Chapter Text
From his hospital bed, Dazai’s left eye traced the shadows and edges of the bandages wrapped around his left wrist. His right eye was hidden beneath a patchwork of bandages, and unlike his left wrist, his right arm was fully obscured by paper-like strands. The nauseating white lights drenching his body almost seemed to have been devoured by the depths of his dark brown eye. In contrast, his white button-up shirt gleamed like the sun striking the surface of the sea.
Dazai flicked his eye to a young boy who was being dragged into the room of blue curtains, white tiles, and overhead metal rods. The boy appeared to be around the age of twelve or thirteen, and he had short, orangish-brown hair, blue eyes, a scowl on his face, and bandages around his left wrist. Dazai fixed his eye on those bandages as the boy passed by, ushered into the bedded section of the room immediately beside Dazai; each bed in the room was demarcated from the other beds by curtains that formed large boxes.
“I’m telling you, I’m fine,” growled a young, ash-eroded voice on Dazai’s left—the side that the boy had just walked towards. “I don’t want to be here.”
“I understand that you don’t want to be here, but this is for your health and safety,” replied a much deeper voice that Dazai surmised was from the doctor who had guided the boy into the room.
Dazai was arrested by the conversation beside him to the point where his senses had asphyxiated nearly all other sounds. He kept his eye riveted on the curtain separating him from the boy and the doctor.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” groaned the boy. “I—”
“Nakahara-san, it’s all right. You don’t need to tough this one out. We’ll discuss counseling later.”
“Hah?! Counseling?! As if!” Dazai could hear the smack of shoes hitting the floor.
“Nakahara-san, I understand that the idea of counseling might be scary, but—”
“I don’t give a shit! I’m telling you that you have the wrong idea about all of this! Ugh, whatever…” The rustle of fabric on sheets and the faint creak and groan of metal springs cut through the curtains. “If it’ll get me outta here faster, then whatever.”
“Then we’ll discuss this after we’ve handled your medications.” Dazai observed as the doctor with short brown hair, glasses, and a white coat briskly plodded past him.
“Stupid,” hissed the boy beside Dazai after the doctor exited the room.
Tilting his head, Dazai pushed himself to the edge of his bed, facing the direction of the boy. “Nakahara?” he quietly called out, slipping his hand into his pocket before offering a single nod to himself.
“Hah?” echoed back the familiar, vexed voice.
Dazai slid off his bed and approached the curtain concealing the boy. “Can I open the curtain?” he asked, though he wasn’t sure why he’d asked at all.
“Whatever.”
Pulling back the curtain with a grating hiss, Dazai gazed at the small, thin boy who was sitting on a white bed with his arms and legs crossed; the boy wore a white shirt and black, slightly baggy pants. Then, with a mirthful smile, Dazai raised his left hand and said, “We’re matching.” He closed his visible eye, retaining a smile.
The boy furrowed his brows, his gaze lingering on Dazai’s bandage-covered right eye. “So what?” he mumbled.
Dazai walked up to the young boy, taking note of the array of bruises and scrapes encrusting the boy’s arms. “You’re no fun. It’s a funny coincidence.” He welcomed himself to the vacant spot on the bed beside the boy.
“Hey! I—”
“By the way, I’m Dazai. Dazai Osamu.”
“Tch. Nakahara Chuuya.” Chuuya curled his fingers into his arms as his lour deepened. “What happened to you?” His body subtly tilted away from Dazai.
“I slit my wrist,” Dazai replied nonchalantly, and immediately, Chuuya’s brows rippled. “I knew I should’ve used something sharper, but I thought it’d hurt more, so I didn’t. Turns out that, to a certain point, the duller the blade, the more it hurts. But if it’s too dull, it won’t hurt at all, but it also won’t do anything to you. And now my suicide attempt is only an attempt.” He let out a defeated sigh.
Chuuya, on the other hand, was staring at Dazai with parted lips and widened yet scrunched-down eyes. “You… Is that funny to you or something?”
Dazai cocked his head. “I mean, it’s ironic, at least.” He shrugged, swinging his legs back and forth like a pendulum. “I wanted to die, but someone had to come along and ‘save’ me.”
A mixture of bewilderment and something akin to revulsion curdled Chuuya’s expression. “You’re telling me that you’re annoyed because someone got you help for doing something so stupid?” His voice was a bullet of rancor.
“Stupid? Like you’re one to talk.”
“Hah?! Unlike you, I didn’t try to kill myself!”
“You didn’t?”
“No! But these assholes won’t believe me!”
Dazai turned so that his entire body was angled to face Chuuya. “Then what happened?” he inquired, intently analyzing Chuuya’s movements and reactions.
Chuuya brought his right hand to his forehead as he sibilated, “Got into a fight.” His eyes sank to the floor.
“Over what?” Dazai pressed.
Chuuya’s lips receded ever so slightly. “Some idiot thought it’d be hilarious to ‘accidentally’ smash the project of someone I know. I punched his lights out, but I got a nasty cut from it.” He shook his head. “Useless staff here think I’m just lying to look strong. Think I’m some poor, depressed kid getting abused, neglected, and bullied. Ugh. I’m fifteen. I can handle myself.”
Processing Chuuya’s words, Dazai placed his palms on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. “Huh. I thought you were twelve.” He felt something hard bash into his thigh. “Ow.”
“I hate people like you,” snarled Chuuya.
“And I hate people like you.”
Despite both Dazai and Chuuya’s jaundiced asseverations, neither moved from the bed nor made any physical contact. Instead, the two sat side by side in the murmur of the other patients occupying the rest of the room.
Finally, Chuuya mumbled, “How the hell did you let yourself get caught if you actually wanted to die?”
For a moment, Dazai was silent, but then, he plastered on a smile and chirped, “See, I was walking through town, and I saw a nice, shiny kitchen knife sticking out of the trash! I thought, ‘This must be a sign!’ So, I ran over and cut myself with it.” His innocent grin and gaiety were like the wax coating on an apple.
Chuuya recoiled, pressing one hand into the bed behind him. “A kitchen knife…in the trash? And you just… That’s gross. Who knows what could’ve been on that! And more importantly, you’re saying you did this in front of other people?!” His teeth were bared.
“Oh, my. I’m not that stupid, Chuuya. Obviously, I made sure no one was around first.”
“And yet you didn’t… And since when were we on a first-name basis?!”
“‘Nakahara’ is too long. It’s twice as many syllables as ‘Chuuya.’ Besides, ‘Chuuya’ also fits in the sense that it’s short.”
Chuuya rammed his fist into Dazai’s left hand, cracking their knuckles together; Dazai winced. “I’ll kill you.”
“And make more work for the poor, overworked, underpaid staff here?”
“Kh! Not that I care when they won’t even believe their own damn patient!”
Dazai gently placed his hand on Chuuya’s shoulder. “They’re just looking out for you, kiddo,” he chuckled with a knowing glint in his eye that became a spark to Chuuya’s fuse.
“You really wanna die, don’t you?” Chuuya’s baritone, thunderous voice reverberated through the room.
“I mean, shouldn’t that much be obvious?" quipped Dazai.
“You’re lucky we’re in a hospital, or I’d be strangling you with your own bandages right now,” retorted Chuuya. “Or, I’d hang you with them and use your body as a piñata. You’d also be forced to suffer longer that way from getting some slack from getting beaten around.”
“What a cruel thing to do to something that’s been depressed and suicidal for basically as long as it can remember,” ruefully gasped Dazai, who tipped his head back, covering his eyes with his arm.
Chuuya’s eyelids yanked back as he murmured, “I didn’t realize it—”
“I was joking.” Dazai wore his neutral expression.
“Asshole! You even have the audacity to lie and joke about something like that?! Maybe you were right. Maybe it was a mistake that someone saved you!” Chuuya ground his fists into the bed like coiled springs.
“I don’t disagree,” sighed Dazai, whose words were achromatic balloons drifting through the air. “It would have been better if I’d just died. After all, there’s a reason why so few people would say I’m their enemy.” He scrupulously examined his palms. “I couldn’t care less about what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ If the only reason you have to live is to search for a reason to live, can you really call that a reason to live?” His voice was soft like snow, but his words had hardened into glacial scalpels. “If every potential ‘reason’ you find not to die just yet just ends up as a knife in your back, and before you can get any closure, it vanishes like everything else inevitably will, why bother?
“If you’ve grown numb to everything but the things that thaw you out just to shatter you from the inside and never go away, you’ll just become a pile of broken glass—unable to feel, unable to mend, unable to say a word about any of it, but bound to further decompose and shatter. If trying to ‘fix’ you only ever hurts and breaks you, what point is there in even the idea of hoping for something more? Something different? Anything? Just…anything. Anything at all… But that ‘anything’ becomes everything that’s killing you the most. You’re left wishing you’d never found anything.
“If your reason to live is searching for a reason to live, but you’re destined to never find a reason that won’t slip through your fingers like water, can you call that living? And in the end, there will never be anything that will have made all that suffering worth it. Even if you somehow did find something to heal you, it would never be enough. Nothing that could come of the future will ever be enough to say that the past was worth it. It’s too late for that. And it just aches until you’re empty again. In trying to fill the void, you just restart the whole cycle of pain, longing, and emptiness. That’s all your life is, and if it’s taught you anything, that’s all your life will ever be.”