

There was one caveat though, and it was that the library closed at 5 PM. When this happened, Dazai often found himself wandering around the downtown area, not wanting to take the train home yet but finding little comfort in the hustle and bustle that seemed to be caving in on him the longer he stayed out.

Sometimes he called Chuuya.

“Hey loser,”

“Hi chibi loser.”

“I hate you. Stop calling me that.”

“I’d rather die,”

“Fucker. What’re you doing?”

“Not much. I’m heading home from the library. Just got off the bus. I told Mori I’m studying for a big test since he gave me crap for getting 0.5 points off for a science quiz,”

“Is there actually a test?”

“I mean, yeah,”

“Did you study?”

“No, I fucked around on my phone and read my book,”

Chuuya’s laugh echoed on the other side of the phone. “Figures. Whatever, you’ll ace it anyway, Mr. Genius,”

“You literally call me some form of ‘dumbass’ at least five times a day,”

“You’re smart, Mackerel. Fuck whatever Mori tells you,”

“He lets me know often that I’m not,”

“You’re brilliant,” said Chuuya — so, so sure. “I’ll keep saying it until you believe it,”

“And what if I never believe it?” Dazai retorted halfheartedly, knowing it was the truth. He took a lazy turn down the street corner.

Chuuya was quiet on the other end for a moment. Dazai almost thought he’d accidentally hung up and was about to check his phone when suddenly, softly, like falling asleep, he heard the other boy whisper, a thousand miles away, into his ear, “Then I’ll keep saying it,”

Now it was Dazai’s turn to be quiet.

His mind spun. Maybe it was the new meds. For a second his mouth was a stranger, not knowing how to respond.

The silence continued for a second too long, and it felt somehow louder than all the city noise and downtown rowdiness that surrounded him outside. Impulsively, Dazai felt his feet walk into the nearest shop. It was a bubble tea place.

His eyes landed on an advertised drink that was displayed near the counter. The picture on the menu showed an invitingly purple hue mixed with creamy whites and black tapioca pearls swimming at the bottom, with a rippling gray peeking through the liquid from the almost translucent straw poking out of the translucent disposable cup.

Before he had time to talk himself out of it, Dazai heard himself place an order. “One taro milk tea, please,”

Chuuya’s voice buzzed against his ear once more. “You’re buying yourself a drink and it’s not shitty iced coffee? What’s the occasion?”

Even though his friend couldn’t see him, Dazai shrugged, feeling a little entranced still at the soft purples, deep blacks, light grays, and pearly whites on the drink advertisement. He found the combination soothing, although he usually did not go for anything violet or pastel.

Used to Dazai’s nonverbal lapses, Chuuya didn’t say anything more but remained on the line. He waited until he heard some shuffling on Dazai’s end and his friend mumbled out a “Thank you,” followed by the unmistakable gentle sloshing of a newly made drink. A quiet tinkling indicated to Chuuya that Dazai had walked out of the shop and was most likely back on his trek home.

“Hey, Mackerel, listen,”

“Hm?”

“If, hypothetically, I came back --”

“Like, to Dante’s Inferno where you came from?”

“No, dumbass,”

“See? You do call me dumbass often,”

“I never said I didn’t, just that you were also smart on occasion,”

“Uwaah, Chuuya thinks I’m smart!”

“Actually, never mind, water freezes at the temperature of your IQ number,”

“So mean!”

“Anyway, like I said, if, hypothetically I did come back -- to Boston, --”

“You’re coming back?”

“No. Well. I don’t know. Um. I miss . . . I miss home.”

This was the first time Chuuya had ever mentioned this.

Dazai knew the other boy wasn’t particularly attached to places -- to his best friend, home was never a building or four walls and a roof; it was always people and the feeling of coming back to where you belonged. It never mattered where that place was, so long as it felt right, and over the years, even though they always talked about Chuuya coming back or visiting, Dazai had come to slowly accept that he’d now forgotten about Boston. That wherever he was now was his new home, far away from Dazai and their childhood together.

“How . . . Hypothetically, I mean . . . How would you come back?” Dazai murmured.

Chuuya made a vague noise on the other side of the line that told Dazai he didn’t have a solid answer either. “I dunno, but I want to bring Shirase. He says he misses home too,”

Fucking Shirase. Dazai didn’t say anything. He walked past a trashcan on the street and dropped his half-finished drink inside.

“I want you guys to meet,”

“I’m not exactly eager to meet with the trust fund baby who took your virginity, Slug.”

“You have such a shitty, shitty way with words,”

“I learned from the best,”

“You better not be talking about me,”

“I am talking to you. I trust you can fill in the lines with that pea-shaped brain of yours,”

Chuuya snorted, and for a second Dazai thought he’d successfully avoided the topic of his friend’s boyfriend until the other boy said, “Well, he says he wants to meet you,”

“Why?” Dazai felt offended.

Something in Chuuya’s voice changed then. “He thinks we talk too much. Maybe he’s a little jealous.” He let out a single laugh, but it felt like it was forced. “Jokes aside, would you . . . Would you ever want me to introduce you?”

“Um,” Dazai stammered, suddenly feeling the urge to start scratching himself again.

“Dazai?”

He did not get the chance to say anything back, however, because at that moment Dazai had finished climbing the steps up to the apartment and had walked in on his uncle holding up a red dress in front of a half-naked Q, who was already wearing a tight bonnet with ribbons and string in their hair which screamed discomfort, hence why they were giving the clothing article currently in their uncle’s hands a look of marked apprehension.

Tongue still numb, Dazai felt his arms mechanically swoop in and pick up his little sibling. Q let out a noise of surprise, not realizing their big brother had come home. Dazai pressed them against his chest like when they were a baby again, face hidden in the crook of his neck and their pale, bare back against Mori.

He didn’t look at his uncle as he took Q to their bedroom and slammed the door.

Nobody said a word.

 

. . .

 

At some point, he’d hung up on Chuuya without giving him an answer to a question Dazai did not realize had taken a lot to ask.

His best friend and his stupid, insecure boyfriend were the last thing on Dazai’s mind though as he locked the door to Q’s room and bent down to untie the bonnet wrapped uncomfortably around their head like a hanging rope. Once he’d gotten the pinchy ribbons off, Dazai went to his siblings’ dresser and took out a shirt and pajamas before snatching up the discarded bonnet from the floor and tossing it into the trash.

He didn’t look at Q’s eyes the entire time he did this. When he handed them their clothes, he didn’t even wait for them to speak before he turned around to leave them to undress in peace. Since they’d been born, Dazai had often helped them take off and put on their clothes, and it was never a big deal, but now the very thought of slipping on a shirt Dazai mindlessly chose on their sibling’s exposed body made him feel a little clammy and sick, like he was forcing them to do something they didn’t even understand, even though they’d done this over a thousand times.

Dazai stepped out into the hallway, listening to the rustle of fabric as Q put on the shirt first. His eyes darted to the rest of the apartment, half expecting his uncle to appear with one of his many excuses that always managed to absolve him of any blame or consequence, but Mori was nowhere to be seen.

After five minutes, Dazai came back into Q’s room. He found them in their pajamas and sitting on the bed.

Even though it was only 7 PM, Dazai tucked them under the sheets and turned off their star-shaped lamp on the bedside table, bathing the room in a quite darkness that enveloped the siblings like the arms of their mother, only she was not there, and when she did hug them it felt more clinical and distant, like the incomprehensible mesh of wires from a big machine getting tangled against your skin and leaving hot marks once you get yourself out.

“Nii-san?”

Dazai felt numb.

“Nii-san, why are you angry?”

“I’m not, Q. Not at you,”

“Are you angry at uncle?”

Dazai’s fingers twitched. He looked his sibling in the eye and said, “Don’t let Mori do that to you ever again. Do you understand?”

Q sank into the bed, looking guilty even in the dark. Dazai hated it. Dazai hated that they felt guilty.

“It’s okay, Nii-san, really,” Q mumbled. “Uncle said he bought the bonnet for me so I couldn’t say no to trying it on,”

“You can say no though, and you should when you don’t want to say yes.”

“I guess,”

“Q,”

At the direct address, the child finally managed to meet their brother’s eyes. They looked like pools of obsidian in the darkness, but only for a second, because once Dazai saw that his sibling was starting to look a little scared he forced his face to relax. He shut his eyes, faintly hearing the soft notes of a piano that wasn’t there, before reaching over to squeeze Q’s hand once, twice, before getting up and gently shutting the door.

He stood there for a while, unmoving, trying to fight the urge to scream and rush back into the room, take Q in his arms like when they were still a baby, and run far away from here.

Dazai wanted his mom, but the moment he realized this was also the moment he knew he could never tell her what just happened.

He must’ve stayed there for another half hour before he heard the front door open and his uncle’s shuffling steps coming inside. He didn’t stumble, so he hadn’t gone out drinking. Oddly enough, Dazai would have preferred it if he’d come home drunk. That way, Mori would’ve just done what he usually did and go straight to his room to pass out and miss dinner.

“Dazai,”

He didn’t turn around.

“Dazai, with your active mind I know you must be thinking a lot of things right now, -- you always did think the worst of me -- but I can assure you that nothing was out of the ordinary and Yumeno even said she liked the dress --”

“I’m tired,”

“That’s fine, but I don’t want you thinking --”

“I’m going to take a shower,”

He went into the bathroom, not giving Mori a chance to reply. To keep lying.

He turned the showerhead on, undressed, took off his bandages, and crawled to the furthest edge of the grimy tub. He didn’t reach for the shampoo or soap, just sat there half against the cold porcelain, half under the scorching heat of the water raining down on him.

The droplets felt like sharp pinpricks on his skin. Almost robotically, Dazai’s eyes fell to the scars all over his body, at the mysterious bruises that often showed up on his knees and thighs, the instigating pain a phantom but the hurt always haunting him.

His gaze went to his arms and the dried scabs near his elbow and shoulders. There were a significant amount of blemishes and marks already, but a voice in Dazai’s head kept asking, Why isn’t it bleeding? It should be bleeding. More, more, more. Blood. Where’s the blood? It should be bleeding. Why isn’t it bleeding?

Suddenly he remembered Mori kept his razors in the bottom drawer near the sink. His uncle sometimes cut himself when shaving, the crimson liquid bursting out like the petals on a flower faster than he could grab a towel to wipe it off.

Dazai got out of the tub, sopping wet, dripping everywhere. He opened the drawer.

Halfway through doing it, just when the stinging on his skin got to be almost too much against the scalding water, Dazai thought of little John Steinbeck’s taunting him all those years ago.

He’d only talked with John once since they started high school together -- or rather, there was only one time he acknowledged him and Dazai made any kind of response.

It had been just before he’d broken up with Sasaki. He was hiding out in the library -- from her, from his friends, he couldn’t tell -- and sitting on one of the empty tables by himself. Without warning, an underclassman -- someone he’d tutored once or twice before -- came up to him with bright eyes and said, “I just wanted to let you know I got an A on my last assignment that you helped me with. You’re so good at English, I can’t thank you enough!” The kid was a year below him, white, wearing a red sports jersey and that god-awful pungent cologne freshmen wore to make them feel older.

Dazai, a little taken aback, lifted his head to give a polite congratulations, but that was when his eye caught John, Mark, and Nathaniel standing a few feet across from where he was, undoubtedly slacking off or skipping class and finding asylum in the library like usual.

John was sneering, and Dazai knew then that he must’ve overheard the exchange.

Dazai also knew that John thought it was funny, and suddenly he felt like he was that little kid again, during his first days in America, and he heard his young classmates’ tinny voices ringing in his ears.

Hey Japanese boy, speak Eeeengggliiiissshhhh.

‘Issh ah niche to uh a meet chuu.’ Ha! What a dummy.

He is dumb then.

What is that? Eugh, it really stinks.

Get me the box!

There wasn’t any blood then, when they’d trampled him at the school grounds.

There was blood now.

He had been in the shower so long that the steam hissed around him, coating the tile walls and floor with a heady, warm aroma that reminded him of petrichor mist.

Just like the warm bath his mama gave him after he came from school.

No, that was wrong. Dazai didn’t just feel like he was that kid again -- he became him too, or, to put it more accurately, he had always been him, that small, lonely boy who couldn’t for the life of him figure out why no one wanted to be his friend. He’ll always remember how that felt, how one of his earliest memories was the sounds of everyone else not talking to him. Like he didn’t exist and he somehow had to fix that.

Dazai will always remember realizing how the reason nobody liked him was skin deep, that he wore it on his very pores, but he couldn’t take it off, couldn’t throw it in the wash to iron out the wrinkles; even if he ripped it all off or scratched at it until his nailbeds bled, he would never be free.

Like a pot with holes in it, just about to spill. Like that octave just above the highest volume, ready to deafen you.

Like an hourglass, flipped, and flipped in a topsy turvy waltz, the sands of time never getting the time to feel itself falling even before the sky became the carpet and you were standing on air, like a tornado, like . . .

Bitterly, — let him be bitter — Dazai thought how Chuuya would never understand that. He was always loved from the beginning. People swarmed to him like he was the eye in a gigantic storm.

Dazai was more like the hurricane: Never grounded, made to move by whatever called his name. Porous, trickling, airy, and violent. Spilling, spilling, spilling debris and disaster like it was shedding its own skin.

The water kept raining.

VI. Lapse

The peach flower boy was seventeen and didn’t know what to do when Q got their first period.

By some grace of God, it happened when they were both home and Dazai was reading in his room, spacing out, when suddenly he heard a shriek coming from the bathroom. He was running down the hallway before he even registered that the noise was coming from his sibling and not some wounded animal.

He found Q on the toilet with both their hands clapped over crossed legs, a look of utter mortification and shame on their pink face.

For a second, Dazai just thought Q must’ve missed the toilet or something like when they were first getting potty-trained, and he was just about to laugh it off and say it’s alright, it’s not a big deal, but that was when he saw the blood on Q’s fingers.

Each of them gawked at each other for a good beat before Q let out an unholy gasp and started screeching again, this time very loud. They shoved their hand in between their legs and squirmed, letting the tantrum take over their entire body now that their brother was here to handle the situation like always.

Jumping at the noise, Dazai cupped both his palms over Q’s ears, which had the desired effect of making them stop screaming. Shutting their mouth tightly, they looked up at Dazai, eyes wide now and beginning to tear up. “Nii-san! Nii-san, it’s so gross, it’s so gross! What do I do? What do I do?!”

Dazai thought that was a very good question.

For all his forethought, he hadn’t really thought about what he’d do when Q inevitably started their period. He knew logically that Q would have no choice but to come to him when they got it, but he’d stupidly thought it might happen when they were at school or with their friends, by which other fellow uterus-havers and ever-so-wise women, -- for which the world always had an abundance of yet also never fully appreciated as was rightfully due -- were more likely to offer assistance in that scenario and save one clueless brother the awkwardness of exactly what was happening.

It didn’t take much brain power to see that their sibling was scared though.

Even Dazai knew that eight years old was too early to start a period, and not for the first time since he became a big brother did he wish his mother were here, with them, to tell him what to do and how to be brave about their bodies. Suddenly he remembered that clammy, dreadful night when he’d walked in on Tane in premature labor.

The memory sprung Dazai into action.

He didn’t need to survey the bathroom or check the drawers to know Mori had zero sanitary supplies stocked up at the apartment for something like this. Dazai reasoned there might have been some in his clinic downstairs, but most of the cases the doctor took on were men or young children, so he didn’t have much faith in his uncle having feminine hygiene products that hadn’t been sitting in his clinic shelves for months, and he doubted Q would appreciate being handed a pad that came from a dusty box.

He got his sibling to calm down. “Wait here,” he said, giving their head one small pat of reassurance before heading out the door to make his way to the nearest convenience store, where he bought pads, liners, and Advil with all the money he had saved for this week’s groceries and transit fare.

When he got back, Q was still sitting on the toilet, but they’d stopped crying.

Dazai set the plastic bag he’d been carrying near the sink and took out the box of pads.

Without any sense of decorum, he looked at the bottom of the packet and read the instructions on how to use them. He understood how it worked in theory, but there was no way he was going to put the pad on Q for them. That felt really wrong. So Dazai did his best to try and teach them the right way to put the pad on their underwear, demonstrating by using his unhelpful stupid boy crotch as an unhelpful stupid boy reference until he was sure they got it. Feeling more relief than abject humiliation, Dazai then stepped out of the bathroom to give Q some privacy.

After a few minutes of quiet out in the hallway, he eventually heard the victorious crinkling of tissue -- huzzah! -- and then the relieved sigh of the toilet flushing, followed by the sound of the sink water running. Q came out of the bathroom fully dressed and fresh as ever, though the lingering look of embarrassment on their face betrayed everything.

“Nii-san . . .” Q’s lip trembled. “I . . . I did it like you showed me,” They cringed, let out another disgusted yelp, and that was when Dazai knew the worst was over.

“It was so gross! So gross! I don’t like it at all!”

Dazai fought a laugh down and nodded. “Yeah, my friends who get it all say it’s gross.”

“It’s the absolute worst!”

“Ah, yeah. Q, do you . . . know what happened to you? Um, did they teach you about this in school?”

Q frowned. “Mori-san told me about it,”

“Told you about what?” the voice of their uncle yawned from across the hallway. By the time both siblings swiveled their heads to see, the man himself had come out from his dark room with bedraggled, greasy hair, a four o’clock shadow, and his usual slept-in grimy lab coat.

Figures he was asleep this entire time, Dazai thought, annoyed.

“Uncle! Uncle! I got my womensensation!”

Dazai rubbed the side of his head. “Q, it’s menstruation,”

“Oh, whatever he said!”

Mori’s face showed genuine surprise. In his mind, Q was still his adorable, albeit a clingy, baby niece. He vaguely remembered when she started walking -- was it that long ago? -- and now she had her period? At eight years old? It wasn’t unheard of, but it was uncommon, and Mori never would’ve expected it to happen to Yumeno.

He supposed since she’s Tane’s daughter she’d have inherited his sister’s unpredictable female health-related troubles, -- Tane had gotten her period early too -- but Mori hadn’t caught any early signs of puberty in Yumeno. In fact, her body seemed to be frozen in its juvenile development, teetering on that cusp between sexless, innocent adolescence and the maturity that reluctantly came with age. As a doctor, and as Tane’s brother, Mori understood this, but with his niece it still took him by surprise.

Aside from her sweet face, which was delightful and queerly feminine, one could hardly tell if Q was a girl or a boy.

And now she was a woman! Blooming right in front of his very eyes.

Mori sewed a smile onto his lips and clasped both hands together in approval. “My, that’s big news, Q. A milestone for any young girl. We should celebrate! Let’s eat out tonight!” Mori purposefully avoided meeting Dazai’s eye when he said this, knowing the boy would have a sour look on his face that should’ve been one of gratitude, not irritation. Granted, he knew that he hardly took his niece and nephew out on many outings like other guardians did with their children, but he liked to think that that made the times they did do something together all the more special.

Before Dazai could say anything, Mori had darted back into his room and grabbed a comb lying on his nightstand, smoothing down his greasy hair before making his way to his niece and giving her a congratulatory pat on the head.

Q was beaming.

“Alright, it’s my treat tonight. Now get dressed, you two,”

“Ehh? Uncle, I’m already dressed,” Q protested, gesturing to their floppy blue sweater, shorts, knee-high socks, and loafers. Even at eight years old, they’d already developed a distinct style and knew what they liked to wear.

Mori wasn’t very thrilled with their outfit, however. “Nonsense, those are your home clothes, Q! Put something more . . . celebratory on. Something less drab. Something to embrace your newfound femininity! How about that nice dress I got you? The red and yellow one?”

“Oh, Uncle, it’s too small. I . . . I don’t like the frills,”

“Nonsense! You look beautiful in it, my dear. Wouldn’t you say so, Dazai?”

Dazai’s hands clenched into fists. He tried to keep his voice level, searing into his mind that image of their little sibling terrified, confused, and bleeding on the toilet just minutes ago. “I think what Q has on is fine,”

Mori’s smile never left his face. It didn’t have to, in the same way a weapon encased in glass did not cease to be a killing thing even when locked up and put on display.

Ten minutes later they were in the car, Q wearing the suggested dress in the back and itching at the sleeves, Dazai sitting rigidly next to Mori in the passenger seat and staring out the window as the city evening pooled itself into scarlet sky.

The restaurant Mori chose was a family friendly one. For once he wasn’t stingy and told them they could order whatever they wanted since they were celebrating, which earned an excited hurray from Q. They ordered three big servings plus dessert, gobbling up the food without a care in the world.

Dazai ordered one appetizer and a salad that tasted like paste in his mouth. When he bit into the lettuce and made a face, Mori gave him an infuriatingly questioning look. Dazai forced himself to swallow it down and told his uncle he wasn’t very hungry.

“Well, that’s fine if we have leftovers. It’s my treat, after all.” Mori responded amicably.

Dazai tried to enjoy the meal and focus on Q’s smiling face. He could tell they were really happy to be on an outing with their uncle, and it helped a lot that the good food and smiles from Mori seemed to be endless.

By the time they were all done eating and had indeed packed up their leftovers, Dazai’s foul mood had somewhat fizzled out with the cola drinks Mori indulged them in having just this once.

Dazai went to use the bathroom.

As he was walking back to their table, he lingered at the other side of the room and looked at Q and Mori. The two had their backs to him, the latter now pocketing his credit card after having paid for the meal and the former chatting up at him about something Dazai couldn’t catch.

Q looked happy.

Even Mori seemed to be in a good mood.

For a moment, it all felt like it was going to be alright.

The spell was over once they got back home. Once inside the apartment the doctor gave Q one last distracted headpat before wordlessly walking to his clinic without a second glance at his niece and nephew.

All three of them had forgotten to take the leftovers out of the car.

When the door to the clinic shut behind Mori, Q kept looking at it as if half expecting -- or half hoping -- that he’d come back out and take them somewhere else. Spend more time with them. But even Q knew that wasn’t going to happen. They had already been incredibly lucky with tonight’s dinner.

Dazai put a hand on their shoulder, prompting them to look up.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Thanks for helping me earlier, Nii-san.”

“Of course.”

“I’m glad uncle took us out,”

“. . . Me too,”

A beat passed. Dazai turned to their sibling. “Are you going to tell mom?”

The room was dark, but the look of perplexity on Q’s face was clear. “Huh? Tell her what?”

“About getting your period,”

“Oh. Ah. Maybe. I don’t know --”

“I can ask for us to go see her this weekend instead of next. So you can tell her the news. You want to tell her the news too, right?”

Q didn’t say anything, neither agreeing or disagreeing.

“She’d want to know,” Dazai insisted.

Q stayed quiet.

“You should tell her,” He hated how he was the one who sounded like a little kid. “Just . . . Just because she isn’t here doesn’t mean she wouldn’t want to know,”

Almost like a kindness, Q blinked twice at him, letting the words sink in, before giving a nod. “Okay,” was all they said, and Dazai had to be satisfied with it.

Both siblings climbed up the stairs to the apartment, diverging at the foyer to their own respective rooms like marbles rolling down an elevated ramp and piddling into their designated boxes.

Q shut their door and after a while Dazai could hear the hum of music playing.

He sat on his bed, quiet.

Not for the first time, he thought again about how Q didn’t know any better, -- in so many ways they didn’t understand, or can even begin to try to -- and, what’s more, nothing in them ached to know, the same way a goldfish never wants for the ocean, or how a rich man thinks all his money had already bought him everything on earth so nothing else was needed or missing.

Unable to get Q’s indifferent, disbelieving apathy out of his mind, Dazai suddenly remembered the promise he’d made to his mother, the night before they left for America. “You mustn’t wish you died,” she had said. “Promise me Osamu, you will never wish that again.”

I’m sorry, Mama, he thought. I’ve been wishing just that. All this time.

He’d been breaking that promise for as long as he could remember.

Maybe he’d been breaking it all his life.

VII. His Lonesome

Around midterm season of eleventh grade, it seemed Dazai entered a semi-permanent state of being zoned out -- alone in his room, at a dark solitary corner in the downtown library, on his lonesome in the empty school cafeteria, it didn’t matter. He’d linger there, -- anywhere -- listless, like deadened windchimes, not doing anything of note for hours and hours before he’d feel his legs inevitably hoist his body up from wherever he was and walk him to the next destination. Or to sleep.

So much sleep.

Time passed. Syrupy. It was nearly intolerable.

He still went to classes. He still worked at the writing center. He still cooked meals, fetched the groceries, cleaned the house, tied his shoes, did his homework, read his books, went to his appointments; he took his meds and bathed and put itchy clothes on and crossed the street when the light turned yellow and collected coupons from flyers and took out the trash bags swollen with used bandages; he ate food, he made human sounds, he took showers.

He took a lot of showers.

He did all of this, but at the same time could not believe that he did. It was as if, quietly and without fanfare, he’d been abducted in the middle of the night and placed in a cotton white room where no noise or living reality passed through his skull. Everything became a dull, dull, monochromatic hum that paralyzed as much as it annihilated.

And he’d sit in this room and stare at himself, stare at the pulsing blue artery lines on his skin, the papers he’d get back with “Excellent” and “A+” written in blood ink on the paper. He’d feel the salt and starch and protein in the food he ate going down his throat, could feel himself digest it slowly the way a haunted house chewed on its ghosts and never spat them out. He’d shit and cry and wipe everything off with a cloth or tissue and there was laundry, there were the dishes every night, there was feeling nothing, there was his bedroom ceiling pounding down on his tired eyes like cartoon anvil beatings, and there was his phone trilling alarms, notifications, where are yous, can you pick up these things, are you still there?

He knew something was wrong -- everything was wrong, really -- but whenever his counselor or his friends or even Chuuya asked him if anything had happened, he’d just shake his head and say no.

No, nothing happened.

Nothing ever fucking happened.

Until one day when he’d finally gotten out of bed after God knew how long. His eye caught the wall clock saying it was late afternoon, the heavy air breeze coming in from outside the window telling him it was overcast and dark out.

He must’ve gotten up to get something from the kitchen or take a piss or tearlessly cry in the bathtub again but he found his uncle standing in the middle of the main hallway, blocking his path.

Dazai stared at him, his moppy, unbrushed hair falling over his eyes.

“Do you need something from me?” he mumbled. His body felt like lead.

“Dazai, you came home at 3 AM last night.”

He stayed quiet, like a volcano. He had a headache. It throbbed like a heart, like skeleton bones banging against hollow walls.

“You’ve been coming home very late recently. Your sister asked me to talk to you.”

“Is that so.”

“Yes, Dazai.”

“I see.”

“I’ve begun to notice something’s off with you too.”

“Oh. Off?”

“I’ve always allowed you your independence, --”

“My independence.”

“-- But this is getting out of hand. You’re still a child.”

“Uhhuh.”

“I talked to your mother and she’s worried too. I didn’t want to tell her, but --”

“Uhhuh.”

“Dazai,”

“Uhhuh.”

“Stop that. What’s going on with you? What are you doing? What were you doing last night?”

“Just out,”

“Out?”

“Nothing. Just nothing.”

“Where were you? Last night, where were you?”

He knew and he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember.

“Dazai,”

This was annoying. His headache was the emperor of migraines: No clothes, just a gaping, pounding nakedness.

“Dazai,”

“Mori, It’s frankly none of your business,”

An irritation matching Dazai’s flashed in his uncle’s eyes. In the hallway’s mounting blackness, they both glared at each other, like two trapped animals about to fight in a colosseum. Or planets about to collide. “Excuse me?” the doctor finally said, pursing his lips. His voice rose, climbing uphill.

“I said it’s none of your business, uncle. I’m not a kid anymore, uncle. I’m big enough to go out by myself.”

“You are still a child. Your mother --”

“Why do you care if I’m out late?”

“Your mother doesn’t want you going around the city by yourself. Yumeno doesn’t either. And I --”

“And you what?”

“I’m also concerned, and I think it’s time to tell your mother about --”

“Mom’s not here.” He said it quietly, but it metastasized. “She’s never here and all we have is you and you --”

“Watch your tone, Dazai. I’m still your guardian.”

That was hilarious. Suddenly he couldn’t hold any of it back anymore.

“Guardian? Guardian? You don’t do anything. You’re not even here most of the time, so I have to be. I don’t go to parties. I rarely see my friends. I haven’t even thought about college, fuck.”

“Dazai --”

“I clean, I cook, I take care of Q, --!”

“Dazai, you need to calm down,”

“You’re one to ask about ‘where are you’ and ‘what are you doing.’ I should ask you! I’m here when Q needs me, not you! You only ever take them out when it’s convenient for you. You’re never actually here for them. Not like I am. Not like you’re supposed to!” His voice caught, but he kept going. He had to keep going. Everything coming out of his mouth felt impossible and apart, like somebody else was saying these words, far off, -- radio static -- and he couldn’t stop it. Oceans of words. The setting sun crashing into the black night sky. “And the worst thing is -- the worst is that Q still thinks you’re a good uncle to us. Q loves you more than they love Mom! They look up to you! They love all your shitty cheap gifts and stupid outings. They're always happy when you give them attention, when you remember they exist, but you don’t see that! Or maybe you do, and you just don’t care. How many times have you let them down? How many times have you forgotten a birthday or ditched an event for your own selfish reasons? How many times was everything your fault? All you do is make them feel bad about themselves, yet --”

“Dazai, I’m not going to stand here and listen to you speak to me like this --”

“With me, it’s whatever, you know? I stopped expecting anything from a long time ago. But Q’s just a kid, Q never got to meet our dad, you were supposed to be a dad for us, but you -- you just leave us to go do your -- your perverted lolicon shit --”

“Dazai!”

“What? You think I haven’t figured it out? You’re getting sloppy, old man. You know how much crap I’ve found just lying around the house while cleaning up your apartment? Your clinic? The first time I saw one of your magazines I wanted to throw up. You’re disgusting. You’re fucking disgusting. You shouldn’t even be allowed anywhere near kids, let alone raise your sister’s --”

“DAZAI!”

“I’m actually glad you were such a deadbeat while I was growing up. Like hell, I used to wish you’d step up more, maybe not for me, but at least for Q, but now I realize we were lucky being left to fend for ourselves. You’re evil. You’re garbage. You repulse me, I wish Q hated you like I did, I wish Mom could see how worthless you are, you’re such a sick degenerate bastard --”

He heard the slap long before he felt it stinging his cheek, as if the sound -- the impact -- traveled faster than the pain.

His ears rang.

Another slap. Mori spat out something venomous but he didn’t hear it.

A third hit. It felt kind of good until it didn’t anymore, -- like his skull was finally getting squeezed and cleansed out of the poison -- but after the relief came pure hurt, suspended in midair: a confounding feeling of numbness in his cranium, of delayed reaction and robotic dissociation, and suddenly Dazai was moving before anything else could happen.

Mori might have hit him more, he didn’t know, -- he’d die never knowing -- but without missing a beat, he pushed against his uncle, yelling at an inhuman volume now, and ran past him into the black slimy bathroom, slamming the door with a clattering bang. Everything was ringing, vibrating. It was dark inside. Cold. He saw himself violently wrench open the cabinet above the sink and fumble around for a razor in the dark.

In the mirror he saw a little boy rip off the strips of tight gauze that were wrapped around his arms and legs and torso like confetti strings and start mindlessly scratching at the skin underneath, like an animal, no longer human, with a thousand veins and a broken heart, shaking in its own weakness and breathing hard, in tune with the bells tolling, knelling, crackling.

He saw the boy climb into the bathtub, a thin trickle of red snaking down his arm and smearing against the porcelain, fingerpainting the hard whiteness with a blooming, vibrant color that spread like spider lilies on the tile. He saw him keep ripping, clawing messily, saw the faucet turn and thought of the bruises. He saw the vacancy. He saw the razor’s glint, the blades almost luminescent and shiny underwater. He saw the boy tuck his head in between his legs, heard his strangled noose cry. His shoulders trembled. He was whimpering, not looking, not wanting to look, as if not looking would save him the mutilation, as if when he tore and cut and knifed at his bloodless human flesh, dragging the instrument up and down his elbows to his wrists, each arm suffering a few messy strokes, he’d be fine, but then he was tired, -- God, he was tired, he was sleeping too much, he’d been taking his meds, -- and his body stopped moving; there was a clatter and a low sob and then regret like backing yourself into a corner just before the world ended and he saw the darkness contract, spots dancing in his eyes, somebody knocking -- banging -- on splintered wood, and then Q was screaming, “Nii-san! What did you do, whatdidyoudowhatdidyoudowhatdidyoudowhatdidyoudo -- nii-san, nii-san --” and that’s funny that he’d forgotten to lock the door he was usually so careful and the light was still off but kind of dim -- fluttering -- and maybe the bulb needed replacing he’d remember to do that soon but someone was calling for him he should say something, he should get up but the water was dripping like piano keys in the silence and he was swimming, swimming, swimming in it, down a lullaby drain, down the rabbit hole flood, and --

VIII. Ward 4, Bed No. 102

He woke up in his room.

It was dark. The apartment was as hallowed as death.

He was in bed, underneath several blankets. His skin felt clammy, like he slept through a fever. Or drowned.

He tried to move, but suddenly he felt white hot pain flare up, paralyzing him. His eyes gradually adjusted to the dark well enough to see that most of his torso and arms were newly bandaged and just a little damp. The gauze was haphazardly tight on his angry red skin, as if whoever did the wrapping had been in a hurry and couldn’t tell what they were doing.

Q was hugging him from behind, asleep and tucked up beside him like a protective mollusk, one small hand clinging to the back of his long-sleeved shirt. Their breaths were even, warming his back like vapor seeping into the bedsheets’ foamy fabric.

Dazai remembered what happened. His cheek throbbed black.

Ignoring how his body protested and screamed, he slowly pulled himself up on the bed and gently removed Q’s arms and tucked them in again before rummaging in the dark for a jacket and shoes.

He found his backpack and stuffed a set of dirty clothes and two of his books inside it almost mechanically, not knowing why he was doing so until he heard the tell-tale sound of his uncle’s footsteps in the hallway just outside his door. He froze, waiting.

When Q found him, did they tell Mori? Based on how his bandages had been awkwardly applied, he figured that his sibling did the job themself and cleaned everything up after him in the shower.

Just as Dazai had the thought, But Q tells Mori everything, another swiftly comes after it like the drop of a carousel wheel:

They must’ve been so scared.

He scratched the side of his face, unable to decide whether the sharp sting of his fingernails on his cheek was eerily comforting or added to the dull ache he felt smeared all across his skull.

He had to get out of here.

But where?

It didn’t matter.

Just get out.

With one last look at his little sibling sleeping on the bed, Dazai slowly got up and pried open the door, staking out the lightless hallway and making sure it was clear before shutting the door behind him and walking downstairs. He checked his phone. A missed call from Chuuya with voicemail.

The carousel juddered, convulsed, attacked itself.

Once he was outside, Dazai called a cab. It was morning, but there was no sun. The sky was an eggshell gray, almost sulphurous in its bellyache of a color. Raindrops as thin as pins and needles came down from heaven.

When the driver pulled up, Dazai didn’t even allow them the time to look over the weird kid wearing his soaked pajamas and carrying a flaccid backpack getting into a cab at 7 AM.

“Emergency room. The nearest hospital. Please.” He realized too late this was not a normal destination to request regardless of context. He didn’t want to alarm the cab driver, so he tried his best to sound steady and calm, but the last word came out a little strangled.

Thankfully, the driver didn’t ask any questions and just started the engine. Once the vehicle got moving, Dazai felt himself sigh in relief.

On the way to the hospital, the rain turned cold and sharp, like the jagged ends of a cave mouth’s teeth.

Dazai had forgotten to put on shoes.

 

. . .

 

Chuuya texted him after he paid the cab fare and got out of the car.

Are you okay? Haven’t heard from you in a while.

Dazai’s fingers hovered over the phone keyboard, which was now getting pelted by the incessant downpour that did not care about the ten feet he’d have to walk from the dropoff site to the hospital entrance. He sneezed, staring at the message, almost wanting to laugh.

Stupid Chuuya.

I’m fine, Slug, he sent back before pocketing his phone.

He was dripping wet once he got inside. Immediately after walking through the automatic doors he was hit with the scent of nauseating disinfectant that could only be found in hospitals and funeral homes.

It reminded him of his uncle.

Unlike outside, which was an underworld of gloominess and muck, the emergency wing was bright -- artificially bright, like angel halos -- so Dazai was a little disoriented. Once his eyes settled, he was met with the sight of a spacious yet coagulated waiting room full of anxious, barely-alive people in uncomfortable rattan chairs more metal than plush. There were mostly loners like him, -- some looked delirious, as if they still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that they were physically there -- but a handful of families were scattered around the room, clumped together in obedient and tireless silence, as if absolution would come faster if they made themselves behave as dead as possible.

The first to notice him was a female security guard stationed in front of the sliding doors. She’d been sitting on a stool with her arms crossed when Dazai walked in, but aside from a small jerk of her head in momentary surprise towards his direction, she didn’t react much to the raggedy teenage boy with no shoes who just walked into the emergency wing.

She eyed his backpack and bandages suspiciously, -- no doubt assessing what exactly was wrong with him to warrant coming here -- but once she saw the vacant look in Dazai’s eyes she pursed her lips, understanding, and leaned into the radio attached to her uniform. It crackled, responding to her voice like a coaxed animal, and she said something into it that Dazai didn’t catch. After saying a few words and cutting off the radio, the security guard sighed a bone-tired sigh and hoisted herself up off the stool, making her way to the strange boy covered in rain.

“Hey sweetie. What’s your name, sweetie?” Her voice reminded him of taffy butter that had been stepped on.

He slowly lifted his head, unaware that his tongue was moving to answer her. “I tried to die. Please help me.”

Like the cab driver, the security guard didn’t ask any more questions. One second she was in front of him and the next she’d darted away and there was an orderly in mint-green scrubs handing him some towels and papery slippers that were too big on his feet.

Once they confirmed he wasn’t in any immediate danger and quickly redressed his soaking bandages, Dazai was told to take a seat like the rest of the people in the waiting room.

He doesn’t know how long he waited, but eventually a tall male Asian nurse with SAKUNOSUKE on his pink name tag and a Paw Patrol lanyard attached to his ID card approached him with a clipboard and a large translucent bag, presumably for his dirty clothes. For a second, Dazai wondered if they sent this guy to deal with him because they were both Japanese.

Wordlessly, the nurse led Dazai to a nearby consulting room that was about the size of a walk-in closet and shut the door behind him, muffling the sound of the ill-at-ease hum that haunted the waiting area.

He left him for five minutes so Dazai could change into the flimsy hospital gown. When he came back with a juice box, which looked comically tiny in his large hands, he looked at the boy once over and said in pristine monotone, “I’m sorry, but you need to take off your underwear and socks too.” A pause. Then, in Japanese, “You can keep your glasses and bandages on though.”

Dazai blinked, his face clearly showing how he wasn’t exactly eager to strip naked in front of this blank-faced nurse with day-old stubble. He’d just tried committ suicide, but that didn’t mean he’d lost his sense of dignity. He was still a prideful teenage boy, after all.

Before he could move, the nurse threw him a small bundle wrapped in clear plastic. Dazai caught it automatically and saw it had a standard black set of boy’s boxers, a white medium T-shirt, and matching pajama pants.

“I’ll give you another five minutes,” Nurse Stubbly said -- this time in English -- and then left the room once more.

When he came back Dazai had put on the new clothes, but he’d wrapped one of the towels he’d been given around his shoulders and head in a pathetic attempt at mimicking a blanket.

Stubbly brought in two metal folding chairs and soon enough they sat facing one another, interview-style. He asked Dazai a few questions that were clearly required protocol written on the clipboard he was holding, but even as he went through the list and Dazai numbly answered them the best he could, the nurse’s eyes remained on him, listening to his every word.

“What’s your name?”

Dazai told him.

“Why are you here, Dazai?”

“I got in a really bad fight with my uncle. I was upset and locked myself in the bathroom. I took a razor and . . . I . . . ” For some reason, he couldn’t say it. He felt like an idiot.

“You hurt yourself,” the nurse filled in for him.

“Yeah. I cut my arms and legs.”

“Have you done this before?”

Stubbly’s straightforward yet intensely patient manner was kind of disorienting, -- he sounded so calm, like they were just two friends chatting at a bar together.

“Yes, I’ve cut myself before.”

“Were you only trying to hurt yourself or did you hope to end your life?”

Dazai stayed quiet, which was answer enough.

The nurse nodded, seemingly unphased. “Have you done any other forms of harm to yourself?”

“I guess . . .”

“Is that why your face is bruised?”

The throbbing on his cheek drew attention to itself again. Dazai’s head formed the words: “No, my face is bruised because my uncle hit me.” But, like before with describing the razor, he couldn’t will his mouth to move. To say.

Suddenly he felt his body start to tremble with a cauldron-bubbling anger. Say it.

Say it, you fucking coward.

It’s obvious you got assaulted.

Say it!

Why are you protecting Mori?

The nurse’s flat voice broke him away from his thoughts. “Dazai. How did you get here?”

“Here?”

“The emergency room.”

“I took a cab.”

“And where is your uncle now?”

Dazai remembered how he heard Mori’s footsteps just outside his door before he left the apartment. “At home. I . . . didn’t tell him I was coming here.”

Stubbly nodded. “I see,”

A beat passed. Without further comment or warning, the nurse stood up, the legs of his chair scratching the linoleum floor beneath them with an itchy screech. He was looking down at his clipboard and using a pen to write down some things, which suddenly made Dazai nervous.

“Um,” he stammered. “What’s . . . What’s going to happen to me? Do I have to go back home?”

The nurse met his eyes. For the first time, he smiled. It was a kind smile, and it made Dazai relax a little.

“No, you’ll stay here with us until we sort everything out for you.”

“Will you . . . Will you tell my uncle I’m here?”

“Eventually we’ll have to, but you don’t have to talk to him or see him.”

Upon hearing this, a wave of relief washed over Dazai. In the back of his mind, he knew he’d have to face Mori eventually, but right now that felt as insurmountable as constructing a ladder to the moon.

The nurse must’ve caught on to Dazai’s feelings because he didn’t ask anything else after that. After opening the door, he told the boy to bring his stuff and follow him. Together, they walked down a few corridors and took an elevator to one of the upper floors.

Dazai was led to a section of the hospital represented by a sign that said CHILDREN’S PEDIATRIC WARD in bold green letters. They didn’t stop at the main area, however, and soon Dazai was taken to a more private interconnected area that required an ID card to enter. Once inside, the doors that needed a password to open gently slammed shut behind him with a tinny beep.

It became all too clear that the world was now split into In Here and Out There.

Even though he figured this would happen -- if you tried to kill yourself they put you in the psych ward, that’s a no-brainer -- but nevertheless Dazai felt his stomach drop with a feeling of cold dread. He hugged his backpack and bag of wet clothes close to his body, almost erupting into uncontrollable shaking had it not been for the bulky feeling of the two books pressing against his chest in the backpack.

His heart slowed down. His breathing also slowed, like a record player reaching the last half of a song.

Nurse Stubbly was talking to a receptionist lady behind a screen. Dazai couldn’t see her face, but he saw her leave for a minute and then come back with an empty gray bin that she then neatly slid underneath an opening.

Stubbly handed him the bin. “Put your belongings in here please. You’ll get them back after twenty-four hours. You can keep your glasses on, but that’s all.”

Dazai was about to argue -- no way was he giving away his phone and books -- but the look in the nurse’s eyes told him that things would only be more difficult if he put up a fuss, so Dazai did what he was told.

Twenty-four hours. Completely off the grid.

They gave him a room on the first floor and a lonely blue bed by the window. Judging from how the other beds had been thoroughly slept in recently and the fact that some of the side tables had things like game consoles, granola bar wrappers, greeting cards, and what looked to be homework booklets stacked on top of one another, Dazai deduced he must’ve had at least two other roommates. Nobody else was there when he arrived, however, which was a blessing.

Another nurse with a music note pattern on her scrubs came to take his blood pressure and check his bandages. She had an upbeat, cheerful demeanor and said things like, “Well aren’t you a handsome young man!” and “I hear a tummy rumbling. After I finish these tests I’ll grab you something to munch on, hon.”

Dazai mostly ignored her.

It was only after she left to get him food and another juice box that he noticed Stubbly had disappeared.

“Sakunosuke! Are you on your break now?”

There were voices in the hallway, one of them familiar.

“Yes,” came that unforgettable monotone.

“I saw you come in with a new kid. You look a little alike,”

“Is that so?”

“I mean, you’re both Asian, haha!”

“I see.”

“Vicky said he’s in for a suicide attempt. Poor kid,”

Dazai stiffened, knowing he shouldn’t be hearing this but straining his ears to listen anyway.

Stubbly didn’t respond. His coworker kept talking. “I caught a glimpse of him when the nurses were running tests. Completely frozen, must be the shock. He must be a manly tough one like you, eh, Sakunosuke?”

For a moment, the question hung in the air, and Dazai thought Stubbly -- did the guy call him Sakunosuke? -- would offer up nothing more but one of his signature blank stares, but then, softly, “I think he’s on the verge of crying.”

Dazai didn’t want to hear anymore. With an air of pitiful defiance he reached across his cot and dragged the hospital curtains around him like a protective chrysalis that blotted out all sense of danger and wrong.

He fiddled with the remote next to his bed until the lamp over his head shut off, bathing the room in darkness.

Dazai buried himself underneath the thin blankets, letting the smell of downy cotton and fresh detergent sink into his body as he closed his eyes and willed everything to a static noiselessness.

Outside his window, it was still raining.

 

. . .

 

When he woke up, it was nighttime. He could hear someone steadily breathing in the bed next to his. The sound of padded footsteps followed by squeaking siren wheels and a few snatches of passerby conversation trickled in from the door about eight feet away from Dazai’s cot.

A dried orange juice box, a clear plastic cup of water, and some generic crackers had been placed on his side table.

At the sight of food, Dazai felt the gravity of his hunger, but with it also came an overwhelming, pit-deep sickness that forced him out of bed and stumbling towards the bathroom that he remembered briefly seeing when he first got here.

He barely made it to the rim of the toilet before he tasted vomit and felt his entire body heave like a groaning submarine. The act of throwing up was so violent; Dazai didn’t even have time to catch his breath before another wave of puke forced its way out of him and into the bowl with a severed head plash.

Oh, the tears came then.

They didn’t stop. Even when his stomach was empty and he found himself helplessly dry-heaving -- gagging on acidic air -- and clinging to the disgusting toilet rim in desperate hopes to ground himself, they still kept retching out of him like gunshots. Bullets filled with water, sick, and everything else he’d siphoned into the broken glass bottle that was his young heart.

He couldn’t stop crying.

Until, of course, he did.

And what he also did, which many often do everyday with zero witnesses or rudimentary fanfare, because we are all born alone and shall inherit this same ancestral loneliness until the sun dies and we take our last cosmic breaths, was pick himself up, wash off the grime, and make the horrid, impossible walk back to bed, where he once again, like a caterpillar whose metamorphosis was aborted, crawled under the blankets, closed his heavy eyes, and never wanted to awaken anymore.

 

. . .

 

As promised, they gave him his backpack and newly washed clothes after twenty-four hours. He later found out that they did this -- take away everything you brought with you to the psych ward -- so you wouldn’t have anything familiar on-hand to hurt yourself. Or worse.

Even when Dazai got his stuff back he noticed they’d taken out the drawstrings in his jacket.

He still wasn’t allowed his phone.

Beside his cot, someone had placed a plastic vase with lilac flowers in lukewarm water. There were four stalks in total, so not exactly a bouquet; some of the leaves had already started to rot so the stems looked more black and gray than not. Still, the buds themselves were a healthy light purple, almost white, as if the petals were mocking life itself. Flowers of buffoonery.

He slept a lot, and time allowed it, but after a day spent in bed the hospital staff told him he had to get up and try to move around and possibly interact with the other kids. There were mini rehabilitative programs scheduled after each mealtime and counselling sessions where the patients could choose between DIY arts and crafts, playing in the game room, or exercising in the small gym next to the resident psychiatrist’s office. Most chose either arts and crafts or gaming. No one ever chose exercise, so Dazai took advantage of the empty gym space and hung out there behind the yoga balls and rolled-up mats that lay sadly against the puke-green walls. The place smelled like dead sweat and old rubber, but at least he could be alone.

A nurse -- usually Sakunosuke, whose first name was Oda, as Dazai found out later -- would come in every ten or fifteen minutes to check up on him. At first, Dazai would try to pretend he was actually using the gym by hurriedly grabbing onto a resistance band or a kettlebell and swaying his body a bit to mimic working out whenever he heard footsteps coming his way, but at some point he gave up because Nurse Oda seemed to be the only one who remembered he was there, and he didn’t seem to care whether or not Dazai was using the squeaky broken treadmill or reading a book he’d snagged from the mini library in one of the common rooms. The blank yet not disapproving look Oda gave him each time he came back seemed to say, “Please feel free to do whatever you want. Just don’t try to kill yourself because that would be unpleasant and would get me fired.”

Dazai respected this condition. This silent arrangement made between the peach flower boy and the psych ward nurse was perfectly satisfactory until the third day of Dazai’s stay at the hospital. Like usual, he’d been tucked away in a corner of the gym flipping through a generic bestselling YA book to pass the time when Oda came in unexpectedly.

Dazai almost jumped, but once he saw the familiar stubbly face he relaxed. “You just checked on me five minutes ago. I haven’t choked myself with one of the jump ropes yet, if you must know.”

Oda didn’t laugh, just blinked down at him from across the room. “The doctor would like to speak with you,” he said. Without warning, a man in brown slacks and a wrinkled dress shirt with a stethoscope wrapped around his neck came up from behind him.

Dazai tensed.

“Dazai,” the psychiatrist said, smiling like an iceberg. “Can you come with me to my office?”

He put his book down and got up.

IX. Vitals

Dazai knew he would’ve had to face Mori eventually, but what he didn’t predict was his uncle not putting up any fuss and willingly waiting outside the psych ward on his first visit. It was as if Mori was abstaining from showing his face out of some twisted parody of respect for his nephew, whom he’d, alas, quite regrettably, beaten and promptly driven to suicide.

Bygones.

Dazai only caught a brief glance of his uncle dropping Q off outside his room before the man gave him a cursory look up and down, and then nodded. Like a surveyor. “I’ll just be outside,” Mori said over his shoulder, almost cheerfully.

Before leaving, he made it a point to lock eyes with Dazai, flashing him a somber look that lasted less than a millisecond before he turned around for good.

The boy understood. Mori hadn’t yet told his mother that he was here, -- that they’d fought and Dazai’d tried to die and then checked himself into the loony bin afterwards behind Mori’s back. No, his uncle hadn’t spilled the beans or made any crucial moves, but, rest assured, he would have to let Tane know eventually, and, as expected, he wasn’t happy to be the one to have to do this.

Perhaps in his own way Mori was being considerate, letting Dazai know in advance that his mother would have to be informed sooner than later. As usual, he was quick to remind Dazai that staying suspended in this current episode of inactivity and laziness for too long at the psych ward was unsustainable; he should prepare for what had to come next.

Or maybe his uncle just wanted to waste no time in coming up with his own adequate spin on these unfortunate events that would inform his sister about as little as she needed to know and thus inconvenience him the least.

Whatever his reasons, they’d made an agreement in that one look between them: Mori would tell, but Dazai would have to explain. It was up to him to come up with a story that suited the mess he’d made.

Of course, his uncle was giving him the option to tell Tane the whole truth. He’d never stoop so low as to beg Dazai to lie for him, the same way Mori, aside from the occasional lecture that was more performative than advisory, never really enforced anything in his nephew’s life.

Like always, Dazai was free to do or say what he wished.

It was a choice, but it wasn’t a choice.

He was sure Mori thought this to be more than fair, -- not selfish, not irresponsible, and certainly not negligent or cruel -- and that was when the flash of red-hot hatred that he’d felt during their last fight came back like crackling mountain sparklers erupting in his chest.

Dazai recalled the slap. The incessant, ubiquitous yelling making the pain on his face pulse and throb like a dead, writhing animal. The cold, disembodied showerhead water drilling into his brain like ice picks sifting through entrails.

Something solid collided into him, momentarily stealing the air from his lungs.

Q had climbed into his cot and thrown themselves on top of his body. Without even taking off their shoes or saying a word, they wrapped their arms around Dazai’s torso and buried their blotchy face into the front of his T-shirt.

For a while, there was no sound save for Q’s silent sniffles. In a somewhat desperate frenzy, they kept trying to clamber up Dazai’s lap, as if their one goal was to cling hard and hug all the breath out of their brother’s frame.

A bit dazed, Dazai placed a hand on their head, and it was like he’d flipped a switch. All at once, his sibling stilled, like when all the air escapes an instrument and leaves nothing but composed silence. Their vice-like grip on him, however, didn’t let up.

Their small voice, “Nii-san?”

“Hey Q,”

“Nii-san,”

“. . . I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Q didn’t start crying until Dazai hugged them back. They must’ve been holding it in. They were nine years old.

“Hey, um, thank you. Thank you for saving me. You were so brave. I’m so proud of you, Q.”

Q’s sobs were muffled against their brother’s shirt, but Dazai felt the wet tears spill past the fabric and lightly dab his scratched skin underneath. He didn’t know what to say. What to do. How to form the right words.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Q kept crying.

“I’m so sorry.”

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

He couldn’t stop saying it, even after Q had calmed down and gone quiet again, almost asleep. As he held his little sibling in his arms and started to gently rock both of them back and forth -- just like when they were kids -- Dazai realized he wasn’t only apologizing to Q.

The globe spun, but the flowers in the vase did not move.

 

. . .

 

After that first visit, Dazai was given the okay to go outside the ward with his family. He wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital grounds or go off by himself without a ward staff member to monitor him, -- not even to go to the bathroom -- but he could go to the cafeteria or sit in the outside courtyard next to the gift shop with his uncle and sibling for about an hour each time they came.

They let him have his phone, but he had to give it back once he returned to his room. This didn’t really matter though, since Dazai was only able to check his messages and see about thirty missed calls and texts from Chuuya and a dozen more from his friends before the screen went to black.

Battery was dead.

It was like the phone killed itself. Ha. Ha.

Aside from a few necessary exchanges, Mori didn’t try to talk to Dazai much: “I’ve contacted your school and asked them to send over your coursework,” “Oh, okay.” “Since your grades are still above average, your teachers all said to focus on getting better and not to worry too much about catching up.” “I see.” “Although it’ll only be a detriment to you in the long run if you continue to neglect your studies,” “I know.” “Next time we come we’ll bring over some more clothes for you too.” “Hm.” “I’ve closed the clinic for the week,” “Is that so,”

As his guardian, Mori was trusted to watch over Dazai while he was outside the ward, but he thankfully didn’t go beyond this supervisory role by trying to convince Dazai he was particularly worried about him -- as any reserved yet still doting uncle would be.

Mori also had the good sense to keep his distance the second he, Dazai, and Q left the ward grounds and were no longer being watched by the hospital staff there.

There wasn’t much to do. Usually families would have these visits to catch up and just talk, but that just wasn’t possible when all three of them knew well enough how Dazai ended up in the hospital in the first place.

Dazai wasn’t sure Q understood all the details, but, like it would soon be with his mother, he had no doubt Mori had told them his own version of events -- with a few valiant emendations and even bolder embellishments in order to preserve their family’s precarious unity, naturally.

Maybe Mori even added in a kind lie, just because it was Q.

Usually, Q would take their uncle’s word as gospel and never question anything he said. This time, though, -- and it made Dazai’s heart break a little to see it, although he didn’t know why -- they didn’t seem to be as willing to believe Mori’s snow-white half-truths.

The man himself surely must’ve sensed this newfound wariness -- it was truly a shame neither his nephew nor niece found it in themselves to trust his better judgement anymore -- but Mori didn’t let on at all that something had changed and, except for a few moments when he backed off sooner than he normally would’ve when Dazai and him talked, he was the portrait of absolute aplomb, as if his sister’s eldest child slicing his wrists in the bathroom was an everyday, albeit disagreeable, occurrence that demanded as little attention as one would give to water in an iron pot steadily coming to a boil.

More than anything, though, Mori prided himself in his diplomacy and optimal timing, which is why the next time he and Q visited Dazai a week after he was admitted into the hospital, the first thing he did was hand his nephew a new phone charger.

He’d noticed it had died and stayed dead. He also remembered the day he allowed Dazai to have that phone, which he still hadn’t paid him back in full yet. But no matter.

The charging cord was a devitalized violet. Lusterless and umbilical.

Dazai took it without a word.

 

. . .

 

Despite the relief of finally having a means to charge his battery, Dazai dreaded opening his phone and checking his messages. The thought of even connecting to wifi and turning on notifications, only to scroll through what would undoubtedly be a tsuris of texts and missed calls -- all of which were most likely from Chuuya and his friends -- made him dissociate and feel woolly, as if he was trapped inside a prison chamber that was slowly filling up with water and all he could do was watch the thin gushing spring turn into a pool, and then the pool into a flood. And the flood into the end of the world.

After Mori and Q’s visit, Dazai had to give his phone and new charger to the nurses at the front. He wasn’t allowed to wait for it to come back to life, but the staff promised him they’d keep it plugged in so he could use it without issue next time he was allowed.

He anticipated that next time with apprehensive dread.

Days passed without any pomp or fanfare. Funnily enough, aside from the occasional commotion from a nearby patient who needed help with using the bathroom or the benign hospital alarms suddenly blaring like lighthouse signals, the psych ward, like an opulent hotel made of glass that was sequestered away on a monkey island near the far reaches of the earth, was still.

When he wasn’t meeting with his psychiatrist or curiously following Nurse Oda like a lost stray dog around the floor with even more curious yet altogether mild inquiries about anything that struck his juvenile fancy, Dazai spent most of his time in bed reading. After committing to an arduous one-man sentinel hiding out in the small gym space during the first few days, the boy had given up trying to convince everyone that he was, indeed, fervently devoted to his athletics and not instead using the veneer of exercise as an excuse to actively avoid talking to the other kids as if he was practicing for some sort of introverted olympiad sport.

For the first time in a while, Dazai just read his books. Without apology or distractions.

It was almost peaceful.

Until one day he was again summoned to meet with his psychiatrist for his daily check-up, but instead of finding his doctor, Dazai saw a white social worker lady sitting across from him in one of the psych ward’s small conference rooms. She had a floppy blonde perm and was neatly dressed in a pencil suit and silk scarf, complete with a cheap knockoff fountain pen demurely poised over a black leather-bound notebook on her lap. She looked very professional and in control.

But she still carried that tell-tale haggardness about her that seemed to emulate from all welfare and public service workers. Dazai knew the type.

She gestured for him to take a seat, which he did, looking her over some more with guarded discretion.

Everything about her seemed eager to show that she wanted to help -- at some point they all did, but Dazai knew she was among those who were already too exhausted to do much of anything. For them, life had been absolutely real and therefore unflinchingly torrential by the droves -- hence this woman would end up taking more from him than giving, because if she were going to continue on and tell herself it was okay to sleep at night, -- that she did what she could (most don’t even try half as hard) -- then she had to be hard. Many people come to this conclusion: To protect their own sanities, their own hearts, and their own vitals, so they may survive.

Yet to survive required selfishness -- the type of selfishness many mistake for charity.

That was just how these things worked.

It is easier to watch and look away. It is easiest to bear witness and believe that suffices as a testimony. Or a soul.

The woman’s voice was smooth and steady, like a creek swollen with rainwater. “Hello Dazai. Thank you for coming to see me today.”

He nodded. The hospital band on his arm made his wrist ache.

“As is protocol, the hospital on behalf of the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts has asked me to meet with you to assess your case,”

“My case?”

“Yes. Your case.” The lady crossed and uncrossed her legs. She clasped her well-manicured hands together and placed them neatly on her lap. “I understand that things at home have been difficult for a while now. Would you like to talk about it?”

Dazai didn’t have an answer to that, because he honestly didn’t know. Were things at home really so bad? Or, at least, were they so awful that he needed a social worker on his “case”?

He didn’t know. Honestly.

He hadn’t told anyone what really happened with Mori -- how his uncle had beaten him and how that had essentially inspired him to drag a savage razor across his naked flesh -- but he also hadn’t tried very hard to hide the whole truth either.

Dazai, barefoot and soaking wet, had come to the emergency room alone covered in fresh bandages and purpling bruises. He’d checked himself in for a suicide attempt, which, while alarming on principle, was made all the more worse by the glaring fact that he was still a child. His family came to see him, but anybody paying attention could see how much he loathed his uncle; how Mori’s visits were less made out of a sense of filial duty and were more like the patient movements of a vulture encircling a carcass.

No, it didn’t take a detective to make even the most basic of assumptions about what -- or who -- caused Dazai to feel like he had to do what he did.

He felt his jaw slacken then, as if the words were deciding whether or not to venture out or stay hidden, -- to peek out from the bushes and anticipate teeth -- but in the end his lips barely moved. His tongue didn’t even lift up to the light.

Almost like a reflex, the social worker seemed to immediately understand that this kid wasn’t going to talk much -- they usually don’t, the poor things -- so she decided to move on.

It was that selfishness she nursed like a basket floating in a river. It made her feel benevolent. It made her feel righteous.

Clearing her throat and meeting the young boy’s eye, she said, “You’ll be turning eighteen in June, isn’t that right? That’s very soon.”

Dazai nodded dumbly. In truth, his birthday had been the last thing on his mind, but it now occurred to him that if he’d succeeded in killing himself he would have remained seventeen, just a few months shy of eighteen. His obituary would’ve said seventeen. Forever.

Dazai had read stories about people dying really young. Mostly from his novels, but there were countless pieces on the news of kids going missing or accidentally passing away from unforeseen circumstances. Those reports would often emphasize how they were “gone too soon” or “taken too early.” Greek tragedy wording like that.

If he’d succeeded, they would’ve probably said the same thing about him.

Life is too short.

He’ll be dearly missed.

He didn’t have enough time.

Except, he was still alive, and life may be short, it’s true, but to him it felt like the longest, most tiresome road, -- an endless valley ever expanding and growing darker by the day.

Not for the first time, Dazai envied those kids who had their lives suddenly snuffed out of them for one reason or another. He knew he shouldn’t, but he did.

He could not understand how anyone expected him to survive this life.

“What are your plans for after you finish high school?”

Dazai stayed silent.

The social worker crossed and uncrossed her legs again, the fabric of her skin-colored stockings gripping her flesh like a snake wrapped around prey. “From what I understand, your grades are above average and you’re all set to graduate this summer. Of course, you’ve missed quite a bit of school while being here, but your teachers have all said you’re more than capable of catching up and finishing the year off with the rest of your class.”

Just the thought of trying to reorient his brain to make sense of his schoolwork again -- of going back on campus and seeing his friends, of seeing Sasaki or John and Nathaniel and Mark -- made Dazai want to close his eyes and never open them again. He knew he could do it if he tried, -- if he went to that dark place in his mind and let the part of him that was functional take over -- but even just conceptualizing the elephantine effort it would take to do all he needed to do was exhausting.

Retreating inward, he thought about Mori’s razors, of the pills his uncle kept locked in his saline clinic cupboards. He thought of high places, of bridges that are like ladders to heaven that one could jump off from without a sound, your ankle accidentally getting caught in one of the bottom rungs and letting out a tuneless crack before you hit the pavement. He thought of blood, of something sharp tearing into him and killing the pain, of all this heaviness finally leaving so he could float and be spirited away to somewhere he didn’t have to think about lessons or unit tests or how everyone he knew seemed to be in on this universal secret that told them how to be normal and sane and was only ever spoken in a language he couldn’t understand. In words his clumsy mouth couldn’t pronounce.

Dazai tucked his hand into his shirtsleeve and started scratching. He barely noticed how his skin peeled underneath his fingernails.

“Have you considered going to university? Maybe one out of state?” the syrupy voice asked.

He blinked. “Huh?”

The social worker cleared her throat. “Well, perhaps, since it’s clear that the circumstances at home are not ideal -- at least from what I’ve inferred and what I have been made to understand -- it’d be good for everyone if you moved away for college. Put some distance between yourself and your family for a while to focus on your future,”

His future. The same one he just tried to abort.

She said it so effortlessly, the same way one would talk about discarding an old shirt and putting on a new one. She did not think it required talent; she did not consider it commanded strength, just that it was, and so should be.

That was just how these things worked.

Dazai didn’t know what to say. His future. This woman was talking to him about his future. With a strangled roil in his throat, he realized he never really thought about it before. It was his sole, all-consuming obsession.

“Dazai, are you listening? Have you ever entertained the idea of going away for secondary education? Is there somewhere you’d like to go that’s outside of Massachusetts, for example?”

For a second, -- and in that second he felt like all the oxygen in the room had turned to fire -- his mind flashed to Chuuya in England. Chuuya attending his fun high school abroad with his smart rich boyfriend that he has good sex with. Chuuya with his endless conveyor belt of people who always wanted him around. Chuuya with his parents who loved him and big sister he could depend on.

Dazai knew it was useless, but he let himself imagine for a shining minute what it would be like if they went to college together, just like they’d planned to when they were kids. To live in the same city again. To have his best friend just a bike or train ride away, instead of separated by miles and miles of ocean and violent borders.

Chuuya far away. Chuuya not far away.

Chuuya not stuck here; not the one left behind.

“Going away?” He said it like it was a spell. Or maybe one had been cast on him with these thoughts. Of seeing him again.

Of being free. Of just getting the fuck out of here.

The social worker droned on. “Yes, it’s fairly common, especially nowadays with international student programs and travel bursaries,”

“Where . . . Where would I live?”

“There are scholarships that help pay for or at least partially pay for your living accommodations. It depends on where you choose to go to school and the housing options available there.”

“How would I afford it?”

“You will most likely have to sign up for student loans, but again, with your high grades I’m sure you’ll be able to get some sort of funding to go elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere . . .”

The social worker tilted her head, as if readying herself for a volley of protests or more useless questions. (This was her job, after all).

“What would I study?”

“Why, whatever you want. Anything is possible,”

“Whatever I want? Anything? Really,” repeated Dazai, as if he was mocking her. “Anything . . . But . . .”

He was stalling now. Each sentence uttered was a wobbling woodblock stacked on top of the one before, building momentum as quickly as it invited the crash and fall.

And it did, because the thought most imperative happened and was given verbal form: “What will happen to Q?”

To her credit, the social worker’s face didn’t betray much of the discomfort or slight impatience that briefly yet undeniably flashed across her face at this question.

With practiced adult composure, she put down her pen and said, “Q. You mean your little sister, Yumeno?”

“Yes, what would -- If I left, what would happen to Q?”

Dazai already knew the answer. Like a heaving pendulum that ebbed and flowed yet never left the pit of his mind, the truth swung at him and sliced his stomach open.

“Your sister would remain with your uncle,”

“He shouldn’t even -- He shouldn’t even be anywhere near them, let alone --”

“Dazai, your uncle has been in charge of both you and your sister for nearly a decade now. It’s because of his US citizenship, steady income, and medical insurance that you and Q have been able to go to school and live away from your biological parents. Even if you and him don’t exactly see eye to eye, -- and of course I am not trying to dismiss the weight of that -- it is still not enough reason to dissolve his role as you and Q’s guardian.”

But he hit me. He hit me and it’s his fault I’m here.

“What about my mom? Can’t . . . Can’t Q stay with her?”

“There is no need to bring your mother into the picture more than she already is,”

“But can Q stay with her?”

The social worker crossed and uncrossed her legs. In a calm voice that almost infuriated him, she explained, slowly, “Dazai, you know that your mother surrendered all claims she had of you and your sister shortly after she was diagnosed with long-term post-partum psychosis. She has made improvements, but is ultimately unfit to raise you and your sister. Of course, you have always been permitted to see her as has been agreed upon, but legally speaking, she has ceded her rights to you both as a parent.” The woman paused, letting the words hang between them with an austere gravitas, as if she was telling him something he didn’t already know and it was quite honestly such a burden to have to be the one to do all this. “Besides, even if she were to try and reclaim custody, her request would be denied almost immediately by a court of law. For one thing, your mother’s been living off of money given to her by your uncle,”

“What about her savings? She had a job before. My dad did too. He left her money when he died. That’s how we moved here,”

“It’s true that your mother’s been able to partially get by using the money your father left her in his will, but I looked at the financial records myself, and, while so far the leftover funds have been enough to keep your mother afloat and on her treatment, it, unfortunately, isn’t enough to support you or your sister according to child guardianship protection laws. You both need your uncle to --”

“No we don’t --”

“Don’t what, Dazai?”

“We just . . . don’t . . .”

“Don’t need him? How absurd. Of course you need him, he’s the only -- erm -- one of the few constant and reliable adults in your life, so . . . ” The social worker trailed off, as if a caterpillar suspicion had begun to crystallize in her mind. “Unless you have good reason to believe he isn’t?”

“I . . .”

Why can’t I say it still? He hit me. He hit me.

He might do it again.

If he did it again, would you believe me?

Dazai switched tactics. “What if I got a job? I’ll be eighteen soon. A legal adult. Could I take Q?”

The social worker blinked, like butterfly whiplash. “What about college? With just your high school diploma -- which you still haven’t received, need I remind you -- you wouldn’t be able to secure stable employment for at least a few years until you gain some experience and professional connections, which you can just as easily acquire if you pursued a university degree,”

“Okay, I get a degree. How long will that take -- four, five years? How old would Q be by then, about thirteen? Could I take them then? Away from Mori?”

“Where would you live?”

“We can find an apartment,”

“How would you afford it?”

“My job. You said I’d have a better chance of getting a job if I go to school,”

“Yes, but it’s not guaranteed, and any position you get will likely be entry-level. Plus you hardly need me to tell you how hard it is to support two people -- two children -- with only one source of income.”

“Single parents do it all the time. Mori’s doing it with us right now,”

“Yes, and quite competently, by all accounts.”

Dazai had nothing to say to that.

Taking his silence as an opening, the woman added, “And where does your uncle fit into all of this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Even if you take your sister to live with you, and even if your uncle allows it and lets you both move out without complaint or protest, what will happen to you two without his support? His adult guidance? And besides, you must know that until Q is eighteen, her and your mother are still your uncle’s legal dependents. So if you cut off your uncle, you not only jeopardize the financial security you and your sister have enjoyed since being taken in by him, but you also cut off your mother too.”

It’s not fair. It’s just so unfair.

“Where will Q go when it’s time for her to decide her own future? Can you guarantee she’d be able to do what she wants once she turns eighteen with you as her sole guardian?”

Why was he so helpless? Why was no one helping him?

“And, again, what about you? You deserve a life too. Your sister wouldn’t want you to make so many unnecessary sacrifices for her.”

“Sacrifices? I’m not making sacrifices,”

“You have been, Dazai. Far too many,”

Something about her tone -- the righteous, hallowed pity in her voice -- made him lift his head up slowly. He realized then that this woman hadn’t just been talking to Mori, she’d been talking to Q too. Or, just like all grownups did, she talked at Q and they’d sat still and listened.

What had she said to them? Did she bombard Q with these same questions about the future and what she thought was best for everyone? Did she tell them that staying with Mori was the right option?

Did she talk to Q like she only had their best interests in mind too? Even if it meant separating them from him?

Just like how they took him away from his mom?

The clock chimed, signalling an old hour had passed.

At the ring, Dazai stood up and mechanically started heading for the door. “I’m really tired. Can I go now?”

The social worker remained seated, obviously displeased at the meeting’s lack of a resolution. Nonetheless, she managed to sew a smile on her cracked lips. “All right, but I’m scheduled to see you again same time tomorrow. I’ll bring you some pamphlets on university applications and signing up for bursaries. We can go over them together, if you like,”

What was there to say except, “Okay.”

As he left the conference room, he could practically hear her unspoken words -- her voice amidst a chorus of voices, none of them unsure -- ringing in his ears: You cannot stay here forever.

Reality is encroaching and you have to make a decision.

You have to choose what we have already decided for you.

That was just how these things worked.

He closed the door without making a sound.

X. Odasaku

“I spoke with your mother over the phone.”

Dazai had walked out of his meeting with the social worker wrapped in a daze. He’d somehow ended up hunched against a vending machine that was tucked away in one of the more remote hallways of the ward. The image of the primped and polished woman crossing and uncrossing her legs was still on his mind, but the force of the blunt address to him made the boy perk his head up. He saw Nurse Oda staring down at him, his face as inflexibly monotone as ever, but not unkind.

“My Mom?”

“Yes, we were finally able to reach her. Since she wasn’t listed as your primary guardian in your files, it took me a while to get her contact information at the institute. I apologize,”

“Did Mori ask you to talk to her?”

“No, but your uncle did mention she would want to know you were here when he visited last,”

Dazai frowned, unsure if he heard him right. “Why would he do that?”

Oda said nothing, which meant he didn’t know himself.

“What . . . What did you tell her?”

Again, the nurse said nothing, but Dazai could see it in his eyes.

And suddenly it made sense: Mori knew -- because Mori always knew -- that Dazai hadn’t told the hospital staff about their fight, or that he’d hit him, so he’d tasked one of the nurses to deliver the news to Tane so he wouldn’t have to come up with a suitable explanation as to how Dazai got put in the psych ward in the first place. Ingeniously, Mori had absolved himself from the burden of telling her, knowing Tane would be more focused on the fact that Dazai had admitted himself for a suicide attempt rather than being concerned as to what actually caused it.

She did not -- would not -- think to ask why he did it. Because at some point she had lost the right to know why, and they not only all knew and accepted it. They depended on it.

Maybe it died along with her husband.

Regardless, it didn’t matter who told her what happened with Dazai. To Mori, it must have only mattered that it wasn’t him.

Dazai understood his uncle’s sound reasoning, -- better for a nurse who didn’t know the whole story to tell a story for them both, thus turning the partial fragments into a narrative whole that Tane could accept without hesitation. Now even Dazai wouldn’t have to tell her the details of how and why he tried to die. What Oda knew became what happened.

His uncle had found a way to cover it up, using Oda as a perfect mediator that simultaneously dealt with the problem and annulled both him and his nephew of any more responsibility to the truth that Tane now did not have to -- and will never -- know.

Dazai couldn’t disagree: Mori’s logic was seamless, almost elegant in its efficiency. But still, he heard himself whimper, “I didn’t . . . I didn’t want her to -- Not like this --”

“She had to know.”

For a moment it seemed like Dazai was going to argue, as if what Oda said had taken the form of impossibly itchy fireflies that danced in the front of his face, yet no matter how hard he tried his eyes just couldn’t adjust to the flickering, glowing, irritating light.

Then he simply hung his head, as if surrendering. “. . . What did she say?”

From where he stood, Oda shifted slightly from one foot to another. “She cried for a while,”

Dazai bit his lip, hating himself. Just himself.

The hallway light bent. The shadow that Nurse Oda’s tall frame had been casting onto him like a gravestone suddenly evaporated, and the next thing Dazai knew the man was sitting next to him on the floor, also pressing his strong back against the vending machine that hummed its leviathan whir. “But then she said that what matters is that you get better,” the nurse said simply.

Despite everything, the peach flower boy let out a halfhearted scoff. “Get better,” he said, his voice sounding alien.

“Yes, get better.” Oda wasn’t looking at him and was instead looking across the hall through one of the floor’s grainy windows. “She also told me to tell you she loves you,”

“Loves me,”

“You’re her son.”

“I’m sure she wishes I wasn’t,”

Oda frowned. “Why would she want that?”

“Who would want me as a . . .” Dazai couldn’t finish. Like most of his bad thoughts, it sounded so meek and pathetic out loud. In his head it was like an incessant roar strong enough to tear through reality, but once spoken, the words felt less powerful, like they didn’t belong to the space they took up and never did.

Dazai rubbed the backs of his eyes. “I should just die. I wish I’d died. It’d be better for everyone, especially my mom.”

Oda stayed silent, his eyes fixed on the opposite window glass. But Dazai knew he was listening.

“Others better than me have died over worse,” the boy blurted out, almost defiantly.

An image of his father in a black suit, tucked in a coffin, looking cold as midwinter, wriggled into his mind. “You know how many . . . how many good brilliant people have died too early?” He had no idea why he was bringing this up now. “People wanted them to get better -- people like my mom needed them to . . . but it was still useless. They were too sick.” He should stop. He needed to stop now; even he knew this was getting childish and wrong, -- that he sounded like an ugly screeching record -- but his mouth kept stumbling forward, flashing its weary colors. “She should -- She should give her love to whoever in this hospital is more likely to cure cancer, or go to Mars. Or something.”

“Now why would she do that?”

“Because they’re better,”

“Better?”

“Yes. Better. Good. They’re good.”

Oda paused, genuinely giving it some thought. For a hilarious second Dazai got the sense that the man was recalling all the names and faces of the patients he knew in the hospital in earnest and was trying to gauge their human worth based on whether or not they were likely to change the world via life-saving cancer research or revolutionary space travel.

And of course this was a ridiculous prospect to entertain, but just when Dazai felt like he couldn’t take it anymore, the nurse finally said, “But they’re not her son,” He met his eyes then: a serene, vast blue encountering Dazai’s abyssal black ones. “You’re her son,”

He scoffed again. “But I’m not better. I die, it’s fine, and the sun will rise and the wind will blow and --”

“Your mother will wish it was her that’s dead,”

They both let the truth float above them for a while. The fireflies were still dancing, growing dim now.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Dazai’s stupid voice caught in his throat. “It just doesn’t make sense,”

“I suppose so,” Oda paused. “You know, when I was your age, I was at a cafe once reading the first two volumes of a novel I’d found lying around. I wasn’t much of a reader, but something about that book sucked me in. Do you know what I mean?”

Dazai did. His chest hurt with how much he knew.

The nurse didn’t look back to see Dazai’s reaction, but the way he stared at the empty wall and didn’t meet his eyes assured him that the boy was listening.

“I only had the first two volumes out of three though. I looked around for the third one, but I was never able to find it. I didn’t know how it ended, but I liked the novel so much I kept reading and rereading it. Whenever I had the time, I’d go to that cafe and sit in the same spot by the window overlooking the seaside. One day, a middle-aged man saw me and said that he recognized the book I was reading. Before I had time to ask him more about it, he commented that the third and last volume is an atrocious piece of work and that I should be happy that I only had the first two volumes.”

“That’s kinda rude,” Dazai muttered dumbly.

Oda gave a small smile, still looking at the wall but also beyond the wall. At something that wasn’t there. “I thought so too. I thought, ‘Nobody asked, old man.’ I was a little annoyed, but I was also jealous because he knew the ending -- the ending I’d been searching for -- and I didn’t. Him coming up to me like that felt like he was dangling it over my head,”

Dazai nodded. “That’s the worst,”

“Yeah, it is. Anyway, he asked me if I still wanted to read the last volume after he said it was so horrible. I said of course, why wouldn’t I?”

“I would’ve said the same thing,” Dazai balled his hands -- not tightly, but firmly. “Just because he doesn’t see why it matters to you doesn’t mean it matters any less.”

“I think you’re right,” Oda said, turning to him finally and meeting his eyes again. “You’re an interesting one. Your mind dances.”

The nurse’s gaze was so intense, so captivatingly sincere that it made Dazai’s face heat up.

Very few people looked at him like that. So honestly.

At the mention of dancing -- of music, which always took the form of tripping piano keys in his mind -- Dazai suddenly remembered his mother’s voice. Something she told him when he was young.

It was during those dark days, -- those first months in America -- when John Steinbeck and his group of bullies would torment him ceaselessly. He’d come home everyday with new scratches on his arms and legs, holding back a heaviness in his eyes that no amount of crying could’ve evaporated.

He didn’t know it at the time, but his mother had already been making plans to transfer him to a different school. She must’ve explained it to him beforehand, but he was so tired and so frustrated over no one listening to him that he forgot to pay attention to her too.

One day Dazai was on his way to school, but at the last minute a surge of panic overtook his tiny body, and he closed the door to Mori’s apartment wordlessly and made his way to the couch where Tane was. Shouldering off his small backpack, he crawled beside her and pressed his ear to her tummy before she could scold him for skipping classes again.

The baby inside Tane was kicking. A little of the hurt melted away.

He felt his mother’s soft hands on his head, threading through his soft hair. “Osamu, you don’t want to go to school today?” she said quietly.

He buried his face deeper into the folds of her shirt. They don’t like me, Mama. He mouthed the words but didn’t dare speak them out loud. They don’t like me. They hate me. Coming up for air, he tilted his chin and peeked up at his mother, who was looking down at him trying to hide behind her belly.

She smiled. “You look like a little peach,”

Dazai blinked, unsure whether she was making fun of him or not. “A peach?”

Tane nodded. “Yup. A peach. I could just eat you right up,”

“I’ve never seen you eat a peach, Mama,”

“You haven’t? Oh, I ate a lot of them when I was pregnant with you. When I was a little girl too. Your grandmother would bring slices up to my room while I was working and I’d eat them with my brother, but he didn’t like them that much,”

“Is that Mori?”

“Yes, that was uncle,”

“How come he ate the peaches even though he didn’t like them?”

Tane bobbed her head a little to the side, considering it. “Hm. I guess because it was one of the few things we could do together.” She laughed. “I don’t think he ever warmed up to the peaches though,”

Back then, Dazai couldn’t imagine his uncle as a little boy like him. He did not know it then because we never know until it has happened and then it is over, but he was soon entering that age when giants did not just inhabit legends and fairytale books. He stayed quiet, unsure what to say.

Tane took his small hand in hers. “That was alright, though. Do you know why?”

“Why, Mama?”

“Because sometimes you can have the tastiest, most juiciest peach there is, and it’ll be glowing, and bright, and so, so yummy to eat. But Osamu, not everyone likes peaches,”

Not everyone likes peaches.

It couldn’t be helped, and it couldn’t be changed.

The memory faded.

Before Dazai could react, he felt Oda suddenly reach over a hand to pet his head, ruffling his moppy brown hair that had grown greasy since he’d last showered.

Dazai jolted. “U-Um. W-What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Oda replied in his usual monotone, retracting his hand. Dazai looked at him with perfect bamboozled confusion, but the nurse just shook his head, almost smiling. “It’s about time for dinner.”

As if taking a cue, Dazai’s stomach yawned. He realized he was hungry.

Together they walked back to Dazai’s room. Odasaku watched him climb under the blankets and settle himself amongst the capsule-white pillows comfortably. With a nod, the nurse said, “I’ll fetch your food for you. Just stay here.”

“Okay.”

He did.

Notes:

You can find me on Twitter doing English major nonsense: @eu_gi_oh

Curious Cat: https://curiouscat.live/eu_gi_oh