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On an unremarkable Monday in Yokohama, Fyodor Dostoevsky stands in front of an abandoned, dilapidated apartment complex, a cacophony of machines surrounding him, all wires and cables and television screens. There’s a sufficiently ominous mist surrounding them, the frost of winter making it look like the Russian is a welcome presence.
Without preamble, Fyodor announces to the rag-tag congregation of battered soldiers in front of him: “Dazai-kun is dead.”
Agency members, Port Mafia members, the government’s Special Abilities Department officers—they’re all here, carrying with them varying inventories of injuries, collapsing into this place as it’s the headquarters claimed by The Rats.
Atsushi can only stand there, for a moment, feels a terrible mixture of terror and shock. Dazai-san? Dazai-san, who always knew what to do? That Dazai-san?
A split second.
“Cut off the broadcast!” Ango-san yells, his panicky voice cutting through the buzzing silence that follows after Fyodor’s unbelievable declaration. Atsushi blinks. Why is that the priority? Shouldn't they ask to see Dazai-san? Dazai-san isn’t someone who’d die and leave them behind, just like that, is he? Dazai-san isn’t really dead, is he? Everything will be okay if they see Dazai-san, right? “Whatever you do, make sure we cut—”
Atsushi blinks again. The members from the Port Mafia are quick to move, an almost tangible sense of desperation surrounding them. It’s a strange sight—the guardians of the city’s peace during the dark hours following the commands of the government. The Port Mafia is split into two. A huge group is moving towards the cacophony of cables and TV screens in front of where the Russian demon is. Another group is practically flying back. Are they retreating?
“We need to make sure that A5158 doesn't hear—”
A heavy footstep.
Even with the tiger’s help, it shouldn’t be possible to hear one single footstep amongst the chaos. It shouldn’t be possible, but Atsushi hears it all the same. Feels it all the same.
Atsushi feels the earth groan.
“Oi. What shouldn't I hear?”
A dangerous voice.
Atsushi feels a trickle of something in his spine. Danger. His heart feels haunted, heavy, high-strung, hot, hunted. Oh. He sees Kunikida-san on his knees beside him. Oh. They're all on their knees—even the Russian demon. The Port Mafia members look… terrified. It’s the closest word to describe it. They look terrified like a bad situation has just gotten impossibly worse.
Even Akutagawa.
…Oh.
Atsushi knows the facts.
There’s only person who’s remaining standing on his own two feet at the moment. The person in front of him is Nakahara Chuuya. Gravity manipulator. Port Mafia Executive. Interim boss whenever the Port Mafia’s Boss isn't available. Called 'Chuuya-san' by everyone, except for Dazai-san, who calls him all sorts of names. Respected by everyone, even by Akutagawa. Knows how to separate private life from his work, likes to eat and drink around Yokohama's pricier restaurants and bars.
According to the mission plans for the three-way alliance: Nakahara Chuuya should be stationed on the part of the city away from here—near the Port, as he’s the Interim Boss and he’s supposed to protect the rear and prevent reinforcements from coming in. A one-man army to welcome the airplanes ready to raze Yokohama from the bloodthirsty Order of the Clock Tower, to provide unerring hospitality towards any expensive yachts from The Guild and their desire to take advantage of the commotion to obtain their own goals, to be the immovable mountain against any infiltrations from air-sea-land that could come from slithering snakes, falling angels and racing rats.
According to the plan that was agreed upon during the ceasefire between the different parties that are at each other’s throats but are united in wanting to protect Yokohama: Nakahara Chuuya shouldn’t be here.
According to the plan devised by Dazai-san: Nakahara Chuuya shouldn’t be here.
Those are the facts.
Atsushi closes his eyes as his face is forced against the ground by the heavy force of gravity.
The tiger inside of him hisses and bounds towards Atsushi, jumping down on him. Not to harm him—no. The tiger folds over him, like it's trying its best to blanket Atsushi. Like it’s trying to cover Atsushi, like it’s trying to fuse them together, like it’s trying to protect him, at all costs.
Atsushi blinks.
Ah.
He's transformed to a tiger.
He hears a growl from Byakko. He's growling too. He's—he’s shaking. Byakko's shaking. They're both afraid.
Almost instinctively, Atsushi and Byakko sees Nakahara Chuuya in front of him and sees a threat. Atsushi growls again, the tiger’s paws pressed flat against the ground, just like everyone else around them.
Fyodor Dostoevsky remains on his knees, sweat trailing down from his forehead from the effort to keep himself mostly upright.
“Oi.” Nakahara Chuuya says, dangerously soft. The air crackles, stone and earth letting out helpless pleas as they’re ground to dust. “What did you just say?”
Fyodor Dostoevsky smiles.
“Dazai-kun is dead.”
And Atsushi sees the world be swallowed by a sea of black.
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Fishy.
It’s very fishy.
He knows he’s strong—just like he understands how weak he really is—and he relishes in challenges, in fights. But there’s something almost sadistic here, in the mission plan. No, not sadistic. There’s only one word he can think of to describe the situation and it’s the one word that Chuuya very carefully doesn’t want to think about.
“So… I’ll be the main defense. The last defense. For airplanes, submarines and ships. For everything else.”
Boss can’t do his usual—steepling his fingers together and resting his chin over them—to hide the lower portion of his face. A certain someone once said that Boss did that because the twitch of his mouth revealed so much about himself. Chuuya called it a load of bullshit—but had to concede that the idea had some merit.
“I have high hopes for you, Chuuya-kun.”
Chuuya doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but he does bow down and accepts his assignment. It’s Boss’s orders which means it’s a job, which means it’s something he has to do and has to do well.
Even if the entire plan reeks of stinking fishy mackerel.
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What the fuck was the point of standing guard here?
Chuuya crushes his third cigarette under his heel, his coat billowing behind him as he stands on top of a crate on Yokohama’s Port Area. The sea breeze is salty with the ocean and the threat of rain, dark clouds simmering overhead. There’s some lightning on the distance, the blackened skies swallowing down the small slivers of sunlight that remain. It looks bleak enough for the end of the world, a sickening fog draped over most of Yokohama ever since Dostoevsky’s merry band of villains have made it their home.
A couple of kilometers from his spot, the rest of the three-way alliance is taking care of Dostoevsky. All while Chuuya is on the verge of yawning out of boredom and the terrible itch to join the fray. He knows he’s the best person to be here, because his instincts will be enough to sense enemies pressing in despite the poor visibility. He knows and he hates it, because he also knows that he can do so much more damage if he’s there. He’d also personally like to punch Dostoevsky in the face, for a great number of reasons.
Chuuya stifles a yawn as he stretches, keeps his limbs nimble and light.
And then—it happens.
‘It’ being a sudden lightning strike on his spine. Not an actual fork of lightning, but the sensation is electrifying and dreadful enough for the comparison. A feeling that Chuuya hates, above all else. He’s felt this a handful of times over the course of his life, but nothing is as painful as this. Even that time with the affair about the apple suicides—no, this time is at least six times more painful than that.
It starts with the burning hot fire from the base of his spine, then it radiates towards the rest of his body, crawls over his legs, festers on his fingers, stabs at his head. His heart twists as his gut rumbles.
Dazai is in danger, his senses and his instincts scream at him. Arahabaki awakens from its stasis deep inside him, asking for blood and retribution. Dazai is in danger and I need to go.
Dazai being Dazai means that he’s pretty much always in some state of danger, but there’s always something deeper, something more dangerous, whenever Chuuya and Arahabaki have their desires merge.
Dazai is in danger and he needs me.
It doesn’t even take a split-second.
All that’s left of the metal crate is a huge dent that folds the metal and crushes the ground, like a shooting star has descended and obliterated it.
Wait for me, shitty Dazai—!
-
“Dazai-kun is dead.”
His hands are wrapped around its hands. He pulls, with very little resistance. He doesn’t have need for a detached, skinny arm, so he throws it behind him. The other arm is still attached, but it means that his other hand is unoccupied, so he settles for wrapping it around its neck.
There are buzzing sounds surrounding him. They could cries or they could be screams. It’s all the same to him. He only sees black and blood and he needs more. Arahabaki is seething inside him. Chuuya is seething inside him. At this moment, he is Chuuya and he is Arahabaki. They are one and the same. Arahabaki only knows calamity and destruction, but right now—they both know one other thing.
“D-Dazai…”
He sees a black crescent moon on its face. It’s smiling at him, despite him having just torn off its arm and despite him strangling its neck.
A smile.
He remembers, underneath the despair fueling him, a certain smile. Dazai smiles when he’s pouting after his friend takes a long time to reply to his messages. Dazai smiles after he drinks with his drinking buddies. Dazai smiles after he’s able to finish off a torture session with some technique that nobody else could stomach. Dazai smiles after getting a high-score at a video game. Dazai smiles after he tricks him to drink vinegar instead of the soursop juice he’s expecting. Dazai smiles after seeing him use Corruption despite both of them knowing each use could be his last. Dazai’s the only one who’s ever smiled at him after seeing him be so disgraced, be so inhuman, be so much like the god of calamity and destruction he actually is.
Dazai’s the only one.
He crushes the other arm, feels too-brittle bones crack under his grip. Weak and human. It’s too weak and human yet it’s able to kill Dazai. He twists his hold, sees blood spurt out along with some torn muscles. He’s mildly surprised that the blood that trickles out isn’t black.
Dazai’s always said that he wanted to die, didn’t he?
A cheerful, painless suicide. A double suicide with a beautiful lady. A suicide.
Will things be more acceptable, if Dazai died with a smile on his face?
“D-Dazai…” He growls, fire and smoke in his eyes. “D-Did he… have fun, as he died?”
It speaks, in a voice that sounds serene even as its torn apart: “He died with a smile.”
…Oh.
Arahabaki is quiet, for a moment.
Chuuya thinks: I wanted to be the one to kill him.
And then, Arahabaki whispers, because he belongs to us.
Dazai died, alone. With a smile. Away from everyone else. Away from Chuuya.
He takes a deep breath and transfers his grip. Holds its face. It doesn’t look afraid, even as it stares back at a god. It’s the last thing that Dazai saw before he died. It will look better with a smile on his face. Equivalence, to tip the scales of justice and disgrace.
He presses his thumbs on both sides of its mouth, hooks his thumbs there and moves. The skin splits, wide, wider, the black and red crescent swallowing up its face. He knows that normally, all the blood loss and injury would render it dead as well. But he’s the god of calamity and destruction and he decides when the nightmares end. He still has a lot of things that he’d like to do.
He’d like to count its insides, break open its ribs and see if it possesses a heart. Check how long it would take for its ribs to fold and surrender to his touch, see if he could retrieve its heart and its brain and lay them down as offerings to Dazai’s grave.
“Nakahara Chuuya,” it says, a slow rasp of a rattlesnake. “Arahabaki.”
He bristles, stops stretching its mouth. One more twist and he’d have its head on his hands.
“You’re doing all of this, but…” It trails off, eyes glinting like black diamonds. “Dazai-kun didn’t even think of you in his last moment, you see?”
He pauses, tilts his head.
He knows. He’s always known. He’s never been at the forefront of Dazai’s thoughts. He’s fine with that. He doesn’t want to be in Dazai’s thoughts, not at all. He’s not interested with being the only one in Dazai’s thoughts, because that would mean bearing the brunt of all his machinations and pranks and plans. He’s fine with how things are. He doesn’t think about Dazai because he doesn’t need to; Dazai doesn’t need to think about him because he doesn’t need to. They just both are. He doesn’t think about Dazai because he knows him already; Dazai doesn’t think about him because he knows him already.
Seven years spent with Sheep, and yet, it only took one meeting with Dazai for his entire world to change, only took one mission for them to unravel each other. Seven years since he’s met Dazai.
Dazai’s the only one.
There’s more than a billion humans in this world, but there’s only one Dazai Osamu. And he—
He’s been snuffed out by this wretched rat in front of him.
He—
He’s always been considered by Dazai as his dog. And it’s true, in some respects. He’s the firepower that Dazai aims at their enemies, he’s the Queen that flips the chessboard many times over.
—but Dazai is his dog too.
Dazai’s the one sent to missions where his life could be ended in painful and violent ways, because he needs to stop Arahabaki. Missions could be ended just by Chuuya’s existence, but Dazai has to tag along with him to minimize damage. Dazai has to follow Chuuya, even through the possibilities of getting swallowed by black holes or getting crushed by whatever Chuuya’s destroying at the moment.
They both are tied to one another.
And now—but now—
Dazai-kun didn’t even think of you in his last moment, you see?
He sees fire and smoke.
“He didn’t even talk about anything important,” it continues to say with rasping tones. “He only rued the fact that with him dead, he’d be unable to buy more microscopes so he can see fairies. I, of course, am not so cruel to deny him a glass coffin—”
—a microscope.
Once upon a time, Dazai had said: Chuuya is so small that I’d need a microscope to see him!
Once upon a time, Dazai had been captured during the Dragon’s Head Rush and left a message for Chuuya to come and rescue him, the message left behind in a newly-bought microscope inside his office, the office where Chuuya always barges into to wake Dazai up and drag him to their next mission.
Once upon a time, Dazai had proclaimed himself the Snow White that needs to be woken up by Chuuya.
Chuuya’s vision clears.
He sees Fyodor Dostoevsky’s mangled body in his hands, the rat’s sickly hue unable to hide his smug satisfaction. He hears the cries of pain and for him to come to his senses from Ane-san, from Akutagawa, from everyone else. He smells gunpowder and blood, despair and decay. He tastes power heavy on his tongue. He feels—the lightning strike electrifying him, gravitational laws making him spin, pulling him in.
Arahabaki cries out inside of him.
Right now, Arahabaki is him and he is Arahabaki.
Calamity and Destruction.
Chuuya—and—Dazai.
“That fucking bastard is waiting for me,” Chuuya breathes out, his humanity winning over and suppressing Arahabaki once more. Sleep and rest—because Chuuya’s going to get to work now.
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Chuuya’s honestly not sure what happened to Dostoevsky’s body after he dropped him. Given that Arahabaki is back to its slumber, the area-wide blanket of gravity should have lifted, so everyone else should have been able to move. But again, Chuuya’s honestly not sure and he honestly doesn’t care.
He flies inside The Rats’ Headquarters, letting himself be guided by the pull of his instincts. The bullets that the wayward Rats shoot his way are deflected back, his single-minded trajectory unchanged. He manages to reach the top floor of the building, patches on the ceiling showing the skies break.
A glass coffin sits in the middle, Snow White in his slumber embraced by bloodied bandages.
Chuuya doesn’t dare breathe in, not until he’s standing beside Dazai’s cold body, not until his bloody hands are softly tracing Dazai’s chapped lips. There are three stab wounds near Dazai’s stomach and liver—they must have been painful, but Dazai’s face is calm and serene. Untroubled waters, like he knows all this will come to pass.
The Agency has the Angel of Death, but her Ability will not work on a corpse nor will it work on someone that can nullify her gift.
Without bothering to check for Dazai’s pulse, Chuuya bends over the glass coffin, keeps one hand on Dazai’s neck, another hand on Dazai’s cheek. Arahabaki grumbles inside him, but power flows from his core to his fingertips, from his soul to his kiss.
A kiss of life from the harbinger of death.
Arahabaki destroys the traces of whatever godly power Dostoevsky has pulled down for his machinations, just as Chuuya dips his tongue inside a cold mouth and forces Dazai to swallow the antidote that he hid under his own tongue.
Chuuya keeps them pressed close, a minute, three, five.
Five minutes, until Dazai’s heart starts beating again.
Dazai gasps into their kiss, before lifting a hand to cradle Chuuya’s cheek in return. His other hand is rubbing at the corner of Chuuya’s eye.
“I didn’t cry for you,” Chuuya says as soon as he pulls away, the words like fluttering butterfly wings against Dazai’s mouth. “I’m not that stupid.”
“And yet you came for me,” Dazai whispers, his brown eyes warm and fond and with a hint of disbelief.
Chuuya pauses, stares at the stars reflected in Dazai’s eyes.
“…And yet, I came for you.”
“You’re more prince-like this time,” Dazai murmurs still with the star-struck look on his face. “My favorite dog prince.”
“Just woke up and already talking shit,” Chuuya says with a roll of his eyes, but he does lean down and presses a couple more kisses against Dazai’s mouth. Just to make sure that he really is alive.
Dazai is the only one for him, after all.
Dazai’s hands around him trembles before tightening their hold.
And maybe, just maybe, he’s the only one for Dazai too.
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end