Chapter Text
On a pleasant summer afternoon, Chuuya was dispatched on a mission that was little more than an errand.
Some goons had taken to ambushing some of the Port Mafia's less-guarded transports, so he and a few men were to clear out the thieves' warehouse and take stock of the stolen goods. Child's play, really. Chuuya expected to be back at the Port Mafia headquarters in time to clock out for an early dinner.
He and his entourage cleared out the warehouse in a matter of minutes. Thanks to the grunts' machine guns and Chuuya's talent in handling knives, they stormed through the ill-equipped guards and picked off the clerks hidden in the warehouse's backrooms. Simple and clean. A perfect mission.
Chuuya nodded to himself as he surveyed the warehouse, mentally cataloging how many trucks they would need to shuttle the various crates back to their storehouse. In the wake of Fitzgerald's chaos, the small gangs and amateur criminals had decided to take a crack at the Port Mafia. Their efforts had, of course, been efficiently crushed. The Port Mafia would not be so easily destabilized, especially with Mori commanding them from his skyscraper throne.
The RA-TA-TA-TA of machine-gun fire suddenly ripped through the air, shattering the peace and kicking Chuuya's nervous system into high alert. He whipped around, drawing a knife from his belt as he went.
It wasn't a wave of reinforcements or even a stealthy sniper. The grunts stood around a corpse, unloading round after round into the body. A pool of crimson steadily seeped outward from the ravaged body, washing around the grunts' shoes and staining a nearby canvas wrap.
Chuuya's gut twisted. “Hey!” he shouted. All three grunts flinched and looked up at him, wearing various expressions of guilt. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”
“Sorry, boss!” one of the grunts shouted in return. “We were just... er..."
The trio shared a hesitant look, and Chuuya ground his teeth. “Don't waste ammo, you idiots!” he barked. “Save it for your next mission!”
The grunts nodded in tight unison, drawing their guns up to their shoulders like a line of soldiers. Chuuya scoffed and dropped from the balcony overlooking the warehouse floor, stalking towards the main doors. He resolutely ignored the pool of blood slowly and steadily spreading across the floor.
When a fleet of Port Mafia armed trucks arrived at the warehouse, Chuuya left the job of loading the crates to someone with a lower paygrade.
He couldn't shake an ill feeling for the rest of the night. Even his early dinner didn't taste so good.
Of course, Chuuya was no stranger to violence and death, and he quickly reestablished himself in the relentless rhythm demanded of Port Mafia executives. He moved from location to location, from one job to the perpetual next. Each was bloody and grim, yet Chuuya took pleasure in the adrenaline that came from a good fight. The city never slept, so neither did he.
When Chuuya was told to accompany a transport (why had Mori decided that his capabilities were most useful as an armed guard?), he swallowed his irritation and resigned himself to an afternoon of menial labor.
Unsurprisingly, things did not go smoothly. A group of petty vandals attempted to hijack the driver at a stoplight, so Chuuya, who had been holding vigil on the truck's top, crushed the thieves into the street. Quick and painless.
“You're clear,” he called to the driver before clambering back onto his perch.
The driver honked her understanding, then started the truck up. Chuuya sighed quietly, running a hand through his hair and silently praying that he didn't have to deal with such pointless attacks. His mild annoyance morphed into confusion when the driver aimed the transport for the pile of bodies littered in the street. There was a whole other lane and no one else around. Yet she headed for them, pressing the truck faster and faster.
“What are you-” was all Chuuya could get out. The sickening crunch of too many broken bones to count reached his ears, and the transport sped down the street with blood splattered across the grill. The driver and the grunt stationed in the cockpit both howled with laughter.
His dinner didn't taste so good that night, either.
It wasn't that Chuuya had a problem killing people or endangering lives. He wouldn't have become an executive without a streak of ruthlessness, after all. In fact, he often took the dirtiest work just to be as efficient as possible. What he did take issue with was excess. Dazai had always embodied that mindset. And, as Chuuya looked around the Port Mafia, he slowly realized that excess ran rampant among the grunts, the executives, and everyone in between.
During a stealth mission to infiltrate a small-time gang's base of operations, a trigger-happy grunt fired on an older man who'd been sitting across the street, engrossed in a newspaper. His shots alerted the gang's guards, and their small group had to fight their way out. Chuuya shouted himself raw at the needless carnage.
He passed the same street two days later and spotted a small memorial erected for the man. Several crying people knelt next to it.
He clenched his jaw and kept walking.
It didn't stop. An American diplomat was taken captive, and a mid-level mafioso was ordered to torture him for information. Chuuya was her second, assigned to make sure her interrogation was thorough. After half an hour of hellish punishment, it was blatantly obvious to him that the man knew nothing of worth.
“No, wait!” the mafioso protested when Chuuya announced he was pulling the plug. She cracked her knuckles with a grin that was too wide for her face. “He's holding out on us.”
“I'm not!” the diplomat screamed. His voice cracked with hysteria, and he strained wildly in his handcuffs, exacerbating an already broken collarbone. Pale eyes darted back and forth, gleaming with terror. The left side of his face was a purple mass of bruises. “Please, I have a family! They're waiting for me! My husband- it's our anniversary next week! And our kids, our kids-”
The other mafioso's punch landed like a brick to a glass window, and the diplomat's screams echoed around the room. Chuuya hurried outside and called Mori, relaying the results of their interrogation and humbly suggesting that they called it off before the woman's enthusiasm landed them in hot water with America. Chuuya swallowed the bile burning his throat as he listened to the animalistic screeches drifting up the stairs.
He was too late. The diplomat died half an hour later, and his torturer never stopped grinning.
The diplomat's body was delivered into the hands of the local police (anonymously, of course) and shipped to Yokohama's airport. Chuuya wasn't required to follow up. In fact, he'd been given a new mission a few hours after the interrogation's conclusion, so that was what Mori expected him to focus on.
Chuuya went to the airport instead. A jet with American markings landed directly at sunset, and a well-kept man in a black suit descended from inside, clutching the hands of two small boys. The family quietly walked to the coffin. Then the kids burst out sobbing. They clutched at the blanket strewn over the wood, and even from across the field, Chuuya saw silent tears stream down the husband's face. The sunset stretching across the horizon seemed to explode at that moment, streaking the sky with red, gold, and orange.
He didn't sleep that night. Nor the next night or the night after that. Eventually, he passed out in the field and almost impaled himself on one of his own knives. Mori chewed him out for that one, using his disgusting, sugary sweet voice as he chided Chuuya and told him to set a good example.
The mafioso who had killed the diplomat got a raise. Chuuya took out a prescription for melatonin.
It continued. On and on, a terrible cycle permeated the Port Mafia's ranks. Chuuya felt as if he'd been walking through a darkened art gallery, then suddenly, the lights had been switched on. Every heinous act was displayed in perfect clarity.
A reckless group of grunts demolished a farmer's market because they hadn't bothered to go one street down and save themselves a confrontation. As an executive, Chuuya was provided details of each – their names, faces, and what weapon they'd used to slaughter the families at said market. Each was released back into active duty without punishment.
A few months after the diplomat's death, a European secretary arrived in Yokohama. Mori's interest was piqued, so she, too, was taken hostage and beaten for information. For the second time in as many months, Chuuya was forced to bear witness to the utter destruction of a human's body and mind.
He kept his mouth firmly shut for a full hour. By then, the secretary had had everything she knew about European defense beaten out of her. The grunt didn't stop.
Chuuya caved.
“Alright!” he shouted, stepping between the sweating grunt and the bleeding woman. One of her legs was broken beyond repair, and she was missing a few teeth. Something hot and hateful burned in Chuuya's chest, and he rounded on the grunt with a bit more ferocity than usual. “She's unconscious! What do you think you're going to get from her?”
The grunt shot him a confused look. “But the boss said to beat her until-”
“She's unconscious!” Chuuya roared again, and the flame in his chest convinced him to draw a knife from his belt. “She's almost dead, and she's already told us everything she knows! Why should we kill her?”
Mori called Chuuya into his office later that night. His honeyed voice was gone, and he stared at Chuuya with cold distaste as he delivered a not-so-subtle warning.
“Don't go soft.”
The secretary survived. When her wife arrived at Yokohama Airport a few days later, Chuuya watched the women cling to each other and exchange desperate, tear-stained kisses.
The melatonin lost its effects a day or two later, so on the nights when he couldn't sleep, Chuuya shed his mafia outfit and wandered the streets. Even in darkness, Yokohama was vibrant and alive. Friends laughed beneath bright streetlights, couples shared late dinners on outdoor patios, and amused parents guided tired children home from the park. Each car lined up on the street represented a person – a being with a life to lead.
It was at that point that Chuuya could no longer lie to himself. When he closed his eyes, he saw piles of people, bullet holes riddling their bodies or bones jutting out unnaturally from where they'd been run over or tortured. When he passed the prison cell they'd used to beat the diplomat, Chuuya heard the man's anguished screams and relived his family's gut-wrenching grief.
The Port Mafia's headquarters no longer looked beautiful in the early morning sunlight.
A few weeks later, Chuuya hesitated before delivering the killing bow to a guard aiming for his forehead. His blade landed above the woman's heart, and Upon the Tainted Sorrow deflected her bullets. But Chuuya's hesitation didn't go unnoticed by his “partner” for the mission.
“What was that?” Akutagawa snapped. Chuuya clenched his jaw and pressed his fingers to his temples, desperately trying to stave off a pounding headache and rein his frustration in. The younger man did not read his physical cues. “She was aiming at you!”
“I know,” Chuuya bit back. His headache was getting worse by the moment. “I killed her, didn't I? Pay attention to whatever you're doing.”
Akutagawa scowled and broke formation, moving away from the crate he'd been using as cover. Logically, it made tactical sense. Their siege of an enemy warehouse was almost over, especially with the two of them there to facilitate the Port Mafia's victory. But Akutagawa's actions were clearly borne of disrespect, not tactical logic, and it took all of Chuuya's self-control not to punch the kid in the nose.
“The boss warned me that you're not as sharp as you used to be,” Akutagawa said, and derision weighed heavy in his voice. “I never thought you would lose your touch.”
Something deep in Chuuya's chest flared – that same plume of fire that had convinced him to intervene in the secretary's beating. He rounded on Akutagawa and fisted his hands in the younger man's shirt, hauling him a step closer.
“And you're invulnerable now, are you?” Chuuya snarled. “Dazai finally called you his good boy, and your head's fixed, huh?” Akutagawa's lips curled over his teeth, but Chuuya just slammed the other man against the nearest wall, anger running rampant in his veins. “You killed each guard twice! You didn't even think about it! Every single one of them, you pierced their hearts, then ripped their bodies apart! You're no better than a feral dog!”
The sound of gunfire and raucous laughter reached Chuuya's ears. His stomach tied itself into a sailor's knot.
“Do you hear that?” he demanded, shaking Akutagawa roughly. “That's the sound of those idiot grunts shooting corpses. Why? You do it too, don't you? Why?!”
Vaguely, Chuuya knew he was saying things he couldn't take back. Anyone with a pair of eyes could see that he was overreacting, and admittedly, Mori wasn't entirely wrong. He'd lost his edge. But fury and pride and something uncomfortably close to guilt roiled in Chuuya's stomach, spewing acid back up his windpipe. And Akutagawa just stared at him, bewildered and disgusted.
Disgust. As if he was the monster for hesitating.
Chuuya sensed rather than saw two crimson strands fly towards him, and he threw up a hand, catching Rashomon without even a glance. Akutagawa's nonexistent eyebrows pressed together with confusion. Chuuya grit his teeth and slammed the strands into the concrete, forcing them down to the next level of the warehouse.
“I'm not a stray, Akutagawa,” he warned lowly, fixing the younger man with a cold smile he reserved for his most hated enemies. Akutagawa recoiled with horror shining bright in his eyes. “Don't make the mistake of thinking I'm weaker than you."
When Mori called him as soon as their party returned to the Port Mafia headquarters, Chuuya couldn't even say he was surprised. His position as an executive was the only thing standing between him and being beheaded. The fact that Mori dismissed him with only a wave of the hand was a testament to the reputation he'd built over the years.
In truth, Akutagawa wasn't the root of Chuuya's rage. However, the younger man was the culmination of the unchecked bloodlust he saw in the Port Mafia – the product of learned murderous nature crafted by Dazai.
Fucking Dazai. He'd always been a little less than human, and he'd taught Akutagawa how to hate, how to kill, and how to make himself numb. That wasn't even addressing the myriad psychological issues he'd bestowed upon the kid before disappearing into Yokohama.
The Port Mafia was an organization of killers; this Chuuya had always known. But they weren't efficient or practical like he. Many of them took great joy in taking another human's life or disturbing their eternal rest once dead. Some looked at innocent bystanders and saw them as little more than sandbags, targets for their shiny new toys.
Three months after Chuuya's “breakdown,” he was finally entrusted to a real mission. He'd been relegated to minor affairs during his break, and the promise of engaging in an actual fight chased away the last of his cabin fever. Chuuya accepted the coordinates, waved off Mori's unspoken warning, and headed to downtown Yokohama with a pep in his step.
His enthusiasm evaporated like dew in the sun when he arrived at the apartment complex and found a bombing squad awaiting him.
Mori had told him he'd be cleaning up some loose ends. What loose ends could be found here?
“Nakahara-san!” a mafioso called, and Chuuya headed over to the man's side. “According to the boss, we had a pick-up here a few days ago. Prototype guns, stuff like that. We're here to blow up the complex and make sure that there are no traces of the Port Mafia.”
“Blow up the complex?” Chuuya echoed, dazed. It was four stories tall, with windows scattered across the street-facing wall. They displayed laughing people, cheerful lights, and running children. “I debriefed the guy who ran the pick-up,” Chuuya added dully. “He said it was the smoothest he'd ever had. No witnesses. No complications.”
The mafioso shrugged nonchalantly. “I guess. Boss said to blow it up.”
So many people. So many innocent lives.
“This is what we're using, by the way. Remote-operated.”
Chuuya followed the mafioso's pointed finger, and ice-cold horror plunged through his chest. Stacks of dynamite were piled in the flatbed of a nondescript truck. At Chuuya's stare, the attendants standing by the hatch raised their thumbs with identical grins.
Grins. So many people were going to die, and they were grinning.
“Are you sure this is what Mori-san ordered?” Chuuya rasped. He knew he was cracking, but god, he couldn't stand by and let this happen! There had to be at least three hundred people living in the complex!
“Yeah, I'm sure,” the mafioso replied evenly. To his credit, he didn't even bat an eye at Chuuya's desperate questioning. “Oh, and the boss mentioned that he wants you to stay behind. Make sure everything's gone, no loose ends.”
So that was it. Mori was testing him. He'd watched Chuuya's slow fall from grace, and this was his way of offering salvation. Chuuya could almost hear the man's silky warning; “Don't disappoint me, Chuuya.”
Chuuya watched the technicians arm the truck and ram it into the complex. He watched a miniature supernova bloom within the building, blasting rubble into the air and shattering the walls like a sledgehammer through glass panes. Smoke billowed, and ashy snow covered the street. Everything melted into a horrible cacophony of car alarms and crumbling concrete and screams, and god, the screams-
And laughter. The other members of the Port Mafia laughed as the complex went up in flames. When a sobbing woman emerged from the building with burns searing her entire left side, one of the grunts shot her in the head with a long-distance rifle. She collapsed without a sound. They all laughed louder.
Per Mori's orders, Chuuya stayed in their lookout post long after the bombing squad packed up. He sat and observed the chaos from afar. Cars pulled over, people treading the line of life and death stumbled from the complex, and on-fire dogs and cats raced into the open air, howling in sheer agony. Chuuya watched five such pets kneel over in the grass. He watched five families clutch their beloved animals to their chests, wailing.
Even once firetrucks and ambulances arrived, the screams didn't stop. Those trapped inside their apartments kept screaming, begging for someone to let them out, please, let them out. Some jumped from fourth-story windows. Others clambered out of the massive hole in the walls caused by the initial explosion.
The sun slowly set on the ruined apartments, and eventually, the firefighters managed to tame the fires. Somewhere along the line, Chuuya's heart stopped beating. It hung in his chest, dead and still, and his lungs stopped cycling oxygen.
He'd killed them. Not a single one had been involved in criminal business.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Chuuya cried. They were silent tears, though. He didn't sob dramatically or demand answers from an impassive and impartial god. He was the self-proclaimed deity who had dealt the final blow – how fitting for the physical embodiment of a destructive god. Chuuya had played executioner for a judge and jury who'd had no right to decide the fate of people not on the stand. The faces of his victims flashed through his head – the diplomat, the secretary, the old man, the people at the farmer's market, all the guards who hadn't even known what the Port Mafia was until Chuuya had sliced their throats.
Something tickled his fingers, and slowly, he looked down. His hands were bloody. Vaguely, Chuuya recognized that he was hallucinating since he hadn't been anywhere near the carnage. But his hands still bled. Red droplets dripped onto his legs, his shoes, the concrete ground below him.
People kept screaming.
Chuuya returned to the Port Mafia a few minutes past midnight, hours after the bombing squad had detonated the dynamite. Just as there had never been any traces of the Port Mafia in the first place, they weren't even among the top 100 suspects. After all, why would the infamous Port Mafia target a suburban area with no ties to the underground?
Mori summoned him as soon as he arrived. Chuuya complied. When he stepped into the boss's office, the man faced him with a broad, welcoming smile.
“I heard the mission was a success, Chuuya-kun,” he called cheerfully. A tray of wine sat on the side table, though only one glass had been poured. He might have been pleased, but he wasn't that pleased. “I'm glad to see that you haven't lost your edge. People were starting to worry about you.”
Chuuya tried and failed to ignore the dark chasm yawning in his chest. “I haven't,” he agreed, and only years of training lent his voice its usual cadence. “What's next?”
“Always looking ahead,” Mori chuckled. “I've always liked that about you. You're not much of a planner, but you get things done.”
Chuuya stiffened at the thinly-veiled insult.
Mori tugged a file out from underneath and held it out. “That's your next target,” the Port Mafia head explained once Chuuya accepted it warily. “It's the same idea. You're going to have to rig some explosives this time, though. Extra security.”
The file detailed an apartment complex almost identical to the one that had gone up in flames earlier in the day. The acrid tang of smoke clogged Chuuya's nose – along with the stench of burned flesh.
“Why?” Chuuya asked. He couldn't quite keep the waver from his voice.
“It's another clean-up,” Mori said dismissively, taking a sip of wine. “We had an exchange there a few weeks ago. The leading man took care of the witnesses in the area, but we have to make sure word doesn't get around. It'd be bad for business if we lost those trading grounds to the police.”
Another complex.
Three hundred more lives.
More. Always more. Had the Port Mafia always operated with such reckless and callous abandon, or was Chuuya only seeing it now that he was looking?
“You'll head out tomorrow. I trust you know what to do.”
“No,” Chuuya said dully. He closed the file and looked up at Mori. The other man stared back at him.
“You don't know what to do?” Mori asked, clearly bewildered.
“I'm not doing this.”
Mori's confusion immediately shifted into irritation. “Chuuya-kun, you were doing so well. Don't tell me you've really gone soft. Everyone has been on my ass about it, and I-”
“It's not about going soft!” Chuuya roared.
A hint of danger flickered through Mori's eyes. But the anger in Chuuya's heart had flared once again, fostered by all the pain he'd inflicted with his own hands and fed by the death and destruction he'd stood by and allowed to unfold.
“These are innocent civilians!” Chuuya continued, waving the file with shaking hands. “What's the point of killing them? It's more trouble than it's worth to dispose of their bodies, even if the truck destroys itself and-”
“No one is innocent,” Mori interjected, and steel edged his voice. “Come on, Chuuya-kun, you've killed thousands before. Why is this getting to you?”
And suddenly, Chuuya's stomach bottomed out. Mori was right; he'd killed thousands. Thousands. People of all ages and ethnicities, children and elderly, indiscriminately and viciously. And for what? Business? Profits? To move money and illegal goods and assassinate those with a bounty on their heads? What had Chuuya ever gained, anyway? He was an executive, yet he barely made enough to rent an apartment a few miles away.
His hands began to bleed once more, staining the file and seeping into the pictures of the next apartment complex.
“I quit,” Chuuya rasped.
A beat, heavy and tense.
“What?” Mori sneered. The single word was laced with an undeniable threat. “You can't-”
“I quit,” Chuuya repeated, and the sentiment took root in his chest. He threw the file back at Mori, and the older man caught it with a grunt. “Take whatever you want. Try to kill me if you want to sacrifice some of your men. I quit. I'm done.”
Mori stared at him. Chuuya held his gaze. He had nowhere to go and funds to keep him alive for about two months (squirreling away part of his salary into a non-Mafia bank account was the best decision he'd ever made). But anything was better than this. Anything was better than watching blood drip from his hands again.
Anything was better than acting like the demon festering in his soul.
“You're just like him,” Mori sneered, breaking the silence. He stood, and the air darkened around him. Chuuya stood his ground. “You both had a come-to-god moment, and suddenly, you think you're too good for the Port Mafia. Are you going to run off to the Agency, too? Are you going to come after us someday? The only people willing to take you in?”
Chuuya allowed a cold smile to touch his face. “Don't try that on me, Mori. I'm not Akutagawa.”
Mori let out a harsh bark of laughter, and before Chuuya could turn away, the man lashed a hand towards his throat. Chuuya ducked away from the attack. It was only once he straightened that he realized Mori hadn't been aiming for his throat – Chuuya's hat was crushed in the boss's hand.
“Get out,” Mori spat.
Chuuya needed the hat. He needed it to remind him where he'd come from and why he wore his gloves.
But Mori stared at him with pure hatred, and he dug clawed fingers into the felt. Chuuya would have to fight for his prized possession, which was precisely what Mori wanted. If Chuuya struck first, the Port Mafia head had a “reason” to call in his retainers and order them to open fire.
What a fitting end to a decade of indiscriminate killing.
Chuuya left without a word. Just before escaping the office, he dropped his coat on the ground. Mori's enraged spluttering was the last thing Chuuya heard before the door slammed shut, and he was alone in the waiting room.
The Armed Detective Agency wouldn't take him in; Chuuya had no plans of begging them for charity, anyway. He was among the unforgivable. There was nothing out there for him.
But a part of him had broken beyond repair. Whatever remained of his humanity had stared into the face of death, and it had rebelled.
No one would miss him, at least.
Chuuya left the Port Mafia headquarters at 1 AM, driving a beat-up motorcycle he'd received as a new recruit nearly a decade previous. And he resolved never to return.