Work Text:
I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven.
O.D
***
“—azai!”
He jerks upright. Then, blinking, Dazai eyes the source of the distraction: his tight-lipped co-worker who scowls at him from behind a pair of quadratic glasses like he has a telepathic ability that he never told Dazai about. “What are you standing here around for? You’re not getting paid to daydream all day!”
Ah, yes. He is also the manager – though if you ask Dazai, he takes that title a little too literally what with all the micro-managing he does.
“Eh, Kunikida-kun, have you drunk too much coffee again? Is that why you are seeing things that I don’t?”
That earns him a scoff and –
“Ouch,” Dazai complains, rubbing the back of his head that just got smacked with a book – with a hardcover binding! “I’m going to file a complaint against you, just so you know. You’re clearly abusing your position of power.”
“And you are abusing your position of employment here despite having a piss-poor attitude.”
Kunikida’s muttered voice is accompanied by the sound of clattering dishes as he reorganizes the tower of coffee mugs for the tenth time in an hour; Dazai keeps telling him that there is no use since he is going to take it apart each time, being a different human being and thus having a different way of structuring his work style and all, but it’s like talking to a brick wall.
“There’s nothing to do here. What do you want me to do? Perform magic tricks to attract new customers?”
“You could wipe the counters, for starters. Take out the trash. Our silverware has been long due for some polishing, too.”
Dazai sighs with his full chest, body, and soul as he rests his chin in the curve of his palm. It’s so terribly boring – standing here for six hours four times a week, listening to the same complaints over and over, serving expensive coffee to people who could simply go home and make it themselves if they weren’t such money-spending-loving-creatures. He would much rather fantasize about the fictional universe in his head.
For some reason though, he lives in a setting that requires him to pay for existing which means he has to earn money somehow and since his stories have yet to travel from his head onto paper – let alone be marketable, which he highly doubts they will be, he is forced to work.
“Dazai, I wasn’t asking,” Kunikida yells in a volume that should come with a warning for sensitive ears like Dazai’s. “Get your ass moving. Now.”
“All right, all right,” Dazai grouses and unfolds himself from the counter, sticky with droplets of spilled sugary beverages. Maybe Kunikida’s demands aren’t so audacious, after all. That still doesn’t stop Dazai from picturing his mouth sewed shut for the next fifteen minutes.
The inciting incident of his life happens when Dazai least expects it: he is almost done with the rush hour when the penultimate customer in the line steps away and reveals the person behind him.
Though, really, if you ask Dazai calling someone like this something as simple as a person is a literary crime. There is something otherworldly about them. Alien. That halo of red hair maybe, shimmering in the golden noon light like it’s electrified. Possibly, it’s their clothes, obsidian-colored robes adorned with golden shoulder… armor, and matching vambraces. Yeah, that definitely plays a part too.
The only reason Dazai doesn’t freak out at the sight of something – of someone who looks like they stepped out of a parallel universe where people dress for casual coffee runs like this — is that Dazai is used to seeing things that don’t belong in this world.
So he meets the stranger’s intense gaze without so much as a flinch and waits for something to happen.
Except it doesn’t.
Nothing happens.
They just stare.
“Um… hi? Can I get you anything?” he eventually asks when the stranger does nothing but gaze at him with those shockingly blue eyes, more piercing than the sunlight.
They blink. Once, twice. “What?” they rasp out. “Me?” Their voice is at once deep and lyrical – a war song, something to die to.
“Yes, you,” Dazai says dutifully before tilting his head to the side. “Unless you see anyone else in front of me.”
“Something to drink,” they tell him, still hoarse after clearing their throat to no avail.
“Okay,” Dazai nods, fingers hovering over the register, “and what drink would that be?”
“Coffee?”
The corner of Dazai’s mouth tips upwards without his permission; he can’t help it. Everything about this conversation is oddly amusing. “Is that a question or an answer?”
“A coffee, damn it,” the stranger grouses, their knuckles turning white what with how tightly they are gripping the counter, freshly wiped. Such emotions over a simple coffee order!
“What kind of coffee?”
They stare at him. Furiously. “It doesn’t matter. Just… a coffee!”
“Well, I guess I could surprise you if that’s what you want,” Dazai says and meets their narrowed gaze with a bright grin. “Do you want that, stranger?” His thumb jerks at the wall behind him where their menu is displayed in glaring, obnoxious letters. “If not, here are the options: we have lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, macchiatos, caffee lattes –”
“Just whatever. You pick. Surprise me,” the stranger cuts in, impatience sizzling in their tone.
“Fine, fine.” Dazai strokes his jaw in contemplation. “Hmmm. You look like a plain black coffee kind of person.” He still hasn’t figured out who he is dealing with here, whether they’re a guy, a girl, or neither – all Dazai knows is that they are objectively the most beautiful person, creature, hallucination he has ever dreamed up. “Or maybe your looks are deceiving me, and you’re actually really into sugar? Maybe a –”
“Dazai,” suddenly Kunikida barks at him from somewhere out of sight. Gross. “Stop playing around and get back to work!”
“All right, gee,” Dazai murmurs, albeit with a frown. He is taking his sweet time, but he is working! Kunikida takes his job way too seriously if you ask him. “A black coffee for… what is your name?”
“Why?” they ask, brows wrinkling in suspicion.
“Because,” Dazai answers, simple. “We must ask that of all our customers. Standard policy.”
It’s not. Pandora's Box is not popular enough to need that.
“Oh,” the stranger replies, blinking before pulling their shoulders back. “Chuuya.” Their eyes lift to look him right in the eye, and Dazai’s insides plummet like he is a kid again, young and foolish enough to buy a ticket for a rollercoaster to see what it’s like. Horrible. It was horrible. But this… “You can call me Chuuya.” This is the opposite of horrible.
It takes Dazai a few seconds to gather his wits and get his body to function properly again. “Great, one black coffee for Chuuya!” His voice is full of unnatural cheer. “Not to-go, right?” A high-pitched chuckle tumbles out of him. “Surely you want to enjoy it in peace without rushing anywhere, hm?”
Chuuya stares at him for a moment. “Yeah. Sure.”
The order gives Dazai the excuse to spin around and catch his breath as he relies on mere muscle memory to operate the espresso machine, almost knocking over a few of their coffee carafes in the process.
“Here you go then,” he chirps out after setting the cup of coffee on the counter between them. “Have a wonderful day, Chuuya!”
“Thanks.” Looking at him, Chuuya gives him a nod that is way too intense to last so briefly. “You too, Dazai.”
Dazai is left staring at their retreating back. How did Chuuya know his name? Then his eyes flicker down to his name tag, and his chest sags in what should be sweet relief – no one wants a stalker! — but tastes like disappointment, as bitter as the coffee that he just whipped up.
For the rest of his shift, he can’t focus on his job for the life of him. Partly because it’s work and Dazai sees no reason why he should bother putting more effort into it than showing up, and partly –
Well, the stranger. Chuuya. They keep staring at him. They are clearly trying to be subtle about it by turning their eyes in the other direction every time Dazai catches them, but their gaze is far too intense not to notice it like a heavy magnet on the side of his head.
He should be freaked out. Instead, curiosity blooms inside his chest like a balloon, and if Dazai doesn’t get to relieve it any time soon, it will pop, and the result of that will not be pretty.
Which is why, the moment, the clock strikes one in the afternoon, Dazai tosses his apron away and avoids Kunikida’s invasive gaze like he is allergic to it.
“Could you please wipe the counter before you lea—"
“Sorry, no can do!” Dazai exclaims, striding past him with a flick of his hand. “Gotta go!”
That excuse would probably be more believable if he didn’t sink down into a leather seat on the other end of the coffee house; Kunikida will be too busy bossing Dazai’s replacement around to call him out on his bullshit, though.
The stranger’s head jerks upright across from him, staring at him with wide, startled eyes.
“Hi!” Dazai says.
“Hi?”
“So I have this theory.”
Their eyelids flutter. “Huh?”
Dazai takes a deep breath and intertwines his fingers on the round table between them. “You see, all my life I’ve been able to see things that other people can’t. Ghosts. Spirits. Yokai. That kind of thing, you know?” He takes Chuuya’s welcoming silence as his cue to go on. “Anyways, I’m pretty sure my manager thinks I’m even crazier than normal because I’m talking to myself at this very moment, right? You’re just another figment of my imagination? I’ve grown bored enough to conjure a pretty little thing like you out of my mind to make life more interesting?”
A dreadful minute of silence passes before they say, “You’re not crazy.”
The world sways and then comes to a dizzying stop.
“I’m not?” Dazai asks, exhaling the nervous energy in his lungs with a huff.
“No,” Chuuya says with the slightest hint of a smile. “I’m real.”
“But I’m not supposed to see you.” Dazai is 99% sure that Chuuya is not visible to the normal human eye. Not only because they don’t look like they don’t belong here, but because everyone here acts like it too. Like Chuuya isn’t here. Dazai watched people pass them without so much as a glance. No one who saw someone like Chuuya sit here would do that. “Correct?”
Chuuya huffs to themselves, pressing out a bitter thing of a half-smile. For someone carrying themselves with so much grace, it looks wrong on them, yet at the same time, it suits them as perfectly as that strange armor of theirs. “You’re fast. Figures.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that, yeah, you weren’t supposed to see me.” Chuuya shifts in their seat and then slips their hands somewhere into their robes. (Note to self, Dazai thinks, robes can have pockets!) “That’s why I was so surprised when you talked to me. I didn’t expect that.”
“And why you acted like you’d never ordered a coffee before,” Dazai guesses when his eyes fall on the cup of coffee, untouched. “… which you probably haven’t — which I take offense for, by the way.” He scrunches up his nose. “My coffees are great, thank you very much.”
For a treacherous heartbeat, Chuuya looks like they are holding back a grin. Then their expression turns flat again, hiding the little truths and secrets they must carry inside them behind the stoic mask of a stranger. “I don’t usually drink human beverages.”
“Huh,” Dazai murmurs and leans closer to eye them with a pair of scrutinizing eyes. “So what are you? Wait, no,” he hurries to say before he receives an answer. “I want to guess. You’re a siren!”
“Hah? What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know.” Dazai shrugs sheepishly. “You’re pretty like one.” Then again, sirens are supposed to be sea creatures. Considering the laws of the world change with the world, anything could be possible these days though! “Okay, give me another try. You’re definitely not human and invisible to the eye…” He draws out a long thinking sound. “You don’t consume our disgusting human drinks –”
“I didn’t say they’re disgusting,” Chuuya grumbles.
“— surely you must be a dragon!”
“Seriously?”
“It’s your hair.” Dazai gestures at it. “So full of fire, you know?”
“That makes no sense. Dragons don’t have red hair, and they don’t look like us either.”
“I know, I know,” he says, waving Chuuya’s little superiority complex away. “I’m obviously joking. One last guess, Chuuya. All good things come in threes, huh? You are…” He pauses. “… an angel.”
The silence on the other end of the table is loud enough to confirm his whimsical guess.
“Hah,” he exclaims, a little stunned, a little smug. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
Chuuya glares at him. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. Not really. To be honest, I don’t even believe in angels,” Dazai confesses with a shrug. “At least up until now.”
That is not the entire truth. Dazai used to believe in quite a lot of things as a child, including angels. Actually, angels, in particular. One could say he had an outright obsession with them, constantly babbling about them to his parents and kindergarten friends, drawing their wings, dressing up as them for his birthdays, and eventually writing about them. But that was a long time ago. He has since learned to believe that not everything – no, almost nothing – that he thinks he sees is true. He just has a creative imagination. A born author, his father used to joke. So why should angels be real then? Why should Chuuya?
Except here they sit, right across from him. Dazai could touch them, feel their skin – their real skin – if he just reached across —
“Why wouldn’t you?”
Dazai’s mouth opens and closes again when words refuse to make sense in his head. Two tries later, he manages to find his voice. “The existence of angels implies that there is some kind of heaven, and –” His eyes find Chuuya’s “— I don’t believe that there is such a thing. Look at this world.” He feels himself smile. “It’s awful. And you’re telling me there is a heaven somewhere full of beautiful, powerful beings who could turn this place into paradise but instead they do nothing?”
“You’ve got it wrong, Dazai,” Chuuya tells him without tearing their gaze away. “We are not here to serve you.”
“Then what are you here for?” Dazai’s lips purse. “By the way, are you a… a man or a woman? Something other than that perhaps?”
Chuuya stares at him. “I’m an angel.”
“Okay, but do angels have genders?”
“We do not confine our entire being into one stereotypical role.”
“Good for you! How progressive. Still, does that mean I should refer to you as they in my head?”
“My colleagues refer to me as he, but you can do whatever you want. I told you. I have no gender.”
“Okay,” Dazai says, nodding. “Neat.”
“As I was saying, our job is not to serve mankind. We are soldiers. We protect. We fight. We slaughter.” Chuuya leans back in the chair with an air of condescension that, for some reason, makes Dazai’s cheeks grow hot. “What you humans choose to do with yourselves down here is not our business.”
“Huh. So what are you doing here then?”
“I’m on a job.”
“In a coffee shop?” Dazai asks, not bothering to filter the skepticism out of his voice.
“Yes,” Chuuya says flatly.
“And I suppose you’re not going to tell me about it?”
“No.”
“Rude,” Dazai tells him. “So what’s it like?”
Chuuya’s eyes narrow. “What’s what like?”
“Not being human, not having a gender, not drinking beverages and all that.” Dazai gestures at him. “What do you do when you aren’t ‘protecting’ the earth and whatever else is out there?’”
“We are not that different from you,” Chuuya says without saying much of anything. “I live just like you.”
Dazai’s smile bumps against the palm of his hand. “Minus the coffee?”
“Minus coffee,” Chuuya deadpans, “yeah.”
“So do you have… a pretty angel partner then?”
Chuuya’s body tenses visibly before he draws out a breath, forcing himself to relax. “Not anymore.”
“Oh?” Dazai says, not sure if it’s still just innocent curiosity leading his words, or something more than that. “So does that mean you’re single?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
He blinks. “Like what?”
“Like that.” Chuuya motions at Dazai’s waggling brows. “It was…” For some reason, he cuts himself off mid-sentence and looks away. “It doesn’t matter. My partner is no longer with me.”
“Oh, come on, humor me,” Dazai finds himself pleading. “I want to know what angel dating is like!”
“No, you don’t.” Chuuya’s cold voice leaves no room for protests, but there is a reason why Dazai graduated school and college in record time despite not having opened an academic book in years. His head is as thick as it looks.
“What if I tell you I need it for my book?”
Chuuya frowns at him. “You… write?”
That question makes it sound like Dazai being a writer is shocking. He is not sure whether it’s a compliment or an insult… but he chooses to consider it the former.
“Well, saying writing might be a tad generous considering I haven’t been able to get more than five words out in the last few weeks, but sure, yes.” Dazai nods enthusiastically. “I’m a writer! Lots of ideas, just not enough wits to put them into words,” he adds with a self-deprecating smile.
Chuuya doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t look away either. How odd.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“Yes, you are,” Dazai says, about to describe just how exactly Chuuya is looking at him when a yawn interrupts him.
“You should sleep more,” Chuuya tells him, voice oddly gentle. “You look tired.”
“No, what I should do is get myself a free cup of coffee, and you,” Dazai points at him as he rises to his feet, “should reconsider telling me all about the ABCs of angels. Please, Chuuya!” He pauses to shoot Chuuya a beseeching look. “You don’t understand. You’re the most interesting thing that has happened to me in like… years! The last time I was this excited was when I discovered drinking alcohol!”
Chuuya’s expression is nothing short of pitying. “That’s sad.”
“I know!” Dazai agrees with a melodramatic sigh. “That means you’ll tell me all about it, yes?” He doesn’t wait to hear Chuuya deny him. “Wonderful! So glad we agree on this!”
Chuuya doesn’t argue – though maybe Dazai’s feet are simply too fast to hear the answer, carrying him back to the work counter to weasel a free coffee from his co-workers and fill his lungs with much-needed caffeine.
But that’s his first mistake.
Turning away.
Because when he comes back, armed with hot, sugary coffee and a thousand questions, the table that was occupied by Chuuya just now is empty. Not a single trace of an angel behind. Like he was never even here to begin with.
Disappointment is a familiar companion by now: his large arms so cold when they wrap themselves around Dazai that his skin, his everything really, grows numb.
“Oh, well,” he says to no one in particular. “It was nice talking to you, Chuuya.”
***
The next morning, Dazai wakes up with a bottomless pool of energy inside his stomach, spinning him in circles until he grows light-headed on his way to work. It comes to a dizzying peak when he enters Pandora’s Box and his eyes automatically search for that maddening red-hair-blue-eyes combination. He doesn’t find it. That current within him comes to a rocking halt, and suddenly the world is a little dimmer again.
That cycle repeats throughout the rest of the work day. Tension rises with each customer that walks inside, and drops again when Dazai realizes it’s not the angel, who may or may not has been a painfully vivid pipe dream anyway.
The hours pass and Chuuya never reappears.
***
After a week, Dazai stands in front of his bathroom mirror, long due for a deep cleanse, and forces himself to acknowledge that maybe his parents and the rest of the world have been right, after all. There are no such things as angels. Why would there be?
Chuuya was just… a daydream. A wisp of hope. An illusion conjured from the bottom of his soul.
Chuuya is everything, just not real.
***
Two weeks and a day later, Dazai drops to his knees in the center of his one-bedroom-apartment and clasps his fingers together.
“I’ve never prayed before,” he admits to the empty room. “I mean I’m not even sure you’re that kind of angel, but I figured I could give it a try since you didn’t leave me exactly a phone number to call. So hey, Chuuya. I am praying to you.” He pauses and goes on when nothing happens. “It’s quite rude to show up in someone’s life only to leave without even so much as a goodbye! I realize your human etiquette must not be the best being an angel and all, so I’m nice enough to inform you of that. It’s rude! You can’t do that! So come back. Please.” A shuddering sigh leaves him. “It’s boring, you know? This life, especially after witnessing an actual celestial being. Please. Just… come back. I have questions that only you have the answers to.”
He opens his eyes then, takes a tentative glance around the room.
Nothing.
No one.
“Chuuya?” Dazai tries, like the fool that he is. “Are you there? Are you listening? Chuuya?”
There is no answer.
And that is an answer in itself.
***
Cons of encountering an angel: going insane.
Pros of encountering an angel: being struck by a bolt of inspiration that makes Dazai write more words in five days than he has written over the entire past year.
***
Dazai tries praying again and again, but Chuuya never returns, so Dazai focuses on the only stable thing in his life, this world, that he knows of: writing. He writes until his fingers bleed, until his eyes ache like they are about to fall out of their sockets, and until the lines between his screen and the world blur.
He writes because he is not sure what else he can do with the escalating madness growing inside him, an invisible parasite that feeds on his vitality.
He writes.
***
Then, one merry afternoon, a month later, Dazai turns around the corner, on his way to the coffee shop, and suddenly he is there. Chuuya. Looking exactly the same as he did last time: donning that ridiculous robe of his, the golden steel of his vambrace glinting fiercely in the sunlight.
“Hello,” he says when Dazai stops in front of him.
Dazai’s eyes narrow. “Hello?”
Chuuya pauses. Then he slowly says, “Yes?”
“Hello?”
“That is what you say to greet someone, right?”
“Sure!” Dazai exclaims. “We also say goodbye when we leave.”
Chuuya’s expression twitches, something unspoken passing in the air between them.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Chuuya quickly says, swallowing that flicker of emotion Dazai just saw in his eyes. “I told you, I am not here to serve you. If I have to go, I’m not going to hang around and wait for you to come back to tell you goodbye.”
“What a classy way to treat your friends,” Dazai mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. Behind Chuuya, inside the coffee house, Kunikida is already running around like a headless chicken, though he thankfully doesn’t seem to have noticed Dazai yet.
“We’re not friends.”
That draws Dazai’s gaze back to the angel. “Then what are you doing here?”
“Three highly dangerous yokai have been spotted here in the neighborhood, so I am here to make sure nothing happens,” Chuuya tells him like that makes any more sense.
“Right, and that’s why you’re here at this specific coffee shop where I, your non-friend, happen to work?”
Chuuya shrugs. “Since you can see yokai, I figured I could warn you.”
Dazai sniffs and raises his chin higher. “Well, consider me warned.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
After another heartbeat, Chuuya lets out a sigh and moves as if to walk away. Again. “So –”
“Wait.”
Chuuya does wait, pausing to tilt his head at Dazai.
“You have to try coffee,” Dazai blurts out.
“... what?”
“You’re visiting a coffee house for the second time already without ever actually trying a coffee,” Dazai explains in his best matter-of-fact voice that he constantly uses to make people do his bidding. Then he curves his mouth into a breezy grin. “Surely that’s against some cosmic rule out there.”
Frowning skeptically, Chuuya shakes his head. “I assure you, there is no such rule –”
“Just come on!” Dazai cuts in, reaching out to tug the angel inside but pausing before his skin ever reaches his arms. Something stops him, tells him that perhaps he shouldn’t try to touch an angel of the heavens without asking first. “Chuuya, try a coffee, or I will personally invite the yokai here, and let them try it. Your choice.” Instead, he gestures inside, though he holds Chuuya’s gaze until he sees his resolve give away.
“You are the most annoying human I have ever had the displeasure of meeting,” Chuuya tells him even when he follows Dazai inside.
Dazai waves his insult away. “You’re not the first one to say that, shorty. You’re not special.”
“Shorty?”
Dazai throws a challenging stare over his shoulder. “Did I stutter?”
“I could smite you right here and now without even lifting a single damn finger!”
“Please do. There is nothing that I would wish for more than dying by the hand of a beautiful angel ~”
***
“So?” Dazai asks, watching Chuuya swallow his second sip of the coffee that Dazai brewed him. “Thoughts?”
Chuuya’s eyes narrow, so serious about his review that it makes Dazai’s heart flutter like a trapped little bird in the cage of his chest. “It tastes like nothing.”
Dazai lets out a surprised laugh. “Really?”
“Yes,” Chuuya says.
“So what, you don’t have any food up there in heaven? Nothing at all?”
“Oh, we do.”
“You do?”
“Sure. It’s different from human food, though.”
Dazai’s head tilts to the side. “How so?”
Chuuya meets his eyes, the air growing thick for that single moment before he leans back in his seat. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Now that won’t do.
“Try me,” Dazai says.
“It’s made of different matter,” Chuuya replies after another moment, a far-away look glazing over his eyes. “My home exists on a different plane than yours, so the laws that apply to you don’t apply to us.”
“So, no mozeralle sticks?”
A breathless laugh escapes Chuuya. How odd. How wonderful. Dazai finds he is quite fond of that sound. “No. We do have wine, but it’s ten thousand times stronger than human wine.” Chuuya shrugs casually. “ I guess it’s the closest thing to the human realm as it gets.”
“How interesting,” Dazai murmurs, only noticing how far he is leaning over the table when he practically rests his entire upper body on it and retreats back into his isolated bubble of personal space. “Do you mind sneaking a bottle out so I can give it a try?”
“Absolutely not,” Chuuya says with a scoff.
Dazai feels himself pout. “Why?”
“Because.”
“Tell me.”
“Fuck no.”
“Oho, a heavenly being cursing?” He slaps the table. “How scandalous!”
Chuuya clicks his tongue. “I told you. We’re not that different.”
“So why not let me have the wine?”
“One sip will send you into a coma,” Chuuya says and pins him with a scowl. “Two will kill you.”
“All the better!” Dazai replies, beaming back at the angel, though his smile falters, even if just for a second, when he sees Chuuya’s jaw tick with glaring disapproval.
So cursing is allowed, but this isn’t, huh?
How very mysterious.
***
“Hey, Chuuya.”
Silence.
“Chuuya,” he tries again.
More silence.
Dazai steps in front of the angel to block his vision with himself, waving until those watery-blue eyes lift and acknowledge him. “Chuuya, pay attention to me. I am speaking to you!”
“I wish you weren’t,” Chuuya tells him – an ironic thing to say considering he claimed to be here on a job and yet has not left Dazai’s side to go anywhere since this morning.
“Hey, no one’s forcing you to spend all your time here,” Dazai tells him as much as he plants his butt against the same counter Chuuya is leaning against, leaving a breath of space between them. “Speaking of which, are you perhaps my guardian angel?”
Chuuya’s head snaps to the side to glare at him. “Hah?”
“Should I repeat it or –”
“I heard you just fine,” Chuuya snaps, nostrils flaring. “Why the fuck would I be your guardian angel?”
“Hello?” Dazai motions between them. “You’re here, supposedly on a job, but instead you’re just looking after me. Surely your job is me!”
It would make sense too. Dazai is prone to accidents. Falling into rivers. Slipping on ice and hitting the back of his head. Mixing a cocktail of pills and liquor on an empty stomach.
And then there are the accidents that are prone to him. Hungry ghosts haunting his grandmother’s basement. Nine-tailed foxes lurking in the forest surrounding the summer camp where he spent several weeks five years ago. Demonic faces in the cashier that sells him his canned crab every day.
It would make sense. At least more than this: Chuuya staying here for Dazai only, when he has made it pretty clear that they aren’t friends.
“Definitely not,” Chuuya tells him though, shooting down the idea without so much as a beat of hesitation. “You just happen to be part of my job.”
Chuuya, an angel, a celestial being of light and divine power, doesn’t look like much of a liar.
Still.
“I don’t believe you.”
Chuuya huffs out a breath and looks away. “Great. See if I care.”
***
“So I have a question.”
“How surprising.”
“Are you sure you’re not just a fantasy?”
“Pretty.”
“100% sure?”
“Yup.”
“That’s exactly what a fantasy would tell me though,” Dazai points out, lips pursed in thought. “I’m probably going insane – ouw!”
“Did that not feel real to you?” Chuuya asks flatly after assaulting Dazai’s poor head with a coin.
“Well, you look real to me, too, but that does not mean you are.” Rubbing the back of his skull, Dazai frowns at the facts presented in front of him. “Consider it: I’ve been standing here, chatting with you – an angel who is supposedly invisible to everyone but me – for a whole day, and yet nobody has tried to check me into a psych ward yet for talking to myself.” He raises his brows high enough to reach the ceiling. “Why is that, hm?”
“Oh, it’s because they don’t see you talking to anyone,” Chuuya tells him. Just like that.
“Excuse me?”
“No one really registers you here, so they don’t realize you’re talking to me either.”
“Why… do they not register me?” Dazai’s body shoots up from the counter to stare at the angel, wide-eyed. “Wait, is that why Kunikida has been so suspiciously quiet to me lately?”
Chuuya hums. “Probably. They don’t register you because I made them not register you. I figured you wouldn’t want to explain why you’re talking to nobody all the time.”
“But…” Dazai searches for words that won’t come to him. “That is so rude! You didn’t even ask me!”
“If you want everyone to think you’re insane so badly, be my guest –”
“No, don’t!”
Chuuya shoots him a wry stare. “Well, what is it?”
“I just would have appreciated a warning!” Dazai huffs and crosses his arms over his chest. Then he uncrosses them again. “How come people still come up to the counter to order stuff?”
“My powers are intelligent,” Chuuya says, one arm lifting in a half-shrug. “When it’s necessary, they see you. When it’s not, they don’t. Easy.”
“Nothing simple about that.”
“You asked.”
“So you’re actually real,” Dazai concludes, blinking.
“Yup.”
How curious.
Dazai was 99% confident that the last of the screws in his head had come loose.
Several minutes pass before he finds Chuuya leaning against the wall, still real and still here for some reason, and asks, “Will you wait until I’m done with my shift?”
He doesn’t get a vocal answer, but the angel’s eyes meet his, steady as they gaze at Dazai, and he knows that Chuuya will wait. This time, he will.
***
An hour and a half later, they are climbing up the hill that towers above Pandora’s Box and leads to the cramped, fish-bowl apartments where Dazai spends his nights fist-fighting the blank documents on his laptop screen before eventually fist-fighting the sleep that refuses to accept him.
“So what about those yokai?” he asks.
Chuuya spent the whole day with him. He isn’t the most pleasant conversation partner – a fact that would usually exhaust Dazai, yet, for some reason, only fills his head with more and more buzzing questions on their walk home. It’s not just that Chuuya is an angel. It’s the way he looks at Dazai, like he is seeing something that no one else can see, let alone Dazai. A nauseatingly intense tension settles inside Dazai’s stomach every time it happens.
If this was a story and Dazai a character, he would call it ‘having a crush.’
As it is, though, this is real life, Chuuya is an angel, and Dazai doesn’t do crushes. That well of passion where normal people get their love from is reserved for writing only.
Chuuya’s eyes slide to him, a phantom touch on the side of his face even though Dazai is resolutely staring ahead. Up the hill. “What about them?”
“Don’t they need heavenly slaying?”
“Someone else is taking care of that.”
And like a compass pointing north, Dazai’s gaze still slides to him in the end. “Then you’re really here to just stand guard and protect?”
Blue eyes meet his. Somehow, they soften. “Yes.”
Dazai has to gulp a few times to get his voice to function. “Doesn’t that get boring?”
“It’s my job,” simply says Chuuya as though he has practiced that answer a million times before already.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Well, yes,” Chuuya frowns at something – at the cracked pavement, the human air, the question maybe. “Sometimes.”
“But you still do it?”
A nod.
“Why?” Dazai wonders
Why – how do you wake up every day to do something so… mundane despite being an angel?
Do angels even wake up?
Do they sleep?
Do they dream?
Does Chuuya dream?
Chuuya readjusts the collar of his robe before lifting his chin, facing a heavenly superior only visible to his eyes. “Because. It’s my duty.”
“Surely you must have a mind of your own, though,” Dazai continues to prod because there is an itch somewhere inside his head and he needs to scratch it before it consumes him.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Chuuya mutters and shoots Dazai an accusing stare that says as much as ‘stop fucking scratching.’
Dazai sucks in his cheeks and folds his arms behind his back before answering. “You seem to have a personality, so I’m just wondering how you can stand doing something you don’t enjoy but still be so committed to it.”
“I never said that I don’t enjoy it.”
“You don’t have to.”
Who would enjoy work? No one. Not even an angel.
“Don’t project your insecurities onto me, Dazai.” Each word comes with a layer of language that Dazai cannot translate. Not yet. He hopes to master angel-tongue someday. “Just because you don’t like what you’ve done with your life, doesn’t mean I’m the same.”
“Wow, how rude,” he replies even though Chuuya is right.
Dazai does not enjoy waking up four times a week to go to a job that does not fulfill him in the slightest only so he can pay his bills and continue to live this hollow existence. But he doubts that he would enjoy it any more if he did not have to go to work anymore. Or if he spent his life traveling through foreign countries, tasting different food, different people, and different experiences.
It is not this life that is so dreadfully exhausting; it is life itself. Existence.
He feels trapped –
And at the same time, he feels adrift.
“I just… is that really all there is to life? Duties? Working? For what?” His gaze drifts past the labyrinth of buildings in front of him, past the poles with the missing pet posters and the ads and the stickers, past the people passing him by, always passing by – it drifts past everything. He sighs. “I don’t get it.”
And then Chuuya’s voice hooks inside him and drags him right back. “Maybe you’re not supposed to. Not everything has to have a meaning.”
Dazai considers that possibility for a moment before he wrinkles his nose and decides, “Well, that’s depressing.”
“It’s just the way it is,” Chuuya’s voice, no matter how melodic, is as harsh and merciless as an ocean storm, yet the slope of his mouth is strikingly soft, gentle almost – if such a thing is possible.
Little do people know that soft things hurt just as much. Bruises, kisses, water…
“But don’t you ever wonder? If there is more to all of this?” He tries like a fool. “Come on, I won’t tell anyone. It will be our little secret.”
Chuuya lets out an ancient sigh, tearing his gaze away to direct it somewhere far away. “Of course, I wonder. I have doubts too.”
“But?”
“But my faith is stronger.”
“Faith for what?”
God? Heaven? Destiny?
What is it that everyone around him, everyone but Dazai, use to hold themselves together and keep on walking and walking towards a terrible and distant future?
“Myself.”
Dazai’s mouth parts around worn-out words, and closes again. Faith in oneself? What is that even supposed to mean? Years of stringing words together and making them come alive, and still, he can’t answer this one simple question.
But maybe Chuuya was right. Maybe he doesn’t have to know everything. Maybe he will sleep more soundly at night if he doesn’t.
He stops the philosophical interrogation and lets the sweet silence reign for the rest of the walk. When Dazai unlocks the front door of his apartment complex, he pauses, muscles locking up as they expect Chuuya to vanish right this instant. After all, what is there more to say? To stay for? But Chuuya stays, patient, so Dazai drags the heavy door open, then drags his feet up the three flights of stairs. Their elevator has been in maintenance for four months now. He almost asks Chuuya about a ride upstairs, perhaps with the help of the wings he surely must possess – does he? – but arrives at his front door before gathering the courage to make a demand this outrageous, even for the likes of him.
The miffy smell of dirty dishes, coiled, unreleased October heat, and last night’s improvised dinner welcomes them inside, and Dazai suddenly ferociously wishes he was one of those people that had scented candles at home. He isn’t.
He clears his throat before sweeping his arm over the unimpressive combination of kitchen, bed- and living room all in one cramped space. “This is where I live.”
“I know,” Chuuya says, not looking any different at him than he did before. His angel senses may be too refined to register such mundane things as dishes and miffy air.
“Really?”
A nod.
“So do you have to go now?” Dazai wonders for the 10th time as he wrestles open the bathroom door, blocked by toilet paper and boots, to wash his hands.
“It’s quiet for now,” Chuuya says outside. “Not yet.”
“Do you have a home?”
“Yeah.”
Dazai comes out – and ends up surprisingly close to Chuuya, with only a breathwidth of space between them. “Is it like this one?” he gets out after finding his voice, forcing himself to peel his eyes away.
“Nope,” Chuuya doesn’t seem to mind their proximity – or the crazy intense eye contact. “A thousand times bigger.”
Dazai’s brows rise and he goes to brush Chuuya aside nicely but the angel beats him to it, stepping out of his way to let him through.
“You’re pretty cocky for an angel.”
“The stereotypes you choose to believe in are not my problem.”
Dazai flops down on his bed, and his amused giggle bleeds into a sigh. “I would do anything right now not to have to cook. Anything. Like anything at all –“ The sudden sight of a plastic bag that suspiciously looks like it contains take-out Chinese food makes him squeak out a startled noise. “What is that?”
“Food,” Chuuya says with an air of condescending confusion and lets the bag drop right on top of Dazai.
“I know, I can see that,” Dazai murmurs, heaving himself upright to inspect the contents, “but… it wasn’t here a second ago.”
“You said you would do anything not to cook, so here is food.”
Dazai’s eyes lift to Chuuya. “How did you know that I liked crab?”
Chuuya looks at him, lips curling for a bare second before he turns around and shrugs. “I’m an angel. I just do.”
“Can you see inside my head or something?”
Dazai is not quite sure whether the prospect of being practically naked in front of the angel excites or terrifies him —
“Or something.”
Oh no, it’s definitely the latter.
“Gross!”
“Eat your damn food, mackerel,” Chuuya mutters in the tone of someone who has had this conversation a thousand times before already.
Maybe he has.
Maybe he is the type of angel to walk the earth and adopt humans and –
What?
Spend time with them? Feed them?
What is Chuuya’s end goal here?
That question is a giant, glowing sign in his head, but for once, Dazai deliberately averts his gaze and pretends not to see it because for once…
For once, he does not wish to know the meaning behind it.
For once, he simply wants to have this. Have Chuuya, here, with him.
***
“I prayed to you, you know,” Dazai tells him after his belly is full and his head fuzzy and his limbs lazy.
Chuuya does not reply to him – he does that a lot, ignoring Dazai like a fly on the wall. Dazai lifts his head to see what the angel is doing and is surprised to find him sitting cross-legged on the floor, frowning at the book in his lap like it has insulted his taste in fashion.
“I also wrote about you,” he mentions innocently.
The book slaps shut, and Chuuya directs the almighty force of his angel gaze onto Dazai. “Why would you do that?”
“To not go insane? I met an angel – an actual angel that told me he is very real for the first time in my life – and then he just disappeared. I felt even crazier than before, and let me tell you,” Dazai tucks his hair behind his ear, “I feel pretty crazy all the time.”
For some reason, that makes Chuuya’s face soften. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t disappear again.”
Chuuya exhales and places the book where he must have found it – somewhere under Dazai’s desk of unholy creation. “You know that I can’t promise you that.”
“Why not?” Dazai stubbornly asks.
“Because. I have –”
“Duties,” Dazai finishes for him, already familiar with that speech. He waves that excuse away. “I know, I know. Can’t you take a vacation from them? Don’t you have days off?”
“No?”
Dazai makes a face. “That’s horrible.”
Chuuya only stares back though, all duty and soldier. “I exist to serve. It’s what I was born to do.”
“That’s even more depressing than capitalism… “ Shaking his head, Dazai rests his head back against the bed and stares at the ceiling. “Fine, if you have to go, go. But at least give a guy a warning in advance. Surely that is reasonable enough to ask for?”
Yet the silence that follows is damning.
Dazai scrambles back into a sitting position to look at Chuuya’s guilt-streaked expression. “Wait, no, I didn’t mean it like that!”
“I have to go,” Chuuya says, quiet, gentle, apologetic. “I told you I would.”
“Have to go where?”
“Nowhere you know.”
“Well,” Dazai’s fingers curl in the sheets of his bed, “take me with you!”
Chuuya’s gaze falls to the floor. “I can’t do that.”
“You’re an angel. You can do anything.“
“Not that.“
“That’s stupid.“
“It is what it is, Dazai,” Chuuya suddenly snaps, pupils huge and dark. “For fuck’s sake, I’m not a dog that you can leash!”
But if anything, his outburst only makes Dazai’s desperation grow bigger.
“But you’ll come back, right?” Dazai tries. “There are so many yokai here, Chuuya. So many of them!” He nods, once, twice, and a few more times for good measure. “We need your protection!”
Chuuya smiles then. It’s a sad smile. The kind that you wish you wouldn’t have to see. “I’ll always be there to protect you and this little town.”
“Great, so I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dazai decides.
Chuuya laughs like he is on an inside joke with Dazai – except that Dazai isn’t on it. He is outside of it, peering in through a foggy glass.
“Goodbye, Osamu.”
And that’s it.
As soon as Chuuya utters these two tiny little words, he vanishes – right in front of Dazai’s eyes. He vanishes and leaves nothing behind once again. Nothing but air.
“Goodbye,” Dazai whispers, dazed, to himself and the silence that swallows him slowly, “… dumb angel of mine.”
***
The first time that Dazai ever saw a yokai was when he was four years old. He was on the playground with his mother, letting her swing her back and forth, and then, from one moment to another, he started shrieking, pointing at something in the distance, and promptly fell down. He had to get stitches at the hospital. The doctors said that he had a mild head concussion, which also explained why he kept insisting that he had seen a ginormous fox with nine tails at the playground. It was the injury. He would be fine again once he healed.
In reality, Dazai doesn’t remember that particular day anymore. He knows because it’s a story that his parents told him over and over, jokingly at first, before they realized that Dazai was still seeing things that were invisible to everyone else and eventually stopped talking about it altogether.
He went through several stages of acceptance. For a while, he was convinced the yokai were real, and that Dazai was the chosen one, destined to slay them and save the rest of his peers from the monsters. Then the shame knocked at his front door, and Dazai slowly started to listen to what his parents and the doctors were saying. They weren’t real. They were just in his head. He had a disorder. Even that passed, though, and after nearly a lifetime, Dazai acknowledged that what he saw was very real. As real as life. It just so happened that no one else saw those things.
So he didn’t breathe a word of it to anyone anymore; instead, he used his otherworldly vision as fuel for his creativity, and so began his prolific career as a writer. It’s that hobby of his that triggers his idea.
Chuuya always appeared with the excuse of “having work” to do, meaning: yokai, so the answer to lure him back is quite simple then, right? Dazai just needs to create work for him – and maybe endanger himself in the process. Deep down, he is still secretly convinced that Chuuya is his guardian angel. He must be. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
It seems like cosmic irony that Dazai doesn’t see any yokai whatsoever over the next two weeks. None. Usually, not one week goes by without him catching sight of at least one unsightly creature. There are a lot of them in this world, wandering through the morning mist, lurking in the shadows, drifting. For a time even, Dazai thought they were his mirrors – physical manifestations of his loneliness – because he, too, felt like an alien observing a world that he did not belong in.
When Dazai closes the door of his mouse cage after work on the 15th day of Chuuya and any other yokais’ absence, he decides to take matters into his own hands.
So he sits down at his desk, perhaps a little too enthusiastically as he hits his knee in the process, waits for his laptop to stop flickering and turn on, and starts browsing.
If he doesn’t run into yokai himself, then he will simply find him. That should be easy enough. Not all of them cross the borders between them and humans – that is what he has experienced so far at least. While they for some reason never bothered to harm Dazai, or even acknowledge him, he has read news that pointed to such attacks.
It takes a while.
Rent prices have gone up yet again. The mayor is up for reelection. A new museum has opened. The economy is in ruins. Less people should waste their money on useless bachelor's degrees. Blah, blah, blah.
And then he spots it:
An Employee of a Jewelry Retailer Claims a Dragon Robbed the Store.
The article paints the poor young woman out to be still in shock from the robbery that left her with head trauma, but Dazai is desperate. He needs this to be true.
Knowing that there must be a jewel-hoarding dragon hiding somewhere in the city is one thing, but finding it is another. According to Japanese lore, dragons are usually found in large bodies of water such as the ocean, the sea, lakes, and other unfortunate locations that Dazai can’t simply visit. He hates swimming.
But more research eventually leads him to a blog post of a city resident who complains about the noises he hears coming from the sewer at night. Creature-like noises.
Has Dazai already mentioned that he is desperate?
Two nights later, he finds himself in one such sewer, armed with a flashlight (his phone), an encyclopedia (his brain), and weapons (his fists). Even though he is looking for a dragon, he already gets a thousand heart attacks from the cat-sized rats that scurry past him.
The things I do for you, Chuuya, he thinks to himself, following the length of the tunnel. I must really love you.
Well, of course, he doesn’t love love him. That would be ridiculous. Not only because Chuuya is an angel – and there must be some cosmic law out there forbidding the coupling of angels and humans – but because Dazai barely even knows him. He can’t love Chuuya – he is not even sure he can love at all. But he wants to see him again so desperately that it makes him feel mad, and that must count for something.
It is that same folly that pushes his feet to take step after step no matter how hard the odd drip of water or the ghastly scent of human waste and mold makes him sick with fear.
Dazai only pauses when his ears detect something other than rats and water in near distance: something sharp and hard. Chain-like.
His heart begins to slam so wildly in his chest that he nearly gets sick, but still, he pushes on until that noise becomes ever so closer.
It is after a turn that he sees the lone flame of light that illuminates the lair – and then the dragon. Long white hair framing a pale, translucent skin, and falling over a remarkably human coat sitting on top of a ginormous pile of jewels and listlessly picking at them with razor-sharp talons in place of fingers. Their violet eyes gleam like moonlight when they flicker up to Dazai – and promptly dismiss him again.
If you ask Dazai, they look more like a depressed Dracula cosplayer.
“What are you doing here, human?” the dragon asks without taking their eyes off his treasures. “This place is no good for fragile little things as you.”
“I didn’t know you creatures bothered to talk to your prey before devouring them,” Dazai says after drawing in a breath of courage.
That, at least, makes the dragon lift their gaze. “That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”
Dazai stares back, masking his confusion with flat stubbornness. “But I’m not wrong, am I?”
The dragon chuckles before letting out a dreary sigh. Long, sharp talons trace the sharp edges of the diamond in his hand. “I have no interest in eating you.”
“Why not?”
“My taste is more refined than that.”
“Why?” Dazai asks again, and this time, he can’t hide his confusion. “What’s wrong with me?”
How is it possible that he is able to see yokai but that the yokai never, not even once, bother to attack him? Maybe he is invisible to the, he gets that, but Dazai is here, in a dragon’s nest, and still –
No one ever wants him.
“The better question to ask is ‘what’s not’, but I, unfortunately, do not have that much time.” The dragon tries to shoo him away with a flippant wave of their hand. “Now be on your way, human. You’re not worth the trouble.”
Not worth the trouble.
According to Chuuya, one of his jobs is to stop yokai from attacking civilians. The dragon could be meaning that. Or…
Or he might be referring to something else.
Promptly, Dazai takes a cross-legged seat on the floor and juts out his chin before declaring, “I’m not leaving.”
The dragon cocks their head. “Oh?”
“Seriously, how hard it can be to just fulfill this one wish of mine,” Dazai complains with a huff. “You love killing humans, so why not do both of us a favor and simply do it?”
But the response is once again dreadfully unsatisfying; the dragon returns to their boring task of polishing their treasures and muttering, “You humans are so boring” under their breath.
Dazai doesn’t disagree, but it also seems rather hypocritical to him to claim such a thing while refusing to make humans – to make Dazai more interesting by hurting him badly enough to summon his angel.
But as he finds out over the next hour, rationalizing with a dragon is a fruitless task. No matter how many arguments Dazai presents, the creature doesn’t budge, refusing to touch him, denying him so much as a little slap! The only thing that Dazai finds out is that he goes by the name Shibusawa. But that doesn’t help him accomplish his mission.
So, in the end, Dazai decides to take matters into his own hands. That is what the protagonists of stories do, right? Somehow, going on the offense against an actual dragon sounds a lot easier in writing, though, than it is in reality. It takes him five minutes of intense self-pep-talk to gather enough courage and get to his feet.
The dragon doesn’t spare him even a single glance!
Okay, Dazai you can do this, he tells himself. You might be physically challenged, but if you want to see your angel again, and you really do, you can do this. All you have to do is enrage the dragon in front of you. You’re good at that. Easy peasy.
“One last chance to have at me,” Dazai says, hoping that the dragon will use it wisely. He has always been better at letting things happen to him than doing it to himself. That is, after all, why he chose this method and not the hundred other ones – most of which have failed him before.
“I am quivering in my boots.”
Well.
Dazai sucks in one final breath before he stalks over, reaches out, and slams his fist into the dragon’s face –
That is the intention anyway. The reality feels more like Dazai being punched by the dragon’s face.
With a yelp, he withdraws his hand and stares at it as it throbs with pain. “That – that hurt more than I thought it would,” he mutters. Did he break it? It feels like he broke it.
The dragon sighs, but remains silent otherwise, adjusting the angle of his neck back to its original position.
Rethinking his plan, Dazai ignores his pain and lunges at him again. This time he doesn’t go for the dragon himself but for his treasures since he seems to care about them so much, grabbing an armful and running with it.
A hand yanks him back by the back of his coat before he can even take two steps, and Dazai ends up face-to-face with the dragon again, and, there, finally, the glorious sight of flaring nostrils and wickedly sharp fangs snapping at him.
“What are you going to do?” Dazai mutters and stomps on the treasures under his feet to take it one step further. “Kill me?”
“I just might.”
“Come on then!” he challenges. “Do it!”
The hand fisted in his collar tightens.
Somewhere above, rain starts falling.
And Dazai’s desperation spills over with a hoarse scream. “Just do it!”
Maybe the initial idea was to summon Chuuya, but even if he doesn’t appear – so what? At least this will be over. At least Dazai will finally feel something other than that dominating emptiness. At least he won’t be alone anymore – because dead people aren’t lonely. They are simply dead.
“You want to die this badly?” the dragon hisses, the talons on his other hand growing that much longer. “Fine. Here.”
It happens so quickly that Dazai doesn’t even realize it until he sags to his floor, his hands finding wet heat gushing from his neck.
Oh, he wants to say, Oh, so that’s how it feels. That’s what it’s like to die, but something is wrong; he can’t speak. Obviously. A lot of things are wrong.
Everything spins and plummets, and he thinks this it, this is finally it, and then –
“Dazai?”
…
“Dazai!”
You came. I knew you would.
“What the fuck did you do?” Chuuya hisses somewhere above him. “You stupid dumb human, why would you do this?”
There is wind and stomach-dropping rollercoaster rides and then there is searing heat, pushing through Dazai’s skin and even deeper until he feels like he isn’t bleeding out anymore but burning from the inside out.
His body pieces itself back together molecule by molecule –
And everything clicks into place.
Are you sure you’re not my guardian angel? It kind of feels like it.
“Shut up, I told you I’m not.”
Oh, Chuuya heard that?
Dazai’s eyes flutter open but his vision gets flooded not by light but by flickering images.
***
“Quiet now, both of you. You will work together, and if you want your mission to be successful, you will have to find a way to communicate and work together. I trust that you are both mature enough to do that?”
“Oi, I’m speaking to you!”
“Sorry, but would you mind not talking to me right now? I’m busy breathing.”
****
“You are so fucking weird. What kind of angel would want to be human?”
“Says Mrs. Corruption.”
“Fuck you.”
*****
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing. Just stay. That’s it.”
******
Dazai jerks awake with a gasp – and immediately, he grimaces, lifting his hand to clutch his head. “What just happened? I feel… a little… dizzy.”
“Nothing,” he hears Chuuya say. “Just relax. You’re home. Safe.”
“Home…” Dazai mumbles, still trying to adjust to the feeling of his flesh. “Chuuya.”
Finally, he catches a glimpse of him – ever-so-loud, fidgety, awkward, and full of energy Chuuya. His Chuuya.
“I remember now.”
***
***
“Ouchy…”
The first thing he sees is Chuuya’s eyes, filling his vision with watery blue colors and violent concern. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”
Chuuya.
His Chuuya.
Of course, it’s Chuuya. How could it not be him?
“Like…” Dazai gives up on squinting and lets his eyes flutter shut again. “… I’ve just risen from the grave.” Silence. “But I guess that’s what I did, huh?”
“You really remember,” Chuuya says, and Dazai’s head pulses too hard to decipher whether it’s supposed to be a question or a statement.
“It’s true?” His voice comes out in a low murmur. “All of it? It wasn’t just a fever dream?”
It felt like it.
It still feels like it.
The lifetime of memories is there, gushing through him in rivers. The only thing that is stopping them from overrunning him completely is a mental dam, stable enough to keep him functioning for now, but they are there. All he has to do to hear the force of their current is close his eyes.
He pries his eyes open when Chuuya places a hand on his forehead instead of answering his question. “What?”
“I healed you, but you’re still burning.”
“Probably the memories,” Dazai guesses with a wince. “There are… a lot of them.”
Chuuya scowls. “I’m aware.”
“I mean that there are probably… uh, more than my fragile little human mind can handle,” Dazai reiterates.
“Stop thinking about them then.”
His tone makes Dazai scrunch up his nose. “It’s not as simple as flicking a switch, Chuuya.”
“Damn it,” Chuuya mutters under his breath, already back on his feet. “I should have known that nothing good would come out of this.” He pauses in his pacing to let out a sigh and scrub a hand across his face. “Should have just let you die.”
Speaking of which…
“Why didn’t you?”
Chuuya crosses his arms.
“You have every reason to want me, a traitor, dead.”
Seconds pass, the clock on the wall ticks away, but the angel denies Dazai an answer.
“The day I first saw you at work,” Dazai tries again, “it was no coincidence, was it?”
It couldn’t have been. Coincidences this cosmic do not simply happen.
Finally, Chuuya meets his gaze. “Not exactly.”
Yeah.
“Come on, talk to me,” Dazai begs with a whine, forcing himself to sit up even though it makes the pounding in his head louder. And when that doesn’t work: “I mean, I can also use my own head to think, but then my head will crack like an egg on the sidewalk, and I –”
“Fine, all right,” Chuuya mutters, returning to his bedside. “Be quiet now. That day wasn’t a coincidence. Finding you was, though.”
Dazai’s brows furrow.
Chuuya runs a hand through his hair, so hauntingly human for a second. “I was down here for a job, walking down a street when I saw you.” After a pause, he tries to speak again but nothing comes out. Dazai’s mouth fills with the familiar taste of shame, yet he can’t tear his eyes away from the demolition he caused either. “I felt you. And I just…” Shrugging, he turns away. “I knew that it was you.”
“And then?” Dazai asks, breathless.
“Then I followed you,” Chuuya tells him. “You were on your way to work. I watched you sell beverages for a few hours –” He frowns to himself. “—from the outside until I eventually had to leave. It was for the best. Safer for you. If any of the other angels found you – well, you and I both know they wouldn’t be as forgiving as me.”
“But you came back.”
“I wanted to make sure that you’re doing okay. I never expected you to be able to see me.”
“It’s probably the grace.” Dazai traces the slope of his collarbones with the tips of his fingers – tiny sprouts of divine energy grow within him like weeds in sidewalk cracks. So hot and so cold at the same time. So powerful and so confining. “I lost it when I fell, but some of it must still linger. It’s why I can see the other planes, too.”
“I figured.”
The corner of Dazai’s mouth tips up. He eyes Chuuya. “So…”
Chuuya — ever-so-serious, lovely Chuuya frowns back at him. “So what?”
“So you are still here,” Dazai points out the obvious.
“Yes,” Chuuya deadpans. “I’m glad to hear that your eyes still work at least.”
“Aren’t you breaking a thousand rules by being here?”
Exhaling, Chuuya turns his head northward. “I am.”
“Just for me?”
“You’re basically a ticking time bomb now that you remember. I’ve gotta make sure that you’ll be all right.” He clicks his tongue. “I clean up my messes.”
Dazai nods pointedly. “You clean up well after yourself too.”
Chuuya’s eyes fly open to scowl furiously at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you look older. Seasoned,” Dazai says with a grin that makes him squint from pain but that is so worth it. “No longer a brat but –”
“You’re confusing me with yourself.”
“—still as tiny as one.”
“Shut up,” Chuuya snaps. “Look at you. You’re… what, twenty years old?”
“Twenty-three.”
“You’re basically a baby.”
“Actually, I’m an adult.”
“Not in angel years.”
“Except we’re not up there, but down here, and down here we play by different rules,” Dazai’s smile sharpens, “partner.”
The crestfallen shadow that falls over Chuuya’s face makes Dazai press his mouth shut to stop more cruelties from spilling out. How funny. He has only had his memories back for a few hours, and already he feels that sickening thud of his heart for wielding so much power over Chuuya – an angel, a celestial being of light and divine strength, a soldier, a weapon – armed with nothing but his tongue.
How ridiculous Dazai is.
“You should rest,” Chuuya says after a moment too long. “Your old memories will be hard on your human body.”
“I don’t feel like sleeping,” Dazai responds. He does roll onto his side where he is more comfortable, though just to be able to still look at Chuuya.
“That’s awful. You’ll still have to do it though.” With that, he rises to his feet, showing Dazai that he truly intends to leave –
“No, no, just wait,” Dazai almost falls out of bed in his hurry to stop him. “Not yet.”
“Dazai, rest is important –”
“I know but…” He only pauses when he gets his hand around Chuuya’s wrist. “I haven’t seen you in ages. Give me another minute before you vanish and leave me all alone again.”
Chuuya’s jaw clenches. “I’m not the one who left.”
Dazai stares at him for a moment before averting his gaze. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
After several thumping heartbeats, Chuuya sits back down on the bed, the mattress creaking under his weight, and he rests his other hand on top of Dazai’s, the one that’s still clutching him. Angel blood is a thousand degrees hotter, yet his skin feels remarkably human against Dazai’s.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Chuuya says. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“And what if they call you back?” Dazai sniffs. “What then?”
“Let me worry about that.”
“I know how things work back there,” Dazai reminds him in case he forgot – because he certainly acts like it right now. “As soon as they find out what you’ve been up to, my life as a barista will be over.”
“They have no use for a human either.”
Except that it’s not the entire truth. They both know that when Dazai fell, he took a thousand secrets with him. His mind is practically Pandora’s Box, waiting to be cracked open and spilled to the first power-hungry creature, angel or not, that gets its hands on him.
“That doesn’t mean they won’t punish me for leaving in the first place.” Dazai jerks his chin at him. “Just look in the mirror, Chuuya. You’re still angry. Now imagine how peeved the self-righteous pricks up there will be when they find out.”
Wounded, Chuuya lets go of Dazai’s hand, his spine bending under the weight of that accusation. Dazai can almost see his wings, drooping and tensing behind him, always saying the things that Chuuya could not. “I’m not angry.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m not talking about this now.”
“Because you know I’m right.”
“No, because you won’t understand,” Chuuya snaps viciously.
Chuuya has always been so dutiful, but in the end, his sense of loyalty is even more ferocious — which wouldn’t be a problem if he gave it to someone worthy for once in his life.
Not someone like Dazai.
“Because you’ll refuse to understand like you always do.”
“Understand what?” Dazai pushes on, folding his arms over his chest. “That I’m not sorry that I broke the rules and left that place? That I disobeyed? Who cares?” He lets out a shrill laugh. “Truly, why is duty supposed to be the most important thing in my life when it brings nothing but misery?”
“I understand why you left!” Chuuya snaps.
“Then why are you so angry?”
“Because you didn’t just leave them, you left me.” Chuuya sucks in a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose before starting over. “I get why you did it, and if being human and making coffees all day and living in this rathole is what makes you happy, then good, okay? Good for you. But you left. You left me. And I just…” His eyes plummet to his hands, staring at them like they hold secrets to the universe. “You never even said goodbye. You vanished without a single word.”
“It was my mess.” Dazai’s voice is startlingly quiet – even to his own ears. “The least I could do for you after everything was not to involve you in my business.”
Chuuya scoffs in response.
Dazai’s shoulders draw up, elbows tucking into the sides. It’s easy to remember why he fell considering how rotten this conversation makes him feel. Like everything about him is wrong.
“What good would it have done?”
“You’re asking me that after giving me shit for the exact same thing?” Chuuya snaps, pinning him with a cold glare
“Well…” Dazai’s lips purse sheepishly. “I didn’t know. You can’t blame me for not knowing.”
“I’m not, but you can’t blame me either for wishing you would at least have had the decency to tell me back then.” Chuuya shakes his head. “Just one single word, Dazai. That would have been enough. That’s all I wanted – that I fucking deserved.”
Dazai pushes all that air, so heavy and tepid, out of his lungs. “I had to leave. I couldn’t stay.”
“I know.”
“I had to leave –”
“I know.”
“— and talking to you was the one thing that could have changed my mind, and I had to leave. I had to, Chuuya. I had to.”
It must take Chuuya a moment to process these words because he is awfully quiet, eyes cast on Dazai but seeing through him, really.
And then, he scrubs a hand over his face and says, “Whatever. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” Dazai murmurs. He didn’t expect Chuuya to forgive him all of a sudden but he thought there would be more of a reaction than a simple ‘whatever.’ “So what now?”
“Now you rest. Get better.” Chuuya gets to his feet and pokes Dazai’s forehead. What is likely supposed to come off as threatening simply feels gentle. Familiar. “Forget about everything else, and let me worry about that.”
“But Chuuya”
“What?!”
Dazai holds his gaze for a long, thick minute before he says, “I missed you.”
Chuuya’s breath comes out as a hiss. “Stop.”
“I really did,” Dazai insists; and it’s the truth. He is not only saying this so Chuuya will stay a while longer and look at him with something other than dry, hollow bitterness – though he will not complain about these side effects either.
“You can’t miss someone you don’t even remember.”
“I think I did. Remember you, I mean.” Dazai presses out a small smile that feels all wrong. So awkward. “I didn’t know it was you, but it’s like a part of me knew that something was missing. That this wasn’t all there is to life. That somewhere out there, was –”
“Was what?” Chuuya mutters. “Me?”
“Yes.”
Chuuya huffs out a scoff. “Being human has made you soft.”
“Is that so bad?”
To a soldier, to Chuuya, it is.
Then again, as dutiful as he was, he has always had such a human streak that Dazai envied – not that he would ever admit such a thing out loud.
That’s why hell.
“I wish I could show you what it’s like,” Dazai says, resting his cheek on both of his hands as he gazes up at Chuuya.
“What’s what like?”
“Falling asleep.”
“Why would you want to show me such a redundant, time-wasting thing?”
“It’s not so bad!” Dazai puffs out a sigh. “Well, usually it’s quite hard for me. I wonder whether it’s because of who – of what I was before this. Maybe a part of me knew that I didn’t have to sleep back then.”
Chuuya crosses his arms and raises his brows, not sure what Dazai is trying to convince him of here. “So far, it doesn’t sound like anything good.”
“Yes, yes, but that’s because we’re wired differently, but to humans?” Dazai’s eyes flutter closed; he feels himself smiling a real smile. “Sleep is something precious. Just before you fall asleep, there's this moment when you're neither fully awake nor fully asleep and you just… drift.” An audible sigh leaves Dazai. “You feel yourself falling. Slipping away. You give yourself over to something much grander than you. It’s quite a feeling.”
“Then why don’t you go ahead and demonstrate it for me, huh?”
“If only it was so easy,” he murmurs.
Chuuya squats down to his eye level and touches his temple again. “Here.” There are rules. Rules that dictate angels are not to interfere with humans unless there are non-human parties involved; otherwise, the human plane must be left alone. That means healing humans, or even letting them sleep is not allowed either.
But Dazai supposes that this won’t matter more than the last few times Chuuya broke them, for him, either.
“Oh… heh.”
“How’s that?”
“That’s good,” Dazai says with a sigh, already drifting. “Wonderful… actually.”
“Is it like actual falling?”
“Mmm… yes.”
“Do you remember it then?” he hears Chuuya asks, somewhere farther away than he was before. “Falling?”
Dazai releases one last full-body sigh and nods.
Every second of it.
***
“How is your head?”
Dazai touches the body part in question, tilting it this way and that way before meeting Chuuya’s ever-so-serious gaze. “Pretty. Do you agree?”
“I mean, how are you dealing with the fact that you just downloaded millennia worth of memories into a human brain?”
“Well, I’m up and standing, so I’m good.” A full night of sleep certainly helped Dazai’s body to recover from the impact of the last few days. Well, that, and the other life that he so conveniently chose to forget when he fell. The memories still dash against the back of his skull in waves, sending up little sprays of images every now and then. Dazai has yet to decide what is worse: keep them locked out, or allow them in.
For now, he prefers to deal with them as he deals with most problems he encounters: pretending they are not there at all.
“I’ll be all right,” he chirps and swivels around to Chuuya with a beam on his face. “Worry about yourself!”
Chuuya stares back at him. “Hah?”
“I have plans for you. Big plans.”
“What plans?”
“Human plans.”
“Dazai –”
“You’re going to go to the arcade with me,” Dazai declares, strutting over to the angel’s side and slinging an arm around his shoulder. “And to the cinema. And to read my favorite books.” He nods. “You’ll see why life’s so much more fun down here.”
“I’ll pass, thanks,” Chuuya mutters, already slipping out from under Dazai.
“Come on, don’t give me that ‘I’m only here for a job’ excuse, Chuuya. You might be loyal to the core, but you’re also clever enough to break a few rules without getting caught.”
“For things that I actually want to do, and getting dragged around by you is not it.” Chuuya gives him one of his ‘and that’s that’ glowers. “I only wanted to make sure that you’ll be fine. You are. So my job here is d—”
“Spend a day with me,” Dazai cuts in with an apple-sweet smile and his hands innocently folded behind his back, “or I will send Mori a greeting card with my home address on it myself.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Dazai only beams back at him, not budging.
Their stare-down lasts for a while, the tick of the clock on the wall becoming louder with each second that passes, but if there is one thing that Dazai is sure of, it’s that Chuuya has never bested him in any game.
“Fine, you reckless brat,” Chuuya eventually breaks, and Dazai lets go of his resolve to clap his hands in excitement. A day out just with Chuuya! “Risking your entire identity and the life that you died for just to blackmail me into hanging around with you all day.” Chuuya shakes his head like he is disappointed. Well, he probably is. “You are still just as deranged as I remember.”
Dazai is all too happy to ignore him as he rushes to throw open his closet. “I’m so happy that you’ve agreed to our date. Now, we’ll have to find you some clothes, though, because that’s –” He blindly gestures at Chuuya’s shiny robes — which are ridiculous even for an angel of his rank. “— not going to cut it.”
“Date?!”
“Do you wish to look classy or trendy?”
“My clothes are just fine!”
“Not in my world; no, they’re not,” Dazai reminds him. “Chuuya, you will step out of that fancy secret angel plane of yours and join mine.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because I said so,” he answers, as simple as that, before he holds up a plain-black turtleneck sweater and a wine-colored hoodie. “Now, which one do you prefer?”
***
An hour later, they are seated around a round corner table at a shop in Dazai's neighborhood that he has always wanted to visit but never got to before. Chuuya chose to go for the casual, oversized street style, donning a hoodie and a pair of baggy jeans that he had to conjure up with his angel powers since all of Dazai’s pants were too big for him. He is also excellent at playing the role of the ever-disgruntled young man, scowling at the batch of pancakes in front of him like their existence is pure blasphemy.
“Is this really necessary? You know that I won’t taste any of them.”
“Fake it ‘till you make it, baby.”
“Faking it will do nothing,” Chuuya responds with an even more serious stare, “and I am not a human toddler. I am ancient. I am older than –”
“Yes, yes, you’re old and terrifying, but you’re still going to eat these pancakes and pretend that you’re enjoying them.” Since the ancient and powerful angel doesn’t look like he is going to pick up his chopsticks anytime soon, Dazai does it for him: stabbing a piece of pancake and shoving them against Chuuya’s mouth until he obediently opens it. “Here. In you go. Wonderful. Good job!” Dazai watches him chew obediently. “How was that?”
“Fine,” Chuuya admits and uses the napkin to wipe the corner of his mouth. “I guess.”
Liking the sound of that, Dazai nods before he waves over the waitress. “I would like to order twenty mimosas please.”
She blinks at him. “Um…”
“What, do you want to see my ID? I’m over twenty-one, I promise.”
“That will be… all right, sir,” she says and scurries into the kitchen.
When Dazai turns back, Chuuya is staring at him with that judgmental look of his. “What?”
“Twenty? Can you even afford that?”
“What would you know about our human currencies?” Dazai shoots back.
“Enough to know that you can’t afford it,” Chuuya deadpans.
“Hm, maybe,” Dazai admits, pillowing his chin on his folded hands, “but you can.”
“Hah?!”
“Just wield your angel power, and there, done.” He shrugs. “The mimosas are for you anyways, since we don’t have the hardcore stuff that you fancy so much here.”
**
“Now what?” Chuuya demands to know once they step out of the brunch place one or two hours later. Despite giving Dazai shit about the mimosas the entire time, Chuuya sure did find a liking to them, guzzling them down like they were water. It earned him a few funny looks from the waitress and the other customers that were brunching there.
“Now we’ll go to the arcade,” Dazai tells him, giving the sleeve of Chuuya’s hoodie a tug. “Well, no, first we’re going to go to Cosmo World… and then we are going to go to the arcade.” He casts a glance to his side where Chuuya is dutifully keeping pace with him, eyes narrowed on the road like he is marching straight into war. “By the way, are you feeling the mimosa yet?”
“No,” Chuuya says and hiccups. A flushed grimace replaces his stoic expression. “Fine, a little. Very little.” He nods twice to himself. “Like taking a single sip of wine.”
“You have always been a lightweight though –“ The threatening glare that Dazai receives makes him quickly switch lanes again. “All right, all right, I didn’t say anything.” He is once again forced to grab Chuuya’s arm since the angel is for some reason set on walking in a completely false direction. “The train’s that way.”
“Train?” Chuuya echoes in the affronted tone of high nobility that just got told their carriage has been replaced by a donkey back. “We have to travel by train?”
“Duh. You don’t expect us to walk, do you?”
“Do you not own a vehicle?”
“In this economy?” Dazai puffs out a scoff. “No way.”
“This is humiliating.”
Their train arrives just in time, and Dazai tugs his unhappy angel behind himself and into a fishbowl-packed wagon.
“Human life is all about that, Chuuya,” he says, wrapping his fingers around a leather hand loop dangling from the ceiling. “It’s one humiliation after the other.”
He sees Chuuya’s gaze settles on the side of his face in the reflection of the smudged glass window. “Yet you still wish to continue it?”
“Huh? Being human?” Dazai plays dumb because the direction of this conversation is already setting his nerves ablaze. “What else am I supposed to do?”
“There are ways, you know,” Chuuya says quietly so the other passengers won’t overhear them. “To restore your powers.”
Dazai pointedly fixes his eyes on the advertisements on the walls, staring so hard yet not seeing anything. “I’m never going back there.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Then this life will be a short one.”
“Precisely.”
“You’re so strange still. Sometimes –“ The rawness of his voice drags Dazai’s eyes back to him; he secretly yearns to find the angel’s eyes open with trust again, like they once used to be, or at the very least be able to break them open, but all he sees is a guarded expression, a hundred years standing between them and what they once had – what they once almost were and almost could have been. “Sometimes I imagined this. Finding you here, on earth, human.” Their gazes meet. “I always thought you would be different somehow. Changed.”
Dazai tilts his head to the side. “Didn’t you say I’m softer now?”
“Yes, but it’s still you.” As if that makes any sense. “Still Dazai.”
“Not entirely,” Dazai says.
Chuuya lets out a breath and looks away. “Not entirely.”
Overhead, an automatic voice announces their next stop.
“You’re not entirely the same either, for what it’s worth.”
Chuuya’s attention darts right back to him, though the color that’s dripping from his eyes is bitter blue. “That must be the human in you. My Dazai would never say that.”
The train comes to a halt.
“Your Dazai is standing right here.” And then Dazai lifts his hand and pokes Chuuya’s nose. “Boop!” The angel’s eyes widen, a bewildered mixture of horror and outrage that Dazai ignores when he grabs his hand and tugs him through the doors that scrape open. “That’s our stop!”
It’s a five-minute stroll to Cosmo World, and Dazai spends them playing tour guide as he points out different buildings, shops, and monuments on the streets and recounts their history to Chuuya, who looks like he would rather be doing anything but this – at least when Dazai glances over to his side.
Sometimes though, he feels Chuuya’s eyes slide to him, and the weight of them is comforting, bittersweet almost, rather than scrutinizing.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Dazai says, “if I get to ask you something in return.”
“What was your life like before this?”
Dazai has been waiting for this question, yet he has no perfectly satisfying answer to it anyway.
“Well, it was a life,” he eventually starts, intentionally vague as his mind searches for a better description than ‘miserable when alone, and miserable when with others.’ “My parents – they desperately wanted a child that they couldn’t have. The doctors called it ‘inexplicable infertility.’ Then one day, years after they had pretty much given up on trying, they received the news that they were expecting. That was me. Their little miracle, huh?” Dazai shoots the angel next to him a look and waggles his brows. “It’s funny, Chuuya. I don’t even remember much of my childhood anymore. Our silly, little human minds are funny that way. I know that I started seeing things at a young age though. The third plane. It never made sense to me why I did until I got my memories back.”
“But they left you alone, right?” Chuuya asks.
Dazai clutches a hand to his chest. “Your concern is touching but misplaced. Yes, they left me alone. So for a long, long time, I thought that it was just the way it is. That I was a little crazy in the head, you know?” He chuckles. “I tried out a bunch of medication, but nothing ever really helped, so eventually I just accepted it as a part of my life and moved on with it.”
“What about your parents?”
“What about them?”
“What do they think?”
“They think that I’m their odd, eccentric, and mentally-ill miracle son. I think they expected more of me – wanted more for me than a part-time job as a barista and an unfulfilled dream of a writing career.” A shrug. “But that never stopped them from loving me.”
Chuuya chews on that for a minute. “That’s… good.”
Humming, Dazai bumps shoulders with him. “Isn’t it?”
“What about others?”
“Others?” he asks, pretending to be more obtuse than he is because –
Chuuya’s brows tug into a pissy, little scowl. “You know.”
Because of that.
Dazai shakes his head. “I don’t.”
“You do.”
“Hmmm,” he touches his bottom lip with the tip of his finger. “Do you perhaps mean lovers?”
“Or friends,” Chuuya is quick to correct this time. “Whatever you prefer to share with me.”
“Aren’t you a curious, little angel?” Dazai teases and reaches over to pinch Chuuya’s cheek, flushed from the November wind. He is shocked to see that Chuuya doesn’t immediately punch him.
Instead, he shamelessly meets Dazai’s eyes. “Can you blame me?”
Dazai’s heart stumbles a little. His feet almost do too – but he manages to avoid such a mishap just in time, clearing his throat and straightening his spine before he says, “First, let me ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“Did you look for me?”
A heartbeat passes; then —
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Always,” Chuuya says, just like that. Like this one word doesn’t carry more meaning than most love declarations nowadays. “Your turn.”
It takes Dazai a moment longer to overplay the treacherous flutter of the thing in his chest. A heart. He has a human heart, and, for the first time in maybe forever, he realizes how painful it is to have one. How much it aches when it beats like that.
“I’ve had friends,” his voice comes out thick no matter how many times he clears his throat, “girlfriends, boyfriends, yes.”
“But?”
“Why do you think there is a but?”
Chuuya snorts. “There is always a but with you.”
Dazai’s lips purse in defeat. He doesn’t enjoy admitting it, but it’s true. But, but, but. He is just one big contradiction.
“But no one ever stayed. I think I knew that there was something different about me. I never knew why though. I thought it was a curse, that maybe I was just destined to watch life happen from the stands because I never learned how to play the game of life, never learned the rules, never had the handbook that everyone seemed to magically know.” They pass a group of giggling teenagers, and he curves his mouth into another breezy smile. “But now I know. Problem solved. No buts anymore.”
“It makes such a big difference to you?” Chuuya asks.
“It makes the world’s difference. I know now and —” The staggering invisible blow that slams into Dazai’s skull cuts him off mid-speech.
“Dazai?” A hand touches his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“N-Nothing,” Dazai rasps, barely able to suppress a wince as he clutches his forehead. “Just a little headache.” He hopes the grin he flashes is more convincing than his voice. “Nothing to worry about. Really.”
Chuuya’s whole face darkens though. “It’s the memories, isn’t it?”
It’s fine. Just a little headache that will not stop Dazai from ending their day before it has even begun. “I told you. Nothing to worry about.”
“Why do I not believe you when you say that?”
“Because Chuuya’s allergic to believing anything I say.”
“You and I both know there’s a reason for that.”
“It’s still rude!” Dazai exclaims and grabs Chuuya’s hand to drag him to one of the shooting stands with those fancy prices. “Now come on, I think you owe me one of those big teddy bears.”
Surely their angel powers – or, well, Chuuya’s will come in handy for that, no?
“I owe you?!” Chuuya sputters even though he follows Dazai anyway.
The angel powers do come in handy. Chuuya doesn’t miss a single target, and despite the leery looks the vendor sends their way, Dazai still ends up with a giant stuffed dolphin between his arms. He names it Arahabaki and it follows them on the Ferris wheel, then to the arcade. Chuuya pretends to be above their silly little human games for exactly six minutes before Dazai ropes him into a competitive match in which he epically defeats the angel.
Chuuya’s enraged glare is even worth the growing pressure inside his skull. Dazai feels like he is a balloon that is getting bigger and bigger with each hour, and there is only so much time until he just… pops.
“How about the library next?” Dazai wonders when they step out of the Arcade. His watch says that it’s only three in the afternoon. His stomach, however, growling, says that it’s time to eat.
“Dazai –”
He stops Chuuya as soon as he sees the face he makes, so dreadfully serious when they are just starting to have fun! “We can’t talk much but I could show you my favorite reading spot. It’s really cozy.” Dazai nods firmly. “I like it.”
“Dazai,” Chuuya says again.
“What?” he asks, exasperated.
Chuuya frowns at him. “You’re in pain.”
Blinking, Dazai tries to scowl right back at him, but it’s a little difficult given the strain it puts on his eyes. “So?”
“That’s your answer?” Chuuya snaps. “So?”
“So I’m in pain,” Dazai says and shrugs. “I’ve been in pain for most of my life. Big deal. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course, it matters. It matters to me.”
Dazai’s heart flutters, and so do his eyelids. “Heh, how nice of you…”
“I’ve seen what it’s like to be human,” Chuuya mutters. “I believe you, okay? It’s fine. We can be human at home, too.”
Home.
What even is that to beings like them?
“Chuuya’s an awful liar,” Dazai tells him even as he lets Chuuya guide him away from the glitz and the fun, away from the sun, away from a hopeful future, and back to his fish-bowl life from before.
**
A few hours later, Dazai is buried under five different blankets that are supposed to keep his shivering at bay. It’s like trying to fix a stroke with a band-aid, though. That fever that is making him sick comes from a wound that is too grand and too ancient to be cured by modern medicine and blankets.
While watching Chuuya play maid has been a delight, Dazai would have preferred if it happened under different circumstances. He can barely keep his eyes open long enough to even look at the angel anymore.
“How are you feeling?” Chuuya asks eventually, sitting at the edge of his bed to feel his temple. The cool touch of his fingers is a sobering relief to Dazai’s fever-muddled head.
The joke that’s on his mind requires too much energy and effort, so Dazai is forced to stick to the plain and deplorable truth. “Not too good if… I’m being honest.”
Chuuya drags his hand higher but thankfully doesn’t steal it away, brushing it through Dazai’s sweat-soaked hair. “I know.”
“This…” Dazai heaves the weight of his gaze up to him. “This isn’t going to go away any time soon, is it?”
Silence stretches as they look at each other.
“No.”
Dazai’s head slumps back against the pillow, mouth trembling with the bitter smile that clings to his lips. He always thought that reaching the epilogue of his life would come with relief. Instead, it comes with the childish wish to get a few more pages, a couple more chapters. “And here I was… happy to finally remember.”
Chuuya doesn’t have anything to say to that.
Dazai doesn’t blame him.
Eventually, he strings enough energy together to ask, “How many years have passed since I fell, Chuuya?”
Chuuya brushes his finger across his cheek one last time before pulling his hands into his lap with a sigh. “A lot of them.”
“How many?”
“One-hundred-and-forty-seven.”
“Oh, wow,” Dazai murmurs. “That’s… a lot.” He chuckles. “Sure is a lot.”
“And yet it feels like we’ve been here before just yesterday,” Chuuya mutters, his voice drooping like a wilting flower – so unbecoming of such a lively creature as him.
Dazai hums. “I’ve probably been through quite a few reincarnation cycles then, huh?”
“Probably.”
“Chuuya,” he says slowly, gulping down a breath, “have we –”
“Don’t,” Chuuya tells him. “Don’t ask.”
Dazai has never bothered to follow his orders before, so there is no reason to start doing it now – if only it weren’t for the way the words bleed out of his mouth.
Maybe it’s better not to ask.
“Okay.”
They sit in that awful silence for a while, Dazai shivering silently to himself and Chuuya staring into nothing with his knees drawn up to his chin. What a human picture the two of them make.
“I’m cold,” Dazai says eventually.
Chuuya gets to his feet, almost automatically –
“I don’t need another blanket.”
Chuuya stops, and turns around to him. “Then what do you need?”
Dazai gazes back at him without giving him an answer, hoping that the bond that they once used to share will come through yet again and let them communicate without actually using words.
Chuuya’s mask of flat irritation twitches, understanding. Of course, he does. He always does. After a flicker of doubt, it evens out into resignation, and he sighs as he climbs on the bed and crawls over Dazai to squeeze himself on the other side of the bed.
He didn’t have the money for a bigger frame, so it’s a tight fit. All the better.
Chuuya wraps his arms around him, and his body heat starts to fill the empty places that the cold has carved into Dazai.
For the first time ever since he got his memories back – who knows, maybe even long before then, Dazai feels a semblance of relief in this nest of bodies.
“Better?” Chuuya asks, eliciting more – better —
goosebumps with the brush of his lips against Dazai’s neck.
“A little.”
As expected and as wished, the arms around Dazai tighten, pulling him impossibly tighter.
Dazai savors the marvelous warmth before he clears his throat. “It could be even better.”
Chuuya grunts against him. “How so?”
“You could… I don’t know, use your wings for extra heat.”
He feels Chuuya stiffen into a brick.
“Just an idea,” Dazai adds sheepishly. “You don’t have to, of course. I’m just dying, but it’s no big deal.”
“You’re not dying,” Chuuya hisses, and his embrace feels like a romanticized punch to Dazai’s chest. “And your bed – fuck, your entire apartment is too damn small for my wings.”
“You’re full of divine magic,” Dazai mumbles. “You can make it work.”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
“You used to want to.”
“That was different. That was home.”
What a subtle way to remind Dazai that he isn’t.
It is the truth though.
“I loved your wings,” Dazai admits after another breath. “There weren’t many things that I loved about being an angel, but your wings – I loved them, I did. They were very pretty.”
Chuuya’s huffy exhale washes over his neck. “Stop trying to manipulate me into showing my wings.”
“I’m not manipulating you. It’s the truth.”
“Yeah,” Chuuya scoffs. “And the sun rises in the north, and humans are the only species in the universe.”
This game they are playing, it is too thrilling not to roll around in bed until they are facing each other. Granted, Dazai miscalculates and ends up closer to Chuuya than he anticipated – close enough that the tips of their noses brush, just for one sickening heartbeat, before Dazai inches back breathlessly.
“Why would I lie about liking your wings just to make them show them to you?” Dazai asks. “That’s contradictive.”
Chuuya’s brows squish as if he is actually taking Dazai’s argument into consideration even though he holds onto his skeptical scowl nonetheless. Then: “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
“You’ve always liked messing with my head. It’s just who you are.”
“I’ve always liked your wings, too.”
“Stop saying that,” Chuuya grouses, shaking his head.
Dazai’s eyes widen though and he reaches out to poke the angel’s cheek before he can think any better of it. “Are you blushing? You are! Chuuya, you’re blushing.”
Chuuya slaps his hand away. “No, I’m not! Shut up!”
“Why are you so embarrassed all of a sudden? You used to flaunt your majestic, beautiful wings all the time back then!”
“It’s different!”
“What is?”
Chuuya stares at him for a moment before shaking his head. “Never mind. Forget it.”
Even if Dazai could, he wouldn’t. “No, no, tell me. What’s so different about me complimenting your wings and you showing them off in public as often as you could?”
“It just is.”
“That’s not a real answer.”
“You’re not getting another one.”
“Chuuuuya, come on.” In a moment of bravery, Dazai lifts his fingers to Chuuya’s chin, cupping it to deny him the chance of looking away again. “I like your wings. Why are you so embarrassed about that?”
Chuuya’s watery eyes glare back at him for a moment before he practically sags under Dazai’s touch, exhaling a sigh. “Wings are… personal.” And then his gaze snaps back to Dazai again. “You know that.”
“Surely not personal enough to be so flustered about?”
Except that Chuuya’s flat stare claims exactly that.
Dazai’s lips flatten. It’s ironic, truly, how out of place he has always felt even back then, as an angel. He fell because he believed being anything other than an angel would finally put the missing pieces in place. Instead, he became human, and still, he doesn’t belong. He never belongs.
Wherever he goes, no matter who he becomes, he will always live somewhere in between, never fully at home, never whole. A destined outsider. An alien that knows enough to pass most of the time, but not enough to feel like one of them.
“Heh. You’re right,” Dazai says. “I’m just messing with you.”
Except now Chuuya starts to see through his façade. Seriously. “You really didn’t know?”
“It’s not like we ever got a book where all the rules were written down.”
“Well…” Chuuya makes a face. “I thought you knew.”
Dazai shrugs. “My memories… still fuzzy.”
His heart beats once, twice, and suddenly gigantic, feathered wings unfurl from behind Chuuya’s back, pearl-white and beautiful; one curls around Dazai and the bed, its touch light and grounding at the same time.
Dazai’s words snag in his throat at the sight. He is almost breathless enough to reach out and brush the tips of his fingers over the secondaries, the feathers that are closest to him. But that much he knows still. Touching is a no-no. At least, without permission.
As if reading his thoughts, the wing snakes around Dazai all of a sudden. It’s strong enough to make him feel like he is being swaddled in more blankets except these ones are a thousand times better. They also happen to come with the side effect of easing the throbbing pain in the back of Dazai’s skull, which has begun to crawl down his spine in the last few hours.
When Dazai’s eyes inevitably flutter to Chuuya, he is met with an expression that tries too hard to appear unimpressed to be genuine.
“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Chuuya raises one brow. “That’s all that it took?”
Dazai hums happily.
“You know…”
“Yes?”
“I liked your wings, too.”
Dazai swallows before opening his eyes to blink back at him. He doesn’t respond though. He doesn’t know how. Or what.
After all, his wings burnt to a crisp during his fall, disappearing into the night as black as the colors that they used to be. Now there is nothing left of them anymore.
Dazai wants to savor this moment, at least for a few more hours, but he hears the echo of his fate like the loud tick of a clock on the wall, counting down his time – and there is not much left anymore.
He clears his throat and tries to smile, all of a sudden feeling like he never learned how to do that properly. “Hey, Chuuya.”
Chuuya’s eyes slide to him in response.
“There is one more thing that I think you’d like about us humans.”
“And what’s that?” he asks.
“Well, there is this… “ Dazai unconsciously licks his lips. “… thing that we do. When we like someone. I want to show it to you.”
Chuuya stares at him. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
“I don’t,” Dazai says automatically. “You’re still very annoying.”
“So are you.”
“But for some reason, you are here.”
“So you pity-like me?”
“So do you,” Dazai fires back, making Chuuya scowl even harder. It’s cute. Magnetic even, pulling him closer unconsciously.
“I don’t pity-like you.”
“So you just like me?”
“No, I just...” Chuuya breaks off to make an unhappy little noise and huff before meeting his gaze again; they are close than before. Much closer. “I don’t know.”
Dazai tilts his head, and it makes the wings around him tense. Angel anatomy – what a wonderful, little thing. “So… I can show you?”
Chuuya nods, quiet, and his eyes flicker down to Dazai’s mouth before dragging up again.
Dazai has to bite his cheek – smiling right now is probably not the best choice of action. It’s hard though when Chuuya is looking at him like that, so intensely, like he can’t decide whether he hates what is happening here or whether he loves it.
Only one way to find out.
Dazai closes his eyes and the distance between them; his lips press against Chuuya’s, just a light brush, really, because he is an angel and angels don’t kiss, not like this at least, and this must be very weird and new for him.
It’s absurd just how much pain this one tiny little thing can cause though.
Because Chuuya kisses him back, ever the natural learner, and it opens a chasm inside Dazai, a bottomless, hungry thing that does nothing but crave. Crave this. Crave more. Crave Chuuya.
Dazai draws away to suck in a gasping breath, his eyes open only for long enough to see the darkness of Chuuya’s pupils before their mouths collide again. Dazai braces himself on the bed with arms as the wings pull him closer, mirroring the dizzying sensation of Chuuya’s kisses.
Somehow, Dazai ends up on his back with Chuuya’s hands clasping his cheeks and Chuuya above him. And it’s good. It’s perfect. It aches. Not like the pain, which has become a dull whisper that’s being dwarfed by the slam of Dazai’s heart. But like a giant bruise that covers him from head to toe, making each brush of lips hurt as much as when they pull away again.
“Still think humans are stupid?” Dazai whispers during one of those times, voice, chest, and fingers trembling alike.
“Yes,” Chuuya murmurs, eyes gleaming like burnt ice in the dim lights of his apartment. “Very much.”
And then he kisses Dazai again.
The thing about good things like rainbows and epiphanies and first kisses, however, is that they never last.
It starts with a hiccupping chest that Dazai ignores. He is kissing Chuuya – of course, his heart is over-excited; that is no reason to stop. Except that it eventually infects his lungs, stealing more and more oxygen from Dazai until he can’t even kiss Chuuya back anymore because he is too busy gasping for breath and clutching his head.
“What’s happening?”
Just for a moment, he catches the same wildfire that rages in his heart reflected in Chuuya’s eyes before it dies out, washed away by muted resignation. “The memories. They’re making your brain swell.”
“Ouchy… “ Dazai’s giggle sounds like coughing. He is a stream and bit by bit he is narrowing down into nothing. “Doesn’t sound too good. Does that mean… I’m going to die…?”
“I’m not going to let you die,” Chuuya says firmly; the thumb on Dazai’s cheek is a passing relief from the fire that’s devouring him whole.
Dazai’s lips tremble as he speaks. “Then… what are you going to do?”
Chuuya meets his gaze. “You know what.”
Dazai shakes his head. “No… I don’t want to.” He tries to scramble away but there is nowhere to go, and his body is too sick to get off the bed. “Chuuya, please.”
“You won’t feel a thing.” Chuuya’s eyes grow glassy as he nods a few times. “It will be all right.”
“I’ll forget all of it again,” Dazai whispers. “I’ll forget and you… you will be gone again.”
“And you won’t even remember, so it won’t matter,” Chuuya snaps with a pained edge to his voice.
“I didn’t remember last time either and I still felt it!”
“I’m not going to let you die.”
“Just…” Dazai sucks in a wobbly breath. “Just come back again, okay?”
“And what? Do the same thing over and over?”
“Why not?”
“Every time I touch you, you remember.”
“Then don’t touch me!”
Chuuya’s gaze softens. “Dazai…”
“Just come back!” Dazai doesn’t wish for many things. Really. He has resigned himself to his fate as an eternal outsider, but – just this one time, can’t he have a little more? Can’t he be happy just this once? “I’ve had more fun with you than I had in a lifetime!”
“Someday,” Chuuya says, and the gentle tone makes Dazai thrash underneath his touch, trying to get away, to stall for more time; just a little more, “you’ll meet someone, and it will be less lonely than it is now. You always do.” A stray tear rolls down his cheek, shattering when it reaches the curve of his reassuring smile. “You always make it in the end.”
“No,” Dazai begs, shrinking into himself as Chuuya’s hands cup him tighter, growing hot. “no, please, don’t, I don’t want to –”
***
“One ginormous cappuccino,” Dazai says, handing the teenage girl her drink with an overtly polite grin. “Who is next?”
“That would be me,” says the next customer, and forward steps a young man with the reddest hair Dazai has ever laid eyes on, the first ray of sunlight shining through the clouds of his dreadfully boring Thursday afternoon.
“Oh. And what would your name be?”
The man frowns at him. “Did you mean my order?”
“No, I meant your name,” Dazai replies, all his sense of shame dwarfed by the overpowering pulse of attraction thundering in his chest. “We ask that of all our customers.” He nods self-evidently. “Trust me, I work here.”
“Still, aren’t you supposed to ask for my order first before asking for my name?”
“Are you trying to tell me how to do your job?”
The man’s eyes narrow, scowling at Dazai for a long moment before he lets out a sigh and says, “Fine. Chuuya.”
“Chuuya! Got it,” Dazai chirps and grabs a paper cup. “And your order, Chuuya?”
He likes how that name sounds on his lips.
Chuuya.
Chu~ya.
Pretty.
Chuuya shoves his right hand into the pocket of his coat. “A black.” He wears gloves, Dazai notices, the leather of the same color as his coffee order.
“And your number?” Dazai asks shamelessly, lifting his gaze to Chuuya again, who gives him the world’s driest expression in human history. For some reason, that only makes Dazai want it even more.
“Okay, now I know this is definitely not part of your policy.”
Making a face, Dazai tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “Do you mind telling me anyway?”
“Yes,” Chuuya says. Just like that! “I’m not available.”
“Maybe I want your number but in a friend-way.”
Again, Chuuya stares flatly at him. Dazai’s sure that this time he will say no. Why shouldn’t he? Except that after another sigh, he actually mutters, “… fine. But I want my coffee first. Then I’ll sit down outside, you’ll join me, tell me something about yourself, and I’ll decide if I want to be friends with someone who blackmails their customers at work.”
“Are you sure you’re not available?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure.”
“Okay,” Dazai says. “See you in however long it takes me to ask my boss for a break.”
“Take your time.”
“I won’t.”
— THE END —