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“Ah, Dazai-kun, it’s good to see you again.” Mori smiled.
“Mori.” Dazai greeted back cheerfully. “Are those new wrinkles I see?”
“Dazai-san?” Tanizaki looked confused, wondering why his older coworker seemed so comfortable insulting one of the most dangerous men in Yokohama. Sure, Dazai was usually careless when it came to his own safety, but this seemed a bit much.
Ranpo rolled his eyes.
“Careful, Ranpo-san, they might get stuck!” Dazai called back to him helpfully, Ranpo sticking his tongue out at him in return.
"Oh, did none of you know?” Mori simpered, ignoring Ranpo’s offended huff. “Dazai-kun was my righthand man and intended successor. In fact, if he would just come back—"
"Excuse me, I would never have been the next boss." Dazai interrupted, shuddering at his own words and doing his best to ignore the use of the familiar honorific. “Too much paperwork.”
He hid a grin at Kunikida’s grumbling at how he never did any in the first place, focusing on trying to keep himself from lunging forward and trying to strangle Mori with his bare hands, since no weapons had been allowed at the meeting.
Surely he could manage it before being killed by the other Port Mafia members, since No Longer Human would delay them being able to finish him immediately.
But no, they needed Mori alive.
For now.
(He had never claimed that working for the side of the light meant he’d suddenly developed any more morality than the small amount he’d already had. He would still be more than willing to gut the man if not for the insurance policies he had in place as leverage to use against Dazai if he tried anything).
"Ah, and here I had been expecting you to slit my throat at any moment." Mori sighed, debating whether or not it was worth the risk of Dazai actually snapping to mention that he'd said as much to Oda Sakunosuke shortly before the man's unfortunate death.
Probably not, as amusing as the results would be.
"I can still do that, if you'd like." Dazai offered sweetly. "But I'd just pass the torch to someone else, not take it for myself."
"Yes, I suppose you were always too concerned with your little suicide attempts to have much ambition." Mori sighed, not noticing Chuuya behind him mouthing the word 'little', as if the redhead hadn't stopped dozens of attempts over the years, more serious ones than any of Dazai’s current coworkers had witnessed. "It really is such a shame. You would have been great, you know."
"Your definition of 'great' is very different than my own." Dazai replied, keeping his tone so even and pleasant that a few people who knew his true feelings about the man in front of him actually shivered. "I never quite understood why you were so determined to make me your heir. I'd have most likely run the Port Mafia into the ground out of sheer boredom."
"You reminded me of myself, of course!" Mori smiled.
"So you tried to make a clone to take over for when you could no longer hold the position?" Dazai's nose scrunched up. "Gross. You might be better than the old boss, but that says more about him than it does you."
He noticed Kouyou open her fan and use it to hide her mouth.
The woman had never particularly liked Dazai, but he knew that she wasn't particularly fond of Mori either, regardless of her acknowledgment that he was the lesser of two evils in comparison to the man who had killed the lover she'd tried to run away with.
"Still holding Oda's death against me, I see." Mori sighed.
Dazai's eyes widened imperceptibly, thrown.
He wouldn't have expected Mori to say something that would hint that Dazai hadn't just left the Port Mafia for the hell of it, much less an implication that Dazai held Mori himself responsible.
"A good leader would have managed to get that permit without sacrificing the lives of innocent children." Dazai said after a moment.
Chuuya’s eyes widened, clearly having only been told part of the reason Dazai had left, if he was even told anything.
Dazai made a mental note to talk to him later, because if there was one thing about Chuuya that he doubted would ever change despite his status as a mafioso, it was his capacity for compassion.
For someone who cared so much about the subordinates under his command and who had still protected his former gang even after they tried to kill him, the idea that he would approve of killing kids was laughable.
Maybe, Dazai thought wistfully, he’d even get the chance to know the redhead better beyond all the masks they had presented to each other over the years.
But this wasn’t the time for such things.
"I can understand, from a strategic standpoint, why you manipulated the situation as you did.” Dazai bit out. “However, bringing them into it was a mistake."
A mistake that had caused Odasaku to take a page from Dazai's book and turn kamikaze in the hopes that he would be reunited with his kids.
Unfortunately, unlike with Dazai himself, his own method of what basically amounted to suicide had been successful.
"A weapon that refuses to kill is useless." Mori sighed as if wondering why Dazai was still going on about this. "I couldn't have him influence you into his way of thinking."
"And yet here we are." Dazai tilted his head mockingly. "How did that work out for you, I wonder?"
Mori’s smile thinned.
The turn the conversation had taken had caught all of them off guard.
Many of them had wondered why Dazai had left the Port Mafia, especially once they’d slowly realized that he had been rather high-ranking when he did so, but they hadn’t imagined anything like this.
Kunikida, in particular, was especially affected by the conversation and its implications, having been witness to the cruel murder of children and other innocents before.
The Port Mafia Boss might think that he and Dazai were one and the same, but to the blonde it couldn’t be more obvious that he was wrong.
Not when Dazai’s hand, clasped behind his back, was shaking in what Kunikida assumed to be suppressed rage.
Fukuzawa closed his eyes, heart hurting as he recalled the time they had spent as the first generation of partners that were later coined Soukoku, even if Dazai and Chuuya were the ones to earn the name.
So that’s how you got your hands on your permit. Were you always capable of such depravity?